#for some wild reason disney decided to actually write a script for that one and that one only

[thatwitchrevan]

It's not even just that I like Cloak and Dagger because I do or that it has better characterization than most of the MCU franchise put together because it does but honestly FATWS could lose against absolutely anything in the canon, it could be knocked over by the lightest breeze, it is such an utter waste of a show that She Hulk probably beats it in some way but I refuse to watch to find out. Putting it against Cloak and Dagger literally should be absolute murder and yet.

#honestly the only disney marvel series that could ever hold a candle to pre disney ones is moon knight okay #it's the only one that even tried. even showed up to the competition. even remotely #moon knight was good #for some wild reason disney decided to actually write a script for that one and that one only #also the netflix and other series aren't immune to stupid shit!!! #i hated jessica jones season two despite season one being absolutely gold! #defenders was honestly silly! #i will still not watch iron fist! #and runaways got so unbearably goofy in the finale arc #they would still absolutely kick fatws' ass without breaking a single tiny bead of a sweat

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x12 Review

Second Chances was a lacklustre finale for an uneven season. Let’s dig in!

Earlier this week I re-watched S1 in preparation for the S2 finale and the contrast between the two seasons is jarring. In almost every way S2 has been worse and after seeing this finale I’m less optimistic that Tim will be able to fix the long list of things that have gone wrong. Tim has said in some of his interviews today that pretty much all of S2 was written before the pandemic and that they didn’t have to do as much re-writing as people might think due to the stringent safety measures Disney put in place. Of course, that removes an excuse for the bad writing we’ve seen so much of this season as according to Tim what we saw of S2 is largely what he envisioned minus big crowds and background dancers.

 Across his many interviews today, the one consistent point is that Tim does not have any real plans for future seasons; things like Ricky’s endgame he hasn’t decided on and he can’t even guarantee the summer season the finale sets up due to the weather in Salt Lake. I do think a S3 is an almost certainty given the show’s popularity but I’ll take Tim at his word that he truly doesn’t know if they’ll be renewed since it seems to be a new Disney tradition to wait until seasons are done airing before making a renewal decision (the same thing happened for the popular and well received Mighty Ducks: Game Changers which got a silent renewal only after all of S1 aired). That being said as poor of a season finale as Second Chances is it is also a terrible potential series finale. In large part it goes back to his lack of planning, he wants to keep all options open but in doing so Tim is crippling the show’s ability to deliver any pay offs or tie up loose ends.  

The one mostly well done plot line this season was Portwell which got a happy ending tonight as they canoned. The only good thing about the big brother angst was that it was so insane that it had to be addressed and sure enough it was and Gina got her first kiss with a guy she really liked. If Tim is to be believed the reason we didn’t get an on screen Portwell kiss was not because of their age difference or covid concerns but because he felt that everyone’s first kiss was different so he wanted it off screen so viewers could fill in the blanks themselves. Tim’s line of reasoning is profoundly stupid. Imagine if they had Jamie show up and he and Gina talked off screen and Tim tried to claim that because everyone has a different relationship with their own siblings that he wanted the audience to fill in the blanks as to how their conversation went!

Still we saw great character development on Gina and EJ’s part as both really grew from the people they were in S1. As Tim noted, EJ bringing Gina back in 1x10 was kind of the set up for this story line. The only thing missing was a brief Portwell scene sometime in eps 2x01-2x04 to set them up. The consistent development they got from 2x05-2x12 is unlike any other ship on the show; only Rini exceeds their development. 

Unfortunately I don’t think that will last in S3 because Tim will always favour Ricky over EJ and if he wants to do Rina he’ll dispose of Portwell before doing so. I was surprised that they never bothered to have Ricky and Gina have a conversation about Gina’s S1 confession. It was a huge mistake to have Gina pine over Ricky for half the season and it was no surprise that Gina’s story line got instantly better once she stopped interacting with Ricky. Tim has made clear in interviews that he’s still interested in the possibility of Rina which makes his poor writing of them even more bizarre. What conclusions are the audience supposed to draw from the Rina story line this season? That Ricky never cared that much about Gina? That it’s totally fine for the show if they don’t interact for 6 eps in a row? That Gina has moved on? I’ve said before that a wiser man than Tim would recognize that doing both Portwell and Rina will do tremendous damage to the show and he should pick one and not do the other. Of course he’s not that smart but it is wild how he’s accidentally written their story line to make for a perfect end to Rina. 

Second Chances was great and is the only part of the finale that would have been well suited to being part of a potential series finale. 

The Rini closure was a sad inverse of their S1 opening night confession. They’ve fallen so far from being the it couple of the series and I fear Tim doesn’t actually know what to do with them now. He really needs to decide if he’s tearing down that treehouse for real. 

The less said about the Valentine’s chocolates the better but at least Gina and Nini are cool again and Nini can explore her budding music career with Jamie’s help. Tim repeatedly said in interviews that the scripts about Nini’s music career were all written before Driver’s License came out and I think he understands that the audience is just going to see the show as copying from Olivia’s life. 

The wildcats just deciding to drop out of the Menkies was a lame cop out. Tim has said he always meant for that to happen though they were originally going to compete at the Menkies then drop out (presumably that’s where we would have heard Lily singing Home). Somebody should have mentioned the $50 000 prize money which the East High theatre department could surely use after Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara burned it down (remember that story line that had no consequences?). And that NYU scholarship could have been life changing for one of them and yet no one even brought  it up once this season. 

I did like the twist that it was EJ and his dad who got Mazzara into Caltech. He’d be a fool not to take it but I’m glad he confessed to Miss Jenn. She’s had a really rough season and I hope she redeems herself in S3.

Howie was acting so weird tonight and last ep that I have a hard time believing he was really so awed by Kourtney’s talent rather than feeling guilty for helping to steal the harness. The harness is another useless plot device; there are no consequences for Lily stealing it, she’s not caught, East High pulls off another version of the transformation off screen, and then East High withdraws from the Menkies anyways. Doubtless the harness will eventually come up to serve Rily angst. 

At least Lily was straightforward, I’ll give her that. She has such an odd way of speaking, almost child like. As awful as it is there is potential for a forbidden/secret romance story line with Rily. It really does not speak well to Ricky’s character that he’s so easily fallen for Lily’s act when he has no reason to trust her and she never apologized for making fun of Big Red during the auditions or making Ashlyn feel insecure during the dance off. 

The one way in which S2 was drastically better to S1 was in regards to the Seblos story line. Clearly Joe being bumped up to regular made a big difference. We got the first same-sex kiss between two boys and the first love song sung by one boy to another in Disney history and that is a legacy to be proud of. Of course, there was still some Disney censorship such as Carlos and Seblos being unable to use the word gay in the same ep that focused on Carlos singing In a Heartbeat to Seb. 

S1 of HSMTMTS had a clear direction, the wildcats would have to try and come together to stage High School Musical and Ricky and Nini would have to decide if they still had a future together while Gina and EJ had to work on being better versions of themselves. It was simple sure but it worked very well. There was a lot of heart but also a lot of humor and the show never took itself too seriously. What has S2 had? Beauty and the Beast was hardly the main focus of the cast or the writers and the central couple that S1 was built around is now broken up either for a long time or for good. There was a lot less of the meta moments that jokes that made S1 such a hit, for far too many eps this season the show took itself way too seriously. Hell even the lighting this season was darker than in S1. 

Olivia Rodrigo’s team had complained in a recent article that Olivia wouldn’t be able to potentially tour until fall 2022 due to her contractual commitments which is a sign that they think a S3 is very likely though I wonder how late S3 filming would have to start to keep her occupied until late 2022. There’s no confirmation of this but I thought it might be worth keeping an eye on; a post on r/hsmtmts by someone who claims to have a source working on production says that the plan is for S3 to be a summer theatre camp possibly with Camp Rock renditions and the plan for S4 is to jump 6 months ahead to the final semester of senior year and end with Ricky, Nini, Big Red, and Kourtney graduating from East High. They also say that part of the delay in the S3 announcement is a conflict between Tim and Disney executives. Tim wants to move production to LA and film on sets as it’s easier and cheaper while the Disney execs still want some on location shooting in Salt Lake. Again this is all unconfirmed but if it pans out it will represent a major shift in the series. 

Regardless if Tim wants the show to remain successful he needs start planning out what he wants to happen. He should not assume he’s getting more than 4 seasons. If the series gets a S3 but then is suddenly cancelled then how would he want all the main story lines to wrap up? And if they make it to S4 where does he see it ending? The graduation of the current juniors is a logical series ending point but if Tim wants to do something different he needs to start thinking of that now. I can’t say I’m excited anymore for S3 but I do really hope that Tim and his writers can turn things around and that will only happen if they recognize what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. 

Until next season Wildcats

#HSMTMTS #Portwell #Rini #Gina Porter #EJ Caswell #Ricky Bowen #Nini Salazar-Roberts #Kourtney Greene #lily #HSMTMTS Reviews

[kenobiapologist]

Star Wars Novel Rankings

In celebration of the end of this year, I made a tier list of all of the Star Wars novels I’ve read since I joined this fandom in 2017 (which you can use to rank these books too). And I named all the tiers in a dorky but appropriate fashion. I would love to hear your thoughts on my rankings, as well as how you’d rank the books yourself! I’ve had a blast reading Star Wars novels from both Disney’s canon and the Legends extended universe over these past 3 years. Here’s to many more years of reading stories from the galaxy far far away! 

I put longer (but not more coherent) thoughts below the cut.

The Chosen One: Bringing Balance to the Force and My Depressed Soul

1. The first spot of top tier had to go to Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization for obvious reasons. You simply cannot beat it. It’s a masterpiece. I literally had to put the book down to scream when I read the prose associated with the opening battle over Coruscant. It gave a whole new meaning to the triumphant music and the synchronous twirling of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s starfighters as they weave through blaster-fire in the battle over Coruscant. The rest of the book is the same way. You can’t put it down. I have wAyyYyYy too many feelings about this book oh my god.

2. Thrawn was a surprising book for me. For being centered on an admiral of the Empire’s navy, it had so much heart in it! I loved reading from Eli Vanto’s perspective too. god dammit I love that freaking Wild Space hillbilly dweeb with all my heart. I think his experiences getting to know Thrawn and learning from him guides the reader to feel much the same way as Eli by the end. Thrawn is a trusted friend, not the enemy you expect him to be. I could have done without Arihnda Pryce but she’s supposed to be unlikeable so I won’t blame Timothy Zahn this time.

3. The Clone Wars Gambit duology is basically Karen Miller writing fanfic and I’m HERE FOR IT. As is tradition with Karen Miller’s Star Wars novels, the emotions are dialed up the eleven. Our favorite dumbass Jedi team is back at it again with a mission to save the galaxy and this time they end up going undercover as two lumberjacks from the boonies. Anakin holds an energy shield back from collapsing with his bare hands like a total badass. Obi-Wan is in love with another woman despite it always ending in tragedy, while also bickering like a married couple with Anakin every ten seconds. get a fucking room, you two. These two books inspired one of my fics so they’re near and dear to my heart.

Jedi Master: These Books Have A Seat On The Council Too

4. Wild Space was appropriately named, I’ll tell you that. It’s a wild ride from start to finish. *slaps the front cover* this book can fit so much of Obi-Wan’s suffering in it! @forcearama has elaborated on the many reasons why this book is a gem in Snark Wars blog posts (linked here). It’s also the beginning of the best team-up since Anakin and Obi-Wan...Bail and Obi-Wan! These two bastards get under each other’s skin but it makes for the perfect character development. This book is the reason I screech with delight whenever Bail Organa appears on screen, or is mentioned in conversation. Bail gets a mysterious tip about trouble on a planet, and Obi-Wan decides to go with him to investigate. Cue Sith-induced suffering. It’s cool to see a normal person experiencing the weirdness of Force sensitives and how the world has this extra level of sensory information in it. Plotwise this one isn’t the best, but I think the interactions between characters really shine in this novel. Karen Miller’s writing is like a cup of hot chocolate to me. Indulgent character insight, full of sweet moments, has a bunch of extra marshmallowy dialogue, you’re reading it to have a good time but not to be satisfied with plot. You get me?

5. Do I even have to explain myself here? Kenobi by John Jackson Miller is both an interesting western-style tale set on Tatooine, and a beautiful character study of a man stricken with grief he keeps suppressed. How does one continue on when their whole family was murdered and their whole culture burnt to ash? I wanted to give Obi-Wan a hug the entire time I read this. The characterization was spot-on, from the way he wrangled animals to the way he severed a man’s arm off in a bar with his lightsaber. And when he meets a woman named Annileen Calwell, or Annie for short, Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to call her by her nickname ever and if that doesn’t just break your damn heart fucking fuck.

6. Ahsoka was the first Disney canon book I ever read and it kickstarted my love for E.K. Johnston. The writing is simplistic, but that makes it easy to jump into. Overall, it’s a quick and enjoyable read. By far the best parts are the flashbacks that mull over memories Ahsoka has of the time before Order 66. That shit hits you right in the heart, man. And the part where Ahsoka equates Obi-Wan and Anakin to her adoptive family ohhhhhhh god the tears they flow like a river. There are scenes that allude to Ahsoka becoming the vital part of the Rebellion we know her to be from Rebels, balanced with her current struggles to survive and find herself. Despite having cast away her identity as a Jedi and having any remaining bits of her culture destroyed by Palpatine, Ahsoka shows us all how bright a hero can shine in the darkest of times. AND SHE WAS WRITTEN AS QUEER! finally some good fucking food.

7. Oh shit, another E.K. Johnston book? Don’t be surprised. She’s a prequel fan and so am I, hence why Queen’s Shadow is so high on the list. E.K. Johnston pays homage to our favorite queen and badass senator Padme Amidala. There’s politics, there’s solidarity between female characters, and Bail Organa is in it so you KNOW I simply must give it a high rating. All jokes aside, I thought the story added lots of little details to the world of Star Wars without it being all stereotypical sci-fi nerdy language. You know how people want to describe something beyond our technological capabilities so they throw a bunch of nonsense together like “pre-praxis crystal bio-anode circuitry”? I’m looking at you, Karen Miller, I love you but please. There is none of that in this book. It makes sense, it adds color and culture and life to the worlds of Star Wars. Most of all, it devotes time and love to developing Padme outside of her place in canon as Anakin’s wife, Queen of Naboo, and Senator. She is all of these things, but she’s human too. I do agree that the pacing is slow, but it’s something meant to be savored, I think. E.K. Johnston really shines when she’s writing dialogue because she gets these characters. That’s something to appreciate, because not all canon books agree with the way we’ve perceived the characters as an audience.

8. Rogue Planet chewed me up, spit me out, and declared me an even bigger stan for The Team. People who say Qui-Gon would have been a better master for Anakin can ~get out~ because I could read about these two hooligans getting neck deep in space shenanigans all damn day. Anakin is like twelve, which is a time in his training that we don’t get a lot of in canon. Personally, I think it was equal parts heartwarming and funny to read about their adventures. There is some angst sprinkled in there because hey, we’re reading about Anakin here, let’s not forget the emotional trainwreck that is Anakin Skywalker. The duo is sent to a planet that makes super fast ships that are ?sentient? or at least biologically active. They bond with the pilot, which makes Anakin perfect for this mission. There’s a scene where these little floof things attach all over tiny Anakin because he’s so strong in the Force and it’s god damn adorable how dare he?? I’d probably rate this one even higher if I read it again, but it’s been awhile. Characterization is spot on and reminiscent of Matthew Stover’s writing in how it highlights the strong bond between Obi-Wan and Anakin, how they’re fated to know each other. I’m a sucker for soulmates, what can I say? 

9. Lost Stars reads like a movie. Not a script, but just the perfect amount of detail that you can imagine the scenes but the pacing is still quick, the dialogue smooth and natural. I couldn’t help wishing this was a film because the story was so all-encompassing. The highs and lows of the emotions of both protagonists, their relationship developing, the differences in culture. Folks, this book has it all! It’s a totally different perspective on the events of the original trilogy, seen from the side of Imperial cadets training to become pilots. Eventually, one splits off and joins the Rebellion while the other perseveres in the Empire. It’s like star-crossed lovers, but covers so much more ground than that. And the characters are fully developed. These original characters knocked my socks off, and that’s hard to do since I’m usually an Obi-Wan stan through and through. For anyone uncertain of reading Star Wars novels, this book is a great place to start. Action-packed, emotion-filled, and stands on its own despite weaving perfectly into the established universe. What more could you want?

10. Back at it again with the prequel shit, amiright? Queen’s Peril is E.K. Johnston’s most recent Padme-centric novel and it does not disappoint fans that wanted a taste of the Queen’s side of the story. Set during the events of The Phantom Menace, we get a “behind the curtain” look at how all of the handmaidens came to be more than their title suggests. There’s teenage girls getting stuff done! It makes more sense why Padme was elected ruler of her home-world, and you come to appreciate that a royal leader is not alone; there’s actually a whole team at her side to help her overcome everything from the drudgery of daily governing to Trade Federation blockades that threaten to starve her people. I think if you enjoyed Queen’s Shadow, you’ll enjoy this book a lot. For those that are unfamiliar with Johnston’s work, I wouldn’t recommend this one first because it does cover events you’ve already seen in movies and therefore is a less suspenseful companion to them. On the other hand, because it does tie in with TPM, it doesn’t suffer from the pacing issues of Queen’s Shadow to the same degree. I read this all in one sitting, so it’s definitely fun, but wasn’t compelling enough in its character development to elevate the book past some of the others I’ve listed already.

11. Thrawn: Treason was a refreshing return to the Grand Admiral we all know and love after the second installment in this series slowed things down a bit. Although it wasn’t as character-driven as the first book (which I love with all of my heart), there were still many moments that had me cackling at the disparity between Thrawn’s immense intellect and the other Imperials’ sheer stupidity, and that’s what we’re here for in a book about the Empire, right? There’s a lot of pressure on Thrawn, as his TIE Defender project has been pitted against Director Krennic’s Project Stardust. Who will get the funds? We just don’t know?? Tarkin sits in between the two and as usual, manipulates everything to his advantage. Palpatine questions Thrawn’s allegiance to the Empire after some of the choices he has made, leaving him in even more of a pickle. Thrawn is sent on a wild goose chase task that should definitely end in failure (on purpose because Imperials all want to watch each other burn as much as they want to watch the Rebellion burn), but you know Thrawn will find a way. My main squeeze Eli Vanto makes his return after being absent from book 2. Missed you, my sweet sweet country boy. He doesn’t have a leading role in this novel, but every scene he’s in makes the story better. Thrawn says “perhaps” way too often for my taste, but if you can ignore that, this book is a solid read. Equal parts action and deductive reasoning, as any Thrawn book should be.

12. Most of Dark Disciple had me thinking this was going to be a top tier book, and damn do I wish we could have gotten this animated. We follow Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress on a mission to assassinate Count Dooku. Why the Jedi thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. But I’m here for it all the same. 3/4 of the adventure were intriguing, but the ending didn’t do it for me. I won’t spoil things for anyone who hasn’t read this yet, but after all of the character development, to have it squandered so quickly just left me disappointed? I got really attached to everyone in this novel, and I’m sure you will to. I’ve read this and listened to it as an audiobook, and actually I think it’s more memorable as an audiobook. Would recommend, except for Mace Windu’s voice being exceptionally southern for no reason. Weird. I think this novel captures all of the great things about The Clone Wars show; time to really get to know each character and their motivations, action and adventure with the darkness of impending doom tinting everything, and lightsaber fights! Plus, Obi-Wan and Anakin make appearances in this book and it just adds that extra bit of spice. Worth the read, even if you know they aren’t going to get Dooku in the end (which I am still mad about, screw that guy).

