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#instead of the trevor arc in book 2 i was thinking instead making an arc based on the gloria ramirez case
nosfearatus · 3 years
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So I've been thinking through the rewrite I had in mind for open heart and I've decided to put it together chapter by chapter. I might make it into some kind of fanfiction later, but for now I just want to get the outline down.
Chapter 1: Of Dolphins and Sharks
You are an emergency medicine intern at Boston's premier teaching hospital, Edenbrook. The emergency thorectomy occurs as in the original but when the nurses dreamily sigh over Ethan Ramsey, MC asks if that name's supposed to mean something to them, which starts off the running joke of people asking if MC practiced medicine in the woods, which, no, MC just doesn't care to keep up with these doctors outside of any research they've done. MC heads to get changed and encounters Bryce, a neurosurgical intern, and Jackie, an infectious disease intern, mostly sticking to the original, and they all head to the atrium together for orientation. MC is unfamiliar with Harper Emery, but Bryce mentions one of her more famous contributions to a medical journal and MC recognizes her by that.
Then MC meets their senior resident, Zaid Mirani, he's a bit of a jerk but it's easy to read that he genuinely cares about his interns. Throughout the day MC also meets several other doctors when helping emergency patients settle into other wings of the hospital. Sienna is the intern responsible for a kid in the pediatrics wing that MC helped reduce a fracture on and MC immediately notices how kind and warm Sienna is. Elijah is an oncology intern that MC meets when the two of them get lost and are both conveniently looking for the same cancer patient, who is typically an outpatient but was admitted after getting violently ill at work and was brought into the emergency room by handsome and kind paramedic Rafael Aveiro. Landry is a pathology intern who MC meets when running some blood samples from a patient to the lab and he mentions how he looks up to Ethan Ramsey, while MC offhandedly mentions that maybe meeting your heroes isn't a good thing, Ramsey enters the lab and acknowledges MC but not Landry, a fact that awes Landry and makes MC uncomfortable.
The gem scene in chapter 1 is a 15 gem scene where you can just hang out with your new friend group in the cafeteria at lunch and get to know each of them better and learn why they became doctors. You also realize that you guys are really good as friends and decide to move in together, this unlocks the penthouse apartment because you guys jump on it ASAP. It's sweet and friendly while also providing the premium housing without having to resort to underhanded tactics or selling your friend's services. Immediately after lunch MC is getting some menial filing done when the ER is suddenly thrown into pandemonium as a scuffle erupts. Chapter ends.
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Wonder Woman 1984
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The first 3/4 of 2017’s Wonder Woman was my favorite film of that year. The last 1/4 was my least favorite film of that year. What can I say, I have a complicated relationship with the DCEU, and the part I keep getting disappointed by is the big smash-em-up, explosions everywhere, muddy mess of orange/blue filter in the “climactic showdown” between hero and villain. I just don’t have the patience for it anymore, and I was so hoping that the Jazzercise vibes of Wonder Woman 1984 would do something different. 
As it turns out, this movie was trying to warn me like so many stories that have come before - be careful what you wish for. Just how badly did my wish go bad? Well...
I’d already heard some questionable things about the movie before I tuned in, so my expectations were tempered but I guess it was on me. I should have known better than to wish for a story with reasonable pacing, some kind of consistent tone, villains with discernable motivation, or a Wonder Woman movie that was actually about fucking Wonder Woman. I’m not even mad as much as I am puzzled. That and tormented by Pedro Pascal’s manic televangelist energy in my dreams. 
Some thoughts:
I have never wanted to go anywhere as much as I want to in 2020, and the place I want to go more than any other is Themyscira. Love this first sequence. Why is the whole movie not about Themyscira??
If the Olympics were like this whole long Amazonian warrior triathlon, I would be WAY more into track and field. 
Also I legit don’t understand the problem with her taking the short path? Like, it’s there for a reason? She just caught up to her horse? Someone explain this to me.
So this mall...basically the hub of American commerce in the 80s that was practically printing money, it made it so fast...is secretly a front for antiquities trading on the black market? And these unorganized-ass dipshit criminals who seemingly just walked in off the street and decided to engage in some light robbery today are after antiquities? Sure, Jan.
Ohh I miss Waldenbooks so much!
This thwarting of crime sequence in the mall feels so...cheesy. Schlocky, almost. Like a 50s comic book come to life. I dunno, it just doesn’t feel like the tone I was expecting. In the context of the whole film, we really blew our action load in these first 2 sequences, and also this is the last point in the movie in which Diana actually resembles her character from the first film.
I would also be stammery and blushy when talking to Diana Prince for the first (and second) time, but I’m kinda getting a gay vibe from Barbara. This meet-cute + date is definitely playing up romantic vibes. Kristen Wiig is so good at characters like these - in less than 2 scenes, I have such a clear picture of who Barbara is, what she wants, what she fears, and that’s all down to Wiig’s choices. [ETA: This makes it all the more infuriating when Barbara suddenly is like “I want to be an apex predator” when nothing about her character’s reaction to getting positive attention indicates she would want to start shitting all over everyone else.]
Pedro Pascal is skeeving me out as our villain Max Lord, which really just shows his range, because normally I love him and find him wildly charming in everything. But he’s playing this oil baron creep to the max, as they would say in the parlance of the 80s, and it makes my skin crawl. 
The mechanics of how Steve Trevor returns are wildly confusing. Why is this other guy involved at all? Are we supposed to be ok with the idea of Diana fucking *some other dude’s body* without his consent just because Steve’s spirit/consciousness/whatever is inside the guy? Also that guy DEFINITELY got fired from his job after going AWOL for a whole week, right? 
I am thrilled with Steve’s clothes montage. One of my favorite things in any 80s film, and his enthusiasm really sells it.
I do really like Diana and Steve playing detective, following clues, crafting theories. In spite of the absolute dumbassery of how Steve came back, Chris Pine and Gal Gadot have incredible chemistry and I do find their scenes together delightful. 
I think that’s why it’s so frustrating to me the way their entire relationship was handled. If the whole point of the wish going bad is that it has a cost, wouldn’t it have been better, instead of making Diana weak, to have Steve slowly start to be more and more of an asshole - aka not the Steve Diana remembered and loved? Make her realize that the Steve she knew and loved is really gone and she has to stop letting his memory hold her hostage. Maybe his last moment of self-awareness would be realizing that this wasn’t who he really was, and she was better off just remembering who he was and moving on rather than trying to hold on to this thing that isn’t good for her? 
The sequence with the fireworks made me emotional. The only time I’ve ever been on a plane on the 4th of July was when I was coming back from a visit with my uncle in Dallas. He had flown me, my mom, and my grandma down for a whirlwind trip, and we flew back the night of the 4th. I got to see fireworks from above for the first time, and it felt so magical. My uncle passed away 2 months ago, and feeling that magic again (via Diana and Steve) made me miss him and all the adventure he brought into my life something fierce.
Am I supposed to be like...anti- the idea of Barbara absolutely kicking the shit out of this drunk catcaller who attempted to assault her earlier in the movie? It feels like the film wants us to be like “oh no that’s bad” but my empathy goes on vacation for attempted rapists. 
Like...did anyone do ANY kind of fact-checking on this script? The Maya haven’t been “wiped from the face of the earth” there are still 6 million of them living in Central and South America. Escalators were invented in the 1890s for fucks’ sake. PLANES IN THE 80S DONT WORK LIKE PLANES IN 1918. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT ALL THOSE SWITCHES DO STEVE. Also...just because the plane is invisible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore. Isn’t the whole point of radar to detect things that you can’t, y’know, SEE? Seriously, how many people fiddled with this script until it turned into an incomprehensible mess?
Did I Cry? OK yeah, I did when Diana and Steve had their conversation after they escaped the White House. But I feel like I should have cried more then, as well as earlier when Diana tells Steve that she only wants this one thing. I love Gal Gadot in this role, but I do wish her acting expressed a little more emotional depth and honesty for the moments like this that should really tug on the heartstrings.
I know Wonder Woman is bulletproof, but are we saying she’s also...immune to electricity? 
If there’s one thing that living through a global pandemic has taught me, it’s that we can’t rely on the inherent responsibility of every individual person to do the right thing in order to save their community (or the world). So the climax of this film really feels like a big ol’ fictional FUCK YOU to every person who has been quarantining since March as the US government twiddles their thumbs and relies on personal choice to lower infection rates. I know they made this film during 2019 and had no idea what would be coming, but this entire sequence was the most horrifying, short-sighted, offensive way to have good overcome evil I could imagine for a 2020 movie. “Just count on people to do the right thing and everything will be fine!” We’re WELL FUCKING PAST THAT, Diana. 
And maybe this is my debbie downer pessimistic ass, but the message “the world is a beautiful place the way it was” feels like some real bullshit. Do you mean the world is a flawed, complicated place where beautiful things exist DESPITE all the violence, inequality, and poverty? Ok, that I’ll buy, for sure. But “Everything was fine the way it was!” is uhh not what I would have gone with. That’s a first draft edit if ever I heard one. Seriously, how did this make it through MULTIPLE studio drafts and no one thought to point this out?  
I literally had to go back after the credits were over and rewind to figure out what happened to Pedro Pascal at the end. If I not only don’t care, but also can’t remember what happened to the villain at the end of the movie, that’s a big motherfucking problem.
I was giddily delighted by that first post-credits scene though! Probably the biggest moment of joy I felt during the film.
For being a Wonder Woman movie, it feels like there’s so little actual Wonder Woman IN the movie. The first film is rooted firmly in Diana finding her place in the world, understanding and coming into her power. This feels like she’s a bystander in her own life, and her most significant moments are always in the context of someone else’s narrative arc. And there’s nothing that comes even close to the breathless wonder of that No-Man’s-Land scene, aka one of the best superhero movie moments of all time. 
This doesn’t have the knowing wink of Aquaman or the nuanced character arcs of Birds of Prey. It doesn’t have the childish glee of Shazam! or any of the nonsensical grimdark bullshit of Zack Snyder’s entire ouvre. It feels like Wonder Woman 1984 suffers the same fate as its protagonist - a profound lack of presence or drive. Sure there are some fun sequences, and the actors are doing the best they can with a weak script, but it’s just not enough to save it. In a year where I saw so few contemporary films (focusing more on catching up on past films I’d missed), I can’t think of one that disappointed me more. 
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rikebe · 3 years
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Important question: how are you feeling about Trevor being in xfactor investigations?
im honestly really disappointed by how he’s being written in the current x factor run :/
i dont get the motivation behind making trevor all cutesy and uwu when that’s never really been who he is. like he usually ranges from awkward kinda weird kid to being pretty jaded and a straight up cynic and like, who can blame him, he got dealt a pretty bad card by being a freak even among other mutants. trevor already seems like the kind of kid who got picked on in school so having to transfer to mutie school and continue to get bullied there probably wasn’t great for his self esteem LMAO 
like he has been written as like, cute, like in gen x he was pretty sweet and more awkward and occasionally sad than bitter like he was in watxm (he was so jaded in watxm, it was kind of hilarious), but it’s really taken WAAYYY too far in x factor.
this weird attempt to make him, like, the positive ray of sunshine of the group is 1) not really in line with his usual personality and 2) just comes across really weird. like he’s a teenager, he’s 16+ at least, and he acts like a child, and not even a well-written one. the santo thing is especially painful to me because they went to the JGS at the same time and instead of being, like, horrified that his former classmate has been basically lobotomized he’s just like “haha neat can we keep him” like trevor are you fucking okay? then again none of the x kids reacted to their FRIEND BEING PRETTY MUCH DEAD in a normal way. you know, the academy x kids who had to watch their friends die by the dozens would probably feel some kind of way about losing one of their own after being promised over and over they wouldn’t have to go through that kind of thing again. but hey i guess they were too busy throwing an epick rager to care about that
in general i’ve been really disappointed by x-factor. i was really excited about the lineup initially (i mean, rachel, akihiro, david, trevor??? hello is it my birthday???) until i saw who’s writing it LMFAO. i’m not at all happy about how akihiro’s ““““redemption arc”“““ is being handled because it has 0 emotional weight and feels really empty, his relationship with aurora is unearned and based on nothing. also all the stale memes the writer insists on putting into all her work that just give me a migraine. i have to admit there are occasionally good character moments, like julian calling sofia beautiful blew my dome straight off (THATS HIS NICKNAME FOR HER! THAT WAS THEIR THING!!!), the x-kids interactions were fun but you know, i’ll do anything for those sweet sweet x-kids. akihiro had some moments since he did a complete 180 from being a horndog who only cares about boning down to being like “im actually a very deep person u know” which was insanely jarring in itself. but mostly it’s a disappointing book for me
TLDR look at how they massacred my boy. i think trevor is much more fun being weird, awkward and bitter than this like. excitable puppy of a person who’s honestly really grating. i do like the visual representation of his power though, it’s a fun touch
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charliejrogers · 3 years
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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis
Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.
Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.
But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?
So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.
Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?
Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.
But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.
The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.
That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.
These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.
And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.
Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.
And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.
**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)
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wall-of-history · 3 years
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BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui is Still as Beloved as Fans Remember: A Response to Comic Book Resource and Matthew Attanasio
Hey everyone! I’m James, the guy behind Wall of History. I know I rarely drop the facade of my brand on official Wall of History accounts, but today, I’d like to make a more casual, opinionated post on something that’s been getting a lot of attention from the BIONICLE community on Twitter.
Last night, Comic Book Resources posted an article titled “BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui is Still as Pointless as Fans Remember,” and if you have even a surface-level familiarity with the BIONICLE community, I’m sure you can guess the reaction we had — CBR’s tweet was pretty quickly ratioed by fans, drawing comments like, “Comic book resource [sic] once again proving you do not require a brain to type,” and, “We think that the Vahki would like to have a word with you guys." BIONICLE fans generally agree that Legends of Metru Nui is the best film in the franchise, so claims that we universally “remember” it in such a negative light are completely baseless — I’d like to move past the inflammatory title, however, and analyze the actual contents of the article.
LEGO's decision to focus on prequel material was received as a slap in the face. While fans were ready to see the story press forward, it instead fell backwards to tell stories that held little significance to the ‘present day’ plot of the franchise.
To say that the story of Metru Nui held “little significance” to the plot of the franchise is ridiculous. For three years, fans had been given only vague legends about the origins of the Matoran and their struggle with the Makuta, and after Makuta’s defeat, “pressing forward” meant returning to the world they had left behind following the Great Cataclysm. To introduce us to that world and show us how the Matoran came to be in their present situation was an obvious next step for the story.
That's not to say the various comics and novels didn't deliver interesting stories; they did.
That’s true, they did! However, the rest of this article gives me reason to believe you didn’t actually read them (or, at the very least, didn’t pay attention when you did).
They just weren't what fans craved at the time. Legends of Metru Nui failed to bring anything valuable to the table in this regard, with a sloppy story, terrible pacing and forgettable characters.
There are numerous claims and implications throughout this article (we’ve already glossed over one) that BIONICLE fans generally felt certain ways about this film, as well as this story arc as a whole, but none of these claims are backed up. To blatantly misrepresent the feelings of the community like this is rather poor journalism.
Regarding your claim that Legends of Metru Nui failed to bring anything valuable to the table, I’ll reiterate my point from above — the ending of Mask of Light saw the Matoran take the first steps toward reclaiming their home, a home that had been hidden from us, the fans, since the inception of the franchise. Showing us why and how this home was lost in the first place proved to be a vital step in expanding the scope of the BIONICLE legend. Makuta’s actions in Legends of Metru Nui ended up being the inciting incident for the rest of the story, a story that was largely set in the Matoran Universe introduced by this arc.
Your claim that the film has forgettable characters is, like your claim that fans generally remember this film negatively, demonstrably false. Vakama is widely regarded as one of the best characters, if not the best character, in the franchise (the last post on this very blog is evidence of this), and Nidhiki proved to be so popular that his origin story was later relayed to us twice, in the short story “Birth of a Dark Hunter” and the novel BIONICLE Legends #4: Legacy of Evil.
