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sleepynegress · 7 months

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On GEN V...

First, I have to say that though I watch The Boys, for me the skewering of power, and it being always corrupt/corruptable, especially when corporate was smudged a bit by all the white dudes being centered by the narrative and fandom, and certain expected patterns in that.

...i.e. Butcher and Soldier Boy and Homelander...ALL being stanned while all being terrible people. -Mother's Milk and Frenchie being side kicks (the Black man and the "foreigner") and the silent but deadly Asian girl... You get it. I hate that this is the case, but even when meant to subvert, this tends to happen.

So, it's interesting that they leaned in harder and made it MORE obvious this time, by literally blowing up the Golden White Guy (played by Swartzanegger's son, no less) at the end of the pilot episode and playing a Black woman's gaze as the entry point into this angle on the world. ...We saw how that went with Star Trek: Discovery. Those used to the Dursley 37 birthday presents treatment were and still are REAL mad. I hate to say it, especially given how unusually well this show is rendering the insecurities and challenges of this time for young adults, but some people we like are not gonna make it through this season... And it won't be pretty when they go (holds a halo of protection over Emma & Jordan).

...But Marie, a.k.a. the audience's gaze? is safe. That said, Marie is *also* written like the usually centered white dude, just like Micheal Burnham before her. Her arc is "the hero's journey." She stumbles, but ultimately she will measure up to the highest potential (one of, if not the most powerful hero) even she can't see yet... TW for this section... for self-harm/eating disorders etc... The powers being spot-on metaphors for the struggles and insecurities of young people is a nice writing choice. Marie's puberty/power advent literally killed her parents and alienated her sister. So, of course, she can't truly see the potential. There's ritualistic self-loathing in both her cutting and Emma's vomiting to use their powers and that is mostly imposter syndrome for both....Both of them are SO MUCH more powerful than they think, but are held back by parental baggage.

...Andre too, though instead of self-harm it's being lazy about his power development, to subconsciously detach his own personhood from his father trying to live through him.

Jordan Li is bigender but is most comfortable presenting "femme", which may also have to do with detaching from their parents' preferences in gender presentation for them. They want a super-powered son. But the only times Li presents that way is when they feel they absolutely *have to* or actively need to do something and only can, in that form. "Relaxed" or default Jordan is femme.

So, while I see people wishing Li would have been femme Li in that first kiss, it makes sense that they would shift, given the baggage and male presentation preference pressure they grew up with. They shifted back to "default" Li once they were relaxed...i.e. afterglow slumber... An interesting inferred detail is that Li was born presenting male. That is likely a big reason why their parents are that attached to a masc gender presentation.

Now Cate's arc, just like the Golden Boy Luke is actively subverting an element of expected whiteness. Her power is to compel people with touch. It's white women's tears as a superpower, which is IMO, the most clever power social metaphor in this franchise. Cate's moral compass is the strongest of the superheroes we've seen in the entire Boys universe so far. She's got those actual Karen powers, but she's the anti-Karen.

She avoids using her power non-consensually in ways that cause permanent harm and even consensually in ways that may help, and given her entry point (similar to Marie, but w/o closure), it makes sense. --This is all the more tragic if she's being used in the way I suspect...given her nightmare/flashback in those opening eps. to having been in "The Woods" (I think it's either she or whoever the puppet show person is in Sam's episodes, that is the reason for the blackouts). She's a Pusher, and much like Andy in Stephen King's Firestarter it takes a heavy toll on the brain...

She's probably not gonna make it through this season, yall. Anyway, all this to say... I am intrigued by this show. And fully invested in these characters. And I like it better than The Boys because it's leaning harder into alienating the elements it's satirizing... The Boys fans are still into the aspects of the show The Boys' narrative is skewering, but Gen V is saying much louder, this is not about you.

#seriously marie is powerful af and has no idea #if the headpopper is terrifying marie could literally pop everything and bend the blood to kill huge swaths of more folk afterwards #gen v #meta #thoughts so far #blah blah #gen v's cate & misfits' alisha are similar in power social metaphor skewering #but on opposite ends #it's...interesting watching how fandom is *still*#hard pill to swallow #some of yall's gaze at jordan is the same as little dick man was about emma...#and that creepy tv guy tek too #cate self-harm to save andre that seizure leads me to believe that if its her #its unwilling not by choice #but then it's also suspicious that she told no one about her flashback

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erictmason · 3 years

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The Road To “Godzilla VS. Kong”, Day Four

(Sorry for the delay on this one, Life proved just a bit too busy the other day to finish it; my “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” review is gonna be pushed back as a result too. But! No worries, on we go. ^_^)

KONG: SKULL ISLAND (2017

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Writers: Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly, John Gatins

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly

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Technically speaking, Gareth Edwards’ “Godzila” from 2014 was the first entry in what is now generally referred to as “The Monsterverse”, an attempt by Warner Bros. Studios and Legendary Pictures to do a Marvel Studios-style series of various interconnected movies (and which, like most such attempts to cash in on that particular trend, hasn’t really panned out; “Godzilla VS. Kong” seems likely to be its grand finale as far as movies are concerned, the only two “names” it had going for it are Godzilla and Kong themselves, and even at its most successful it was never exactly a Powerhouse Franchise). But the thing is, when that movie was made, the idea of a “Monsterverse” did not yet exist; it was only well after the fact that Legendary and Warner Bros. got the idea to turn a new “Kong” project into the building block of a Shared Universe of their own that they could connect with the 2014 “Godzilla”, with a clear eye on getting to remake one of the most singularly iconic (and profitable) Giant Monster Movies of all time. As you might guess from that description, however, said “Kong” project also had not originally been intended for such a purpose; it would not be until 2016 that it would be retooled from its original purpose (a prequel to the original “King Kong” titled simply “Skull Island”) into its present form, which goes out of its way to reference Monarch, the monster-tracking Science organization seen over in 2014’s “Godzilla” and which includes a very obviously Marvel-inspired post-credits stinger explicitly tying Kong and Godzilla’s existences together.

The resulting film is fun enough, all things told, but that graft is also really, distractingly obvious.

Honestly, I wish I knew why I’m not, generally, fonder of “Skull Island” than I am. It’s not as if, taken as a whole, it does anything especially bad; indeed it does a great deal that is actively good. Consider, for example, the rather unique choice to make it a Period Piece; that’s decently rare for a Monster Movie as it is (indeed one of the only other examples that springs to mind for me is Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of “King Kong”, which chose to retain the original’s 1933 setting), and it’s rarer still that the era it chooses to inhabit is an immediately-post-Vietnam 1970’s. Aesthetically speaking, the movie takes a decent amount of fairly-obvious influence from that most classic of Vietnam-era films, “Apocalypse Now” (a fact that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was always fairly open about), and it results in some of the movie’s strongest overall imagery (in particular a shot of Kong, cast in stark silhouette, standing against the burning sun on the horizon with a fleet of helicopters approaching him, one of a surprisingly small number of times the movie plays with visual scale to quite the same degree or with quite the same success as “Godzilla” 2014). It also means the movie is decked out in warm, lush colors that really do bring out all the personality of its Jungle setting in the most compelling way and, given how important the setting is to the film as a whole, that proves key; Skull Island maybe doesn’t become a character in its own right the way the best settings should (too much of our time is spent in fairly indistinct forests especially), but it does manage to feel exciting and unusual in the right ways more often than not. The “Apocalypse Now” influence also extends to our human cast, which is sizeable enough here (in terms of major characters we need to pay attention to played by notable actors, “Skull Island” dwarfs “Godzilla” 2014 by a significant margin) that the framework it provides-a mismatched group defined by various interpersonal/intergenerational tensions trying to make their way through an inhospitable wilderness, ostensibly in search of a lost comrade-is decently necessary. Though here we already run into one of those aspects of “Skull Island” that doesn’t quite land for me. Taken as a whole, it sure feels like the human characters here should be decently interesting; certainly, our leads are all much better defined and more engagingly performed than Ford Brody, to draw the most immediately obvious point of comparison. Brie Larson (as journalistic Anti-War photographer Mason Weaver), Tom Hiddleston (as former British Army officer turned Gun For Hire James Conrad), and John C. Reilly (as Hank Marlow, a World War II soldier stranded on Skull Island years ago) definitely turn in decently strong performances; I wouldn’t call it Career Best work for any of them (Hiddleston especially feels like he’s on auto-pilot half the time, while Larson has to struggle mightily against how little the script actually gives her to work with when you stop and look at it) but they at least prove decently enjoyable to watch (Reilly especially does a solid job of making his character funny without quite pushing him over the edge into Total Cartoon Territory). I likewise feel like Samuel L. Jackson’s Preston Packard has the potential to be a genuinely-great character; his lingering resentment at the way the Vietnam War played out and the way that feeds into his determination to find and defeat Kong is, again, a clever and compelling use of the 70’s period setting, it gives us a good, believable motivation with a clear and strong Arc to it, and Jackson does a really solid job of playing his Anger as genuine and poignant rather than simply petulant or crazed. But there’s just too much chaff amongst the wheat, too much time and energy devoted to characters and ideas that don’t have any real pay-off. This feels especially true of John Goodman’s Bill Randa, the Monarch scientist who arranges the whole expedition; the Monarch stuff in general mostly feels out of place, but Randa in particular gets all of these little notes and beats that seem meant to go somewhere and then just kind of don’t. Which is kind of what happens with most of the characters in the movie, is the thing; we spend a lot of screen-time dwelling on certain aspects of their backstories or personalities, and then those things effectively stop mattering at all after a certain point, even Packard’s motivations. A Weak Human Element was one of the problems in “Godzilla” 2014 as well, though, and you’ll recall I quite liked that movie. There, though, the human stuff was honestly only ever important for how it fed into the monster stuff; it was the connective tissue meant to get us from sequence to sequence and not much more. Here, though, it forms the heart and soul of the story, and that means its deficiencies feel a lot more harmful to the whole.