Jedi Knight: Passed the Trials but There’s Room for Improvement

13. Few books in the Star Wars universe are centered around characters with no use of the Force, but in Most Wanted, we see a young Han Solo and Qi’ra struggling to survive on Corellia and it provides a humorous but compelling backstory to both characters in the Disney canon. Han is his usual lucky goofball self, and Qi’ra is smart and cunning. You can see how they grew into the versions of themselves in Solo. While the book stays on the lighter side of things (typical of stories written for a younger audience), there are still moments of depth on droid rights, viewing the Force as a religion, and what life is like in a crime syndicate. Addressing these heavier topics without it killing the pace of the story is hard to do, but Rae Carson pulls it off flawlessly. I went into this book with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had. Han and Qi’ra start off as competitors, but eventually have to learn to work together to survive as more and more people start hunting them down. They’re honestly so cute together, I loved their dynamic. It makes Solo a better movie, and although I liked it on its own, characters like Qi’ra needed a little more time to get to know, which you can get here!

14. Thrawn Alliances was not what I expected at all, and it took me a lot longer to get through. Hell, it has Thrawn, Anakin/Vader, and Padme in it! What’s not to love? Apparently, a lot. The different timepoints and perspectives in this were more jarring than anything else. Although the interactions between Thrawn and Anakin/Vader were enjoyable, it was not enough to elevate this book into the Jedi Master tier. Things felt dry, the characters didn’t grip me like in the first Thrawn, and it all felt like a ploy to introduce Batuu into canon before the launch of Galaxy’s Edge.

15. Leia: Princess of Alderaan was a dive into young Leia’s life before we see her in A New Hope even though this was marketed as a journey to The Last Jedi book, which I disagree with. We really haven’t seen any content about Leia in this time period before, and although I can’t say I was looking for this, I did enjoy it. The book was a little long, but there was adventure and the seeds are planted for Leia to be a bigger part of the Rebellion. The romance wasn’t too memorable, but Holdo wasn’t pointless in this (a stark contrast to her brief appearance in TLJ just to sacrifice herself). There’s a hint about Leia being Force-sensitive but it’s not in-your-face. It’s a typical coming-of-age story but in the gffa. The best part about this is seeing Bail and Breha as parents. I’m forever in pain that we didn’t get to see more of this in movies because it’s so so sweet. Leia must choose what kind of person she is going to be--and what kind of princess she will become. It won’t be for everyone, but I liked it.

16. Master and Apprentice was a typical Star Wars novel, which means it’s full of original characters that are strange and outlandish to serve the plot, a new world full of beautiful landscapes, and Obi-Wan suffering. I want to make it clear that this book is 80% Qui-Gon, 10% Rael Averross, and 10% Obi-Wan. I was expecting it to be 50% Qui-Gon, 50% Obi-Wan, as the cover suggested. Although I was disappointed by that, the story overall was okay. Qui-Gon is kind of an asshole in this? When is he not, though. We really get to sink our teeth into the way he and Obi-Wan fundamentally disagree with each other, so much so that their teacher-student relationship is falling apart. Tragic! They go on one last mission before calling it quits. Qui-Gon is in over his head with prophecies, Obi-Wan just wants to follow the rules, and Rael Averross is Dooku’s previous apprentice that is living his best life as a regent until Pijal’s princess comes of age. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid book. I just don’t vibe with Qui-Gon and want to whack him upside the head every time he avoids confrontation with his own student. My protectiveness for Obi-Wan is showing again, isn’t it? Yikes.

17. James Luceno is one of the most analytical authors I’ve ever read anything from, but it seems to always work? Tarkin is all about...well, Moff Tarkin. He’s ruthless, intelligent, and just downright evil. His backstory was compelling and I found myself drawn into the story by the details, although it is dense and took awhile to finish. I’m not interested in him as a character, but despite that, I enjoyed this story. The plot wasn’t memorable enough for me to recall after 3 years, but it’s similar to how Thrawn rose through the ranks of the Navy, just in a different part of the Empire’s governing body. We don’t get many books completely focused on a villain (I don’t count Vader ones because we know who he was before and the whole damn saga is about him), but this one is good! Don’t be fooled by it only being in the Knight tier. I think people who read a lot of sci-fi will like this book a lot. This is like the opposite of Queen’s Shadow, basically. If you had gripes about that book, you might like this one instead.

18. Battlefront II: Inferno Squad was a worthwhile read for anyone who played Battlefront II. Iden Versio is a great protagonist in the game, and I think Christie Golden totally gets her character. She’s nuanced and relatable. The whole team is interesting and getting introduced to each member before the events of the game makes everything mean more. That’s the real goal of any prequel story, I think. Accomplished! The action scenes are on point, the plot served to highlight what makes Inferno Squad special, and you get a sense for the morally grey area anyone must function in as an operative for the Empire. Although not necessary for the greater canon, it’s a great adventure. Iden and her squad members infiltrate the remains of Saw Gerrara’s group (they’ve become a bit of extremist) and destroy them from the inside. It’s got the suspense of a spy thriller and all of the nerdy space opera elements you expect from Star Wars. Although it’s weird to jump into a story not knowing any of the characters, you’ll get attached to Inferno Squad fast. Well, except for Gideon Hask maybe. He’s kind of a dick.

19. If you’re craving some Dark Side action, Lords of the Sith will give you what you’re looking for. Sidious and Vader crash-land on Ryloth and have to work together to survive, and also defeat the Free Ryloth Movement led by Cham Syndulla. It’s all fucking connected, guys. I love when people weave together stories that fit into the canon timeline like this, bringing in side characters and allowing them to develop some depth. And a chance to sink into the mind of a Sith Lord is always fun, if you’re in the mood to read about destruction and anger. It’s cathartic sometimes. If you’re always wondering, why didn’t Vader just stab Palps when he had the chance, this book explains their dynamic more. It didn’t really change my opinion of any of the characters, which is why it’s not higher on the list.

20. Catalyst suffered from being in a really boring part of galactic history. Despite that, Galen Erso and Orson Krennic have a hilarious relationship that I would have loved to see on-screen. This book really develops Krennic to become more than just the whiny entitled evil man we saw in Rogue One. He’s ten times worse now! But I mean that in the best way, I laugh whenever he’s in a scene, that sassy man just brings me joy. James Luceno is at it again, making things as detailed and dry as possible. I read so many of his stories right at the beginning of my journey through Star Wars canon and it’s a wonder I didn’t quit. Some of them are dark as fuck. And also slow as hell. With this one, I think it all comes down to what you want out of a Star Wars novel. Some people will really enjoy the plot. I think seeing how Galen became a part of Project Stardust was interesting and every time something about the Death Star became more clear, I screeched because I knew what it would eventually become. This book may not hold your interest though, which is why I put it lower on this list.

21. Star Wars: Clone Wars was a decent retelling of the Clone Wars movie. I liked it because I liked the movie, but you have to be able to sit back and enjoy the ride, not thinking too much about the silly parts. For that reason, it’s pretty far down in the rankings. Ahsoka is young and liable to get on your nerves. I certainly wasn’t her biggest fan at this point in the series. The biggest problem is that Karen Traviss is very anti-Jedi. Some authors for Star Wars tend to do this? To me, it’s weird. I didn’t notice it too much because it was one of the first Star Wars books I read, but it contrasts starkly with the truth of the prequel trilogy and some of the other entries in the Clone Wars Novel timeline, like Karen Miller’s books. Needless to say, although this book wasn’t super memorable aside from the familiar plot, it kept me reading Star Wars books, and so it is at least an average book. Plus, any content with Anakin and the clones is worth it for me. I love them.

22. A New Hope was good, for Alan Dean Foster. I’m not a fan, I’ll be honest. But this novelization stands on it’s own. I’m going to have to do a re-read to really go in depth on why this isn’t farther up on the tier list, but the movie is always going to be better to me. If you want to re-live the great beginning of the Original Trilogy, it’s worth your time. I mean, the story is full of adventure and mystery and lovable characters. What’s not to love? I just feel like the movie really elevates the narrative with a great score and fun character design/costumes/sets.

Padawan: These Books Have Much to Learn

23. Attack of the Clones was more entertaining than The Phantom Menace because the characters are in funnier situations. Obi-Wan and Anakin chasing Zam Wesell through the levels of Coruscant? Hilarious, just like the movie. Anakin and Padme falling in love as they spend time together? Holy fuck it’s so much better than the movie. Please read it for that alone. Outside of that, the writing style didn’t really impress me. And my experience with it wasn’t super memorable. There was potential to really make the inner dialogue of these characters impactful, to really develop the story of Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme beyond what we could get from the movie scenes alone. I didn’t think it went above and beyond there. Not a bad story at all, but you don’t get to look at Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, or Ewan McGregor the whole time either, so therefore I must rank it lower. So many beautiful people in that movie, holy shit. You can understand my, dilemma, yes?

24. I enjoyed parts of The Phantom Menace book, like deleted scenes with Anakin living on Tatooine before Qui-Gon and Padme meet him. The additional depth is lovely, but I think a story like Queen’s Peril adds more to TPM than this book does. The story overall is still fun. I love this movie so much, it’s hard for me to be critical. I did put a lot of post-it flags in my copy, so it does develop the characters and get you thinking beyond your expectations from the movie. What more could you ask for from a movie novelization? I’d say not much, if I hadn’t read Revenge of the Sith and had my fucking mind blown. In comparison to that, this one is just okay.

25. The Last Jedi novelization wasn’t bad, necessarily. It tried its best to bring this story up to par with some of the interesting novels that don’t have movie counterparts. But still, the plot suffers because of how this movie was made. It’s very focused on Rey and Kylo, and Finn’s little adventure with Rose seems pointless in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather read this again versus watching the film, but that’s all I’ll say on this because I’m trying to keep my opinions on this movie to myself to avoid digging up old arguments. Jason Fry did well, and of the two Sequel Trilogy books I’ve read, I would recommend this one over Ep. 7.

26. The Force Awakens falls short and I think it’s because of Alan Dean Foster’s writing style on this one? It didn’t really expand on anything from the movie, while taking away the beautiful music and visuals. This novel is the antithesis of Revenge of the Sith’s novelization, and for that reason I ranked it fairly low. I wouldn’t read this one unless you really really love the Sequel Trilogy.

27. To be fair, I read the new Thrawn book before I went back and read this one. Even so, Heir to the Empire didn’t impress me at all. Thrawn didn’t seem like a thrilling villain with lots of depth like he did in Timothy Zahn’s reimagined Thrawn novel. We barely saw him. A lot of time was spent on the Original Triology’s trio, which waasn’t bad. I thought Luke, Leia, and Han were all written fairly well. The latter part of the story was redeemed by the interactions between Mara Jade and Luke, for sure. Enemies to lovers, anyone?? Without Thrawn, this book would have been an entertaining story, but for all of the praise it has received from long-time Star Wars fans, I was expecting to be blown away and I wasn’t. Maybe I have to continue the triology to figure out what all of the fuss is about, but after this one, I’m not super motivated to read more. Change my mind?

28. Cloak of Deception really shines when you’re following Palpatine’s perspective because you can feel the undercurrents of his master plan to destroy the Republic underneath his calm persona as a Senator. Other than that, it’s a forgettable plot. This is all about galactic politics and some terrorist group trying to blow up some government officials. Basically the most boring parts of the prequel trilogy. I listened to the audiobook of this at the beginning of this year and I already forget what it’s about. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan should have been able to bring some humor and energy to get you rooting for the good guys,  but there was barely any of that. I was disappointed in all of the characters. Everything felt distant, removed from the heart of the characters. Some people in reviews have argued that the events of The Phantom Menace really pinned this novel in a corner because you already know what happens, but I disagree, because we know how Revenge of the Sith goes and The Clone Wars show is that much more tragic and heartbreakingly beautiful because of it. Prequels can be done right. This ain’t it, Luceno. Sorry.

29. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Fatal Alliance needs to go home and rethink it’s life. I’m a huge fan of the Old Republic and I’ve put like 200 hours of my life into playing that game, so I was hoping for some fun content in this part of the timeline. Sadly, this book captured the worst parts of the game, like the fact that there’s way too many factions at war with each other. Jedi, Sith, Empire, Republic, Mandalorians. They’re all here. They’re all ready to throw down. And I’m tired. As with many of the books in this lower tier, I felt there wasn’t enough description of the world or the people in the story. We’re in the gffa, be a little weird and wacky. Be big and bold! Make things terrifying, or beautiful, or both. But give my mind something to work with. The number of characters made the plot messier than it could have been, and it definitely isn’t worth the read. I can’t speak for all Old Republic books, but this one didn’t impress me.

A Sith Lord?! On My Bookshelf? It’s More Likely Than You’d Think

30. So underwhelming, you might as well just read the first half and then stop. Last Shot is absolutely terrible, except for Lando Calrissian’s characterization, which was spot-on. If the whole story had been from his perspective, I probably would have a much difference opinion on the novel as a whole. Sadly, this is not the case. Han was boring, he bottled up his emotions, and seemed drastically different from the badass he was in the original trilogy. There are different timepoints in this novel, and in all of them, Han is unrecognizable. Don’t nerf one of your main characters like that. Daniel Jose Older and I might just not get along. I thought his writing style didn’t fit Star Wars at all. It was like breaking the fourth wall, totally pulling me out of the story constantly. Also, there were little to no descriptions of body language, locations, or movement. It left me feeling disoriented the whole time I was reading. I thought one of the most interesting things would have been seeing Han, Leia, and baby Ben being a family at this point in time, but Han’s family was there as a prop, nothing more. There was a big bad item that was going to cause galactic destruction and our heroes had to go save the day. There was barely any tension and no one lost an arm so I’m pretty pissed off. Is it Star Wars if no one gets their appendage removed? I can’t tell you how much I disliked this book. Which is sad because I was hoping to enjoy it. I like Han. I like Lando. I like space adventures. I’m not that hard to please, or at least I don’t think so.

#Star Wars Novels #tier ranking #long post #i worked hard to put my thoughts into words for you guys #i read these books over a long period of time but I thought I'd encompass all of it in one post #sw lit #i've had so much fun becoming a part of this fandom #and I love the conversations about the books and the gffa in general #hopefully this will inspire some discussion! #i would love you guys to make tier rankings as well #they're always my favorite youtube videos to watch

[sher-soc-the-famder]

i rly need some platonic fluff too... maybe Thomas and Logan? those sweet sweet platonic cuddles. maybe one is sick?

Optimal Recovery

Summary: Logically, taking care of yourself is the best and most efficient way to feel better.

Word Count: 1833

Warnings: N/A, just some fluffy fluff here

Notes: This was fun :D I really do need to write more with character Thomas

Read on AO3

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The screen in front of Thomas wavered, the black lines of text bleeding into each other. He ran his hand over his eyes. The glare of the screen drilled into his head, but he was already behind on his work. God, if he wasn't always behind on his work. He took a deep breath and felt his breath catch. Coughs shuddered through his body until he curled in on himself, clutching at his chest. 

He took a deep breath, pulling his shaking hand away from himself. He reached for the keyboard of his laptop again. Only to yank his hand away as it clicked shut. Thomas followed the arm that closed it up to meet Logan's eyes. Logan raised an eyebrow at him.

"As grateful as I am that you are focusing on your work," Logan said steadily, "I believe that now is not the correct time for that diligence."

"But-"

Logan reached up from the laptop and laid a hand across Thomas' forehead. Thomas leaned into the cool touch gratefully, only peripherally aware of the way that Logan sighed. He slumped forwards even more, pressed up against Logan's steady presence.

"You are running a temperature," Logan said. Thomas tried not to whine as Logan pulled his hand away. He didn't think that he succeeded. Logan frowned briefly; Thomas blinked wondering if he imagined the expression before Logan started to poke at his shoulder. "Combined with your cough, headache and dizziness, the most likely diagnosis for your condition is a cold. Ample bed rest and hydration should lead to a swift recovery."

"But I don't wanna move," Thomas whined.

Logan sighed again. He poked at Thomas' shoulder again until he leaned back deeper into the chair that he sat on. Thomas blinked at him slowly, trying to fight through the fog that covered his brain. Thinking about it, that might be why he was struggling so much to make progress on his script. 

"There will be time to catch up on your work later," Logan said, sweeping Thomas' laptop away, "I shall make sure of it. Our current focus should be regaining your health. Preferably before Virgil decides that it means that you're dying. Again."

"I mean, I could be-"

Logan pointed a finger at him.

"Don't. Just- don't."

Thomas grinned at him. He really should spend more time with Logan. He needed more teasing if that was his reaction to a joke. Thomas had four brothers and six figments of his imagination; he totally knew how family like this worked.

"Stay there," Logan said, and Thomas lurched forward in panic anyways when Logan stepped away. The world spun around him and only the cool hand on his shoulder kept him from falling out of his chair completely. His breath caught, and another round of coughs left his entire body shaking. Logan pushed him gently back into the chair once more with a frown. 

“I am confident that you are aware of the definition of stay, so I am confused as to why you act like you don’t,” Logan muttered almost more to himself than to Thomas.

"Don't go," Thomas said more than asked, reaching for Logan's shirt with his shaking fingers. He never liked being alone in the first place; Virgil and Patton both could attest to that. Seeing Logan turn his back and panicking wasn't a logical response but well. Thomas thought he could be forgiven for having one irrational thought while sick.

Logan eyed him for a long moment. Thomas tightened his grip on Logan's polo. For a wild moment, Thomas worried that Logan would simply disappear as his Sides could, and then Thomas would be left alone to deal with his cold. He could. For all his joking about it, he was an adult who could deal with things like this. He just preferred not to.

Logan gripped his hand gently and pulled it free.

"I won't be long," Logan said, his voice as soft as when he tried to comfort Patton or Virgil or even Roman. Thomas wondered why they didn't hear that tone more often. "I am simply going to collect the supplies that you will need and I'll be right back." He looked Thomas straight (gay) in the eyes. "I promise."

Thomas let his hand drop and watched as Logan turned to rifle through his kitchen cabinets. At least the kitchen was in view of his sitting space. He could still watch Logan collect a glass of water and what looked like saltines as he set them down on the counter. Logan leaving to gather things from upstairs however-

Thomas finally closed his eyes, even as the black spots swan underneath them. It was better than watching Logan get swallowed up by the stairs. With his own heart racing, from the cold or from his anxiety, Thomas spent a brief moment to hope that Virgil was holding up alright.

He focused in the quiet, steady footsteps making their way around his apartment. He tried to time his breathing to the movements, even if Logan did stop every once and awhile. Thomas let himself drift, not quite asleep, but not quite awake either. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying not to shiver. From the cold or the anxiety, it didn’t matter.

He jumped at a hand on his shoulder.

"Thomas." Thomas blinked at Logan slowly. He glanced around, taking in the light blanket that Logan must have grabbed from the bedroom, along with a stack of books and movies. He looked down and sighed at what Logan held in his hands. Thomas made a face at the medicine but took it gratefully anyways.

He swallowed the pills first, and took the glass of water when Logan handed it to him. He drank it slowly, under Logan’s watchful eyes. Thomas almost wanted to point out that Logan didn’t need to hover that close but refrained. He took the liquid cough syrup less gratefully and felt his face scrunch up at the taste. Logan watched him down it all sharply, nodding to himself as he swept it all away and set it down on the kitchen counter.

"I will set an alarm on your phone for a reminder when you need the next dose." Logan's eyes already scanned the room for the intended device. "I would encourage you to rest in the meantime. I have picked out a selection of media that you might enjoy without having to get up. There is the choice of netflix as well, though you will want to make sure that you keep a steady amount of water intake as well."