These new heroes are Vakama, Nokama, Matau, Onewa, Whenua and Nuju, Toa of Fire, Water, Air, Stone, Earth and Ice, respectively. Whereas Mask of Light's Toa Nuva were already fan-favorites, the Toa Metru were a mixed bag, and this film did nothing to help their image. In truth, all three of the main Bionicle films failed to highlight how awesome the Toa could be, which is a shame.
BIONICLE is not the story of the Toa. It’s the story of the Matoran.
In the behind the scenes featurette on the Legends of Metru Nui DVD, the narrator makes the odd claim that both Mask of Light and Legends of Metru Nui are “all about the Toa.” This claim is odd not just because Mask of Light literally isn’t about the Toa (it’s mostly about two Matoran), but also because the Matoran have always been the heart of the franchise — a fact that Legends of Metru Nui comments on.
Many fans feel that Mata Nui: The Online Game is the best BIONICLE media, and it’s a story that largely focuses on the Matoran. You play as a Matoran, you primarily interact with Matoran, you solve Matoran problems… and until the very end, the Toa are mostly off doing their own thing. This makes for a really compelling story, precisely because the Matoran aren’t “awesome” like the Toa. It’s cool when the Toa unite their elemental powers to make the Makuta explode into a pile of scrap metal, but it’s compelling when the Matoran armies, whose leaders previously seemed preoccupied with their own problems, unite to save the ragtag Chronicler’s Company from what would have been a deadly Rahi attack.
The Matoran have always been the emotional heart of the BIONICLE legend (the Toa’s stories do focus on saving them, after all), and Legends of Metru Nui understands this. When Lhikan tells Vakama to “save the heart of Metru Nui,” the Toa Metru immediately assume he’s talking about himself… and that kind of makes sense! Lhikan is, after all, the last Toa, a fearless, noble hero, and the last bastion of light in a city being consumed by shadows. Of course he’s the heart of Metru Nui! The Toa Metru spend most of the film searching for Lhikan, but when they find him, he’s not the hero he used to be anymore — he’s a small, frail Turaga now, and he berates Vakama for seeking out him instead of saving the true heart of Metru Nui, the Matoran. This is a great twist, not only because it finally delivers on some of the spooky foreshadowing from earlier in the film, but also because it sends a clear message to the audience that the Matoran are the heart of this legend.
The plot revolves around Vakama's (voiced by Alessandro Juliani) inner struggle to realize who he is. If that sounds familiar, it's because that was basically the plot of the first Bionicle film, which handled these themes in a much stronger way.
While it’s true that Takua and Vakama both struggle to accept their destinies as Toa, I feel Vakama’s struggle is the stronger of the two, as his is based in the very relatable anxiety of impostor syndrome.
That's largely because Vakama, along with just about every other character in the film, is incredibly boring.
This is one of the comments I mentioned above that makes it hard for me to believe you actually read the comics and novels that tell the rest of the Metru Nui story. Vakama’s character arc is undoubtedly the most complex in the franchise, based in relatable anxieties, and actually has a clear beginning, middle, and end (contrast this with the more repetitive character arcs of the Toa Nuva, who have to learn about the importance of unity several times over before they finally internalize it).
Despite being the protagonist, Vakama has an incredibly erratic and unfocused arc, while Whenua (voiced by Paul Dobson) and Nuju (voiced by Trevor Devall) receive next to no development at all.
This latter statement regarding Whenua and Nuju is true, but I don’t think it works as a criticism of the film, which is clearly meant to focus on Vakama, Lhikan, the Matoran, and the Makuta. Rarely does a film with an ensemble cast give a complete arc to every single character, and if it keeps the film more focused, that’s a good thing.
And whereas the antagonistic Makuta had a consistent, threatening presence in Mask of Light, he's an absolute joke here.
He eats people in this movie!
However, much like Mask of Light, Legends of Metru Nui maintains the problem of poor editing to the point of being laughably bad. There are transitions and cuts that make absolutely no sense. The movie struggles to let scenes settle and develop, with many in the middle lasting no longer than a minute, which is extremely jarring to watch.
Alright, I’ll give you this one — the editing could stand to be a bit more polished. It’s a film that’s trying to juggle quite a few plot threads, though, so I think its ambition makes its editing shortcomings forgivable.
For example, in the comics, writer Greg Farshtey explains why Vakama experiences visions of the future. But in the film, there's no explanation for this at all, making it seem like Vakama has clairvoyant powers out of nowhere (not that his vision [sic] do anything substantial in the film).
This is an extremely odd comment, because it’s just not true on either count. Vakama’s visions are never explained in the comics, but they are explained in the film, barely fifteen minutes in: “Visions can be a sign of madness, yes, or messages from the Great Spirit.”
The claim that Vakama’s visions contribute nothing substantial to the film is also objectively false, since his visions are what compels the team to go after the Great Disks, from which Vakama crafts the Mask of Time.
There are plenty of other small lines and instances that ignore the continuity, like Whenua commenting on how he went from being a Matoran archivist to a Toa fugitive in a day. That's obviously not how it works -- the disk hunt alone takes a while in both the comics and the film, so Whenua's statement makes no sense.
Whenua’s line is, “When I woke up, all I worried about was cataloging.” He does not explicitly claim to have been a Matoran when he woke up. All this line does is show that Whenua thought he’d be able to return to his life as an archivist now that the Morbuzakh and Krahka had both been defeated.
Of course, nowadays, many Bionicle lore scribes have properly allotted the film in the larger Bionicle timeline. But at the time of release, it felt like Legends of Metru Nui was blatantly going against everything that was already happening in the canon, which was upsetting and/or painful to watch.
Do you have a source confirming that fans felt this way at the time? As I briefly discussed earlier, this article is filled with implications that BIONICLE fans in general feel the same way about Legends of Metru Nui that you do (this is even made explicit in the title), but none of these implications are backed up, and this is simply not the case.
For the true fans out there, revisit this film if you want. Just don't expect anything special.
I watched it just the other day and had a great time! And the last time I hosted a stream of it, we all had a great time! And this brings me back to the core issue with this article: the baseless claim, in both the title and contents, that BIONICLE fans generally dislike Legends of Metru Nui. Perhaps it’s odd to write a response like this for what’s probably a pretty harmless article. Perhaps it’s an overreaction. But to see a huge site like CBR publish an article like this, that's not just full of factual inaccuracies, but also misrepresents the feelings of most of this community, is upsetting. To ascribe this kind of negativity to a generally friendly community, a community that so genuinely loves what we love, flaws and all, for some clickbait ad revenue… is upsetting.
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thestray · 3 years
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The 62 2020 Movies Releases I Watched During 2020 Ranked
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Like the awkward title says, I’m going to rank (and talk about) all the 2020 movies I watched in 2020. This is not meant as any empirical list of what was best, it’s ranked by what I liked the least to the most, and my main criteria is what kind of impact it had on me and/or how much I enjoyed the experience of watching it.
Little bit about myself, I went to art school for animation, then after art school I went to a community college where I studied screenwriting. Never ended up pursuing either thing professionally, but I still write screenplays in my free time and read screenwriting books and listen to screenwriting podcasts. I'm the type of person that loves special features, seeks out behind the scenes information and director interviews, and watch youtube videos analyzing films. I love film, and thinking about film and talking about film and sharing the films I like, and maybe one day making films of my own, who knows.
Ranking and reviewing 62 movies was a more ambitious and challenging task than I anticipated, I rearranged this list swapping titles back and forth so many times, and then I’d remember a movie I forgot I watched and have to add that and figure out where it ranks. I started this on January 1st and am just now ready to post it on the 17th, I was still switching rankings right up until posting this. Even looking at it now there are some kinda want to switch but I’ve accepted that this is more or less arbitrary, lol. 
The more I learn about film and what goes into creating a movie the more lenient I am about them. It’s not like I’m never critical of films, but I try to consider both the good and the bad of a movie instead of thinking in a binary of films are either amazing or trash. Some of these films aren’t great, but I typically still enjoyed them to some degree. Except Mulan, lol. I’m sorry Mulan. Speaking of Mulan...
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62. Mulan
I'm going to try to say something nice about all these movies even if I didn't like them at all. So... I like the cast, and there are some nice visual moments. I actually was looking forward to this movie before reviews started coming out, it has 2 of the martial arts G.O.A.T.s in it, Donnie Yen and Jet Li, and also Jason Lee as the bad guy, so I figured it might at the very least have some decent action, but they were all underutilized. There’s not a single moment in the film where I felt anything at all. I think all these Disney live-action remakes are doing is making a case for how effective animation is for storytelling.
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61. Color Out of Space
I heard a lot of good things about this movie, and it’s really cool visually, and I love Nicolas Cage always, but I really couldn’t get into it. I guess my main issue is that it starts off already too campy for any of to the Lovecraftian horror to really hit. It felt like a B-movie with great production value, and maybe that’s what they were going for? I really wanted to like this but I really just did not feel invested in anything going on, did not relate to anyone in the family, so I don’t think I got much out of it besides the cool visuals.
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60. Bloodshot
I think the main flaw of this movie is that is that Vin Diesel was a producer on it, and Vin Diesel should be kept away from making creative decisions on movies. How Did This Get Made did a great podcast episode on this movie. It’s absolute nonsense, it has a couple of cool sequences and special effects in it, and Lamorne with a British accent is great, he’s the main redeeming value of this movie.
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59. The Midnight Sky
It seems like this movie wants to be Interstellar, it’s structured in a very similar way, but it just didn’t quite have that same emotional punch. It looks very good, it’s well-acted, it has it’s moments.
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58. The New Mutants
It's not as much of a trainwreck as people make it out to be in my opinion, I think the cast is good and it has some good character interactions, but it mostly suffers from the fact that it's way too predictable, from the beginning you're way ahead of the characters, and it doesn't help that they're in this confined setting so there's not a lot for them to actually do. But I appreciate the attempt at using mutants to do a horror breakfast club thing, good concept.
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57. Vampires vs The Bronx
Vampires as a gentrifiers taking over the hood, great idea. Mero is in it, the brand is brolic. It was a fun set up, but it was neither funny enough or scary enough in my opinion. The vampires die so easily it's like okay whatever. It's like a really long Goosebumps episode.
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56. Freaky
I don't think the execution lived up to the great concept, but Vince Vaughan was really great in those sincere moments playing a teenage girl. Horror fans will appreciate the gory kills. I'm not going to spoil anything but I do think there are some narrative issues that keep this from being stronger than it could've been. If you made the killer a creepy janitor at the school or even one of the teachers, then I think that would've created more interesting situations.
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55. Eurovision
I love Will Ferrell, I even love some of his flops like Casa De Mi Padre and Kicking and Screaming, and even the House I think had a lot of really funny moments. This was definitely one of the least funny movies he's done to me. I think the director David Dobkin couldn't commit to being silly the way Adam McKay can cause there's a lot of this movie that just has no jokes, and the movie is over 2 hours long which isn't normal for comedies so you spend a lot of time watching unfunny scenes and extended musical numbers.
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54. The Wrong Missy
I'm not a big fan of most Happy Madison movies, the jokes are very hit or miss for me. I'm a big fan of Lauren Lapkus though so I watched it to support her, and she plays an absolute psycho in this. It's so over the top it's like this character is not a human being, but I have to admit there are a few moments where she made me laugh pretty loud. I'd never watch this movie again, but maybe I'd look up certain parts on youtube.
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53. The Platform
High concept dystopian sci-fi horror. Reminds me of the Cube. It's one of those things that makes you think about what you'd do in the same situation. It's a very on the nose allegory, so by the end of it my only takeaway was "Yeah, it really be like that." 
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52. Archenemy
Another high concept movie. Joe Mangienello is good in it, but Glenn Howerton and Paul Scheer are my favorite parts of the movie, it's fun to see comedy actors play bad guys. My main problem with the movie was that I did not find the teen character to be interesting or relatable at all, in fact he can be kind of obnoxious. In his introductory scene he's REALLY bothering this random guy minding his own business, not respecting his boundaries at all. Then the rest of the movie is about him exploiting a homeless man and being really pushy for likes on some app, and he doesn't really have a character arc. Also wasn't a big fan of the animated sequences but I forgive that knowing this was a low budget movie and those sequences were done by a team of just 3 people. 
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51. Power
Jamie Foxx is great. I think he makes almost anything he's in watchable to some degree. The idea of this movie is fun but I think the action sequences are kinda underwhelming, but Jamie makes it worth watching in my opinion.
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50. Birds of Prey
This movie was all style and absolutely no substance. When your main character doesn't have a solid purpose or goal you're really just watching shit happen, and that can be okay if the shit that's happening is occassionally fun or funny, but it doesn't really make for a memorable story in my opinion.
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49. Wonder Woman 84
The most panned movie of 2020 maybe? It's got flaws for sure and some narrative choices I just can't understand why they made. It has some fun performances though and I ultimately appreciated that our superhero wins not by using her fists but by appealing to goodness. I feel like you rarely see that kind of idealism any more. It may not be realistic but I think that's one of the things fantasy is good for, showing us a way things could be better to strive for. But yeah, the Steve Trevor things was fucking weird, why'd they do that? And neither Steve or Diana seem concerned with about this random guy's fate. I'd probably rate this film higher if they had Steve simply appear out of thin air, I mean why not? It's magic. But I loved Kristen Wig and Pedro Pascal in this. Pedro is performing with his whole body, did he film this after season 1 of the Mandolorian? Maybe being under that helmet for a season made him want to be really expressive. The films overall kinda campy but I didn't necessarily mind that.
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48. Peninsula
Sequel to the already classic Train to Busan, this film decides the up the scale, which is what sequels often do, but I think it was a mistake in this instance. This is more of an over the top action movie than a character-driven horror film like the first. There's a climactic Mad Max-esque car chase scene that is almost entirely CGI. I don't think it was a bad movie, it's an okay popcorn flick, but it definitely doesn't live up to the original.
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47. The Old Guard
In terms of action I don't think it did anything interesting, but I like how they explored how horrific and heartbreaking it would be to be immortal. Coming to terms with your own mortality is a tough thing to do, but we often don't consider the idea that death is a blessing we take for granted. 
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46. Sputnik
A Russian sci-fi thriller about a young doctor being tasked with trying to figure out how to separate an alien parasite from a Cosmonaut that's returned from earth. Good performances, creepy vibe, and lots of interesting questions about ethics. It has a sort of epilogue ending with a reveal I didn't quite understand the significance to the story, but didn't take away from either. Solid.
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45. The Invisible Man
Fun sci-fi thriller about toxic abusive relationships and gaslighting. Elizabeth Moss is great in it and my favorite sequences are before her character actually catches on and you have moments where the camera is just focusing on a random place, very creepy and effective.
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44. Sonic the Hedgehog
Personally I would've preferred a fully animated film taking place in Sonic's world. I don't know why they always feel like they need to make these movies about human characters and then spend a lot of time having to hide your CG character and having people do comical reactions to them. It feels very played out to me. BUT Jim Carrey is great in this, of course. Jim Carrey is the reason to watch this movie. He makes the movie. And it goes without saying thank God they changed that character design.
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43. 2067
What I liked about this dystopian future is that the cause was basically everything. War, famine, ruining the environment, pandemics, just all our collective fuckery has resulted in a world where the human race is on the verge of extinction, plants are extinct, and oxygen is synthetic. Enter time travel, a young man is tasked with traveling into the future to bring back the solution to saving the human race. Very timely obviously. I liked it.
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42. Monsters of Man
Some asshole tech bros let some killer robots loose on a remote southeast asian village as a trial run. It has lots of flaws but I give it some leeway because this is the first film of a guy who wrote, directed and was the cinematographer by himself, he didn't have a huge budget or much experience, so it's hard to expect perfection. My biggest criticism is that the film centers a white guy living in this village and some westerner medics, not the actual Asian people of the village. Could've been so much more of interesting commentary about racism and eurocentrism dropping these robots in a village of brown people no one will miss just for practice. That aside though I think it was a solid enough thriller and the robots looked pretty good.