Still, those deficiencies really aren’t that severe, and moreover, like I was saying before, there’s a lot about “Skull Island” to actively enjoy. The Monsters themselves do remain the central draw, after all, and for the most part the movie does a solid job with that aspect of things. It does not, perhaps, recreate “Godzilla” 2014’s attempt to make believable animals out of them (even as it does design most of them with even more obvious, overt Real World Animal elements), but there is a certain playful energy that informs them at a conceptual level that I appreciate. Buffalos with horns that look like giant logs with huge strands of moss and grass hanging off their edges, spiders whose legs are adapted to look like tree trunks, stick bugs so big that their camouflage makes them look like fallen trees…the designs feel physically plausible (especially thanks to some strong effects work that makes them feel well inserted into the real environments), but there’s a slightly-humorous tilt to a lot of them that I appreciate, especially since it never outright winks at the audience in a way that would undercut the stakes of the story. Kong too is very well done; rather than the heavily realistic approach taken by the Peter Jackson version from 2005, this Kong is instead very much ape-like but also very clearly his own creature (in particular he stands fully erect most of the time), with a strong sense of Personality to him as well; some of the best parts of the movie are those times where we simply peek in on Kong simply living his life, even when that life is one that is, by nature, violent and dangerous. Less successful, sadly, are his nemeses, the Skullcrawlers; very much like “Godzilla” 2014, Kong is here envisioned as a Natural Protection against a potentially-dangerous species that threatens humanity (or in this case the Iwi Tribe who live on Skull Island, but we’ll talk more about them later), and while they’re hardly bad designs (the way their snake-like lower bodies give them a lot of neat tricks to play against their enemies in battle are genuinely fun in the right sort of Scary Way), they’re also pretty bland and forgettable, even compared to the MUTOS. That said, they serve their purpose well enough, and their big Action Scene showdowns with Kong are genuinely solid. Indeed, the movie’s big climactic brawl between Kong and the biggest of the Skullcrawlers has a lot of good pulpy energy to it (particularly with how Kong winds up using various tools picked up from all around the battlefield to give himself an edge), likewise there’s a certain Wild Fun to the sequence where our hapless humans have to try and survive a trek through the Crawlers’ home-turf.

Where things get a bit tricky again is when the movie attempts to put its own spin on “Godzilla”’s conception of its monsters as part of their own kind of unique ancient eco-system. The sense of Grandeur that gave a lot of that aspect such weight there is mostly absent here, especially; there are instances where some of that feeling comes through (Kong’s interactions with some of the non-Crawler species, for example, do a good job giving us an endearing sense of how Kong fits into this world), but far more often it treats the monsters as Big Set-Piece Attractions. Which is fine as far as it goes, it just also means a lot of them aren’t as memorable or impactful as I might like. Meanwhile, the way the Iwis have built their home to accommodate, interact with, and protect themselves from the island’s bestiary feels like a well-designed concept that manages to suggest a lot of History without having to spell it out for us in a way that I appreciated (I would also be inclined to apply this to the very neat multi-layered stone-art used to portray Kong and the Crawlers except that the sequence where we see them is the most overt “let’s stop and do some world-building” exposition dump in the whole movie). But the Iwis in general are one of the more difficult elements of the movie to process, too; it seems really clear there was a deliberate effort here to avoid the most grossly racist stuff that has been present in prior attempts to portray the Natives of Skull Island, and as far as it goes I do think those efforts bear some fruit; we are, at the very least, very far away from the Scary Ooga-Booga tone of, say, “King Kong VS. Godzilla”, and that feels like it counts for something. I just also feel like there’s some dehumanizing touches to their portrayal (in particular they never speak; I don’t mean to imply that Not Speaking equals Inhuman, but the fact that we are not made privy to how exactly they do communicate means we’re very much kept at arm’s length from them in a way that seems at least somewhat meant to alienate us from them), especially given their role in the story as a whole is relatively minor.

At the end of the day, though, all the movie’s elements, good and bad, don’t really feel like they add up together coherently enough to make an impact. And I think if I had to try and guess why, even as I find it wholly enjoyable with a lot to genuinely recommend it by, I don’t find myself especially enamored by “Skull Island”. It has a lot of different ideas of how to approach its story-70’s pastiche, worldbuilding exercise, Monster Mash-but doesn’t seem to quite succeed at realizing any of them fully, indeed often allowing them to get in each other’s ways. It isn’t, again, a bad movie as a result of that; there really isn’t any stretch of it where I found myself bored or particularly unentertained. But I did paradoxically find myself frequently wanting more, even as by rights the movie delivers on basically what I was looking for from it.

#king kong #kong: skull island #godzilla vs. kong #movies #theroadtogvk #review #ericthemason #my writing

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phantom-le6 · 3 years

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Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 (2 of 6)

Carrying on our look into the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, here’s the second round of episode reviews from that season.

Episode 6: Phantasms

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Lt. Commander Data experiences a strange dream that begins with him walking a corridor within the Enterprise, then hearing a rotary dial phone sound, and seeing three workmen that he says are "dismantling a warp plasma conduit". When he tries to speak to them, he can only emit a high-pitched noise. The workmen turn and rip off Data's appendages, finally tearing off his head, before Data wakes from the dream. Though Data is worried about the odd nature of dreams Counsellor Troi suggests he continue to dream to explore the darker imagery he is experiencing.

Captain Picard is invited to an Admirals' dinner, an event that Picard has been trying to avoid for several years as he feels it would be rather boring. Unable to provide excuses, he orders the Enterprise towards Starbase 219 where the banquet is to be held, but they find the new warp drive will not engage. Data and Lt. Commander La Forge attempt to diagnose the problem, but after double checking the new configuration, the engines refuse to engage.

Later, Data finds himself in another dream, now set in Ten-Forward. In addition to the workmen, other members of the crew are present, in particular Troi as part of a large cake (a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting according to Lt. Worf). The workmen prompt Data to cut into the shoulder of the cake while Troi tries to convince Data to stop. Suddenly Data wakes, finding Worf, La Forge and Troi in his quarters, as he has been late for his shift. Data has never experienced this before, and tries to understand the meaning of his dreams with a holodeck-simulated Sigmund Freud. Later, while still working with La Forge to repair the engines, he begins to see imagery from his dreams while awake, including seeing crewmen with "small mouths" on their bodies, and an engineering tool appearing briefly as the cake knife. Later, Data attacks Troi on the turbolift, wounding her on her shoulder, where he claimed he saw one of those mouths. Data willingly puts himself under guard in his quarters, fearing what harm he might do to others.