Thomas jumped in while Logan took a small pause to breath.

"Well, you'll be here to make sure that I do, right?"

Logan blinked, caught off guard. Thomas wished that he was better at reading his Sides. He knew they weren't always the best to each other, heck he wasn't the best to them at times. He wanted to work on that. Thomas patted at the spot next to him on the couch.

He could see Logan hesitate, foot shifting forward and a quiet twitch of his cheek.

"I don't think you can catch it from me," Thomas reasoned, trying to coax Logan closer. "Plus isn't there something about how contact with others releases good hormones and stuff to help people recover faster?"

“There have been studies proving that physical touch can boost immune systems and release the hormone known as oxytocin which helps promote positive thinking, optimism, and trust," Logan said. He paused and adjusted his tie. "So you are correct, in a sense. Are-" he cleared his throat. "Are you sure?"

Thomas fought not to roll his eyes. He reached out as soon as Logan got close enough and pulled him onto the couch. Thomas shuffled around for a bit, until he had curled up in the blanket that Logan had given him and pressed up against Logan's side. He ignored the stiff way that Logan held himself.

"So," he said cheerfully, "I'm thinking of a documentary."

"The chances that you retain any information from a documentary at this point in time is rather low," Logan said, slowly starting to relax. Thomas let himself melt into Logan, relishing in the warmth even if he knew logically he was more overheated than under.

"Yeah, but it would be fun," Thomas didn't shrug, but only because that would upset the careful balance that Logan gave off. Also, he could lose his blanket. "Plus, we'd get to watch it again later to actually learn things from it."

"In that case," Logan adjusted his glasses, "Disney plus is connected to National Geographic and has a wide selection of nature documentaries that we could peruse."

Thomas beamed up at him and handed him the remote. 

"I'm supposed to be hydrating," Thomas told him, "and I only have one hand free so." He waved the one hand outside of his blanket burrito to emphasize his point and ignored the small huff of breath that came from Logan. He pointedly grabbed his glass to further his point as Logan scrolled through their options.

He carefully set the glass back down and let his body relax onto the couch and adjusted to find the most comfortable position against Logan. He didn’t want to disturb Logan too much, so despite his initial feelings of simply climbing into his logical Side’s lap, Thomas wiggled down to his shoulder pressed into Logan’s side. He lay his head against Logan’s chest and grinned to himself.

He could be feeling better, but at least this way he'd get something out of it. Thomas glanced up at the intense way that Logan stared at the television, most likely trying to pick the "best" option that could hold the most correct information while being something useful that they could use on top of whatever logical thoughts that went through his head. Logan didn’t even seem to have noticed the change in positions. Thomas felt his grin widen as he turned to the television.

Yeah, this way he got something out of it, and he wasn't even the only person too.

~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~ * ~~

Logan startled as Thomas' phone alarm went off. He froze as the weight against his side shifted. He reached out and tapped the dismiss button. Thomas shifted again, murmuring slightly and settling into a more comfortable position against him. 

Logan didn't know when they had started to cuddle on the couch but-

He glanced at the documentary still playing on the television and back to Thomas' sleeping form. He reached out and tucked the blanket so that it sat more securely around Thomas' shoulder, adjusted Thomas' neck so that he wouldn't cramp and then gave him an awkward pat on the head. Logan turned his focus back to the documentary and made a mental note to make sure Thomas took his medicine when he woke up.

He turned the volume down on the documentary and smiled to himself.

Rest was optimal for recovery after all.

#Sanders sides #sanders sides fic #Logan sanders #Character Thomas #sick fic #fluff #platonic cuddles #nothing but feel good here tbh

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

I MEAN IT GAVE ME CHILLS IN A GOOD WAY. and also it would be hilarious to write imo; just these 6 dudes that all look the same and just made up A Guy.

“Thomas,” Roman announces quite suddenly, with a triumphant gesture that manages to inadvertently sweep half of the script drafts off the couch in the process.

“I still can not believe we’re doing this,” Virgil says.

“Oh, you’d better believe it, Way Down Gay-destown, ‘cause I just got the perfect name for him. Thomas. That’s his name – Thomas Sanders.” Roman pauses, and wiggles his fingers a bit. “Thoughts?”

Remus perks up. “Oh, our fictional character has thots now?”

“Crawling all over him like weevils,” Virgil nods.

“I thought we were calling ourselves ‘Sides’,” says Janus.  

“Guys, please,” Roman begs.

“Thomas sounds good to me,” is Patton’s opinion. “It’s nice and friendly, and also it has two syllables, like the rest of us! It kind of fits in like that.”

“It is a surprisingly apt name, especially when you take into consideration that Roman most likely did not know of the linguistic root when picking it,” Logan muses.

Remus waves a hand lazily from where he’s draped backwards over the couch, writing Transformers inflation porn on the notes app of his shitty phone. “Uh, noparoni, falsehood, all that jazz. I was watching. He went on babynames dot com and everything for this.”

“...What he said, yeah.”

“Ah, yes, babynames dot com, the internet’s premier and leading source for all accurate name derivations,” comes the dry response.

“Thomas means twin,” Roman says. “It means twin, and it’s funny because we all look identical! It’s like another layer of meaning! A fun little injoke, just for us.”

“Yes,” says Virgil, “you’re right. We need many, many deep layers of meaning and in-jokes woven into the shared identity we’re crafting as part of Roman and Remus’s wild, spur-of-the-moment internet scam.”

“How dare you,” Roman objects loudly, flailing so suddenly that he nearly falls off the couch. “This is polar opposite of a scam, we’re – we are merely taking advantage of our uncanny shared appearance to... share joy amongst the humble Youtube vlogging community! And perhaps show off. Just a little. But to say that it’s a scam – ”

“No, this is definitely a scam,” Janus says. “I mean, look at us. We’re inventing an entire person for internet clout.”

Patton looks like he’s having second thoughts about this whole thing. “I’m having second thoughts,” he says. “Like, on an ethical, moral sort of level, is any of this... really a good idea?”

“People invent other people for shittier reasons all the time, I think we’re fine,” Virgil says. “I mean, look at internet catfishes. Or every male fiction writer with a very obvious and creepy fetish. Or J.K. Rowling.”

“J.K. Rowling doesn’t exist?” Janus says. “Excellent. We won, boys.”

Roman grabs a pen and scribbles it into the notebook, next to a hasty little stickman doodle of an average-looking guy and a list of qualities and attributes and skills. “Well, all that aside, nobody seems to have an objection to this, so Thomas it is! Thomas Sanders. Thomas I’ve-Just-Realized-He-Needs-A-Middle-Name Sanders.”

“Thomas F Sanders,” Remus suggests.

“The F stands for ‘Fucking’, doesn’t it,” sighs Patton.

“Well, yeah.”

“Way to go for the low-hanging fruit, dude,” Virgil says. “Okay, put a pin in the middle name for now. Our collective brainchild has a name, so... that’s something. I guess.” He grabs the notebook from Roman and squints down at the short-ish list they have so far. “Any more character traits we wanna give this guy?”

“Intense love of Disney films,” Roman says.

“We’ve already got that; you suggested it about five times already.”

“Maybe he can play the ukulele!” Patton suggests.

Virgil nods, and starts to write it down before stopping abruptly. “Wait. Can any of us play the ukulele?”

Silence.

“He can only have traits that we already have,” Virgil reminds them. “That’s the whole idea. We’re derivatives of him.”

“Well, I’ll work on the ukulele thing,” Roman says decisively. “Put it down anyway. Anyone else?”

“He can’t cook to save his life,” Janus says.

“Catholic guilt,” Logan provides, with a little wince and a slight adjustment of his glasses. “It provides a good base for many of the plotlines we wish to include in this, I believe.”

“Give him a huge dick,” Remus says.

“Remus,” Roman growls.

“Just a humungous badonker of a penis. He beats his meat and the entire earth rumbles.”

“Remus,” Patton groans.

Remus grins. "He’s packing some real chunky meat down there. As in, his drill is a five star excavator. A proper manmade wonder. It's the kind of meal you get a prize for finishing. A bridge between two warring nations. And the girth! God had to resize the Earth so the radii wouldn't match. You can use his cast iron pelvic greatsword as a radiation shield in Chernobyl. His – "

“Remus, weren’t you listening? We’re only giving him traits that we already have,” Virgil says, looking Remus dead in the eyes. “I’m not going to let you misrepresent yourself like this.”

The room almost immediately erupts into a loud chorus of enthusiastic oohs. Quite a few people throw things at Virgil, who lets out a snort of amusement and ducks to avoid getting nailed in the eye by a stray television remote control. Remus just cackles.

“We’re going to have to tone back the dick jokes, probably,” says Janus with some regret, once everybody calms down a bit. “Don’t want to get demonetized within the first few weeks.”

“Well, Remus already broke the Youtube demonetization speedrun last week, so at least we know what not to do,” Patton says absently. “The real question is, though – who’s going to actually play this Thomas person?

“Don’t look at me,” says Janus. “I’m looking forward to getting the play the villain for once.”

Patton points at him, mock-glaring. “Hey, don’t think you’re missing out on a redemption arc just because you like the evil aesthetic!”

Janus lets out a little affronted hissing noise at that, but doesn’t actually object.

“Well, I’m not shaving my moustache for any of you fuckers, no matter how much internet clout we’re gonna get for it,” Remus declares.

A quick, meaningful glance is exchanged between the four remaining people in the room.  

“Leave me out of it,” Virgil decides.

“I don’t really mind, either way,” Patton says.

“In that case, I shall arm-wrestle you for the honor of portraying our glorious, talented and entirely fictional centre of being on our upcoming Grammy-award-winning sixty-part webseries,” Roman declares, flexing dramatically.

“Which may or may not be a scam,” Logan says.

“...Look, are we doing this or what?”

“Absolutely.” Logan places down his book, and shrugs off his jacket. “I should warn you, however – I am what I believe is colloquially referred to as ‘absolutely fucking ripped’.” He breaks out into a surprisingly wicked smile. “Roman, let me be clear. I am going to be the one to portray Thomas Fucking Sanders, our beloved nonexistent media superstar culmination-of-our-collective-selves. And I am about to flat-out destroy you. Let’s go.”

There’s a beat of silence as everybody stares at Logan. The stares range from impressed to terrified to obviously horny. All of these are equally valid emotions to be feeling, because Logan is ripped, and somehow none of them have ever realized this before.

“Well, before we do that, give me five minutes to make popcorn,” says Janus. “Because I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

#storytime #asks #this got out of hand and is extremely stupid #also warning for Remus and his dumbass dick jokes #Anonymous

[cryptovalid]

The weird politics of the Blip

The more the MCU fleshes out the events after Avengers: Endgame, but especially in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the less sense the geopolitics of the MCU makes to me. In this essay I will be sharing my perspectives on politics in the MCU. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, don’t feel obligated to engage. Also, by the very nature of this essay it will involve spoilers for the MCU and discussions of topics like state violence and terrorism, so consider this a trigger warning.

It’s an understatement to say that the world would change radically if half the population would randomly disintegrate, and I understand that speculating on the consequences of those people coming back after five years is no simple task. There might even be story considerations I am unaware of.

But the idea that the world’s governments would immediately start forcibly removing people from the homes they lived in for five years, to accommodate people who were declared dead five years ago sounds really strange to me. Let’s explore this.

If you were the survivor of a disaster that cut the world’s population in half, what would this look like to you? You’ve presumably went through a lot of hardship and trauma in the years following. You’ve sold some of the things belonging to your deceased loved ones, or bought stuff from other people in a similar situation. You may have relocated, started a new family. Grieved.

And suddenly those people you literally saw turn to dust in front of you just appear again, like nothing happened? Literally in the same befuddled state in which they died. 

And I have to stress: they died. there is no way to suggest that a person can be atomized and still be alive.

So why would you even trust that this was the same person? In a very real sense, it’s an identical copy of your deceased loved one. Similar to teleportation, this should cause us to wonder if they were truly resurrected, or merely cloned. What kinds of rights do they have, being legally deceased? Would we even know if these were impostors, if the situation changed them somehow?

I’m not saying there’s no answer to these questions, just that people should disagree on this. People would have high-minded philosophical, scientific and religious debates. Conspiracy theories and fistfights. This is by far the most world-changing event ever recorded. It should have massive ethical, political and spiritual implications.

And what I think we should think about is that these people who returned have nothing. They have no memory or lived experience to prepare them for this different world, all of their material possessions belong to someone else now, and by definition, all political, economic and military power is held by those who stayed, who now have a material conflict of interest, because if they acknowledge that you are the same person and deserving of the things you had 5 years ago, they have to give it back. Even without the administrative nightmare this would represent, the returned have nothing. Even their work experience is practically meaningless, especially in high-paying jobs. 

What would happen if Steve Jobs somehow magically returned, having no idea what Apple had been doing in the last couple of years, and demanded to be put back in charge of Apple? It’s not exactly an easy ‘yes’, is it? The world’s power balance would be forever shifted. 

I’m not saying everybody would be unsympathetic to the plight of the people who unblipped. But I am saying there would be a massive movement or series of movements opposed to giving them back their stuff. And I’m saying that movement would not only be popular but also backed by every powerful business interest and government.

Because realistically, the unblipped would be the refugees. They are the ones who would have lost everything, fighting an uphill legal battle to even be recognized as alive and as the same person they were 5 years ago. They would be the ones in camps, waiting for supplies.

Ironically, they would be the ones most hurt by the status quo returning to normal, as there is no way to keep massive famines and shortages from happening in this situation without international coordination. 

So why did the MCU decide on the opposite idea? There are two arguments I can think of: one narrative, and one political. On a narrative level, speculating on a changed world is complicated and risky. If Marvel wants to make stories relevant to us in our world, they have to more or less get back to a status quo we would recognize before it would complicate their properties going forward.

The second reason, I think, is that to truly explore a world like this is radical and potentially a liability for Disney, both in terms of their audience and their relationship with the US military.

Of course any real discussion on policy in this situation requires the heroes to at least pay lip service to a political opinion, which could cost them a lot of fans. We are talking about the legitimacy of borders, of private ownership. Any examination of the edge cases will cause people to have Strong Opinions of their own. In a crisis like this, can people squat in empty houses? Do these people have human rights and refugee status, and how should those be protected in the real world? Can any state justly displace people and if not, are these people allowed to disobey the government or even fight them?

Since the US military subsidizes Marvel’s use of military hardware, it has script approval. So that can also explain why they can’t make the US government the bad guy or present a truly different world where the US military is rightfully no longer in control. 

Who can legitimately deprive people of things they need to survive in a crisis like this? What’s more important: the right to own a house and keep it empty if we so choose, or the right to live in a house? 

If we get too deeply into it, Karly’s position (in theory) seems very compelling, like Erik Killmonger’s before her. And so, they have to make her (like him) a hypocrite who goes too far, so it doesn’t seem like the MCU is advocating violence against the state. 

Karly’s ideology is muddled by the writers because the violence she performs has no chance of actually achieving her goals of global solidarity. It feels tacked on to make her less sympathetic. Realistically, someone like Karli would be holding political rallies, sit-ins. Writing op-eds, staging marches and organizing her community into self-sufficiency. Possibly getting into fights with the cops during evictions or protests. If you read Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a kind of allegory for American politics, then Walker represents Trump, Sam represents Obama, and Karly represents... whatever conservatives think socialism/BLM is?

So it feels like FatWS is trying to thread the needle: Nationalism is bad, but so is statelessness. A state should have integrity, and benevolence. And it can have those things, if represented by the right people. Then, the violence is just and measured. It’s barely even violence at all.

I’m kidding of course, the kinds of solutions the MCU offers are basically ‘Co-Intelpro, PMC’s and neighbourhood watches... but run by morally perfect people’. It’s the way a propagandist would represent clandestine domestic espoinage or police brutality: Sam and Bucky would never kill anybody defenseless, and they would never interfere with legitimate polical movements. Because the writers create a perfect world where it’s always clear what everybody’s intention is before the fighting starts, and non-lethal violence is a reliable default option, no more morally problematic than some rough-housing by rambunctious kids.

I know I can trust Sam and Bucky because the writers would never give them realistic implicit biases in a way that would endanger their moral character. They are perfect because they are not real.

The robots, aliens and wizards are not the only unrealistic thing about the MCU. we have to be aware of how artificial the politics are, even if we want to suspend our disbelief. Or else we end up trusting politicians when they embrace a fundamentally immoral status quo, and let thousands die to maintain it (I know, a WILD hypothetical that will surely never come true, but worth keeping an eye out for.)  

The politics that a blip would realistically set in motion are so different from our own, that it would call into question the legitimacy of private ownership and the state. In order to avoid upsetting its fans and its financiers, the MCU has to return to a status quo where those political realities can be taken for granted.    

#pop culture analysis #Falcon and the Winter soldier #MCU critique #the Blip #Flag Smashers

[spaceotter42]

Terri Minsky Talks About Her Finale Decisions

Andi Mack EP Terri Minsky on Legacy, the Series Finale and Movie Possibilities

Photo Courtesy of The Disney Channel

From Paste

Andi Mack is over; long live Andi Mack!

By Alexis Gunderson  |  July 26, 2019  |  5:41pm

If you haven’t caught up with the Andi Mack series finale, turn back!

Well there you have it friends. With Andi’s (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) momentous high school decision, a joyous group singalong to “Born This Way,” and the long-awaited proof that both Buffy (Sophia Wylie) and Marty (Garren Stitt) and Cyrus (Joshua Rush) and TJ (Luke Mullen) like, like like each other, Andi Mack, Disney Channel’s boldest and most groundbreaking original series to date, is officially over.

Having gotten Andi Mack showrunner Terri Minsky on the phone for a long, deeply spoilerific conversation earlier this month, we’ll have a lot more to say about the finale’s wholesome perfection and the series’ parameter-shifting legacy in a moment, but first, let us just say this: Honestly, more series finales should just be one big party.

Get the drama out of the way early! Turn down the lights and turn up the jams! Give a grandma an inflatable T-Rex costume and an open dance floor! Sit a couple of boys down on a romantic fireside bench and let them finally hold hands! Seriously, showrunners—dancey, joyful series finale parties are where it’s at. Don’t sleep on Andi Mack’s excellent example.

If you’ve paid any attention at all to Paste’s previous coverage of Disney Channel’s groundbreaking family dramedy, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time we’ve suggested that more shows should be doing what Andi Mack was doing from Day One. More shows should be exploring the shape of non-traditional family setups. More shows should be letting teens tackle platonic friendships with thoughtful joy. More shows should be making intergenerational family dynamics a focal point of their storytelling. More shows should be letting the specificity of their characters’ full identities—from cultural background to race to sexual orientation to the ability to see crafting treasure where anyone else would see trash—inform their growth. More shows should let teen boys be tender, and more shows should gently call teen boys out when they’re being benignly oblivious to the inner lives of others.

More shows, in short, should just BE Andi Mack. And while its series finale, “We Were Here,” was a disappointment insofar as it officially marked the end of our time with the Good Hair Crew, it was a wild success in showcasing every other thing, big and small, that made Andi Mack so fantastic from the beginning. From the emotional (and actual) growth in Andi’s new-normal family set-up to the core four’s rock-solid friendship to the official blossoming of the puppy love romance between Cyrus and TJ, “We Were Here” found its sense of finality in the same kind of infinite possibility wrought by change upon which the series originally began. Nothing is final, the finale told its fans, except how we care for others.

But enough of our sentimentality. We promised a FULL SPOILER exit interview with series creator Terri Minsky, and we live to serve. Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Paste: Terri! First of all, congratulations on the series! How are you feeling, now that the finale is finally here?

