#eddie achieved his dream but what did it cost?

[queenie-ofthe-void]

Steddie Rockstar AU but it's just the song If It Means A Lot to You by A Day to Remember.

#steddie rockstar au #rockstar eddie munson #eddie achieved his dream but what did it cost? #is he happy? no of course not #hurt/no comfort for sure #steddie #steddie idea #steddie hurt/no comfort #steddie prompt #steve harrington #eddie munson #Spotify

[sealpointselkie]

My OCs: Edit (Eddy) & Hope

I’ve had these OCs for a while now but I finally got up the courage to commission art for them (I find Hope especially hard to colour I’ve “ruined” several good (by the standards I’ve set for my own art) drawings trying to figure it out. 😫

Thank you so much to @popato-chisps for the excellent art and your patience for the details! Hope is out front with the mallet and Edit is in the back, probably begging her to stop! Find the rest of their story under the cut:

I’ve been a bit embarrassed by my OCs; I love them, but I worry that others will think they’re uninteresting or uninspired. My idea for the genesis of these characters was inspired by Underverse where, through the actions of ‘outcodes’ or ‘demigods’ timelines and whole AUs were destroyed. I also watched a bunch of alchemical symbolism vids and thought about the collective unconscious of these timelines and how traumatized and angry they’d be that these outside entities used their AU as a battlefield ending in their destruction. I would imagine after a battle like that the power of the outcodes would permeate the space that used to contain the AU, and what if the fragmented unconscious of the sentient beings of that AU coalesced with that power to birth new life? New life that could travel the multiverse and protect other AUs from their fate? And what about the power of the outcodes that helped birth them? What opposing forces would these new being have to fight within themselves? (This was also inspired by Paper Crane’s birth) This idea also let me make “ship kids” without their “parents” having to be in a sexual relationship, which, I admit, appeals to me. I see these “fusion kids” as being in conflict with the Star Sanses and the Nightmare Crew (along with any other deities/out codes) but guilty of manipulating timelines and AUs to suit themselves in the absence of such figures.

Edit came first: I liked the Cross x Ink ship (Crink) and I thought about what a merging of their powers would be like. I decided on the idea of “Cross-out” or editing, which (in my mind) kind of balanced the forces of creation and destruction between Ink and Cross. Edit, or Eddy, is similar to Ink in that he can’t produce emotions on his own, but unlike Ink gathering his ink from the Doodlesphere, Eddy gathers ink by being in close proximity to events with highly charged emotional energy. He has three kinds of ink: white creates emotion, black drains emotion and red heightens it. So if Eddy is feeling an emotion like rage or joy he can use his red ink to increase the intensity of that feeling, which also boosts his fighting power. However, there is a catch, Eddy is very susceptible to rage and can loose control of himself easily when indulging in that emotion. So, in a way, he’s inherited Cross’s anger issues.

When Eddy was “young” he was guilty of creating the events that allowed him to gather ink: his “drained” state, like Ink when he runs out of ink and emotions, interfered with any empathy he would have had for the people of the AU he was currently living in. The fragmented unconscious within him “told” him that he should feel, that he wasn’t whole, so he chased ink like an addict. It’s why he’s attached himself to Hope, since being around her passively generates ink for him. Since joining up with her he’s been able to have a steady supply of ink, and therefore emotion, which allows him to empathize with other people and makes him hesitate to create the same mayhem he did before when he was more often “drained”. He tries to mitigate Hope’s crazier and extreme plans to hurt or damage as few people as is necessary.

Now he enjoys helping creators and encouraging them to edit, prune or streamline their creations – there is such a thing as over designing! But he truly believes in their own vision and won’t force a creator to follow his suggestions

His magic takes form or white circles and red X’s, symbolizing ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ his red X’s can nullify attacks while his circles can enhance the power of his own or other’s attacks. I see him as a support character, standing in the back and buffing his allies while debuffing his enemies. In a pinch he can use his pen as a weapon. He also has access to a Sans skeleton’s typical attacks of bones and Gaster Blasters, shooting red energy.

And then there is Hope; Hope is a fusion of Dream and Error which fashioned her into an avatar of her namesake. Hope can create and destroy, lift you up and cast you down, and Hope lives in between these two extremes. Meeting in the middle is never an option. Hope, like most skeletons, considers herself physically gender neutral but the identity she constructed for herself revolves on being a “Magical Girl”, defender of hopes and dreams!, and therefore uses she/her pronouns.

Hope sees herself as a traveling Magical Girl who spreads hope where ever she travels and gives the people she touches the opportunity to achieve their dreams! In reality what happens is that Hope chooses someone with ambition, or an aspiration, and manipulates events to give that person to prove the “strength” of their dream and propel them forward. No matter the cost. This most often creates an extreme or dangerous event with permanent consequences moving onwards. If they “succeed” (in her mind) then she has created a world where their dreams coming true is more likely than before! If they “fail”, well, they just didn’t want it enough and she’ll abandon them immediately. It’s rare for her to give someone a “second chance”, or continue meddling in the life of someone who passes her “test”. She usually introduces herself as a traveling performer and Eddy as her bodyguard, she often performs on the street singing top 100 pop songs where the lighting effects and sound quality is oddly good for someone with her equipment… But hey, she’s a monster so “magic”.

When it comes to her magical equipment it comes from her necklace mimicking Dream’s bauble, which transforms into multiple forms:

1. Her mallet, her go to weapon: she has ridiculous strength, like a cartoon character

2. Her microphone with stand: part of her persona is an idol/pop star. She knows the top 100 by heart and is an excellent dancer, it also creates a spotlight on her, no matter the circumstances of lighting or atmosphere.

3. Her Wand: Portable microphone, can use it to enchant others.

Hope’s glitches tend to be diamond shaped and some can be soft, it gives her the appearance of shojo sparkles rather than Error’s computer-like graphic errors.

She has a limited ability to “enchant” or control others which she uses to create her scenarios: a villain to vanquish for someone who wants to be a hero, make a talent scout more likely to pay attention to a certain young dancer, etc.

Hope thinks Eddy’s become a stick-in-the-mud since he’s had enough ink, however, and she’d never admit this, she feels rather lonely wandering from AU to AU and Eddy is the closest thing to a real friend she’s ever had. He’s also someone she’d like to have watching her back when the time comes to teach those out-codes a painful lesson. She’s definitely a character that prefers to be on the front lines and the center of attention in a fight.

Her theme and Inspiration is: Oh No! by Marina and The Diamonds

(Sorry the editing is funky, I copied and pasted from email and the mobile app won’t let me correct any more than this.)

Ink by @/comyet

Error by @/loverofpiggies

Cross and Underverse by @/jakei95

Dream by @/jokublog

Paper Crane by @/little-noko

Art by @popato-chisps, commissioned by me, @sealpointselkie

Edit Sans and Hope by @sealpointselkie

#my ocs #my ocs art #commisssoned art #edit sans #hope #crink child #cross x ink fusion #error x dream fusion #insomnia child #cross-out sans

[love-advice-on-call]

Submitted Anonymously (admittedly the ask itself is lengthy, but I’m including it as a whole because there is really important information here for everyone in similar situations):

why do i keep on attracting men who cannot see my worth and use me until i am no longer of use to them? i have noticed this pattern in the men who have been friends of mine or past exes/crushes.

my ex boyfriend made me feel like i was not good enough for him. i felt deprived of the attention and love that i needed at times. it got to the point where sometimes i would throw a tantrum so he would finally acknowledge me. we would get into an argument and then sometimes he would bring up a mutual friend of ours in the conversation. he would mention how she never does this and always understands him. i realized how much that stung to hear. it made me feel like i had failed at being his girlfriend and that i apparently do not know him well enough compared to somebody else.

then, this guy that i recently had fell for, led me on for months on end and made me feel like i had a solid chance with him. he accepted my dreams and hopes. he promised a future with me where i would be taken out on dates and lose my first to him. he stopped being that way with me after a couple of months in our weird friendship. he would only be endearing and sweet to me when he was horny. i became this toy that he used to get off too. stupidly enough, i still thought he liked me and did everything he asked because i was so desperate for him to continue feeling something for me. i found out eventually that he was in love with my best friend. i was pushed to the side when something better came along, basically.

a year ago, an old friend of mine who is married, has 2 kids, and is 30 years old (i am 9 years younger than him), started flirting hardcore with me. i had no idea he was married and had kids until a few months in our friendship to which he explained how he could had sworn he told me. it just made me feel so sick after i found out because he was telling me how much he liked me, wanted to be with me, and explained in depth on what he would do to me if i was with him. he sent me photos, asked to see photos, became pushy when i said no, and wanted me to watch him get off to the idea of me. i explained to him how he needed to stop and it took some convincing for him to finally do that. he also had a girlfriend as this was going on (my other best friend) and i do not think she knows he was doing this while they were beginning to date. i

then, this newest guy, i just want to take things slow, and have normal conversations. they begin that way and then it gets sexual. he starts to address me as a “whore”, “slut”, orders me around to do his bidding, demeans me, and makes me feel like i am just not good enough. i understand how some people get off to this but it has gotten to the degree where i almost started crying because i felt so wildly triggered by it. he stopped right away when i asked him to not stop calling me those things. he told me how he did not want to make me feel like crap or that i was not good enough. so, that is good.

i don’t know anymore. everything is making me feel disgusted with myself and like i am stuck in the body of my child self again. i just hate feeling like i am a second option, a toy to be used with, and that i am just not good enough. i hate it so much.

Response:

So I would like to say is that it sounds like you are describing having a bad dating radar, but the bigger underlying issue is that you seem to be getting mixed up with these really abusive guys.  I think you know this too as you’ve pointed out these guys are jerks, but I’d like to start off with going through your ask and pointing our some of those things to you because I think a 3rd person perception of the situations is important.

“i felt deprived of the attention and love that i needed at times. it got to the point where sometimes i would throw a tantrum so he would finally acknowledge me.....  he would mention how she never does this and always understands him. i realized how much that stung to hear. it made me feel like i had failed at being his girlfriend and that i apparently do not know him well enough compared to somebody else.”

I’m sorry that he’d compare you to other people. Something like that would definitely hurt and it sounds like neither of you were having your needs met in the relationship.

then, this guy that i recently had fell for, led me on for months on end and made me feel like i had a solid chance with him. he accepted my dreams and hopes.

Generally with people leading others on, there is sort of a power dynamic there.  One person has something the other person wants (almost always emotional) and they leverage it to get what they want (sex, attention, control, etc.).

i found out eventually that he was in love with my best friend.

I have my doubts that he was in love with your best friend.  Given how he was treating you it’s more likely this was another relationship where he was also using your best friend.

a year ago, an old friend of mine who is married, has 2 kids, and is 30 years old (i am 9 years younger than him), started flirting hardcore with me. i had no idea he was married and had kids until a few months in our friendship

Ouch, that is really all I can say.  Holy shit I’m sorry to hear that he did that to you and disgusted to hear that he is doing that to has family.  I always hate hearing about these situations.

he sent me photos, asked to see photos, became pushy when i said no, and wanted me to watch him get off to the idea of me. i explained to him how he needed to stop and it took some convincing for him to finally do that.

A bit of good news hear, I’m glad to hear that you asserted yourself when things got too heavy.  This is a tremendous victory and you should really be proud of yourself for doing this.  So many people are not strong enough to stand their ground, but you did.

he also had a girlfriend as this was going on (my other best friend) and i do not think she knows he was doing this while they were beginning to date

I- just... anger, disappointment.  This guy sounds like scum of the Earth.  Not even sure if Satan himself would be able look at this one. Fuck this guy

he starts to address me as a “whore”, “slut”, orders me around to do his bidding, demeans me, and makes me feel like i am just not good enough. i understand how some people get off to this but it has gotten to the degree where i almost started crying because i felt so wildly triggered by it. he stopped right away when i asked him to not stop calling me those things. he told me how he did not want to make me feel like crap or that i was not good enough. so, that is good.

Again, good to hear that you asserted yourself and very glad to hear that this guy respected your boundaries and emphasized that he didn’t mean harm.  Sounds like every one was responsible in the end, but sorry to hear that it did end up hurting you.

What is interesting to point out  though is that this guy took a dominant/deprecatory role and that he did it to specifically you.  Like maybe he knew or felt that you would be receptive/sensitive to it.  In no way am I saying that he meant to hurt you, just saying that maybe he felt like you would be the kind of person he would do that to.

i don’t know anymore. everything is making me feel disgusted with myself and like i am stuck in the body of my child self again.

It is sad to hear and I think there is a lot to uncover there.

Overall, taking a look at everything, there are some common themes going on here.  Throughout everything you talk about positions where you are being deprived emotionally, taken advantage of and used, and there seems to be a power dynamic involved in many of the situations.

What you are talking about here tells me that I think it may be time to look into some therapy and self help books.  I know that might not be the end all solution you were looking for, but you’re describing a complex problem that is affecting your relationships in many ways and it’s something that has been going on for a while.  Instead of a solution, I think it is better to think of this as a goal “to stop dating jerk guys”.  That is all you need to do in reality, but because that takes time, it’s better to think of it as a goal.  Doing therapy, reading books/learning, and doing self discovery will help you achieve that goal.

With COVID going around, you can always do therapy over the phone or over internet.  I myself do this as a patient and it works just the same. Therapy doesn’t always cost money, if you reach out to a local college with an established psychology department, you will find students in training and they offer free sessions.  If you have some money for therapy, then you can look at psychology today to find a therapist in your area.

As for self help books I recommend reading “Dating Radar: Why Your Brain Says Yes to "The One" Who Will Make Your Life Hell“ by Bill Eddy.  I haven’t read the book myself yet (admittedly), but I have read a few of his articles and they are very good.  He talks about things like spotting the person who is going to end up being a jerk, before you get to invested which is an important first step. 

I also recommend taking a break from dating.  This will give you an opportunity to look inwards without the distractions from these guys.  It will especially prevent the allure of men filling that emotional gap.  In reality, you are the only who can fill it and you need to accomplish that before you can start seeing other people.  Otherwise we can get situations like you’ve described.

These guys may make you feel like you aren’t good enough, but as we’ve pointed out, they are the ones who are not good enough; And you know these men are no good for you and you know these men are holding your emotions hostage. At the core of you, there is a person that wants out; that wants individuality back, that wants your power, your control, your say, and your satisfaction, and wants genuine love.  It may take some time, but I think you can achieve it.  The important thing to keep in mind through all of this is that you are good enough.  

Wishing you the best and feel free to write in again if you have more questions.

Posted May 10, 2020

#advice #relationships #love advice #relationship help

[brauthaalandfc]

Manchester City Player Ratings 2018/19

I got bored and decided to write a lil review of Manchester City players this season. Hope you enjoy and feel free to discuss.

Warning: may be biased

Ederson: 9/10  Keeping this one short and simple, just like Eddie’s passes from the back. What more do you want from a keeper? He can give you assists, great saves, and is willing to run half way up the pitch to defend his teammates. Took one point off him because he didn’t score. Maybe next season. 

Kyle Walker: 7.5/10 The English idiot definitely got tired around christmas time with a few dodgy games which I guess is understandable given the fact the he hadn’t really stopped playing for over a year with the World Cup and so on and he might have been the England crackhead but overall I think Kyle did well. Especially during the last few games, I thought that he played really well. I think it was Crystal Palace away that he probably had one of his best games. I hope he rests well over summer and can continue that form next season. 