Dr Crusher takes care of Troi's wound but finds the spot still discoloured after her treatment. Investigating further, she discovers the presence of interphasic creatures that are feeding on the Enterprise crew, which can only be seen under interphasic scans. The crew realizes the creatures are where Data has been seeing the small mouths, and believes Data may know how to deal with the creatures through the dreams he has been experiencing. They hook up Data to the holodeck and watch as Data's dreams play out, helping Data to understand them. Data realizes that his mind has been telling him that he can adjust his circuitry to generate an interphasic pulse that will kill the creatures. After using the pulse, La Forge postulates that the new warp drive was infected with the creatures, and after confirming that they've been exterminated, is able to successfully engage warp, though the repairs take long enough that Picard is able to avoid the Admirals' dinner yet again.

Troi later visits Data, who has since apologized for his attack. Troi shows no resentment, but jokingly remarks "Turnabout is fair play". She reveals has made a cake shaped like Data for them to share. Data wonders what Freud would say about the about the symbolism of devouring one’s self, but Troi paraphrases Freud and tells Data that sometimes “a cake is just a cake”.

Review:

This is our first, and I think only, episode that follows up on Data’s dreaming capability that he had activated last season. Ideally, it could have been used to somehow explore or expand on Data’s character, or as some kind of means of issue exploration, but again TNG falls short of what Trek should be. Rather than using the dream program to create an episode of true Trek, it becomes a convenient deus ex machina for a ‘crisis of the week’, complete with the accompanying technobabble. TNG, and indeed Trek itself, is always at its worst when the sci-fi trappings take centre stage instead of acting as window-dressing for something more substantive, and this episode is a case-in-point. Granted, some scenes have become effective meme fodder in the social media age, but that’s not what Trek is. I only give this episode 5 out of 10.

Episode 7: Dark Page

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise welcomes aboard members of a telepathic race known as the Cairn, who have only begun to learn spoken communication in order to interact with non-telepathic races. They have been learning from Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, who tries to set her daughter Counsellor Deanna Troi up with Maques, who is part of the Carin delegation. Maques has a daughter named Hedril, who has become Lwaxana’s star pupil as her younger age means she can pick up spoken language more easily than the adult Cairn. Lwaxana begins to display signs of emotional distress through random outbursts, which she initially brushes off as fatigue. However, after an incident with Commander Riker in Ten-Forward, an examination by Dr Crusher reveals Lwaxana’s levels of a neurotransmitter used in telepathy are depleted. To recover, she needs to refrain from using her telepathic abilities, and Deanna offers to help her mother continue educating the Cairn in spoke language without resorting to telepathy.

However, during a trip to the Enterprise arboretum, Lwaxana uses telepathy when Deanna struggles with how best to explain the concept of ‘heaven’ verbally. Moments later, Hedril accidentally falls in the arboretum pond; she is unhurt, but for some reason at that moment Lwaxana falls into a coma. Dr Crusher is unable to find any physiological reasons for this, and an unintended side-effect of Cairn telepathy is subsequently ruled out as well. Maques reveals Lwaxana’s mind is collapsing in on itself, but cannot interpret the images in her mind to understand why. To find out, Deanna enters her mother’s mind with Maques’ help and the permission of Captain Picard.

In Lwaxana’s mind, Deanna encounters a variety of barriers and is ultimately forced out by her mother when she encounters an image of Hedril. Suspecting Lawxana’s retreat from reality is related to a repressed traumatic event, Deanna begins searching for clues among her mother’s journal entries. With Picard’s aid, she learns there is a seven-year gap from just after her parents married to a month after her birth. The gap is highly unusual because Lwaxana was very diligent about her journal, and the entries have been deleted by her rather than not being made in the first place.

Deanna re-enters her mother’s mind, and finally tracks down her mother in a representation of the Enterprise arboretum, which Lwaxana has equated with Lake El’nar on Betazed where the Trois used to live. At Deanna’s urging, Lwaxana relives her traumatic memory to stop it killing her. It turns out Deanna had an older sister named Kestra; one day while the family was enjoying a picnic by the lake, Kestra’s dog ran off. She went after it, the Trois too occupied with the infant Deanna to notice. As a result, Kestra got into trouble in the lake and drowned. Lwaxana blamed herself for allowing the tragedy to occur, but Deanna reassures her it was an accident and not her fault. After finally saying goodbye to a mental construct of Kestra, Lwaxana wakes up. Later, Deanna reveals Mr Homm had retained a photo of Kestra in case Lwaxana ever wanted to stop repressing what happened, and asks her mother to tell her more about her sister.

Review:

While some people might feel this episode’s darker feel coming right on the heels of ‘Phantasms’ is somehow not right, I think it’s good because you end up with a good example of how to use darker imagery and create a good psychological episode after we got a bad one. Moreover, it’s got a lot more to make it stand out than ‘Phantasms’, beginning with a guest appearance by a very young Kirsten Dunst; this episode was done a year before Dunst shot to wider fame in ‘Interview with a Vampire’, and almost a decade before she began appearing as Mary-Jane Watson in Sony’s first attempt at producing a Spider-Man film franchise.

Second, this is the last time Lwaxana Troi appears in The Next Generation, with all her subsequent appearances being on Deep Space Nine, and it’s also about the only Lwaxana Troi episode I would deem as good. That’s because her normally over-the-top, nails-on-chalkboard personality is subdued very early on and we finally get a more serious, well-rounded take on the character. The other advantage of this is we also now get to explore a bit more of the Troi family tree, as we end up meeting Deanna’s dad (albeit only as a construct in Lwaxana’s mind), and we also find out Deanna has a deceased older sister she never knew about.

The idea of Kestra and her tragic loss is, for me, what makes this a great episode to watch, because normally Trek in general, and TNG in particular, don’t really delve into the idea of psychological trauma. I suspect a large part of this is down to the rules Roddenberry tried to lay down about how much more ‘mentally stable’ humanity is meant to be in the 24th century. However, as I’ve noted on my earlier reviews for this show, a lot of his ideas in that vein were unrealistic and not credible. Seeing the show capitalise on Lwaxana’s alien nature to get a story like this was a good move, and I actually found myself feeling sympathy for her for the first, and perhaps only, time of watching her. I think if TNG had toned down her flamboyance right from the character’s inception, it wouldn’t have taken something like this coming along to have that effect. For me, the episode gets 9 out of 10 (it’s still a Lwaxana episode, so by its very nature top marks are impossible).

Episode 8: Attached

Plot (as given by me):

The Enterprise arrives in orbit of the planet Kesprytt, whose population is divided into two peoples, the Kes and the Prytt. The former society is seeking entrance into the Federation while the Prytt are isolationists who are zealous to the point of xenophobia. This concerns Captain Picard, as at that time all other worlds admitted to the Federation have done so united, and the idea of only admitting part of a world trouble him. He and Dr Crusher beam down to meet with representatives of the Kes government, but a tractor beam generated by the Prytt diverts the transporter beam. As a result, the captain and the doctor appear in Prytt territory and are taken prisoner.

Believing the Federation is forming a military alliance with the Kes, the Prytt implant devices in Picard and Crusher so they can determine the truth from their thoughts. However, a guard manages to sneak Dr Crusher’s confiscated tricorder to them with a food delivery; it has been programmed with an escape map and access code. The two officers begin to escape, while back on the Enterprise, Commander Riker and the rest of the crew begin working with the Kes to try and recover the captain. Their efforts to contact the Prytt fail, but Ambassador Mauric reveals that by using Prytt who are sympathetic to the Kes, they have engineered an escape.

On the planet, Picard and Crusher soon discover the implants are now making them aware of each other’s thoughts. They cannot find any means of filtering them out, and any attempt to part company results in both of them feeling waves of nausea, forcing them to stick together. When the pair have to divert from the map they’ve been provided to avoid a Prytt patrol, Mauric learns of this and accuses the Federation of separately forming an alliance with the Prytt. That night, Picard and Crusher make camp, and Crusher learns that Picard was once in love with her. However, Picard felt guilty having such feelings for his best friend’s wife, and further guilt over Jack Crusher’s death drove the pair apart. However, Picard states that he now just sees her as a friend.

Determined to rescue his missing comrades, Riker beams the Prytt Security Minister Lorin aboard the Enterprise against her will. He then explains to Lorin that the Kes will most likely not be granted Federation membership, as the paranoia of the Kes and the xenophobia of the Prytt suggest the planet is unlikely to be seen as a viable potential member. In addition, he notes that failure to return the missing officers will only attract more ships to the planet, something the isolationist Prytt would rather avoid. As Picard and Crusher reach the border between the territories of the two factions, they are located and their co-ordinates provided to the Enterprise.

