#there's another one where he ends up in a world where its post-jason's revival | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Hi, I was reading your post about Jason punching Dick in the face when Dick revealed he fake his death was bullshit ( which it was) and it reminded me of an issue/question that has bothered me for sometime.

Why did people believe Dick was actually dead?

I’m not the most avid comic reader so maybe I missed something but it was always weird to me that everyone just accepted this especially given how Bruce was acting or should I say wasn’t acting.

This is a man when his child died another child had to come along and told him sir you are being too violent and emotional you need supervision. When his other child died he went all over the universe to bring him back to life because he knew it was possible ( which was happening at the same time), so why didn’t anyone think it was weird he wasn’t doing that for Dick. Can you imagine Dick really dying that soon after Damian it would be injustice Batman Version. You are telling me that Tim, Jason or Barbara didn’t think it was weird that Bruce didn’t also bring Dick’s corpse to the bring Damian back to life mission or mention it to themselves. Like what more likely Dick dead and Bruce is handling it well or that he fake his death to do something stupid and Dangerous after his partner/brother/ little bit my son the feelings are complicated died after he was knocked out and woke up to his corpse.

Oh man, this is like, the entire nature of my beef?

(Slight derail just to emphasize the fact real quick that Dick DID actually die, he was just revived quickly, but like, the trauma of his death was very real and its not like anyone was clued into Luthor having a resurrection backdoor built into his literal murder of Dick in the actual moment of it happening. So Dick’s death wasn’t fake, and additionally, he didn’t have anything to do with like, telling people about it, because he was literally comatose in the cave and recovering while Bruce was telling people....by the time Dick woke up in the cave, we already know that Alfred at least had already been convinced by Bruce that Dick was dead, so I have a kneejerk need to pushback against the Dick faked his death narrative by reminding people wherever possible that Dick had no agency in the spreading of that narrative.

It happened without him being involved, and the only actual contribution he ever made to it was just not revealing he was alive before Grayson #12, after Bruce like.....emotionally, mentally and physically badgered him into accepting that doing so would be directly harmful to his family and he didn’t want to be the reason more people died when like, people had just died because he ‘let’ himself be captured and interrogated by Power Woman’s Lasso of Submission, did he?

SORRY TO BE PEDANTIC, just wanted to start this off on a clarification, even though I know the aim of your ask was very much in tune with the rest of my response. A lot of people don’t read the actual comics, so like, I’m never gonna skip over an opportunity to emphasize that the shorthand people use to refer to Dick’s death and the year he was with Spyral, is like, literally just shorthand for describing it. Its not actually an accurate description of how all that went down and who had the most hand in it).

BUT ANYWAY. BACK TO THE MEAT OF THE BEEF.

Okay so like, not only was the entire family and Bruce himself giving Dick shit for his death and Spyral, like, PAINFULLY egregious because it was literal victim blaming in every possible sense of the word....

None of it made a LICK of sense with ANY of their characterizations, and they ONLY all accepted it on face value because the Plot Demanded It, and when you're like, no, as a reader I say The Plot Demanded It is not a good enough reason for me to be like well sure, that makes sense......looking at the characters ACTUAL actions at face value pretty much just makes them all look like assholes?

Like, Tim has never gracefully accepted anyone's death. Ever. This is core characterization for him. He will go to the ends of the earth for his loved ones and to bring them back, prove they're not dead, refuse to let death be the final verdict for them. He was tempted to use the Lazarus Pit to bring his parents back to life. He refused to accept Bruce was dead long before he had any proof whatsoever of that theory. He tried to clone his BFF/future-husband Kon in his fucking basement like, dude was two whole inches away from going Full Dark Side in his quest to bring back a lost loved one no matter WHAT the cost.....and then you've got Dick unmasked onscreen, killed offscreen, and Bruce then reporting to the rest of them with zero inflection 'oh Dick's dead now. Its very sad' and Tim's just like, sure. Sounds legit.

I mean?!?!

And you're SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DAMIAN THING! Bruce LITERALLY LITERALLY LITERALLY went BEYOND the ends of the Earth, like, he full on chartered a fucking space ship to fly his whole family out to APOKOLIPS to bring Damian back from the dead by going to EXTREME lengths.....WHILE everyone else thought Dick was dead....

And not a single person looked at Bruce and was like, okay, not that we're not down to do this for Damian because we miss Stabby Smurf something fierce ourselves, but.....what the fuck is UP with you dude? Why aren't you displaying ANY hint of this same kind of energy in regards to your eldest son that you said you watched die right in front of you?

Like....I don't know that we were actually ever told that Dick's coffin was empty or had a fake in it, but like....this family of detectives who refuse to accept death, defy death, COME BACK FROM THE DEAD....not a single one of them said like, okay, if I'm gonna like, ACCEPT accept that Dick is dead and gone for good, I need to at least just see him one last time? That's literally all it would have taken for someone to realize hey something's a little wonky here. Where's the dead body, Pops?

Since when has Jason ever missed an opportunity to prove Bruce is a) full of shit, b) acting like an emotionless robot and all his kids deserve better especially when they've just like....died, c) just factually incorrect and wrong and jumped to a conclusion before it was conclusively proved, d) lying like a liar or e) all of the above?

Nobody even ASKED if Dick's body could be put in a Lazarus Pit? Yeah, Jason wouldn't necessarily recommend it himself, given what it put him through, but actually fuck that, I take that back, because I'm NOT actually of the opinion that Jason full on hates his life and actively spends every second of every day wishing he hadn't been resurrected, even if it had come with a huge buffet of additional trauma and pain.

And that's kinda what's implied when people just take it for granted that he would never be on board with any scenario involving using a Lazarus Pit to bring Dick back, because it suggests that based even just on his own experiences and feelings, he honestly believes Dick would prefer being dead and not have ANY further opportunities to be with his loved ones, his friends, help save the damn world again at some future point.....that Jason, projecting based just off himself, legit feels Dick would rather be dead than have another shot at life even WITH the downsides of Lazarus Pit usage? Nope. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Speaking of not buying it.....you know what was missing from all those soliloquies the others monologued at Dick about how they felt and were hurt and just devastated by his death, to such a point they can't seem to muster a single shred of happiness that he's NOT dead still -

(seriously, Damian was the ONLY person in ALL THE LANDS OF EMOTION-HAVING who expressed ANY kind of positive reaction to having Dick back. We were so fucking cheated of like.....ANY opportunity to have the characters show just how much they valued him by just being fucking HAPPY he was alive, no matter what else was involved....and then most of fandom compounded that by for years being like mmmm, no, Dick didn't get yelled at enough by his family for what HE put THEM through. Needs more yelling. More punching too. Bad Dick. Bad. This is the only way you'll learn not to die and get shipped off on a mission that you don't want but at least is to protect your family after being beaten into it by your dad whilst victim blaming you for dying in the first place. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO THINK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR FEELINGS FOR A CHANGE, DICK?!?)

- But like, BUT I DIGRESS aside....you know what was missing from all those monologues about how hard DICK'S death and ensuing year of basically exile from his loved ones was for EVERYONE BUT HIM?

We never got a single line of explanation as to what everyone else officially thinks even happened to him in the first place?

Like, did Bruce straight up just say oh bad news kids, your brother umm. Expired. Spontaneously. There's no one to blame, he just keeled over, its all very sad.

Is that how that went down?

You're telling me that the explanation of Dick's death didn't come with a single pointed finger at someone for this family of blame-happy vigilantes to like, BLAME for the loss of this brother they all mourned oh so much, they just couldn't help but blame him for all the hurt it caused them?

The family that in every other fic is like OBSESSED with avenging and being avenged and all things vengeful and even tangentially vengeance-y....like didn't ask for a single detail on whomst the fuck deprived us of our brother-having?

Where were the attempts on Luthor's life by Jason (who I mean, yeah I know it was in a previous continuity, but erasing that timeline doesn't erase my awareness of the time Dick killed Jason's murderer so like.....mmm, just saying, woulda been nice)....where was the rage directed at the Crime Syndicate and references to how seriously and personally the Batfam took making sure that they were PUNISHED for all this and would never be free to wreak havoc on their world or their family again? What did they tell Damian when he came back to life, and how are you going to tell me that this fraternal little ball of fury didn't aim himself like a cannonball at whomever the fuck had DARED take HIS Batman from him when Damian wasn't around to have his back?

Not only does everyone else's desire to be avenged start falling really flat the second you factor in hey maybe Dick feels "mmm what about MY avenging" sometimes, and why doesn't anyone ever care about doing that for him.....but also, y'know what REALLY sucks about the ONLY person we actually SEE being blamed for Dick's death and ensuing absence being like....Dick himself?

Not only were his family all super keen on making all of this HIS fault and HIM the bad guy because of how it made them all feeeeeeel (and meanwhile fuck his feelings, am I right Batfam hfaklshfklahfkla).....

They somehow found a way to justify prioritizing this OVER ever even getting around to blaming some villain for his death in the FIRST place, in the entire year or so they thought he was still dead!

Like, you couldn't come up with a single target in all that time, but Dick's back two seconds, and you don't even give him a chance to EXPLAIN before you're punching him, shutting him down with 'I expected better from you' and turning away with 'I don't want to hear it, why am I surprised Dick Grayson disappointed me again'?

afshklfhalfhalfhla

Make it make sense!

And like, it won't, cuz it doesn't, and it never will, and like I said at the top, the ONLY reason it all played out this way is because DC doesn't give a fuck about character development and deemed it necessary to go down this way for the sake of the plot (which was totes worth it, I mean, glad we sacrificed characters for this A+ plot which was clearly the greatest plot of all time and definitely justified every story choice made or not made around it loooool).

BUT.

BUT BUT BUT.

The problem isn't JUST that DC is stupid, even though that is an eternal mood and quite the problem.

Its that the SECOND large parts of fandom decided to play along with DC and just accept the story at face value, only add to it and play into it exactly as it happened in canon with no significant deviations, and like, heaping on the LITERAL abuse from Dick's siblings while ignoring the LITERAL abuse from his father....

THAT....is when all of this becomes relevant.

Because the second people decided TO engage with the reasoning DC gave for what Bruce did and how and what Dick did and how and just not mess with any of that and have it all play out exactly like that...

The second people are like, okay we're FINE with not just dismissing this story as OOC writing that doesn't make any sense, and actually VALIDATING it to various degrees by engaging with it as is....

That's when 'OOC writing' stops being an excuse or explanation for alllll of the above gaps in character logic and actions.

Because its like, when you had abundant chance to REJECT this story and say nope, this was bullshit from start to finish and I'm not here for it, when you were just as capable of transforming literally ANY aspect of this story you didn't like into something that made more sense to you....

And you chose not to.

That's.....accepting it as valid writing. You were like, okay, I'm game to just treat this as a thing that happened, just like they said that happened.

For the chance to give Dick shit for it, see. For the angst, see.

And that's when I'm like okay cool, so when engaging with this story as is and accepting it on face value and just delving into the characters as they were SHOWN interacting with and around these events......for the angst or whatever....

You guys just all decided en masse to just hop, skip and jump over allllllllll the opportunities for angst inherent in examining even ANY SINGLE ONE of the above lapses in judgment or hypocrisy on the parts of the characters (who don't get to be excused by OOC writing if you're not going to call the story an example of OOC writing, whoops).

And its just like, uh, what's up with that?

#lol thank you for this ask tho #I havent gone on a good Spyral rant in months #it does wonders for my pores

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, August 16, 2021

U.S. Air Force veteran comforts children plagued by gun violence (Reuters) Like many cities across the United States, Washington has seen a spike in shooting-related deaths during the pandemic. Homicides were up 19% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. This month’s data shows that the city has already clocked more cases than at the same time last year. “It’s like a war zone. It’s like being in the military,” Jawanna Hardy said. Frustrated by the senseless loss of life, Hardy, an Air Force veteran and now a 34-year-old high school English teacher, launched ‘Guns Down Friday,’ an outreach program to support neighborhoods plagued by gun violence—including the one she has lived in since childhood. She has raised money for shooting victims’ gravestones, advocated for more streetlights, and trained people how to treat bullet wounds themselves. She drives her van—adorned with photos of young gun violence victims—through the streets to greet youngsters. On a recent Friday, she arrived with water balloons. “Put your guns down and pick your water balloons up!” Hardy cried through a megaphone as children outside an apartment complex in southeast Washington laughed and scrambled to drench one another. She knows her Friday night street parties will not stop gun violence but hopes they can at least provide children a brief respite from the constant fear in which many live.

Haitians scramble to rescue survivors from ruins of major quake (Reuters) Haitians labored overnight to pick through shattered buildings in search of friends and relatives trapped in the rubble after a devastating earthquake struck the Caribbean country on Saturday, killing 1,297 people and injuring at least 5,700 more. The 7.2 magnitude quake flattened hundreds of homes in the impoverished country, which is still clawing its way back from another major temblor here 11 years ago, and has been without a head of state since the assassination of its president last month. Churches, hotels, hospitals and schools were badly damaged or destroyed, while the walls of a prison were rent open by the violent shudders that convulsed Haiti. Access to the worst-hit areas was complicated by a deterioration in law and order that has left key access roads in parts of Haiti in the hands of gangs, although unconfirmed reports on social media suggested they would let aid pass.

Want to stay long term in France? First come the classes on how to be French. (Washington Post) In France, la vie en rose comes wrapped in red tape. Foreigners hoping to stay here long term must sign an “integration contract” and agree to uphold French values. The contract requires four days of civic education, yet what’s taught is more akin to a government crash course in how to be French. There are discussions about Marianne—the symbolic embodiment of the French Republic—and about classical culinary dishes, such as duck confit and escargot. France 101 covers both the cultural (how to visit museums) as well as the practical (how to navigate the national health-care system). The classes, plus language lessons for anyone whose fluency doesn’t measure up, help determine whether an applicant gets a multiyear visa. Every year, an average of 100,000 people take the courses, in cities across the country. The contemporary agreement explicitly states that receiving an extended residency visa is conditional on abiding by its terms, a key one being deference to French values. After an applicant signs the document, the language test is administered and 24 hours of classes scheduled.

Taliban sweep into Afghan capital after government collapses (AP) The Taliban swept into Afghanistan’s capital Sunday after the government collapsed and the embattled president joined an exodus of his fellow citizens and foreigners, signaling the end of a costly two-decade U.S. campaign to remake the country. Heavily armed Taliban fighters fanned out across the capital, and several entered Kabul’s abandoned presidential palace. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, told The Associated Press that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an “open, inclusive Islamic government.” Kabul was gripped by panic. Helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and the American flag was lowered. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out. Fearful that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights, Afghans rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings. The desperately poor—who had left homes in the countryside for the presumed safety of the capital—remained in parks and open spaces throughout the city. Many people watched in disbelief as helicopters landed in the U.S. Embassy compound to take diplomats to a new outpost at the airport. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.