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41. Family Romance LLC
An interesting movie about a Japanese entrepreneur who has a business where he'll play whatever role in your life you need. Father, husband, coworker, etc there's a scene where someone even pays him to be scolded in his place by his boss. The main thrust of the film though is him playing the role of a girl's absentee father, pretends to reconnect with her and take her out on the town for activities. It's shot very documentary style, and there are a mixture of first time actors and non-actors. Sometimes there are long awkward conversations that feel just as awkward as real life. I really liked the premise, and the only thing that keeps it from being higher on my list is it doesn't have a strong enough conflict nor does it really have a satisfying conclusion.
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40. Over the Moon
Directorial debut of animation legend Glen Keane, I really liked this visually. It was sufficiently enjoyable, but it doesn't have that emotional gut punch that Pixar or Disney films tend to have. But I guess cartoons don't NEED to make you bawl your eyes out to be good. I think there were some missed opportunities narratively, like I guess this is spoilery so just scroll ahead if you don't want to know, but she gains a step brother that she doesn't like and doesn't want to spend time with, once the adventure starts on the Moon they get separated very early on, and don't ge reunited until towards the end, but she somehow now cares about him and considers him her brother. I didn't feel like that was really earned, they should've been together throughout the adventure getting to know each other. But I otherwise liked the story aside from that nitpick. Loved the colors of this movie, almost everything in the moon world is luminescent which provides some nice visuals. Hope to see Glen direct more in the future.
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39. The Croods 2
Nothing revolutionary but it has some solid physical comedy and great voice acting. All of Nicolas Cage's overacting is perfect for animation, and I liked Peter Dinklage as Mr. Betterman as well. There's a lot going on thematically but it all works pretty cohesively.
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38. #ALIVE
Another Korean zombie thriller. I really liked this because I felt like as far as zombie outbreaks go this is the most realistic scenario. Once you realize what's going on you will just stay in your house rather than risk going outside and fighting zombies. But that poses the problem of a limited supply of food and water. The main thrust of the movie is not how this character survives though it's about him trying to retain his will to live. It's the perfect pandemic isolation allegory.
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37. Love and Monsters
It looked kinda corny but I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. I like Dylan O'Brien, I love Tom Holland as Peter Parker but I've always felt like Dylan O'Brien would've been a great choice too, he has a good everyman relatable quality. There's also a dog in the movie that I loved. Put a dog in peril in a movie and I will be on the edge of my seat guaranteed. It's a fun movie with some interesting creatures in it and a solid character arc for our main protagonist.
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36. Extraction
I love the trend of stunt coordinators directing films. That's the main reason why the John Wick series is so good, and the reason why this also has some very solid action. Nothing crazy here in terms of story or themes, everything is an excuse for Chris Hemsworth to fuck people up and it delivers on that. There's one scene where he slaps around some kids attacking him that I found hilarious as well. Fully welcoming an Extraction 2.
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35. Save Yourselves
A couple decides to take a break from social media and get away to a cabin outside the city. While they're disconnected from the world an alien invasion occurs, furry little basketball sized poofs. This movie was pretty funny. I'm a little ambivalent about the ending but I enjoyed these hipsters arguing about what to do about aliens.
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34. Bill and Ted Face the Music
A most bodacious movie. Fun gags and a robot that steals the show. It's not as good as the first 2 but I don't think that's any surprise. I think it borrows a little bit too much from the previous films, like the collecting legendary musicians thing, could've done without that. It was a fun movie though, and the daughters really worked.
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33. An American Pickle
Seth Rogen playing an orthodox Jew who's been preserved in pickle juice for 100 years and his modern day app developer grandson. I think this may be Seth Rogen's best acting role, as silly as this movie is he's kind of endearing as this character from 100 years aro, and as the grandson he's a lot more understated than he usually is in movies.
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32. Tenet
Tenet! Is it controversial that this is not higher up on the list? I really like Nolan's films, actually been a fan since watching his first film Following in a film class. Nolan likes playing with time in his movies so it was inevitable that he'd do something that addresses it very directly eventually. I love the time travel genre and I think this is one of the most ambitious and unique approaches to it to ever done. I actually braved theaters to see this because I did not want to miss the opportunity to see it on the big screen. I did it as safely as possible and booked a reserved seating theater where I knew I wouldn't be sitting by anyone, had a mask, gloves, antibacterial gell on deck, sanitized my seat with wipes, etc, there only 2 other people in the theater all of us sitting way for from each other. Weirdest moviegoing experience I've ever had but glad I saw it on the big screen because the visual spectacle of this is excellent. The reason it's not higher on the list is because as conceptually cool as it is as I did not feel invested. Just on a story level having a character we know very little about pursuing a goal he knows very little about for no clearly defined reason makes it feel like... we're just watching events unfold as opposed to watching a character-driven story. There's a moment at the end that you can tell was meant to be an emotional moment, but I felt nothing. They try to introduce some emotional stakes with the female character, but idk, since it wasn't tied to the inciting incident it felt more like a b-plot than fundamental to the story. So it was a really fun cool looking puzzle, more like watching a cool Rube Goldberg machine, but not something I really thought much about after it was over.
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31. Guns Akimbo
I really have been enjoying Daniel Radcliffe's post-Harry Potter career, he'll do some solid dramas he seems to prefer doing fun weird shit like Swiss Army Man, Horns, his role on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, etc. This is in that vein of fun weird shit, a guy who gets guns bolted to his hands and is running around the city in a robe trying to survive essentially a real life video game. A lot of the movies lower on this list had fun concepts but were lacking in execution, but this is one that is just as fun as the idea sounds, even more fun actually, it's funny, the action is good, and there are some great visuals. I found it all around enjoyable.
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30. Let Them All Talk
Glen Close as a celebrated author who invites her nephew and 2 estranged best friends on a cruise with her.  It's a very light-hearted movie with some underlying conflicts that the characters are afraid to address head on. Glen Close is great, obviously, she plays this pretentious self-important woman with affectations but is still likable and warm. It's a fairly pleasant almost slice-of-life until the 3rd act where everything comes together. To me it was a movie about communication, saying what you mean, saying what you feel, and those unspoken assumptions of what those around you are thinking or feeling about you. I know I can relate to the idea of wanting an apology from someone who might not even be cognizant of the fact that you feel slighted by them, or vice versa finding out someone's had a long standing problem with you when you thought you were cool. One sided grudges do no one any good.
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29. True History of the Kelly Gang
I've heard of Ned Kelly, but I've never seen the Heath Ledge or Mick Jagger movies about him and I don't know much about him other than he's a famous Australian outlaw and something of a folk hero to some. The performances and cinematography if this are great. George MacKay from 1917 is the lead and he's amazing, sometimes vulnerable and soft, other times a madman. It spends a lot of time in his childhood and the child actor who plays Ned is great as well. It's gritty and sometimes surreal in it's imagery. From what I can gather previous films seemed to focus more on what happened with him and his gang, while this movie seems to focuses more on everything in his life that led up to him becoming who he is and forming that gang. Like a 3rd of the movie is spent in his childhood, and once the gang is actually formed things move at a pretty brisk pace, seemingly skimming over the exploits of the gang to the conclusion. The film feels very raw and gritty and very fuck the police which I always appreciate.
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28. Lucky Grandma
A stubborn grandma in New York's chinatown gets her fortunte read and is told that she's going to be very lucky and come into a fortune, she then comes into possession of a bunch of money that belongs to a gang and she decides to try to keep it feeling it's owed to her by the universe. A funny crime drama with the unlikeliest of protagonists.
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27. Da 5 Bloods
Spike Lee is an icon but he can honestly be a little hit or miss for me. I don't always enjoy every choice he makes, for instance he uses real footage of war attrocities in this, and it's really upsetting to see REAL people, including children, be killed, when you're not expecting that. I understand it's meant to be upsetting, but it does make the movie something I'll probably never rewatch. Spike Lee's films to me can also feel at times heightened to the point that it feels a little cheesy (Miracle At St Anna), and there moments in this that kinda took me out of it to be honest, but overall I enjoyed it. The performances were great, Delroy Lindo in my opinion is one of the most underrated actors of all time, he's just always good no matter what he's in, everyone else in it is good too, but of course I have to mention Chadwick Boseman who was great. At the end of the day it gave me a lot to think about in terms or race, war, America, forgiveness, trauma and so many other things.
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26. The Devil All The Time
There's a LOT going on in this movie, maybe a little too much, it's like 2 or 3 movies smashed into one, but... I really liked it, and that's probably because Tom Holland is so good in it.  Really liked Robert Pattinson in it too. I can’t really think of more to say about it say I won’t. Next movie.
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25. Bad Education
A true crime movie about school district officiala who stole from the budget of a highschool. Hugh Jackman is great in this. I loved Jackman as Wolverine, but now that he's done with that I'm excited to see him other stuff cause he's always interesting to watch; The Fountain, Prisoners, The Prestige, he's always solid. I enjoyed this, it was done with nuance, it doesn't let them off the hook for what they did but it doesn't paint them as absolute monsters either. I really have to ask myself, if I could get away with stealing money that no one would miss... I don't know, I think I'd not do it out of fear not altruism, lol.
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24. My Octopus Teacher
This is a documentary on Netflix about a diver who immerses himself in the world of underwater life and documents the life of an octopus. It's really beautiful, both in terms of visuals and in content. There's not a lot to talk about because it's fairly straightforward, but it was really fascinating to learn about this octopus and see the bond they mutually formed, and again I can't talk about how great this movie looks, it's like you're in a different world. This is something I could put in and mute while I draw just for the ambiance. 
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23. Kajillionaire
A quirky dramedy about a family of really obtuse poor scam artists. As absurd as their behaviour is I can totally imagine a trio of weirdos like this living in Los Angeles ( I can say that cause it's my hometown and where I lived most of my life. It's Evan Rachel Wood's best role, I never would've imagined her doing something like this but she's great as "Old Dolio". It's funny, at time sad but not in a hammy melodramatic way, and I feel it had the perfect ending.
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22. The Gentleman
Guy Ritchie doing what he does best. It's fun, stylish, witty, has layers and twists and reveals. Everybody's good in it. It doesn't have anything poignant to say, but it's fun to watch the entire time
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21. Run
A thriller about a wheelchair bound teen who suspects her mother is drugging her and tries to get to the bottom of it. You can tell this director is a Hitchcock fan because it definitely has that Rear Window vibe but takes it a step further, and in many ways it's even shot and paced like Hitchcock. The lead actress is actually wheelchair bound herself so it really adds to the realism of all the things she does in this film. Oh, and Sarah Paulson is the mom, when is Sarah Paulson ever not good?
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20. Horse Girl
Alison Brie is an awkward neurotic woman getting over recent grief and a history of mental illness in her family, she starts to have weird dreams and then notices people from her dreams in real life, starts blacking out and having gaps in time, and starts to believe it's due to alien abduction conspiracy. Is she losing her mind or is it really happening? Alison Brie is really really good in this, and she co-wrote it too, it has a lot of moments where you really feel sorry for her or scared for her and you start to question what's real yourself.
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19. Swallow
I  found this movie really fascinating, it's like what if you turned one of those My Strange Addiction episodes on TLC into a movie. It's about this woman who ostensibly, at least from appearances, has the perfect life (at least by societal standards), she came from nothing and is now housewife to a rich successful man, and behaves almost like a Stepford wife. Then develops a compulsion to swallow inedible things, like marbles and batteries and thumbtacks, which is a real condition called pica. Its the kind of movie that gives you a lot to think about but no easy answers.
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18. Time to Hunt
A Korean heist thriller set in the near future. A bunch of childhood friends rob the wrong person and have an Anton Chigurh-esque killer sent after them to retrieve the money and kill them. It's a really tense cat and mouse thriller with good performances. The ending seemed to turn a lot of people off based on a lot of youtube comments I read, but I didn't mind it. My only real gripe is that they set this in the near future but aside from some imagery in the beginning it doesn't seem to come into play that much, this all could've taken place in modern day or even the past with no alteration of the story. I think the future setting was more just for some social commentary that maybe went over my head a little bit because I'm not from Korea, but I think if they were going to do near future they could've added some futuristic weapons or something. But that's just nitpicking, while the future setting didn't add to the story much it didn't take away from it either.
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17. Tigertail
As I get older one of my worse fears is making decisions that I will regret for the rest of my life, so this movie really hit home as a cautionary tale. It's a kind of quietly devastating movie. There's no huge tragic horrific even, just a huge miscalculation. Decades of your life of work and unhappiness go by and all you can do is wonder what things could've been. I also especially appreciated the cinematography and music of this film.
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16. Mother
It's been a while since I hated a character this much, but this titular mother really pissed me off. She's a neglectful mother who only sees her son as a tool, but he sticks by her cause he loves her. It's definitely not a fun movie to watch, but it made me feel a lot and meditate on the idea of love and whether it in itself has innate value.
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15. Call
I went into this movie cold, having no idea what it was really about other than that it was a thriller that revolved around a woman getting mysterious calls. I'm glad I had seen no trailers and did not know the gist of the plot becuase it went places I really was not expecting. One of the most fun thrillers I've seen in a while. So, I'm not going to talk about the movie but what I will say is that Jeon Jong-seo, who played the woman in Burning is in this, she was great in Burning and she's great in this. After watching it I googled her to see what else she's been in that I can watch and this is only her 2nd film. Apparently Burning was her first audition EVER and she BOOKED IT! Like, one a million success story right? But she deserves it cause she's great and I look forward to seeing what else she does.
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14. Possessor
This was directed by Brandon Cronenberg, the son of David Cronenberg, big shoes to fill, and I think he's going to fill them fine cause this is already a cult classic in my opinion. The visuals in this, which look like they were mainly created with practical and in camera effects. There is some very graphic very realistic violence in this. The movie is about an assassin who works for an organization and uses some type of scientific process to "possess" people to carry out hits. When she's in a body for too long who's in control starts to blur. It's really fucking trippy, like a fucked up Black Mirror episode.
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13. Borat 2
Been a fan of Sacha since the old Da Ali G Show days when Borat was just a side character. I'm amazed with out Sacha can stay in character the way he does, especially when later on in the movie he shelters in place with some Qanon conservatives with who knows how long staying in character. Maybe they'll reveal they were paid actors who knows, but whatever I fucking laughed a lot at this movie. There's a black woman in this movie that I hope to god was not an actress cause I loved her and her reactions so much. It was a breath of fresh air to watch something that's just goofy in 2020 because it wasn't a good year for comedy. As much as I love film sometimes I got a little fatigue from watching so many things with very heavy themes, this also had heavy themes it was satirizing, but also chimp pornstar jokes, so..  a fun time.
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12. A Sun
A drama about a family's eldest son going to juvenile detention for his involvement in a violent crime. We see how his father, his mother, his brother and his pregnant girlfriend all deal with this. I found it very engaging. My only gripe is that there are some moments of levity where they use this really generic comedy music score it and it really takes you out of the film. No music at all is better than bad generic music. Other than that I really loved it and the ending is great. I really thought this would end up in my top 10 but the following films just had more personal relevance or were more fun to watch.
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11. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
R.I.P. Chadwick Boseman, this movie is like an acting showcase for him, he has so many great monologues here, the ending really took the wind out of me. It's also packed with really still relevant commentary on race.
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10. Onward
You already expect a Pixar movie to make you cry, but this came from angle I was NOT expecting and I bawled hard at this. This movie was so applicable to my life experience it's like they specifically engineered it to make me personally cry. Honestly there are better movies lower on this list, but movies are just like any other art, when a song touches you on a personal level it doesn't need to have complex instrumentation cause it's how it made you feel that matters.
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09. Palm Springs
A comedy released during a pandemic about trying to find stimulation and meaning when every day is the same thing? Ya don't say! Another take on Groundhog Day, which at this point I feel like it's its on genre with the amount of times the concept has been done, but I'm not complaining, I typically enjoy a good time loop movie (or show; Russian Doll). I don't know what else to say besides that it's really funny and Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are both charming and great in it.