Back on board and with the implants subsequently removed, Picard and Crusher discuss their feelings for each other. Picard thinks they shouldn’t be afraid to explore how they feel for each other, but Crusher thinks the opposite, thereby turning down Picard implicitly. Picard accepts this, and is then left alone to process what has happened.

Review:

Ever since the show started, there’s always been some acknowledgement of not just a shared history between Picard and Beverly, but also some level of mutual attraction. This episode is probably the first to address it in such a direct manner, though, and it makes for some interesting character exploration. All of a sudden, two people who have feelings for each other but keep them private are forced to share those feelings via a tech-induced form of telepathy. It’s a great concept and we get a good episode out of it.

Unfortunately, the episode spends a bit too much time jumping back to the whole ‘Kes vs Prytt’ situation. I know that’s somewhat necessary because it’s that plot which facilitates Picard and Beverly having this forced mental link, but at the same time it doesn’t really add anything to the episode. Perhaps after ‘Phantasms’ and ‘Dark Page’, both of which were also quite psychological in nature and devoid of any real break from the main plot, the show was trying to mix things up. However, ‘Dark Page’ was good for having a plot of substance to follow all the way through, where ‘Phantasms’ was largely or entirely devoid of substance. Adding a b-plot would have probably harmed the later episode, and would only have helped the earlier ‘Phantasms’ if it had explored a character or an issue. Likewise, having everyone else do something doesn’t add anything to ‘Attached’; it’s just filler, some of which isn’t all that necessary.

In addition, this episode had a lot of potential for some slightly longer-term continuity. For pretty much the entire show no main character ever seems to form any kind of long-term romance, and since the O’Briens left for Deep Space Nine there haven’t been any recurring guest characters of a married or otherwise romantically committed status. Picard and Beverly could have made for a good multi-episode romance, but instead the show fell back on its episodic nature. It’s something of an annoying move, and a strange one considering some of what we’ll see coming as this season progresses. However, all in all the episode isn’t bad; it just fails to realise the full potential of its own story. End score, 7 out of 10.

Episode 9: Force of Nature

Review (as given by me):

While Lt. Commander Data begins trying to train his cat Spot on the suggestion of Lt. Commander La Forge, and La Forge engages in friendly rivalry with an old academy friend who is the chief engineer of another vessel in the fleet, the Enterprise travels to the Hekaras Corridor. The Hekaras sector is full of intense fields of tetryon particles, which can make warp-travel hazardous. The Hekaras Corridor is the only part of the sector through which warp-capable vessels can travel. The Enterprise’s mission is trying to locate a medical transport ship the Fleming, which has apparently disappeared somewhere in the corridor.

After entering the corridor, the Enterprise locates a disabled Ferengi vessel. The DaiMon in command claims their vessel wis disabled by something they believed was a Federation signal buoy, but which emitted a verteron pulse that disabled their systems. The Ferengi claim to have seen another Federation ship elsewhere in the corridor, and Picard trades the assistance of his crew’s engineering staff for the co-ordinates. At the co-ordinates, the Enterprise finds a debris field and begins investigating it to determine if it is the remains of the Fleming. As they do so, they are disabled by a verteron pulse and then boarded by two Hekaran scientists, brother and sister Rabal and Serova, who claim that the Enterprise is killing them.

The scientists explain that warp-travel in the Hekaras sector is damaging their planet of Hekaras II. Their research theorises that over time, sustained warp travel in the region will continually weaken the barrier between normal space and sub-space until sub-space rifts are created, and they claim their planet is already beginning to experience climate change from the gravitational shifts the breakdown is causing. Due to not having had their research taken seriously by the Federation, the siblings have resorted to mining the corridor in an effort to draw Starfleet in to investigate. They agree to assist in repairing the Enterprise in exchange for Picard and his crew looking at their latest research.

La Forge and Sarova clash verbally with each other during the repairs; La Forge is angry at having extra repair work to do and is appalled at the lives the siblings might have risked if they’ve disabled the Fleming in the same way. Sarova, however, notes that the lives being put at risk on her world are also important, and the disabling of a ship’s engines is only an inconvenience. Rabal tries to act as peacemaker, explaining to La Forge he was originally a sceptic, but was eventually convinced his sister was right once he took the time to understand her theories.

Data reviews the siblings’ research and notes that it cannot be proven as it would take a large amount of warp energy to do so. However, given that the theorised damage the siblings fear may be cumulative, he recommends they ask a dedicated science vessel comes out to investigate further. Picard agrees, and asks the pair to submit a proposal to the Federation science council. Rabal agrees, but Sarova refuses, seeing this as just another delay. In desperation, she returns to her ship and triggers a warp core breach just as the Enterprise locates the Fleming. The result is a sub-space rupture just as she had theorised, and the Enterprise is then faced with the challenge of rescuing the crew of the Fleming even though the rupture prevents the use of warp drive within it.

La Forge laments that Sarova felt she had to go to such extremes before they would listen, but Data objectively highlights that she resorted to drastic measures no reputable scientist would employ. After extensive study of the rupture, Data proposes the Enterprise use a ‘warp burst’ to give them their initial momentum and then ‘coast’ through the rupture to beam out the Fleming’s crew. Picard agrees, but when the Fleming tries to engage its warp engines inside the rift, the increased distortion within the rift deprives the Enterprise of the momentum it needs to escape. La Forge then suggests matching the phase frequency of their shields with the distortion waves from the rupture, thereby ‘surfing’ out of the affected region, and on the second time of trying the ship manages to escape.

Later, Rabal shows the Enterprise senior staff new projections of the sector based on new research in the wake of Sarova creating the rift. In forty years, he projects the region will be mostly sub-space ruptures if warp travel isn’t prohibited, and the climate damage to his planet is already accelerating. Picard then receives a message from the Federation council;

"Until we can find a way to counteract the warp field effect, the Council feels our best course is to slow the damage as much as possible. Therefore, areas of space found susceptible to warp fields will be restricted to essential travel only, and effective immediately, all Federation vessels will be limited to a speed of – Warp 5? – except in cases of extreme emergency."

It is noted that while the Federation will share this with all other warp-capable powers, not all of them will necessarily follow the same restrictions. Picard also offers the Hekarans a weather control matrix to counteract the climate damage caused by the rift, then later notes privately to La Forge that he is worried to think his time spent exploring the space he loves might also be responsible for destroying it. La Forge claims it won’t come to that, and notes that they still have time to find a way of reversing the damage.

Review:

After three episodes with psychologically-heavy plots, we now come to something a bit more issue-centric as we get another Trek effort at addressing environmental issues. Apparently from what Memory Alpha says, the writing staff found this a bit tricky in some ways because anything about o-zone depletion, climate change, etc. was a very tricky thing to put across for them. However, I think this episode does a pretty good job of creating a metaphorical exploration of the concept. It’s also very well balanced, as you’ve got the devout, almost fanatical environmentalist in Sarova, the out-and-out sceptic in La Forge and Rabal somewhere in the middle, while Data also has input as the voice of pure reason in the equation.

It’s also interesting to note the scene in Ten-Forward between La Forge and Rabal where they discuss the ‘ease’ of giving up on something that is causing damage to the world around them. Rabal’s comment that ‘it won’t be easy at all’ is a very poignant and apt one, because now as then giving up anything convenient for the sake of not messing up the world isn’t easy, nor is it meant to be. Look at how we’ve reacted during the pandemic we’re still in; a lot of things that are ultimately conveniences have been put on hold, and some may never return, or not in the way we knew them. Giving up on that is certainly not easy, but for our safety and survival, it is essentially necessary.

That said, giving up things which are convenient to avoid damaging our world doesn’t always have to be difficult. Environmentally safe technologies like hybrid and electric cars have recently begun to be more widely used, for example, so before long we may still be able to drive long distances without having to worry about the world’s oil supply. If this kind of shift towards eco-friendly technology was better supported and enjoyed a greater volume of research, we could probably shift to a lot of other eco-friendly practices with little or even no inconvenience at all. As La Forge notes at the episode’s end, we still have time to correct the damage; some of the environmental recovery seen during the first lockdowns of the pandemic shows nature can recover to an extent when we’re not in a position to keep messing it up. What we need to do is capitalise on that time as best we can, especially the major corporations who contribute far more to the problem and far less to the solution than the general public in many if not every case.