Minsky: Thank you! You know, it’s actually gotten harder as we’ve gotten closer to the finale, because I think I was in some sort of state of—I won’t say denial, but [making] something from start to finish, that’s a first for me in terms of a television show. So originally I was feeling really, really good about it, like I did something. But now […] that I’ve done what I wanted to do, exactly what I wanted to do, and it’s turned out even better than I had imagined, it’s kind of weird to have done it!

Paste: Oh, we can only imagine. That’s not a feeling a lot of people get to have.

Minsky: And now that it’s really over, over, over, I [do] miss it more than I really have at any other point. I just look at the finale and I remember how those kids were so emotional, but how they were able to snap right back into the scene and whatever they were playing and not have that ending feeling about them. By the end they were all just such amazing, professional, incredibly talented people, I just look at them and I think, Oh, I wish I could be THEM when I grow up!

Paste: Same, honestly. To have that kind of emotional maturity at any age, let alone fourteen, fifteen?

Minsky: Incredible. I’m dying to see what they all become, all of them for different reasons.

Paste: What was the process of getting Andi Mack to this specific ending point? Did you have a three-season arc going into the project, or did you even know that three seasons would be where you’d be ending?

Minsky: I would love to say yes, but the truth is, I didn’t. It really was very much a process—the stories that came out of the room, a lot of them were obviously very personal to the writers themselves, and then the actors, what they brought, who they were. Everything was kind of like a plant that grew on its own, developed its own ecosystem.

In terms of when we learned that this would be the series finale, I don’t totally remember, but we were breaking Season Three and looking for our cliffhanger, this is like episode 10 out of 21, when we found out. So it was early enough that it was really great to be able to think, okay, we want to tell these stories, we want to get them in, we want to make sure that they lead to a place where it will conclude. I didn’t want to have people feeling cheated, especially if they’ve been watching the whole time. But it was hard, very, very hard, to know at Episode 10 and not be able to tell anyone. We definitely cried a little in the writers room, but [in terms of organic storytelling], it also made sense.

Paste: When it came to actually writing the finale, how did you approach that? What was the feeling like on set as everything was wrapping up?

Minsky: So, this is the first finale that I’ve written. It was the last episode, I was obviously going to write it, but we were still editing and writing and punching up and shooting all the ones leading up to it, and so it was almost the easiest script I ever wrote, because it was, like… we knew what was going to happen, it was just a matter of at what point, and what were the words going to be. Then I was done, and the writing room was so great about it and very supportive, and then we turned it in, and then there was the table read, and then we were shooting, and I was like WAIT A MINUTE! Wait a minute, this is the FINALE!

Paste: What was the process behind making “Born This Way” the party’s climactic moment?

Minsky: I have to give total credit to Paul Hoen, the director for [the episode], because we knew that we wanted to have the 2.0 party from the first season, we wanted to do a callback to that. So we had the story, but in terms of performing a song, that was all Paul. He’s done so many movies, and so many set pieces, I think he just had it in his head. So he made a list of songs and showed it to me, and the next day he said, we’ve got “Born This Way.” And I was blown away. I still am. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how he did it, but we have it, and it was so great, so great.

Paste: Well, and it’s such a recognizable dance party anthem, and so recognizably an LGBTQ pride anthem, that it feels like the perfect finale button to the episode. Like, saying that Cyrus’ coming out arc wasn’t just thrown in to be thrown in, but was developed very intentionally.

Minsky: Oh, it makes me so happy to hear that.

Paste: So we know the show has a very passionate fanbase in general, but when it comes to the Cyrus+TJ storyline, that passion is even more intense.

Minsky: Well, I think a lot of it is the fans reacting to seeing things on a Disney Channel show that they hadn’t seen before. On the one hand, I feel sad that this is the first time, I feel honored that we were the first time, but I also would like nothing more than to not ever again have something like this be such a big to-do. I just want characters to get to be who they are, to not have to explain, apologize, come out. But the fact is, now there’s this audience that’s paying attention, and you want to do right by them. I felt like they were there for us, and I wanted to give them something to thank them for being patient, for sticking around, for hoping, for paying such close attention. I’m just really hoping the finale is… I know it can’t be everything, but I hope it’s going to be something.

Paste: Can you talk a little bit about the process of deciding what that end moment for TJ and Cyrus would be? As both fans of the show and professional critics of serial storytelling, we found the quietness of their big moment to be exactly right, but we know that there will be fans who will still wish there had been more, or who will hold up the kiss between Buffy and Marty as a comparison, wondering why Cyrus and TJ couldn’t have the same thing.

Minsky: I feel like… they’re still in middle school, you know. And I know that people do things in middle school, but I guess I feel like it’s so. much. for, you know, the captain of the basketball team, to hold hands with a boy in the middle of a party. Like, the look on his face? I feel like a kiss, in a way, would have not been realistic to these characters. A lot of that story, a lot of that journey between Cyrus and TJ was subtext, and I think that whatever they were saying to each other, they weren’t actually saying in words. And even that final conversation isn’t explicit. I love that they have that moment reaching for each other and holding hands, in my mind, in the world that we live in, in the story of this relationship, that is a lot.

Paste: Oh, we remember being fourteen! Holding hands felt way more intimate and scary than some kind of awkward first kiss.

Minsky: I think that first physical contact with somebody is so intense. The feeling of their hand and your hand intertwined, how unusual and connected and intense that is. I just felt like this was the story of these characters, that they finally understood what they were saying to each other, and it wasn’t like they had to wonder, is he saying this? or is he thinking this?

In terms of the story, it didn’t need a kiss. Adding a kiss would have been doing it just to do it, to be first, and I didn’t want that. I would love if we were going to go on and have another season or another story, I would love to have the first LGBTQ kiss on Disney.

Paste: Well, at this point, if an Andi Mack movie ever did happen, it seems like the ideal outcome would still be that theirs wouldn’t be the first gay kiss on Disney. Like, the real power of Andi Mack has always been for us the number of doors it has opened to the shows that will come next. Cyrus and TJ walked so characters we have yet to meet could run.

Minsky: Oh, that’s true, yeah! I DON’T want to be the first gay kiss on the Disney Channel, you’re right.

Paste: We’ll come back to the dream scenario of a movie in a minute, but first, are there any stories you got to tell that you’re especially proud of?

Minsky: You know, the funny thing is that from Season One, we had wanted to do a story about that sort of casual racism, that idea of people thinking it’s okay to touch a black girl’s hair because it’s so cool. And we had touched on that in different moments, but then finally here we were in Season Three (Note: episode 3.17, “Arts and Inhumanities”) and it was like, we’re doing it! I’m very happy that we managed to get that in. But I’m also so happy that we did a Bar Mitzvah. I’m thrilled we got to read from the Torah. I love the shiva episode, Cyrus coming out to Jonah over bagels. I’m just so proud of all of it.

But if you want to know the one thing I’m most proud of, it I’m proud we got that cast. When I think back to the beginning of it all, Peyton was eleven. You just don’t know how these things are going to go. So to have it come to life the way that it did, it was just one of those things, like a Black Mirror episode, but a good one? You know, I’ve wanted to do a mother-daughter show for a long, long time, but I guess it took me this long to do it because I had to wait for Peyton Lee to be born!

Paste: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your experience with Andi Mack?

Minsky: It sounds GOOP-y, but it really was a dream experience. Working in television, people are always like, that’s so cool! But it’s really not. It can be hard, there are compromises, you can feel like you’re not doing anything worthwhile, and this was the exact opposite. And when this girl in Kentucky started this Andi Mack Thousand Cranes Project and there were these paper cranes with people saying what the show meant to them… I mean, that was very powerful and meaningful and a gift, and none of it was anything that I could have foreseen, and I’m just so grateful. I’m grateful to the willingness of the cast and to Disney’s support and to fans being so expressive. I’ve never had a job like it before.

Paste: What do you hope audiences will take away from the show?

Minsky: To me, the thing that I felt like I wanted to say to the audience is when Andi says to Jonah, do you ever wonder what it would have been like if we had met when we were older? And he says, someday we will be. And I think, for me in my life, nothing that I thought, “well that’s the end of that story!” turned out to be the end of the story. And I do want people to see those [kids as] people and think of them and wonder where they are, or try to guess what they might be doing.

Paste: Okay, we promised we’d get here—what about an Andi Mack movie? Any thoughts on what that could look like, should every fan’s dream come true?

Minsky: Oh, gosh! I would love to do an Andi Mack movie at some point. I want to get back with those characters, I want to get back with that cast, I want to be back in that world. But as my mother always said, you should leave a party when you’re having fun. And we had so much fun.

All three seasons of Andi Mack are now available to stream on the Disney NOW app.

#Andi Mack #Terri Minsky #We Were Here

[juicemitio]

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation 

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it 

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it 

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying 

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)  

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone 

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation 

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight) 

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch 

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason 

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together 

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again 

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them 

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window

#taz #taz graduation #taz amnesty #taz balance #taz commitment #taz dust #travis mceloy #clint mcelroy #mbmbam #mcelroys #also i left out the actual worldbuilding tips bc the workshop is something you pay for and it wouldnt be fair if they wanted to do it again

[rins-rambles]

TDP Actor AU

I miss writing these, so of course I do one for my next favorite hyperfixated show

General

Callum and Ezran’s actors are actually brothers. Since they worked incredibly well together in their auditions they were both chosen to play the roles of the princes’.

This is Ezran’s actors first major acting role

Funnily enough, Claudia and Soren’s actors aren’t related, but many have mistaken them to be actual siblings. Claudia’s actress has called Soren’s actor her “brother from another mother” on her social media plenty of times.

They actually worked together on other shows/movies where they played siblings, so of course it comes naturally to them

Ezran actually acts with a Bait plushie that he now doesn’t go anywhere on set without.

Claudia actually dyed that section of her hair purple, and let Ezran’s actor paint her nails. Although she wears a wig, Rayla’s actress really wants to dye her hair white, and Claudia gives her tips.

A lot of the humor coming from Soren is usually ad-libbed by his actor. Since he sometimes comes up with something funnier than what the writers intended, they sometimes just write “Soren does/says something” and let his actor go wild

Rayla’s actress was a gymnast, which is how she moves so agilely and begged the crew to let her do her own stunts. She was allowed this freedom, but in certain fight scenes they have a stunt double doing the work.

Callum’s actor thought Rayla was just really good at mimicking accents, but she really does have a Scottish accent.

Rayla, Callum, Ezran, Soren, and Claudia’s actors when not on set like to joke around, especially “casting” magic. But instead of saying the spell, they often say, “You’re watching the Disney Channel!”

Claudia and Viren find that the dark spells are just sentences played backwards is both really cool but also creepy

One problem some of the elven actors face is when their horns would fall off during scenes, sometimes for no reason. There are lots of blooper takes so far when this happens, to the point where the actors yell “point!” every time it happens, since they made a bet to the staff that if they would get at least a total of five horn drops in a season, then they would have to treat the actors to a restaurant.

All the elf actors have to wear what they call a “finger glove” over their pinky, so their finger can be CG’d out to show that they only have four fingers. In far away scenes, they don’t worry about it so much, but on close ups, they have to wear the finger glove. 

Season 1

Echoes of Thunder

Callum’s actor integrated his photographic memory and love for art into his character, and the writers went with it

The baker that Ezran steals jelly tarts from is actually one of the directors for the show

Claudia’s actress says that when playing Claudia, she’s literally just being herself.

She says that one time in the past, she did end up running into a tree when reading a book. Her father videotaped it and forever has proof.

Runaan’s hair has gotten caught and tangled with his surroundings on more than one occasion. His horns also sometimes gets tangled in his hair

Harrow and Viren’s actors are old friends, and were surprised to see each other on set when shooting their first scene together. That scene happened to be when Viren goes to offer to switch his soul with Harrow’s

Harrow’s actor begged to be able to throw in the “winter is coming” line, since he’s a huge GoT fan.

However after he’s killed off, he asks the writers if they intentionally made him the Ned Stark of this show because of it.

Pip is actually all CGI, since Harrow’s actor is allergic to birds. But he does have a cat that he calls Pip.

Callum’s actor had a hard time not tearing up when he had to say goodbye to Harrow.

Rayla’s actor tends drops her weapons more often than the other actors do

What Is Done

The two guards who are talking with each other about breakfast are actually some of the writers.

Ezran just made up the combination for the “stone rock” 

Claudia was just told to act like she hated the jelly, and while it tasted a bit like oranges, she called it persimmons, because she doesn’t like those fruits

Claudia has a bit of a hard time moving in her dress down the stairs and nearly tripped a few times. So she was glad that later on her outfit gets changed

But she always liked filming the part where she treats her hand like a flashlight. 

Moonrise

The egg is actually lighter than it looks, made out of thin 3D printed plastic and carefully painted

Viren and Harrow’s actors could barely keep a straight face when Harrow orders Viren “on his knees”, which is why the cameras use more close ups of their faces, since one of the other was trying hard not to crack up

In order to get the “dark” moonshadow elf look, Runaan and Rayla’s actors actually have to get more makeup applied on them, and then get layered on with CGI. They’re both less than pleased about having to spend more time in the makeup chair, but they put up with it.

Callum actually has a hard time saying the spells, because he would sometime stumble on the words. A majority of the blooper reels are of him messing up.

Everyone off set made jokes about Callum being Ariel while Viren was Ursula after Viren takes his voice

Bloodthirsty

Amaya’s actress is actually deaf, and was the first choice to play her character which she happily accepted. She has a brother in the army, and bases some of Amaya’s characteristics off of him. 

She’s grown close to Ezran and Callum’s actors, teaching them ASL and starting to treat them like they’re her actual nephews

Gren’s actor is a close friend with Amaya’s actress, and is usually the one who translates for her outside and during work

The loaf of bread Amaya describes as “weapons grade” is actually a loaf of bread one of the staff members baked, but left it out for too long, so it hardened. They decided to throw that into the script. 

The snail armor line was actually an argument Ezran and Callum had when they were younger

Rayla’s actress was sad when the writers forced her character to cut her braid, since she would spend some time off set to braid it herself

Rayla almost teared up when her character calls Callum out on saying she’s a monster

The cube is made out of thin metal, and there are lights inside that glow when someone off set hits a switch

An Empty Throne

Rayla’s actress does get a bit motion sick, but not to the extent that her character does

The boat ride the three ride on is shot on something like Roaring Rapids 

However, the drop from the small waterfall and the close ups on the actors faces were done on green screens

Amaya’s actress enjoys how much her character calls out Viren on his bullshit. 

Sarai’s actress and Amaya are actually related to each other, and Amaya’s signing to her statue are how she feels about her sister. It’s also thanks to her sister that she even got into the acting industry. 

Through the Ice

Ezran’s actor has an idea of what the talk about “sandwiches” indicates, although when he asks his brother to clarify, he changes the subject

Callum’s actor had to sit down a few times because he lost his breath when performing the Aspiro spell

Rayla’s actress doesn’t like looking at her hand, because she doesn’t like the bruising color it leaves behind.

Running up the stairs and stretching is how Soren’s actor usually prepares to play Soren 

His history is like a see-saw line is ad-libbed which threw of Viren’s actor and he had to adjust to that line

Offset, Claudia occasionally does call Soren “Sor-bear”

The Dagger and the Wolf

Ezran’s actor loves animals, and hopes to either be a veterinarian or an animal caretaker if he ever stops acting

The huge swordsman used to be a wrestler, and agreed to play this part as a favor to one of the writer’s who’s their acquaintance. 

Rayla’s actress had a blast playing “human Rayla”, and the lines that made it in were improvised. 

When getting an idea for Ava and Ellis, the girl who gave the writers some pointers ended up getting the role of Ellis, while her companion wolf got Ava

Cursed Caldera

Callum’s actor claims he had the best pun about the Cursed Caldera and everyone else was just jealous at how good it was

Rayla’s actress hates slugs and was not fond of seeing the CGI monster she’d have to fight off

Runaan’s actor admits that he didn’t like filming his scenes when he’s imprisoned, mainly because he was always cold without a top on. He thinks that the writers purposefully had him without a shirt for many different reasons

It takes roughly three hours in the makeup chair for Viren to get his “corrupted” form done

Wonderstorm

Claudia genuinely thought the “Ka-tallest mountain” line was hilarious which made it easier for her to really laugh on set

Rayla’s actress literally booked it off the set when the mummified person hisses at her

For the effect of the spider-roar, Ezran had to stand in front of a large leaf blower and he actually enjoyed that part, thinking it was funny

While the actors thought that the spiders looked cool, they admitted that they would never want to see them ever get that big

Callum’s “jerkface dance” is actually something one of the writers did for their siblings whenever they had to apologize. Callum is particularly proud of how he got down the movements in three tries. 

The actors all cooed when they got to see what Zym looked like and all demanded that stuffed versions of him would be made available and they’d get theirs first

Lujanne’s actress claims she likes wearing the elven horns more than the ears

She likes to think Phoe-Phoe is based off of her own pet bird that she allowed the team to use as a reference

#tdp actor au #the dragon prince #tdp #tdp shitpost #callum #rayla #ezran #soren #claudia #viren #harrow #amaya

[dracophile]

Wreck it Ralph 2

Thoughts, spoilers and some ideas below cut

So, I saw Wreck it Ralph 2 recently and I’ve had a little time to think and process it. And...I liked it. I liked it, but I don’t love it as much as I did the first.

The first one was top tier Disney/Pixar to me. It had fantastic characters, great story and world building, probably the best use of their villain twist and a fantastic climax.

This one...It had a lot of interesting concepts, but it felt like it was trying to use them all without giving them real development. Again, the characters were GREAT! I love Yess and Shank, and Spamly was really funny. But they divided so much of their attention between them and what was going on with Ralph and Vanellope, it didn’t feel like either Shank or Yess--mainly Shank--were as developed as they could’ve been. Having some questions at the end of the movie is fine but feeling like major characters are strangers not so much. As much as I loved the cameos by the princesses, I almost feel like they detracted from time that could’ve been spent on the story.

I also felt like the climax was not that satisfying, especially compared to the first movie. It’s fair to compare them since this is the sequel. Compared to King Candy/Turbo’s villainous arch and reveal, and his buggy final form, and Ralph willing to sacrifice himself to blow up the bugs and save the game; compare that to just...a bunch of mindless Ralph’s? And talking it out? I mean, the message is a good one, but the unlike the inspiring reiteration of the first, this one just kind of shoved the message in your face. There was no gravitas either. What was at stake when the ralphs were rampaging? Oh, people’s internet went down, someone lost their shopping cart at Amazon--big whoop? The last one had bugs taking over everything and Turbo wanting to erase Ralph and Vanellope and sugar rush basically.

I also feel like like Vanellope staying in Slaughter Race at the end is...confusing. Like I get it, she feels Slaughter Race is an upgrade, but she is the MAIN CHARACTER of Sugar Rush. No one is going to wonder where she went? (That’s something that did bother me before too, like did no one wonder where “King Candy” went after that day? Or people who had played the game other places wondering who the hell he was and where Vanellope was?) What if they think the game is broken again? And what do people playing Slaughter Race think she is, some kind of Gremlin? She sticks out like a sore thumb! The developers are probably confused as fuck too, what if they take her out of the game? It feels like the ending was forced based on the message, rather than actually focusing on a resolution. (part of this I could’ve forgiven if they’d enclosed her car and made her out to be a mysterious racer like the Stig from top Gear, but it still would’ve raised a lot of questions.)