From hubris to humiliation: America’s warrior class contends with the abject failure of its Afghanistan project (Washington Post) Twenty years ago, when the twin towers and the Pentagon were still smoldering, there was a sense among America’s warrior and diplomatic class that history was starting anew for the people of Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world. “For you and us, history starts today,” then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told his Pakistani counterparts. Earlier this month, as the Taliban raced across Afghanistan, retired Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, a two-time veteran of the war, stumbled across Armitage’s words. To Dempsey, the sentiment was “the most American thing I’ve ever heard” and emblematic of the hubris and ignorance that he and so many others brought to the losing war. “We assumed the rest of the world saw us as we saw ourselves,” he said. “And we believed that we could shape the world in our image using our guns and our money.” Both assumptions ignored Afghan culture, politics and history. Both, he said, were tragically wrong. Michèle Flournoy, one of the architects of President Barack Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan in 2010, said, “In retrospect, the United States and its allies got it really wrong from the very beginning. The bar was set based on our democratic ideals, not on what was sustainable or workable in an Afghan context.” Flournoy acknowledged in hindsight that the mistake was compounded across Republican and Democratic administrations, which continued with almost equal fervor to pursue goals that ran counter to decades—if not centuries—of the Afghan experience.

Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts (Washington Post) The Taliban's stunningly swift advances across Afghanistan have sparked global alarm, reviving doubts about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy promises and drawing harsh criticisms even from some of the United States' closest allies. And many around the world are wondering whether they could rely on the United States to fulfill long-standing security commitments stretching from Europe to East Asia. "Whatever happened to 'America is back'?" said Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defense Committee in the British Parliament. "People are bewildered that after two decades of this big, high-tech power intervening, they are withdrawing and effectively handing the country back to the people we went in to defeat," Ellwood said. "This is the irony. How can you say America is back when we're being defeated by an insurgency armed with no more than [rocket-propelled grenades], land mines and AK-47s?" As much as its military capabilities, the United States' decades-old role as a defender of democracies and freedoms is again in jeopardy, said Rory Stewart, who was Britain's minister for international development in the Conservative government of Theresa May. "The Western democracy that seemed to be the inspiration for the world, the beacon for the world, is turning its back," Stewart said. Rivals of the United States also have expressed dismay. Among them is China, which fears that the ascent of an extremist Islamist government on its western border will foster unrest in the adjoining province of Xinjiang, where Beijing has waged sweeping crackdowns on the Uyghur population that have been denounced by the West. The United States' Arab allies, which have long counted on the U.S. military to come to their aid in the event of an attack by Iran, also have faced questions over whether they will be able to rely on the United States.

Torrential rains lash wide areas of Japan, three feared dead after landslide (Reuters) Torrential rain lashed much of Japan on Sunday, flooding roads and buildings in the western part of the country, while three people were feared dead after a landslide in central Nagano prefecture. Large parts of Japan, particularly the southernmost main island of Kyushu, have seen record levels of rainfall, causing rivers to overflow and triggering landslides. While the rain had stopped in much of Kyushu as of Sunday morning, Tokyo and other parts of the country were pounded by the downpour. Japan “will continue to face conditions in which a large-scale disaster could occur at anytime, anywhere,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said at a ministerial meeting on Sunday. He called on local municipalities and relevant organisations to cooperate and act with speed on rescue missions and aid.

More military personnel deployed to enforce Sydney Covid restrictions as entire state locks down (CNN) Additional Australian military personnel will be deployed to enforce tighter Covid-19 restrictions in the greater Sydney area next week, authorities announced Saturday, as the entire state of New South Wales (NSW) prepares to go under lockdown. Stay at home orders will be applied across the country’s most populous state, with people only permitted to leave home to shop for essentials, receive medical care, outdoor exercise with one other person, and work if residents cannot work from home. Schooling will also be moved back online. Sydney, the capital of NSW, has been under lockdown measures for more than seven weeks now, and they will likely be extended further; they were set to end on August 28 but the state government has indicated restrictions will remain through September.

Fuel explosion in Lebanon kills 28, wounding dozens (AP) A warehouse where fuel was illegally stored exploded in northern Lebanon early Sunday, killing at least 28 people and injuring 79 more in the latest tragedy to hit the Mediterranean country in the throes of a devastating economic and political crisis. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion near the border with Syria. Fuel smuggling operations have been ongoing for months. The Lebanese Red Cross said a fuel tanker exploded and its teams recovered 28 bodies from the site in the border village of Tleil. In a statement, it said it evacuated 79 people who were injured or suffered burns in the blast. Hours after the blast, Lebanese Red Cross members were still searching the area for more victims as Lebanese soldiers cordoned the area.

'Once the best in the Middle East,' Beirut hospital pleads for fuel as it faces shutdown (The Week) A once-famed Beirut hospital is now pleading for international aid to avoid running out of essential resources. The American University of Beirut Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon, is making an urgent appeal to the United Nations and its specialized agencies, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Children's Fund, to supply the hospital with fuel before it's forced to shut down by Monday. Lebanon is mired in an economic and political crisis, and the nationwide fuel shortage is currently the most dire consequence. That's perhaps most clearly reflected in the plight of AUBMC, which said 40 adults and 15 children living on respirators would die immediately and many other patients will be at great risk if the shutdown is not avoided. The medical center said it's been rationing fuel and electricity for weeks, but is running out of both. Liz Sly, The Washington Post's Beirut bureau chief, notes that the American University hospital "was once the best" in the entire Middle East region; the announcement shows that the country is "truly heading to disaster," she writes.

#headlines #news

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semicolonthefifth · 4 years

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CROSS ch.2 - Bad Moon Rising

The night was still strong, and the moon past the mountains helped shine the way.

For 3 hours now Jason Cross had been driving down the Black Road. On the drive since, Sid had been weakly banging against the car for the first hour before stopping on the second - at least that’s what Jason was sure had happened. Throughout the drive, Jason had been listening to the radio. Every now and then he’d switch the channels whenever a song failed to capture his attention. He’d mostly been ignoring Sid’s antics from within the trunk, and had been in the need for something to fill his mind till he reaches his destination.

So many stations littered the airways, from Calberi to Moresatta - all throughout the Black Road passage. Dozens of stations settled along the road, and all of them had the same idea on what to play. Humanity isn’t creative anymore, all they want are the oldies - the kind of stuff that used to play back on the Old Earth. Way back when, before they left for far off stars, only to then realize what a mistake it was; before they had settled on so many worlds, got into as many problems, and wished greatly that they hadn’t forgotten the way back. So, every station plays the oldies - the songs from the far ago generations.

You’d have such stations as: “Classics of the Great Wars”, “Music of the Groovy Times”, “3R’s Real Revolition Radio”, “The Legends of Rock n’ Roll”, and even “Electric Orchestras of the 2nd Millennium”. Most of the stations Jason had blocked out - he’s listened to them all, especially the ones off “Country Listenings” some time back. He’d stop listening to them altogether, maybe find a station making new stuff - if they ever come to existence. Though till then, “60’s Power Radio” still had some things he hadn’t yet listened to as much.

A couple turns of the dial, and he had come into the station just as when a favorite of his came on: “Bad Moon Rising”, by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The moment the tune picks up, Jason’s stresses from the long drive started to fade away. Though he hated to admit it, the feeling was nice. He began to ease up on his grip of the wheel, and allowed himself a chance to relax when the lyrics came into play - and slowly he sung it to himself.

“I see the Bad Moon Rising…”

“I see trouble on the way…”

“I see earthquakes and lightning”

“I see bad times today.”

His singing became almost automatic - it always felt like that with songs he has in his head longer than he should. He recalls seeing adverts and news clippings, all about what some experts from the cities call the “Nostalgic Disease”. It isn’t like an actual sickness, it was something Jason would refer to as ‘being all in the head’. It affects plenty of folks, especially in the cities. Those affected claw over whatever they can from the Old World, and then get hooked on it. They listen to a song 40, 80 times in a sitting, trying to capture that ‘magic’ off those stories they hear about from the old homeworld. They want more though, and soon enough they try to live it.

Jason recalls a story he heard once: a man became so addicted to the music from some millennia old musician named Elvis Presley that he was convinced he was the guy himself. The man paid millions for surgeries to look the part, using a couple of surviving photographs off a museum. Even went as far as to get an artificial voice box installed so he’d have a voice straight off the radio, crackle and all. Last he heard, the copycat ate himself to death as soon as a gray hair got through the fake ones. The worst part of it all was that it wasn’t the only story of its kind - there’d been many others, many copycats - changing themselves to copy ancient figures, celebrities and even fictional characters alike.

Jason laughs to himself a bit when thinking back, but then realizes that he’s singing the final lyrics to the song. He realizes where he is at the moment, and immediately switches the radio off. It’s good timing at least, as further down the Black Road he could see a set of white buildings off to the side. After a quick shake of his head to wake his senses, he grips the wheel tight and gets ready for the turn off the Road.

The Black Road has always been the greatest landmark in the arid wastes of Aurora, in both size and importance. Ever since the United Republic of Earth colonized and settled down here, the road has been the deciding factor for easier trade and travel between its two cities on what is often a sun-blasted desert. Although the alien natives aren’t subtle about their hatred for the road, every human loves the seemingly endless stretch of pure black pavement that has helped them settle these lands. All the humans love this road, especially those wanting to cause trouble for everyone around them.

With the creation of the road came the bandit and the raider - groups who constantly harass and devastate the various settlements that line the Black Road. For as far as Jason could remember, there have always been raiders murdering and setting fires along the road. There has been an ever-increasing level of violence along the wastes of colonized Aurora, and furthermore an increase of groups who set themselves to fight back - and in response, an act from the UROE had to be made. To ensure that the worst of humanity are to be dealt with, and that the best are sufficiently rewarded, they settled the bounty offices - a way to put a mark on any bandits in the area, and pay off those willing to do the job.

One such office, a mile off the Black Road - stationed the same distance either way between the two major cities at the ends of the Road - was set in the middle of the open plains. It was close to the Eastern mountainous wall that runs parallel to the road, visible in the night through the twinkling lights in the pitch darkness.

It was easy to make out. The buildings of the site was painted a bright white, which appeared clearly against the mountains and dunes. Within the site there was a main two-floor office facing South with another, smaller building nearby. The office appeared boring and simple, with little other features aside from some windows and utilities to keep it functional. The side building meanwhile only possessed a door and a singular window, but no light was shown to be coming from it. Remaining to note was an appropriately sized water silo, a generator, several solar panels, and a discreet radio tower barely peeking from the office roof. All of which were encircled by a vast perimeter of chain-link fencing guarded by a single guard post. A flag of the UROE flew proudly - bluish green in color, with a white emblem of the Earth surrounded by stars and the various flags of the Republic’s states. It stands out, even against the brightness of the office it decorates.

The drive takes a while, but Jason’s car soon rolls up towards the post. He quickly rolls down the windows and presents his license and contract, allowing himself through and towards the main office itself. He stops right in front of it, turning the car off once he’s parked.

Before Jason gets out, he suddenly remembers the gun he had taken from Sid at the bar - and for a moment he takes some time to examine it.

It was a seemingly impressive thing: the custom decoration had a ‘cool’ look to it, as Jason though, and it appeared that the metal trims appeared legit. It all depicted a road waving wildly, with a road-sign reading ‘66’ at the center - etched on both sides, practically mirroring each other. However, as Jason turned it over, he began to notice some issues. It had a pretty face, but nothing more. The grip felt loose- the trigger stuck badly; there were indications of grime and dust that was only cleaned surface deep. The way the gun jostled and clicked when waved, you’d figure the thing would’ve blown the man’s groin much sooner.

He carefully tosses the gun aside, but not before skimping the leftover ammunition and storing it into the glovebox. He can’t use it, as badly as he would’ve needed to. Almost any gun would be better than no gun - yet in this case, he liked to have one that actually worked.

Jason finally leaves out the car, and as he makes way for the office he gives a smack of his hand against the back where Sid’s been kept. “Don’t you let me catching you leaving any time soon.” He snarks aloud, chuckling before whistling a tune.

5 seconds into his whistling he recognizes it as “Bad Moon Rising”.

He stops immediately after.

Eventually he enters through the door, and the moment he does so he can feel a jet of cool air hit him square in the face. He barely stifles a low, soft moan before giving into a bit of shaky laughter. He happily calls out, “Damn Barry! When were you gonna tell me you got that AC fixed!?”

Jason stands right under the open vent, an easy feat considering how high he stands. Cool air blows across the main floor office: a fairly open, presentable area with a half-wall barrier blocking off a series of desks lining the floor. To the sides are doorways leading to other, smaller officers, with only a singular staircase off to the back. The place was for show, for the most part - all but one of the offices were empty with only the standard supplies atop the desks. Only one office, towards the side, had decor that was easily seen from the main entry-way.

From where Jason stood, he could see various knick-knacks, some maps, and one man.

The man exits out, giving Jason a hefty smile and a jolly chuckle.

“Just recently!” He shouts, making his way over

He is a graying, blond-haired man whose as wide as he is tall. His complexion is that of a man barely touched by the Auroran sun, only made slightly pink in color. A gray collared shit wraps around his body, tightly tucked into a set of dark grey pants complete with well-shined black laced shoes. On his chest is a small badge, clipped to his left with a photo of himself and his name - “Garry Barr”.

Immediately he goes to Jason for a handshake, and Jason allows it without an inkling of complaint. Barry then proceeds to push far close into Jason’s space, giving the young man a strong slap to the shoulder fueled by celebratory glee.

“Jason Cross you bastard! Thought for a moment you wouldn’t be back so soon. You got Sid, right? Got him good?”

Cocky, Jason shrugs and gives a comical grin. He looks down at Barr with about half the amusement. “Of course! I told ya I’d get the bounty. The fucker put me through a whole lotta runnin’ across the road and back, but I did get him.”

“And just for that, I’m grateful. Absolutely touched. Just as happy as can be!” Barr lets out another bit of laughter before proceeding to hook Jason over and direct him to his office. He speaks further before Jason could get a word in. “You want a drink? I can get you a drink. We ought to get a drink, a smoke - something!”

Jason chuckles awkwardly, but tries to answer through Barr’s rambling, “Had enough, actually. You mind calmin’ down? What’s the occasion anyways?”

“I’ll get right to it!” Barr happily shouts, still leading Jason on.

He’s soon brought to a chair, though Jason kindly rejects and opts instead to lean against the doorframe while Barr moves to his desk. The man bends down and retrieves a box kept in the lower shelf, all the while Jason’s eyes wander around the room.