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08. Scare Me
This movie was funny, creepy, the performances were great, and it's just really unique and clever. Written, directed, produced, and starring Josh Ruben, who I know primarily does really idiosyncratic "impressions" on instagram. It's 2 people alone in a cabin telling each other scary stories, they don't cut away to the stories you just watch them act it out. 4 people in the cast, one location, and it still manages to be a fun ride of a movie and manages to touch on some good themes in the overall story. I really hope to see Josh Ruben direct more films because I think he's really creative.
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07. Ride Your Wave
A romantic comedy about a woman trying to find joy and purpose in her life. I often go into movies very cold, so I didn't know much about what this movie was about, just knew that it was from an animation studio and director that I really respected. It's very beautiful, very grounded, until it's not. Kind of movie that breaks your heart so it can uplift you later.
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06. Uncle Frank
I really did not expect a lot from movie, not that I thought it would be bad, I just thought it be your middle of the road movie. It's about a teenage girl who really looks up to her uncle who she learns is a closeted gay man, in an era where that was potentially dangerous to be. They go on a road trip home when his father dies and learn about each other and themselves, it sounds kinda cookie cutter, but it really surprised me. Paul Bettany is so very good in this, and it made me cry. Easy way to get on high on this list is to make me cry lol.
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05. Children of the Sea
This film had to be in my top 5 because I'm an animation nerd and this is one of the most beautiful animated films ever. Ever. It's right up there with Akira and the Ghibli catalogue, and the works of Satoshi Kon, and all the Disney movies and everything else. It focuses on details and nuances in a really gorgeous way. The story is VERY ambiguous and gets very metaphysical towards the end, the climax is like watching an acid trip. It's about a girl who meet 2 young boys who have adapted to living underwater, and they form a bond, and then... uh... there's no way I can concisely explain it. The creator has said it's not supposed to be understood logical, instead it's supposed to be felt. There's a lot of symbolism and metaphor, it's very philosophical and explores themes of connection and the cycle of life. It's produced by Studio 4°C, which is my favorite animation studio because they really push the envelope, they're responsible for Mind Game, Tekkonkinkreet, and the recent Mutafukaz, and other, if you've never heard of any of those definitely look them up, they're unlike any anime you've ever watched before. Anyway, beautiful movie and the cryptic plot allows for you to rewatch it multiple times and take different things away from it. I can't wait to own it on blu-ray.
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04. 37 Seconds
I saw this very early in the year and love it. It's about a young woman with cerebal palsy who is also an aspiring hentai artist trying to get laid. Her mother who takes care of her like a child smothers her, so it's not only about trying to get laid but trying to have some independence. Firstly the performance of this woman who actually does have cerebral palsy and is a first time actor is so natural and endearing, secondly there are things they portray with an uncomfortable amount of realism and awkwardness that it really draws you in to the nitty gritty of her reality and what it can be like for someone who is wheelchair bound to try to have sexual experiences. I like that there were 2 films this year about characters in wheelchairs that used unknown actresses that face the same things their characters do, it adds to the authenticity of either film. Films like this are why I think diversity in film is not just about doing something for the demographic you're depicting but also giving everyone else not of that demographic new unique stories and perspectives.
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03. Soul
I guess spoilers if you haven't seen this because it's easier to talk about why I liked it if I talk specifically about the plot. I wasn't expecting much from this when the initial trailer dropped, it made it seem like it was going to largely take place in this imaginary soul place with these blue things, and for most of the first act it seemed like that's what it was going to be, but when they come back to earth and the story really starts I really started enjoying it. This movie tricks you into thinking the film is about finding or fulfilling your purpose, only to throw a curveball that living life in and of itself is the "purpose", and this movie resonated so much with thoughts that were already on my mind. I relate so much to Joe as a creative person myself with so many unfulfilled dreams, at 36yrs old, having to put many of my goals on the backburner just to survive, and generally having that feeling that I'm still waiting to live life because I'm not fulfilling my "purpose". Sure reaching for goals is great, but I think our culture breeds this idea that happiness is a destination, an accomplishment, a certain amount of recognition, a monetization of your passion. I really loved how the film depicted that there's a dark side to focusing on your passions and how it can become a source of stress and unhappiness. This movie is just about savoring life itself, which people have been expressing through platitudes since forever but this film illustrated it in a way that words fail at, and that's what makes film such a great form of art.
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02. Sound of Metal
This movie had one of the best trailers of 2020, I couldn't wait to watch this movie. FIrst of all I love RIz Ahmed and think he's an underrated and underutilized actor, he's fucking amazing in this, he needs an Oscar nom FOR SURE. His frustration is so palpable and he feels so natural in this movie. It follows a metal punk drummer who loses his hearing and goes to stay in a deaf community to acclimate. One thing I think is absolutely brilliant about this movie is the sound design. I'm not deaf so I can't speak from any type of experience, but they try to replicate what going deaf sounds like, what the audiologist tests sound like, what hearing aids and cochlear implants sound like, it's very immersive. I almost think of it like a companion piece to Soul, cause I had almost the same take away, it's just coming from it at a different angle.
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01. I'm Thinking Of Ending Things
Okay, so I’m going to have a lot to say about this movie.
Maybe a very controversial pick for my number one because so many people absolutely hated this movie, lol. I am biased given that I'm a huge fan of Charlie Kaufman, he's my favorite screenwriter, and his films have only gotten weirder and weirder, so I know to expect the unexpected when going into one of his films. I can understand how this would be an offputting experience if you're expecting the conventions of normal narrative structure. It was surprising and perplexing to me how this film unfolded but I've watched non-narrative and experimental films before so I was intrigued rather than frustrated. You think it's about a woman who is thinking of breaking up with her boyfriend as they head to meet his parents. Once we get to his childhood home things start getting surreal, and that surrealism just escalates to the point where you realize this film is not at all attempting to depict reality and doesn't even have any continuity. This is the most a movie has ever felt like one of my dreams. I don't know how other people dream but this was so much like every weird nightmare I've ever had where I feel trapped in a situation. 
There's a scene where the family is talking about art, the dad says he hates abstract art because it takes no skill, he prefers paintings that look like photographs because that takes real skill, the son asks why make a painting look like a photograph when you can just take a photograph, the woman states she paints pictures of landscapes and tries to imbue them with a sense of interiority, capturing the way she feels, the dad asks how can a landscape be sad if you don't have a person in it looking sad. I felt like this was a bit of meta commentary on the film itself. After I watched this movies I had my own theories, I watched some analysis videos on youtube that confirmed a lot of my ideas and gave me insight on other parts of the film, I watched the film again and formulated more ideas, it's so dense with things to project meaning onto and interpret it. I went on instagram and ended up having lengthy discussions about what the film meant both with people who loved it and hated it. Everybody I spoke with had slightly different interpretations and takeaways. One woman who initially did not like it came away with an appreciation for it after we had a lengthy discussion about it's meaning. 
All of this is why it's my favorite film of the year, not only did I relate to it on a personal level because I'm in a stage of my life where I'm approaching middle ages and afraid I'm going to end up like the guy in this film, but I can't remember the last time a film led to such meaningful conversation about life, death, love, mental health, loneliness, trauma, etc. So like the scene where they're talking about art, I think this movie is neither intended to be abstract or realistic, it's supposed to be imbued with a sense of interiority. I know I sound way pretentious right now, but I just really appreciated Charlie Kaufman for making something unabashedly expressionist and serving it up to mainstream audiences. I really feel like I grow as a person and an artist every time I watch one of his films.
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So there ya go. That’s it. That concludes this arbitrary exercise in ranking the movies i saw last year, thank you for wasting your time on this, lol. I think it was a very good year for movies. 
If there was a movie you were expecting to see on the list and it’s missing I just didn’t get to it in 2020, I may do an unranked follow up list of 2020 movies I missed in 2020, maybe.
That’s it.
End of post.
Bye.
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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years
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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT IDEAS
Object-oriented programming in the 1980s. If it can work to start a startup. Instead of building stuff to throw away, you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of startups grow out of them. Already spreading to pros I know you're skeptical they'll ever get hotels, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it. Those are both good things to be. I don't mean that as some kind of answer for, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting. When someone's working on a problem that seems too big, I always ask: is there some way to give the startups the money, though. What would it even mean to make theorems a commodity? There seem to be an artist, which is even shorter than the Perl form.1 However, a city could select good startups.2
Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a complete system for supporting server-based applications, where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program very quickly. Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over. But a hacker can learn quickly enough that car means the first element of a list and cdr means the rest. If an increasing number of startups founded by people who know the subject from experience, but for doing things other people want. It could be the reason they don't have any.3 An interactive language, with a small core of well understood and highly orthogonal operators, just like the core language, that would be better for programming. The more of a language as a set of axioms, surely it's gross to have additional axioms that add no expressive power, simply for the sake of efficiency.
One of the MROSD trails runs right along the fault. When you're young you're more mobile—not just because you don't have to be downloaded. The fact is, most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The three old guys didn't get it. PL/1: Fortran doesn't have enough data types. What programmers in a hundred years? Just wait till all the 10-room pensiones in Rome discover this site.4 Common Lisp I have often wanted to iterate through the fields of a struct—to push performance data to the programmer instead of waiting for him to come asking for it. It would be too much of a political liability just to give the startups the money, though. And they are a classic example of this approach. For one thing, real problems are rare and valuable skill, and the de facto censorship imposed by publishers is a useful if imperfect filter.
I'm just not sure how big it's going to seem hard. Often, indeed, it is not dense enough. If the hundred year language were available today, would we want to program in today. Of course, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960. A friend of mine rarely does anything the first time someone asks him. As a young founder by present standards, so you have to spend years working to learn this stuff. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.
You can write programs to solve, but I never have. One advantage of this approach is that it gives you fewer options for the future. Otherwise Robert would have been too late. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life.5 Java also play a role—but I think it is the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, and I felt it had to be prepared to explain how it's recession-proof is to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway. The real question is, how far up the ladder of abstraction will parallelism go? Anything that can be implicit, should be. New York Times, which I still occasionally buy on weekends. So I think it might be better to follow the model of Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a lot of them weren't initially supposed to be startups. It's because staying close to the main branches of the evolutionary tree pass through the languages that have the smallest, cleanest cores. The way to learn about startups is by watching them in action, preferably by working at one. At the very least it will teach you how to write software with users.
Few if any colleges have classes about startups. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots. It might help if they were expressed that way. It's enormously spread out, and feels surprisingly empty much of the reason is that faster hardware has allowed programmers to make different tradeoffs between speed and convenience, depending on the application.6 At the top schools, I'd guess as many as a quarter of the CS majors could make it as startup founders if they wanted is an important qualification—so important that it's almost cheating to append it like that—because once you get over a certain threshold of intelligence, which most CS majors at top schools are past, the deciding factor in whether you succeed as a founder is how much you want to say and ad lib the individual sentences. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. Preposterous as this plan sounds, it's probably the most efficient way a city could select good startups. Most will say that any ideas you think of new ideas is practically virgin territory. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Whatever computers are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in.7 That was exactly what the world needed in 1975, but if there was any VC who'd get you guys, it would at least make a great pseudocode.
If this is a special case of my more general prediction that most of them grew organically. Writing software as multiple layers is a powerful technique even within applications. The more of your software will be reusable. Using first and rest instead of car and cdr often are, in successive lines. Of course, I'm making a big assumption in even asking what programming languages will be like in a hundred years? It must be terse, simple, and hackable. It becomes: let's try making a web-based app they'd seen, it seemed like there was nothing to it. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched.8
The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. That's how programmers read code anyway: when indentation says one thing and delimiters say another, we go by the indentation. You need that resistance, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones. Maybe this would have been a junior professor at that age, and he wouldn't have had time to work on things that maximize your future options. How much would that take? It's important to realize that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand.9 You'll certainly like meeting them. It's not the sort of town you have before you try this. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. I'm not a very good sign to me that ideas just pop into my head.
Notes
Dan wrote a prototype in Basic in a series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was 10.
With the good groups, just harder. Which in turn the most successful founders still get rich from a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a great one.
There are two simplifying assumptions: that the only way to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's not as facile a trick as it was putting local grocery stores out of their portfolio companies. If the next one will be familiar to anyone who had worked for a really long time? One new thing the company they're buying.
If I paint someone's house, the growth in wealth in a bar. I didn't need to warn readers about, just as much the better, but they start to be about 50%. Together these were the impressive ones. Other investors might assume that P spam and P nonspam are both.
All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. The point where things start with consumer electronics.
If they're on boards of directors they're probably a cause them to keep them from the VCs' point of a press hit, but that we wouldn't have understood why: If you have two choices and one or two, and so on. But if so, or in one where life was tougher, the same reason parents don't tell the whole story. Incidentally, the switch in mid-twenties the people they want.
Trevor Blackwell points out, First Round Capital is closer to a clueless audience like that, except in the median VC loses money. Unless of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you care about, just those you should seek outside advice, and this trick, and so don't deserve to keep them from leaving to start or join startups. There is not much to seem big that they only even consider great people.
You also have to do it right. In every other respect they're constantly being told that they are bleeding cash really fast. Probably more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was.
In theory you could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities. If you have the concept of the reason for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was no great risk in doing a small proportion of the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power. As I was there was near zero crossover. Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the evolution of the next year they worked.
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northoftheroad · 5 years
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The Wayne family
Sometimes, when I read Batman fanfiction, I wonder whether the writer has been reading the same comic books as I have. Because they paint a picture of a big, happy Wayne family where the kids are very close and sometimes the whole bunch even live together. 
Now, I do know the difference between canon and fanfic. And I get that wishful thinking and selective reading plays a big part. But still, I'm curious where these conceptions come from.
Just to be clear. I do think of Bruces adopted/foster children as a family because they have a common father(figure). But they have not grown up together. It depends on what DC continuity you're playing with, of course, but most of them are in their teens when Bruce Wayne comes into their lives and they can’t have lived more than a few years with him. Several of them have not lived together. So even if I let my imagination run amok, I can't see them living at the Manor together as a tight-knit family, and I don't think all of them know each other very well.
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Batman and Robin vol 2 # 10. By Peter Tomasi, art Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray.
Dick Grayson had moved out (or been kicked out, depending on what version you go with) when Jason Todd came along (and Bruce suffered from empty nest syndrome). Jason was dead when Tim Drake came into the picture, and Tim lived with his parents or boarding school in the beginning. Even if Dick kept in pretty close contact with Tim, he had a permanent home elsewhere.
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Batman: Gotham Knights # 45. By Scott Beatty, art Roger Robinson and John Floyd. 
I admit I haven't read a lot with Cassandra Cain. As far as I understand, after Flashpoint she has never lived in the Manor. Before Flashpoint, she was adopted, but I don’t believe she lived long in the Manor, and the only other Wayne adoptee she can have shared the home with is Tim. 
Edit: At least, Bruce probably did have time to adopt Cass, even though he promised to do it in Batman: Redemption Road (2008), just before the story arc Batman RIP where he, presumedly, died. They certainly did not live together as a family for long. 
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Batgirl: Redemption Road # 6. By Adam Beechen, art Jim Calafiore and Jack Purcell.
I’m sure there are cute panels of Tim and Cass out there, but I’m picking some from comics I know of.
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Batgirl # 50. By Dylan Horrocks, art Rick Leonardi and Jesse Delperdang.
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Batman: Family # 7. By John Francis Moore, art Steve Lieber and Stefano Gaudiano.
Tim was an older teenager when Damian al Ghul/Wayne dropped into the house and immediately tried to get rid of Tim the hard way, and I don’t think they spent a long time under the same roof until Bruce "died", and soon after Tim left (at least partially). 
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Batman # 657. By Grant Morrison, art Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang.
Dick moved in with Damian and raised him (for about a year). When Bruce first came back he travelled with Batman Inc, and Dick and Damian continued to live together. There were times when you could find Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian and Alfred in the Manor at the same time, but not living permanently together. 
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Batman & Robin vol 1 # 20. By Peter J. Tomasi, art Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray.