One final note; this episode marks the first occasion where Data’s cat Spot is referred to as ‘she’ rather than ‘he’; this would be later revisited in the episode ‘Genesis’ but never explained, as Spot had always been a ‘he’ until this point. As such, this episode is slightly marred by this small but nonetheless noticeable continuity error. End score is 9 out of 10.

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kingofthewilderwest · 7 years

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Hi! I've read many of your posts and they're awesome! Think of this one! If the Dragon Riders were in a Modern AU what would be their hobbies? What kind of animals will their dragons be?

Thank you so much!

There have been lots of different interesting modern AUs whereby the dragons have become cats, dogs, or even horses. There’s some good appeal to each idea. Personally, I wouldn’t mind making the dragons based upon the creatures they were designed from; so, Toothless would be a cat, Stormfly a bird, Meatlug a dog, and... I guess Barf and Belch would be a snake and Hookfang a lizard or something.

Now for hobbies...

Hiccup

Hiccup is the inventive powerhouse of Berk. In a modern AU, Hiccup would likely be just as revolutionary - and the area where our greatest technological development is currently... is computers. I can easily imagine Hiccup as someone who constantly fiddles around with both computer hardware and software. He’s built his own machines. He knows how to program in multiple languages. I like to imagine modern!Hiccup as a techie who spends a lot of his hobby free time playing around with computers.

If we want, we could also suggest that Hiccup has other hobbies in other areas of invention and creating. Maybe Hiccup is decent at fixing cars, too, or at the very least knows the basics. Maybe he’s taken a woodworking class in high school. His high school physics projects were possibly a little over the top. If Hiccup enters any club at his high school, it’s the robotics club.

Another significant area of hobbies for Hiccup is going to be the arts. Hiccup is canonically a talented artist in the DreamWorks franchise. There’s no reason why Hiccup wouldn’t enjoy sketching and drawing in the modern world, too. His preferred art style is probably realism, with an emphasis of making the image more photorealistic as versus developing a recognizable artistic style. He’s probably drawn a lot on paper, but given as he loves the latest technology, does a bit with digital art, too.

I don’t think Hiccup would have gotten into sports. Stoick might have tried to put his kid into a few sports when he was younger, and maybe Hiccup tried some other sports on his own volition in the desperate attempt to appear “cool.” No success. Hiccup would not be an athlete growing up. The one potential area of exception is equestrian sports. Even if I do like Toothless as a cat best, there’s still something fun to be said about Hiccup having an ability to ride an animal extremely well in a modern AU. Hiccup could be quite talented riding horses, capable of competing in every event from jumping to dressage.

Astrid

Astrid, unlike Hiccup, is an accomplished athlete. She tried soccer/football at a young age and was pretty good at it. She stuck with it for a number of years until she switched to rugby. On top of that, Astrid has trained as a gymnast since she was very young, and also tried her hand at several martial arts. Even for sports she has not officially competed in, she still manages to perform impressively. She steals the day for informal volley ball matches she has with friends, and everyone wants her on their team for ultimate frisbee. Heck, she’s probably wrestled some of her friends to the ground on random occasions, too.

Astrid spends so much time on her academics and competitive sports that she doesn’t have too many hobbies outside of these. She’s never had the time and attention to develop her cooking skills, though on the rare occasion she tries to make eggnog, everyone in the family runs frantically away.

Snotlout

Snotlout in the DreamWorks franchise seems to be accomplished with the needle. Maybe this translates to a modern world, too; Snotlout actually knows how to cross-stitch and work a sewing machine and knit scarves (which he always claims are made by his aunt, not him).

Snotlout also mentions working out in the first HTTYD movie. I bet Snotlout loves going to the gym to lift weights and tone his hot body several times a week. He’s probably not that talented at actual team sports (despite trying to sign up and show off on a few of the most popular sports), but he can make up for his embarrassing year of football by lifting impressively at the gym. Well, he thinks it’s impressive, anyway. And it’s not bad. Though... Astrid can outlift him.

Fishlegs

DreamWorks’ biggest nerd will be a nerd in the modern world, too. To be honest, Fishlegs’ hobbies are really easy for me to imagine!

Fishlegs plays Magic: The Gathering and has even been to a few local tournaments. He knows all the ins-and-outs of the game, the most expensive cards, the best tactics, you name it. You get him started talking about MTG... and he won’t shut up for another few hours. He’s also a huge video game lover and can be seen on the PC or console several hours a day. Especially, he’s obsessed with League of Legends.

Fishlegs enjoys watching nerd culture movies and knows a decent amount of comic book material. He’ll watch superhero movies and get into debates about which hero would beat who in what sort of competition. You’ll find him at the occasional local comic or sci-fi convention. Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Teen Titans... he’s enjoyed them all.

In high school, Fishlegs enjoyed a few academic competitions, especially in the sciences. I am sure he’s participated in both Science Bowl and Science Olympiad. He’s probably gotten a few medals from Science Olympiad at both the regionals and state level... maybe even making it to the national competition.

It’s also fairly easy for me to see Fishlegs as a band geek and/or orch dork.

Tuffnut

Tuffnut also seems to know a bit about needlework given comments in RTTE. He also seems to like interior decorating and other such things. Perhaps in the modern world Tuffnut has a good eye for fabric and tailorsmanship, too. I’m going to suggest this not so much because it’s in his character but because it’s amusing to consider: but Tuffnut making cosplay. That could be entertaining. Or maybe it’s just unusually elaborate Halloween costumes? It’s a holiday he and Ruffnut get a little too engrossed in.

I don’t imagine Tuffnut being involved in too many activities, especially not formal clubs or extracurriculars. However, there’s one exception: theatre. Tuffnut adores theatre, and I’m sure he’s auditioned for a few roles at his local high school. Even when it’s just English class and the teacher assigns the students into groups to act out a Shakespeare scene, Tuffnut gets... overdramatic and involved.

It’s not exactly a “hobby” but I’m sure that Ruffnut and Tuffnut spent many hours together enacting pranks at school.

If Tuffnut got involved in a sport, it’d be figure skating. He’d go for the figure skating; Ruffnut would go for the hockey.

Ruffnut

Like Astrid, I could also imagine Ruffnut as a rugby player. Ruffnut is fierce, downright fierce, at the sport. There’s no fear. There are times that Ruffnut gets irritated and jealous that her teammate Astrid receives a lot of the credit - Astrid is a bit more popular than Ruffnut - but Ruff’s coach is fully aware of how bold and dedicated a player the Thorston twin is.

When Ruffnut enters college, she finds herself participating in some extreme experiences. She’s gone bungee jumping and skydiving multiple times and has greatly enjoyed both experiences.

#long post #httyd #How to Train Your Dragon #rtte #Race to the Edge #Ruffnut and Tuffnut #Ruffnut #Tuffnut #Hiccup #Astrid #Snotlout #Fishlegs #analysis #my analysis #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #anonymous

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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The 11 most important fandoms of 2017

In a year where reality often felt more like fiction, our fan communities became more vital than ever.

We watched our heroes—both fictional and real—rise and fall from grace, some of them transformed into symbols as fans took the streets to peacefully protest real-world events. Many of us finally began to see ourselves reflected in our fandoms, whether it was Wonder Woman‘s Diana, Star Trek: Discovery‘s Michael Burnham, or Star Wars‘ expanding roster of diverse characters. Some of the year’s top fandoms were unexpectedly delightful, including the dating simulation game Dream Daddy and the rise of the K-pop group BTS. Others revealed the darker side of fan culture, from self-righteous toxicity (Rick and Morty) to racist and sexist backlash (The Last Jedi).

But even in the most frustrating moments, we had our favorites—looking at you, Daenerys Targaryen—to burn it all to the ground.

GIF via Game of Thrones/HBO

Here are our top fandoms (listed in no particular order) of 2017.

1) Rick and Morty

Adult Swim/YouTube

When Rick and Morty turned April Fools’ Day on its head and casually dropped long-awaited season 3 premiere on Adult Swim’s website, nobody could’ve imagined, well, everything that followed. To examine the kind of effect Rick and Morty had on fandom this year, look no further than McDonald’s Szechuan sauce.