Barr’s office is full of memorabilia of the Old Earth. Model tanks line the shelves by chronological order, all positioned at the same direction and without a bit of dust to ruin their clean, pristine appearance. Several posters of films and wars from the 40’s covered the walls - all of which contained behind glass frames to protect their quality. They mostly covered topics like “War Bonds” and “Liberty”, but Barr didn’t care for the aboutism - he was more drawn to the looks. Lastly, hanging right behind his desk was a replica shotgun, locked behind a glass case with but one plaque reading, “Winchester Model 1987. Trench Gun”.

Jason’s eyes shifted back to see Barr open the box, and from it he nearly brings out a small rectangular bottle with an amber colored liquid and a yellowish-green cap, along with a tin lined with cigars. The tin advertised “Babe Ruth Smokes; Great Vintage Taste from a Great Vintage Era”. with a picture of a grey colored man in striped pajamas.

Barr sat down nice and comfy, rubbed his hands and delightfully waved his fingers over the items laid upon his desk. He sniffed the air, savoring it even from afar. Jason taps the doorway, breaking Barr from his ecstasy.

“Uhh, Barry? What’s the… uh, situation here?” Jason asked, his smile still uncomfortably kept, but his tone presented as respectful as can be.

Finally, Barr answers, with exhaled excitement, “Promotion. I am getting a promotion. All thanks to you.”

“Me?” Jason responds, confused. His face contorts in surprise before returning to his previous expression as he continues, “Uh, I don’t see what you’re talking about here.”

“That bounty you brought in: Sid Leibers. We’ve been looking for him, and here you are. You bring him in to us, and now I’m finally going to get my dues for once in my life. So for that, yes! You boy, I thank! Now then, do you still want the smokes? You ain’t too old yet to celebrate, and I hope you got the taste for cigars. They say these got the old taste right - exactly how it’s described in the old archives.”

“Again, pass.” Says Jason. He brings his hand up to scratch his head, still unsure exactly on what is going on. He then asks the question that had been running through his mind every now and then. “You know Barry, now that you mention it - why have you guys been hounding for Sid so badly? I mean, 850 creds? I know he killed some people, but the worst murderers and arsonists I’ve seen get a bounty of at most 400 alive. Least those people got about a dozen more bodies under their names, and they’re way more sadistic and messed up than this guy ever was.”

Barr leans over his desk, takes a long look towards the hall outside his door and then to the window before looking back at Jason. He whispers, with a wide-eyed look, “You really want to know?”

Jason pauses, jokingly pulls a similar look, and replies in the same tone, “Sure.”

Barr sits back, chuckling lightly for a bit as he then explains - all while his fingers come and rest upon each other. He begins, “I shouldn’t tell you, honestly, but might as well since it’s going to be old news soon. You hear about some gang making a big hit further along the Western mountain ridge?”

Jason shakes his head.

“Well, they’re causing a mighty fine problem for a lot of people along the Black Road. Plenty of hits, ranging from kidnappings and ransoms, arson, murder - just about everything. For the past few months they’ve been pressing the villages for protection money, else they’ll come back and cause even more damage.”

“Sounds to me like your typical, small raider band.” Jason states.

“Not quite.” Counters Barry, elaborating more seriously now. His tone shifts to faithfully present the rank and affiliation he holds within the government on Aurora. “Now they’re not as sadistic as a raider or as large, but they’re smart - at least, whoever is leading them is. They have a good understanding of the environment, and are able to move about without anyone being able to track them. The gang’s hiding out within the ridge, but every time we get to a base they’ve already moved out days before. Not to mention this isn’t like those raiders; these guys can stay put in the mountains for weeks at a time, and we suspect that they possess enough of a survivalist skillset to make use of the wastes without issue. From what reports we’ve managed to scrounge up from those willing to talk, their numbers range from around 12 to 20 men. Not big, but we’re still running blind with what we got on them. Many of the villages affected are too scared to talk, and others ain’t much trusting of our offices to say anything anyways. The guard we have here at the nearest outpost can’t do anything unless we get further intel on the enemy - the command won’t devote manpower to what they see as ineffective searching.”

Jason nods and nods, taking in the information but ultimately not really caring. He keeps his opinion to himself that these guys don’t sound special - no different from any gang he’s dealt with in the past. Folks will join any group if the money’s available, and smarts don’t matter a thing if all they do is the same thing by running around like a bunch of crooks. Still, none of what Barr said had satisfied Jason’s question. “Ok, but what does this have to do with Sid? He’s just some punk, nothing else.”

“You’re right, he is just a pink,” Barry agrees, but his tone becomes progressively chipper. “But - he’s a punk with the right connections. See, what we managed to get from one village is that Sid had recently become a member of this gang. Now, he is dangerous, but he’s thankfully an idiot as well. The bastard was bragging about how he had just gotten in with the gang, completely away from the ears of his operation. With him looking to be our best chance, I commissioned the Bounty Board team to issue a large price on him - alive. Once he’s in our hands, we can interrogate him for all he’s worth.”

There it was, the answer - and Jason had to admit it: it felt good knowing that now. He did some good, albeit without having a clue about it beforehand Of course, the price was what really mattered. “Smart move.” He comments, smiling, “I got to say, you guys are awfully clever. But, how’re you sure he’ll talk? Man ain’t exactly lookin’ to be the agreeable sort.”

“We’ve got out ways, Jason. Man’s an idiot, like I said - and, from the profile we got on him, this ain’t exactly the longest he’s been with a gang. He’ll crack to something, sooner or later, and when he does we’ll have what it takes to nail those fuckers for good.”

“Then congrats to you, friend.” Jason remarks, giving a half-assed salute, though his smile tells Barr that he genuinely does mean well.

“No, thank you. Still! We should toast!” Barr exclaims, rising from his desk with the cheeriest of attitudes. “How about we get Sid out the car and give him a ‘congratulations’ drink? Let him know he’ll be in good hands.”

He starts power-walking out the door towards the front, with Jason following after at a slower pace. Jason comments, “Sure, might as well give him a chance to stretch his legs.”

The two exit out the front and right outside, and almost immediately Jason starts to miss the cold breeze.

With keys in hand, Jason moves around to the back of the car with Barr, and with a wide grin on his face he starts to unlock the trunk. Barr is barely able to contain his excitement, so much so he’s practically hopping in place and thinking past 10 different ways to greet the creep. With a CLICK the trunk swings open, and the two men stare inside - then when they see Sid, their expressions sink.

A long moment of silence falls between them, but especially Sid. The punk lays in a puddle of his own blood from within the trunk, his hands limply placed against his crotch. All color had drained from his body, with the last bit of it being the dark mellow blues of his eyes and lips. His eyes stared off at nothing, not registering one bit to the two men staring at their owner, whose expression is utterly blank.

Barr then breaks the silence, stating dryly, “Well thanks a-fucking-lot, Jason. You killed our man - way to go.”

“Now wait a minute.” Jason starts, holding a finger up as his eyes are kept locked onto the body in the trunk. He doesn’t say anything else, or for that matter can’t find a good reason to right now. With an open palm, and some slight hesitation, he reaches forward and gives Sid a couple smacks across the face. Twice, thrice, four and five times he does this. The slaps get a bit harder, but the body doesn’t move.

He turns sharply towards Barr, momentarily at a loss for words. Barr looks back, his once jolly expression giving way to an equally strong frown. Jason holds his hands up a bit and attempts to make a point, “Let me explain… he was alive when I brought him here.”

“Yeah, well he ain’t alive anymore.” Barr shoots back.

“The dude was banging the trunk door on the way here. He was causing all sorts of a fuss! For all I knew, when coming here, he was still pretty much alive.”

“And in that time.” Barr replies, almost about to blow, “Did you, at any point, dress this man’s wounds?”

“I… didn’t think it was serious.” Jason mumbles.

“The man’s balls are shot off!” Barr screams, his face turning a hot pink. “I think that calls for a fucking band-aid at the very least! Goddammit!” He yells, even louder - to the point his voice began turning course. He slams the trunk, causing Jason to jump back while Barr storms off back towards the office.

“Come on Barry!” Jason pleads, following after the man before Barr does a 180 and stops him dead in his tracks.

“Don’t you ‘Barry’ me, ya moron! This was supposed to be my break. MY promotion! Best chance I’d get to saying goodbye and good riddance to this hell blasted planet!”

“Now that ain’t fair, Barry…”

Barr resumes back into the office and is just about ready to shut the front door when, suddenly, Jason grips it from the outside. Jason peaks in, crying out, “Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Barr listens, and after a moment Jason calms down before asking politely, “What about my payment?”

Barr’s eyes grow wide, his mouth agape, and the punks on his face become a peppery red. He stammers, “You just-- I don’t-- Why’d you-- I should strangle the fuck out of you! Fucking payment?! Read the damn contract! ALIVE! You get the bounty if he comes alive! Alive - Payment! Dead - hit the dirt and LEAVE!”

Then with a quick pull he slams the door, right onto Jason’s fingers. Jason lets out a harsh scream, but doesn’t let go. It takes another three slams from the door before he finally releases, as he trips onto the dirt and holds tight to numb the furious pain going on in his fingers. Barr finally shuts the door and locks it, before walking off into his office in pure rage.

Jason shakes the pain away as best he could, right before looking back at the office door. He yells and begs, “Barry! You can’t leave me with this body, Barry! It’s gonna stink my damn car!”

After a minute of getting not a single answer from Barry, Jason curses and nurses his injured fingers. He lightly blows on his bruised digits, all the while slowly making his way to the back of his car. Stopping, he looked with disgust at the dead body attracting flies in his car. Delvitely he slams the trunk shit, wincing from the pain in his hands, before finally getting into the front seat to drive on out of there.

He speeds on out of the gated area, setting course for the Black Road.

First on his agenda: finding a place off the side to dump the body.

Second: looking somewhere to get some ice - for both his hands, and his drink.

#original work #my writing #CROSS #KRONOS #eyeofsemicolon #the5thsemicolon #semicolonthe5th #short story #science fiction #original story #Jason Cross #writing #western

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wellhalesbells · 5 years

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I see you reblogging some comic stuff an I was wondering if you have a favorite comic or favorite character or ship?

this ask is from so long ago but [DEEP BREATH IN] i’m finally going to answer it, nonny. finally. i kept wanting to read a little bit farther in my comics stack because.... maybe i’ll like that and will regret not having recced it, i just hafta--get--to it, see? and, honestly, i’m still there BUT, come on, i’ll never be caught up because that would mean comics would just have to stop coming out and i would be sad forever if that happened, SO

i’m not even going to pretend like i can narrow this down to one comic. (one ship? sure, that’s spideypool. one character? sure, that’s the merc with a mouth, the regenerating degenerate, wade motherfucking wilson. but one comic?!) there is just straight-up too much out there to make a definitive ‘yes, this is it, this is THE ONE ™ ’ statement. instead, uh, let’s break this shit down, yeah? (super special secret bonus round, will note all lgbt+ rep and standalone comics.) in no particular order, here the frig it goes!

HORROR

infidel, by pornsak pichetshote and aaron campbell. in case you haven’t seen this on every 2018 best list ever, here it is. and, yeah, it was good. a muslim-american main character living in a haunted apartment building where the entities feed off the xenophobia of its occupants. if that’s not a fucking modern horror story i don’t know what is.

spread, by justin jordan and kyle strahm. THIS IS ONE OF MY NEW AND ALREADY ALL-TIME FAVORITES. what an awesomely weird and epic story. the spread is an uncontrollable, unstoppable monster-making force that humanity accidentally unleashed by digging too deep. it infects everything it touches and basically all of humanity is running from quarantine to quarantine just hoping for the best. and speaking of hope.... she’s a baby, rescued by no, and the only thing that’s ever been able to stop the spread. also, no’s gay? and i just DID NOT see that coming. it seems like it’s going to be such a formulaic, bro-y story about the action hero who kisses the face off his girl (her name’s molly and she’s batshit insane and amazing) and instead, nope, it is not that at all. lgbt+ main characters.

the black monday murders, by jonathan hickman and tomm coker. hate capitalism? think all the rich and powerful are evil, soul-sucking monsters? [obnoxious, low-budget commercial sound effects] MAN, HAVE I GOT THE SERIES FOR YOU.

the beauty, by jeremy haun and jason a. hurley. i just started this recently but so far, oh my good golly gosh, i looove it. a sexually transmitted disease that makes you conventionally gorgeous.... at least before it explodies you. [wide, creepy smile] the art is gorgeous, the characters are aces and i am very, very pleased so far. lgbt+ minor characters.

the great divide, by ben fisher and adam markiewicz. this? was a COOL idea. the execution stumbled a bit but, gosh, was it neat. it’s post-apocalyptic where touching another person will literally kill.... one of you. the survivor then absorbs the memories of the person who dies, taking on a ‘rider.’ some people collect them, some people go mad, some form a bond, all have the side effect of dyslexia. like i said, neat as all get out. lgbt+ minor-ish/main-ish character. standalone.

revival, by tim seely and mike norton. a rural town in wisconsin experiences ‘miracle day,’ where the dead rise again.... except, they were kinda already mourned and buried and this is really just fucking up the status quo.

the woods, by james tynion iv and michael dialynas. a high school gets picked up and plopped down in an entirely new, and wickedly hostile universe. it’s all survival and alliances and seeing what you’re really made of when it comes down to it. lgbt+ main characters.

clean room, by gail simone and jon davis-hunt. a cult, a journalist and a clean room walk into a bar...

anya’s ghost, by vera brosgol. you think it’ll be a cute story of a girl and her ghost. HA HA THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS AT ALL, OKAY.