Danilo: 7/10 When Kyle was too busy snorting coke (just kidding, don’t kill me), Danilo played really well in his place. Although he isn’t as quick or as direct as Kyle, he provided a composure and control that sometimes Kyle lacks. He didn’t really make any big mistakes when playing, and I would have given him a higher score if he played a little more. There has been rumours of him leaving and I hope these are not true because he is a pretty solid back up at right back and is Bernardo’s favourite person to annoy.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: 8/10 Am I crazy giving him a higher rating than Kyle? Probably. But I love to spread appreciation for my unproblematic little blonde ukrainian! Last summer he was linked heavily to Wolves- it looked highly probable that that was were he was going to end up this season. However, he decided to stay and fight for his place at Manchester City and I am so bloody glad that he did! When Ben got injured and Delph was...you know... being Delph, Zinnie stepped up and performed at left back (not his natural position!!) and played at a higher standard than any of us would have thought! I really admire his determination and confidence in himself to stay and fight to get into the first team. You can tell he works hard always and really loves and appreciates all his teammates. I have loved watching the little shy KDB lookalike grow and blossom into a more confident young man. Hopefully there is much more to come from this bundle of joy. We could all learn from Oleksandr Zinchenko!

Fabian Delph: 3/10 I might be a bit harsh here but literally, when did he forget the basics of football? Man preached it in All or Nothing but couldn’t practice it irl. Deplhy was a breakthrough last season and played well when Mendy got injured (yes, again). But this season... I don’t know what he was up to. Most games he played, we lost. I honestly have no clue what made him snap like that vs Leicester but bitch... calm down!! Is it harsh to say I don’t think he played well once this season? Well, I am saying it. Don’t get me wrong, I will be sad if he leaves this summer. He most definitely has passion, and whilst sometimes that leads to him perhaps being too emotional on the pitch, I appreciate it and is a popular character in the dressing room that will be missed. He has given a lot for the club in recent years but I’m afraid I see no future for him here. No more Delph every weekend :( 

Benjamin Mendy: 5/10 I have a soft spot for Mendy, can you tell? You’re probably thinking 5 is too high but I will tell you why. He played 10 games this season and got 5 assists during that time. That’s an assist every second game (if I have done my maths right). In the early stages of the season, there was no doubt that he was one of our most effective players. I was at the home game vs Huddersfield in August and I thought he played so well that game, bombing up the wing every time. He got an assist too, if I remember correctly? His crosses are insane and watching him live was a (rare) blessing! This makes it hurt even more knowing he got injured. It is obvious that Ben has so much potential and has bags of talent however, injuries seem to haunt him. Along with his occasion lax judgement and lack of concentration, he finds himself in difficult situations. It breaks my heart of the stories leaking from the training ground of him breaking down in tears. I cannot be easy for a young footballer to go through so many injuries when they are at a club that is constantly winning and breaking records, where you can watch your teammates win things and have fun with each other whilst you are stuck inside with your leg in a cast. My heart breaks for him and I hope that next season, these injuries no longer take over him and he can have a season to finally show why he is one of the best left backs in the world.

Aymeric Laporte: 9/10 There has been a lot of hype around Van Dijk this season (and rightly so) however, Aymeric hasn’t received as much attention and I think that is slightly unfair. Laporte, in my opinion, is not that far behind Van Dijk and is nowhere near his peak quite yet. I think that Aymeric has been one of our best and most important players this season. He is always reliable in defence and has probably been our first choice CB this season. Not to mention, he scored that header against Brighton that put us back in front and on the way to the title. I believe that Aymeric is an amazingly talented CB that will only improve over these next few seasons, and who knows, he might one day become the best CB in the league. 

Nicolas Otamendi: 6.5/10 Nico was so so good for us last year and offers us more physicality at CB in comparison to Stones and Laporte, however he hasn’t really stood out this season. Despite this, I don’t think he has done much wrong? He has been largely reliable when called upon to help out the team and I really can’t fault him for that. Like Danilo, he was been linked with a move elsewhere but I hope that he doesn’t move. Like I said, he is more physical than Stones and Laporte and sometimes I feel like we need that, and with Vinnie leaving I don’t think it is wise to let another CB go when I don’t feel academy players like Garcia are ready for that jump up yet. Oh and he has a good beard so I bumped him up from an initial��6. 

John Stones: 7.5/10 It has been a bit of a weird season for Stonsey, hasn’t it? At the beginning of the season, he was playing loads and was dead good. However, after THAT moment vs Liverpool he seemed to fade away a little and it looked like Pep prefered to play Vinnie and Laporte over him nearing the end of the season when it was tense. He still played a little though. sometimes coming on to play as a defensive midfielder kind of position and didn’t really make any mistakes there which I guess shows him maturing as an all round player and reveals just how much Pep trusts him and sees potential in him. I expect him to play a lot more next season and continue to grow as a central... sorry centre back.

Vincent Kompany: 8/10 I was considering giving him a 10/10 just for that goal vs Leicester but I am keeping that score for someone else ;) What can I say about this man that hasn’t already been said? He is a Manchester City and Premier League legend. He captained this team to a domestic treble, an achievement never done in Men’s English football. Pep trusted him at the most important part of the season and it turned out to be the correct decision with that thunderbolt against Leicester (honestly, I cried). His season was kinda the opposite to Stonsey’s, he didn’t play much in the beginning of the season but played a lot in the second half. I’m so glad he got a run of games without injuries and got to play a pivotal role in the season’s outcome. He went out on a high and I wish him all the best in his new role at Anderlecht, as long as he comes back sometime soon. Captain. Leader. Legend.

Fernandinho: 8.5/10 I think it says a lot about the importance of Fernandinho to this Manchester City team that when we lost two games back to back in December, Fernandinho was missing. He is crucial to the way in which we play, and he plays his role so effectively and in a composed and sophisticated manner. He is like the unsung hero of the team. So why didn’t I give him a 9 or a 10? Whilst he has been reliable for large parts of the season, sometimes I feel like the game gets to him a little. The best example of that was vs Newcastle where he gave away the penalty that could have cost us the league. Luckily it didn’t but usually he does not make them mistakes but sometimes when we are under pressure, he can let out his frustrations. Regardless of that, I think he has done an immense job yet again this season. Despite getting a few injuries and frustration clouding his better judgement, he is still one of our best players. 

Ilkay Gundogan: 8.5/10 I was soooo gutted when we signed him in 2016 and he then proceeded to have that season ended prematurely due to injuries because I was so excited to see him play for Manchester City. However, I feel like we got to see the best of Ilkay Gundogan this season. Whilst sometimes I scream at him for continuously passing backwards some games, his reading and intelligence of the game is probably one of the best in the squad. When Dinho picked up a few injuries near the end of the season, I thought that was our title dreams over, however Ilkay decided to prove me wrong and deliver amazing performances when we needed him most. Sometimes City fans on Twitter give him stick but I genuinely believe that he is a massive talent for us and is fully capable of playing that Dinho role if we need him to.

David Silva: 7/10 There is a case to be made that David Silva is best ever player to put on a City shirt however, this season wasn’t his best. He started off well, and that free kick against Huddersfield was amazing! But gradually, he became slower and less like the el mago that we all know and love to watch. He would give the ball away cheaply and occasionally pick the wrong pass or just slow down play altogether. Even I was getting a little bit tired of Pep playing him ahead of a faster and more direct Leroy Sane. But at the Manchester Derby at Old Trafford, he did what David Silva usually does, and made the game his own. He was so so good that night and helped to keep the calm and control that game, even when we were looking a little bit shaky. Despite this, he did look tired most of the season. I really hope that was just Pep overplaying him because of Kev’s injury and that he isn’t losing his legs because I’m not ready to let go of him yet.

Phil Foden: 7/10 Now, me saying that Phil and David were both 7′s this season, does not mean that I think that they were at the same level this season. Of course, David played at a higher level than Phil. It just means that Phil’s standards are understandably lower than David’s. However, Phil did amazingly this season despite his situation. He is in a team, competing for a place with players like David Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. So I think we were all surprised when the team news came out for the Spurs game and he was there. No, not on the bench but in the starting eleven. An eighteen year old boyhood fan starting a game for Manchester City! Against a top 4 team! In a tight title race! Not only that but he scored and played maturely for his age. I am incredibly proud of my lil baby Phil (even though he has a baby now). He started and played in more games than I would have anticipated. All of his time spent patiently waiting for his chance and training alongside his hero, has paid off! I hope he will get even more game time next season, showing us all why he has the nickname Stockport Iniesta!

Kevin De Bruyne: 7.5/10 This is a difficult one. Kevin has had a difficult season. It seemed that whenever he would finally hit form, he would get injured again. I cannot imagine how difficult that would have been for him. It was saddening as a fan who loves to watch him play that we never really got to see the best of Kevin De Bruyne, We saw glinces of it in the FA Cup final but it was a little too late. There is no doubt that Kevin is a world class player, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to witness that this season. Despite this, when he did play he definitely had an impact. We are a better team with Kevin De Bruyne in it. No arguments about that. I hope next season he is back to his normal self, assisting and scoring when we need him most.

Bernardo Silva: 10/10 Ah, here we go. Brace yourselves, this could be a long one. I LOVE BERNARDO SILVA. In my opinion, he has been the best player in the Premier League this season AND should be in top 3 for Ballon d’Or. Am I being incredibly biased and over reactionary? Probably, yes. But am I wrong? No. Bernardo Silva has everything. He runs 12-14km a game. He never stops. He can dribble like Messi. Yes, like Messi. He dribbles like Messi. He can cross balls into the box. He can run halfway across the pitch just to tackle someone off the ball. He took on Virgil Van Dijk. 5′6 Bernardo Silva decided to get in a battle with 6′3 Virgil Van Dijk. Can we just take a moment to appreciate him in that game against Liverpool? He ran and ran and ran until he covered every single inch of the pitch that night. He wanted to win more than anyone and it showed. And let’s talk about his passion.  He celebrates every Manchester City goal like a madman, running across to the goalscorer and pulling the craziest of faces. And his goal celebration at Old Trafford? ICONIC. He did a knee-slide at Old Trafford in front of the City fans. Twenty years ago, and he would be considered a City legend for that alone. But he is on his way to becoming one of Manchester City’s all time best. I mean, his chant is already one of the best! I cannot fault any part of his season. Maybe he could have scored and assisted more? Meh I don’t care, his work rate earns him something more than just goals: the fans hearts. He has the potential to become one of the best in the world and I am so glad he is at Manchester City and has committed his future to us. 

Raheem Sterling: 9/10 Raheem has matured so much this season. Not just on the pitch, but off the pitch too. He has become a great influence and inspiration for those who have to suffer through racial discrimination and horrid racist attitudes. Whilst he has always been this person, it has taken the media this long to recognise this and praise him for it. I am happy that finally he is getting the positive recognition that he deserves. And he has deserved it this season. Each season he seems to grow more and more confident in himself, scoring and assisting more often. I can only see him growing from here and becoming even better. Only thing that is missing is his goal at Anfield, winning our first game there since 2003 ;)

Riyad Mahrez: 6.5/10 I think that it was always going to be difficult for Riyad this season. Our wingers: Raz, Leroy and Bernardo are all well suited to Pep’s style and the players around them. He needed time to adapt and learn. Overall, I feel like he dealt with it quite well. Yes, he missed that penalty at Anfield but he won us points at games where we were struggling slightly like Bournemouth. He did end up missing a lot of game time due to just how good Raz and Bernardo have been this season, he couldn’t really get a look into the team. And how many other players would to be honest? Although, I do feel he could have done better for a first season in a team like this, he has coped well and integrated into the team nicely. Hopefully he can have a breakthrough like Bernardo next season!

Leroy Sane: 6.5/10 I feel like Leroy would get a far greater rating if Pep played him a little bit more but I guess Pep had his reasons and that is understandable. Leroy, for me, is one of the best young players in the world. He has so much talent and potential. He offers something different from the other wingers in the team and can cause defences to have nightmares. And on top of that, this season we discovered that he is dangerous from free kicks too. But as I said, Pep didn’t play him as much as he could have. I guess Pep and Sane have their own problems and I hope it can be solved because Leroy is one to keep here at City. He has a huge future ahead of him and I would be massively disappointed if we lost him. 

Gabriel Jesus: 6/10 Gabi is the the same kind of situation as Riyad and Leroy. I think he has so much potential at this club however, his game time is limited due to the fact that he has to compete with Sergio Aguero, possibly one of the best strikers to play in the Premier League. It is a massive ask for Gabriel at his age. However, I think he has shown enough this season and seasons prior that he is a talented player who fits in this team perfectly. His workrate is perfect and I can see him becoming an important player for us in the future.

Sergio Aguero: 9.5/10 If you ever need a goal, Sergio is the player to go to. This man got back to back Premier League hat tricks against Arsenal and Chelsea IN THE SAME WEEK. Unfortunately, he just missed out on the Golden Boot, however he scored incredibly important goals for us this season. The goal vs Burnley, the one vs Liverpool and the one vs Brighton are just three examples. He is always there when we need him. And that is why I put him as the second highest rated. (sorry Raz I still love you xx)

#manchester city #premier league #2018/19 #longpost #this has a higher word count than my history dissertation hahahaha

[themastercylinder]

SUMMARY

Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is a psychic who has been using his talents solely for personal gain, which mainly consists of gambling and womanizing. When he was 19 years old, Alex had been the prime subject of a scientific research project documenting his psychic ability, but in the midst of the study, he disappeared. After running afoul of a local gangster/extortionist named Snead (Redmond Gleeson), Alex evades two of Snead’s thugs by allowing himself to be taken by two men: Finch (Peter Jason) and Babcock (Chris Mulkey), who identify themselves as being from an academic institution.

At the institution, Alex is reunited with his former mentor Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) who is now involved in government-funded psychic research. Novotny, aided by fellow scientist Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw), has developed a technique that allows psychics to voluntarily link with the minds of others by projecting themselves into the subconscious during REM sleep. Novotny equates the original idea for the dreamscape project to the practice of the Senoi natives of Malaysia, who believe the dream world is just as real as reality.

The project was intended for clinical use to diagnose and treat sleep disorders, particularly nightmares, but it has been hijacked by Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), a powerful government agent. Novotny convinces Alex to join the program in order to investigate Blair’s intentions. Alex gains experience with the technique by helping a man who is worried about his wife’s infidelity and by treating a young boy named Buddy (Cory Yothers), who is plagued with nightmares so terrible that a previous psychic lost his sanity trying to help him. Buddy’s nightmare involves a large sinister “snake-man.”

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A subplot involving Alex and Jane’s growing infatuation culminates with him sneaking into Jane’s dream to have sex with her. He does this without technological aid—something no one else has been able to achieve. With the help of novelist Charlie Prince (George Wendt), who has been covertly investigating the project for a new book, Alex learns that Blair intends to use the dream-linking technique for assassination.

Blair murders Prince and Novotny to silence them. The president of the United States (Eddie Albert) is admitted as a patient due to recurring nightmares. Blair assigns Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly), a psychopath who murdered his own father, to enter the president’s nightmare and assassinate him—people who die in their dreams also die in the real world. Blair considers the president’s nightmares about nuclear holocaust as a sign of political weakness, which he deems a liability in the upcoming negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

Alex projects himself into the president’s dream—a nightmare of a post nuclear war wasteland—to try and protect him. After a fight in which Tommy rips out a police officer’s heart, attempts to incite a mutant-mob against the president, and battles Alex in the form of the snake-man from Buddy’s dream. Alex assumes the appearance of Tommy’s murdered father (Eric Gold) in order to distract him, allowing the president to impale him with a spear. The president is grateful to Alex but reluctant to confront Blair, who wields considerable political power. To protect himself and Jane, Alex enters Blair’s dream and kills him before Blair can retaliate.