Now, Flashpoint, New 52 and Rebirth makes it even more impossible to puzzle together a credible timeline for everything Bruce Wayne is supposed to have done and everyone's relationship with each other. We’ll end up with Jason being Robin for about a month... But, anyway...
At the start of New 52, Dick has gone back to Nightwing and moved into his own flat in Gotham. He’ll continue to move around in different cities so he’s clearly not living with any other Wayne. By then, Cassandra is retconned out of the family and I haven’t seen any sign that Jason lives at the Manor with Bruce and Damian (and I don’t know about Tim either).
Fast forward into Rebirth, and Duke Thomas stayed and trained with Bruce for a while. If any of the other kids lived there at the same time is anybody's guess, but you can see the whole Bat-family (including, for instance, Stephanie Brown and Luke Fox) share a happy meal in the Manor, so at least they socialize from time to time. I’ve read somewhere that Duke since has moved in with relatives.
In canon right now, as far as I can make out, the only one who (at least sometimes and varying between the books) lives with Bruce and Alfred in the Manor is Damian. 
Another fanon exaggeration on the opposite part of the scale, in my opinion, is the penchant for portraying Dick and Jason's relationship as extremely bad from the start.
There are three different versions of how they met before Flashpoint. The first time, when Jason was a circus-boy Dick clone, Dick originally wanted to take him in, but Bruce stepped in instead (DC needed a new Robin for Batman, after all). The second time, Bruce had fired Dick from Robin because he was shot by the Joker and then promptly picked up Jason, after Dick had left. The third time (Nightwing Year One), Bruce fired Dick and kicked him out (I tend to ignore this version mostly, to be honest, because Bruce is ridiculously much of an ass here) and then, as you know, took in Jason.
And it's not that Dick loves Jason straight away, or the fact Bruce took in a new Robin by the blink of an eye, in the two later versions. But he still gives Jason his old Robin suit and his phone number in version two and in version three, they part on decent terms, and Dick tells Bruce (by recording) that he could have done worse.
After that, they hardly meet before Jason is killed because Dick is working with the Titans and doesn't live in Gotham. Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Jason helped the New Teen Titans a few issues (Dick was busy getting in the hands of Brother Blood and being brainwashed, at the time) in New Teen Titans vol 2 # 20–31. And there is a snapshot of Dick and Jason hanging out as civilians in Nightwing vol 2 issue 63. That's about it. 
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Nightwing vol 2 # 63. By Chuck Dixon, art Trevor McCarthy and Karl Kesel. 
Then, of course, Jason came back from the dead slightly unhinged (2005). I don't know the whole picture of meetings or confrontations between the Bat-kids between Jason's comeback and Flashpoint (2011). I do know he dressed up as Nightwing and killed people in Nightwing vol 2 # 118–122. When Jason was abducted, Dick struggled a bit with the question "Is it ethical for me to save someone who's a danger to society?" before he went to save Jason. In the end, Jason sends a telegram where he says "Thanks for coming for me, brother. I know we don't agree on much. I just wanted to believe we could be family again." Tim and Dick also had a confrontation with Jason in Teen Titans (2003) # 47, and Dick and Jason had a not very amicable meeting in the Outsiders v 3 # 44.
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Nightwing vol 2 # 118 –122. By Bruce Jones, art Joe Dodd, Paco Diaz, BIT and Nathan Massengill. 
And then we have Battle for the Cowl, where Jason shot Damian, left Tim for dead and tried to kill Dick after he had refused to become Robin to Jason's Batman. (I guess there are Jason fans out there who think that Dick was not justified to put Jason in jail after that. Obviously, I'm not one of them, but if anyone dislikes these years in canon and decides to ignore it to the best if their ability, who am I to judge?)
So, the Wayne boys definitely had a partly antagonistic, partly close, partly distant relationship. After Flashpoint, I think it has in been portrayed as better. At least, I haven't seen them try to kill each other...  Tim calls Damian "gremlin", Jason is Damian's secret mentor (or so I've seen somewhere), they sometimes meet on the rooftops and work together. On the other hand, the previously close relationship between Dick and Tim seems pretty much forgotten. (Let's hope they start remembering that soon again.)
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Detective Comics # 975. By James Tynion IV, art Raul Fernandez and Alvaro Martinez.
Somewhere in Batman and Robin Eternal, Jason says that Tim is the only of the other Robins that he likes. (I honestly don't know where that came from, I never noticed them seeing eye to eye before. Still, it's not like I've read every Bat comic ever printed. But then, I rather believe the same goes for a number of DC writers... Edit: I’ve been informed that it’s probably from a flashback in an issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws.) In RH and the outlaws annual 1 (I think that’s the only issue of that series I’ve read, to be honest), Jason narrates that there was a time when he would have killed Dick on sight. "Not my proudest moment. We've made up since then." They have a complicated relationship, but they are still somehow clearly brothers, and Jason thinks back to when he saw the Flying Graysons perform and how Dick was a hero to him then (another retcon after Flashpoint).  As far as I know, it's the only post-Flashpoint retelling of how Jason and Dick met, and the story is that Alfred puts Jason in Dick's room so he wouldn't have to clean a new one. Dick is not happy to find someone in his bed when he comes home to visit. They fight. Honestly, I can't imagine Alfred doing that, so that's one version of the canon I’m happy to overlook...
On the other hand, we have Jason and Dick hanging out on the rooftops in Blüdhaven in Nightwing vol 4 # 15, and Dick, Jason and Damian certainly bicker like siblings (together with Duke) in Batman vol 3 # 16 and # 33.
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Nightwing vol 4 # 15. By Tim Seeley, art Minkyu Jung. 
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Batman vol 3 # 16. By Tom King, art David Finch. 
On the whole, I think the only thing you can be sure of about the relationships between the Wayne family members these days is that it varies quite a bit between titles and writers and has had its ups and downs over the years. But that they have never lived together as one big, happy family.
Of course, all this is based on the comic books I’ve read, and there might very well be stories out there that paint a different picture. But on the whole, I’m pretty confident that this panel is about as close to a happy family gathering we’ve seen. And then it’s not only the Waynes but the Bat family.
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Batman and the Signal. By Scott Snyder and Tony Patrick, art Cully Hamner.
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Alright let’s go through my thoughts on Doctor Sleep and what I will and won’t be including in my portrayal of Dan Part 1. (there will be spoilers for The Shining and Doctor Sleep so if you want to avoid spoilers just don’t read this)
Thoughts on the movie
-First and foremost, I’m going to save my thoughts on Dan and Dan-related things for part 2, where I’ll talk about how this affects my writing of him. Don’t think I’m ignoring him.
-DO NOT LET THIS BECOME SUCH A BOX OFFICE FLOP PLEASE GUYS IT’S BARELY BEEN OUT TWO WEEKS WE CAN’T LET THIS FLOP IT DESERVES BETTER
-When I saw Rose in the trailers and thought she’d be hot and powerful I WAS NOT PREPARED for her in the movie. Rebecca Ferguson is fabulous and give so much energy and charisma in her scenes and is drop-dead gorgeous while doing it
-Kyliegh Curran is a great Abra and can hold her own against the adult actors despite being so young, and her scenes with Rose are great because both actresses are bringing it and working off of each other and having a whole lot of fun doing it
-when I saw it with a friend there were nine of us total in the theater. That’s mostly because we saw it on a Tuesday afternoon, and it was actually nice because we reacted to things a lot more openly. That being said, DO NOT LET THIS FLOP GUYS GO SEE IT PLEASE
-Emily Alyn Lind is great, and if you’re worried about the sex scene between Rose and Andi happening, it isn’t. Andi’s fifteen in this, and the closest they get to anything in that vein is Andi telling Rose she’s the most beautiful woman she’s seen, and when Rose gives her steam their faces are close to each other. To be fair, whenever someone takes steam they act the same way, so it’s not some weird thing that only happens with Andi. But she was great bc she was so creepy and composed and ready to throw hands with anyone and everyone.
-Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy. Hot. Damn. I wasn’t expecting him to be as awesome as he was. He was calm, collected, intimidating, and his scenes with Rose were great because you can just tell how much they care about each other. It should be noted that he’s actually Native American (more specifically, Hunkpapa Latoka on his mother’s side; his dad’s Irish) and acts in Westworld (he plays Akecheta). Another thing that should be noted is that two years ago he had a brain injury that took him out of acting for a while, but he’s recovered! All in all, he’s a pretty cool guy who is a great Crow
-I do wish they actually showed Rose and Crow’s relationship because really all they did was she kisses his neck once and they spend time together a lot and he calls her “Rosie”. They do keep her screaming “You killed my crow”, but I do wish we saw them doing a little bit more couple stuff. Mainly because I thought they were cute in the book.
-WHERE WERE THE MURDER LESBIANS I WANTED THE MURDER LESBIANS WE DID NOT GET MURDER LESBIANS ALL WE GOT WAS MURDER LADIES I WANTED MURDER LESBIANS
-Unfortunately, Rose being bi wasn’t in the movie, but her vibes were definitely not straight ones
-The score was very close to the Shining score, but I’m not mad about it because I love the Shining score, and they used the music effectively
-There is body horror in the film. The murder of Bradley Trevor is shown, and there’s blood and him screaming and crying. It’s mostly her stabbing his leg then cutting to him screaming, and then the end where he asks her to kill him and she does, and he’s covered in blood and bleeding from the mouth. In the scene where Rose enters Abra’s head, Rose’s hand gets stuck in a file cabinet and she pulls it out slowly and you see the skin coming off of her hand. It’s about thirty seconds, but you see it and it’s gross. After that scene is over, her hand is still cut up and is very messed up for a lot of the rest of the film. The last  scene with any kind of body horror is during the climax, where Dan attempts to kill her with an axe and she digs the small end in his leg before digging her hingers into it. Some blood spurts out, but it only happens two or three times in quick succession, so it’s small. 
-David is stabbed in the chest offscreen, and all you see is his body with a knife sticking out of him, but there’s a lot of blood surrounding him. If you don’t like seeing dead bodies you won’t like that.
-When people get shot blood does shoot out of them, but it’s minimal and rarely forms a large splatter or anything.
-Billy commits suicide by shooting himself under the jaw. All that’s shown is him putting it under his chin, then it cuts to Dan trying to get to him before hearing the bang and seeing some blood. But there’s very little left to the imagination and it’s pretty disturbing.
-The way they showed cycling out was well done
-There’s a lot of practical effects and not that much CGI. In general the CGI was good. I mean, sometimes it looks a bit goofy (but try showing me a movie where a special effect doesn’t look goofy) but it’s really in scenes that are surreal and supernatural so it works a bit more.
-Really the only actor that they recast from The Shining that was truly off-putting was Jack, but that was mostly because Jack Nicholson has such a unique face and it’s hard to make someone look like him, let alone make someone look like him without having a weird uncanny valley thing.
-The characters that are recast don’t have a lot of screen time in the movie, and the one character that shows up a lot is Dick. Who is, fun fact, played by Carl Lumbly, who played John Parker in Buckaroo Bonzai. If you don’t think you’ll like the recast actors, they have the most screen time in the beginning and at the climax, but it’s heaviest in the beginning because it’s with child Danny.
-The kid they got to play little Danny is so adorable I love him
-Fun fact! Danny Lloyd aka the actor for Danny in the Shining movie, had a cameo! In the baseball game he’s the person who says “Watch out for number nineteen”
-The only thing that I didn’t like was that Billy and David died. I understand why they did it and like what they were going for, but I still didn’t like it.
-Billy is a true ride-or-die and he’s a great character and I’m hopping on the “Billy and Dan are dating” train because I CAN AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME
-David being a good dad and having a good relationship with his daughter and him not trusting Dan being totally okay and never used against him gives me life
-I was disappointed that when ghost Deenie came it wasn’t to warn Dan but to let him know they recently died, but hot damn that scene was freaky.
-Tbh Dan’s guilt about Deenie and Tommy was underused and could’ve been a bit more.
-DICK SAYS KA IS A WHEEL I REPEAT DICK SAYS KA IS A WHEEL
-I can’t stress enough how many times I bit my tongue to stop any Bi Panic(TM) noises from escaping because every scene Rose and Crow are in I was DEHYDRATED
-When we saw the first Overlook flashback, everyone in the theater was making various kinds of approving noises, e.g. a couple of people went “ooh” when we see Danny riding on the carpet, and my friend and I gasped when Danny’s tricycle went from carpet to wood floor because it was the exact same sound it made in the Shining
-THE FUCKING OVERLOOK SETS WERE FABULOUS
-THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL IS STUNNING
-IT LOOKED LIKE THE SHINING OVERLOOK SETS IF THEY HAD BEEN LEFT IN A DAMP CELLAR
-THE OVERLOOK SETS ARE JUST AWESOME
-When Dan and Abra were driving to the Overlook and the camera panned over to the hotel, everyone in the audience literally sat straight up and stayed that way for the rest of the climax. Except my friend and I, but that was because we both leaned forward, but we still stayed that way the entire time.
-Once again, THE SETS WERE GREAT
-I liked how the final. showdown with Rose went. I liked it a lot better than the book, actually (fight me). It was emotional and great and I feel it gave the characters a good conclusion to their arcs.
-There are like five of the True versus the forty in the book, and it’s a lot nicer.
-Abra says “Barry the Chunk” but he’s just called Barry and the implication is that he’s a large broad-shouldered man instead of what it was in the book
-Azzie is a good cat and deserves the world, although I thought I heard them say “She” which is a weird change. Provided that it’s real and wasn’t me mishearing them.
-Ewan McGregor sings at one point.
-Danny is a precious baby angel child and I love him
-John Dalton is more of a bit part than in the book, which works a lot better for this film.
-I wish we got more of the weird things Abra did as a child instead of just the spoons
-When Rose sees the elevator of blood she’s weirded out but then gets this look on her face like “I can dig it” and it’s honestly pretty funny
-I know that there’s no way this would’ve happened in the film because it’s honestly unnecessary and would’ve ruined the tension of the climax and couldn’t have happened due to character locations, but I really wanted Rose to walk around the hallways and see the bear guy and just go “wtf”. It would’ve been hilarious. I know that can’t happen, but it’s just a funny image.
-They didn’t have the tampon line and I’m a bit disappointed but also that’s fair
-They didn’t have the plot twist where Dan actually is Abra’s uncle, which was a good decision from a movie standpoint.
All in all, it was a good movie that I’m looking forward to seeing again, and I’ll go more in-depth about Dan and what I thought about him in part 2.
GO SEE THE MOVIE
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mazojo · 5 years
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Monday Chapters!
Finished Monday chapterss ~~ Boy today was an emotional rollercoaster and I am just so-... Spoilers ahead soo beware if you haven't read todays chapters!
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High School Story: Class Act - Chapter 14
Booyyy today was honestly redeeming for the past 2-3 chapters of pure deceptions. I adored everything and I had so many feels, it was quite a r i d e.
So it starts off by the play day arriving. We have some encouraging words for the crew and we kind of go to speak with Skye, Rory and Ajay (he didn't quite apologize but he got me whipped so ill forgive him this time). Everyone is super excited but we realize we didn't get Ajay a present as a director so we of course pay the diamonds to do him a card becouse he deSERves it <333 The scene is cute and then finally the play starts. It all goes great and we kiss Rory (that was a bit meh as I really thought we would have our first kiss before going on stage but whatever, ill let it pass becouse next chapter we confessinggg)... The play is over and we all go see our parents and we find out Rory’s mom came and the money for the treatment was reunited and AHhHH. Danielle also kinda helped by asking the girl our twin used to date (I Honest to god she was so irrelevant and annoying I can't remember her name) to donate her money instead of building ice sculpture so yay redemption arc?. We also find out that although Skye resereved two seats for her parents they didn't come and it broke my heart but Mrs. Silva being the awesome mother she is, took Skye under her wing and it was adorable. We then go home and start preparing for the cast party we will host and the chapter is over.