All in all I think it had interesting concepts but it didn’t really meet my expectations. I realize the first one set the bar high imo, but this one just didn’t feel like it tried to reach it. Also, not enough Calhoun and Felix. You dare rob me of Jane Lynch, even when she is acting straight? How dare?!

What would I have preferred? Well, mainly, something different as far as a villain. Ralph being his own worse enemy is poetic, but it wasn’t pushed hard enough. At the very least, rather than making a bunch of copies of Ralph, what if the virus was the sort that actually infected something? First you could have an infected Vanellope, Ralph freaking out and having to get her to that gate thing (which, build up, no pay off on that front) and his confession then. But then the virus gets him and it just turns him into the kind of villain people expect. He just leeches power from other sources, getting bigger and and bigger and more volitile. Maybe the Yess and the Slaughter Racers all come out to try and distract him while figuring out how to get the virus out of him. He causes a lot more trouble for the netizens, maybe even trying to destroy sites/servers including Slaughter Race. Finally Vanellope gets through to him and Ralph actually has a battle with himself (physically and mentally) to split and stop the virus from wrecking the internet.

What I’d like even more is something to do with Slaughter Race. Maybe mirroring the first movie, there’s a “ghost” in the game--a former character that was taken out before release. Making it timely for the time, he’s your typical white male lead--let’s call him Scrapper.

Lets say in initial development, Slaughter Race was a much different game, much more generic. More clean lines, flashy cars, but no real substance or story. It was an “open world” like Slaughter race, but there was nothing to do outside of just driving against other players and Scrapper’s team. Scrapper was initially named something generic like Stephen or Charles (Arthur?) and was the initial leader or what would later be Shank’s crew in this game, and he liked it as it was because he was the center of attention. The game was made for him he felt rather than having to fit into the game. Cocky, self-congratulating, wants to win at any cost—and pretty much that way in character and out unlike Shank. Shank in this stage was also more boringly named, second in command. She wanted to focus on making the game interesting to play for the players, and was usually the voice of reason for Scrapper. They were good friends.

However, in the in first round of play testing, the game wasn’t testing well. Players found nothing really interesting about the game’s design or world, and they found Scrapper difficult to beat, but also annoying and redundant. He had his fans of course, but most felt there was nothing new or exciting about him or the game. They liked his car though. Many of the open beta players actually gravitated more towards Shank, finding her mysterious and much more interesting, wanting her to be a bigger part of the game. They also wanted more story, and a more interesting setting than the sleek, modern city, with stuff to actually do other than just going around a race track on a set pattern. They wanted something darker and grittier. It got to the point where the developers reworked the script and setting from scratch to make Slaughter Race. Scrapper wasn’t keen on the chaos, the craziness, compared to his modern utopia but it was much more well received. Shank was down with the changes, enjoying the freedom and the creativity it allowed, and tried to convince Scrapper this was good. But “Scrapper” was still not well liked. So a further rework was done before a full release to make Shank the leader, and Scrapper her second in command. To do this, they copied Scrapper’s racing abilities over to Shank, and nerfed him down.

Scrapper was not happy to say the least. Shank didn’t want him upset, still considering him a friend, but at the same time she embraced the changes and was flourishing. She was also a great leader and the gang was doing much better too. She’s happy, she just wishes it wasn’t at his expense. Scrapper starts belittling Shank, making her insecure about herself. There are those who are really mean about it online too--which is how Shank met Yess. Yess saw a video of her and came to meet her, wanting to feature her. She really helps bolster Shank’s confidence and they become good friends. Scrapper isn’t happy but they try to do their jobs. He gets more and more bitter until he starts lashing out in game, trying to mess things up for Shank. The players and developers think it’s some sort of bug and try to figure it out. Scrapper fans think it’s hilarious and encourage him, so to speak. Shank and Scrapper fight a lot until finally, it gets so bad he crashes the game one day. The developers decide he’s too buggy and write Scrapper out of the game. But he’s still there, lurking behind the scenes…but not very powerful now.

Enter Ralph. Scrapper is able to narrow in on Ralph’s distrust/jealousy of Shank and gets him to where he can talk to Ralph alone. He plays on Ralph’s insecurity and his past with Vanellope when Ralph tells him. he weaves a sob story about Shank stealing his code and his spotlight and Ralph is more convinced Shank is just like Turbo and a danger to Vanellope. Scrapper convinces Ralph to help him out of the game and, with Spamley’s help, down to the dark web to find a way to get his body back.To do so requires a virus that lets him take over other codes. Ralph brings it back to him and Scrapper starts by taking the code of some of the other NPC’s, abosrbing them. Ralph is horrified, but now Scrapper is going on a binge, taking the codes and data from everyone and everything, altering them back to what he wants.

The altering game puts Vanellope and Shank in danger and they barely manage to get away in Shanks car outside of the game while Scrapper still is going wild. Ralph confesses, Vanllope is livid again that he would do this, and shank tells them the truth about Scrapper. (The lesson becomes more about getting rid of toxic people in your life as much as following your dreams and Vanellope is still mad at Ralph). Scrapper escapes the game and starts causing even more havoc outside of it, Yess comes and chews him out, showing him comments about how the majority hate this “new” look for Slaughter race. He goes ballistic. Ralph tries to fight him and gets abosrbed, and the two personalities are warring with each other through the net. Vanellope and Shank (and maybe the princesses if we wanted to include them still, because I would) manage to get him down and Spamely and the others bring something to extract Scrapper and Ralph. Scrapper fights back and for a moment it seems like Ralph might’ve been deleted. But he’s okay. Vanellope forgives him and Ralph makes a promise with her--rather than doing the same thing all the time, they’ll find new things to do to keep life interesting, and he’ll understand if sometimes she wants to go to Slaughter Race as a guest character--he’ll stay home and watch the highlights.

That’s my take on this, I’m mostly just getting it down so it will leave me alone in my head.

#wreck it ralph #wreck it ralph 2 #Disney #movie review #ideas #rewrites

[yellow-saber-blog]

The Star Wars Fan Wars or why some fans hated The Last Jedi.

If you are into StarWars or into films in general you are probably aware that the SW fandom is currently divided into two groups - those who hated the TLJ and those who loved it. Or so it would seem....I am pretty sure there are many people, like me, who stand in between: people who acknowledge the film’s flaws but who still find things they enjoy in it. But one thing is certain - those who stand at the extreme lines are very vocal about their opinions and are often pretty rude towards each other.

I am writing this post here on Tumblr because I want to address a particular issue that is bothering me a lot and that is: how people who liked the TLJ are  labeling those who didn’t like the film as “butthurt fanboys” and discredit their opinions and feelings as being simply “broken expectations”. 

I want to defend those angry “fanboys/girls” a bit, because it seems that some fans miss the point of why others hated TLJ. Lots of the complains people have, even though often expressed with anger and harsh words, are legit. 

Now, before we go further, I want to address another issue that people neglect - personal oppinion vs facts. 

Now imagine you are going to buy a shirt in the store with your friend. You both like clothes from the StarWars brand. They now have a new collection of shirts. You absolutely love that new blue shirt but your friend doesn’t like it at all. This shows your different taste and leads to your opposite opinions on something that is subjective. No one can convince the other that their opinion is right or wrong because that is the nature of subjective opinions and personal taste. 

The same is with movies - someone will enjoy a film that another will hate and both are free to express their joy or frustration as much as they want without trying to discredit the other. 

Now there is another aspect to things - the facts. As much as you like that new shirt’s design if you look at it closely, you might notice that it’s not sewed properly or that there are some other defects on it. You can still like it or buy it but you cannot deny the fact that there are defects on that shirt and that is not made as good as it could have been done. 

The same thing can be said about the TLJ - that film is not stitched up together as good as it might have been. You can still enjoy it immensely but you will be lying to yourself if you insist that this is a good movie because it isn’t. The script, the pacing and the inconsistent tone of the movie are some of it’s bigger problems. When audiences go to see a StarWars film made with billions of dollars from some of the best in Hollywood, they naturally expect to see a decent, competent movie. You can’t blame people for complaining when they are given something far less professional than promised.  

I think we can all acknowledge that TLJ has weak points in terms of storytelling, consistency and basic logic. That being said, we should also all acknowledge that visually this film is magnificent and one of the best looking StarWars films. Those aspects we can consider facts about the film. You will be insulting a lot of classic movies if you insist these things aren’t true.You can still love or hate the movie all you want but you should at least acknowledge those basic truths about it. So objectively this film deserve probably around 6/10. Definitely not the best of StarWars. But it can still be your favourite SW film, nonetheless. 

Now lets get to the point - why some fans hate this movie? The main reasons are simple and I will list them in no particular order: 

- Silly side story -  the dump and illogical things that happen with the Resistance and all the subplots revolving around Poe, Finn and Rose. The movie just doesn’t know what to do with them. The plan about going to Canto Bight gets stupider the more you think about it. General Holdo’s motivations and character in general are simply weird for a Resistance leader. Everything there feels like a filler episode of a TV show. Is that all they could come up with? You might at least understand why such a silly plot makes some people angry or irritates them. StarWars never had any super complex plot points - but no matter how simple those stories might have been, they were at least bound by a basic logic and overall narrative purpose. ( and they were much more fun to watch) 

- The First Order start to feel like a joke. Snoke is killed without explaining anything about him at all, Hux is more like a comic relief and not like a serious bad guy. The whole First Order feels underwhelming. The Dark Side has always been very cool and a bit frightening. Now is more like a bunch of idiots with cool looking ships. 

- The bad treatment of the original characters - Luke is misused and his character is completely changed without proper explanation or motivation. I won’t even go into details about Luke because it will take me ages. Leia, in turn,  is given close to nothing to do and her “force flying” appears to be more laughable than impressive. Yes, there are some good scenes with Luke and Mark Hamill is amazing in the part but the negative things are just overshadowing the good ones. 

To those reasons you can add other complains that people still have about Rey being a Mary Sue, about Snoke being useless, about Kylo Ren’s still unclear motivations and so on. 

But let me condense it all in it’s basic essence - Disney/Ryan/Kathleen Kennedy and whoever else was involved - they all tried to be original in the wrong places and changed things they shouldn’t have changed AND at the same time they were unoriginal and silly in story points they should have changed or be creative with. Let me elaborate: 

Luke won’t train Rey the way you think. Luke is not the hero you might expect to see. He is actually responsible for the fall of Kylo Ren and he did things against his character because you won’t expect that. And when Luke finally decides to do something he just Force project himself to have a “surprise” at the end. And dies. Basically Luke is written to be nothing you expect him to be, so you will be surprised. But the truth is: no one wants to be surprised by Luke or see him as a broken old man, no one wants to see their beloved characters killed off in such ways as Han and Luke.  Give the audience the Luke they love and know. Surprise the fans with new characters and plots points without ruining the things fans already love. That is what will make people happy, why is it so hard to understand? 

The "This is not going to go the way you think” theme goes on -  Rey parents will be nobodies because you won’t expect that. Snoke will die, because you won’t expect that, Holdo has a secret plan all along because you won’t expect that. These choices are not about being original or creative, they are just doing the opposite because they want people to get something “they don’t expect”. 

JJ and the marketing team created all that mystery around Rey and Snoke, it’s not just the fans’ imagination going wild. Still  they didn’t deliver anything intriguing about those “mystery boxes”.  I am personally ok with Rey’s parents being nobodies - I actually expected that to be the case. But you can’t blame people for wanting to know more about Snoke. When the first Star Wars films  were out it was enough to say “this is the Emperor” and he is the bad guy. Now we have 6 movies and even more canon books and tv series. You have all that existing history there. The context of the story is different.  It’s normal for people to want to know where those new powerful characters are placed in the history of the story. If you give them no answers about Snoke, you make the character pointless to the fans. So he is just a tool for Kylo to rise to power? But it’s Star Wars - people want to have something more to the story than just unexplained and undeveloped characters. 

Still with the new characters, people are more perceptive to changes therefore one can do something really bold with them and change them upside down and get away with it.  But the characters we grew up with - they need to be consistent with what we know about them. There is the balance between things you can twist/change and things you should respect and honer. 

Now despite all the “ this is not what you expect” ideas, the creators of the film have the same story points as the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi - we have a space chase, a white planet battle with walkers, an exotic world where we meet someone who will betray our characters, Rey will face Snoke as Luke faced the Emperor and so on. Those story similarities are the things they could have made completely different and be as creative as they want with those. Yet, they chose the similar plot points and visual elements to echo the OT but changed the characters from the OT. Why??? That is a very dump decision if you know anything about StarWars fans or if you know anything about people expectations and behaviour in general. Disney are not trying to win Oscars with this, they are trying to please the audience. But something in their research tables and marketing graphics went totally wrong. 

There are at least 100 ways to write that same story both pushing forward the new characters and honouring the OT characters. They killed Han in an idiotic way, Luke is now gone in a poetic but useless manner. All those misplaced creative choices make the new films out of balance. They talk about balance so much in the story but they cannot achieve it. The balance between new and old, between the old generation and the new, between creativity and honouring the established lore. This imbalance it the real problem of the new trilogy. And this is a REAL PROBLEM no matter if it personally bothers you or not. If it doesn’t - good for you. But don’t disregard the opinions of those who are bothered by the unbalanced new trilogy and don’t call their complains “whining” or “lack of vision”. 

You can enjoy the characters and the movie despite those problems but to deny that those ARE problems is a bit naive and short-sighted. 

At this point it seems that Disney have no real idea of what they are doing with this franchise. At times it’s apparent that they are more concern with marketing and money rather than making a good film product. But is that really true? I am sure no one at Disney wanted to make a bad movie on purpose. But it turned out to be a rather messy one. One can make huge mistakes with the best of intentions. 

They are nuances to things - nothing is black and white. Neither “playing safe” nor its opposite “disregard the film legacy” are good choices. 

I just want to conclude this post by saying that people who grew up with StarWars don’t take this universe lightly. Life might suck big time but when you go to your StarWars corner of the galaxy, things should be better there. When someone hurts a character you love from your childhood you have the right to be angry, you have the right to complain, you have the right to demand a better treatment of that character. 

We should all demand to be given better movies, better treatment in general as audience. I am sure there are many new, original and great stories that are not given green light so we can have more Marvel, more DC, more Star Wars. Therefore Star Wars movies should be made worthy of their title, of their popularity and of the resources poured into them. The hardest thing in all aspects of life is to get the balance right.   

I really hope that Lucasfilm are making something better for the final movie, something that will bring fans back together. 

I personally consider everything from TFA until now to be alternative universe and this is how I am fine with it. But still I would prefer to see a movie with a more intelligent script and not a filler subplots. 

How many times per day we say to each other the same thing - do not disregard people’s feelings and opinions just because they differ from yours, don’t attack or insult those people because what they say makes you feel uncomfortable. 

We all love the same thing lets be more civilised about it. 

#starwars #star wars #tlj #the last jedi #fans #why people hate tlj #disney #luke #luke skywalker #balance #the force #get the balance right #new vs old #random #thoughts #lucasfilm #rey #kylo ren #snoke #opinion

[shrimpkardashian]

I am going to post this text which I used to make this 90-minute podcast where I ranked all of David Lynch's films. It’s close to 5,000 words long. Since I took the time to write all this out, I wanted to post it, edited for the page. Enjoy:

David Lynch has created ten feature films in forty years, specifically between 1977 and 2017. I am going to rank all ten films right now.

I’ve broken down the Lynch filmography into four tiers.

Tier #4 consists of two films that, while they’re not necessarily horrible, I’d be OK with never re-watching again.

Tier #3 is Dune, just… Dune… (crickets)

Tier #2 also consists of two movies, two features that are close to being really great, but are ultimately flawed for very different reasons.

And then there’s the Final Tier, Tear #1, ALL-TIME CLASSICS, of which, by my count, there are five. Not bad, considering that equals, oh I don't know... half of his filmography.

You might be wondering what constitutes an ALL-TIME CLASSIC... great question. In my book, it’s a movie that scores a 9.500 or higher on my highly scientific to-the-thousandths scale movie review scoring system. All ten of these feature films have been scored between 5.999 and 9.819. Using the thousandths scale allows for accessible gaps as I slowly fill in the list as I continue to compile my personal ranking of the greatest films ever made (and also... the not so great). I urge you to go to my website www.movies.myameri.ca to see the list of over 200 films that I've reviewed and ranked thus far.

Now, let’s get to the list...

#10

Perhaps, The Elephant Man––David Lynch’s second film, from 1980––doesn’t work for me because you can feel, in a sense, that he’s selling his soul. Sure, it's "good" and was recognized as such in all the ways and by all the metrics that the most mainstream critical pipelines assess and award art that is "good."

It's what I couldn't put my finger on at the time I recorded my initial review, and the truly repulsive thing about it: It's bad in the way these  "good" films often are. It feels older than it is: a 1980 film about the 1920s that feels like it was made in the late 50s. It’s stylistic feel is both confusing and confused. The brief intrusions of Lynchian originality are present and welcome, but they’re all too quickly dispersed by stale set pieces, and performances that are either overwrought or stiffly boring. Only Freddie Jones, in the devious role of the elephant man’s original "handler," strikes a cord.

The look and feel of John Hurt’s titular character is effective, because it is grotesque. It is in no way fantastical, even if we’re looking at the height of movie magic, because this person existed. And through this realism, a sickening is induced. With every one of Hurt’s nasally slurps––while that’s surely the point, and it wholly succeeds on that level––the film becomes less re-watchable, a major tenant of my grading scale. Wherein Eraserhead’s baby is pure fantasy––a goofy, disgusting, horrifying little buddy that the viewer wants to spend time with––the Elephant Man is an abomination. Our horror with him, at him, over him, is both the movie proving its thesis, and shutting itself down.

David Lynch is on record as having been pleased with the film, but what amount of that pleasure has been framed by four decades of opportunity in large part because of its success, isn’t clear.

The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards. No other David Lynch feature was nominated for more than one. It is his worst film by a wide margin.

#9

It would be easy to dismiss 1999’s The Straight Story as a joke disguised. Here was David Lynch making a relatively, well, "straight" movie about a man named Alvin Straight and it was titled The Straight Story. It was released by Disney. When I rewatched this recently I imagined what the movie might have been like if it had the same plot but, you know, felt Lynchian. What it would be like if the entire film had the tone of my favorite scene, the "I LOVE DEER" scene... but, alas, it isn't that.

The film is just a feel-good story. Sometimes, when you peel back the layers, there's just more goodness hiding underneath, and nothing more. And maybe there's a kind of horror in that as well.

#8

Dune stands alone.

Released in 1984, it's the only film among the ten wherein Lynch didn't have complete final cut. It's, by any classic metric, a bad film. At the end of the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, which details one of the first attempts at bringing the best selling science fiction book of all-time to the big screen, Alejandro Jodorowsky describes going to see Lynch's version and being filled with a perverse glee that the movie was a failure, that it sucked. And it is definitely a failure.

The film is a god-awful mess. Do not under any circumstances attempt to watch the 3-hour "extended cut" version. Lynch had nothing to do with this and it does not re-insert anything by way of noteworthy lost footage. It merely accentuates the worst elements of the original theatrical cut. The biggest crime by far being... the dreaded voice-over, which plagues both versions.

In 2011, a YouTuber posted a 9-minute super-cut compiling all of these whispered voice-overs, which––if you aren't familiar––are meant to give more clarity to the story by presenting the audience an inside look at "the thoughts" in various characters' heads. But these "thoughts" do exactly the opposite: bogging down the story and actually making it harder to follow (in my opinion).