The film ends with Jane and Alex boarding a train to Louisville, Kentucky, intent on making their previous dream encounter a reality. They are surprised to meet the ticket collector from Jane’s dream.

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The Dream Master Roger Zelazny

According to Roger Zelazny, the film developed from an initial outline that he wrote in 1981, based in part upon his novella “He Who Shapes” and novel The Dream Master. He was not involved in the project after 20th Century Fox bought his outline. Because he did not write the film treatment or the script, his name does not appear in the credits; assertions that he removed his name from the credits are unfounded.

    DEVELOPMENT

DREAMSCAPE’s title encapsulates both the film and the mental landscape that its independent filmmakers occupied for almost three years. Its creators hoped that the production would not only prove to be a success, but that it would also give them the clout to go on to bigger, even more ambitious projects. Featuring elaborate special effects by Peter Kuran’s Visual Concept Engineering Company and makeup effects by Craig Reardon, the film was launched as the first outing of newly-formed Zupnik-Curtis Productions.

Producer Bruce Cohn Curtis is one of the few men left in Hollywood who still has ties to its fabled beginnings, the nephew of the legendary Harry Cohn, one of the founders of Columbia Pictures. Looking the producer, from his immaculately clipped hair down to his tailored, sharply creased suits, a chill falls over any set that Curtis walks onto. With a military air of no-nonsense, Curtis keeps a close eye on his productions and is happy only if filming is on schedule.

“I’m tyrannical on a set,” Curtis says with a smile of relaxed authority. “That’s why I use the people I have as well as I do. Many of the people on DREAMSCAPE have worked with me before and have come back because I am a perfectionist and won’t settle for less. I have a standard of excellence in my films that I’ve always maintained, no matter what the cost, so that even though you might not like the stories I’ve done, the look of the film is always rich.”

Remembering that he had to prove himself publicly in an industry filled with people just waiting for the newest Cohn to fail, for his first effort Curtis made OTLEY, a sharp-edged spy spoof/drama with Tom Courtney as an ersatz spy who finds his make-believe assignment being taken very seriously by the other side. The film died at the box office, but drew good critical notices. The industry sat up and noticed; Harry Cohn’s nephew was off and running.

Curtis partnered with various producers for awhile, including Irwin Yablans on HELL NIGHT, but chafed at being the junior partner without clout. The matter came to a head when he was making THE SEDUCTION with Yablans and grew tired of having his ideas ignored.

Curtis resolved to start his own company and make pictures his way. He found financial backing from businessman Stanley Zupnik, and was looking for scripts to start Zupnik-Curtis Productions when associate producer Chuck Russell brought in director Joe Ruben and the DREAMSCAPE script. Curtis had worked previously with both and gave the green light for Ruben and Russell to begin revising the script, written by David Loughery.

Ruben discovered Lowery’s script in 1981 at the William Morris Agency, which represents both artists. Lowery, a television writer, had come out to Hollywood in 1979 after winning a script writing contest sponsored by Columbia Pictures, while a student at the University of Iowa. Ruben had just finished directing the TV-pilot for BREAKING AWAY, and was looking for a new project.

Once Ruben started reading the DREAMSCAPE script he found he couldn’t put it down. The vision Loughery described was breathtaking, with rivers ablaze and boats filled with the undead. Ruben was excited by the property and showed it to Russell, his assistant director on JOY RIDE and GORP (also starring Dennis Quaid), films made with Bruce Cohn Curtis for producer Samuel Z. Arkoff. Russell suggested they take the script to Curtis and his new company.

It took seven months for Ruben and Russell to rewrite DREAMSCAPE; with Curtis providing detailed criticism and ideas throughout. Loughery was brought back in to help write the final draft.

“We knew some things in Loughery’s script, like the holocaust dream at the end, were so expansive that it was virtually un-filmable,” said Russell about the changes that were made. “The original ending was set in New York. We changed that so we could do the movie out here in Los Angeles. In Loughery’s script you saw all of New York on fire after the bomb had hit. You saw the Statue of Liberty, ferry boats filled with the undead, and flames across the harbor. It was really great, but I knew we couldn’t afford to do it like that.”

Putting a screenplay into production inevitably means rewrites and not always by the original writer. In the final billing, Loughery receives story credit, while sharing screenwriting credit with director Joe Ruben and associate producer Chuck Russell. When I started writing with Joe and Chuck,” he says, “the original screenplay was pretty ferme, about 108 pages. They wanted to work some more on the characters, and their relationships. That was a good thing the development of the characters gave the audience more reason to care for the people and what happened to them.”

One of the things that really worried us about the character of Alex Gardner is that he’s something of a smart ass. So, we were afraid the audience wouldn’t like him. As soon as Dennis went to work, it was obvious we weren’t going to have any problem.

“My favorite character is Tommy Ray, the psychotic psychic, played by David Patrick Kelly. He doesn’t have many scenes, but when he’s on, he does a great job. The ‘have a heart scene is going to be seen by the audience as a rip off of Temple of Doom, but the fact is we shot it months before Temple of Doom even went into production. That is Chuck’s idea; he has a grisly and macabre sense of humor.”

Russell and Ruben beefed-up the character of Buddy (Cory “Bumper” Yothers), the little boy whose nightmares are cured by the film’s dream research project. In Loughery’s script Buddy wasn’t a running character. The idea for Buddy’s character arose from concepts the writers picked up from the study of dream research.

“We found the case of a little boy who was having such terrible nightmares that he couldn’t sleep,” said Russell. “It was affecting him physically; we used that case as our model for Buddy. The first time in the film when Alex (Dennis Quaid) acts unselfishly is when he enters Buddy’s dream to try and help him. He rises to the occasion and fulfills the role of hero.”

  THE DREAM CHAMBER

On an adjacent stage the set for the Dream Chamber was built. Outside, the set looked like a plywood igloo circled with florescent lights. Inside however, a small, padded chamber led to a main control room by a door and a large window. The set was a quiet haven, even when the normal racket of production was going on outside.

“The initial sketches of the set design for the Dream Chamber were some wild approaches that we felt were interesting, but not what we wanted,” Russell said. “Some of them made us feel too much like we were on a spaceship, while others were more like a classic, BRAINSTORM-type, wire-strewn lab. We decided we didn’t want a lot of whirling lights and buzzers, but something quiet and womb-like. It was a very difficult set to design because we were trying to make something that looked authentic, but we didn’t have any precedent for it.”

From an aesthetic standpoint, the design worked wonderfully. From a practical standpoint however, problems cropped up immediately that led to several delays in shooting. The set itself had been designed by Alan Jones without consulting with director of photography Brian Tufano. Jones then abruptly left the production for personal reasons so that when the set was built, Tufano had still not been consulted during the shuffle to find a new set designer. Tufano had great difficulty in setting up his lights and camera within the small confines of the set. An outside computer graphics firm had been brought in to supply authentic looking medical displays for the many small monitors built into the set. Unfortunately, the computer wouldn’t work right and left a full crew standing around collecting pay while technicians tried to figure out what had gone wrong with their expensive battery of equipment. Later, one of the technicians would quietly tell Russell that an Apple home computer would have been sufficient to give them the displays they wanted.

  BEHIND THE SCENES / SPECIAL EFFECTS

 “Some of the rough figures from effects companies were just staggering in the amount of money, research and development time they would need.” – Chuck Russell

Chuck Russell was told to shop around for people who could create the film’s extensive special effects and draw up a budget.

“It was very exciting to shop the script around and find out what could and couldn’t be done,” said Russell. “Some of the rough figures I got from effects companies were staggering in the amount of money, research and development time they would need. We just didn’t have the preparation time or budget of something like ALTERED STATES.

“When we found Peter Kuran’s VCE and Craig Reardon, and they got excited about the project, we knew they were perfect for it. They even helped sell the project because of their reputations, Reardon’s for working on Steven Spielberg’s POLTERGEIST and Kuran from his work with George Lucas.”

Russell assigned the live action makeup effects to Reardon, and the miniature and optical work to Kuran’s VCE company. Richard Taylor’s MAGI company was also asked to contribute computer animated imagery for the film’s “Dream Tunnel” effects. For the Dream Tunnel, Russell and Ruben wanted a semi-abstract look different from the other effects work in the picture, a “hazy.” dreamlike look, with an object or two from the upcoming scene to form and float towards the viewer to act as a visual cue for what was about to happen.

The effects sequences were storyboarded by Len Morganti; the budget was finalized on the basis of those storyboards. Because director Joe Ruben had not worked with special effects before, he carefully went through each scene with the storyboard artist.

“I knew that I had to be totally committed to my boards,” said Ruben. “I spent a lot of time thinking through the sequences and how I wanted to shoot them because I knew if I didn’t, the film would go out of control because the special effects people wouldn’t know what they were responsible for and what had to be done with each shot. I was able to get just what I was looking for. Morganti would sketch out something and if I asked him to move it a little lower and more to the right, he’d be able to do it with just a few strokes of his pencil. It was almost like working with a camera.”

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BUDDY”S NIGHTMARE

To try and save money while providing a sense of heightened realism, Russell and Ruben had wanted to shoot the “Buddy” dream, the little boy’s nightmare, on location.

“We found an old Victorian house and were actually shooting,” said Russell. “We realized that by the time you put in the lightning and thunder, it was going to look like Vincent Price was going to come around the corner. It was too on the nose, too traditional. We asked Jeff Stags, our art director, to do something different. He came up at the last minute with the idea of a forced perspective set, sort of Dr. Caligari style. It was a small set, but much more effective, as well as inexpensive. Buddy’s dream is really my favorite because it has much more impact, even though it’s not as spectacular as the last dream.”

Another problem that cropped up involved Reardon’s Snake man suit. Although an impressive work up close, Ruben felt that at even minor distances, it would seem as just a man in a rubber suit. Ruben and Russell still hoped that flickering low-level lighting would help. but Ruben began to realize that even with the extensive work he had put into planning the storyboard angles, the lighting was not going to be enough to sell the suit to an audience. Reardon firmly disagreed, “Contrary to negative thinking about rubber suits, you’ve got to see them as something delightful, and full of potential for doing something wonderful,” said Reardon. “You have to think of them almost as toys. Right when we were about to shoot the basement struggle scene, I went aside with Ruben and said there are two ways of looking at this; you can think of this as a rubber suit which will look bad, or as something which, with the proper angles and lighting, will convince people that they’re looking at a living, breathing, snarling Snake man. Now when Ruben first saw it, he said ‘Oh boy, Reardon, I don’t know…it’s a rubber suit. I thought that had a dangerous ring to it if he really believed it, which was hard to tell because he, Russell, and Loughery had this camaraderie among the three of them based on this constant derogatory kidding. That’s well and good and worth a few chuckles, but where it begins to become pernicious is when it begins to condition thinking to be truly negative.”

Reardon also objected to the low-level lighting strategy that Ruben and cinematographer Brian Tufano used to film the suit. “Tufano seemed to have a fine contempt for any kind of supplementary light which would be, in logical terms arbitrary, but in dramatic terms exciting and interesting … something that would catch the eye, something that would fill in a face or create a little cross light to show textures,” said Reardon. “The naturalistic photography Tufano used can be very detrimental, I think, to SF and fantasy stories. You contrast this with the work of John Hora, who shot THE HOWLING and GREMLINS, and you see that special effects profit enormously from using special tiny spots and direct lighting. But I didn’t feel it was my place to raise the issue.”

Reardon did try to get his viewpoint across to the filmmakers by preparing a lighting test on video. The test was crude but illustrated the alternative Reardon was suggesting. “They ignored it,” said Reardon of the test. “Yet, when they got on the set, they were completely vapor locked on the suit. They didn’t know what to do with it, and they didn’t have any ideas. All the storyboards that had been prepared in advance were completely ignored. Not once did I see anybody bring up a storyboard and crack it open and say that for this frame here we need to set up this angle. All the audacious plans evaporated. Ruben was at a loss to shoot special effects or rubber suits.”

Aupperle s first job was to coordinate the sculpture of the stop-motion Snake man, which was being done by Steve Czerkas, with the suit being built by Craig Reardon.

“They told me that they wanted to feature Craig’s suit prominently, so I was going to try and make the miniature as close as possible to Craig’s suit,” said Aupperle. “We started with a man’s armature and sculpted Craig’s design over it. I knew we were going to have to make some changes, like making the tail longer so it could whip around, but I wanted to avoid one of those instances where the suit never matches the miniature. I’d run back and forth to Craig and measure his design with calipers just to make sure we were dead on.

“Since Craig’s suit was being done in pieces our model was the first time the producers saw the way the design was going to come together. They wanted more changes than I ever expected. They actually had Steve Czerkas re-sculpt the model. It got away from the manlike design and no longer really matched the suit. I was a little concerned that the two would intercut, but that’s what they insisted upon.”

Causing Aupperle the most concern was the production’s seeming lack of respect for the story boards. *They wanted to be able to use Craig’s suit any way they wanted,” said Aupperle. “They didn’t want to be tied down by storyboards. At one time they asked me to revise the storyboards. They said they’d just have to wing it on the set. That attitude left me little to do until they were done with the live action. I found the situation very distressing.”

  Perhaps the greatest disappointment for Reardon was the scant use made of a full snake-man costume.  The suit appears in the film for just a few frames, as the man-snake breaks through a door; most of the action originally planned for Cedar was replaced by Jim Aupperle’s animation using models built, following Reardon’s design, by Steve Czerkas.

THE SNAKE MAN

Most changes made in the script did not alter Loughery’s story significantly. In Loughery’s original draft, the creature that menaces Buddy in the boy’s dream and later reappears as the creature stalking the President and Alex was to be a rat-man. “We changed that because so much had been done with werewolves,” said Russell. “This was right after THE HOWLING and AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and we felt the difference between a man with a rat’s face and a man with a wolf’s face would be minimal.

“We wanted to take a different approach,” Russell continued. “Not the direction of John Carpenter’s Thing but something identifiable, so that when Tommy Ray changed into something to scare Alex, you would be able to see that it was Tommy Ray’s version of the same creature. Joe Ruben wanted to go with something that scared him, and since he’s scared of snakes, we went in that direction. I did some sketches of a snake creature and came up with something that really excited us because it was a departure from anything either of us had seen before. I think part of it came to me from my memories of seeing THE SEVEN FACES OF DR. LAO. When we showed it later to our effects people, Peter Kuran and Craig Reardon, they were really sparked by it too.

A stop-motion animator was the last member of the effects team to be hired, done through VCE. Both Russell and Ruben had agreed early on that the best and cheapest way to get what they wanted from the Snake man sequences would be with a mixture of live-action and stop-motion effects, but they were unsure just how they would mix the combination.

“I knew we would need a good animator,” said Russell. “I knew a live-action Snake man with its long neck and swishing tail would never work in a master shot. We didn’t have umpteen million dollars for physical effects.” Russell and Ruben planned to use low-key, flickering lighting for the sequences in order to seamlessly blend the two effects techniques.

Said Russell, “ Joe and I sat down with the special effects people on the Buddy sequence storyboards, which is the first appearance of the Snake man, and asked which way it made more sense to do it? It made sense to do the wide shots in stop motion and the close-ups in live action, and in the cases where we weren’t sure, we would have both of them overlap and whichever worked better, then that’s what we would go with.”