FANTASY

rumble, by john arcudi and james harren. SCARECROW WARRIOR GOD, SCARECROW WARRIOR GOD, SCARECROW WARRIOR GOD!!! okay, first off, the art in this? pushes every friggin’ button i’ve got, and many i did not know i had. second, this book is so fucking fun. it’s mythology that’s balls to the wall ridiculous, funny, and features a main character whose life motto is basically: ‘do i have to?’ infinitely relatable and then some.

heathen, by natasha alterici and rachel deering. UGH, ONE OF MY FAVORITES. the art is just horribly, horrendously gorgeous and it’s LESBIAN VIKING MYTHOLOGY, OKAY. OKAYYYY??? lgbt+ main characters.

the wicked + the divine, by kieron gillen and jamie mckelvie. one of my favorite ever series right here. it’s a hella cool concept (gods reincarnating as humans every twelve years, and burning up their hosts in two), whip-smart and if you’ve ever met a human being who likes a pun more than kieron gillen i defy you to produce them. lgbt+ main and minor characters.

batgirl, by gail simone and adrian sayaf and vicente cifuentes. you know how people rave about gail simone? there’s a reason people rave about gail simone. honestly, i’ve never had much interest in babs. i don’t tend to go for superheroes who don’t kill and i have even less interest in ‘the killing joke’ story line and i am convinced only gail simone could’ve done the recovery on that and she did a GLORIOUS job of it.

red hood and the outlaws, by scott lobdell and dexter soy. (ignoring recent - and annoying - developments), this is my favorite of all the rebirths dc did. scott lobdell is the only writer to have gotten the idea down of: okay, we’re starting over, i assume you don’t know anything but i also assume there are a bajillion people reading who know everything, and hit the perfect medium between those two things. so if you want to start a jason todd run, you legitimately can here, and get all the found family, badassery, batman-teasing enjoyment there is to be had.

iceman, by sina grace and robert gill (covers by kevin wada). classic super-heroing here and bobby’s first solo title. he’s figuring out coming out while fighting (and flirting) with baddies. sina really gets his humor and how truly wonder-awful it is! lgbt+ main character.

spider-man/deadpool, by joe kelly and ed mcguinness. watch those names there, those are your guys right there, period. they looked at the void of a spider-man/deadpool series and filled it with absolutely everything you could possibly want for the pair (sans a hardcore make-out sesh, though they did get a few variant covers with some puckered up lips in there!)

limbo, by dan watters and caspar wijngaard. a fusion of 80s aesthetics, voodoo elements and a noir tone. just some remarkably cool shit in this. the ending, for me, left something to be desired but it was more than worth it to see worship via mixtapes. standalone.

hawkeye: kate bishop, by kelly thompson and leonardo romero. kate bishop is, apparently???, a super impossible character for a lot of writers. kelly thompson is not one of them. kelly thompson is my favorite kate bishop writer, actually, and the fact that she is ever not writing her is a gd travesty.

the unbeatable squirrel girl, by ryan north and erica henderson. honestly, i’m so tempted to just stick this under ‘contemporary,’ because it really does just feel very... normal. doreen’s navigating college, new friendships, and y’know... the squirrely-ness. this had every opportunity to suck and instead it’s funny as heck, never takes itself too seriously, and is just pure good-hearted entertainment through and through.

wolf, by ales kot and matt taylor. a paranormal detective and the-possible-antichrist go on a road trip. people hated this comic and i don’t know how you can hate a comic that has a character called freddy chtonic who has tentacles for a mouth???

ms. marvel, by g. willow wilson and adrian alphona. hi, you read ms. marvel because the world is a garbage fire and people are terrible and your cynicism is at an all time high and then kamala khan waltzes in and reminds you people generally want to help each other and the world improves when we work together and that thing optimists feel? you’ll feel that for as long as you’ve got the pages open and that’s a magical thing. lgbt+ minor character.

monstress, by marjorie m. liu and sana takeda. psychic links with monsters, matriarchal societies, magic and witchery, half-human/half-animal (and other ratios) characters, all through a steampunk lens. what’s not to like about that??

inhuman, by charles soule. i love this series, i love the idea of being a total average joe/joanne, getting smacked in the face by a cloud of mist and suddenly having to figure out how to live basically a whole new life. also, if you don’t fall madly in love with dante pertuz, i don’t even know what to tell you, my dude.

heart in a box, by kelly thompson and meredith mcclaren. break-ups suck, but only because of that whole pesky broken heart thing, right? so emma gives hers away. problem solved, no? standalone.

i kill giants, by joe kelly and j.m. ken niimura. i didn’t cry my eyes out or anything. did not. standalone.

sex criminals, by matt fraction and chip zdarsky. having sex = stopping time, which leads suzie and jon to the only logical conclusion: let’s rob some banks!

hawkeye, by matt fraction and david aja. honestly there are a lot of other artist combos in this run but the only ones that are worthwhile are the ones that have fraction and aja’s names on them - sorry not sorry.

SCIENCE FICTION

black bolt, by saladin ahmed and christian ward. saladin revived this character one hundred million percent. there is absolutely a reason this was parading around all over ‘best’ lists when it was released. it really, really did the damn thing.

saga, by brian k. vaughan and fiona staples. this is the comic you recommend to people who don’t even like comics because it is that good. like, my dad - who hadn’t read a comic since he was a pre-teen, eagerly awaits each new trade. the world-building, the characters, the care put into every single solitary bit of all the things? unparalleled. lgbt+ minor characters.

frostbite, by joshua williamson and jason shawn alexander. a post-apocalyptic story that has humanity dying from a plague that literally freezes you from the inside out. very neat, very cold, very readable. standalone.

descender, by jeff lemire and dustin nguyen. this had a rough start, for me, with the main character of the first trade being tim-21, an android who is literally incapable of having the depth to be a lead BUT that does not last through to the next trade, thank god. lots of space and found family and world-building in this to be had! but you know how people rave about jeff lemire? there’s a reason people rave about jeff lemire.

paper girls, by brian k. vaughan and cliff chiang. the 80s and time travel and lifelong friendships. it’s brian k. vaughan, you know it’s good, okay? why do i even have to sell you here, man? lgbt+ main characters.

injection, by warren ellis and declan shalvey. this is another one on my list that started out a little rough but really appealed to me later on. there was just a lot to absorb in that first trade but, once you’ve got it, the ride gets way, way smoother. lgbt+ main and minor characters.

black science, by rick remender and matteo scalera. this was a rocky start, because the main character is such an asshole but in a way where he can’t see he’s an asshole, he’s just a tortured genius who’s superior to all of you, don’t you know? but i am so glad i persevered because if that’s the set up? the rest of the series is knocking him back down. super scientist grant mckay finds a way to access the eververse, every possible reality the universe has on offer, and that’s really what causes every single problem that follows. hard to cause the apocalypse and be an arrogant prick, ya know?

CONTEMPORARY

giant days, by john allison and lissa treiman. this series is so funny and smart and warm. these girls are so kind to each other and relatable and failing at adulting regularly and often and i love reading about them. lgbt+ main character.

lumberjanes, by noelle stevenson and grace ellis and brooke a. allen. this is funny and ridiculous and kind and cool and all other awesome adjectives and you should read it, fact. lgbt+ main characters.

my brother’s husband, by gengoroh tagame and anne ishii (translator). this is such a sweet story about acceptance and family tbh. lgbt+ main character.

fence, by c. s. pacat and johanna the mad. i mean... i need to see nicholas and seiji hook-up, i need that, stat. stat means now! lgbt+ main characters.

WEB/INDEPENDENT COMICS

long exposure, by kam heyward. so mitch and jonas are my absolute faves and i love them to death and the author is so kind in that they actually put this up in print on indyplanet so i can read it the way i, personally, love to read comics (and - bonus! - support them with the monies). lgbt+ main characters.

modern dread, by pat shand and ryan fassett (editors). i’ve been trying to find more better horror comics lately so i’ve been kind of half-heartedly stumbling through kickstarter on the hunt and this was SUCH a great find. it’s an anthology but more cleverly done than any other kickstarter anthology i’ve read, with a main story line that seamlessly strings together the would-be-disjointed ones. this was really thoughtfully put together and really well done! standalone.

heartstopper, by alice oseman. a very sweet story about two high school-aged boys becoming fast friends, playing rugby and falling in love. the two characters are mentioned as an aside in the author’s book, solitaire, and she became so invested in them that she wrote their backstory as a free webcomic. lgbt+ main characters.

the pale, by jay fabares. JUST started this (like, just a day or so ago) but i’m enjoying it so far!

hotblood!, by toril orlesky. i mean... is it a webcomic about a centaur falling in love with his boss? it just might be. did i get a bound edition through a kickstarter campaign? maybe. maybe i did that. who’s to say? lgbt+ main characters.

the bay, by bbz. life on mars through the lens of three young professionals who form an odd but lasting friendship. lgbt+ main characters.

hard drive, by artroan. is it a nsfw comic about a dude and a robot? .... it might be a nsfw comic about a dude and a robot. [coughs] lgbt+ main characters.

seen nothing yet, by tess stone. a nsfw comic about two amateur ghost hunters. can’t imagine why i might be interested in that [coughs] lgbt+ main characters.

captain imani and the cosmic chase, by lin darrow and alex assan. i mean did i want a starship captain who can’t help but lust after the smuggler he’s chasing. i mean, maybe i did. maybe. lgbt+ main characters.

taproot, by keezy young. ghost falls in love with boy, boy falls in love with ghost, AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. lgbt+ main characters.

always raining here, by bell and hazel. just two boys falling in lurve. lgbt+ main characters.

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years

Text

New top story from Time: The Pandemic Closed Art Galleries’ Doors. But Who Said a Gallery Needs Four Walls and a Ceiling?

The traditional art gallery—the sterile, windowless viewing room aptly labeled the “white cube” by artist and critic Brian O’Doherty in 1976—has dominated the art world for decades as the primary way to display works. The white cube, which has been compared to an operating room as well as a burial vault, has been championed as a way to maintain neutrality while viewing artworks. “The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden floor is polished so that you click along clinically, or carpeted so that you pad soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as the saying used to go, ‘to take on its own life,'” O’Doherty wrote in Artforum.

But its eerie, clinical neutrality comes at a price. The cube creates something artificial about the way the viewer interacts with art, removing both from the outside world, and from anyone who doesn’t seek out or stumble upon that room. The cube has been perceived as a symbol of elitism: if you didn’t dress the right way or frequent certain neighborhoods, the cube and its contents were not for you. And if you didn’t know the right people, the chances of your work being displayed there were even slimmer.

Now the pandemic has made the gallery even more inaccessible, at least temporarily, inspiring curators and creators to reimagine how art might be shared. But while today’s circumstances are new, artists’ efforts to think beyond such restrictions are not. In the 1960s, members of the Fluxus movement created works that blurred the distinction between art and life and denounced the gallery’s formalities. Everyday acts could be works of art, and many of the works could not be restaged or reproduced in full. Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, in which the artist sat on a stage with a pair of scissors and invited audience members to take turns cutting off her clothing, blurred the relationship between the viewer and the art, and threw into question any sort of neutrality.

The land-art movement of the ’60s and ’70s saw artists sculpt the earth to create large-scale works, like Robert Smithson’s 1,500-ft.-long Spiral Jetty made of salt crystals, water, and basalt rock on Utah’s Great Salt Lake, that inherently held their creators’ anti-commercial politics: other than in photographs, there was no way for the massive pieces to exist within four walls. The “earthworks” made during this period were the antithesis of what the white cube represented; rather than existing in a void that nullified the outside world, these works were the outside world.

As galleries have shuttered during social distancing and stay-at-home orders, this spirit of creativity, if not outright anti-establishment thinking, has informed new relationships between art and viewers. From video games to snail mail, the examples below are just a few of the ways artists and museums have seized upon this difficult moment to prove, yet again, that possibilities for interacting with art are as wide open as a room is closed.

A Miniature Gallery

Courtesy of Shelter In Place GalleryB. Chehayeb’s abstract paintings on display in the miniature Shelter in Place Gallery

On March 27, artist Eben Haines launched Shelter in Place Gallery, a miniature display room that allows artists to create small-scale works that appear larger when photographed and shared on Instagram. After reviewing artists’ submissions of sample images and proposals over email, Haines and his partner Delaney Dameron ask the selected artists to drop off or mail them their work. Then they install and photograph each tiny solo art show, which lasts for less than a week.

“The fact that the space is miniature, and that the viewer understands that it is a fabrication, means that they end up looking closely at details: the masonry and the conduit and poorly placed outlets, the water stains where the skylight has leaked,” explains Haines.

For artists who don’t have access to their studios now, creating small works is far more feasible than what their usual work might entail. They’re “able to make more ambitious work than they could ever afford to at scale, let alone have shown in a commercial gallery,” says Haines, referencing the prohibitively high cost of real estate for urban galleries that might otherwise show more large-scale works.

Exhibited artists include B. Chehayeb (whose work is shown above), who makes paintings of abstracted memories of growing up Mexican American, as well as Mary Pedicini, who created a mixed-media room installation that hung from the beams.“ Hopefully,” Haines says, “we allow people to make the work they’ve always wanted to make.”

Video-Game Curation

Courtesy of Sarah WaldorfThe Getty’s Animal Crossing Art Generator tool allows players to import works from the museum’s open-access catalog

In 2020, you can have your very own Claude Monet or Vincent van Gogh—or at least a pixelated version hanging above the stove in your virtual kitchen. With the Los Angeles–based Getty Museum’s Animal Crossing Art Generator tool, players of the highly popular Nintendo game—in which users design a whimsical island world while befriending the animals that inhabit it—can search through the museum’s open-access collection and import images into their game. Then, players can display each work however they choose: on a wall; on a piece of clothing; or even in their own galleries, which friends who are also playing the game can visit virtually.

Bringing works of art into a video game and inserting them into a fictional world changes their contexts entirely, making them playful, moldable items. Players, in a sense, become curators. “It doesn’t just give users access to our collections, but it allows them to shape the museum experience for themselves,” says Selina Chang-Yi Zawacki, a software engineer at the Getty who developed the project. “In general, the typical museum experience is very rigid. It’s set up for you; there’s a flow you have to follow—but with this tool, you can make it whatever you want.”

Some users have chosen to print out the digitized versions of their chosen works, bringing the digital back into the physical world. The Art History Undergraduate Association at the University of California, Irvine, even used the tool to add works to a virtual art show honoring the opening of a canceled campus exhibition.

Mail Art

Courtesy of Julie Sola and Jason BrownMore than 350 participants sent their works to Nashville for Brown’s “my view from home” mail-art project

The decades-old populist art practice commonly known as mail art or postal art has seen a revival in recent months. The rules are simple: all one has to do is make a small work of art of any kind (drawing, collage, poem, etc.) that can fit into an envelope and send it through the mail to another correspondent.

Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus artist On Kawara and many others practiced the form in the late 20th century. The movement gained prominence in the 1950s, when Ray Johnson, who wanted to rebuke the gallery system, encouraged his network of acquaintances as well as strangers to share work through the mail. Johnson would send templates that had copies of his own drawings with prompts, like “Please add hair to Cher,” to correspondents, who would add their own mark to the mailings before returning them to him or forwarding them to someone else. The project eventually became known as the New York Correspondence School.

Since stay-at-home orders took effect, several mail-art projects have emerged. For one such project, Nashville-based art collector and curator Jason Brown has been holding an open call called “my view from home.” The initiative invites people everywhere to send in their works, which Brown collects and posts to the project’s website and Instagram account. After the submission period is over, Brown plans to donate the mailings to the Special Collections at Vanderbilt University Library in Nashville. According to Brown, he’s received more than 350 works from 27 countries, including India, Cuba and Germany. “It expands the notion of what an artist is. Mail artists come from all walks of life; most are not professional artists,” says Brown. “All you need is your imagination and a stamp.”