But even with all of its many, many flaws, the film is not without its charm. The look of it is extremely interesting, if not inconsistent. Some imagery looks dated, while other effects seem ahead of their time. The soundtrack, an amalgamation of Toto's overblown rock aesthetics and a nuanced main theme co-written by Brian Eno, is kind of awesome

But really Dune is just a huge mess of ideas. For example, in one scene the actor Freddie Jones is given a cat with a rat taped to its side, hooked to a contraption, and is told to "milk the cat" if he wants to stay alive. His character is never seen or mentioned again. These are the ideas of Frank Herbert told through the lens of David Lynch and filtered by producers who were so damn concerned whether or not the plot would make sense that they butchered the whole damn thing. What's left are pieces, intriguing pieces strewn about the 2-plus hours.

It would be easy to submit this film as the last place entry, #10 out of 10. But I just can't do that. I would re-watch this under the right circumstances. The strange convergence of wild visuals, bad editing and too-fast, too-big, too-soon nature of the production, puts this in a special category among the Lynch filmography. It almost hits "so bad it's good" notes, in a way. When Denis Villeneuve unleashes his high stakes, huge expectations version of Dune in 2020, David Lynch's third film will likely become nothing more than a footnote.... a grain of sand among the great DUNES of film history, one might say. (Sorry.)

#7

Inland Empire is, technically speaking, the final film of David Lynch's career. Released almost thirteen years ago in 2006, it's certainly the most confounding. Three hours of lo-fi footage, welded together by a director whose contempt for the industry he was a part of had reached a boiling point. And that boiling point is INLAND EMPIRE.

For years, I attempted to watch this film in stops and starts. That, for quite a long time, I never got past the relatively straight, narrative-driven first hour is probably telling. Outside of a classic Grace Zabriskie appearance as Laura Dern's crazy Polish neighbor, not much really happens.

But it isn't so much that nothing is happening that's the issue. It's that nothing interesting is happening. An actress gets a role. Her co-star is a womanizer. Her husband might be jealous. There's some mystery concerning the development of the project. They have an affair. After a burst of imagery at the start, this all unfolds in a fairly normal fashion. The most noteworthy thing about it is how it looks. Lynch used a digital camera to film some ideas with Laura Dern one day and then decided to make a feature film out of it. He's stated that he had to keep using the same camera out of necessity. That he had to make it look this way, is a very Lynchian answer to the question "Why does INLAND EMPIRE look like garbage?" Because it does truly look like trash. You can get better video fidelity from any cheap Android phone nowadays. It has not aged well.

Some might point to this and say that's exactly why it's genius, why it's underrated... but I ain't buying that line of thinking, either. It's a misstep, in my opinion. The film is a bloated experimentation of a script written on the fly. It has only one true saving grace... Laura Dern.

Even if they hadn't reunited for the successful collaboration that was Twin Peaks: The Return, I think I'd be OK with this being the pair's final work together. The film only works because of Dern. The entire thing is a testament to her ability and it transcends the hardware that was used to capture it. When I finally got around to completing this watch, I was struck by how weird it got. Which is saying something about a David Lynch film! Without Dern this might play like someone's forgotten student project of the mid 2000s. With her, it's a strange bookend to an amazing career.

One that I have no other choice but to start, and stop, and start again. Someday.

#6

Wild at Heart was produced at the height of David Lynch's success in 1990. Riding the high of Blue Velvet, arguably his most beloved work in a critical sense, even to this day, and filmed just as the world was experiencing TV’s Twin Peaks. Lynch's fifth movie arrived just as the concept of "Lynchian" was soaking into the cultural landscape. It's a brash, outrageous film that feels like the work of an individual who could no wrong. This cockiness both makes it fun, and provides its flaws.

While there seems to be "a point," however cloudy and/or veiled and/or vague, behind most things in every David Lynch film, Wild at Heart seemingly indulges in bombast for the sake of bombast. It's no surprise this Louis CK's favorite film and the film that nearly gave Roger Ebert a heart attack. (See this video)

I'd like to split the difference between those two sentiments, if I may. I don't agree that Lynch is always trying to "get off the hook" as Roger Ebert put it. But that may be the case with Wild at Heart. That it is the only Lynch film to take the top prize at Cannes, perhaps speaks more to the idea of Lynch and his influence in the culture at the time, then it does to the film itself. CK was right to read this film as a comedy, it's the only way it works. And Ebert was wrong to crucify it for being such. But It stands outside the top tier of Lynch's career for a different reason. With cockiness comes laziness. Lynch notoriously had his hands full during the development of this project, as he abandoned the TV world of Twin Peaks to make it. Wild at Heart feels half-baked as a result.

Sure, it has its moments. Willem DaFoe gets to hang his hat on the mantle of notable, completely over-the-top supporting characters in the Dennis Hopper / Frank Booth tradition. And Nicolas Cage and Diane Ladd are every bit as crazed in their performances as well. And yet, therein lies another problem: the movie has only one speed, out of control. The Sailor-Lula love story is meant to provide the downbeat, something earnest in a sea of chaos. But it falls short. You can't stop to smell the roses if the car never stops.

#5

That half of David Lynch's filmography constitute all time classics is no minor accomplishment. I imagine there are only a handful of directors with a better batting average. And so, the order of these next five films is fairly insignificant. Certainly there are biases at play which have placed them into the positions you find them here. For example, I certainly haven't watched Eraserhead enough and I've probably seen Mulholland Drive too many times by comparison. It's also about timing. Maybe This Moment™ in My Life™ is more fitting for Lost Highway then it is Blue Velvet, for myriad reasons, and so on and so on.

The thing to know is this... These five projects have all stood the test of time, and any one of them is deserved of the top spot. Now, back to the countdown...

Eraserhead was exactly like I thought it would be.

I neglected to watch this film for a very long time. I kept telling myself "Now is the right time to watch Eraserhead, Jeff." What I didn't realize until I finally watched it is that the answer to that question is both never and always.

Eraserhead is a feat of nature. A film that took years to complete feels and flows like it was molded together over a single month. It almost feels silly to expound on the film at this point. It's been dissected to death. Even critics who fail to understand it can appreciate it on the most basic of levels. This. Is. Art. PERIOD. There's no denying that.

Wherein the surrealists who decided to make films couldn't get past the concept of the singular idea, confining their work to shorts OR a series of loosely connected "living paintings," Lynch was able to extrapolate the aesthetic to feature length and also tell a story.

It's soundscape alone is a work of art, and perhaps the most important facet of the film from a historic point of view. This world sounds exactly as it looks: manufactured, fractured, jarring and glum. What brief respite the Lady in the Radiator provides with her haunting, off-kilter serenade is all we get by way of counterpoint to the unnerving soundtrack of Lynch's debut feature. It took Lynch, working in tandem with master sound engineer Alan Splet, nearly a year to complete. From the 1991 book, Midnight Movies:

"The soundtrack is densely layered, including as many as fifteen different sounds played simultaneously using multiple reels. Sounds were created in a variety of ways—for a scene in which a bed slowly dissolves into a pool of liquid, Lynch and Splet inserted a microphone inside a plastic bottle, floated it in a bathtub, and recorded the sound of air blown through the bottle. After being recorded, sounds were further augmented by alterations to their pitch, reverb and frequency."

Lynch's first film is also his shortest, just shy of ninety minutes, and it's hard to find any flaws. Is the detour with the severed head at the pencil factory meaningless? How about the next-door neighbor character... unnecessary? Inside the Top 5, I won't be nitpicking just to do so. In the Top 5, everything is fine.

#4

While I don't necessarily think Blue Velvet is the best film of David Lynch's career, it's hard to argue that it isn't the most important. It is the world from which all subsequent Lynch things are built. Following the creative and commercial disaster of Dune, Lynch's fourth feature is a dark psychological horror that both expands upon and completely blows apart the aesthetic of Film Noir. And there really isn't a single David Lynch film project after Blue Velvet which doesn't also explore this form to a degree.

The movie marks the debut of a pair who would turn out to be lifelong collaborators in the David Lynch cinematic universe: Laura Dern, acting here in one of her first "adult" roles at age 19, and the composer Angelo Badalamenti. Badalamenti would go onto write the scores for every subsequent entry in the filmography except Inland Empire, and his main theme to Blue Velvet remains one of the most memorable.

Blue Velvet is also notable as being a vehicle for Dennis Hopper's re-entry into mainstream cinema. Relaunching his career, Hopper's portrayal of the deranged Frank Booth remains as skin crawling as ever.

I think the fact that I have watched Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive more than any other of Lynch's films had a lot to do with where I've placed them on this list (that they aren’t higher). But I swear I'm not being contrarian for contrarian's sake. As I said a minute ago, all five of these films are worthy. When it comes to the movies of David Lynch, well, I guess you could say, "....HE PUT HIS DISEASE IN ME." (Sorry.)

#3

The strange origin story of Mulholland Drive somehow eluded me for years. I only found out that this movie, Lynch's ninth, released one month after 9/11, was literally developed and shot with the intention to be a TV pilot for ABC. I found this out from the book, Room to Dream, by the way. The half autobiography/half biography of Lynch's life, which came out last year that I highly recommend. Only when it was clear that it wouldn't work for television did Lynch decide to re-cut and film additional footage to release as a feature. Though this was common knowledge, I managed to watch this many times over the years with no idea. When I rewatched it again recently with this information, I couldn't help but try to pick out what was filmed when in the timeline, and if I could see any inconsistencies... a true hellish way to watch a picture. I don't recommend it. But I digress..

From Blue Velvet on, each one of David Lynch's films (outside of The Straight Story) has had a longer running time. At close to 2½ hours, 2001's Mulholland Drive was his longest to date by a decent margin. It’s something of a misnomer that Lynch's films meander, as people mistake deliberateness for slowness or frivolity. Mulholland is filled with detours, inhabiting the film like micro movies in their own right. This also continues the loose Los Angeles trilogy (after Lost Highway and concluding with Inland Empire), which, at their heart, are films about coming to grips with who you really are. This might be the most direct lampooning of the film industry itself, but all three deal with being someone who you're really not.

Lynch has repeatedly stated his admiration for the 1950 film noir classic Sunset Blvd., another film about the film industry. In some respects, the naïveté of Naomi Watts' Betty is the counterpoint to Norma Desmond. In Mulholland Drive, her character says, "I'd rather be known as a great actress than a movie star. But, you know, sometimes people end up being both." Whereas, Norma Desmond portrayed by Gloria Swanson, has already reckoned with the true fate: "No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star."

The arc of the characters—plural—Betty and Diane, and the power of Naomi Watts' performance as them both, is behind the wheel on Mulholland Drive. I found it odd that she took second billing in the opening credit crawl to co-star Justin Theroux. Was this because she was unknown to the masses at the time, or perhaps another piece of the puzzle to this movie's greater themes?

Mulholland Drive touches all the bases. At times bleak and bizarre. Sometimes bright and hopeful. In many ways, it's modeled after the next film on our countdown, as it can almost be read as two separate entities: converging, crossing and meeting together again? Well...

#2

No film surprised me more during my recent rewatch binge then 1997’s Lost Highway. David Lynch’s seventh film might be his most divisive, in so much as it failed to ignite the critical response that really any of his other films did upon their release.

While it’s industrial rock heavy soundtrack perhaps dates the film to its actual era of production more than any other Lynch picture, it also works as an anchor. Outside of Inland Empire, this is easily his most abstract and seemingly rambling work. It is grounded through style and feel. And it might just be his best singular statement.

Bull Pullman is a revelation as the jazz saxophonist Fred Madison. His chaotic emoting on the stage through his blaring instrument is but another counterpoint, this time to his subdued, confused off-stage demeanor. Who knew the goofy President from Independence Day could pull this off?

My critique of Patricia Arquette in many of her other roles is that she comes across as lifeless. Well, with her performance here as a dead-on-the-inside beauty, that mode has never played better. She's tremendous, acting the conduit in this strange play, this circuitous journey that is often described as a theatrical möbius strip, where our leading man has quite literally been replaced. 

And that brings up another interesting point: There doesn't seem to be a traditional main character in this film. Arquette in her dual role as Renee and Alice is functionally it, but she gives way to Pullman and Balthazar Getty's Pullman––a car mechanic named Pete––for long stretches, and its Lynch's most diplomatic film in terms of dolling out the heavy lifting in this regard.

And last but not least we have to talk about... Robert Blake.

In a sea of outstanding, intensely weird and occasionally unforgettable supporting characters throughout the Lynch filmography, Blake’s Mystery Man might just take the cake. That Robert Blake, more than likely an actual sociopath, instructed Lynch on his character’s look––which, let me remind you was such: Blake decided to cut his hair cut extremely short, parted in the middle, white Kabuki make-up on his face, and an all black outfit––might be the best example of the auteur trusting his instincts, and having it pay off completely. Only on screen for a handful of scenes, Blake, who would be arrested and acquitted for the murder of his wife just a couple years later, delivers a truly unsettling performance. In his final film role ever, he encompasses true evil more than Twin Peaks’ BOB or Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. The Mystery Man is the lurking, vile corruption of what’s good that Lynch has always been looking for.

But Lost Highway is not a “what’s beneath the surface” film like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks or even Mulholland Drive are. The “point” of Lost Highway might just be that evil exists in plain view... and there’s nothing we can do about it. Gary Busey sometimes has to watch his only child disappear in a lightning bolt of spoiled meat and that’s that. When they reappear, broken and struggling, and falling down the same path until it happens again, well... that’s just life.

One of my favorite parts of the entire movie is a scene early on when a detective asks Fred Madison if he owns a videocamera. His wife, Renee Madison, portrayed by Patricia Arquette, responds, "no, Fred hates them." Fred responds, "I like to remember things my own way." The detective asks, "what do you mean by that?" Bill Pullman, as Fred Madison, replies, "how I remember them. Not exactly the way that they happened."

#1

(DISCLAIMER: I’m sorry if you think it’s cheating that I am including the expanded Twin Peaks Universe as one single entry on this list. I’m sorry if you think the only thing that should count is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me because that is the only Twin Peaks thing that is actually a “feature film.” But also: SORRY NOT SORRY.

This is my list and I’m putting Twin Peaks at #1, specifically: all of Season 1 of the original TV show, plus the beginning of Season 2 (until the episode where we find out who killed Laura Palmer) and the Season 2 finale. Then of course Fire Walk with Me, and the 18 hour MOVIE that is Twin Peaks: The Return, or Twin Peaks Season 3, if you will (I prefer the former as it gives the masterpiece the gravitas it deserves).

If you put a gun to my head and I ABSOLUTELY had to only include Fire Walk with Me, I would probably drop it to #4 or #5 and slide everything else on the list up a spot.  End of DISCLAIMER.)

I was given the Twin Peaks Gold Box as a Christmas gift in 2007. The 10-DVD set had just come out and this was still an era when people treasured physical things like that. It was really important and meaningful to me, and I still own it despite no longer having a DVD player. Watching it for the first time was a treasure and a fond memory. The feeling I got when I heard that Badalamenti theme music start the show and everything in between...

...yes, even James in Season 2. I loved it all: the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole kitten caboodle. The original TV series is, obviously, far from flawless. Lynch stepped away for long stretches before going fully AWOL after it was revealed that Laura Palmer's father, portrayed by the great Ray Wise, is in fact her killer. After that, the show took a turn (to put it lightly).

But Lynch never gave up on the world. He returned to helm the stunning Season 2/de facto series finale. So much of the mythology that Fire Walk with Me and certainly The Return is built upon is ignited in that finale, fittingly titled "Beyond Life and Death." But really, the original series is most notable for merely existing at all. A precursor to the "golden age of television" that was right around the corner, there still hasn't been a network series remotely this daring. There's often much made, too much if you ask me, about the "cult of David Lynch." Critics of this “cult” say its followers are blind: The man can do no wrong. It's weird for weirdness' sake. And so on, they drone.  Now, I'm a fairly big David Lynch fan (no duh). But I've always tried to remain grounded in regards to this. He's not perfect. But he has made near-perfect art. And I'm a fan of ART first. A practicer of admiration? Maybe some distant second, third, fourth or beyond. I see his infiltration of the masses with Twin Peaks as one of his finest achievements in the arts. How many powerful people had to be convinced that the mainstream was ready for something like this. It's baffling. That, of course, they weren't ready is kind of besides the point. Someone has to poke the bear.

If Lynch had closed the books on Twin Peaks with Fire Walk with Me, his sixth film released in 1992, that would have been fine. It's a polarizing feature and was a fairly significant box office bomb, even for Lynch. Fire Walk with Me nonetheless retains an otherworldliness among the filmography. Given the subject matter––you know, just your average super-violent father-daughter incest rape thing––it's hard to argue this isn't his darkest tale by a wide degree. It's perhaps not ripe for repeated viewings. In fact, I did not rewatch it for this review, the only film of the ten. Why? Well, I had given it a replay back in 2017, just before the debut of Showtime's Twin Peaks: The Return. And, to be honest, I just wasn't ready to return to this madness quite so soon.

Only David Lynch could mold one of the loftier aspects/thematic devices/main characters (?) of the long-awaited follow-up to perhaps his most beloved work on one of the most random, seemingly meaningless, toss-away lines spoken in a bad Cajun accent in a cameo role by David Bowie. "We're not going to talk about Judy at all..." Until, that is, the time is right... Say... 25 years later?

I just recently began to rewatch The Return and I'd like to say thank you for this, David Lynch. This needs to be put into the discussion with his greatest work, if it's not already there. I can recall after various episodes of its original run (May to September 2017), feeling a sense of awe and wonderment and confusion and joy. I say to anyone that's curious that this is an 18-hour movie. David Lynch made an 18-hour movie when it wasn't certain if he'd make any more movies again.

It would be dumb, if not downright foolish, to try and hash out the plot-lines or gush over Kyle MacLachlan's performance in not two, but three distinct roles. Here, the duality of man has fractured yet again in these modern times. And when I got to that final two-hour finale, I found myself on a family vacation. So I carved out a block of time to watch it at the house we were renting on my laptop, alone, in the dark, as the rest of my family enjoyed a sunny day at the beach. I filed Kyle and Laura Dern's Diane into one more sketchy motel and then onto El Paso, Texas, of course, just as everyone had guessed, and then back to Twin Peaks, Washington, where the series ends on a question... Special Agent Dale Cooper turns to Laura Palmer outside her childhood home and asks, "what year is this?" She screams into the abyss and the lights in the home spark off and the screen explodes into darkness. For a series that was, ultimately, about the passing of time as much as it was about the origins of evil in the universe or anything else, it was a fitting end.

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Why You Have the Fear of Failure (And How to Conquer It Step-By-Step)

Nobody enjoys failing. Fear of failure can be so strong that avoiding failure eclipses the motivation to succeed. Insecurity about doing things incorrectly causes many people to unconsciously sabotage their chances for success.

Fear is part of human nature. As an entrepreneur, I faced this same fear. At times, I forgot that who I was wasn’t what I did. My ego and identity became intertwined with my work, and when things didn’t go as planned, I completely shut down. I overcame this unhealthy relationship with fear, and I believe that you can too.

Together we’ll examine how you can use failure to your advantage instead of letting it run your life. We’ll look at what a fear of failure is, where it comes from, and how to overcome it so that you can enjoy success in your work and life.

What is fear of failure

Fear causes you to avoid potentially harmful situations. Fear of failure keeps you from trying, creates self-doubt, stalls progress, and may lead you to go against your morals.

What causes fear of failure? Here are the main reasons why fear of failure exists:

Patterns from childhood – Hyper-critical adults cause children to internalize damaging mindsets.[1] They establish ultimatums and fear-based rules.This causes children to feel the constant need to ask for permission and reassurance. They carry this need for validation into adulthood.