You can't even begin to imagine how hyped I am for next monday like oUR little baby mc will finally confess and I will even give out all my diamonds if it meant being with Ajay and ahHHHH... The chapter was amazing, I love everyone (except Trevor) and goodnight.
Desire and Decorum Book 2 - Chapter 4
Aghhhh I loved this chapter so much?? All the quality time we got with our gang and my boy Mr. Sinclaire was so amazing??
The chapter starts with us arriving to Grovershire and we see Briar’s mom. We then write a letter to all our friends informing them of the situation and a few days later we find out they all came?? for mc?? and I just love them all so much?? We then play around a bit while showing them the town and we get a diamond option over there but nah... We then go to our old house were we find a letter form our mother and its quite sad. As we exit the house we find mr. Sinclaire <333 and we have the option of a diamond scene to go visit the river bank and of freaking course I took it and it was amazing. We got to be all showy and seeing Mr. Sinclaire flustered is a win win in all the ways possible. As we head back we find a paper crane of the same guy prince thingy trying to rally people to turn against him and be free?? and we just shrug it off but I think maybe the Duke is the one trying to start a turmoil... Anyways the chapter ends with Briars mom telling us that a festival would be tomorrow so be prepared.
I believe next weeks chapter will probably end with lady grandmother or the duke finding us and some consequences would be involve... I dunno... I just wanna be happy with my grumpy and flustered Mr. Sinclaire ;w;
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The Heist: Monaco - Chapter 6
In todays chapters we finally got to complete our crew! ahhhh I am so excite of whats to comee!!
The chapter basically starts with our safe-house on flames thanks to Ansel -.-, we get the diamond options to upgrade to this luxurious places but I ain’t wasting my diamonds sooo I got the trashy one.
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Anyways, we realize we kind of need to up our acting game, so we are going to find our last member, a grifter. We go see this man going by the name of Peter Graves who is pulling a con acting as a bad actor (if that makes any sense? lol) and although he is kind of a lot pompous he is good at acting and wants to become a Hollywood star. Then we go see this girl named Miranda Moreau who is kind of related to the royalty pulling some cons at a charity event and she is also kind of meh. In the end I choose Peter as he was free but I didn't specifically liked one more than the other, maybe later when we get to know them more lol. We go back to our trash house and Anton (my baby meme lorddd) informs us that its gonna be even harder to infiltrate to the event because of this super security thingy Ansel prepared so yeah that should be fun.
I honestly though Sonia was going to be our last member? Kinda disappointed but its alright, she will definitely turn on Ansel (maybe that depends on the heist points? hmmm...). Anyways here is the picture of my crew and I love them all ~
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So thats it for todays chapters and I am very excited for next week, specially High School Story: Class Act which Ill probably write a two thousand words essay on if I finally get to kiss ajay lol I am not even kidding
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vigilantsycamore · 6 years
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This is a response to @djcblog for their post about Batman #50.
In case you’re not already filtering the tags: spoilers ahead for Batman #50, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Romeon and Juliet, and the Empire Strikes Back. Also, this is a long post.
First, the title:
Superhero fans don’t like story
Avatar: the Last Airbender, Avatar: the Legend of Korra, at least half of the Ben 10 franchise, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Atop the Fourth Wall, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Spectacular Spider-Man, Young Justice, the MCU, the DCEU, Lord of the Rings, Percy Jackson, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, Harry Potter, and even sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Just some of the story-driven things I enjoy. If you look around for any reasonable amount of time, you’ll find plenty of other superhero fans who enjoy similar works. You might have been able to get away with this if you’d said “a lot” or even “most” but you didn’t. Blanket statements are a terrible idea.
There’s a disclaimer right after that basically says “I looked at a bunch of individual statements by superhero fans and concluded that the only way they can have the opinions they do is if they despise the very concept of a good narrative.” Presumably the intention was to be able to respond to what I just did by saying “well, I didn’t look at their blogs, just at what they said about this latest thing that happened,” but it backfired and showed what’s wrong with their post: dismissing all criticism of something with flimsy logic without doing more than looking at the things the fans were saying at this one point in time.
superhero fans hate the idea of conflict, suspense, overarching character development, and tragedy.
I’m sure some of us do, but again, blanket statements. Most of the superhero fans I’ve seen hate the idea of misery porn, ableist rhetoric being used to justify misery porn, cheap and ineffective attempts at suspense, refusal to show genuine character development, a lack of new types of conflict, and most of all we hate being encouraged to expect change and a specific event embodying that change to happen at a specific time only to find out once that time comes that instead we’re getting the same tropes that we’ve been complaining about for years and maybe the thing we were promised will happen if we wait another year.
If it were up to them, every superhero story would be a super chill slice-of-life story, 60+ issues of casual hijinx, laughs, and eating together around the dinner table. Villains would be the wacky neighbors, and the only trace of negativity would be the romanticized origins that turned them into the sexy characters they are today.
I can’t speak for all comics fans, but if it were up to me, superhero stories would vary depending on what those characters seem to need at that specific time - if there’s been too much action, try something character driven; if there’s been not enough action, have the heroes fight a big monster. There’d be focus on the heroes being casual, joking around and eating together, sure - they have mundane lives, and often the comics neglect to show that - but there’d also be conflicts to resolve, people to save.
The villains would, depending on what kind of villains they are, have their origins revised to make them more complex; have their origins un-revised to make them more readable; be given a redemption arc by having them acknowledge their shortcomings and work to make up for them; be shown examining their motivations and/or mental health issues in a way that explicitly rejects the idea that those motivations and/or mental health issues made them become villains; be examined outside of their rivalries with the heroes; or be examined in terms of their relationships with the heroes/with other villains. Again, it depends on what would be best for that character, and chances are none of them would get more than two or three of those approaches in one run.
There’d be plenty of negativity in the villains, who would still commit villainous actions, but those would be villainous in a way that 1/ fits the character, and 2/ doesn’t detract from the readers’ experience (so no BS like sewing a character’s face onto your chest for shock value). There’d also be negativity in the setting - systemic issues like corruption or a horrifying prison system - but those would be addressed, as they should be in real life. The villains’ origins would certainly not be romanticized - most of them are traumatic, and I’d make sure to at least try to show villains confronting that trauma.
They become so attached to these characters that they begin to see them as precious cinnamon buns that need to be protected. The writers who put them through conflict (see: a story) are, thus, the real villains.
Again, the complaint most of the fans I’ve seen have isn’t that the characters are being put through conflict - half of us are fanfic writers, we love messing with the characters’ lives - it’s the way the conflict is executed. If a character is shown acting in a way that goes against their moral code without a reason why they’re doing so, that’s a problem. If a character makes a mistake that they wouldn’t normally make without an explanation - not even “they’re stressed and they haven’t been thinking clearly” - that’s a problem. If a character states an opinion that they’ve always disagreed with before without a reason why they changed their mind, that’s a problem. It’s not about putting the characters through conflict, it’s about distorting the characters to manufacture conflict or to make another character look better by comparison.
Tom King’s entire run on Batman has been one for the ages. Anyone looking at this book critically can see that, and very few will deny it. He’s dug into Bruce’s psyche, his personal life, his relationships (especially, yes, with Selina) in ways so intimate that no other writer really has. It’s been a hell of a journey. One that is only halfway done, at least.
That’s a very subjective statement. I mean, if you mean it will have lasting impacts... in the very same post, you go on to warn us not to judge the story before it’s finished and here you’re making a judgement on it’s impact before it’s finished. Your hypocrisy doesn’t disprove that, but I see no proof of it either. We don’t know yet if the story will even end with a changed status quo - and after what just happened, it’s hard to trust any claims that it will. Even if it does, will it stick? Some people are worried there’s another reboot coming.
If you mean quality... nice implied dismissal of anyone who does disagree - “you’re just not looking into it critically” - but there are plenty of flaws in it. Sometimes, King resorts to telling rather than showing - a common criticism of WoJaR - and other times he doesn’t even tell (that the reason why Bruce and Selina were able to hold their own against Superman and the Flashes is implied to be because Ivy is the equivalent of a noob with a BFG, but while it holds up for Superman, there’s no actual evidence that the same applies to the Flashes. All we’ve got is “it’s how it worked with the first guy.” And even then, some have criticized the explanations for being flimsy.
Other times, King’s portrayal of a character comes off as insulting to the character’s fans, particularly when the context of that character is overlooked where it shouldn’t be - even if Batman and Wonder Woman’s temptation was supposed to show what would realistically happen between two people with compatible orientations who spend decades in a warzone and ultimately reaffirmed the love between Bruce and Selina, there is a case to be made that Diana was making advances for a long time before Bruce was tempted and that Bruce was the one who resisted first, making Diana seem like a temptress, which is disloyal to the character. The omission of her canon significant other, Steve Trevor, can be criticized as another mistake with that run.
I will concede that King’s examination of Bruce’s psychology, relationships, and personal life has few precedents... but there are precedents. Hush was a beautiful portrait of Bruce and Selina’s relationship and although that was the focus, other characters’ relationships to Bruce were given a significant portion of the story. Characters like Talia, the Joker, and arguably even Dick got a similar amount of meaningful panel time in those 12 issues as they did in King’s 50. Grant Morrison’s run is controversial - and rightly so - because of how he treated Talia as a character, but his examination of Batman’s history and legacy is a great commentary on how enduring Bruce is as a character. Dini and Snyder are two other examples who can be compared to King. King may stand out because he’s been examining multiple aspects where other writers focused on one, but in terms of each of those aspects individually it could be argued that the other writers did better jobs.
Also, the run overall being good does not prevent individual parts of it from being bad, nor is it an automatic dismissal of any criticisms of those individual parts. You also cannot get away with making a subjective declaration and saying that anyone who thinks critically must agree with you because that’s a sign of not thinking critically.
Superior was a fucking triumph by the end. You know why? Because it was a fucking story. You know, with a three-act structure? Beginning, middle, and end?
Right now, King’s Batman is in the middle. And we’re all acting like this is it. Like we just walked out of Empire Strikes Back and don’t even give a shit that Return of the Jedi will be next.
This isn’t about Superior. The most common criticism of Superior was that Spider-Man was, for some time, dead and possessed by a villain. I’m guessing that was your problem with it too - what the writers were doing to the character. The criticism of Batman #50 isn’t what’s being done to the characters, it’s what’s being done with the characters. The argument against letting Batman be happy - that I can’t see ever being a good argument, regardless of how many times it’s used, and that gets problematic when the fact that Bruce suffered a traumatic experience is taken into consideration - is one of the problems. Another is the fact that it’s hard to imagine Selina ever agreeing with the idea that Batman needs to be miserable. Just look at Batman: Noir. It’s an Elseworld’s story, but the characters are on point.
Also, I’ve seen stories with three-act structures. And five-act structures. Here’s three examples:
Avatar: the Last Airbender
The end of Book Two is kind of like the end of Act Two. Here, the heroes triumph - they get a lot of wins. All the subplots get resolved and three of the characters have a chance to get what they’ve wanted or needed for a while. But then the villains they’ve forgotten about come back and set a plan in motion that causes everything to go wrong. Two of the heroes choose to save their loved one over taking that chance they got earlier. The other has her choice made for her in a way meant to mirror the main plot and introduce an important plot device.
Zuko gets a similar choice, but he choices what he wants (his honor) over who he loves (his uncle). By choosing wrong, he shows that his character arc isn’t complete yet.
Things go even more wrong one last time, but the episode ends with a hope spot - Aang’s not dead. The world still has the Avatar to save it.
Romeo and Juliet
This is the five-act one, and the start of act three is the turning point here:
Romeo and Juliet are married and happy. Everything’s going great. Maybe one day they’ll be able to make their marriage public and the houses will reconcile - at least, Friar Lawrance hopes so.
Then Tybalt and toxic masculinity ruin things, Mercutio and toxic masculinity ruin things more, and Romeo, grief, and toxic masculinity encouraged by grief, ruin things irreparably. (No, I’m not projecting 21st Century politics onto Shakespeare’s work - the play is written and structured in a way that 1/ condemns unnecessary aggression and violence, and 2/ emphasizes the way then-contemporary society saw this as positive and a key part of masculinity. That’s a tangent.)
Romeo and Juliet can’t be together now, for Romeo’s own safety, but there’s another hope spot - Romeo isn’t sentenced to death, just banishment.
The Empire Strikes Back
It’s been a while since I saw it, but it’s the same deal, isn’t it? Luke is training with Yoda; Han, Leia, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO are safe in Cloud City, then Vader shows up - the protagonists forgot about him, didn’t they? - and Luke has to sacrifice his training to save his friends, but he’s not successful because Han gets frozen and Luke gets his hand cut off. There’s a bonus here: we find out that Vader is Luke’s father, which defines their interactions in Return of the Jedi.
Now, Batman #50 does have some of these features: things are going well, then they suddenly go wrong, heroes sacrificing what they want/need, a villain we’ve forgotten about being behind it... but the execution is wrong.
First, out of the three examples I mentioned, two actually have not just success but triumph. In A:tLA, it’s Appa’s return, Long Feng’s defeat, and the Earth King agreeing to the invasion plan. In R&J it’s R&J getting married. In Batman #50, it would have been Bruce and Selina actually getting married.
Second, the sacrifice doesn’t have a good reason behind it. If Selina had left Bruce at the altar because Holly was in danger, that would have worked. If they’d agreed not to get married because Bane was planning a massive assault on Gotham and a wedding would be a target, that might have worked. Instead, we got 1/ Holly, acting nothing like previous depictions of the character, mentioning the whole “Batman can’t be happy and be Batman” thing because she’s secretly working with Bane, 2/ Selina agreeing and ditching Bruce at the altar rooftop with a letter explaining that he’s still just a traumatized child, which... yikes.
Also, it would have worked better if Bruce also had to make a choice.
Third, Bane’s involvement is weak. He’s revealed as the one who was manipulating events behind the scenes, but we don’t see how. We know how Vader, or Tybalt, or Azula beat the heroes. With Bane, we don’t know why any of the other people with him are there; we don’t know what role they played in his plan, we don’t know what his plan was. We don’t get any sort of confrontation with the heroes.
Fourth, there’s no hopeful note. Yes, they could still get married, and from a Doylist point of view Bane being the mastermind means that the whole “Batman can’t be happy” thing may be disproved (though “Batman can be happy” and “Batman is/will be happy” are two different things), but that’s not a hopeful note. It’s not “Han may be frozen and Luke may have lost a hand, but aside from that everyone’s okay and they have a chance at making a new plan.” It’s not “Ba Sing Se has fallen, Zuko betrayed Iroh, and Aang’s been shot, but Aang is still alive and the Gaang, the Earth King, and Bosco have escaped.” The issue doesn’t end on a reminder that the heroes can still get back what they’ve lost or that the conflict can be resolved, it ends on a reveal that in every other example happens before the sacrifice. Even the story that the audience knew was going to have a tragic ending hand this hopeful note.
Now, Batman #50 isn’t necessarily the very end of Act 2 - that could be Batman #51 - but the execution is already flawed. It gives us a retrospective and instead of a triumph we get a poorly executed sacrifice, the reveal’s in the wrong place and there’s no hopeful note. Crossroads of Destiny is a two-part “end of Act 2″ and it doesn’t have those flaws. For Star Wars, the end of Act 2 is a whole act. That’s at least two issues’s worth.
You’re passionate. I am, too. But you need to recognize that the story isn’t over. And until it is, you can’t judge it. Period.
Except you can.
There is no reason not to be able to judge part of a story as well as the whole. We can look back at how it fits into the whole thing later, but that’s the thing about episodic narratives - the individual installments can’t rely on the ending for their quality. The story arc isn’t over, but this part of it is - and it’s a flawed part.
We know it’s not over. King already said this. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. Because in all likelihood there’s going to be plenty of people who don’t buy the rest of King’s run, regardless of how good the overall narrative ends up being. You know why?
That’s the other problem - arguably, the bigger problem - here. It’s not just about narrative flaws, though that is a big problem too. It’s also about capitalism.