Jason Pickleman, a Chicago-based graphic designer and gallerist, held a mail-art exhibition over Instagram Live and plans on divvying up the 600 artworks he’s received in the mail into smaller groups that can be mailed out as “as a lending library to anyone interested in experiencing the collection.” The project, titled “MAILL” (Mail Art Inventory Lending Library), aims to create “a museum from your mailbox,” as Pickleman puts it, and allows for art viewing to become a more tactile and intimate experience. Plus, according to Pickleman, it’s nice to open your mail and discover artwork rather than utility bills or mail-order catalogs.

“Drive-By” Exhibits

Courtesy of Toni Ross and Sara SalawayIn a “Drive-by-Art” show in New York, Toni Ross and Sara Salaway exhibited When, a social-isolation “calendar” of jumbled chairs with date-related words

Organized by Los Angeles–based conceptual artist and theorist Warren Neidich, “Drive-by-Art” is a unique blend of the physical and digital that creates a socially distant art experience. Aimed at bringing art back to its starting place, the artist’s studio—where Neidich believes the work is in its purest and most powerful state—his shows allow spectators to use an online map to drive past works displayed on artists’ lawns, porches and mailboxes from the safety of their cars. He came up with the idea after being sequestered in a cabin at the start of the pandemic; “Drive-by-Art” was his “reaction to feelings of isolation and disconnection.”

Neidich has already completed shows in L.A. and New York’s Long Island, and plans to expand to more cities and countries. Exhibits have included Jeremy Dennis’ “Destinations,” wood silhouettes covered in photocopied images of the Eiffel Tower and Elvis’ meeting with President Nixon. Neidich worked with local artists and curators Renee Petropoulos, Michael Slenske and Anuradha Vikram to ensure a diverse range of both established and emerging voices for the expanded Los Angeles show. “I was using the car, which has many functions in the history of America, like the building of suburbia, and was trying to give it another meaning as a place of protection, a kind of solitary bubble through which you could experience art,” he explains.

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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exploringsocialinformatics · 4 years

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Post #1: A One-to-One Utopia

I am basing this post off the article “One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality” by Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, and Prakul Sharma, which I chose both because the timeline of the issue was very interesting and also due to my background in a Secondary Education program where I took courses related specifically to education and technology.

I am wary of anybody who says that they’re going to change the world, but the transition from reading about the Utopian vision of One Laptop, Per Child (creator Nicholas Negroponte once said that they were “invent[ing] the future” [“The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations”]) to the slow but seemingly inevitable downfall was still somewhat surprising. The program is one that had been within my peripheral vision as someone who studied education in my undergrad program and I can understand how people got swept up in the concept, especially when the technology available was less accessible. On first glance, it does seem revolutionary and, in ways, it is. Revolution requires follow-through and support, though, and it inspired doubts even before its initial roll-out, with supporters expressing hesitant skepticism like, “We were excited about the prospects, but kind of scared by the over-simplistic plan, or lack of plan” (Robertson, 2018).

As Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma note, the issues behind OLPC’s original downfall were based in seemingly more consideration for the creation of the hardware than the people they were creating the hardware for (66 – 68). There are plenty of these issues to talk about—the entirely reasonable argument that basic needs like water and physical school structures should be met before the government spends money on untested technology, the notion that OLPC is just a “one size-fits-all American solution to complex global problems” that functions more as a “marketing ploy” (Robertson 2018) than any type of organized program—when it comes to observing why OLPC struggled to the point where they shuttered their organization until it was relatively recently revived. I would argue, though, that one of its fundamental flaws and potentially the most immediately debilitating was their lack of consideration for teachers and, in particular, their lack of follow-through when it comes to measuring their success.

In The Effect of One Laptop per Child on Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and Students’ Use of Time At Home, a very thorough study that had to be thorough due to a lack of substantive data from OLPC’s program, the researchers found that there was no significant impact on school performance when the laptops were introduced in Peru (Yamada, Lavado, Montenegro 2016). Additionally, Morgan G. Ames—who I will reference several times due to her excellent research in Uruguay—found that the laptop use was largely focused on media consumption: music, TV, video games (Ames 2015). While media consumption absolutely has a place within education, it’s clear that this usage isn’t falling within the realm of what Negroponte was envisioning: namely, programming (Ames 2015) and creation. Essentially, the laptops are often a tool to consume and not create.

In a presentation titled the same as her recent book, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop per Child, Ames explains in-depth the fundamental issues that marred the program from its inception—extremely worth watching if this topic interests you and a fantastic introduction—and tells the story of how Nicholas Negroponte’s main goal was to get laptops in the hands of children and trust that they would make the most of it on their own (Ames 2019). Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma emphasize this, saying in 2009 that “it appears to some that the educational mission has given way to just getting laptops out the door” (66), which implies even more explicitly that the intentions skew a bit more towards business than ever stated by the organization—or, at the very least, attempting to save face when it became apparent they would not make their now obviously over-ambitious goal of getting 150 million laptops into the hands of kids in two years.

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It’s important to note that OLPC has consistently stated that their program is about more than the laptops and is also focused on education. On their website, they emphasize, “OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the world. OLPC is a nonprofit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap in to their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community” (“OLPC: Mission”). Considering that Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma reference this quote in their article (68), which means it hasn’t changed since at least 2009 and likely since the first launch in 2005, this is an idea that they’re attempting to embrace without necessarily having the means to do so.

There is an explicit education philosophy—constructionism, which encourages kid to “think about thinking” and have tangible experiences (Robertson 2018)—behind OLPC. I see issues with the implementation of it but don’t want to be overly harsh about it as a concept—after all, I absolutely believe it has a place in classrooms and Seymour Papert, the original mind behind it, studied with Piaget and was openly praised by him (“Seymour Papert”), which is pretty amazing. The main issues with constructionism from my perspective, especially as it applies to the distribution of the OLPC laptops, are twofold: 1. Many teachers in a variety of different educational systems are highly limited in how they’re able to teach and 2. As an educational philosophy, it arguably requires the students involved to have some. . .instruction. Very few, if any, educational practices are studied without being properly implemented by an educator.

This isn’t to say that OLPC doesn’t involve educators in implementing their programs. This is to say that they didn’t do enough in their implementation to properly prepare teachers for how to use the technology in their classroom, including, for example, not even providing teacher training when they rolled out the program in Libya or contacting the teacher’s union in Peru before they were already starting the program there (Robertson 71). In her presentation, Morgan G. Ames describes the decline of use in Paraguay where she studied for several years due to the fact that OLPC didn’t provide any service or repairs to laptops that were imminently more breakable than they advertised (Ames 2019). OLPC’s ultimate plan was to get laptops to kids. I would argue that this does not function as an education plan or even do more than offer a potential tool without guidance to introduce a constructionist philosophy.

We can see a hint of how OLPC values teachers by looking back to their charter, which states “building schools, hiring teachers, buying books and equipment [. . .] is a laudable but insufficient response to the problem of bringing true learning possibilities to the vast numbers of children in the developing world” (“OLPC: The Mission”). That really speaks to most of the major issues: if there isn’t basic infrastructure in place—physical schools with working water—and teachers to guide their learning, can students who haven’t been exposed to this kind of technology (or even those who have) truly benefit from it? How do we measure those true learning possibilities? Can we measure them? It might seem overly technical to try to apply statistics to some big, expansive dream but the dreaminess is, in and of itself, the problem.

Just because these issues exist doesn’t mean that we must write OLPC off entirely, though. The bones of the idea are genuinely well-intentioned and they’ve still managed to get a significant amount of technology to kids even if they didn’t meet their stated goals as their original incarnation. As of this October, they’ve given out 3 million laptops (Cameron 2019) and that certainly matters. Regardless of the outcome, sharing those laptops made opportunities that could help kids in developing nations change their lives and open up more possibilities in the future.

While there is plenty to criticize about the program, many of the fundamentals are worthy of praise: constructivism is an important educational practice that can unlock critical thinking skills and creativity in a way that many kids don’t have the opportunity to explore. Just the ability to own and hold and use a laptop is empowering and prepares kids for using other technology. And, overall, Negroponte’s philosophies and reasoning are absolutely inspiring.

He talks about kids becoming “change agents” and allowing them to “connect with the world, think critically and challenge indoctrinations of intolerance” (Ashling 2010). He wants kids to have the whole world open up to them and has a singular vision for doing so which, for better or worse, is a vision worth exploring.

Also, in a vein I hadn’t considered, Jason Johnson argues in his 2010 article “Can a Laptop Change How the World Teaches?” that he observed sixth graders in his one-to-one laptop program educationally benefiting from their laptops outside of the classroom through things like tracking sports statistics, recording skits, and creating address books (72). While he also invokes the need for a teacher to guide students toward productivity, this is another important factor to consider: OLPC laptops have gone to all kinds of kids in all kinds of places and other one-to-one programs have also been gaining popularity throughout the years. Broadly looking at how kids in general use laptops could bring new significance and meaning to these programs.

From articles titled The Laptop That Will Change The World to articles titled OLPC’s $100 Laptop Was Going to Change the World—Then It All Went Wrong, it’s both fascinating and discouraging to watch OLPC’s struggle. As people, we want to believe that we can change the world—that good people stepping up can change the world—but this is an overly simplistic concept in a complicated world. One good idea constructed within one cultural framework and one philosophy of education that by no means represents both the majority of teacher’s experiences or their capabilities within struggling, flawed educational systems isn’t enough.

One laptop can’t change the world.

With a sustainable plan, though—it’s not a bad start.

Ames, M. G. (2016). Learning consumption: Media, literacy, and the legacy of One Laptop per Child. The Information Society, 32(2), 85–97

Ashling, Jim. (2010). Laptops bridge gap in structured learning. Information Today, 27(5), 22 - 23

Johnson, Jason. (2008). Can a laptop change how the world teaches?. Knowledge Quest. 36(3), 72 - 73

Kraemer, K. L., Dedrick, J., & Sharma, P. (2009). One laptop per child. Communications of the ACM, 52(6)

Lavado, P., Montenegro, G. & Yamada, G. (2016). The effect of one laptop per child on teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ use of time at home. IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Robertson, A. (2018, April 16). OLPC's $100 laptop was going to change the world - then it all went wrong. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now

Seymour Papert. (2007, March). Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20150308021353/http://web.media.mit.edu/~papert/

The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations. (2005). Retrieved from https://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16067-the-hundred-dollar-laptop-computing-for-developing-nations

The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. (2019, March 5). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH13bVUfNuk&t=2s

#this might be what the kids call TLDR

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smilystore · 5 years

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If ‘The OA’ Doesn’t Get Un-Canceled, I Will Literally Die

Hey, Netflix. How’s it going? How was your weekend? Did you spend it deciding to murder a beautiful, intricate TV show that ended on a tantalizing cliffhanger in cold blood? You did? Cool. Sorry, did I say, “Cool?” What I meant to say was, “How could you possibly do this to me, and only me!?”

In case you missed it, today Netflix canceled its mystery supernatural drama The OA after two seasons, and after ending Season 2 on one of the most jaw-dropping twists in recent TV history. Here’s the thing: I have no speech about representation or what this TV show meant to me, personally. Intellectually, I understand that The OA was undoubtedly an expensive show. I realize that—despite the fact that I told you how good it is—very few people watched Season 2. I know that Netflix is a business, I know it all comes down to the numbers, I know capitalism rules us all, blah, blah, blah. But, respectfully, if The OA doesn’t get picked up and I am never given resolution on that cliffhanger, I will cease to exist. My soul will leave this saggy flesh sack I call a body, and nothing, not even Jason Isaacs doing an interpretative dance, will be able to revive me. So let’s just go ahead and un-cancel the show, OK, Netflix? Because I would really love to keep living.

Created by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling (who also stars as the series’ lead), The OA was not like other TV shows. The OA was weird and sincere, bonkers and beautiful, spiritual and at times, religious, but never, ever preachy. It took big swings and never apologized for that. It was art. Like most great art, The OA made you work for it. Season 2 was, in some ways, a meandering disaster. More than once, I felt the impatient urge to skip through scenes. Who has the time for delayed gratification in the year 2019, when my favorite form of entertainment is still six-second Vines? But if you pushed through to the end—if you watched that finale—it was absolutely worth the wait. Did it tie together all the loose ends? Did it always make perfect sense? Was the giant, all-knowing octopus ever explained? No, no, and no, but it somehow still felt like a divine revelation, the exact same kind experienced by Detective Karim Washington as he stared through that damned rose window in the finale.

More than that, Season 2 completely restored my faith that if creators Marling and Batmanglij were given the space and resources to realize the five-season plan they’d had mapped out—five NDEs, five dimensions, five seasons—that all, even the octopus, would be explained in time. But Netflix—which has shown time and time again that it is not interested in investing in that kind of longevity—didn’t give Marling and Batmanglij the opportunity to prove it. As a result, fans will be forever left in a state of suspended anticipation following one of the wildest twists in television history.

Major spoiler alert: In the final moments of The OA Season 2, all of the characters are launched into a new dimension—a version of our dimension. The dimension in which Jason Isaacs is an actor on a Netflix TV show called The OA. Let’s imagine, for a moment, how truly weird and wonderful that Season 3 would have been. Jason Isaacs could have used his real British accent, and Netflix could have indulged in so much self-referential content, which is a classic Netflix move. Everyone could have been happy!

Plus, there are still so many unanswered questions. Was that Steve or actor Patrick Gibson in the last scene? And was that The OA or Brit Marling? Did anyone else make the jump? Is Homer there? What about BBA? And what the heck was that giant octopus about? I simply cannot live in a world where I don’t get answers, but now I fear that I must. Not to exaggerate, but this is the probably worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone, ever. I always thought the end would come via drowning in some sort of climate-change-related geo-storm, but I guess this is how I die. Thanks a lot, Netflix. Have fun breaking the news to my parents, you sadists.

Of course, I might be able to carry on living if and only if the show gets picked up by another network or streaming service. It’s time to do the movements and resurrect this show, OAfans. If we don’t, then all I have to live for is the Zombieland sequel, and I really don’t think that’s enough to keep me going.

By Anna Menta

The post If ‘The OA’ Doesn’t Get Un-Canceled, I Will Literally Die appeared first on Smile store.

source https://smilystore.com/2019/08/05/if-the-oa-doesnt-get-un-canceled-i-will-literally-die/

#World news

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Jonny Bairstow: England batsman sets tone in Cricket World Cup

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/jonny-bairstow-england-batsman-sets-tone-in-cricket-world-cup/

Jonny Bairstow: England batsman sets tone in Cricket World Cup

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Cricket World Cup: Watch the best of Bairstow as England book semi-final spot

Panic over, for now. As one English sporting team exit at the semi-final stage of one World Cup, a second has fought its way into the last four of another.

The knockout stages of this cricket World Cup do not technically begin until next week, yet England find themselves inadvertently ahead of the game.

A win over India when defeat would have felt terminal, now a demolition of New Zealand by 119 runs in what was effectively a quarter-final.

It is quite some turnaround on a week ago, a revival through adversity that mirrors that of their dominant batsman.