Although this arrangement was made in good faith and with the best intentions, the decision to let the two techniques overlap and not make a clear distinction between which shots would be assigned to each ultimately proved to be a decision that led to tensions and feelings of betrayal between makeup expert Craig Reardon and the production company.

  Opticals were also used to create the clouds and background sky for the first dream that Quaid enters, the vertigo dream where he goes into the mind of a steelworker and falls. “There’s one shot where Dennis Quaid is supposed to be falling. said Kuran. “I spent some time trying to figure out how a person should fall so it will look right on film. We had a good plate of a falling background, and they rigged an elaborate harness at Raleigh to hold Dennis. When we were on the set. Ruben asked me how a person should fall, and I went through the motions of what Dennis should do, but Joe didn’t do that. He told Dennis to do something else that looks really corny. He ruined the shot. There was no way that I could think of to fix it and I think it looks really cheesy right now.

THE PRESIDENTS NIGHTMARES

At a budget of over $300,000 for some 90-odd cuts, DREAMSCAPE was one of the largest jobs VCE had taken on, as well as one of the most difficult. As the producers were continually asking VCE to create more or make changes with what they had done, Kuran wasn’t under pressure to have all the special effects done by the original deadline. Kuran pretty much improvises his effects as he goes along. The more they wanted him to do, the less certain he was about how much longer it would actually take to finish the effects. One thing was certain. There was no way they’d be able to get the movie out in the fall as Russell had originally hoped.

In a way though, the delays had been a good thing; something everyone was almost afraid to acknowledge because of all the tribulations the film had gone through. Kuran was creating the effects layer by layer, and even with only early tests to show, the effects still looked very good. It helped convince Curtis that even though the schedule and budget had gone to hell, it was still within limits he could work with—he was getting a better product for his money than he ever dreamed possible. The more Kuran tinkered with the visuals, the better they got. The live action footage of the actors had come out better than expected, too. Quaid and Von Sydow were marvelous in their roles, and if they could just get the effects to come out anywhere near what had been described in the script, they all began to feel they might have a movie yet, even if they did have to grimace a bit when they realized that the work on the film was still far from over.

Working with Zupnik-Curtis productions was not without its problems for Kuran in the beginning. Because Curtis had never worked with special effects before, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

“We started getting pressure from them early on,” said Kuran. “They had a rough cut of some of the sequences for us to work from, and they wanted to see something. But they kept changing the cutting without realizing that it meant we’d have to go back and redo the whole scene. There was a trolley shot that they wanted to make longer by one foot of film. At that point, all the backgrounds had been shot to length. All the miniatures had been broken down. I managed to talk them out of that one.”

Another problem is the very nature of post-production work. “When somebody does a movie, they make a little mistake here and a little mistake there, and if it doesn’t work, they just kind of throw the shit over their shoulders and it lands on them in post-production,” said Kuran. “Unfortunately, this is where we do most of our work. People are at their worst to deal with in post-production. They’re under deadlines, and if the movie doesn’t work they’re in even worse shit. The people who shot the movie are gone and they usually refuse to accept the fact that the movie is crummy because of them. Lots of people can go onto a production and create a lot of shit and come off smelling like a rose because the movie’s not finished when they leave it.”

Although VCE was contributing some 90 cuts to the film, the majority of the effects were going to be clustered around the holocaust dream near the end, and at the start, including the terrific A-Bomb teaser which opens the film. “I thought the bombs in THE DAY AFTER just didn’t look right,” said Kuran. “They looked so dark and cold. You look at a nuclear test and you can see it’s a very bright fireball, so we wanted a very hot look to our bomb.”

The Trolly/Subway Cart

 Reardon’s and Kuran’s most elaborate work is seen in the climactic sequence, a surreal view of the day after Nuclear Armageddon. Dennis Quaid enters a dream which represents the President’s worst fears of nuclear war, the setting is an old trolley car that travels among the bombed-out ruins of Washington, D.C., past several surrealistic tableaux-travelling mattes and miniatures courtesy of Peter Kuran’s V.C.E. David Kelley, Plummer’s henchman, enters the dream as well, for a climactic confrontation with Quaid.

 For the holocaust dream at the end, Kuran’s basic effects strategy was to have a live-action foreground element, an intermediate miniature behind that, and then have a matte or tinted water tank shot as the background. The scenes were difficult because Kuran needed something that would convey a sense of extremely large scale while still having realistic detail, a tall order on the show’s tight budget.

Russell had originally wanted to do the holocaust effects scenes first and rear-project them as they were shooting the live action. Kuran pointed out that it would take thousands and thousands of feet of film to try and generate the footage they would need, and that they would have a better chance of making sure the background footage matched with the live-action trolley car if they shot the trolley first and then had it to play the backgrounds against.

“Jim Belohovek and Sue Turner built the miniatures for the scenes, and we photographed them in different layers,” said Kuran. “To get good depth of field, we shot them at one frame per second. Then we started adding the fires. Because those had to be slowed down, we shot them at 72 frames a second. We don’t have any motion control equipment. I set up a dolly for the camera, filled the room with smoke, then lit the fires. It takes a couple of seconds to get the camera up to speed. Then we pushed the dolly down the tracks until eventually timed the push right and got it to look the same speed that we thought the trolley would be moving at. The background is a water tank shot that we used to make it look moody by adding some glows and fires. Counting everything I’d say there’s about 20 elements in that shot.”

While Kuran labored in the bowels of VCE, director Ruben and Academy Award winning editor Richard Halsey were slowly cutting the film together using unfinished optical tests that were the right length and Jim Aupperle’s Snake man animation. Kuran had been able to find them an east coast underground filmmaker named Dennis Pies (pronounced “pees”) to do the Dream Tunnel effects and the stuff looked wonderful. It was exactly what they wanted. But now it was time to decide how they were going to mix the live action Snake man and the animation, and to a great degree, they were coming down against the live action footage.

With the will to manipulate the dream to his own ends, Kelly at one point extends his fingernails into stilletos, which he uses to rip the heart from the car’s conductor, with the logic of dreams, the trolley then becomes a subway car, populated with a dozen grisly war victims, looking more dead than alive, Shortly after, Kelley transforms into a snake monster.

Reardon details the other effects he did for Dreamscape. “Tommy Ray Kelly transforms with knives springing from his fingers. He uses these to tear out someone’s heart which sits beating in his fingers,” the effects Technician says. “We made a prosthetic hand and an artificial heart for this scene. 

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“We made 12 mutants up for them, Reardon says of the subway denizens, “all extremely exaggerated in their ugliness, so that, in the heavy shadows and flickering light that was planned for the shot, they would still prove effective. The design is heavy-handed, but suitably macabre for the scene.

“I hogged all the major sculpture on the picture for myself, but there were a number of other people working with me on this that also deserve mention. My greatest praise must go to Bruce Kasson, who took the weight off my shoulders where mechanical work is concerned. He worked out the mechanical effect used for the death of one of the characters at the end, as well as the stilleto fingernails. David Miller was our acrylic man, doing all the hard plastic pieces, and certainly one of my right hand men in doing the sculpture, along with David Cellitti.

Snake Man Transformation Effect

Following the completion of principal photography, there was a brief hiatus, during which Reardon re-stirred his somewhat-dampened enthusiasm, before tackling the transformation sequence.

Replacement animation is a variety of stop motion that uses separate, slightly differing sculptures, rather than the movable models most frequently associated with the form. Pioneered by George Pal, replacement animation is nowadays seen mostly in David Allen’s television commercials featuring such animated characters as Mrs. Butterworth and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Reardon’s suggestion to try this technique for an unusual transformation. Because of the frame-by-frame nature of the animation process, the sequence would be a short one-less than two seconds in sculpting work than Reardon (or, most likely, anyone else) had ever expended on a transformation effect of such short duration; 32 heads, each altered slightly from the previous head in sequence, each making a barely more than subliminal appearance in the film. It was this rapidity, and the violence of the change, that Reardon felt would make it entirely unique.

“The major problem was one of time,” Reardon says. “How was I to produce 32 different heads for this sequence within a reasonable schedule? The first thing you want to consider in a situation like this is, can you do it full-size? It took me about 15 seconds of heavy thought to realize that would be a killer, because of the molds that would be involved, and the sheer awkwardness of doing such an extensive sequence in full scale. From the beginning, they wanted David Kelley’s features discernible in the snake head’s face, so l also briefly considered taking a cast of Kelley’s face and using reduction techniques, like special shrinking molds, to bring it down to scale-but there is enough distortion in the reduction process that it wouldn’t likely be worth the effort. So I finally decided on doing a miniature portrait sculpture based on his features.

“One way to have gone would have been to produce molds of each and every stage cast one head, alter it a little further, make a mold from that and cast another stage. I ruled that out; it takes about a day to make one mold, so it would have taken a full month to prepare for the sequence.

“Instead, I took a master mold of the first stage turned out a dozen or so duplicates of that, and altered each of them to cover the first third of the total transformation. I then made another mold from the last of these, and changed those progressively. That way, I had to make no more than three molds. As the work progressed, I did some rough tests on video, which helped to show up a number of small glitches. Some of these proved very difficult to correct-seen side by side, two heads might appear to match perfectly, but tiny variances would show immediately on video.”

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A chief problem with all stop motion effects is that of temporal aliasing,” a term used to describe the unnatural look of objects seen to be in motion, but not blurred as they would be if actually filmed in real-time. All along, Chuck kept saying, ‘I hope this won’t look like animation,” says Reardon, “and of course all I could say was, I hope so, too.’

“Jim Aupperle, who did the stop motion animation on the snake monster, and my friend Randy Cook, made some suggestions to counter that problem. Both suggested that if each stage would be slightly dissolved into the next stage, that would soften the edges, and disguise whatever anomalies there were from one head to the next. So Peter took the negative and a dupe negative, printing them to a single positive with overlapping frames, so that no single frame gives a really razor sharp image of one sculpture.

The Caves

Another kind of problem arose in shooting the climax of the President’s holocaust dream, set in a cave-like underground grotto decorated with fires, twisted girders and a glowing pool of green water. Originally it was planned to shoot the scene on a section of the ruins” set at Raleigh Studios. But Russell found out that he could get a few days shooting time at Bronson Canyon. The site, long a favorite locale for low-budget productions, is actually a short “Y” shaped tunnel through a jutting canyon wall in the nearby Hollywood hills. Open at all three ends and with a high ceiling, Ruben and Russell felt they could put up a more effective set inside the cave at relatively little cost to the production.

The art department scrambled on something like 48 hours notice to come up with a revised set for the cave. They did well, but lighting the set so that the lights themselves wouldn’t show was a difficult task made harder by the fact that creating the pool of water just past the junction of the “Y” in the cave had turned the rest of its sandy floor into gritty muck that forced the crew to support the lights and camera on wooden planks and sandbags the best they could. Working in the enclosed confines quickly turned miserable too. Brian Tufano, who had been hired because of his work on QUADROPHENIA and THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE, is yet another British cinematographer who likes to use smoke to diffuse his lighting to give the set greater visual depth. Every time Ruben went for a take, Tufano’s assistants would pump the small, sealed cave full of hot, oily smoke and wait to see if the density was right. While the crew and stars quietly gasped behind their respirators, either more smoke would be pumped in if it wasn’t enough.

According to Craig Reardon, the first scenes that were supposed to be shot in the caves were thought to be relatively straightforward. Quaid, followed by Albert, is moving through the cave when they are attacked by a mutant dog. For the dog’s costume, Reardon’s assistant, Michiko Tagawa, had made some wonderfully revolting costumes.

“They were beautiful.” Reardon said. “They had entrails bulging out of the body and exposed rib cages and boils and french fried skin. Now we were told that a Doberman would wear the costume, and in fact, the trainer had auditioned the dogs in a costume they worked in on the BUCK ROGERS television show. So Michiko went to a great deal of trouble to measure the Dobermans and I contributed sculptures for the heads while she built the body parts up from reject castings for the subway zombies.” Once we got them suited up at the Bronson location however, the Dobermans refused to perform.

“The dogs trouped around in the mud and the zippers and their fur got packed with it,” said Reardon. “It was a disaster. They took one of the suits and tried to put it on a German Shepherd, a dog which is considerably different in body build.”

In his big scene the dog was supposed to run a short distance and jump at Quaid. In take after take however, the dog merely trotted up to Quaid and stopped at his feet to try and shake the costume off. Eyes turned on the dog’s embarrassed handlers who quickly explained that the dog usually didn’t act like that; it was probably because he felt uncomfortable with the costume.

Reardon snipped parts of the costume’s legs away, hoping to make it more comfortable, but this produced no better reaction. Next, the dog’s owners took to furiously waving a little furry target at the dog. then quickly sticking it just inside Quaid’s shirt while everyone enthusiastically urged the dog to attack. This made the dog think everyone just wanted to play. It would run up to Quaid, half-hop once, then bark excitedly while waiting for his trainers to get the toy again.

Quipped Reardon, Bruce Cohn Curtis said the mutant dog looked like someone’s dirty laundry running across the floor.” Finally the dog made one decent leap past Quaid and Ruben called it a take. The shot is still in the film, although the rest of the mutant dogs were replaced with German Shepherd with their fur shaved in patches and dabbled with red goo.

“The script also called for these two raggedy dogs to chase after Quaid and Albert in the dream. It seemed that the easiest way to achieve a really striking appearance for the dogs would be to suit them in a costume covered with foam latex. I consulted with the trainers on the feasibility of it, and they said

‘Yeah, sure.’ So l sculpted two mutated dog heads, and Michiko Tagawa, a very good craftsperson who’s done work with Winston and Burman, did a beautiful job on the body suits-really hideous and nasty. She took some reject castings from the subway mutants, and reworked them into twisted body shapes, warped, burned and decked with growths. But the dogs wouldn’t wear them, and the trainers sort of shrugged, and said ‘What do you expect?’

“Those trainers were let go, and replaced by Karl Miller, who allowed them to shave his dogs in erratic patches, and we gobbed all kinds of blood, goo and crap on them. Good enough, but it’s unfortunate that Michiko’s suits will never be seen.”

VCE generated the bits and pieces that would help add life and highlights to the live action effects. A red glow was added to the mutant dog’s eyes, as well as crawling purple electrical effects when the dogs vanish. Opticals materialized David Patrick Kelly’s nunchaku weapons smoothly into his hands as well as allowed Dennis Quaid to heal his wounds and transform himself into Kelly’s father.

  Snake Man Showdown

The next scene planned for the cave involved Quaid and Albert, discovering it is a dead end and that the Snakeman is right behind them. It comes out of a side tunnel, snarls, and attacks Quaid. Ruben decided he wanted to use the full-sized Snakeman suit for the shot, and Reardon was given short notice to get it ready. At the time, Reardon was working full tilt to prepare the suit needed for the basement struggle in the boy’s nightmare. A different head would be needed for the cave sequence.

“Russell got a hold of Bronson Canyon and said we’ve got to do the Kelly head to look like David Patrick Kelly, playing the President’s assassin) right away. You can’t change things around like that. I said I’d try when I should have told him no.”

Ruben shot Reardon’s live Snakeman suit in the cave, although eventually discarded most of it and replaced the scene with a stop-motion cut. Also discarded was a small but important effect Reardon had worked very hard on getting right, a brief shot where Dennis Quaid “heals” a wound in his shoulder.

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“We created a sort of bite effect, then put a plastic membrane over it and melted it with a plastic solvent so that when they ran the film backwards, the wound would heal,” explained Reardon. “It didn’t work as well as it did on the bench, which is frequently the case, but you did get a feeling of the actual fleshy material knitting itself. They opted to have Peter Kuran redo it with animation.”