Apart from Pickle Rick, Szechuan sauce, an obscure McNugget dip introduced in 1998 to promote Disney’s Mulan, was the biggest thing that people remember from Rick and Morty’s excellent third season. The throw-away joke from the season 3 premiere became almost a rallying cry for some fans. They begged McDonald’s to bring it back, made their own sauce, and one person spent tens of thousands of dollars on an original tub of it. And, curiously, McDonald’s delivered. Sort of.

The fast-food chain first brought back the sauce for the Rick and Morty crew, but then, perhaps to garner some goodwill and capitalize on fan enthusiasm, it made limited packets available for one day. The promotion went off the rails as the sauce quickly ran out. This unleashed some of the uglier and more toxic parts of the show’s fandom—which had already surfaced to harass and dox some of the show’s female writers. McDonald’s eventually promised to re-release the sauce to appease upset fans. It took time (and some interdimensional travel) to make Rick’s series arc a reality, but if anyone could trick a corporate giant into releasing an obscure sauce by the sheer will of its own fandom, it’s Rick and Morty.—Michelle Jaworski

2) Game of Thrones

HBO

In a realm where people have hundreds of shows available at the touch of a fingertip, Game of Thrones is one of the last great must-see TV events. Fans rapturously tuned in every week for season 7’s seven-episode run. Game of Thrones is officially off-book, so both fans of the show and the A Song of Ice and Fire novels were on the same level as they watched the show provide answers to mysteries more than 20 years in the making.

But for fans the highs of season 7 are now followed by a long two-year wait for the show and who knows how much longer for George R.R. Martin‘sThe Winds of Winter. With active online communities and subreddits and Game of Thrones conventions like Ice and Fire Con and new convention Con of Thrones, fans know they’re not alone in the Long Night.

Off-screen, the show was plagued by leaks and spoilers. An outline of the show’s seventh season leaked last year that revealed nearly every major plot point, including one that gained more attention as the show confirmed its accuracy. Fans even identified the actor playing Rhaegar Targaryen from leaks long before he made his debut. Just weeks into season 7, hackers revealed that they breached HBO’s security system, leaked Game of Thrones outlines, and demanded ransom. Unrelatedly, two episodes of season 7 leaked online days before they were set to air. But the behind-the-scenes debacles didn’t affect Game of Thrones, which had record ratings that will likely rise even higher when HBO airs season 8, including one of the most anticipated series finales this decade. All HBO has to do is stick the landing.—Michelle Jaworski

3) Star Trek

Star Trek: Discovery/CBS

Last year’s 50th anniversary was disappointingly haphazard, but Star Trek: Discovery launched with a bang in 2017. Like every other Trek series to date, it inspired furious debate among fans. Some old-school trekkies dislike Discovery’s longform storytelling (or, depressingly, its diverse casting choices), but it also brought a fresh new audience to the franchise. Now halfway through season 1, we’re fully in love with Michael Burnham and her crewmates. Also, the show has inspired one of our favorite fan-theories of 2017: the surprisingly plausible idea that one of the lead actors doesn’t exist in real life.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

4) Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman/Warner Bros.

How many of us burst into tears during Wonder Woman? We don’t have exact stats, but here’s a rough estimate: A hell of a lot. Wonder Woman was cathartic for a plethora of connected reasons, boiled down to the overwhelming satisfaction of a female-led superhero movie that was really, genuinely, brilliant.

Plenty of superhero movies do well at the box office but have zero cultural impact. (Avengers: Age of Ultron, we’re looking at you.) Wonder Woman wasn’t one of them. People rewatched it again and again, and its box office longevity suggests it benefited a lot from word-of-mouth. The number one movie on Tumblr, Wonder Woman gifs were ubiquitous across social media, and director Patty Jenkins was shortlisted for Time magazine’s Person of the Year. In a year dominated by depressing news stories about sexual harassment and misogyny, Wonder Woman was the inspirational, feminist hero we all needed to see.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

5) Star Wars

Star Wars/Lucasfilm

Star Wars has been such collective part of our fandom DNA that it’s hard for some fans (particularly younger fans) to imagine a time before Star Wars. Little did we know just how much everything would change after May 25,1977—or that we would still be deeply immersed in the galaxy far, far away 40 years later.

The year kicked off on a somber note following the death of Carrie Fisher. The Star Wars community spent much of the year honoring the memory of their favorite princess and general. Leia Organa (and Fisher herself) became the source of a new hope whose influence changed lives and helped shape her final Star Wars film. And Lucasfilm had two very public departures this year: Solo directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord just weeks before the end of principal photography and Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow. (They’ve been replaced by Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams, respectively.)

For fans, 2017 meant even more Star Wars to dissect and explore. The Last Jedi challenged everything we knew about Star Wars, and along with answering some massive questions, it gave us a story with several women and people of color at the forefront. (Plus, thanks to The Last Jedi, we now have porgs!) The franchise may be over the hill but it’s showing no signs of stopping. Now that Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is creating a new Star Wars trilogy we won’t be leaving that galaxy far, far away for the foreseeable future.—Michelle Jaworski

6) Voltron

Voltron: Legendary Defenders/Netflix

If you don’t use Tumblr, you may be surprised to see this fandom on our list. Voltron: Legendary Defender is a kid-friendly reboot of the classic anime about space-traveling robot lions and their pilots. It’s a fun and visually appealing show, but it’s definitely not sophisticated in the same way as, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender. However, the fandom is another matter entirely.

Keith and Lance (two of the main pilots) topped Tumblr’s list of popular ships in 2017. That means more people were posting about them than pairings from mainstream fandoms like Riverdale, Supergirl, and Star Wars. That’s partly for the usual reasons—people love making Keith/Lance art and fanfic, and speculating about their role in the show—and partly because Voltron fandom is rife with controversy.

This year, a fan tried to blackmail Voltron’s creators to make Keith/Lance into a canon romance, threatening to leak storyboards from the show. (It didn’t work.) Another group of fans petitioned the showrunners to reveal the precise ages of the main characters—a seemingly innocuous question that ties into a toxic debate between Voltron shippers. The main characters all appear to be in their late teens or early 20s, but some fans accuse certain pairings of having an inappropriate age gap. Keith and Lance are the same age, so if Netflix confirmed that other characters were older or younger, it could give Keith/Lance fans the moral upper hand during arguments.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

7) Yuri on Ice

Crunchyroll

Airing from October to December 2016, figure skating anime Yuri on Ice arrived just in time to make last year’s list. Since then, it’s inspired a constant outpouring of fan creativity and enthusiasm, along with speculation about season 2. (Apparently a film sequel is on the way, but we’re not exactly sure when.) Victor and Yuri’s charming love story was perfectly timed to alleviate the darkest period of the 2016 election, providing a soothing balm during troubled times. It’s funny, romantic, and complex enough to warrant months of intensive analysis.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

8) Overwatch

Blizzard

Two years after this colorful, team-based shooter came into our lives, Overwatch is still one of the biggest fandoms on the internet. It’s unusual for a video game to establish such a prolific creative culture (though there are exceptions), but Overwatch’s vibrant cast of characters keeps giving fans plenty of material to work with.—Sarah Weber

9) Dream Daddy

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulation/Steam

This dating sim appeared out of seemingly nowhere to win hearts and minds this summer. It’s the same basic set-up as any other dating sim: a choose-your-own-adventure romance story with a variety of twist endings. Dream Daddy’s selling point was its unusual range of love interests. In the game, you play a dad who dates other dads in his new neighborhood—a unique concept that quickly led to a flood of fanart and memes. Praised for its writing (including some unexpectedly weird endings) and character design, Dream Daddy was the surprise gaming hit of 2017—especially on Tumblr, where it toppled the Overwatch juggernaut to become the site’s favorite game.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

10) BTS

Republic of Korea/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)

When the Korean pop group BTS from an indie studio called Big Hitdebuted in 2013 , they seemed more or less like every other K-pop boy band trying to claw their way to the top. As they evolved over the next four years, they found their way into a distinctive sound unlike anyone else’s. Known for consistently addressing societal issues in the music they write, the seven-member group’s popularity has soared to international status this year. After winning the Billboard Top Social Artist award and appearing on American TV shows like Ellen and The James Corden Show, it’s clear the band has 11 million followers on Twitter for a reason: their sincerity and determination. From their passionate fandom they call ARMY to their creative evolution, it’s no wonder we thought they would be the future of K-pop.—Colette Bennett

11) Marvel controversies

Secret Empire #1/Marvel

Oof, it’s been a year. Marvel always appears on our year-end lists in some capacity, but this time it’s not in a very positive light. While Logan, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok were all big hits, Marvel Comics suffered a year of controversy and criticism from fans—often for good reason.