Yeah, I’m not fond of it. Communism is awful too, but capitalism is based on people with money making more money. In the case of comics, it’s why I now prefer fanfiction: if you’re doing something as a hobby or to share your ideas with others, you won’t do what DC did.
What did DC do? Ever since Batman #24, they’ve been selling us the idea of Batman and Catwoman’s wedding. Once they knew for sure we were already excited, they told us “it’s in Batman #50. July 4th.” Then they dedicated themselves even more to selling us on the idea of Batman and Catwoman getting married on July 4th.
And then they didn’t. It didn’t happen - they lied to their readers to make money. What’s worse, they’ve still got merch coming out for the wedding that didn’t happen. Somehow DC thought it would be a good idea to make money on the expectation of a good story (again, the issues are individual stories too) rather than the actual story.
And they weren’t ignorant of how mad we’d be. That’s why they let the New York Times spoil it. Incidentally, that was the worst timing ever, at least for local comic book stores. So that’s a double dick move. Add the double dick move for the fake wedding and how much effort they put into selling us on it and it’s a quadruple dick move.
In conclusion, we’re pissed because we were tricked, we’re pissed because DC screwed over local stores, and we’re pissed because the wedding we were excited for didn’t happen because of a poorly executed second turning point in a story.
And then someone saw our anger and decided to make a post that started by telling us that the only reason why we could be reacting this way is that we hate basic narrative tropes.
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heckyeahstevetrevor · 7 years
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So, I'm reading Rebirth Vol. 1 right now. I literally haven't read a comic since I was a kid, so I know I've missed a ton. Do you mind giving a little backstory for us newbies? I get that Diana and Clark had a thing -- what happened there? Steve mentions someone starting 8th grade and someone named Maya. Does he have kids? I did a cursory Google, but, alas. I thought you might be the expert to go to! :) Also, I am digging the beard!
Heck yeah, my friend! You came to the right place. I *love* helping people get started with Wonder Woman. Luckily, you only need backstory starting from 2011 with DC’s massive relaunch called The New 52 (there’s a New 52 reading list for those interested, as well as a Steve Trevor comics masterpost).
Pertinent backstory: The New 52 kicks off in “Justice League: Origins,” where we learn that Steve Trevor is a military pilot who crash-landed on Paradise Island. He comes back with Diana, and when there’s a massive invasion she joins other superheroes in saving the world and they form the Justice League. Steve Trevor serves as both the government liaison to the League as well as the head of an agency called ARGUS (Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans). The JL timeline jumps five years in the next arc (“The Villain’s Journey”) and during this interlude apparently Diana and Steve were together. However, this story begins when Steve is kidnapped by a villain intent on taking down the League, and he’s tortured nearly to the point of death. Once the JL finally saves the day, Diana goes to visit Steve in the hospital and decides—against his protests—that she cannot endanger his life anymore and breaks up with him. Later that night, she runs into Superman and thinks to herself “This dude’s not going to get almost killed by my enemies” and then starts dating him (if this seems poorly thought out, it was).
I love Superman, but having *Wonder Woman* date literally the only man stronger than her is the antithesis of who she is. Unfortunately, as DC was going for a Twilight thing, they really drove into this hard and had Steve make occasional petty appearances in Superman/Wonder Woman. In between said petty appearances, Steve went on to assemble the Justice League of America, the government’s answer to the actual JL. As a result, he made cameos in a lot of New 52 books. 
Skipping ahead: The next relevant storyline was “Forever Evil,” where the Crime Syndicate (remember Earth-3′s evil Justice League: Owl Man, Ultraman, Superwoman?) come to our earth and trap our Justice League in another dimension. Steve got his own mini-series spinoff, Forever Evil: ARGUS, which is basically just him fighting all manner of villains in order to “free Wonder Woman—I mean the Justice League” (his words, not mine). It’s incredibly romantic and shirtless and still very surreal. Diana doesn’t know who did all of this because Steve gets knocked out by a villain at the very last minute and Cyborg has to finish the job. 
Connecting the New 52 to Rebirth: In the last big storyline of the New 52, “Darkseid War,” Diana and Steve are reunited when they have to save the world. This time, we learn that Diana still loves Steve but is unsure whether he feels the same. Just as things are about to get warm and fuzzy, one of the villains (Grail, daughter of Darkseid and a rogue Amazon) kidnaps Steve because she thinks that he is the missing element for her to get revenge on the Amazons—she literally binds him to the anti-life equation and luckily he somehow survives this; when Diana sees that he’s survived she stops frontin’ and they exchange a wordless but emotional hug. (Oh, and Superman dies, but later we learn that he was never really Superman anyway.)
Throughout *all* of this, in her home book Diana learned that she was not made from clay but instead from Zeus’s God-Sperm. The Amazons are rapist-murderers, and everyone is just super mean. DC realized that the hopeless tone of the New 52 wasn’t sustainable and so in Rebirth, they brought on Greg Rucka to fix WW. The very first issue of Rebirth starts with Diana processing all of this information—horrible Amazons, her lack-of-clay origin, her romance with Superman (basically, the horrific time she had in the New 52)—and demanding to know what the truth is. In other words, everything she thought she knew was a lie and now it’s time to find out what’s behind all of this in Wonder Woman Rebirth Vol 1 - The Truth. That should bring you up to speed!
As for the two specific points you mentioned, I would recommend starting with WW Rebirth Vol 2 - Year One before you read The Truth (I know, counter-intuitive, but it’s because of how the issues were released). It shows what the *real* (not New52) Amazons are like, and it explains who Sandy and Maya are (Steve’s goddaughter and her mother, respectively). Hope this helps you and anyone else trying to start the comics!
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This Week in Powers Squared
Everything for the last few weeks has been aimed toward an event that took place on Saturday morning. As part of the store's Free Comic Book Day, Galaxy of Comics, our local shop, offered to let us have a signing; an opportunity we jumped on. I wish I could write that the rest of the week was just getting things ready for the event but there were, of course, bumps in the road. In order to have copies to sell at the event, I had ordered hard copies of all seven issues that have been published. We figured if any issue sold, it would be Issue #1, so I ordered 25 copies of that. For Issue #2, in case someone wanted the entire story arc, we ordered 15 copies. For the remaining issues, I order 5 copies each. At least that's what I thought I had done. Instead of receiving five copies of Issue #3, Ka-Blam, which we had been using for these copies, sent me 10 copies of Issue #5. I found this out on Monday night when I got home from work. Not sure what to expect, we looked for a local backup printer. Our first thought was Kinko's, which we have used for several school projects over the years. (These were the same people we went to about a banner, which we found online for about 1/3 of the cost.) There were issues with the files, and I had to spend most of Monday night fooling around with tiffs and pdfs. I went back the next night and there were more issues. I would have to join pages before they could print them properly. It was a job they said they could do in 24 hours, but the cost was prohibitive; over $24 an issue. I decided to not use them. I had messaged Ka-Blam on Monday night and they did respond on Tuesday. While I still think they got the order wrong, they did come through. They printed the five copies of Issue #3 and sent them to me with two-day delivery. I got them on Thursday night. On Wednesday, Paul and I had gone up to the store to check on the details. The store would supply the table and two chairs. We had already rented two additional chairs, as my wife would also be up there for the duration. We got up on Saturday morning at about 4 am to get ourselves ready. One of the press releases I had sent got a response and the Features Editor of the Pierce College paper, the Roundup was going to be there before the event to interview Paul and Trevor. We put the issues and the other paraphernalia for the signing in a red wagon, which Trevor drove; I carried the chairs and away we went at about 5:30. When we got to the store, we were told there wouldn't be a table for us to use. I won't go into all the thoughts that went through our heads, but we were not going to be denied. We had a table at home and my wife and I went back to retrieve it. We were up and running before 6. The editor was there and we sold our first copy when a friend of the boys from middle school showed up and bought the first issue. We were situated outside the store but away from the main flow of customers. Again, one has to hope that wasn't deliberate. We hoped that we would hear them mention to customers who were there for free comic books and the sale that we were outside, but I don't believe it was ever mentioned. We were stuck with trying to wrangle people on the way in or on the way out and I would say we had pretty good luck. We did meet a lot of people and had a good time. After about 9 1/2 hours, we decided to call it a day. We packed up and rolled our wagon home. On the way, one more friend of the boys from Yu-Gi-Oh! locals chased us down the street to buy an issue. He didn't, however, want to join the mailing list. Go figure. Paul put together a video of the event, showing us before, during and after the signing. This became our weekly vlog, which can be watched here. There's also a slideshow of photos on the website: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/events. The point of the exercise wasn't so much to sell issues but to try to grow our mailing list. We sold less than 20 copies but did more than double our current mail list. There were a couple of names and email addresses that we couldn't read and only gave up on them after three failed attempts to guess at the right one. We sent a free copy of the .pdf for the first issue to everyone who signed up that day and sent our weekly email to 63 names, the largest distribution so far. I'm sure there will be some drop-offs as time goes on, but it seemed to be a win for us as we try to grow our list. I spent most of Wednesday night listening to more from ListLaunch and it seems that we're at least not doing anything wrong yet with our mailing list. As always, if you want to join the mailing list, and I hope you do, you can join here: https://mailchi.mp/dc302d04a252/powerssquared We did receive pages from both Rachel and Nina, both on Monday night, which weren't able to look at until Wednesday. And on Wednesday, Rachel sent us two versions of thumbnails for the next 8 pages, which we got to look at on Thursday. She made some really good suggestions and Paul and I went with them. The point is always to make it better. Paul also had a good suggestion for pages that Nina sent. It was nothing to do with her coloring, which is always good, but with the image itself. We're doing our first two-page spread in an upcoming issue and his idea would make it better. Rachel and Nina both agreed and Nina turned the pages around very quickly. This is the best creative team we've worked with so far.
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azuresquirrel · 7 years
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Now this post is for some more spoilerly points. Now this is NOT meant to be comprehensive. There are so many details in this movie that I plan to see several more times, and I’m not going into every detail here. Just some things I wanted to highlight for my initial viewing.
SOME SPACE HERE FOR MOBILE PEOPLE
Okay, just going to make some bullet points:
-Yeah yeah yeah, everything’s a fucking “cinematic universe” nowadays. But yes, that opener and ender were only there because of “DC MOVIES TRYING TO BE MARVEL.” I’ll say this: they’re both very short and perfunctory (I clearly got the impression that Jenkins did the bare minimum to fulfill the contractual obligation of “NEEDS BATMAN” and I respect her for that). I was also much softer on the ending given that it plays on the watch. STILL I must say THAT OPENING SCENE WAS SO VERY UNNECESSARY. Start on Themiscrya. Start with Diana telling US her story. I was so very cross that we had a fucking car saying “WAYNE ENTERPRISES” on it before we saw Diana’s FACE.
-I know that this is not this movie’s fault - it is HOLLYWOOD’S stupid trends fault but still. I am so very over COLOR = BAD, BROWN AND GRAY = REALISTIC AND GOOD that has infected most all mainstream movies nowadays.
-At least THEMISCRYA ITSELF LOOKED BEAUTIFUL AND COLORFUL.
-I mean yes there was A LOT of movie and A LOT of story to go through. But. We still did not spend enough time on Themiscrya. I could’ve spent hours in Themiscrya.
-It was profoundly affecting to see so many scenes with NOT A SINGLE MAN ON SCREEN. ALL WOMEN. This shouldn’t have affected me so deeply. People don’t fucking blink all the time when there’s so many men onscreen and not a single woman. It’s 2017 why is this still a fucking issue?
-I’m not going to delve deep into this movie and race (IT’S NOT GOOD). I will just say that it was nice to have women of many races on Themiscrya. But yeah, in terms of importance it is a very very white movie.
-I didn’t hate the daughter-of-Zeus thing as much as I thought I would. It was still unnecessary though. They could have written it differently (like . . . why do the Amazonians care about ZEUS anyway? The Greek pantheon is not lacking in goddesses they could have used instead).
-I don’t care about this movie making its own shit up re: the Greek gods and myths because 1. COMICS and 2. that’s what American media has done for decades. IT’S JUST A BOX OF LEGOS AT THIS POINT. Honestly props for having Ares be the villain for fucking once instead of Hades.
-Speaking of, I like that the “twists” of the movie . . . weren’t really. They aren’t twists, they’re blatantly obvious. They are revelations to DIANA (because she doesn’t know she’s in a movie) and they’re important for how they affect HER and her arc and understanding, and not for pulling one over on the audience. I LIKE THAT A LOT.
-In fact I loved how fucking obvious the “god-weapon” thing was. One of the things that annoyed me about the trailer (and god what a bad fucking trailer it was) was all the focus on the damn sword. Over the LASSO and the GAUNTLETS. Yes Diana can fight with anything because she’s fucking Wonder Woman but a sword is not her symbol. So when it was immediately apparent that the sword was a total red herring and that the weapon was Diana herself I was pretty damn happy.
-The “humorous” woman-meeting-Man’s-World stuff was very hit or miss. I did enjoy the blatant subversion of the “born sexy yesterday” trope (Diana: yes I know all about what sex is and men are not effective for pleasure, lol). But yeah you can bet that my eyes rolled out of my head at the whole “what is that thing” “. . . oh it’s a WATCH lol” like come the fuck on, people.
-That being said, kudos to Steve Trevor for being the only naked person in this movie.
-Also that being said, I of course had reservations about the token heterosexuality but . . . actually it didn’t turn out to be an annoying token. I didn’t care going into this movie about them “doing right” by Steve Trevor, but ultimately everything combined to make him WORTHY of Diana. He is a hero who earns being a hero and he never overshadows Diana or takes over her movie in doing so. Also his actual heroic sacrifice was 100% earned and actually emotional. SO GOOD JOB MOVIE, YOU MADE ME CARE ABOUT A MALE LOVE INTEREST. THAT’S AN ACCOMPLISHMENT.
-Also thank fuck the movie isn’t strangled by the red string. Yeah Diana and Steve’s romance is there and happens but takes up very little of the screentime, god bless.
-THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH ETTA CANDY IN THIS MOVIE.
-I’ll say this regarding the female villain: I loved her mask and I loved the name DR. POISON because both were so gloriously comic book-y.
-Also Steve’s almost successful attempt to play the fucking honeypot scheme on her. YOU GO STEVE TREVOR, STRONG MALE CHARACTER.
-Also fucking kudos to David Thewlis for walking onscreen and being so Obviously Evil that again, the twist was a total non-twist.
-Diana in her gorgeous “normal woman” outfit and glasses, carrying the sword and shield: ICONIC and A LOOK.
-Also whoops I missed it, but Steve waking up after being rescued from a watery grave, looking up at Diana’s glorious face and saying “wow.” HARD SAME, BUDDY.
-EVERY FIGHT SCENE. WAS SO GOOD.
-I suppose some people may dislike the slo-mo because it’s such a Synder thing now but I LOVED IT.
-EVERY SINGLE FIGHT SCENE THOUGH.
-Okay but that moment in the Amazons-and-Germans fight when Antiope does the jumping off the shield bit and shoots THREE SOLDIERS AT ONCE. HAWKEYE AIN’T GOT SHIT ON THAT.
-Also DIANA FIGHTS WITH HER SHIELD AND GAUNTLETS AND THE LASSO AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE, THAN THE SWORD, GOD BLESS.
-No Man’s Land. Iconic. 
-The climatic fight felt like a comic book in the best way. It really felt like two Gods clashing and I lived for it.
-One of the most profoundly affecting things about this movie is how every moment of suffering that Diana witnesses affects her and she tries to do everything she can about it and says that something MUST be done to stop it. In so many superhero movies, action movies, heck just MOVIES, suffering is shown and reveled in without any sense of sympathy or empathy, it’s used cheaply. But here is AFFECTS Diana and it doesn’t make her weak - it’s her STRENGTH. To see suffering and injustice and to say NO, THIS IS WRONG.