More successful was a Reardon designed effect where Kelly, now distracted by an ingenious ploy of Quaid’s, reverts to a half-human, half-snake form. While diverted, Albert sneaks up behind him and drives a length of pipe through Kelly’s chest. For this shot, Reardon made a false chest with a mechanical rubber pole section inside that was connected to a spring and operated by cable. Albert would sneak up holding the pipe, then drop it out of camera sight as he lunged for Kelly, and the rubber pipe would burst through a section of painted tissue paper. Although the complex mechanical effect took some time to rig, it was accomplished in only three takes and is gruesomely realistic. It made for a happy interlude before the crew was to run into yet more problems once they left Bronson Canyon and returned to Raleigh Studios.

                                      Dave Millers Unused Snake Man

“I also worked on a snake man head, the one that was originally going to be in the elevator sequence, emerging from the head of Dennis Quaid. But then, they had some kind of quibble over Craig’s head of Quaid–they said it didn’t look like him, or some such garbage-and they hired Greg Cannom to do that sequence over. Greg did another head of Quaid, which they wound up not even showing, though it looked perfect, and another snakeman, which-sorry, Greg I didn’t care for too much. It didn’t seem to have much definition; it was hard to tell what it was. Plus, it was pretty badly edited.” – David Miller

  BOB BLAIR’S DREAM DEMISE

The “Buddy” dream completed the bulk of the main shooting. DREAMSCAPE moved from the largest soundstage at Raleigh into one small stage for what was hoped would be the final shot of the would grasp what was happening. Because Quaid’s strike against Plummer was to be a surprise, Ruben and Russell felt it was absolutely necessary to make sure that the lighting look realistic right up to the moment of the attack. This meant shooting the effect not with lighting that would highlight the makeup, but with ordinary florescent lighting. Reardon hated the lighting, but went along with Ruben’s insistence that changing the lighting would tip-off people that something was about to happen.

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About a month earlier, in late June, Reardon had supplied a transformation head, known as a “change-0” head in the business, for a scene late in the film in which Dennis Quaid confronts political schemer Christopher Plummer in the one place where Plummer is vulnerable, inside Plummer’s own dream. Quaid borrows a trick from dream assassin David Patrick Kelly and changes into his own version of the Snakeman before killing Plummer. The effect was planned to first show Quaid’s head beginning to change, cut back to Plummer as the Snakeman’s hands shoot out for his throat (a very brief scene which was shot earlier) then a quick cut back to Dennis Quaid’s Snakeman head coming for the camera.

“We prepared a head, which I felt was better than a lot of THE HOWLING heads,” said Reardon. “We didn’t content ourselves with just having the face bulge out. We had the eyes blink, and when they opened they were snake eyes. At the same time the neck elongated and the cheeks distended, and the eyes began to pop out of their sockets. The mouth opens unnaturally wide and the teeth elongate. But nobody liked it. Ruben said to me, ‘Geez Reardon, I expected something like AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.’ That’s great. You give me six months and six hundred thousand dollars and maybe you could get that. Besides, that effect was five different heads. I told them all along that I was only going to come up with one head and do as much with it as I could.”

Neither Russell nor Ruben had been happy with the head when Reardon had brought it in. Under the flat lighting of the elevator mockup, the hair looked too bushy and still, the face too lifeless, and the neck far thicker than Quaid’s. The head didn’t work well either. with eyes that frequently jammed as they started to roll up. It took several takes to get the mechanism to work right. But beyond that, when Ruben and Russell saw footage of the effect, they realized that what they thought would be a good visual just wasn’t that exciting.

“Forget that it wasn’t convincing on film,” Ruben said. “When I saw it, I just realized that we needed a more shocking effect.”

“It wasn’t exciting enough,” added Russell. “We didn’t realize that until we saw it. It was a subtle effect that just wasn’t explosive enough. Craig’s head didn’t show anything either that would connect it with the Snakeman, and we decided we needed that, so we racked our brains and decided on something simple, like a guy’s head ripping apart with the Snakeman’s head coming out of the pieces.”

Russell contacted Reardon, but by this time, Reardon was both fed up with the production and busy trying to finish the replacement animation for David Patrick Kelly’s Snakeman transformation so he could be done with the film. Since Reardon was busy, Russell had to find someone who could do the effect and do it quickly. He decided on Greg Cannom, a former assistant to Rick Baker and Rob Bottin.  Cannom’s first solo assignment was THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, and more recently he assisted Baker with the apes for GREYSTOKE.

Cannom had talked with Russell about a year before DREAMSCAPE about another film project that never went through. Cannom was interested in the assignment, but checked with Craig Reardon first, before committing himself. Reardon gave his blessing. Cannom went into his workshop and tried an effect which would combine the two concepts that Russell discussed, creating a skull that would not only split apart, but split apart and turn into a monster at the same time. “I could see the use of the Snakeman with the kid’s nightmare, but going into an adult’s nightmare, I thought it should be a lot more horrendous and scary,” said Cannom.

Cannom’s first prototype makeup was deemed unacceptable by producer Bruce Cohn Curtis. It was a bitter decision because of the amount of effort Cannom had put into it. Cannom took a fiberglass skull which he cut and hinged so it could be pulled apart. Inside the skull, Cannom used a soft foam and sculpted a hideous face so that when the skull was pulled apart, the jaw would drop down and the foam face would come out to form the monster.

“I loved Cannom’s first approach,” said associate producer Chuck Russell. “I think it was terrific. The dangerous thing about the makeup was that in a very quick cut, with a man splitting his head open and something gooey, dark, and spongy coming out, it might look like brains. It was hard to argue for it because of that.”

Curtis told Cannom that they wanted something closer to Reardon’s Snakeman concept. Cannom tried to figure out how to fit Reardon’s Snakeman design into a reworked version of the splitting skull but finally gave up and settled for a two-piece approach. Cannom first built a small, embryonic Snakeman head which would be moved like a hand puppet inside the skull after it split apart. Cannom wanted to stop the camera and replace the small head with a fullsized but slimmer Snakeman head that would rise out of the neck and lunge for the camera dripping goo and skin. As with Reardon before him, Cannom was less than happy with the treatment he felt his makeup got from Ruben and Curtis. Assisted by Jill Rocklow, Kevin Yagher and Brian Wade, Cannom did the effect, but felt little enthusiasm for the final product.

“Bruce Cohn Curtis and the other producer, Jerry Tokofsky, were so insulting and rude to me it was incredible,” said Cannom. “It was like they already had something against me and wanted to find fault. I never want to see Bruce Cohn Curtis again.

“I don’t really think my effect works either,” added Cannom. “It’s not done the way we wanted to set it up. We were very careful about it. First, the skull would split apart, then we would cut away, put the snake creature back into the neck and put skin all around it, and then have it come at the camera. I spent hours getting the chicken skins for the makeup and preparing them, then setting-up the effect. Ruben looked at it and said, ‘That’s not what I want. No neck and no skin. I just want the head coming at the camera.’ I told him that didn’t make any sense! But that’s what he wanted, so we did it his way.”

POST PRODUCTION

Because Ruben and Halsey had been able to do much of the editing work while the final opticals were being generated, the final scoring and assembly of the footage was completed quickly. Curtis had a finished film only a month later and premiered it to his friends in mid-January at a small mixing theater in Hollywood. Although there were some clunky spots that hadn’t been fixed because of time and budgetary problems, the final cut was deftly edited around most of them and they were visible only if you knew what to look for. The audience gave the film a big hand and Curtis was very happy, as well as Kuran. Russell, Ruben and Loughery, who now looked forward to having a potential hit associated with their names. Although Craig Reardon liked the film, he was still unhappy with director Ruben.

Ruben defended his decision to replace Reardon’s work. “Craig was under tremendous pressure to deliver an awful lot of complicated physical effects,” said Ruben. “I wouldn’t be able to see a finished physical effect practically until the day we were ready to shoot it. That was a rough way for both of us to work. I was disappointed some times, and I’m sure he was disappointed in the way I was shooting things, although at no time can I remember him making specific suggestions. I think that the main thing I would change if I were to do it again, and I wouldn’t mind working with Craig again.

  Dreamscape (1984) Music by Maurice Jarre 01.DREAMSCAPE 2:58 02.THE JOURNEY 4:22 03.FIRST EXPERIMENT 1:55 04.SUSPENSE 2:09 05.JEALOUSY MERRY-GO ROUND 2:56 06.THE SNAKEMAN 1:08 07.ENTERING THE NIGHTMARE 4:17 08.LOVE DREAMS 4:10

REFERENCES and SOURCES

Twilight Zone v04 n01_ Fangoria 44 Fangoria 27 Fangoria 34 Fangoria 39 Cinefantastique v15 n02

  Dreamscape (1984) Retrospective SUMMARY Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is a psychic who has been using his talents solely for personal gain, which mainly consists of gambling and womanizing.

[jerseydeanne]

Does anyone know who Prince Edward really is? The Queen's youngest son is not the kind of man to draw attention to himself if he can help it.

So headlines in recent days mocking him as 'Air Miles Eddie' must have caused him considerable discomfort.

Unusually for him, he used a private executive jet as well as a helicopter over two days on public engagements in Dorset and the West Midlands — engagements that he could easily have carried out by road or rail.

The cost to the taxpayer was in the region of £13,000 rather than just a few hundred pounds, giving rise to accusations that he was guilty of 'a blatant abuse of public money'.

What is strange about this is that ever since he was forced to give up a commercial life as a TV producer, he has been extremely careful, as a full-time royal, to do everything by the book — so very different from his demanding brother Prince Andrew. So what has changed?

The theory among courtiers is that the Earl of Wessex fears he and his wife Sophie are in danger of being eclipsed from the excitement of the royal show. He wants to raise their profile.

Tuesday — the opening day of Royal Ascot — was the couple's 19th wedding anniversary.

But it was the glamorous Meghan who inevitably attracted all the attention.

All this came on top of those extraordinary pictures of the newest royal and the Queen in highly animated conversation as they carried out engagements together in Cheshire last week.

Sophie, of course, has been the Queen's favourite family companion for some years.

+5

The theory among courtiers is that the Earl of Wessex fears he and his wife Sophie are in danger of being eclipsed by Meghan (pictured with the Queen). He wants to raise their profile

The former PR girl, now 53, rides out with the Queen at Windsor and also goes carriage driving with her father-in-law Prince Philip, whom she calls 'Papa' (just as Princess Diana did).

'She makes him laugh, which with Philip is half the battle,' says a friend.

On most Sunday afternoons they and their children Louise, 14, and James, ten, have 'five o'clock tea' with the Queen at Windsor Castle, usually in the Oak Room.

These are precious private moments, where the Queen herself pours the tea, and not even the personable Meghan is ever likely to take Sophie's place there.

But, in their official lives, Edward and Sophie, as senior royals, have never enjoyed the same kind of public affection and enthusiasm as the other members of the family.

Indeed, there are several spoof Prince Edward social media accounts which purport to share his homespun royal thoughts, such as: 'Don't you know that feeling in the morning when you are full of energy?! Nah, me neither.'

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However, the real Edward, 54, is keen to be taken more seriously, especially as he is expected to be elevated from an earl to a duke and inherit his father's title, the Duke of Edinburgh.

He has been chairman of the board of trustees of the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Foundation for the past three years and travels extensively.

But the fallout of his embarrassing commercial history, and, of course, Sophie's, too, still weighs heavily on them.

Edward's dreams of a life away from the royal ribbon-cutting routine finally ended in 2011 when Ardent Productions, the television production company which the prince set up in 1993 with £300,000 of his own money, was dissolved.

The company's most spectacular achievement was the ignominy and very public criticism it faced in 2001 after it had a crew film on the St Andrews university campus while his nephew Prince William, newly arrived as a student, was there.

This move was an apparent contravention of an agreement with the media to leave the young Prince William alone.

+5

The Duchess of Sussex, 36, is pictured on the first day of Royal Ascot in Berkshire this week

For her part, PR Sophie famously fell foul of a Sunday newspaper sting in 2001 in which she talked about the Royal Family and other prominent people to a potential 'client' who was, in fact, an undercover reporter.

She described the Queen as 'the old dear' and Cherie Blair, the then Prime Minister's wife, as 'absolutely horrid, horrid, horrid'.

She also created a memorable 'royals for hire' storm when, just three months after becoming the Countess of Wessex, she posed beside a Rover car at the Frankfurt Motor Show having secured a £250,000 contract to publicise the model.

After this, the couple had to throw in the commercial towel, and no one can say that, in subsequent years, they haven't worked hard to rehabilitate themselves.

For Edward, this would not be difficult, as he was the Queen's last child and Philip's favourite son.

In Sophie, the Queen saw her special qualities as a royal consort — ones that blended perfectly with her own quiet approach to duty.

+5

Pictured: The Earl and Countess of Wessex, Edward and Sophie, are pictured at Ascot

And Sophie is very much a modern royal in the sense that she is surprisingly self-sufficient.

She does her own hair, sometimes drives herself to engagements and prefers to make her own 'briefing' notes without the help of a lady-in-waiting.

The daughter of a tyre company executive from Kent, Sophie seems to have little use for airs and graces.

It is Edward who is increasingly indignant — and has at times been furious — at the 'downgrading' of their royal status.

With Meghan's arrival, that can only be exacerbated.

For her part, Sophie has never been troubled by slipping down the official rankings. The

subsequent arrivals of two new royal duchesses — Camilla in 2005 and Kate in 2011 — meant Sophie, a mere countess, dropped down to fifth.

+5

Princess Anne, Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Edward, the Countess of Wessex and the Queen are pictured left to right at Ascot in Berkshire this week

The arrival just last month of another duchess, Meghan, pushed her down to sixth — and in the quaint custom of royal protocol she has to curtsy to the Duchess of Sussex (and to the Duchess of Cambridge), whereas she only has to curtsy to Sophie if Prince Edward is with her.

So in what is the highly competitive world of life inside palace walls, one can perhaps understand Edward's anxieties, especially as 'the firm' moves towards his eldest brother Charles's plans for a slimmed-down monarchy.

Edward was even angrier than Prince Andrew when, together with Princess Anne, they were excluded from the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee flypast in 2012.

And yet, for Sophie, relative anonymity — one might even call it obscurity — has been a blessing.

It has meant she continues to drive the children to school in Ascot and Windsor like other school-run mums, and can have informal lunches with girlfriends, confident in the knowledge that people won't keep pointing her out.

However, friends explaining her appreciation of being able to live life as a normal family conveniently overlook the 57-room Bagshot Park, a rambling Victorian mansion which is their home in Surrey.

Though it should be pointed out that a large part of the place is office space and they occupy only about a quarter of it.

Their support staff are based in offices there, rather than in Buckingham Palace, and they have a relatively small domestic staff of a 'house manager' and an assistant, a chef, two cleaners who live out and a full-time nanny.

Sophie's father Christopher Rhys-Jones, 87, often stays with them.

Since Sophie's mother died in 2005, he has become a regular name on the guest list of the Queen, who likes him very much, and he has been touched by the friendship the royals have shown him.

He was not, however, in the Queen's Royal Ascot party this week, almost certainly because he finds such major occasions a bit stressful at his age.

In this area, at least, Prince Edward finds enormous comfort.

Not for him and Sophie the excruciating spectacle of a father-in-law in cahoots with the paparazzi, for example, or, in a toe-curling television interview, revealing the private thoughts and views of his royal son-in-law.