Perfectionism – Perfectionism is often at the root of fear of failure.[2] For perfectionists, failure is so terrible and humiliating that they don’t try. Stepping outside your comfort zone becomes terrifying.

Over-personalization – The ego may lead us to over-identify with failures. It’s hard to look beyond failure at things like the quality of the effort, extenuating circumstances, or growth opportunities.[3]

False self-confidence – People with true confidence know they won’t always succeed. A person with fragile self-confidence avoids risks. They’d rather play it safe than try something new.[4]

How the fear of failure destroys success

Unhealthy organization culture

Too many organizations today have cultures of perfection: a set of organizational beliefs that any failure is unacceptable. Only pure, untainted success will do.

Imagine the stress and terror in an organization like that. The constant covering up of the smallest blemishes. The wild finger-pointing as everyone tries to shift the blame for the inevitable cock-ups and messes onto someone else. The rapid turnover as people rise high, then fall abruptly from grace. The lying, cheating, falsification of data, and hiding of problems—until they become crises that defy being hidden any longer.

Miss out valuable opportunities

If some people fail to reach a complete answer because of the lure of some early success, many more fail because of their ego-driven commitment to what worked in the past. You often see this with senior people, especially those who made their names by introducing some critical change years ago. They shy away from further innovation, afraid that this time they might fail, diminishing the luster they try to keep around their names from past triumph.

Besides, they reason, the success of something new might even prove that those achievements they made in the past weren’t so great after all. Why take the risk when you can hang on to your reputation by doing nothing?

Such people are so deeply invested in their egos and the glories of their past that they prefer to set aside opportunities for future glory rather than risk even the possibility of failure.

High achievers become losers

Every talent contains an opposite that sometimes makes it into a handicap. Successful people like to win and achieve high standards. This can make them so terrified of failure it ruins their lives. When a positive trait, like achievement, becomes too strong in someone’s life, it’s on the way to becoming a major handicap.

Achievement is a powerful value for many successful people. They’ve built their lives on it. They achieve at everything they do: school, college, sports, the arts, hobbies, work. Each fresh achievement adds to the power of the value in their lives.

Gradually, failure becomes unthinkable. Maybe they’ve never failed yet in anything that they’ve done, so have no experience of rising above it. Failure becomes the supreme nightmare: a frightful horror they must avoid at any cost.

The simplest way to do this is never to take a risk, stick rigidly to what you know you can do, protect your butt, work the longest hours, double and triple check everything and be the most conscientious and conservative person in the universe.

If constant hard work, diligence, brutal working schedules and harrying subordinates won’t ward off the possibility of failing, use every other possible means to to keep it away. Falsify numbers, hide anything negative, conceal errors, avoid customer feedback, constantly shift the blame for errors onto anyone too weak to fight back.

The problems with ethical standards in major US corporations has, I believe, more to do with fear of failure among long-term high achievers than any criminal intent. Many of those guys at Enron and Arthur Andersen were supreme high-fliers, basking in the flattery of the media. Failure was an impossible prospect, worth doing just about anything to avoid.

Loss of creativity

Over-achievers destroy their own peace of mind and the lives of those who work for them. People too attached to “goodness” and morality become self-righteous bigots. Those whose values for building close relationships become unbalanced slide into smothering their friends and family with constant expressions of affection and demands for love in return.

Everyone likes to succeed. The problem comes when fear of failure is dominant. When you can no longer accept the inevitability of making mistakes, nor recognize the importance of trial and error in finding the best and most creative solution.

The more creative you are, the more errors you are going to make. Get used to it. Deciding to avoid the errors will destroy your creativity too.

Balance counts more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success.

We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to recognize that the negative parts of our lives and experience have just as important a role to play in finding success, in work and in life.

How to conquer the fear of failure (a step-by-step guide)

1. Figure out where the fear comes from

Ask yourself what the root cause of your negative belief could be.[5] When you look at the four main causes for a fear of failure, which ones resonate with you?

Write down where you think the fear comes from and try to understand it as an outsider.

If it helps, imagine you’re trying to help one of your best friends. Perhaps your fear stems from something that happened in your childhood, or a deep-seated insecurity.

Naming the source of the fear takes away some of its power.

2. Re-frame beliefs about your goal

Having an all or nothing mentality leaves you with nothing sometimes. Have a clear vision for what you’d like to accomplish but include learning something new in your goal.

If you always aim for improvement and learning, you are much less likely to fail.[6]

At Pixar, people are actually encouraged to “fail early and fail fast.”[7] They encourage experimentation and innovation so that they can stay on the cutting edge. That mindset involves failure, but as long as they achieve their vision of telling great stories, all the stumbling blocks are just opportunities to grow.

3. Learn to think positively

In many cases, you believe what you tell yourself. Your internal dialogue affects how you react and behave.

Our society is obsessed with success, but it’s important to recognize that even the most successful people encounter failure.

Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper because they thought he lacked creativity. He went on to found an animation studio that failed. He never gave up, and now Disney is a household name.

Steve Jobs was also once fired from Apple before returning as the face of the company for many years. [8]

If Disney and Jobs believed the negative feedback, they wouldn’t have made it.

It’s up to you to notice your negative self talk and identify triggers. Replace negative thoughts with positive facts about yourself and the situation. You’ll be able to create a new mental scripts that you can reach for when you feel negativity creeping in. The voice inside your head has a great effect on what you do.

4. Visualize all potential outcomes

Uncertainty about what will happen next is terrifying. Take time to visualize the possible outcomes of your decision. Think about the best and worst-case scenarios. You’ll feel better if you’ve already had a chance to mentally prepare for what could happen.

Fear of the unknown might keep you from taking a new job. Weigh the pros and cons, and imagine potential successes and failures in making such a life-altering decision. Knowing how things could turn out might help you get unstuck.

5. Look at the worst-case scenario

There are times when the worst case could be absolutely devastating. In many cases, if something bad happens, it won’t be the end of the world.

It’s important to define how bad the worst case scenario is in the grand scheme of your life. Sometimes, we give situations more power than they deserve. In most cases, a failure is not permanent.[9]

For example, when you start a new business, there’s bound to be a learning curve. You’ll make decisions that don’t pan out, but often that discomfort is temporary. You can change your strategy and rebound. Even in the worst case scenario, if the perceived failure led to the end of that business, it might be the launching point for something new.

6. Have a backup plan

It never hurts to have a backup plan. The last thing you want to do is scramble for a solution when the worst has happened. The old adage is solid wisdom:

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

Having a backup plan gives you more confidence to move forward and take calculated risks.

Perhaps you’ve applied for a grant to fund an initiative at work. In the worst-case scenario, if you don’t get the grant, are there other ways you could get the funds?

There are usually multiple ways to tackle a problem, so having a backup is a great way to reduce anxiety about possible failure.

7. Learn from whatever happens

Things may not go the way you planned, but that doesn’t automatically mean you’ve failed. Learn from whatever arises.[10] Even a less than ideal situation can be a great opportunity to make changes and grow.

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”

Ask yourself:

What did I learn?

How can I grow from this?

Did anything positive come from this situation?

Dig deep enough, and you’re bound to find the silver lining. When you’ve learned that “failure” is an opportunity for growth instead of a death sentence, you conquer the fear of failure.

Failures can be blessings in disguise

Together we’ve learned what fear of failure is, and how it can have a crippling effect on our ability to achieve. This fear often stems from childhood, perfectionism, ego and over-personalization, and a lack of confidence.

Luckily for us, there are plenty of ways to tackle this fear. We can start by figuring out where it comes from and re-framing the way we feel about failure. When failure is a chance for growth, and you’ve looked at all possible outcomes, it’s easier to overcome fear.

Stay positive, have a backup plan, and learn from whatever happens. Your failures will be sources of education and inspiration rather than humiliation.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

Go boldly in the direction of your dreams and goals. Don’t allow fear to stand in your way.

Featured photo credit: Vecteezy via vecteezy.com

Reference

[1]^MindTools: Overcoming Fear of Failure[2]^Make Money Online Scams Exposed: Causes Of Fear Of Failure[3]^A Conscious Rethink: The Real Reason You Have A Fear Of Failure (And What To Do About It)[4]^Hypnosis Downloads: 4 Causes of Fear of Failure[5]^Wake Up Cloud: 13 Incredibly Simple Ways to Overcome the Fear of Failure[6]^Forbes: How To Conquer The Fear Of Failure – 5 Proven Strategies[7]^Virgin: Why failure is a key part of Pixar’s culture[8]^Entrepreneur: 6 Stories of Super Successes Who Overcame Failure[9]^Wake Up Cloud: 13 Incredibly Simple Ways to Overcome the Fear of Failure[10]^Forbes: How To Conquer The Fear Of Failure – 5 Proven Strategies

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The post Why You Have the Fear of Failure (And How to Conquer It Step-By-Step) appeared first on Lifehack.

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[careerandmoneystoryteller]

Aimee Gates Life In Heaven Episode 2 Aimee Gates Introduction Freestyle Story by Stella Carrier

Aimee Gates Life In Heaven Episode 2 Aimee Gates Introduction Freestyle Story by Stella Carrier

  Start time 1157 am Wednesday August 2, 2017

Completion time 106 pm Wednesday August 2, 2017

 The song She’s A Beauty by the Tubes plays in the background as A long red haired woman named who calls herself Rema introduces herself to Aimee Gates. Aimee Gates notices that Rema looks similar to her except she has an appearance of a 19 year old. Rema telepathically picks up on Aimee Gates thoughts and explains that she came to help Aimee Gates work as a music deejay for one of the parties. Rema goes on to further explain that she just passed away on suddenly on earth in her sleep when she was just 51 years old in an area that is now Iceland. She wanted to work as a music deejay and worked as a personal DJ who got invited by word of mouth to various weddings while alive but she had a very comfortable living as an online travel agent which took up more time. Aimee Gates picked up that Rema died just two weeks after she politely declined twp overseas job opportunities that would have had Rema work as a music DJ in Switzerland and two more at a Restaurant Association event in Washington D.C. and another event just five miles from the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg Virginia.

           The party that Aimee Gates was hosting actually was in a ten story mansion structure in a heaven world filled with a hybrid of various hotels, gardens, and theme parks kind of a hybrid of Busch Gardens Williamsburg, California Disneyland, and Florida Disneyworld 2.0 version. Before Aimee Gates allowed Rema in to the party she asked her to sit down on a pink and yellow couch in a suite and kitchen area that looked similar to the following website; Luxury King Suite

 http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

 However, as Rema sits on the couch she notices that the couch activates a door leading into the party surrounded by 500 different male and female spirits from various backgrounds dancing towards the end of the song Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled feat. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. Rema even notices that a music deejay couple resembling Jonah Hill and a female from the following article welcomes Rema to come up to the stage and work as a music DJ alongside them

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4746840/Jonah-Hill-shows-trim-figure-toned-arms-NYC.html

           Rema asks Aimee isn’t she going to interview her first before deciding whether to allow her at the party. Aimee Gates politely explains to Rema that in the heavenly afterlife worlds you can pretty much do whatever type of work you want and that she was actually cleared by the spirit guide of Rema’s professor husband still living in Iceland. Rema intuitively realized that Gates was for real and coming from the heart when she saw the spirit guide named Damian Moon dressed in his midnight blue and light green robe wave to Rema from the stage. Rema was escorted by Damian into the afterlife world when she unexpectedly died in her sleep.

           The song Meet Virginia by Train plays as Damian Moon teleports into the next room where Aimee Gates is about to partake in her sleep. Aimee Gates is taken by surprise by Moon following her but she is in a realm where good intents are easily seen and Damian Moon hands Aimee Gates a set of five golden cups to throw in the colorful pink and blue lake that three of her family members are swimming in nearby the building and close to the window that Gates is staying in during the party. Gates figures out that her daughters have not passed away but are instead visiting this area in their sleep, and that only one of the daughters is going to remember the dream upon awaking and is going to keep it secret for benevolent and karmic reasons.

           Aimee Gates does what she is told and throws the golden cups in the water. Family member XA is the first to catch two of the golden cups. Once XA catches them they flash into two images in the water. The first image shows XA exercising and the second image shows XA depositing a check of 800 dollars after taxes from a book titled daily scripts. Somehow XA figures out that this image is showing her that her time priority must consist of daily scripts regardless of how she is publicly judged and time for her exercise goals. One of the golden cups lands on family member AO’s head which causes family member XA and AI to playfully laugh. However, seconds after the cup lands on AO’s head, the cup transforms into a four foot white and peach radio dancing in the water and wearing a pair of shoes with the words meditation and music. AI explains to AI that she thinks that the dancing radio image is representing using music in meditation at least twice a day (the dancing shoes metaphor) for spiritual growth and accomplishment of certain goals. Seconds later, the dancing radio disappears into the two golden cups that AI caught.

           The two golden cups that AI caught in the lake transform into a red and golden colored book that morphs into the words imagination before disappearing into the lake and a six foot tall man resembling musician Kid Rock who picks up AI from out of the lake and throws her in the air before AI lands on a silver and pink square shaped couch with the words writing. Somehow as AI lands on the couch she remembers that something she wrote less than 24 hours before contained a word that matched one of his songs. Intuitively AI realized that the imagination book and writing couch image was to give her advice to look at more information to help her increase the power of her imagination and to keep on with her writing as a tool for this even with her busy schedule. AI was excited to share this discovery with her two other family members but both her and Aimee Gates noticed that everyone disappeared from the lake. The Kid Rock image was there but she saw him happily chatting up another musician nearby and some positive intuitive force influenced AI to leave the Kid Rock image and the female musician image to have some privacy. Aimee Gates could not resist calling out to her family member AI to help her understand the deeper symbology to the mystical image she just saw.

         Aimee Gates decided to call her family member AI from the window and was delighted to see AI be mutually happy to see her. However, the moment that AI said she is coming out of the lake to see Gates she then disappeared out of the lake as Aimee Gates saw one of  AI’s male spirit guides teleport AI away from the lake and back to her bed on earth to wake up in the next 10 seconds.

 Aimee Gates asks Damian Moon why AI was awoke before she could talk to her to which Moon replied AI’s spirit guide says in time, he has to prepare her more before you and her could talk more frequently in her sleeptime dreams.

  Affirmations

I mark a new beginning in the book of my life and wisely use the free time I have been giving to rest and tune even deeper into various aspects of my life-spiritual, athletic goals such as walking more, balancing my writing time with some online courses I have enrolled in etc.

I am in the process of becoming more cool,level-headed, and wise when it comes to how I conduct myself around my current work colleagues and future coworkers as I am now logically and intuitively aware that some of them may follow me to where I may reside within 7 years from now or less regardless if I am a private sector andor a government/military worker/employee.

I am well provided for. I live in an abundant universe.

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/stage-names.php#.WTqvpOvyucw

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/dimension-names.php#.WXs6PVWGOcw

Resources and Affirmatiohttp://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/destiny-awoken-names.php#.WXs611WGOcwns

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

My psychic abilities expand each day.

I am creating heaven on earth.

I Call Upon What I Imagine To Be The Influence of Benevolent Spirits From the Heavenly Realms, my higher self, and my celestial spirit ally team for creativity in both my writings and all other areas of my life both present and future

 Meet Virginia by Train-heard song on my Amazon playlist by 1046 am Wednesday August 2, 2017

Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled feat. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller

She’s A Beauty by the Tubes

I am keeping for the reminder of exercise habit

Efficient Habits

 http://richhabits.net/efficient-habits/

Marty Sklar, pioneering imagineer who channeled Walt Disney, dies at 83

http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-me-marty-sklar-obituary-20170727-story.html

I have to admit Jonah Hill is an inspiration fitness wise as his transformation is remarkable.

Slimmed-Down Jonah Hill Looks Fit and Trim for a Casual Stroll in New York City

 https://www.yahoo.com/tv/slimmed-down-jonah-hill-looks-083900007.html

He's starting to look like Bradley Cooper! Jonah Hill shows off trim figure and toned arms while out with a female pal in New York City Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4746840/Jonah-Hill-shows-trim-figure-toned-arms-NYC.html#ixzz4obIqOZHX Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4746840/Jonah-Hill-shows-trim-figure-toned-arms-NYC.html

I may sound very idealistic but I would like to think that many andor enough voters in Florida are going to be open-minded enough to look past the controversy surrounding Robert Blackmon’s girlfriend Sydney Simpson. I truly believe that enough voters are going to instead look more at the type of life that Robert Blackmon and Sydney Simpson are living despite the controversy. From the photos it looks Robert Blackmon and Sydney Simpson have a close relationship which would probably work more to their advantage in Blackmon running for a council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida.

OJ Simpson's daughter's boyfriend is running for office in Florida

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/360d996c-9c3a-3075-94d4-1638543ab9d7/ss_oj-simpson%27s-daughter%27s.html

The 28-year-old boyfriend of OJ Simpson's daughter is running for office in Florida and admits he hopes voters will not be put off by his connection to the convicted felon Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4745732/OJ-Simpson-s-daughter-s-boyfriend-running-office-Florida.html#ixzz4oc6mJ9BZ  Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4745732/OJ-Simpson-s-daughter-s-boyfriend-running-office-Florida.html

 I have to admit Jonah Hill is an inspiration fitness wise and his transformation is remarkable.

He's starting to look like Bradley Cooper! Jonah Hill shows off trim figure and toned arms while out with a female pal in New York City Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4746840/Jonah-Hill-shows-trim-figure-toned-arms-NYC.html#ixzz4oc7ZYBgQ  Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4746840/Jonah-Hill-shows-trim-figure-toned-arms-NYC.html

  Why This Award Show Added a Party-Within-a-Party

With the Citi Open Tennis Tournament in town, Washington's Rammy awards gala made space for the invite-only Player Party.

 https://www.bizbash.com/why-this-award-show-added-a-party-within-a-party/los-angeles/story/34346?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRnNFlXWTJZak00WkdObSIsInQiOiJKQTJDUzZNZ0duZmwweXVJZko1YjlzOUM1UmVaYzBJNHVzcHBNYW5DUUJKdXNkOXpxc2VpU3E1TzFpVldVY1RIcFp3UUd4WGRcL1NhYlU4bHZKTkpibmJodHQrTDkyOUM5TWtNcHN2dUN2dEZ6UFdydmFNek95RlVzN0FUeDBKT3kifQ%3D%3D#.WYHxKVWGOcw

https://www.greatwolf.com/williamsburg/suites

Great Wolf Lodge Suites Link Williamsburg Virginia

  E

[mikegchambers]

The cloud is on and the meter’s running — avoid the sticker shock of ‘pay as you go’

Getting a handle on the actual costs of cloud computing can be elusive and frustrating until your learn the basics of cost control

Cost is often the major driver for many cloud migrations but it’s usually poorly understood in the beginning. It’s fine for startups to demonstrate the value of cloud when they’re coming from nothing, but when you’re dragging 20 years of data centers and legacy software behind you, it’s not always clear what the price tag will be.

Fret not, let’s keep the line on the chart going up and to the right!

“Which is the cheapest cloud?”

This FAQ is similar to asking an attorney “do I have a case?”, or asking a doctor “is it serious?”. The answer depends on knowing which of the cloud services you will use and how you’ll use them — and even then, comparing the costs between cloud providers is difficult.

In their pricing tables, cloud providers are screaming to make you see pennies per hour, per IOP, by ingress, egress, region, zone … you name it. There are even JavaScript calculator that will make you feel really good about the cost.

Upon first glance it’s just so cheap, it feels like shopping a hundred years ago — your dollar is going really far. For cloud novices, some napkin math quickly reveals that their entire infrastructure can be run for just $20 a month with change left over for coffee. Wow, the CFO is going to love you.