Jonny Bairstow was out for a golden duck in the shock loss to Sri Lanka and holed out for a skittery 27 as defeat followed against Australia and England’s much-vaunted campaign began to plummet at pace.

In the past four days he has now made as many World Cup centuries as England managed in 16 years from 1987.

It is characteristically Bairstow and it has come just in time. A week ago, the 29-year-old was railing against critics of his side, saying that people were waiting for them to fail so they could “jump on their throats”. In response former England skipper Michael Vaughan called that a “negative, pathetic mindset”.

A row often works for the feisty Bairstow and it has worked for his team. England have won two tosses, batted first each time and won through aggression with the bat and parsimony with the ball.

Where there was doubt there is fresh belief. The only jumping in the capacity crowd on Wednesday was up and down.

TMS podcast: An England semi-final, the Plunkett song and Mark Wood’s tiny hands

At a warm, sun-smeared Riverside Bairstow played once again like a man jabbing his finger in your chest as his mates hold him back.

In the first over he faced from Tim Southee he crashed one four through cover off the back foot and another over point with his front foot planted down the track.

In Southee’s next over he hit three boundaries in succession – a full one drilled through mid-wicket, a lofted drive over cover and a slashing pull off his chest.

That was the muscle. Later he would finesse Colin de Grandhomme for two fours in the same over with the sort of delicate late cut that used to define an in-form Ian Bell.

Together with Jason Roy, whose return from injury has brought its own liberation, Bairstow took what had begun as a nervy affair and turned it into raucous knees-up.

England had 25 on the board after three overs and 48 by the end of the sixth. By the time Roy hit a tame catch to cover midway through the 19th, the two aggressors had stuck on 123 off 113 balls, and the plot lines were set.

“He likes a bit of fire in his belly,” Bairstow’s captain Eoin Morgan had noted after his 111 against India on Sunday.

Some batsmen at their best isolate themselves from the bedlam all around to play as if enjoying a net. Bairstow likes to bring the noise. Bairstow is bedlam.

Adversity has always brought the best from him. He is the kid who was let go by Leeds United having played in the same youth team as Danny Rose and Fabian Delph for seven years only to forge an alternative sporting career.

His first Test century took 36 innings to arrive. When he celebrated that landmark against South Africa he dwelt on the words of his critics and doubters and thought to himself, “Right, you can stick that where the sun doesn’t shine”.

His 110 in the third Test against Sri Lanka last winter came after he had been left out of the side despite recovering from injury. He has been dropped six times from the Test team and yet will be an essential component in next month’s Ashes.

Even with his county Yorkshire he had scored 19 fifties before he got his first hundred.

There is a theory from one former player close to Bairstow that as a young man, stricken by the suicide of his father David, he was occasionally given too much leeway by those around him, desperate as they were to help him through such an appalling time.

If that sounds unduly harsh there is something about the adult that can still seem at odds with the world. He is often blunt and always honest. Sometimes he can be awkward.

Not many other players would have thought it sensible to greet Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft with a headbutt before the last Ashes series down under.

That incident left him feeling misunderstood but there was no room for confusion on Wednesday.

His century came up off 95 balls with 14 fours and a six, on a ground with as distant a boundary on one side as the one at Edgbaston on Sunday had been short, and he celebrated with abandon: helmet off, arms outstretched, soaking up the cheers and the applause and retribution.

Jonny Bairstow has scored 462 runs in the World Cup – only Joe Root (500) has more for England

At that point England were 194-1 with 20 overs still to come. They never quite kicked on after he played on, driving expansively, for 106 the over after his friend and Test captain Joe Root had been caught behind, but the damage had been done.

This England team are more comfortable batting first. They like to pile on the runs and then wait for their opponents to wilt under the weight of them.

Bairstow, and his alliance with brother-in-arms Roy, allows them to do that. When he scores big runs he wounds the opposition attack and sets free the batsmen who follow to play the same attacking game.

England’s middle order struggles to fire when it is exposed early and wickets are on the board. Its batting line-up is about bullying rather than patient accumulation.

Bairstow sets the pace and sets the tone. On Wednesday he scored 46 runs more than Roy and 64 more than the next highest-scoring English batsman.

England could afford to go 56 balls without a boundary in the later part of their innings because the walls had already been breached.

Two wins on the spin, confidence beginning to flow. Even in the field England look a different team: Jos Buttler’s one-handed diving take to dismiss Martin Guptill, compared to his fumbled stumping a week ago against Australia; Adil Rashid’s one-handed pick-up-and-throw to run out Ross Taylor, when the ground fielding at Lord’s had included fumbles and over-throws.

A semi-final at Edgbaston against Australia or India awaits.

It is England’s first at a World Cup in 27 years. Long may the adversity last.

#Cricket #World

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?

Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?

Victims like....Duke’s parents.

Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has

1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster

2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO

3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that

4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth

5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah

6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.

Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.

I mean in my professional opinion, of course.

Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....

This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....

BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.

Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.

But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....

Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...

AND ONLY ONCE.

Years and years and years ago....and never done it since.

And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....

To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.

Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.

Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.

And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.

Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.

Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.

Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.

And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.

Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.

And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.

And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.

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chriskarrtravelblog · 5 years

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Get lost in Britain’s best mazes at stately homes

From mystical labyrinths to planted puzzles of twists, turns and dead ends in stately home gardens, Lawrence Alexander gets lost in Britain’s best mazes

There’s a scene in Jerome K. Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat where Harris, one of the three friends, offers to show the other two around the maze at Hampton Court Palace. It is, he claims, so simple it seems hardly worth the two pence admission charge, but admits the only time he ever went in he lost an entire party of people – including the maze-keeper – within its hedges.

We still tend to think of mazes as frothy pastimes for family days out. Maize mazes crop up in farmers’ fields, giant puzzle mazes are found in the grounds of stately homes and, of course, Hampton Court’s maze still confounds visitors.

Labyrinth or maze?

A labyrinth carved into Rocky Valley at Tintagel in Cornwall. Credit: Joan Gravell/Alamy

According to tradition, labyrinths are ‘unicursal’, consisting of a single pathway with no dead ends or deviations. As long as you follow the path you will find the centre. Mazes are generally ‘multicursal’, with as many dead ends and paths as possible to confuse the visitor. As a further complication, the famous ‘labyrinth’ of Greek mythology, constructed by Daedalus to incarcerate the monster Minotaur, would have needed to be a multicursal maze to be effective.

The forebears of mazes – labyrinths – have mystified the world since time immemorial, and their true purpose is often obscure. The Rocky Valley labyrinths at Tintagel in Cornwall – a pair of mysterious carved symbols – could be 4,000 years old, though some argue the tools needed to create them would make them at their oldest Celtic and even, possibly, 18th century.

Ancient petroglyphs, Roman floor mosaics, early English carvings and medieval church floors all point to labyrinths having a deeper, devotional meaning. They appear over doorways, on church bells and on all manner of everyday objects – coins, stoneware, even a laundry mangle-board – as talismans against evil spirits.

A labyrinth on Bryher, the Isles of Scilly. Credit: David Chapman/Alamy

Perhaps most intriguing of all are the labyrinths we can physically enter ourselves, whether roundels of small boulders on a beach on the Scilly Isles or a turf-cut maze in a country house garden. The earliest surviving ‘walkable’ labyrinths in Britain are found in Roman mosaics, either as key-shaped borders or entire floors. There are five recorded in Britain, but they were so popular is it likely there were many more.

Mizmazes

Just eight ‘ancient’ turf mazes survive. They are known by many names, from mizmaze and mazle to Shepherd’s Ring, Maiden’s Bower, Robin Hood’s Race and, often, Troy Town or Walls of Troy, as legend holds that the walls of the ancient city of Troy were deliberately built in a confusing way.

The mysterious mizmaze on Breamore Down, Hampshire, is in a yew-grove near a Bronze Age burial mound and is inaccessible by car. Its paths follow the medieval Christian pattern, matching that of the nave at Chartres Cathedral in France. Local folklore suggests the mizmaze was built by the nearby monks of St Michael’s Priory, who would crawl along it as penance or in substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Thought to be from the 18th century, another mizmaze at St Catherine’s Hill, Winchester is the only surviving square-shaped ancient turf maze. It rises slightly to the north of the village of Chilcombe, which has traces of an ancient Iron Age fort and a chapel dating to around 1080. As local tradition has it, the maze was created by a schoolboy in detention from Winchester College, but over the centuries the story has grown so that in the same, clearly extra-long detention, he also composed the school song Dulce Domum before drowning himself in the river Itchen.

The house with two mazes

The turf maze at Saffron Walden. Credit: Philippe Hays/Alamy

Maze fans could do worse than head to Saffron Walden in Essex, which boasts two historic examples of mazes from different eras. On the town’s grassy common lies the largest surviving ancient turf maze in the world, a whopping 46m by 33.5m, though legend suggests it is merely a copy of a much larger maze.

The maze was nearly lost in 1814 when a landowner tried to enclose the common, but the intervention of local banker and maze fanatic Atkinson Francis Gibson saved it. Not everyone was as keen to take care of the maze: the ash tree that once grew at its centre burned down during a particularly rumbustious Guy Fawkes celebration in 1823.

As well as being a saviour of mazes, Gibson was also the founder of the delightful Bridge End Garden, in which, around 1840, his son Francis did his father proud by building a fine yew-hedge maze.

Hedge mazes

Hedge mazes had been all the rage during the Renaissance, when they were a symbol of wealth. Particularly popular in France and Italy, puzzle mazes were purely for fun – as well as a place for secret liaisons away from prying eyes. King Henry VIII had one at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, while the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I saw mazes popping up everywhere, featuring practical jokes such as dead ends and surprise water jets.

Where space was at a premium the maze craze was reflected in Tudor knot gardens. Puzzle mazes fell out of fashion in the 18th century, dug up to create the sleek lines in the landscape made fashionable by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, but by the 19th century the tide was turning again.

Saffron Walden’s hedge maze in Essex, constructed in the Italian Renaissance style, was originally dotted with ornaments intended to fool the visitor into wandering the wrong way. By the mid-20th century, the garden had become an overgrown wilderness – until the next maze revival in 1984, when an archaeological investigation unearthed the original paths. The maze was replanted and opened by Francis Gibson’s great-great grandson, Anthony Fry.

World’s oldest maze

The maze at Hampton Court Palace. Credit: Historic Royal Palaces

Britain’s most iconic hedge maze, at Hampton Court, is also the world’s oldest, dating back to around 1690. Its longevity is perhaps thanks to the fact that during Capability Brown’s long tenure at the palace, he was ordered, in no uncertain terms, to leave the maze alone.

Commissioned by William of Orange, the maze was planted as part of a formal garden known as ‘The Wilderness’ – not an uncultivated area as the name suggests, but a place to wander. Its unusual trapezoidal shape covers a third of an acre and feels bigger inside than it looks from outside. Sadly, a sister maze, made from espaliered trees, has since disappeared.

Practical jokes, coiled snakes and a royal creation

The maze at Glendurgan Garden, Cornwall. Credit: National Trust Images/John Millar

Another of Britain’s historic mazes is to be found at Hever Castle in Kent, formerly the home of Anne Boleyn, and in Edwardian times the seat of William Waldorf Astor. The splendid yew maze in the castle grounds, planted in 1905, has hedges more than eight feet high and it supposedly marks the spot where Henry VIII courted his second wife. Hever’s modern water maze, with its surprise jets that soak visitors, revives another maze tradition: the practical joke.

The classic maze follows a grid layout, but some use curved pathways to confuse visitors. The maze at Glendurgan Garden in Cornwall, planted in 1833, is shaped like a coiled snake nestled into the valley. Unusually, the hedges are cherry laurel, with palm trees at the corners providing an exotic touch.

The maze at Longleat comprises almost two miles of pathways. Credit: Jason Hawkes

The giant maze at Longleat in Wiltshire is also curvy rather than linear, with twisting paths designed to disorientate. What it lacks in history – it was planted in 1975 – it certainly makes up for in scale, with 16,000 yews and almost two miles of pathways.

Today, our fascination in mazes shows no sign of waning, and they are a regular weapon in the garden designer’s armoury, cropping up in private gardens and public spaces alike.

One of Britain’s newest was the brainchild of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, who, inspired by childhood memories of the maze at Sandringham, commissioned a hedge maze at Dumfries House in Ayrshire in 2016. It seems there’s no escaping the enduring appeal of a classic maze, even for a prince.

Book ahead

Saffron Walden

You can stroll between the town’s three mazes, from the turf maze on the common to the Italian Renaissance-style hedge maze in Bridge End Garden, via the modern tiled example in the Jubilee Garden. Open year-round.

Hampton Court Palace

This world-famous maze has entertained visitors for centuries. Can you beat the average time it takes to reach the centre: 20 minutes? Open year-round.

Hever Castle

The castle boasts two mazes set in beautiful gardens. The historic yew maze has a quarter of a mile of pathways, while the water maze is a series of concentric stepping-stone circles set over water, with false steps that shoot jets of water; bring a towel. Main maze open year-round; water maze end of March to October.

Glendurgan Garden

Set in a peaceful valley in Cornwall, this subtropical garden’s maze is built on a slope, allowing you to either tackle the maze yourself or sit opposite and watch others puzzle their way through. Open Tuesday to Sunday mid-February to October.

Longleat

It takes visitors anything up to 90 minutes to make their way to the centre of this complex maze. An observation tower at the heart of the maze marks the finish. Open year-round.

The post Get lost in Britain’s best mazes at stately homes appeared first on Britain Magazine | The official magazine of Visit Britain | Best of British History, Royal Family,Travel and Culture.

Britain Magazine | The official magazine of Visit Britain | Best of British History, Royal Family,Travel and Culture https://www.britain-magazine.com/attractions-2/get-lost-in-britains-best-mazes-at-stately-homes/

source https://coragemonik.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/get-lost-in-britains-best-mazes-at-stately-homes/

#travel to do list #best adventure vacations #adventure travel #adventure trips for families #adventu

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tonightontv · 6 years

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After a couple of stutter-steps salvaging the storyline from season four, the show begins to hit its stride, evoking its glory days.

In addition to being one of the great comedies of all time, Arrested Development will surely go down in history as being one of the most unfortunate, which in some weird way is perfectly on point for the material. If you'll remember, and you probably won't, the last four episodes of the third season on Fox were burned off in one night — unceremoniously, right up against the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. It's funny now.

A season before that, back in the days when ratings really mattered, Fox had to be talked into saving the show, but by the end of that third season it was mostly a cult series, and all the hipster kids who said they were there at the beginning had not yet started watching.