But then Christopher Rhys-Jones is no Thomas Markle. Like Kate's father, Michael Middleton, he has kept a discreet silence on what he has seen and heard.

So can we expect Prince Edward to become 'Air Miles Andy Mark II'?

Thus far, it must be said, Edward has carefully avoided the royal pitfalls that have characterised his elder brother's life.

Yes, he has made mistakes, but he has never pursued the company of dubious billionaires and never given cause for people to describe him as arrogant.

And unlike Andrew's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Edward has not saddled his children with the style HRH — Louise is not a princess and James is not a prince.

'They will have to work for a living,' the Countess of Wessex has said.

So does Prince Edward really want to raise his royal profile, or is it merely a knee-jerk reaction to all the excitement and ballyhoo that has surrounded the new arrival in the family?

The one person who is likely to ensure he gets it right is his wife Sophie. He listens to her.

One friend who has known her for a long time says: 'I can almost hear her now, saying to him: 'Be careful what you wish for'.'

WOW , okay it’s Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy 

#is prince edward wife sophie worried meghan markle

[walgie]

Generation Wealth, Lauren Greenfield, 2018

I consume contemporary culture in selected bites; perhaps if I were younger and more immersed, I would be less struck by the images that this film focuses on. In the opening credits, there is an excerpt from an interview with Eden Wood age 5 yrs (apparently), who as a toddler became notorious for her Vegas showgirl outfit. I dearly hope that her “money, money, money” chant was part of an act. Then, a porn shoot with an apparently teenage girl. And then a strip club, bare butts wiggling at the bottom of the screen, while the women's faces are outside the frame: depersonalized. The quick glimpses of a variety of shocking scenes garishly foreshadow the horrors to follow.

Greenfield revisits the privileged kids who were the subjects of her 1997 book project "Fast Forward". Juxtaposing archive footage of the teens then with the middle aged adults that they became, the message seems to be that the rich people she encountered failed at parenting. [Note: Greenfield has clips of interviews with her own parents throughout the film, and her mother in particular comes off looking like a bad parent. At first it was a bit discomfiting to have the film maker’s own experiences and family interspersed with the other subjects of the film. But then I realised: she is confessing - accusing herself, perhaps - of being part of this culture, this generation.] How did the rich kids turn out? Eddie still acts like an adolescent towards women. Paris and Mijanou are critical of their experiences as privileged teens.

Throughout the film, analysis is provided mostly by clips of and interview with Chris Hedges and by Greenfield's voice over. But some of the characters who appear in the film perform dual roles, both as a subject of the film and as a commentator. Notorious fraudster and fugitive Florian Holm is one. Between Holm and Hedges, we hear an origin story of the current culture. No new insight: the abandonment of the gold standard (1971), aggressive expansionary monetary policy, and debt-fueled government spending to maintain lifestyle and empire. Reagan-era pivot towards supply side economics and consumption. Suzanne, a hedge fund manager, claims that the unlimited pursuit of wealth is enshrined in the Federalist Papers, but I doubt it. Perhaps she is thinking of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ in the Declaration of Independence?

Corollaries to financial wealth are the experience of luxury and the appearance of wealth. Wealth is restricted to the so-called one percent and the achieving it - absent inheritance - is somewhat obscure and usually involves difficulty. On the other hand, the latter two are easy to portray in the media and easy to offer for sale. In the past, many aspired to the level of wealth of their neighbors, and there really were some opportunities to realize the American dream to “move up in the world”. Now the American dream is dead, and many aspire to the level of luxury and the glitzy appearance of the celebrities who appear on television. Time-share mogul David Siegel explains "Everyone wants to be rich. If they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich." The rapper named Stunt provides an example: “Poor people are the ones who spend the most money on the 700 dollar shoes, the ones who don’t have it.“

Hedges analyzes the situation bluntly: “things are getting worse... when there is no social mobility, the only social mobility you have is fictitious. The presentation that you give to the rest of the world denies your own reality. I've come to look at mass culture and in particular television  as a form of violence. Because 24 hours a day this ficticious lifestyle - which we’re all told that we can have - fuels this sense of inadequacy.”

The film makes an inevitable segue from wealth and appearance to bodies and sex. Our culture objectifies the body, and fuels our obsession with a "desirable body type". Images originally from pornography are now mainstream. Greenfield shows us some of the effects. A model self-mutilates to “damage the property”. Greenfield’s 17 yr old son Noah: “guys want what’s really demeaning for women.. and to match guys’ expectation I think a lot of women try to replicate it.” A 15 yr old girl construes topless dancing in words that you might expect to hear from someone who training for a marathon or climbing a mountain. “I want to be a dancer- topless dancing showgirl. I think it would be fun - dancing with my tits showing off. If I could accomplish being that, then I could accomplish anything.”

Two stories felt the most devastating. The porn actress Kacey Jordan gained notoriety as Charlie Sheen’s $30K date but her subsequent life sounds like a hellish descent into misery and poverty. Cathy the bus driver embraces the notion that “what really mattered in life was to be in the best body that I could" and so she goes into debt for her cosmetic surgery. And her daughter carves DEAD on her forehead and commits suicide. The film does not explicitly make a connection between the mother’s obsession with physical appearance and the daughter’s suicide, perhaps because it would be too painful. But the connection is implied.

The film ends with some hope. We see some of the teens who were scarred in the 90s and now are parents with healthier priorities: Paris, Mijanou, and Cliff the former rap artist G Mo. Greenfield seems portray Cliff as the happiest person in the film. His daughter has received a full ride scholarship to Cornell. His journey is the most straightforward: from gaudy rapper to his ethos now: “success is showing my children what a strong father looks like, what work ethic looks like... real American dream”.

Contra Dorothy Woodend

I am a fan of Dorothy Woodend. She is a subtle thinker and has an aesthetic that I identify with. But her review of this film, while cleverly written, is far off the mark.

First - a couple of fact checks. She refers to "Kacey Jordan, former girlfriend of Charlie Sheen, who parlayed her brief stint of infamy into a porn career". Actually the starlet started her porn career in 2007 at age 19. By the time of the infamous episode with Charlie Sheen, four years later, she already had a long filmography.

there is Susanne, a hard-faced hedge fund trader who spends the better part of her life building a career, only to decide a child would give her life meaning.

But actually, Suzanne says in an interview that she “always wanted a family”, contrary to how Woodend casts it as a late “decision”.

Aside: another example of lack of basic journalism skills in another article

here

- she can’t even get the spelling of Suchsland straight.

Woodend stoops to spiteful insults; she describes Greenfield’s voice as “Valley girl croak“. The flutes in the soundtrack are “stupid”.

Perhaps Woodend, rather than trying to understand what the film is trying to do, is criticising it for not being the film that she would have made, if she were the film maker. For example, she notes that “there is too much stuff in here”, but also complains that “there is never any discussion about how much it actually costs to attend this prestigious institution [Harvard]”. I agree, the film covers “too much”. And apparently it is not the stuff that Woodend wants to see.

She objects to the sentimentality aroused by the soundtrack.

there is something, even more insidious at work here, and that is sentiment, the cheapest and easiest of emotion to invoke...

All you have to do to figure this out is to pay attention to the musical cues.

The film is literally coated in music, a sticky bukkake of swelling strings, mournful flutes and tinkling pianos. At any point in the narrative, you can close your eyes and understand not only what is being shown, but how you are supposed to feel about it.

But I would say that the film maker intends that the viewer should feel sentiment, and intends that the soundtrack reinforce the scenes unfolding on screen. I would also say that the soundtrack is effective at doing this, and I think this is not a bad thing. Subtle, no; but this is a documentary, not Hitchcock. Perhaps Woodend would have preferred something along the lines of 60 Minutes, dry “investigative journalism”? The film maker is not trying to do that.

Woodend claims that “the film fails in positing even one original thought.“ It’s not clear what she means by “original” in this context; there is certainly a variety of ways that something can be said to be “original”. Perhaps she is using hyperbole; would it really make a difference if there were “one original thought”? Let it be that the analyses that are given in the film have appeared elsewhere. Let it be too that the images that appear on the screen are not substantially different from images that have appeared elsewhere. But as a gestalt, the film displays real creativity and originality.

More criticism from Woodend:

But none of the subjects have much to offer in the way of a larger analysis.

Any more complex understanding of the issues in question is swept away.

The film never digs deeper to look at why the fires of appetite and ambition are stoked to such a white heat, it only records the outcome of these forces.

These comments are accurate, but again seem to miss the point of the film. I don’t the film maker wanted to achieve any of these things, and I doubt that it could be argued that the film has a responsibility to address these issues.

Finally, Woodend raises an excellent question, but oddly refrains from taking a firm stand:

is Greenfield much different from the purveyors of sex tapes...

Chris Hedges... describes the fictional version of social mobility captured in television and other forms of mass media as a form of violence that “fuels a sense of inadequacy.”

I am tempted to include Greenfield’s film in this category, a work that claims to present reality but is in fact another form of fiction

Woodend has not been shy about passing judgement on other aspects of the film, but here she merely admits to being “tempted” to categorize it.

Woodend finishes her review with a misreading of the end of the film

For all its verbiage about separating reality from entertainment, global capitalism destroying culture and the darker future ahead, the film retreats into boneheaded Hallmark card sentiment about parenthood and love as the answer.

The film ends by juxtaposing images of other ideas of success against the preceding plethora of images. “Boneheaded Hallmark card sentiment” might be accurate, but that is something that really exists, so perhaps the question is whether the film is better for showing it. But at least we can say that the film doesn’t try to give the “answer” that Woodend objects to. The final scenes are hardly intended to be an answer; rather, just a bit of hope. Perhaps Woodend expected a tidy ending with an “answer”  akin to the moral at the end of one of Aesop’s fables, but I think both the film and the viewer are better off without one.

[xena-woundedwarrior]

Bet On Yourself, Not On The Odds - Motivational Speech BY: Eddie Pinero

Side Note from Blogger - I do occasionally post some of the incredible Motivational Videos I come across... However this one spoke so clearly to me and I gain understanding and true person growth of some measure by listening to it... The speaker does it very well - so if you can watch the video, I suggest, take a quiet seat just for 5-minutes and listen to the story that this speaker unfolds from beginning to end and the emotion he holds in his voice as he does it.

*HOWEVER*, This was such a good message, I decided to write out the entire speech, word for word, Not only for the warriors unable to watch, but also for the message to gain a deeper hold and understanding within... I GET THESE VIDEOS CAN GET A LITTLE - ROLLING THE EYES - BUT THIS ONE... THIS ONE SPEAKS TO THAT SOUL WITH IN YOU...*

“We have a Desire to Define that which is often UNdefinable…

When it comes to life and its highly coveted outcomes, assessing the things that we want, we use Probability to Solidify things that are entirely Fluid.

For example; You often hear about the Odds of becoming a professional football player, The Odds of becoming a CEO, of going to Harvard, making six or seven figures… Numbers that often paint a picture of Why you Can't.

That when you hear only One in however many millions of people accomplish something.

The intent is to Show you that You're more likely to fall into the millions bucket than the One bucket. - To Show just how rare or difficult or out of the ordinary Achieving that thing Would Be. Almost like they are being Compared to the lottery - a random number generator... A Lock… A Pursuit in which you have ZERO control.

Think of huge a glass jar – There is One red marble, and Three Million green marbles… And it's like you close your eyes and you better pull out that red one otherwise you won’t become the Oscar winning actor that you dream of being.

The problem with looking at life that way, is that it Overshadows the MOST Important element of success… Understanding just how much Control. You. Have!

The one in however many Hundreds or Thousands or Millions - Was NOT born that ONE red marble in a jar full of three million green OneS. No!... Here she just did things Differently, lived Differently… They didn't relinquish control… they TOOK Control!... and that's the Difference… that's what Matters.

The lottery is sitting back and Hoping your numbers pull - In real life - You create Your Own Probability - Every day, Every minute that goes towards working Towards a Goal - That Means you Get Closer!

Why would you take a snapshot of the Present Moment in Time and Use that to Define the Likelihood that you'll live out your Dream someday down The Road, it doesn't tell you anything; It’s The Steps Along that make your vision a Reality.

Using the same metaphor - Every step, Every decision to push forward, Every time you dig deep and find a little advantage - You're Replacing one of those green marbles with the red One.

Maybe you can't quantify that numerically, Maybe you can't see the progress… BUT it's there!

In fact, numbers should never scare you - Because they're an Indicator that the vast majority of people Aren’t prepared to go All The Way… Aren’t willing to do What It Takes. And YOU… By simply Not stopping, By thinking that You CAN, By giving more than the person next to you… YOU have a Tremendous Advantage over the rest of the world.

When you hear only a small number of people Make it, or Graduate, get Accepted or Win… Your thought process ShouldN’T be… “Oh No”… It Should be… “Perfect this is My Opportunity!” Of course the number of Elite people in any arena is going to be small - THINK of what it Takes to Get There…

Think about the Sacrifice that needed To Make It Happen. The COST that Must be Paid…!

The only Odds that weren’t intentional, are the Odds that you'll continue forward and you should know that they're one hundred percent.

Because when you trust yourself to find a way, When you focus on how to make it happen, YOU have an Advantage!... The world around you? They focus on Why things Can't happen, They see What Can go wrong, They harp on the fact that it's not easy.

Remaining fixated on Why you can.. On finding a way… This means YOU most likely will!

The Terms Difficult or Demanding or even UNlikely, They have NOTHING to do with You crossing the finish line. If you are one hundred percent Convinced you are going to do just that… - Words like Difficultly just imply that there's going to be plenty of opportunities to Quit and Turn Around along the way. A Temptation that Must and Will be Ignored.

They mean that YOU Will be tested. That you'll have to ask yourself, *potentially numerous times*, IF this means something to you? And if it's TRULY worth it and IF the Answer is YES?

Then the Numbers, the Probability, the Odds, They are NOT an Adversary… They are a Out-Lie!”

#MotivationalVideos #InspiringLifeSpeech #LifeIsABattle #WordforWord #YouCan #YouWill #BeDifferent #FaceTheTests #DontFollowSociety #YouDeserveTheOppurtunity #FocusOnYourJourney #DontDefineTheUndefineable #YourLife #YourGoals #YourJourney #EddiePinero #MotivationalSpeaker #FindStrength

[wearemmauk-blog]

Canelo v Jacobs confirmed for 4th of May.

Canelo v Jacobs confirmed for 4th of May. - http://mmauk.net/2019/01/18/canelo-v-jacobs-confirmed-for-4th-of-may/

Canelo v Jacobs confirmed for 4th of May.

Boxing’s biggest star will take a step closer to becoming undisputed champion as Canelo Alvarez (50-1-2, 34 KOs) defends his WBC, WBA, Lineal and Ring Magazine Middleweight World Titles in a 12-round unification fight against IBF Middleweight World Champion Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) during the celebratory weekend of Cinco de Mayo. The champion-vs.-champion event will take place Saturday, May 4, 2019, and will be streamed exclusively live on DAZN.

Additional details for the event, including venue and ticket information, will be announced shortly.

Canelo is a 28-year-old native of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico who became the top man in the sport by facing the best competition and making the best fights for the fans. At 154 pounds, Canelo captured several world titles and defeated the likes of Austin “No Doubt” Trout, Sugar Shane Mosley, Alfredo “El Perro” Angulo, Erislandy “The American Dream” Lara and Liam “Beefy” Smith. However, Canelo scored his most significant victory yet at 160 pounds, where he defeated Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their highly anticipated rematch in September 2018 and established himself as the WBC, WBA, Lineal and Ring Magazine Middleweight World Champion. Canelo then made history by signing the most lucrative sports contract for an athlete in history to begin a groundbreaking, exclusive partnership with global sports streaming platform DAZN that saw the last king of pay-per-view boxing step into a new era as the new king of sports streaming.