First there was the Hydra Captain America storyline, carrying on from 2016. It saw Steve Rogers get rewritten as a Hydra sleeper agent, starring in a rather poorly executed political allegory about fascism in America. It earned continual backlash throughout its highly publicized run as Marvel’s biggest event comic of 2017. Then there were several behind-the-scenes mishaps at the publisher itself, including an executive blaming low sales on women and “diversity,” and the broader problem of discrimination and harassment in the comics industry. In November, we learned that Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief created a fake Japanese persona so he could publish Japan-inspired comics in the 2000s. We assumed this would be the last Marvel scandal of the year, but in the back half of December, it canceled several comics starring women and queer characters, and (unrelatedly) precipitated a very public falling-out with Thanos creator Jim Starlin. Phew.—Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Read more: https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/top-fandoms-2017/

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reyeshatmaker8-blog · 6 years

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Read Propulsion By Victoria Ashley Free.

The story factory has actually rotated for several years that Apple is actually cultivating an automobile, or even at the very least advanced technician for lorries, and today we possess challenging evidence the technology giant is actually hitting the trail with its own own ride. Regardless of all of that, I trek out in to the gloomy mid-day as well as wait for my ever-so-loving brother through his car. Everything altered recently, though, at the launch from the revised DS5, which viewed an attractive old DS model joining this on stage, as well as a devotion that from now on, DS will certainly be added up as an entirely distinct auto manufacturer in production studies. As opposed to taking that he will definitely never ever suffice in his eyes, Parker non-stop pursues his papa's program at the same time losing a lifestyle that could actually make him delighted. That records generally features verification of automotive insurance coverage and providing the finance company as the reduction payee. Will also be actually a good way in order to get loan and also transmit the gaming part coming from Vegas to Fallout 4. I purchased this activity because this appeared fantastic, yet you can not also drive the cars this is actually thus negative. The Californian agency, which began its own operations in 2015, is actually currently creating a billion-dollar factory" as well as poaching the most effective thoughts in the automobile globe", baseding upon the report. Hyundai additionally gives attractive finance and fixed-price servicing bargains, as well as insurance as well as tax prices are reduced. This mid-size auto includes Android Auto as well as Apple CarPlay within its own infomercial console aside from its very own proprietary Blue Web link company and navigation set. 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None encapsulate this more than the Toyota Concept-i, a driverless auto that, as TechRadar Senior Publisher Joe Osborne put that, feels like you are actually diving Ten Years in advance when you jump inside. The 1st alternative when you are searching for rental cars and truck rebate codes or promos is actually frequent leaflet courses or even lodgings loyalty courses. Collecting as well as seeking sources such as rocks, sticks as well as pet skins are made use of in the building of huts within the tribe, as well as can easily likewise be used to construct items and also equipment when out negotiating the wild while sponsoring new group participants, creating your numbers up and also avoiding the attack of adversary management. Car reflections on both gaming consoles also made use of the medium ecological chart premium from the Personal Computer model. So that must take us by means of to have actually received much more events that will definitely be occurring also, then as I mentioned, our experts will definitely be removaling the dialogue over to Task CARS AND TRUCKS 2, therefore the franchise overall is undoubtedly going to be this recurring natural thing, increasing each day. Maybe you are safeguarded along with your bank card as well as your vehicle insurance policy, but if you get into a mishap and also have primary insurance coverage elsewhere, you could leave your insurance firm out of the loop entirely, preventing any type of possible price increases. Switching out primary devices is expensive, as is acquiring a totally new auto if your own malfunction beyond practical repair earlier than it will possess if you had cared for it. As an example, baseding upon the study, a 20-year-old motorist spends 41 per-cent over a 20-year-old chauffeur for auto insurance coverage. In an evaluation from cars and truck accidents involving self-driving cars and trucks from 2012 to 2015, released in October by College of Michigan's Transport Study Institute, autonomous vehicles accomplished a much higher collision price every million kilometers took a trip compared to standard cars - but robotic cars were actually certainly not to blame in some of the accidents. The Gtech eBike is accessible in Sport as well as Area setups and can be gotten directly using the Gtech internet site There's even a 2 Week house trial where you can easily use the bike and also return that if it is actually except you, provided that it's still in good nick. In a statement on Tuesday, Strickland stated the goal from the team would be to have one national self-driving auto policy, as opposed to manage policies condition by state. This's insufficient in order to get a car insurance policy you're most comfortable to take care of. And also despite Mumbai political leaders' taste for developing new flyovers, the high density of road life and inadequate condition from the roads are surely a disincentive to possessing an expensive standing sign" cars and truck. I put that star on the performance, then enter my AI automobile as well as say, when it meets or even overlaps along with actor -20, modification self attribute: rationIncrease to self.rotaionIncrease-20. I adhered that in an empty spot where chair heating unit commands will typically be actually, which my automobile does not possess. If your lifestyle premium has been minimized due to the results from the crash you need to look for an automobile incident settlement deal. When you pay for your auto transit you are going to have your day nailed down and you will definitely certainly not must stress over a company ending up being booked up. At our car dealership in Dallas, our company market every thing coming from reputable family cars and trucks to custom Jeeps and unusual high-end finds that lovers scour the world for. The one I steered was tomato reddish, which really did not help, creating me look like the kind of person that will purchase a cars and truck to ruin people's early mornings.

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celebrityresearch-blog · 6 years

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Rainn Wilson - November 27, 2017

Recent Conan appearances:

January 27, 2015

Disdain for Foodies (link)

Rainn celebrated his birthday a week prior (January 20) by going to dinner in New York City with his wife.

He despises the fetishization of intricate foods in big cities in the U.S., and warns that the last civilization that gorged and vomited (the Romans) completely collapsed.

He then jokes that he hate a delicious Octopus pastrami for his birthday and concludes, “Let Rome burn.”

Comical Torso (link)

Backstrom, a show in which he plays the alcoholic, chain-smoking head detective of Portland Police’s Special Crime Unit, begins with a shot of his bare chest.

Rainn believes his torso is an excellent source of humor, and Greg Daniels, executive producer of The Office made Dwight take his shirt off anytime he didn’t know where to take an episode. As a result, Rainn approximates he took his shirt off 17 times during the series run.

He describes his torso as “long,” “creamy,” and “misshapen” with two “raspberries” on it.

Conan starts to pull up Rainn’s shirt, but he will not allow his chest to be exposed even though he insists he could have been a torso model in ancient Rome.

Amping Up the Sex Appeal of Chess (link)

Rainn is a huge fan of chess and wants to popularize it.

He recently competed against Magnus Carlsen, the #1 ranked chess player in the world. Even though Carlsen beat him in 17 moves, Rainn was satisfied because Bill Gates lost to Carlsen in 9 moves.

His idea for bringing chess to the masses: Carlsen and he battle each other in chess in a sports arena, but instead of chess pieces, they would use Victoria’s Secret models. Every time one piece captured another, the models would have to fight to the death.

October 25, 2012

Metaphysical Milkshake (link)

On his website SoulPancake, Rainn hosts a talkshow in the back of his 1976 Chevrolet van called Metaphysical Milkshake.

Due to the unusual location of the interview set, he often has to take unorthodox methods to persuade guests to come on his show.

He entices Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a bowl of candy, and once he takes the bait, Rainn throws him into the van.

He hits Serj Tankian (of System of a Down) with his car and throws him in the van.

He smashes the head of Uriuah Faber (UFC fighter) on a trash bin and throws him in the van.

Rainn’s Late Night Appearance and Dwight Tattoos (link)

Conan and Rainn first met each other when Rainn starred on Late Night with Conan O’Brian, after he had only done ten episodes of The Office.

At the time, he was incredibly intimidated by Conan, who was his idol, and the fancy set.

As he was being introduced and brought on stage, Rainn became incredibly awestruck, so Conan subtly instructed him to zero in on him by pointing into his own eyes. As Rainn describes this encounter, he describes Conan’s action as a “Jedi mind trick.”

Although Conan did not remember doing this, the two recreated the interaction and then high fived.

Many diehard fans of The Office have begun tattooing Dwight on their bodies. Although Rainn is very flattered by this gesture, he is concerned for the fates of these people come the year 2043 when they have to explain the peculiar body art to their grandchildren.