From cult to legend, Arrested Development was then revived in 2013 by a new thing called Netflix, which needed its own street cred before, you know, taking over the world. People might not remember wanting that fourth season so badly that they would buy a subscription service to get it. What they remember clearly is how disappointed they were by the cut-up results, the Rashomon-style Rasho-mess that creator and writer Mitch Hurwitz ended up constructing, partly out of necessity. (For one thing, it was a challenge to coordinate the shooting schedules of the castmembers, which by then were pretty famous. For another, Netflix was a mysterious new thing and Hurwitz was told people could watchonline all the episodes at once and even out of order, any which way, any time they wanted — ah, the nascent days of streaming! All these factors contributed to his bold, labor-intensive and, yes, "huge mistake.")

I call the show "unfortunate" because although season four is a confusing structural mess and a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment, it's also very, very funny in parts. Those parts are better highlighted in the more linear recut of the season that Hurwitz posted on Netflix earlier this month — on Cinco de Mayo, of course. The new version serves as a better appetizer for the vastly improved fifth season. (Netflix is dropping eight of the 16 episodes on Tuesday, and the rest will be available later.)

Since this series, unlike most other TV comedies, is so story-focused, the early stretches of season five spend a lot of time trying to catch viewers up. The first couple of episodes — seven were made available to critics — are saddled with previous plot points that will be the basis for future developments. So temper your expectations; the narrative clutter sometimes obscures the jokes.

But even amid the mad scramble to re-establish plotlines, there are plenty of funny callbacks. One of the daring elements of the original Fox seasons, which might have worked against the show gaining a large audience, was that Hurwitz and his writers used callback jokes that evoked not just moments in the same episode, but earlier episodes and even earlier seasons. Under its veneer of ludicrousness, it was one of television's most daringly cerebral series.

Luckily, by the third episode of the new season, the cylinders are firing a lot more effortlessly, and the series benefits from having the cast pretty much all back together for shared scenes. Episodes five, six and seven show Arrested Development at its best, taking a full sprint at ridiculously elaborate scenarios.

Jason Bateman (a note of transparency: He's a friend — though he might use that patented Michael Bluth shake of the head to imply that this is a real stretch) is once again not missing a beat as the one Bluth family member who is self-reflective and aware that the clan is insane. That delusional mindset has Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) running for office and George Michael (Michael Cera) still fighting those weird urges over cousin Maeby (Alia Shawkat), who in turn has upped her scheming to preposterous and hilarious new levels, among many other storylines. And while those storylines stumble a bit in the early, catch-up episodes, patience pays off.

Voiceover: George Sr. soon realized his impression of a woman wasn't going to win him any acting awards.

Michael: This is why you always, always leave a note. (Pause) Where's that from?

George Michael: Family of the year? Who would give us that?

Maeby: We're giving it to ourselves.

George Michael: Still doesn't seem we'd get the votes.

It's nice to see the series return to the form it defined so many years ago with its rapid-fire, multiple-layer jokes (verbal, physical and visual). While there's not much of de Rossi in the first seven episodes, Bateman, Will Arnett, Tony Hale, Cera, Jessica Walter, Jeffrey Tambor, David Cross and especially Shawkat get to either pick up or expand where they left off, with a number of cameos from the past sprinkled in as well. Hurwitz, writing partner Jim Vallely and the staff nail enough jokes in the exposition-laden early episodes (with a major assist from Ron Howard doing both narration and acting) to build a bridge to the stronger installments that follow.

But Arrested Development will always be a series that fails to satisfy the expectations of every fan. Not everybody thought Michael Jordan was good when he came back, either. From the halfway point in its new season, it looks like a solid and welcome return to form, which makes me excited to see the rest.

Cast: Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Jessica Walter, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Cera, Tony Hale, David Cross, Portia de Rossi, Alia Shawkat, Ron Howard Creator and writer: Mitch Hurwitz Premieres: Tuesday (Netflix)

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bowiebwe-blog · 6 years

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Bowie’s Favorite Albums Of 2017 Big List! (#20-5)

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20. Paramore - After Laughter

Nah guys, this is still definitely Paramore. And that’s a very good thing. I *loved* their 2013 self-titled album, and though this album doesn’t hit me at quite that level, it’s in the same ballpark(ish). They got groovier and yeah, a but pop-ier, but their heart is still definitely there. And it’s one of the most thematically cohesive albums of the year. You wanna know who I think one of their low-key influences is this time around though? Their good buddies/label mates Twenty One Pilots. I’m not so sure they would have dared take the route they did with the lyrical themes of this album without Twenty One Pilots paving the way into the mainstream first, even if Haley needed to say it. But now that it’s been said, I hope their next album goes into what comes after; hope, and all that good stuff.

*Hard Times, Forgiveness

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19. Liam Gallagher - As You Were

Straight up, I wasn’t expecting Liam to show up and make an album this good. I dunno how much help he had in making it happen, but here it is, it happened. This album rivals late Oasis and even his brother’s excellent post-Oasis projects. The grit here is real, and Liam backs up his incredibly large ego with some great songs. Easily one of the best rock albums of the year. Now let’s please have an Oasis reunion sometime soon as you were LG x

*Wall Of Glass, I’ve All I Need, Chinatown

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18. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon?

Noel Gallagher is one of the very best British songwriters of all-time. I don’t ever flinch or stutter when I say that. He knows how to make a song full of heart be catchy while still pushing the boundaries of what songwriting can be, and all without overcomplication. It’s a fascinating thing to behold. Oasis was built on his back, and they were rightfully massive. And now he’s back with his wee Flyin’ Birds and making another great album. He once again shows he’s not afraid to reach out and find new avenues of songwriting, and somehow he seems to always find the sweet spot. It’s definitely once again a change of sound, and it almost makes me believe he changes it either to challenge himself or because he’s bored. Whatever the case, this is a great album with more great songwriting from an incredible artist.

*Dead In The Water, It’s A Beautiful World

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17. Eminem - Revival

I recently found out that Eminem used 69,000 pieces of paper during the writing of this album, so it’s no wonder to me how he came to be what I easily consider to be the greatest rapper of all-time. His golden days as off-the-wall Slim Shady might be in the past, but his undeniable passion and flow are still strong here. Eminem knows how to deliver, and pretty much everyone who knows rap knows it. He’s the greatest. And as a side note, “Arose” might easily be one of the most powerful Eminem songs ever. It’s like being the dying man fighting for his life and his mourning family at the same time, and it’s amazing to see Eminem be able to still deliver on that. Anyway, Eminem once again brought out greatness in this album. Fantastic.

*Arose, River, In Your Head

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16. PVRIS - All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell

I listened to both of PVRIS’ albums for the first time on the same walk, and let me tell ya, I was instantly converted into being a fan. Their songs and albums are high-quality modern rock albums with a very open feel to them. And the vocals! My goodness. They go from ice water to like having a hot Twilight vampire sink their teeth into your neck like butter. Not much changed tonally between this album and their debut, but like Royal Blood, if it ain’t broke, you don’t always need to fix it. Especially with rock. So many rock bands get so caught up in trying to become relevant electronically that they lose where they came from in the first place. PVRIS is a force to be reckoned with, even if they don’t ever get incredible commercial success (it’s just the world we live in). Great album.

*Heaven, What’s Wrong, NOLA 1

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15. Logic - Everybody

Peace, love, and positivity! We should have all listened to Logic sooner. I decided once he released this album to listen to all of his previous albums before listening to even a single song off his new release, and folks, he’s the real deal. His flow is amazing, his beats are creative, and he’s genuine. This album definitely backs all that up. He’s one creative mother goose, and his art is full of those good vibes we love in music. He also gets more honest and personal than ever here with mental health issues (not just in “1-800…”), so it’s somewhat of an important album even just on that note.

*Hallelujah, 1-800-273-8255

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14. Ed Sheeran - ÷

This album was one of my most-anticipated of the year, and it largely lived up to the high expectations, but not completely. There are some songs I loved, some songs I really liked, and some songs I honestly could’ve done without on here. But here’s the thing… Ed Sheeran’s an amazing songwriter. These songs are all good. Like, even though “Shape Of You” might be one of my least favorite on the album because of that trendy finger harp bounce rythm thing I can’t stand, if you listen in the background you’ll hear very ‘Ed Sheeran-y" guitar-percussion sounds that make the song fascinating to listen to. So sometimes it seems like these songs are too polished for the radio, but it still has a lot of heart and fantastic songwriting. I don’t like it quite as much as I loved 'X’, but I still really liked this album. Mr. Sheeran is constant quality and I’m sure he’ll be a superpower for years to come.

*Happier, How Would You Feel (Paean), What Do I Know?, Perfect

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13. Imagine Dragons - Evolve

Do you hear that? …that’s the sound of Dan Reynolds waking up. If their sophmore album was a necessarily dark album dealing with the regrets and sorrows of stardom, Imagine Dragons came around with their third album to make a bright, flying album that revolves around what comes after the dark times. It definitely feels alive and fresh, using a new coat of digital paint to make the color pop. It’s pretty close to exactly what the doctor ordered for them. And their songwriting keeps getting better (I love the flow of the last verse of “Whatever It Takes”). Imagine Dragons shows they’re not afraid to be around for the long run with this release, and it’s a joy to listen to.

*I Don’t Know Why, Walking The Wire, The Mouth Of The River

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12. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - The Nashville Sound

I love, love, love, love Jason Isbell. His songwriting to me is one form of the amazing eiptome of the human experience. Does that make sense? (…Eh, who cares.) So real. Bare. Honest. I love it. He’s back with his band this time around after a couple of solo albums that I still adore, and although this one might not be *quite* up to the level of those two for me, this is still a really, really good album. As far as folk/alt-country artists go, this guy’s a monster. Definitely worth a listen.

*Last Of My Kind, Hope The High Road, If We Were Vampires

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11. London Grammer - Truth Is A Beautiful Thing

I remember listening to this one for the first time vividly. I was walking down a dark neighborhood street at probably 12:30 AM when “Big Picture” came on. It was like as the song progressed and the music picked up the stars started to pop out, the mountains’ dark outlines became clear, and by the time the song hit its peak I felt alive and deep in the night. The album held onto that feeling. If that makes sense. It was a great walk that night. London Grammer took seemingly forever to realease this album, to the point where I honestly stopped caring for it to come out after loving their debut album, but it blew me away when it came out. It took everything great about their first album and improved it. Subtle. Calming. Aching. Enveloping. It’s easy to dive into when the time is right. Beautiful, beautiful album.

*Big Picture, Truth Is A Beautiful Thing

—-

10. Taylor Swift - Reputation

Were you ready for it? Once T-Swift drops a new album, there’s no getting away from hearing it. And the reason for that? She makes *dang* good pop albums, even since the days when she was still “country.” She knows her craft very well (image-wise as well as musically) and has definitely deserved her wild success. I still consider “1989” to be one of the best pop albums ever (or at least in the past two decades or so), so this one had high expectations coming into it. Well, I’d say it was a success. I mean, I could do another essay on this album. No, it’s not at the level of her last album, but she once again made a solid case for her being the current queen of pop. She dives further into production trends here, but does them better than really anyone else. Her lyrics are honest and sharper than ever, but she still has those fun moments of just being Taylor Swift in there too. So beyond all the mania building up to and during the release of this album, it’s a great album by one of today’s biggest superstars.

*Delicate, End Game, Dancing With Our Hands Tied

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9. Aaron Watson - Vaquero

This album *feels* like Texas, and I love it. I hadn’t even heard of Aaron Watson until a few weeks ago, but I was already blown away and honestly kind of emotional by the very first chorus of the very first track (“Texas Lullaby”). It’s like I was *there*. Back down South. Big calm fields, even bigger blue skies. I don’t think there are any big radio hits on this album, but the songs are so. dang. good. Ugh! This guy is genuine and obviously has a soul full of that sweet country music. Every country music fan out there should know this album.

*Texas Lullaby, Take You Home Tonight, Run Wild Horses, Amen Amigo

—–

8. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

I need to watch out here, because I could easily write an essay on this album. In my opinion, Kendrick is crazy-far ahead of everyone else in the rap world concerning beats and overall production. Kendrick always pushes the limit of what a rap song can be, finding new ways of making something innovative the new hit. I’d even say he’s already the best rap artist ever in terms of making brilliant albums, and not just making them a great collection of songs. He’s always brilliant and innovative, but never at the expense of losing mass popularity and creating disconnect between he and the average listener. Along with the brilliant songs by themseleves that make up this album, the concept and vision of the album itself as a whole is brilliant (if you don’t know, look into playing the track order in reverse). I dunno, he just constantly amazes me. Every time. Kendrick’s working his way up to legend status.

*FEEL., LOVE., GOD.

—

7. Ryan Adams - Prisoner

Chances are you probably don’t know who Ryan Adams is. That’s okay. You’re not alone. It’s an epidemic. I first heard him a few years ago when he released his beautiful cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989, and I pretty close to instantly fell in love with his music. He has a lot of heart, and he can write a heck of a song. Seems like he’s sure fighting a lot of heartache and heartbreak in this album and is learning how to move on from loss, and he tells it beautifully. I’d definitely recommend you give this one a chance.

*Doomsday, Shiver And Shake

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6. John Mayer - The Search For Everything

John Mayer is one of my absolute favorite songwritiers/artists. It just seems like he gets *it*. His songs seep passion and integrity, along with emotion and an abundance of amazing musicianship. He knows amazing skills and all that, but he understands heart, and that’s the core of his music. This album also seems like it has an extra dose of direct honesty in it as compared to his previous works. There are colors of hope, understanding, doubt, love, loneliness, and all else that paint what it means to be human in this album, and they’re bright and genuine here. It’s also cool to see him mix his almost-americana-ish influences of the past few years with the smooth coolness of his Continuum days. Another great one by one of the greatest songwriters/musicians of our generation.

*Emoji Of A Wave, You’re Gonna Live Forever In Me, Never On The Day You Leave

—–

5. Bleachers - Gone Now

I love this album. Straight up. One of the biggest surprises of the year, and I couldn’t be happier about it. You might not think you know Jack Antanoff (a.k.a. Bleachers), but if you’ve ever listened to any recent Taylor Swift or Lorde tracks, you do. His work as a producer is well-known (like I said, big ol’ T-Swift and Lorde tracks among others), but this is his own project from his own mouth, and it is one of my favorite albums of the year. He gets modern and experimental without sacrificing any heart from the songs, and also makes classic callbacks comparable to bands such as The Beatles (“Goodmorning”), while still managing to give them have a beautiful shiny modern polish. There’s a hidden reason T-Swift and Lorde have done so well lately. This album will tell you all about it.