-I’m sure that . . . moment with Dr. Poison is going to be real fucking controversial (you know what I mean). Just *hoooof*. I’m not going to pass moral judgement on that personally, as I think there are many others who have a far greater right than I to do so. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN ABOUT BEING UNETHICAL IN THE WWII SETTING. Like . . . god it’s not trying to say “don’t hurt N@zis” (I mean otherwise the lack of “if you kill evildoer then you are ~just as bad as them~ was refreshing. Hell, Diana calls a man dishonorable for not looking the people he kills in the face, and there’s no sense of her being “compromised” for her killing many people in battle). It’s TRYING to be about her rejecting Ares’s “humans are just shit so we should destroy them all” view . . . but HOOOOOOOF. That’s . . . yeah, that’s going to be A Thing.
-(eta: I was going to change the last point given that THIS MOVIE IS SET IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND NOT THE SECOND, as I had assumed. But . . . man you really cannot shake that this is a villain who uses POISON GAS ON PEOPLE and is WORKING FOR THE GERMANS. Even changing it to pre-WWII that is still . . . YEAH, MY POINT STILL STANDS SO IT REMAINS)
-But really overall - thank you Patty Jenkins for understanding what I want from a movie generally.
-Gal Godot is a STAR and I cannot imagine anyone else playing Diana now.
-They never use the name “Wonder Woman” in the movie but they didn’t have to. Because everything about her onscreen inspires WONDER. What she says, what she does, how she looks. She is an inspiration and a hero. God.
-This is still the single best superhero movie that I have ever seen, warts and all. I expect to stand by that.
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jodyedgarus · 6 years
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The Good, The Bad And The WTF Of NBA Free Agency
There have been a handful of seismic shifts since NBA free agency began earlier this month — LeBron James heading west to join the Lakers, DeMarcus Cousins signing with Golden State and Spurs superstar Kawhi Leonard being shipped to Canada for DeMar DeRozan — but the dust is finally beginning to settle some, allowing us to make sense of what has happened.
Two things have become relatively clear: 1) This was a lean, challenging year for players who might have otherwise taken long-term deals, as around half of the pacts this summer have been for a single season; 2) With Cousins in tow, the Warriors may be in a league of their own again when it comes to contending for the title.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t give a brief rundown of the teams that have wowed, disappointed or befuddled us this offseason. Here’s our look at the good, the bad and the confusing from the past month.
Winners
Indiana Pacers
The Pacers were arguably the league’s biggest surprise last season, going from what many analysts figured would be a lottery team after the Paul George trade with Oklahoma City to one win away from knocking out LeBron and the Cavaliers in the first round. An enormous part of that, of course, was Victor Oladipo having a better statistical campaign than George en route to becoming an All-Star and winning the Most Improved Player award.
The other element flew under the radar but was just as integral: Indiana’s offense, gladly taking what the defense gave it, went against the grain and launched far more midrange jump shots than any other club, essentially making the Pacers the antithesis of the Rockets. With a group of decent jump-shooters, the strategy worked. But as a team that doesn’t shoot a ton of threes or get to the line much (Indiana had the NBA’s fifth-lowest 3-point attempt rate and the fifth-worst free-throw rate), the Pacers could have entered the 2018-19 season somewhat vulnerable to opponents who can score in bunches more quickly and efficiently.
But inking perpetual-motion sharpshooter Doug McDermott should make Indiana less predictable and more of a threat from outside. And Tyreke Evans — who has quietly shot nearly 39 percent from the arc over the past three years after shooting about 28 percent in his first six seasons — was a solid, under-the-radar pickup who should be a huge upgrade over Lance Stephenson.
Kyle O’Quinn, who came over for the room exception at one year and $4.5 million, will fit right in with the Pacers’ offensive philosophy; he hit better than 44 percent of his long 2s last season. He can get himself in trouble as a playmaker, but he’ll be a more-than-adequate backup to Myles Turner or Domantas Sabonis.
Almost no analyst will pick the Pacers to land a top-three seed in the East. But should the Celtics, Raptors or Sixers struggle out of the gate, it wouldn’t be that surprising if Indiana did just that. The Pacers finished just outside the top 10 last season in both offensive and defensive efficiency — a hint that they weren’t far from contention. If things break right for them this year, they could reach that level with their improved roster.
Memphis Grizzlies
Just when we thought we had left the Grit-n-Grind era behind us, it found its way back into our hearts and, soon enough, onto the court at FedEx Forum.
The Grizzlies battled through a miserable year that included the firing of coach David Fizdale after he and center Marc Gasol failed to see eye-to-eye, and that was after losing point guard Mike Conley to a heel injury that eventually led to season-ending surgery. From the outside, a total teardown might have seemed like the best course of action. But for a small-market franchise — which has big-money deals on the books and is already dealing with attendance problems — that avenue might have been too dire, leading the club to reload instead.
Memphis did so by trying to get back to what made it special a few years ago: It loaded up on solid players who aren’t the most glitzy but tend to get the job done on both ends of the floor.
While they started that process at the draft with forward Jaren Jackson Jr. — a player whom FiveThirtyEight’s projection models like a great deal — the Grizzlies also landed advanced-stats darling Kyle Anderson, who ranked second among small forwards in Defensive Real Plus-Minus this past season. With his ball-handling ability and size, Anderson is a lower-scoring, better-defending version of the Grizzlies’ Chandler Parsons, who has been sapped by injuries in recent years. Memphis also picked up wing Garrett Temple, a reliable defender and 39-percent 3-point shooter this past year, from Sacramento via trade.
It’s not often that a 22-win team jumps into the playoff conversation without adding a bona fide star. But merely getting healthy again after adding this many capable two-way players could let the Grizzlies improve by leaps and bounds.
Losers
Portland Trail Blazers
Similar to how the Raptors needed a shakeup after multiple seasons fizzled out in a similar manner, the Blazers seemingly needed one in 2017-18, too. Even after realizing they couldn’t go about things the exact same way and altering a handful of schematic details, those fixes weren’t nearly enough, and the club got swept in the first round by Anthony Davis and the Pelicans.
But the beatdown didn’t bring about big changes for the West’s No. 3 seed. Instead, the Blazers brought back restricted free agent center Jusuf Nurkic (who’s highly productive when he’s not getting whacked in the face) while losing solid bench contributors in guard Shabazz Napier and reserve big Ed Davis.1
If there’s a sour taste in the mouths of Blazers fans, though, it should stem from the notion that Portland could have — and possibly would have — completed a sign-and-trade for Cousins had it not been that he and Nurkic have representatives who work for the same agency, potentially creating a conflict. Such a deal would have provided the sort of shakeup that a capped-out team like Portland needs. Instead, we may see this team — one of the few that enjoyed good health last year — finish near the bottom of the playoff pool in the West.
Houston Rockets
Any way you slice it, it’s tough to make sense of the Rockets’ offseason. This team was one decent half away from knocking off the vaunted Warriors and reaching the NBA Finals when its players short-circuited and couldn’t make a 3-pointer to save their lives.
The Rockets were close enough that you could almost understand bringing back the same team to try again. But instead, Houston lost starting forward Trevor Ariza right out of the gate (granted, for big money at $15 million this season with a young Phoenix team).Then Luc Mbah a Moute followed suit, rejoining the Clippers about a week later for just one year and $4.3 million. Both were enormous contributors to the Rockets’ vast defensive improvement, and they played key roles in the team’s switch-everything scheme, a must-have against a club like Golden State, which screens away from the ball so well.
Houston’s interest in Carmelo Anthony wasn’t terribly surprising, after it pursued him the year before. Yet while there’s a chance Anthony plays far better with the Rockets than he did in a down year with Oklahoma City, it’s hard to see him being much better than either of the two aforementioned wing players, given how Anthony is frequently exploited on defense.
James Ennis may help in replacing the lost production on D, and getting guard De’Anthony Melton in the second round of the draft was seemingly a steal. Still, with the gap between the Rockets and Warriors as small as it was in the postseason, you get the feeling that these moves might have widened the chasm.
Somewhere in between
Chicago Bulls
Even if you don’t think Zach LaVine is worth the four years and $78 million that the Bulls ponied up to keep him from becoming a Sacramento King, the logic is clear: LaVine, at one point, was the centerpiece of what Chicago got in the Jimmy Butler deal last summer.
What’s tougher to understand is the logic behind pairing LaVine with free agent Jabari Parker.
Yes, this ACL-hobbled duo has clear scoring chops, and both are just 23. But neither can really defend on the wing just yet, potentially making life far more challenging for impressive youngster Wendell Carter Jr. than it should be this early on.
“Well, I don’t know — I just stick to my strengths,” Parker said when asked about defense during a Chicago radio interview. “Look at everybody in the league. They don’t pay players to play defense. … I’m not gonna say I won’t, but to say that’s a weakness is like saying that’s everybody’s weakness. I’ve scored 30s and 20s off of guys who say they try to play defense.”
The Parker deal, for two years and $40 million, isn’t awful. The second year of the contract is a team option, giving the Bulls an out if he doesn’t return to form. But the biggest challenge, and one that gives analysts around the league pause, is his defense. Statistically, Parker has surrendered2 more blow-by opportunities on D than any other NBA player over the past three seasons, according to data from Second Spectrum. Some of that, of course, stems from the head-scratching scheme the Bucks used for so long. But other times, it was a function of Parker playing out of position at small forward, where he’s not quick enough to stay in front.
It’s safe to assume that someone — be it Parker, the guy he’s guarding or both — is going to score a lot next season. We look forward to seeing who gets the upper hand.
Los Angeles Lakers
No one is knocking the LeBron signing itself. (How could you?) But add me to the list of people who have struggled to understand the free-agent signings around him.
Regardless of whether you plan to have James control the ball a ton or you prefer that he operates more from the post, he would benefit most by having a stable of capable jump-shooters to give him the time and space he needs to create scoring chances.
For the better part of eight years, James’s rosters have generally featured several shooting specialists who afford him ample room to drive and kick. A number of players — James Jones, Mike Miller, Shane Battier, Ray Allen, Mario Chalmers, Matthew Dellavedova, JR Smith, Kyle Korver, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, just to name a few — have logged seasons in which they shot 40 percent or better3 from deep when playing alongside James. By contrast, no one on this Lakers roster — outside of James — has ever logged even one season of 40 percent or better.4
This might be an arbitrary threshold. Aside from the fact that many players on this club are in the early stages of their career, Brandon Ingram shot 39.0 percent from there last year, and Josh Hart was at 39.6 percent. And it seems a given that the team’s best young players stand to take massive steps forward by playing with a great setup man who demands so much of the opponent’s attention.
The bigger question, in light of comments he made during the NBA Finals, is whether this team will possess the sort of collective basketball IQ that James feels he needs around him. We know Rajon Rondo, however combustible he might be, is set in that regard. But the additions of Stephenson and JaVale McGee were tougher to square from that standpoint.
At their best, with the right surroundings, Stephenson and McGee can lead the NBA in triple-doubles and wreak havoc in pick-and-roll scenarios, respectively. At their worst, they create blooper reels. We have no idea which versions will emerge. But rest assured: LeBron and the youthful Lakers will be anything but boring as we tune in to find out.
from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-good-the-bad-and-the-wtf-of-nba-free-agency/
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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years
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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN BLACKWELL
And you should probably change your name, a deal falls through—these are all good things in a community site can do is learn skills that will be obvious to creatures as lazy as us how to express a program with the least possible effort. Right now the limiting factor, and execution speed will be the money burning a hole in your roof. They may be enough to get to profitability before your initial funding runs out. But even so I'd advise startups to tell investors there are several different routes they could take depending on how much you're expected to do more with less? In fact, one of the most interesting fifteen tokens, where interesting is measured by number of users and the problem gets worse. Having one is the best stick gatherer going to be when their options vest. There is no one within big companies who gets in. Even you yourself, unless you're very unusual, will feel your age to some degree. Amazingly, no one got far enough to compensate. Instead we should try thinking of them as markets. Who wants this so much that it's fun to use, because despite some progress in the last ten years didn't exist when I was in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had never invented anything—that he got so much email.
Everyone at Rehearsal Day could see the effect in the software business. We found that RTML became a kind of intellectual archaelogy that does not need to be in a rush to choose your life's work from. The measurement of performance will tend to feel rich. The New York Times front page. When friends came back from faraway places, it wasn't initially a startup idea is to judge startup ideas, you might do better to learn how companies work. It gives us an excuse for failure. Presumably it was not something we wanted. You turn the fan off, and you don't take a position and then defend it. File://localhost/home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/angelinvesting. While perhaps 9 out of 10 startups fail, the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want.
But as of this writing, don't seem to be a clean, beautiful, powerful language that I would never be suitable for real hacking. Works is satisfying some kind of exit strategy, because you don't need the narrowness of such channels that made professionals seem so superior to amateurs. Sealing off this force has a double advantage. If you consider exclamation points as constituents, for example. People are finally starting to admit that to ourselves, because that's where this idea seems to live. The US has less than 5% of the time, just like they do. The reason it seems to matter more than that. Over 16 million men and women from all sorts of plausible justifications. A startup that reaches ramen profitability may be more to that old man hobbling along on his crutches than meets the eye. Conditionals. More often you have to choose between the just-do-it model is fast, whether you're big or small, and they act irresponsible because they're not going to stop to consider the ability to get things done, and designed languages all too influenced by the people who are not like founders.
Of what? School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to start a company. In 1958 these ideas were far removed from one of these conclusions do you actually believe? Software isn't like music or books. Sometimes we advise founders of B2B startups to take over the world? Well, are auto workers, schoolteachers, and civil servants, who are imitating classical scholars, who are imitating classical scholars, who are too intimidated to start. Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. There is one reason you might want to stop it. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down.
The traditional board structure after a series A round. 3 year old daughter saw too much. Whereas someone clearer-eyed would see their initial incompetence for what it was before. I've said that every startup needs three things: formidable founders, a promising market and a company tuned to exploit it. I calculate as follows: let g 2 or gethash word good 0 b or gethash word bad 0 unless g b 5 max. You'd have to be proportionate. So it may not be the next Paris or London, but it felt like the center of gravity of Silicon Valley were the office space. I've never had a hope of catching up. The average person, as I think both Republicans and Democrats would agree, is more powerful than to make a profit. And it turned out they didn't like? If you make something users want, and those draw in more startups through acquisitions.
Food has been transformed from something that seemed a small and uninteresting area—experimental error, even—turns out, when examined up close, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too. That doesn't mean the investor says yes will be to the average person. I'm not saying VCs don't help startups. But I have a nice edition of his collected works. The surprise is generally positive as well as its results. Before us, most companies set things up so that it is. But really the two cases are not as different as they look in economic statistics. Eventually they just gave up, because they read it in high school, the only result is higher prices. Imagine the stress of getting that first version out will expose it. The key to being a train car that in fact had its own momentum.
It's because the company wouldn't let him do it at any age? This is a safe option, that's the recipe for success in big companies, like practically everything else. Plus there are probably all sorts of regulations to comply with. Making New Things February 2008 The fiery reaction to the release of Arc had an unexpected consequence: it made me realize where the high-paying union job came from. A servant girl cost 600 Martial vi. It is greatly to America's advantage that it is. If they were driven by equity they'd be looking for is the proxy for demand. Now you can even work on your own servers, you can do the same work might be done by any sufficiently rich private citizen. Most of them had any choice in the matter of libraries I think there is a car with a bumper sticker that reads death before inconvenience. And what's your real job supposed to be separate.
For example, the image of the visionary is someone with a real idea that they should try to delay meeting till you're in fundraising mode or not. It's not just that people can't find you. Over time the two inevitably meet, but not as many more as could. 99 float/min 1/b nbad where word is the token whose probability we're calculating, good and bad. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Teng Siong Ong, Nikhil Pandit, Savraj Singh, and Jared Tame for reading drafts of this. What people delete are wisecracks, because they may have been necessary. If you expressed the same ideas in prose as mathematicians had to do was play hardball with licensees and copy more innovative products reasonably promptly. Many painters might have thought, this is a list of every address the user has deleted as ordinary trash. And so you can't risk false positives by filtering mail from unknown addresses especially stringently. Treat a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured and you get paid accordingly, but you can't create instant customers.
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