Let’s burst this bubble quickly

For any serious cloud application, you have no idea what it’s going to cost until you start using it. No idea. First, different vendors have wildly different ways of measuring and charging that seem obvious at first — but you’ll quickly find the monthly bills are like deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I’ve always found that Google Cloud is particularly painful in this regard. I’ve been using it for ages and I still don’t understand their charging model. Take a look at my recent statement for a personal test environment that isn’t even doing very much:

… see — bird, ankh, scarab, Batman symbol. It makes the additional charges on my cell phone bill look like common sense. And because Google’s environment features a ton of ‘managed services’, I can’t even begin to tell you where some of this usage is coming from.

The first thing to know is that the cloud doesn’t cost pennies.

So clearly this isn’t ideal — what can we do? First, don’t panic and don’t pay attention to the “we bill by the second” promises you’ll hear. Also realize that AWS didn’t become a $15 billion annual business by charging you pennies.

When you’re first starting out on your cloud journey, I would recommend this approach to billing:

Find a sales person at your favorite cloud vendor and ask for some credits for a test drive. Then ask for some more. You’d be surprised what you can negotiate here since it’s hyper-competitive right now.

Run small-scale projects for 1–3 months to get a sense of the actual bills you can expect. Pick simple projects where you have more control.

Employ third-party apps where appropriate to find waste, use monitoring tools to keep a watchful eye on usage, and start tracking costs in your own spreadsheets to get an understanding of how this all works.

Set up alarms in case it goes wildly wrong. If your daily budget averages $100, set an alarm for 25% overage. Don’t get a bill for $2000 and wonder why a week later.

Anytime you do get a surprise bill, go back to the friendly sales person and ask for a refund or credit — I’ve never known them to refuse, especially when you’re in the adoption phase.

When you have more permanent levels of resources in place, take advantage of committed use discounts available, which can save 50–90% depending on the resource type and vendor.

When you have non-critical workloads — such as overnight processing that’s not time critical — take advantage of spot instances (see below).

So the cheapest vendor is … ?

T0 answer the original question…. it depends. For machine learning applications (heavily GPU-biased) with petabytes of data, Google Cloud might be the way to go. For a more traditional Microsoft business application in the cloud, Azure could be the answer. In my line of work, I’ve tended to find AWS pricing the most consistently reasonable — but that’s just me.

Also, pricing in the cloud is dropping all the time — AWS has had 52 consecutive price cuts the last time I checked. Although, occasionally second-tier players spring head-scratchingly-odd increases on their users. The net effect is that your provider of choice now may not be the most competitive long-term. So you’ll need to constantly monitor pricing options to get the best deal, and decide if switching over is worth the effort.

“Why is this so expensive?!”

Part of the cloud migration rite of passage for many companies is suddenly realizing that something is wrong. Very, very wrong. Your friendly cloud salesmen promised you low cost, you promised your boss cost savings, he promised you a promotion and you promised your kids a trip to Disney World. Suddenly the invoices start arriving, promises are evaporating and getting a photo with Mickey Mouse is looking further away than ever. Sadness ensues.

Unfortunately, just because you understand on-premise doesn’t translate to an automatic grasp of the labyrinthine world of cloud billing. Here are some of the most common gotchas that ensnare cloud newbies:

You have too much infrastructure. The high-availability, infinitely-scalable promise of cloud is alluring but for every region you enable and every level of redundancy you add, the cloud faucet is turned on just a little bit more. And this is a metered service so the bill goes upwards. Always balance your actual needs and tolerance for outages (RTO and RPOs, remember those?) with the cost of building cathedrals of virtual infrastructure.

Cloud is like unlimited Christmas lights: it’s fun all month until you get the electric bill.

You did a lift and shift. When you shift a poorly written application from on-premise, you now have a poorly performing application in the cloud. There’s some appalling software out in the wild and you’ll need to fix it before you jam it into AWS. There’s no magic bullet for crap.

You have inefficient code that isn’t taking advantage of cloud alternatives. Some examples I’ve seen include scripts that fiddle with data somehow — ETL scripts in Perl, PHP, Python — that have been obviated by much, much better cloud replacements like Data Pipeline or third party options. Make sure you find and drown these, many of which can be identified by looking at the ‘last modified’ date on the filename. They worked well in their day but inefficiency is expensive in the cloud.

Your developers embraced DevOps too well. Servers are popping up like mushrooms, they’re building out the virtual data centers of their dreams, and they love — just love — the sorts of tools they never had before. They’re so happy. Unfortunately, ka-ching, that’s the sound of Jeff Bezos’ cash register again.

You use 95% of all your on-premise servers consistently all the time. The classic capacity usage chart below is a major selling point for cloud. But there are some use-cases where you are happily running at full capacity constantly and there’s no waste or overage. While there are still benefits to switching to the cloud in this case, saving money isn’t likely to be one of them.

“Up and to the right”.

You have a load of pirated software or unpaid licenses. Some IT departments are more like the Black Pearl than the QE2. I’ve seen this before so it’s worth mentioning that licensing is expensive when legal. *Crickets*

You don’t really fully understand cloud — and that’s okay. Nobody does at the beginning but you’re getting there so hold on! There is a learning curve that everyone goes through and we’ve all faked it until we made it, one way or another. AWS had over a 1000 product releases last year and I can talk knowledgeably about 10 of them. Welcome to the club.

AWS On-demand, Spot, and Reserved Instances — in 1 minute

Few companies use all three instance categories properly so here’s the world’s fastest primer on the differences:

On-demand is the cloud you were promised. You want a server, request it, and it’s there. This is the most expensive option.

Spot instances are available when Amazon has too much capacity and they auction off the excess. You can bid on these instances and if you win you get some cheap compute. These are short-lived instances (think hours not days) that are more suited to workloads needing bursts of extra CPU time. Spot is often the cheapest option but you can’t run a large percentage of your platform on it in most cases.

Reserved instances are guaranteed for your usage but require a 1 or 3-year commitment from you. These are much cheaper than on-demand but you are guaranteeing usage (you can trade out of these arrangements but it’s still a contractual cost).

Other providers have similar approaches. Basically, as you slide from immediacy and convenience towards guaranteed usage, it gets cheaper.

Spot instances for the win.

Effects on The Financials

If you’ve ever worked in enterprise IT, you’ll be familiar with the CapEx vs OpEx battle that accountants get so excited about. The short version is that capital expenditure — which is buying hardware in our space — is good since it creates a tax write-off for a depreciating asset, whereas operating expenses can only be written off in the tax year they were incurred. Although I’m no expert in this area (seriously), I’ve noticed a tendency to write off servers over, say, 3 years and then not replace them for, say, ever. Accountants love this stuff.

Back in the non-accounting reality, if you’re managing on-premise IT infrastructure, your cost accounting is really tricky to the point of being imaginary. For instance, let’s say you are responsible for an inventory management system and a logistics platform. What is the percentage of hardware cost you assign to each system? And if you have personnel supporting both, how do you work out their cost? What about the data center real estate, property taxes, air conditioning and security?

As you drill down the physical stack, it’s gets progressively harder to figure out the costs of your operation, especially when a third system is added. And a fourth. And there’s so much overlap at different levels. Ultimately you create a model that satisfies accounting but isn’t particularly accurate or helpful.

Traditional IT cost accounting: bad for margaritas.

In the cloud world, this is very different since it’s a metered service where you pay for what you use. In the same way you can calculate the amount of electricity used by a given store, piece of equipment or assembly line, you can attribute cloud costs by product, vertical, service or any other metric.

The method gives you a precise accounting for the cost of a development environment, cluster, region or tier. And since you can tag resources, you can apply internal categories — departments, silos or project codes — that make it very easy to compare apples to apples.

TL;DR Summary — Quick!

Here a five quick takeaways for getting a handle on the actual costs of cloud computing:

Cloud is not free or cheap. But it can be engineered to be much cheaper than on-premise once you have some practice.

There are accounting implications when switching over. Accountants will freak out, but our IT brethren will generally be happier.

There’s a process of fine-tuning the cost that takes time. Don’t be surprised if it’s more expensive at the beginning, but dramatically cheaper later on.

Cloud provides more transparency into the actual cost of running infrastructure. Don’t forget to include buildings and personnel cost when comparing like-for-like.

There is a steep learning curve generously peppered with road bumps. This is normal for any massively disruptive technology that turns our world upside down.

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The cloud is on and the meter’s running — avoid the sticker shock of ‘pay as you go’ was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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5 Ways Disney Can’t Stop Screwing Up Star Wars

Star Wars. You love it! You think it’s great. But what if Star Wars stopped being great? That would be bad, right? And bad things aren’t great! Everybody knows that! Seeing as how we’re all in agreement here, let’s talk about the possibility that Disney’s entire strategy for Star Wars might be, as a whole, actually madly deeply verifiably bad. I know it’s painful to fathom such a terrible possibility — I mean, The Last Jedi looks just bonkers — but I can’t help to notice a few glaring red flags. Bad flags. So without further ado …

5

So Far, The New Movies Seem Afraid To Take Chances

For staunch Star Wars nerds burnt out by years of jackass Expanded Universe stories, adding to the Star Wars canon sometimes feels like writing new chapters to the Bible wherein Jesus comes back to fight ISIS with the aid of a talking car. And seeing as how the folks in charge of Star Wars are the ones who grew up on it, the new films feel a smidge unadventurous at times.

Read Next

5 Insane Answers For Questions You Didn't Know You Had

It’s no secret that The Force Awakens mirrors every character and plot point from the Original Trilogy. But what I find staggering is how every new character also geeks out over the old cast. Kylo Ren worships Vader. Poe and Rey know all about the adventures of Han and Luke. It’s as if the screenwriters wanted to make “relatable characters,” and so naturally wrote them as Star Wars fans. The filmmakers aren’t blind to this. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has spoken multiple times about the balance between writing an original story and keeping to the Star Wars tone. But with Rogue One, Lucasfilm’s definition of “original story” was “the movie takes place literally a few days before A New Hope.”

And remember Ass-Face Roy and Joe Walrus from the Mon Eisley Cantina? Hooray or something, they came back in Rogue One!

LucasfilmTheir plot arc is: “Get drunk and wander around the Galaxy.”

This scene is similar to one later in the movie, when we see C-3PO and R2-D2 on Yavin, watching the fleet roll out.

LucasfilmJust in case you’d forgotten what franchise you were watching.

This is weird, considering that they’re in that very fleet in A New Hope. Fans have already done the mental gymnastics required to fix this obvious mistake (“They must have taken a shuttle later into the war zone, because that totally makes sense!”), but the obvious answer is that Lucasfilm simply wanted to shove these characters into Rogue One and didn’t bother to think about it too hard. And hey, when this kind of nostalgia callback inevitably wears off, people will have to confront the merits of the writing itself, y’know?

And let’s talk about the spinoff movies (like Rogue One) for a second. These could explore enigmatic side characters like Boba Fett, jump forward or back centuries, or even completely switch genres. Who wouldn’t want to see a Star Wars noir-style detective film? There are so many amazing options …

BBCOh.

Or make a Han Solo origin, I guess? Hey, wasn’t A New Hope already the Han Solo origin? See, there’s a reason that film began when it did: It was the most interesting point to start. We didn’t need to know what Han was up to before saving the fucking Galaxy any more than we needed to see how Leia got the Death Star plans. These are footnotes to a bigger story. Devoting films to them is like if Peter Jackson made a two-hour Lord Of The Rings spinoff adventure about Aragorn hitchhiking to the Prancing Pony.

What frustrates me here is that it’s not like there aren’t popular Star Wars characters that it wouldn’t be awesome to see the origin of. (Yoda has no doubt seen his share of adventures and/or psychic goblin orgies.) But I think the reason we’re getting Han Solo is because it’s safe from a writing perspective. He’s a beloved character, a known quantity. His “origin” will undoubtedly be a series of unbearable callbacks to minutiae from A New Hope. In other words, brace yourself for a nail-biting “Kessel Run” sequence in which the prize is a vest.

4

Forcing A New Star Wars Every Year Means Rushing Out Crap

Everyone knows that classic I Love Lucy bit in which Lucy’s wrapping chocolate on a production line, and the conveyor goes so fast that she gets desperate and starts eating the candy to keep up, but Lucy still makes billions worldwide, because people will eat chocolate no matter how sloppy and slapdash it is.

If you haven’t puzzled out my brilliant analogy, Star Wars is the chocolate and Lucasfilm is the hilarious 1950s comedienne. Disney has decided that the world deserves a new Star Wars film every 365 days, because nothing says “quality” like deciding the release date before knowing what you’re making. (That’s why restaurants always bring your meal out in exactly five minutes, no matter how undercooked it is.)

The moral of the story is “rushing is dumb.” It’s why back when most TV shows had 20+ episodes a season, we’d get hogwash like clip shows and that one X-Files where the villain was a clowder of cats. We learned over time that it’s better to have a smaller amount of high-quality things than a large amount of poor-quality things. This applies to 99 percent of everything humanity has ever created. And if you don’t believe me, look at the small library’s worth of articles about Lucasfilm’s current production problems.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Lucasfilm’s schedule is so nuts that they’re hemorrhaging writers and directors. The script for A New Hope took three years and four drafts to complete, but the process for Rogue One was so zippy that they were writing pivotal scenes during post-production.

So if you’re wondering why these new films seem to borrow so much from the originals, it’s because who has time to think of something new? Who has time to consider plot holes or character inconsistencies when you’re barreling toward a release date? This is the kind of dumb idea that forces you to panic and fire your directors five months into filming.

So yeah, slow the fuck down, Disney. No one is going to forget Star Wars exists if you skip a year. The world once went, like, 16 years without a new Star Wars movie. Those were some wild days.

3

And, Uh, Stop Hiring Indie Directors

Let’s talk about Colin Trevorrow. For those unaware, Trevorrow got his start with a low-budget film called Safety Not Guaranteed, which was based off of a funny fake ad in the newspaper. It’s a perfectly existing movie. So how did he go from that straight to directing Jurassic World? Well, the studio originally wanted Brad Bird (The Incredibles) to direct, and when Bird declined, he referred them to Trevorrow because he liked Safety. In a world full of qualified sci-fi and action directors, this one reference boosted an indie comedy guy to Spielbergian status. And Hollywood being Hollywood, Trevorrow also got a Star Wars out of the deal, because why the hell not.

That’s when things got stupid. After being personally hired by Spielberg for Jurassic World, the newbie director asserted himself hard during the production process and reportedly became difficult to work with. And while a good director is supposed to lead the charge, his lack of experience contrasted with his overconfidence and created a toxic mix, not unlike electing a reality TV show host to be the president of the United States.

And so when his next film, The Book Of Henry, proved to be a confounding disaster, Trevorrow was hastily dropped from Episode IX and replaced with the much more experienced J.J. Abrams. Look, I have nothing against Trevorrow as a director, but the guy was, well, two movies into his career when they hired him for this massive task. And yet for Star Wars, this is a painfully common practice that almost always leads to problems (which I have pointed out again and again).

When Lucasfilm hired Chris Miller and Phil Lord — directors known for improv-heavy comedies like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie — one would assume they were there to bring that element to the Han Solo film. And you know what? Neat! Considering what I’ve already said about that premise, a Han Solo comedy about improv space shenanigans would have been kinda awesome. But it turns out that wasn’t what Lucasfilm had in mind, and the directors’ slower shooting style and frustration over lack of creative freedom led to them being replaced with smilin’ Ron Howard.

See the pattern yet? Lucasfilm inexplicably hires inexperienced or unique directors, refuses to let them express themselves, and ultimately has to shitcan them. I’m gonna go ahead and call it “Trank Mania” after Josh Trank, whose troubled times directing the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot reportedly led to him losing the Boba Fett solo movie. (Also, “Trank Mania” sounds like an awesome WWE special, so there’s that.)

2

There’s No Single Person In Charge Of The Story

While he didn’t direct two-thirds of the Original Trilogy, George Lucas did oversee the writing and production of all of them. Today we have similar “George Lucases” for other series — Zack Snyder and the DC Extended Universe, Kevin Feige for Marvel, J.J. Abrams for the new Star Trek films, and Peter Jackson for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

And so here’s my question: Who is in charge of these new Star Wars films? Is it Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm? Not really. By her own admission, she and Lucasfilm “haven’t mapped out” the direction of the new trilogy, and have been largely leaving it up to each director to figure it out. And that’s kind of insane, isn’t it? Most film trilogies are championed by a single artist keeping track of the details. And without that, you run the risk of setting up plot points with zero payoffs, or adding twists that contradict previous scenes.

To give you an idea of why this is important, when Alan Rickman played Severus Snape, he was made aware (before anyone else) that his character always had a thing for Harry’s mom. That knowledge dictated the way he played the role long before that twist was revealed. Imagine how less effective that performance would have been if he was told, “Oh, by the way, we decided you’ve been good all along!” at the very end.

And right now, the directors of Star Wars are absolutely making those kind of last-minute decisions. You know the ending of Force Awakens, when Rey and Chewie and R2-D2 show up on Luke’s island of Jedi guano and bring him his lightsaber?

Well, it turns out that J.J. Abrams originally planned for BB-8 to be there, and swapped droids at the request of Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. We don’t know why Johnson needed the switch, but it sure seems weird that they’re doing stuff like that. Meanwhile, J.J. is coming back for the final film, and who knows if his plans will match up with what Johnson has set up?

In fairness, both of these directors are good at what they do. But the whole process still seems like they are flying blind with one hand tied behind their backs. And the oddest thing of all is that no one seems to know exactly where it’s all heading, or really why we’re making these films beyond the fact that people love Star Wars. And that brings me to a pretty dark question …

1

Maybe Star Wars Was Never A Repeatable Premise?

There was no fucking way the Hobbit trilogy, or even a Hobbit solo film, was going to be as good as the Lord Of The Rings films. Tolkien wrote Rings as an epic sequel to The Hobbit, and by reversing that order, the movies lowered the stakes. This is the same problem I’m sensing with Star Wars.

The first films were about the saving the entire goddamn Galaxy from tyranny. They were a definitive, standalone series that highlighted the most important event to happen in that universe. Anything else is supplemental and pales in comparison. The prequels worked (on paper) because they didn’t attempt to tell that same story, and focused more on one man’s transition to the Dark Side. (The delivery did have some issues.) But these new sequels seem unable to do much save repackage the same threats from the original films. “They had a Star Destroyer? Well, we have a Mega Star Destroyer!” “You thought the last Death Star was big? Well, ours is even DEATH-IER!”

Look, I’m honestly not certain I’m 100 percent right about this, but I think somewhere down the line, we overestimated how repeatable of a premise Star Wars really was. The originals were a self-contained trilogy, and after they came out, even George Lucas attempted to pivot off of them and find the next big franchise. (Unfortunately, it was called Willow and failed hilariously.)

But Lucas still continued to spend the next decade searching for original stories for his company to tell, eventually giving in and re-releasing Star Wars in the late ’90s. When Titanic knocked the re-release from the #1 box office spot, he went full tilt and dug up his idea for the prequel. And after that, the world’s never stopped wanting more.

But I believe that through all his attempts to revive the franchise, Lucas knew in his heart that the most important, most epic, and beloved part of Star Wars had long been told.

He knew, deep inside his hirsute gullet, that it was time to move on. That Star Wars would never be as special as that first time.

Unfortunately, it might take the rest of us a bit longer to figure that out.

If you’re George Lucas and wanna vent (or maybe just hang out sometime), contact Dave on Twitter.

The new Star Wars movies may be flawed, and we know porgs are just marketing gimmicks. But goddamnit we want still want porgs.

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