In his debut performance, Canelo became a three-division world champion by knocking out Rocky Fielding in three rounds to capture the WBA Super Middleweight World Title in December 2018. Canelo will return to middleweight for this fight as he continues to clean out the 160-pound division.

“I’m happy to announce my next fight during the festive weekend of Cinco de Mayo,” said Canelo Alvarez. “I will unify my middleweight titles against Daniel Jacobs on one of the two most important dates that belong to me. I have no doubt that I will be victorious and that I’ll be one step away from becoming the undisputed middleweight world champion. And what better way to watch it than on as tremendous a platform as DAZN.”

Jacobs is a 31-year-old native of Brooklyn, New York who is widely considered as one of the best middleweights of this era. Despite being away from the sport for 19 months, due to a form of bone cancer that he courageously overcame, Jacobs rose up the middleweight rankings to win the WBA Middleweight World Title against Jarrod Fletcher in 2014. Jacobs made several successful defenses, including a thunderous first-round knockout of Peter Quillin the following year. Despite losing to Gennady Golovkin in a very close fight in 2017, Jacobs has remained undefeated since his return, defeating former amateur champion and middleweight contender Sergiy Derevyanchenko to capture the IBF Middleweight World Championship. Jacobs will look to capture more middleweight hardware in the biggest fight of his career.

“This is the opportunity I have been waiting for. The opportunity to achieve greatness inside the ring,” said Daniel Jacobs. “I have always believed I can beat Canelo, and on May 4 live on DAZN, I will get my chance to play it out. It’s been nearly four years since Canelo has faced an American challenger. It’s going to be a huge event where I believe I will cement myself as the best middleweight in the division.”

“Canelo Alvarez wants the best fights and the biggest challenges,” said Oscar De La Hoya, Chairman and CEO of Golden Boy Promotions. “That’s what he did as the 154-pound champion, and that’s what he’s doing now as the king of the middleweight division. We are also proud to demonstrate to boxing fans that this new partnership with DAZN means that fans will get pay-per-view level fights without the cost of pay-per-view. Golden Boy Promotions is continuing its promise to make the sport as accessible as possible by putting this champion-vs.-champion fight on the platform.”

“What a fight! I can’t tell you how happy I am that Danny Jacobs gets this opportunity to fight Canelo on Cinco de Mayo in a massive unification fight,” said Eddie Hearn, Managing Director of Matchroom Sport. “Victory would cap one of the most incredible, inspirational boxing stories of our generation, and Danny and the team will be putting everything in place to lead him to victory. Respect to Canelo and Golden Boy for accepting this challenge, and congratulations to DAZN and their subscribers for getting this incredible fight with no extra cost. Let’s go May 4! Let’s go Daniel Jacobs!”

“On any other network or platform, Canelo vs. Jacobs would be an expensive pay-per-view,” said Joseph Markowski, DAZN EVP of North America. “At DAZN, we believe the best fights should be available to our subscribers at no extra charge.”

Canelo vs. Jacobs is a 12-round fight for the WBC, WBA, Lineal, Ring Magazine and IBF Middleweight World Titles presented by Golden Boy Promotions in association with Matchroom Boxing

#Daniel Jacobs #DAZN #Golden Boy Promotions #Matchroom #Saul Canelo Alvarez

[darefootball-blog]

Ranked! Who Won the Premier League Transfer Window?

Alosh K Jose And there it is! The shortened Prem transfer window has slammed shut. Premier League clubs can longer sign players. But with the European transfer window remaining open until the end of month. outgoings are still possible for the English top-flight clubs. With the Premier League due to start tomorrow, it is time to asses who had the best transfer window. And the worst. So straight to the rankings. 20. Tottenham hotspur

Mauricio Pochettino did not get a single signing and is stuck with players he did not want. This time Daniel Levy could not pull off any last minute surprises which meant the Spurs are the only team in the league not to have made a single signing. And they are not better off with it. Spurs had nine of thier players involve in the last four of the World Cup and will invariably suffer at the start due to these late arrivals. An injury crisis is all what Mauricio Pochettino's team to undo any progress achieved during the last three years. And he is also stuck with Toby Alderweireld, Mousa Dembéle and Danny Rose, none of whom he fancies. Yes, disastrous. 19. Watford

Troy Deeney and his co-strikers were an utter failure last season. They need to step up. What the Hornets desperately needed at the start of the window started was a striker. So it is all the more puzzling why they could not sign a top striker they needed at all costs. The fact that the three senior strikers in the Watford books have only managed to score a combined tally of 11 goals itself proves the what a kind of a season is they are up against. The permanent transfer of Gerard Deulofeu from Barcelona will help the club in the wings, but much more was needed. Nothing other than a desperate struggle against relegation is to be expected from Javi Garcia's men. 18. Cardiff City

As usual Neil Warnock has trusted hungry Championship players to deliver for him. Bobby Reid will the main man of the new signings. Neil Warnock did most his business early in the window, signing four Championship players desperate to prove that they belong at the top table. Among them, Bobby Reid must start scoring goals galore if the Welsh outfit is the survive the Premier League. Kenneth Zohore was their top scorer last season. But he has scored only nine goals and it is unrealistic to expect to stay in Premier League with such a paltry attack. The deadline day saw the arrivals of  midfielders Victor Camarasa and Harry Arter, but the club remains woefully short of some Premier League experience and any real firepower upfront. 17. Huddersfield Town

Huddersfield needed quality strikers but didn't get any. It will be up to Jonas Lossl to save the team again. The Terriers were the last potent attack last season, finding the net only 28 times. Despite the signing of a whopping eight players, their apathetic attack does not seem to have improved. And among those eight, three signings – Terence Kongolo, Florent Hadergjonaj and goalkeeper Jonas Lössl – were loan transfers made permanent. German World Cup winner Erik Durm's arrival will ad depth in the left-back position. It is not healthy or realistic to hope that the young forward trio of Adama Diakhaby, Ramadan Sobhi and Isaac Mbenza will fire all the goals Steve Wagner's team needs to survive. With teams around them vastly more ambitious in the transfer market, Huddersfield is due for a punishing second season in the Premier League. 16. Newcastle United

WIth Mike Ashley unwilling to back Benitez up in the transfer window, it will up to the Spanish to find training ground solutions. Rafa Benítez wanted too strengthen the attack as they missed a centre striker so badly last season. Is Salomon Rondon the answer? Questions will remain. But the Magpies have signed Kenedy, Ki Sung-yueng and Fabian Schar has been signed earlier in the window. The Japanese striker Yoshinori Muto is an exciting addition although slightly less potent in front of goal than the Toon Army wanted. The deadline day signing of Swansea centre half Federico Fernande was offset by the long term injury to Florian Lejeune. As usual Newcastle ended the window showing a large profit on player transfers with the £22 million received via the sale of unwanted Alexander Mitrovic the biggest contributor. Newcastle may look stronger than last year on paper, but make no mistake, a relegation dogfight is looming in the St. James Park. 15. Manchester United

Jose Morinho has spent his entire summer whining for transfers, but did not get what he wanted. Ed Woodward doesn't seem to be a keen listener. Because virtually everybody in the world heard Jose Mourinho's summer long whining for a centreback. The Portuguese manager did not get Harry Maguire, Jerome Boeteng or the other numerous centrebacks he wanted. Fred, Diogo Dalot and Lee Grant are the only additions to the squad at Old Trafford. It is simply not enough for a sustained title challenge. Manchester United and Ed Woodward must be doing more. 14. Burnley

One time England No. 1 Joe Hart has washed up at Turf Moor. This season was always going to be tough one for Burnley and boss Sean Dyche as they have to juggle between the domestic and European competitions. Burnley does not have a large squad and had failed to significantly bolster it in the transfer window. But Dyche has has boosted his defence with the signing of Ben Gibson from Middlesbrough for a joint-club-record £15 million fee. Gibson will now be the designated backup for the centreback pair of James Tarkowsky and Ben Mee ahead of Kevin Long. Goalkeeper Nick Pope recently underwent surgery on a dislocated shoulder and Burnley has responded by signing Manchester City outcast Joe Hart. Due to this underwhelming transfer window, Burnley will have to prioritise either the Premier League survival or the European dream. It is virtually impossible to excel at both competitions with such a threadbare squad. At least it will be intriguing to see what Championship top scorer Matej Vydra is going to do in the Premier. 13. Brighton

New signing Alireza Jahanbakhsh was a force of nature in Eredivise. But most of the recent Dutch imports have failed in England. Brighton's club record signing of Iran winger Alireza Jahanbakhsh was the headline move from the coastal club. Jahanbakhsh was the top scorer in the Dutch Eredivise last season and he should be able to ease the goal-scoring burden on the 34 year old Glenn Murray. In that sense, the signing of Florin Andone from Deportivo la Coruna shoud also help. The Romanian has scored 18 goals from 66 appearances in the last two seasons in La Liga which is tally not to be sniffed at. Midfielder Yvves Bissouma is also a talented youngster with plenty of room to grow. The signings of Bernard and Martin Montoya will help the defence. Yet there is a sense that Brighton needed a bit more investment in order to play in the Premier League for a third straight season. 12. Bournemouth

Cherries Boss Eddie Howe has always trusted his veterans. It may be their undoing this time around. Eddie Howe has won the signatures left-back Diego Rico and promising young attacker David Brooks early in transfer window. The £25 million club-record, deadline day signing of Levante's Jefferson Lerma is also good news for the club as he remains a canny operator at the middle of the park. But where Bournemouth needed to shore up was the central defence as captain Simon Francis is now 33. They needed a faster and younger centreback but could not add one into the squad. Howe is known for his loyalty to the players who got him to the Premier League, but this could backfire this season. 11. Crystal Palace

Wilfried Zaha stays. *cue relieved sighs* The headline act at Selhurst Park is not any incoming transfer, but Wilfried Zaha's stay. Because without Zaha, Crystal Palace is a toothless giant bunny. The permanent signing of Cheikhou Kouyaté will add some power and bite in the midfield while Viceente Guaita will rival longtime No. 1 Wayne Hennesey for a starting spot while Andrew Ayew will add an alternative option to Christian Benteke who was poor last season. The most intriguing addition is Max Meyer. Once hailed as the future of German football, something has gone horribly wrong in Meyer's career which is why he is in Selhurst Park and not Allianz Arena. But he is still only 22 and has a point to prove. 10. Sothampton

Danny Ings is ready to get his career back on track. The South Coast club has improved themselves in the transfer market after being caught in a desperate relegation battle last term. The final day addition of Danny Ings will give the Southampton attack more verve and purpose. Ings will be hungry to prove his critics wrong after they wrote him off on the back of an injury ravaged tenure at Anfield. Having lost Virgin van Dijk in January, a decent centreback was always a requirement at St. Mary's and so they have signed Jannik Vestergaard. Angus Gunn, the young ex-Manchester City goalkeeper is  extremely talented and will fit into the Saints philosophy of buying youngsters and improving them. The signings of Mohamed Elyounoussi and Stuart Armstrong are well timed as the club aims to inject fresh blood into what was a sated squad last season. 9. Everton

Both Andre Gomes and Yerry Mina failed to spark at Camp Nou. Goodison will be a new start for the duo. Until the deadline day, Everton hadn't done enough to have a place in our top half. But let's face it, Everton won big on the deadline day. Marco Silva's team added two high quality players from Barcelona in Yerry Mina and Andre Gomes. Both have not cut their teeth well enough for the Catalan giants. But Silva is an excellent training ground coach and will surely hope to resurrect the playing careers of the duo. The other deadline day arrival, Bernard will also add some much-needed wing play for Everton. With Richarlison already in the bag, Marco Silva will be confident he would not repeat ex-manager Ronald Koeman's miserable start last season. 8. Leicester City

Man-mountain Harry Maguire will continue to anchor the Leicester back-line. At least for now. The former Premier League champions were under intense pressure from Manchester United to sell centreback Harry Maguire even in the closing minutes of the transfer window. But Leicester held their ground and are better off with that. With Wes Morgan aging and Robert Huth departing, a partner for Maguire was always the priority at King Power. In Turkish centreback Caglar Soyuncu  the Foxes’ defence looks healthy have their answer. Jonny Evans, signed earlier in the summer for just £3 million brings competition at central defence. Riyad Mahrez's £60 million departure was a blow, but not an unexpected one. The arrivals of Monaco winger Rachid Ghezzal and Norwich midfielder James Maddison are aimed at replacing at least some of Mahrez's creativity. So when Claude Puel says he is happy with the quality of his squad, there is no reason not to believe him. 7. Arsenal

The Gunners fans have waited more than a decade for Patrick Viera's replacement. Lucas Torreira seems to be the man. Unai Emery has began his era as the new Gunners manager by addressing the multiple weak points of the team which crippled Arsene Wenger towards the end of his 22 year reign at the Emirates. Most importantly Arsenal have signed the forceful defensive midfielder Lucas Torreira from Torino. Himself no lightweight, the Uruguayan is the player the Arsenal midfield was crying out for the last decade. Sokratis Papastathopoulos has been a dependable cenreback for Borussia Dortmund for long and will bring his experience to the Gunners back-line. But at 30, doubts persist about the Greek's long term future at the club. Bernd Leno will rival the aging Petr Cech for the No. 1 shirt and Stefan Lichtsteiner is a proven winner. But still, there is plenty of problems at Arsenal's defence. With Laurent Koscielny set to miss the half of the season, their back-line looks less than solid. But they have succeeded in shifting a lot of dead weight. 6. Manchester City

Riyad Mahrez has ended a drawn-out transfer saga by finally moving to Man City. The defending champions only added two names to the first team squad with the Algerian genius Riyad Mahrez arriving from Leicester City and Australian World Cup star Danielle Arzani from sister club Melbourne City. The latter will go to Celtic on loan. But it is not due to the lack of transfer market savvy City did not add more players. It was simply that they already had a perfect squad. Pep Guardiola could not get his hands on Jorginho as a tastier alternative to Fernandinho at deep midfield. Oh calamity! 5. Chelsea

Kepa is now the word's most expensive goalkeeper ever. No pressure, then. Chelsea’s summer began with the stalemate between club owner Roman Abramovich which cost the London club precious time both in the transfer window and in the training ground. When Maurizio Sarri finally arrived, he promptly added his Napoli ward Jorginho to the squad. The midfielder will be tasked with implementing Sarri’s philosophy on the pitch. Thibaut Courtois's yearly saga came to end as he secured a £35 million deal to Real Madrid. His replacement Kepa Arrizabalaga was signed at at world record deal for a goalkeeper at £72 million. The former Athletic man is not perfect, but he is the future of the Spanish back line the next decade. The Blues also kept Eden Hazard in which will be the key factor that decide the season. Real Madrid's Mateo Kovacic comes in and those who regularly watched the Croatian will tell you what a dynamic midfielder he is. Overall, despite the early problems, Chelsea did what they had to in the transfer market. 4. West Ham United