*Goodmorning, I Miss Those Days, Let’s Get Married

—

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sabrin-things · 6 years

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SABRIN ZERO SEVENTEEN: EPISODE 1⃣8⃣4⃣: WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE DEAN TV UNIVERSE

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and eighty four of Sabrin zero seventeen. As we enter to another universe, a part of the Dean Rodney Jr’s multiverse. The Dean Tv universe that is, the Dean Tv team are in a recording studio. Making some music, the studio is in Brandon’s cousin’s apartment. It is in the basement, Brandon calls it the Dean Tv dungeon. The Dean Tv posse and other musicians are making a track titled the Louise anthem. The other me (Dean, my other self) and Louise is at the studio seeing what is going on. Dean also helps them, Brandon’s cousin rearrange the music by putting instruments in different sections. He plays the music, he timed it too. Dean shakes his head to the music. He looks at Louise, then the computers with the music software. All the instruments are been performed by people, like keyboards. Guitars like the bass and electric, drum machine. Strings like violins, a robot voice. Vocal also, which makes the music. The anthem of Louise. “So choose the sound of the drum that sounds like an eighties with the claps?” asked Jeremy. “That is me, cos it is supposed to be electro” said Dean. The team worked on the tune for 3 days, from Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday.

“What the Friday?” said Jason. “Hey don’t talk over the music” said Murphy. “What do you mean don’t talk over the music?” asked Louise. “Ignore him, if you want to do it. do it, its your life” said Maria. Brandon’s cousin plays it again, while Dean close his eyes. Until he starts to dream, he hears the anthem in his mind while dreaming. Seeing colourful pixelated letters that spells out Louise’s names. The dream takes place in London with everything looking a bit computerised, people wearing clothes from the eighties. The town has neon lights, cars and other vehicles have got neon lights. Dean finds himself in a house with Louise and the Dean Tv team. He enters the house after having a meeting about the progress of the Dean Tv movement, in the retro styles. Thanks to the tune of the anthem. “My anthem” said Louise. “Yes that is right” said Dean. “The intro sounds like a video game from the 8 bit era” said Helena. “How do you know that?” said Louise. “Dean told me about that before” said Helena. The tune got played on the radio so many times, three minutes and fifty one seconds. Dean turns on the Tv seeing the Dean Tv electro channel appearing on the Tv. Louise gives him a magazine of Dean Tv electro with the front cover of Dean wearing shades on, at the back it is a different person. “A double issue” said Dean. “Yes it is, the other side is very strange with that picture of that girl wearing something on her face” said Louise. “It is a virtual visor I think, Dean Tv VR have designed another visor to make more electro” said Dean. “Now on Dean Tv electro it time for another exciting episode of D Girls electro” said the announcer. “I wasn’t expecting that show to be on Tv”said Dean. “Must be the time schedule changed again for that show” said Brandon. “Hey look its that lady from the magazine, must be the same person” said Dean. He checks it, then looks at the Tv. “Yes of course” said Dean. “What are you talking about?” asked Louise. Dean shows the picture and the lady. “She is a cast member of the D girls series” Dean. “Oh okay but I don’t watch that programme” said Louise. “Why not?” asked Aaron. “Cos she does not watch the show” said Dean. “Why?” asked June smiling. “Because I don’t follow the series, I only the Dean Rodney police Tv series” said Louise. “Good choice” said Dean. “Which one?, old or new?” asked Helena. “New” said Louise. The revival series, the revival series started from twenty sixteen to the present, the original series started from twenty eleven to twenty fourteen. “I think I remember the old series, but I watch it on the classics channel” said Louise. The team went out to the Dean Tv club, checking out some music what the DJ is playing. Some entertainment too. Everyone is dancing, eating food and also drinking. Until the bad guys came to interrupt the party. The villains gave everyone demands to play the Louise anthem in the club. “Hey am the DJ here, in this club and I play whatever I want” he said. “No you play the anthem” said one of them. Until Dean turns into Dean Tv man. “Stop!” he said. “Its the Dean Tv man” said one of them. “Correction, Dean Tv electro man” he said to them. The DJ looked shocked, Louise smiled at Dean. Dean gets out his remote, the bad guys went to attack. But Dean uses his remotes to fire electric stuff. One of them touch his armour, but got shocked by it. All of them fall to the ground, everyone cheered . The police went to arrest them. The party continues on, until the performance starts. The Dean Tv posse and the other musicians perform the Louise anthem. The lady from the back cover of the magazine and the other ladies were on stage too. Dancing and lip-syncing the robot voice. Wearing virtual visors, the girls are in hologram mode. The people danced to the music, including Dean and Louise. The dream started to fade away as Louise tries to wake up Dean. But Dean is still sleeping. Louise kisses him. Dean wakes up. “Wow what a dream that was, I was in the electro world of London. Hearing this tune” said Dean. “The Louise anthem Dean?” asked Brandon’s cousin. “Yes and the tune is so catchy with so many things” said Dean. “Sounds retro” said Helena. Meanwhile in the other universe, the Sabrin universe. The universe team are setting up christmas stuff like the christmas tree. “Only two days till Christmas, the weeks is going so fast” said the rabbit. “Yes, everyone was in the shop where Dean went to buy that Dean Tv love book” said Chawn. I smiled at the book looking at Princess Louise, Princess Helena with their mother who is the queen of the blue rose are posing on the front cover. “Great picture isn’t it Dean 3” said I. “Yes Dad it is” said Dean 3. Sabrin is putting the presents under the tree with the other team members. The computer received an E mail from my other self. With an MP3 of the Louise anthem. We all listen to it. I use the thumbs up symbol to send my other self. Means its a great tune. In the Dean Tv universe my other self on the boat lying down on the bed. Sleeping, started to dream again. Seeing himself and Louise to the anthem. Playing it on a record player. Dancing on the eighties grid with other people.

Check out the tune on the Dean Tv love website.

https://deantvlove2018.tumblr.com/post/168864645024/this-is-the-louise-anthem-i-made-this-tune-on-my

END OF EPISODE 1⃣8⃣4⃣

1⃣:3⃣5⃣:1⃣8⃣.3⃣1⃣

#Sabrintwentyseventeen

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full-zoe-blog · 7 years

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Flower Blog

The Blossom Master respects the bloom aficionados to the exceptional component - Bloom Websites where the blossom darlings can share the information about blooms and bloom related subjects with the blossom appreciating group around the world.

For any broad inquiries and questions on bloom writes and blogging, you are asked for to experience Every now and again Made inquiries on Blossom Blog.

What's more, the Well ordered Manual for Blossom Blog gives you an a point by point notes on the most proficient method to blog on blooms.

Post your remarks on anything identified with Blossoms and Flower Industry. You can make a blog in a split second without the bother of username and secret word. Furthermore, you can likewise see our month to month bloom blog documents.

Taking Simulated Wedding Blossoms Abroad

Blooms are probably, the most sensitive making of nature that commend magnificence, womanliness and delicacy. This is the reason blossoms are utilized for the most imperative occasions in oneãâ¢??s life to adorn and decorate the area of the occasion. Blooms are likewise used to add to the magnificence of ladies if added to their hair, their dazzling bundles and wrists even. Subsequently, blossoms can't in any way, shape or form be awry from the most imperative occasion in a womenãâ¢??s life, her big day. As yet, being so sensitive and delicate, genuine blooms are regularly difficult to keep new and consummate particularly when conveyed miles far from where they are collected into wonderful blossom adornments. This is the motivation behind why, with more than 10 years of involvement in working with simply fake blossoms we are the wedding bloom organization to give your extraordinary day blooms. Counterfeit blossoms are 100% more down to earth, simple to deal with and considerably more significantly they can without much of a stretch be take abroad. At Sarahãâ¢??s Blooms we have an enthusiasm of conveying the most lovely blossom enrichments, bunches and corsages however we likewise need to convey the most astounding quality to each customer. This is the reason weãâ¢??ve figured the best alternative for us is to plan and make fragile bloom courses of action utilizing simulated wedding blossoms made of silk and give a great many ladies recollections that keep going forever. What are the most critical advantages of utilizing fake wedding blossoms for our clients? All things considered, we figured youãâ¢??ve asked, so here are the most essential reasons: Ãâ¢?ãâ¢ Counterfeit wedding blooms are ideal for weddings abroad or abroad in light of the fact that they donãâ¢??t ruin or wither in the warmth like common blossoms do and the bundles remain in place for the ideal wedding service and gathering. Ãâ¢?ãâ¢ Regular blooms all year around, consequently in the event that you adore sunflowers yet weãâ¢??re in Spring then you require not stress since we recovered your. Ãâ¢?ãâ¢ No compelling reason to stress over dust sensitivities or hayfever; in spite of the fact that you might not have any blossom hypersensitivities, some of your visitors may have one and by utilizing manufactured blooms you can keep the wheezing and rashes. Ãâ¢?ãâ¢ Take the correct blooms you need to your fantasy wedding goal in your bag Ãâ¢?? with our simulated wedding blossoms you can. Ãâ¢?ãâ¢ An enduring memory of that ideal occasion, on the grounds that the blooms never blur away, and in addition your best kept recollections of the awesome day. These are just a couple of the fundamental reasons why we encourage you to consider requesting manufactured silk made wedding blossoms rather than regular bundles. From excellent bunches to table focuses and from corsages to buttonhole blossoms weãâ¢??ve got you secured with anything your heart wants for your big day. Considerably more, we if you're wedding function and gathering are outside the UK our silk wedding blooms are so powerful they can be effortlessly conveyed in either your bag or portable baggage. At that point they will be conveyed in place and precisely how you needed them to look and feel and considerably more, you wonãâ¢??t need to spend a fortune on them as with genuine wedding blossom enhancements. Sarahãâ¢??s Blooms are a multi-grant winning organization since we are energetic in conveying the most wonderful simulated wedding blossoms for your extraordinary day!

Posted by Jason Perused at 3:46 AM on Monday, 23 September 2013

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What's New This February? Cupid's Here With More Bolts!

February's about New Love. It's about adding new quintessence to that old sentiment.

Or, on the other hand shower your adoration and feelings to that new woman in your life. The energy of affection lies in your grasp .Cupid's assignment can be a tiny bit simpler on the off chance that you recognized what to this February to start that ideal story of foreverness ,of minimal pink hearts and chocolates,of snuggles and teddy bear since February's not going to return for one more year.

While some trust that Valentines Day is praised amidst February to remember the commemoration of Valentine's demise or entombment.

To start the celebration, individuals from the Luperci, a request of Roman clerics, would accumulate in a consecrated give in where the babies Romulus and Remus, the organizers of Rome, were accepted to have been administered to by a she-wolf or lupa. The ministers would relinquish a goat, for ripeness, and a puppy, for cleansing. This was followed up by a story for the duration of the day, later in the day, as indicated by legend; all the young ladies in the city would put their names in a major urn. The city's lone rangers would each pick a name and end up noticeably matched for the year with his picked lady. These matches frequently finished in marriage. While such unbelievable stories are difficult to check yet there was dependably conviction that some place they may be valid.

Valentines Day

Commending another bond can be more extraordinary. Cuddly white teddy bear alongside marked chocolates,roses,a enthralling bundles of cream or white gerberas 3 or 4 orange roses with green blend and a jug of smooth wine. An interesting knowledge of chocolates comes just from one of the finest carefully assembled Belgian handcrafted chocolate, Full-bodied red wines that brag their extensive dinner blending flexibility is something which everyone needs. Premium wine brands like Jacob's Stream, Mouton Cadet, Lindeman's, and Cono Sur that will just make her experience passionate feelings for you.

New love, new starts and our fresh introductions bring new guarantees of dependable sentiment with the system that conveys crosswise over 180 nations. We make sentiment feel like its recently made.

Love doesn't cost a thing when one has such an immense scope of endowments to look over.

Posted by [email protected] at 5:32 AM on Thursday, 24 January 2013

View "What's New This February? Cupid's here with more bolts!" View [What's New This February? Cupid's here with more arrows!]

Why So Early? It's Simply Cherish!

February is an exceptionally uncommon month. The Time of the legend holy person and the cupid. The time of crisp love, revived sentiment, soft hearts, children's story bonding's, re certifying the interminable energy of sentimental people over everything else. February is Valentines Day.

How has Valentines Day unfurled to be a noteworthy image of affection and feelings?

The historical backdrop of Valentines Day - and the tale of its benefactor holy person - is covered in puzzle. We know about February, long been commended as the time of sentiment, and that St. Valentine's Day, as we probably am aware it today, contains remnants of both Christian and old Roman convention.

The Catholic Church perceives three unique holy people named Valentine or Valentinus, every one of whom were martyred. Legend has it that Valentine was a minister who served amid the third century in Rome. At the point when Sovereign Claudius II chose that solitary men improved officers than those with spouses and families, he banned marriage for young fellows. Valentine, understanding the shamefulness of the declaration, resisted Claudius and kept on performing relational unions for youthful partners in mystery. At the point when Valentine's activities were found, Claudius requested that he be killed. Such power and gives up have ruled the everlasting holding of adoration.

On the off chance that sweet dreams are made of this, who are we to oppose this idea. Venturing to the far corners of the planet over oceans, everyone requests a touch of adoration and warmth and Februarys the ideal time to express what you have not possessed the capacity to or start that sentiment to an unheard of level.

Valentines Day

How would you commend your affection? Roses and Lilies have dependably been the image of Adoration.. Those blooms have the ability to bond and unite. Those stories of affection can be made over blossoms joined by chocolates. Hershey, Godiva, Settle, Ferrero Rocher Lindt and some red roses. Let the sentiment stream.

When you investigate those eyes, you can feel the affection and torment. Try not to sit tight for Cupid to do his thing. With the finest gourmet liberalities, including Godiva 72% Dull Chocolate, Wine Buddy Wafers, Dalmatia Fig Spread, Chocolate Moravian Treats, a crate of Ghirardelli Squares, your woman should feel adored, esteemed, sustained.

Februarys however a bustling month. So get those endowments quick. The years just gazed and you may not discover time to get everything. That is the place we accomplice your affection, with a dash of sentiment, including a radiance of enchantment and mush to blessings by conveying genuine rapidly. Since adoration has no time oblige and with our quick conveyance arrange, premium champagne from the basements of the world's biggest Champagne houses like Moet and Chandon or Worldwide brands of chocolates from Godiva, Neuhaus, Settle, Hershey's &Ferrero Rocher Ãâ¢??reach you ahead of schedule to have intercourse endless.

Let's assume I adore you with our brisk riser Valentine's Day. blessing gathering .The quicker you express your affection, the all the more, 'cheerfully ever after' your relationship gets.

Posted by Visitor at 5:32 AM on Monday, 21 January 2013

See "Why so early? It's simply Cherish!" See [Why so early? It's simply LOVE!]

Christmas Sneak Look!

Along these lines, you have guzzled on the Thanksgiving Feast, skilled your friends and family some great sustenance, wines, chocolates and blooms and said thanks to those precious ones .Every good thing end with a blast.

Particularly amid the bubbly season. You better not yell, you better not cry, you better not yell since we are revealing to you why. Not exclusively is S

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