New head honcho Manuel Pellegrini has revolutionized West Ham's playing staff. With the appointment of Manuel Pellegrini, the Hammers have guaranteed themselves an entertaining brand of football. And their signings are testament for the added vigour. Most of the signings West Ham made were completed early in the window and hence relieving their fans of any deadline day nail-biting. They broke their transfer record to sign Felipe Anderson from Lazio. Once coveted by the biggest of European clubs, Anderson now has a stage to show he is as good as ever. The free transfer Jack Wilshere will add a bit of style to the West Ham football. Issa Diop and Andriy Yarmolenko will add quality in defence and midfield respectively. When the opportunity to sign Lucas Pérez from Arsenal and Carlos Sánchez from Fiorentina on the deadline day, the Hammers pounced. All in all, a happy summer at the London Stadium. 3. Fulham

Once targeted by the European elite, Jean-Micheal is an absolute steal for the Cottagers. The deadline was a very busy one at Craven Cottage as they submitted offers left, right and centre. But it seems there was a method to madness at Fulham as most of the incoming players are quality signings. They have secured Timothy Fosu-Mensah from Manchester United, goalkeeper Sergio Rico from Sevilla, young attacking left-back Joe Bryan from Bristol City on the deadline day. Star striker Alexabder Mitrovic's loan deal has been made permanent too. With the earlier signings of Alfie Mawson, World Cup winner Andre Schurrle and one-time Barcelona target Jean-Michel Seri, Fulham seems to have done what was needed to comfortably survive the drop.  But just don't be fooled by Luciano Vietto's Atletco Madrid background, he was an absolute dud whenever he played for Atleti manager Diego Simeone. And they have signed £27 million club record signing André-Frank Zambo Anguissa. Yes, me neither. 2. Wolves

The seemingly unlimited access to Jorge Medes' clientele had made the Wolves a formidable team under their Chinese owners. Armed with the Portuguese super agent Jorge Mendes, Wolves have stunned their Prem rivals by pulling off incredible signings one by one. Thanks to Mendes, the new boys have signed Portuguese stalwarts Rui Patricio and Joao Moutinho to go with Raul Jimenez and Adama Traore. The signing of Leander Dendoncker has not gone under the radar and the Belgian is capable to dictating play from the deep. Add the fact that they already houses the superb Ruben Neves, Wolves will be the dark horses this season. 1. Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp's maverick personalty has drawn top quality players to Liverpool this summer. Without any doubt, Liverpool had a superb summer window. With the signing of Allison, the Reds finally have a top class goalkeeper. He will be huge upgrade from the hapless Lorius Karius. Naby Keita will be Liverpool's N'golo Kante but with added goal scoring ability while Fabinho brings in more options to the midfield which was not really top notch last season. Xherdan Shaqiri is another good signing which will ease the burden of the magnificent trident of Mohammed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firminho. Liverpool has addressed each of the weaknesses that plagued their team last term. They failed in signing Nabil Fekir, but it is still has been brilliant window for them. Our No. 1. Read the full article

#PremierLeague #TransferWIndow

[survivoremathia]

Ep. 10 - "Heck Everyone on This Tribe!" - Logan

LOGAN

tea time with ryan. when is it my turn

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So last round was wild. If it weren't for duncan, i would have voted david and that would have been even messier. Also sorry Ali I definitely did go in room 9 but it doesn't matter! Because my extra vote was snatcht by Isaac.

RYAN PALMER

LMFAO LAST NIGHT WAS A MESS. it was still totally fun though. i havent had that much fun in a game for a long time. too bad everyone else is being boring af. i dont have anything personal against trevor but i think this series and season is too good to have someone breeze their way to the end because everyone just wants to follow him and hand him the win. i dont get it. oh well. like i said im always just here to have fun and cause a little chaos. it seemed like sam and ali had the most negative reactions to what i said in the tribe chat last night. i literally made it all up...minus the duncan part cause lydia told me about it....anything i can do to spice things up and get ppl paranoid is good. im not gonna survive this round so i gotta make it last. but when i wrote and said that i was a free agent and that if you want my vote you better message me or else someone else will...i got messages from jd logan sam which is interesting. i think sam knows that hes the person i talk to the least so he wants some communication in before im juror...eh...and logan and jd seemed to really want me to know they werent against me...i do actually believe them but that doesnt mean they are gonna go trying to save my ass. honestly just give me that spot in emathia hvv. if i can somehow win this immunity by a stroke of genius itll be my mission to make sure someone good leaves and we dont waste a round by getting david/logan/jd out. oh also i love lydia. and cami.

LOGAN

Also! Heck everyone on this tribe! Literally everyone lied to me last night except for Duncan, Matt and Ryan, and ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IS NOW GONE BY MY HAND. I didn't want to vote for Matt! If I could have gotten rid of Trevor YER DARN TOOTIN I WOULD HAVE! I just didn't read the rules bc I'm a #idiot. If it weren't for Duncan actually trusting me, I would have voted for David or Trevor and looked stupid as heck. I also told Trevor that the "other side" trusts me which is... well, true, because I am the other side. I'm literally about to play his own game and fucking leak false information to him. Maybe flush an idol, maybe flip someone. I will never trust anyone in this game again. Within the next four rounds I'm going unless I can win challenges. It was a good run.

http://survivoremathia.tumblr.com/post/158609746461/immunity-10

DAVID

Me on the bottom? just where i like it! anyway Ali was like "It was rough yesterday ryan was yelling at me ):" and im like bitch I literally didnt vote in the majority and you did can you actually shut your mouth because you have nothing to worry about

ALI

Welp, I have lots to talk about, so I am gonna break it up into sections:

Firstly, I am super happy to have made final 10. Like already outlasting 12 people in a season is a huge achievement! Yesterday's vote got a bit crazy, but I think its opened my eyes as to the next steps I need to take to advance my game. Firstly, in memoriam of Matt. I wouldn't have expected to vote him out so soon, but he'd begun trying to turn the tides against a member of my alliance, and he didn't have a majority, so I almost had to go on the 'Trevor' side. Furthermore, when he was talking about the potential 'majority' that'd take out Trevor, he didn't include Sam or JD, who I'd expected him too, as we'd been working together up to that point. His willingness to just leave out allies, meant that he just had to go :( Next Sam. I feel super bad for Sam. I was encouraging him to use the idol, when it was unnecessary. Our conversation leading up to him playing it though super brought us together, so I'm hoping I have his vote going forwards. Next, I got to play Touchy Subjects! I was so excited for that, and even though it was super hard to make some tough decisions, I really enjoyed it and can't wait to see the results! :) Now, onto 'Tea Time with Ryan'. In my opinion, Ryan screwed up. Like, people get that Trevor is a threat, but all that his temper tantrum did, is make sure people don't want to work with him (at least in my opinion). Like I definitely intend on making a move against the Trevor/Owen power duo, in the next coming votes, however I don't think I'll necessarily want to include David or Ryan (unless one of them happens to still be in the game). I'd potentially want to make that move, with a group of 'Duncan,Me,Sam,JD and Lydia'- I'd super want to bring in Logan as a 5th, but JD is weirdly stubborn about not wanting to work with them. I'm not sure why. Looking super long term, there are a number of threats, that I need to remove before F3. Those people include but aren't limited to: Owen, Trevor, Lydia and Ryan Like I don't want to go to F3 with any of them. My dream F3 would be with David and JD, as I feel like those two are the two I have the greatest chance of beating. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem sitting there with Logan or Duncan either. Even Sam is kinda too big of a threat. As promised to Jay, here is a quick breakdown of my thoughts on each tribemate: Ryan: I may be the lap dog, but you’ll be the one heading to the pound JD: My F2, think I may potentially be able to beat them. Really get on with them. I think them being stubborn about not working with Logan may cost us a bit. I don’t get why they so passionately want them out eek Logan: Super sweet person, sucks that we haven’t up to this point been able to work together game-wise Trevor: Really like him, but he is just too big of a threat Owen: Same as Trevor, would almost want to keep him longer though. We’ll see Duncan: I don’t know what to think of him? Like I feel like we’re close, but at the same time, maybe we aren’t David: We barely talk. Like almost never. Lydia: Kinda scary strategy wise, but a great mentor Sam: Love him too, but he is kinda a threat Who is the tenth person? I can’t remember for the life of me. In conclusion, everyone is a threat and they all need to go.

DUNCAN

On 3/20/17, at 2:25 PM, Unkie Dunkie wrote:

> Me: He poisoned our water supply! Burned our crops! And delivered a plague onto our houses! > Sam: He did!? > Me: Nooo! But are we just gonna wait around until he does!? On 3/20/17, at 2:26 PM, Unkie Dunkie wrote: > Me about matt summers to Sam

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WHEW! THAT WAS FOR YOU EDDIE!!! <3 A few things. Ali leaked that matt summers had a 6 of me him Ali rtp Logan and

DAVID ROBB

https://m.popkey.co/97b4c1/Dj0DV_s-200x150.gif

I've not talked to any of y'all! You formed a majority without me on our original tribe! And when matt came to me I wasn't having it tbh.On 3/19/17, at 7:28 PM, Matthew Summers wrote: > So like idk if you have any sort of vendetta against me but that was what the last message he sent me started with. Like, I DO have a vendetta against you, you said "its hard for you to trust me", verbatim, and YOU VOTED OUT MY SHOWMANCE BINCH! KARMA IS A BITCH NAMED HARMONIA!! Please also know, I was at work when shit was hitting the fan.  I'm so glad that everything went according to plan despite the plan being leaked. It made sense for Samuel to idol trevor, it built their trust, and it prevented any scare of a tie. Now I just need to find out who has the idol now. The more the idol transfers hands, the messier allegiances are going to be. RTP did call out owen and Trevor on having multiple final threes with people and it did make me think about my long term game. Its going to be really hard for me to take on owen or Trevor in the end. My best bets hones lee? My best bets would have to be with either Logan or one of the newbies or samuel. Like Samuel would get the newbies vote but I might be able to pull off the rest? idk. I know for short term, as long as I'm good with Samuel, I'm good with the newbies, bc he knows everything about them. So I know If I want to go deep I need to *shudders* continue to stick with sam. I know that its dangerous to go deep with sam because he is always a contender for the W, but I need to make sure I get to the end before I start thinking about votes or anything like that. So if that means taking another inch of sam down my throat than so be it. 

http://survivoremathia.tumblr.com/post/158645180036/immunity-results

OWEN

IM FUCKING SNATCHED BALD I CANT VELIEVE I WON HOLY FUCKING HSJSJSJSJDJDJDJDJDJJDJDJDJDJDJDJDJNDJDJDJDJD ME WHEN I WOULDNT HAVE WON IF I DIDNT CHANGE MY LAST ANSERR LAST MINUTE????? I don't think?? FUCK

TREBOR GONMA BEAT MY GAY ASS WHEN HE FINDS OUT I BEAT HIM AFTER HIS ADVANTAGES YIKES!!!! YIKES!!!

-

"she [Jay]  doesn't believe anything not in a confessional" sandra, aubry, cirie and michaela are co-winning survivor game changers and neda, ika, and cass are co-winning bbcan5 it's just the facts, folks

TREVOR AND OWEN

https://youtu.be/r-NzfAsCXh0

SAM

Hey why is nobody talking?????? this is supposed to be a chaotic vote???? is it me???? i guess these lame-os don't know that i have another idol????

DAVID

Ryan: Sam just thinks youre a vote with me Me: I mean is he wrong. IS HE WRONG!!!!!!

TREVOR

https://youtu.be/B7Ad9-RNKzg

DUNCAN

Okay a few things. Owen told me about Trevor giving sam his idol and obvi We can tell sam gave Trevor the idol bc of trev's disad in the challenge. Ummm I told Ali about the cursed idol and hopefully that gives me some foundation with him for the future moving forward. The vote apparently is for David. That's what I've been told. I'm hoping that if things go off the rails I'm not the one getting hit by the train. I don't think I'm the biggest threat? But you can never know what's going through a persons head. I'm planting seeds for samuel's blindside rn. I'm sharpening my sword. Hopefully I'm still here to slay the beast

LOGAN

im bein played

OWEN

whew!!! what a time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Matt Summers ultimately left and I think, in doing so, the game was mostly put in perspective: Ryan/David voted with him, Logan/Duncan are now officially together, the Sam/Ali/JD thing still exists as does Trevor/myself/Lydia. However, I...need Sam out of this game. And Ali, for that matter. So I went to Duncan and we talked without Trevor this time about potentially making a move soon. It's probably not a good idea this round, but potentially next round Duncan/Logan/me/Trevor/Lydia could make something happen? So I was SHOOK when JD started gunning for Logan this round??? Like...way to make it obvious you're trying to keep Ryan in the game, who is literally playing you just like Sam and Trevor and all of the returnees are. Whew! So I didn't want Logan gone at all cause that fucks everything up for future plans, so I tried to push it back on Ryan. Sam, Ali, JD, and Lydia continued to be completely like....unresponsive about the vote until finally Lydia spoke up about doing David and I'm like...as long as it isn't Logan, that's fine by me! :) God JD was like telling Trevor how he was the leader and how nobody would listen to her if she tried to get Logan out and I'm like....girl lol Survivor 101 - Don't TELL someone they're the leader. They don't want the target on their back!!!!!!!!!! Huh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So :) We'll see! Maybe it'll be David going, maybe someone else will get fucked up and I'll have nothing to do with it, but honestly at this point there are a lot of people who, if they leave, it benefits me in some way. Ryan and David can go, Sam Ali and JD can go, and Trevor, though I don't want him gone right now, would ultimately take a target off of my back if he left. As long as it isn't Duncan or Logan then I'm good. AND IT CAN'T BE ME :) Whew! Just a day in the life!

ALI

Provided David goes home tonight (which it seems he will pretty unanimously), I think my game is super on the up. Its been clarified that Trevor is a huge threat, and watching conversations develop, its clear he has Sam with him, and Owen is of course linked to him, who is tied to Duncan. Those 4 are dangerous, as they seem inflexible and will likely stick together. It'll really blow to betray Sam, but it's seemingly necessary :( Lydia is a godsend. She is down to make a move on that four, alongside Ryan, JD, Logan and myself. I've finally rebuilt a relationship with Logan, which is great, (I think they're iconic and would love to bring them in as apart of a majority). I also think someone is lying about room 9 and Logan genuinely didn't go. I can hopefully now work with that 4 to do some major to the 'other side'. Woomph, I'm super excited! :) I am slightly scared of the damage being voted 'hero' and someone 'people would like to see win' will cause, but hopefully, also being voted a goat will nullify that! I MAY'VE MADE FINAL 9 AND I'M VERY EXCITED! :) (famous last words). I could've just been a prophet or I just flopped it. That kinda rhymed, but not really. I  guess we'll never know if I make it or not (or at least until the vote reveal in like 15mins). -Ali Out! (but hopefully not of the game)

OWEN

in other news this round has been fishy and I feel like something fishy is about to happen

JD

So Isaac leaving, that was very sad actually. I don't think that there was many people up at the time but we talked and I can feel for him. Not to the extent, but its sad. 

-

Scott getting striked out was not a surprise. He has not been very active from the beginning anyway 

-

Matt's vote, that was crazy. That was, tight. The night before tribal Matt went to Ali and told him that he was thinking about voting out Trevor. Being that me, Ail, Trevor and Lydia were in a final four, me and Ali agreed that this wasn't going to happen so we agreed that we would keep an eye on Matt and try to calm him down so that he would stop targeting Trevor. The only way we were going to tell Trevor was if Matt was really going to push it and as it turns out he really wanted to push it. So it was time to do what we did with Sam, save that ass.

http://survivoremathia.tumblr.com/post/158684167421/tribal-council-9

#allianceofone #episodes