The final photo in Conan’s prepared montage of tattoos was of Dwight’s face on a woman near her butt. Rainn shows particular concern over this image because he worries about the times that woman is getting intimate and her partner must look at Dwight’s face. He quips that the partner of that woman should tattoo Angela (The Office character) on his thigh so the two characters can merge.

Conan sympathizes with this tattoo craze and shows a short montage of people with body art of his face.

December 7, 2010

Growing Up Nerd (link)

Rainn apologizes for his last appearance on the show when he referred to Andy’s lectern as a “podium.”

Following the success of his recent book SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Biggest Questions, Rainn wants to change his first name to “New York Times Best-Selling Author,” and his middle name to “Rainn.”

At the time, The Office had been running for seven seasons.

In order to portray Dwight, who Rainn describes as an “uber dork,” he channels the nerdy behavior he exhibited as a child and teen.

From the age of 11 to 14, every weekend (beginning on 4pm on Friday and ending at 5pm on Sunday) he would exclusively play Dungeons and Dragons.

His father recently found one of his notebooks from age 13, in which he drew medieval and his own Dungeons and Dragons characters. These characters included “Ragnar the Horrible,” who was visibly exuding “sweats of battle,” as well as a devil-like creature wearing a Speedo.

While he was growing up in Lake Forest Park, Washington (a suburb of Seattle) he would frequently run around at 3am with makeshift armor, crafted out of broomstick handles and garbage can lids, and set off on missions.

Eventually, their pretend quests turned a little more mischievous, and they started throwing toilet paper at people’s houses.

Once he and his friends went to a 7/11 gas station dressed in camouflage and wielding armor, bought all the toilet paper in stock, and then went into the gas station parking lot to eat beef jerky. As they stood there, the police pulled up and arrested them because the gas station attendant had reported the boys as suspicious. As they were being driven to the station, they stuffed the toilet paper and armor under the seats in the cop car, but when they were in the interrogation room, an officer entered and dumped all of their stashed objects on the table.

SoulPancake Dares (link)

SoulPancake originated as a website with the mission to “make philosophy, creativity, and spirituality fun and irreverent.”

As a manner of encouraging people to pursue the answers to life’s biggest questions, Rainn’s book, also titled SoulPancake, provides many ideas for activities and students, including “Reverse Pickpocketing” (writing a kind message on a dollar bill and sneaking it into the pocket of an unsuspecting person) or writing your deepest, darkest secret and stashing it in a copy of SoulPancake in any bookstore. Rainn jokes that in the latter stunt, people have confessed a surprisingly high amount of murders.

Rainn is a big advocate of not speaking for a whole day.

The longest he has gone without speaking is three days when he went to a meditation retreat. The worst part about this silence are the sounds in the dining hall: sixty freaks chewing their tofu and occasionally farting. Sometimes, when his roommate wasn’t in his room he would make crazed nonsense sounds just to make sure his mouth still worked.

Conan mistakenly believed SoulPancake was a joint project between Rainn and his son, but Rainn corrected him that his son was only six at the time and therefore had no part in it.

Other talk show appearances and miscellaneous clips:

The Late Late Show with James Corden - November 8, 2017 (link)

Rainn is a huge tennis fan and recently judged a match in which Novak Djokovic played.

As a chair umpire, his goal was to act like the “biggest asshole” he possibly could.

Therefore, he spent most of the match making fart noises and calling balls out that were really in.

At the end of the match, the audience hated and booed him.

Associated Press - July 26, 2017 (link)

Rainn’s top highlights of playing Harry Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery were 1) firing a phaser, 2) being transported in the transporter room, and 3) sitting in the captain’s chair.

When he was between the ages of 5 and 10 watching the original Star Trek series, or when he was 20 watching The Next Generation, it was his wildest dream to take part in this franchise, so that experience blew his wildest expectations.

Even though the Discovery set was littered with signs prohibited pictures and posting on social media, he still took endless photos because he had to savor the moment.

Lovett or Leave It - July 14, 2017 (link)

His charity in Haiti began when his wife and him visited and fell in love with all aspects of the society, namely the people, arts, and humor.

Two months after this visit, Haiti was struck by the earthquake that, according to Rainn, left 250,000 people dead in 2 minutes.

Seven years ago, Rainn and his wife started teaching arts workshops for adolescent girls and they immediately fell in love with the work.

His organization, Lide Haiti has been running for the last 4 years. They currently educate over 600 girls in 13 rural locations in Haiti.

Although Rainn has received many positive responses about his work, he also receives complaints from angry Americans wondering what he’s doing to help his own country. After every Haiti-related Tweet, he receives some responses to the equivalent of “Why don’t you help at home?”, a sentiment he sees as particularly close-minded because were all just human beings living on a “ball of mud.”

He recently visited Tijuana with his friends to interview Haitians who were a part of the Haitian refugee crisis in Mexico.

He feels hopeful that pre-millennials and millennials are more geared now more then ever towards helping people, citing a study by Soul Pancake that found that although just a few years ago, recent college grants listed money and status as their primary goals, graduates today are prioritizing whether or not their work will have a positive impact on the world. The video compiling these statistics will be published on both SoulPancake and on its parent site, Participant Media.

The primary motives of Lide Haiti are arts education, literacy, job training, helping displaced girls acclimate into a school setting. They have a computer lab, mobile library, tutoring services, and scholarship opportunities.

Funny or Die - June 20, 2017 (link)

In a mock interview for a parody movie called Sole Survivor, Rainn describes his “character,” a man named Grimm Simmons, as a self-loathing shoe salesman who testifies before Congress against Big Shoe before dying in a fire.

To the “interviewer,” he insists he’s tired of being perceived as a clown, so this “movie” is a starting stepping stone in his journey towards depicting life as a “miserable circus of failure and pain.”

He cuts off the rest of her questions and is then brought a platter of candies. He marvels at the Airhead Bites because he used to religiously eat them as a child, so, after a brief moment of hesitation, he takes a bite of one.

All of a sudden, a small child pops up adjacent from him in the interviewer chair. When Rainn asks who the child is, the child points to the Sloppy Joe stain on his jeans, which Rainn recalls getting after a fight with eighth-grader, Mickey Strickland.

The young Rainn chastises old Rainn for his hardened spirit, and starts to interview him in attempts to bring back his sense of fun. He asks his favorite ice cream, and after old Rainn says he cannot eat ice cream, young Rainn slaps him in the face, prompting him to share his true answer, which was “cookies and cream.” A similar process ensues when asked his favorite movie, and he ultimately confesses his favorite is Muppets from Space.

After insisting that he’s not a child anymore, old Rainn gets transported back to his childhood treehouse alongside young Rainn. The two Rainns get in a balloon fight with other young kids from atop the tree house.

Eight-grader Mickey Strickland shows up, wielding a Sloppy Joe sandwich, so young and old Rainn whip out water balloon bazookas and blast him.

At this point, old Rainn snaps back in his Sole Survivor interview (this time with a different interviewer) and he confesses that he detests the movie and the true movie he is there to promote is titled Blog the Talking Future Dog.

Funny or Die - June 14, 2016 (link)

For $25,000, Rainn purchased the Weezer Experience Bundle, which earns him a signed copy of Weezer’s new album, concert tickets, a Greyhound bus ride to the Galápagos islands with Rivers Cuomo, bird watching, and a boat ride.

Upon arrival for his Weezer Experience, he is greeted by Rivers Cuomo, and he immediately mentions that they both have “watery names,” which would only be made more entertaining if they met someone named “Lakey Boy.”

Rivers admits they did not think anyone would purchase the package, but he assures him it is still real.

Rainn enters a dark room alone to find three cars of an amusement park ride. Rivers appears in a white linen button-down shirt, sunhat, and begins the “tour,” which is really just a projection simulating a bus tour across America and into the Galápagos.

Once they reach “Galápagos,” Rivers points “wildlife,” such as an old tortoise and a blue-footed booby.

Rainn cannot put his finger on what is off about this experience.

Rivers frantically realizes the crab fences are down and they are in danger, but he assures Rainn they escaped on the back of a waved albatross, so they were safe. Rainn is skeptical of this considering he supposes a Greyhound bus to weigh at least 18 tons.

Again faced with a crab, Rivers fights it off using the Trident of Galápagos, and once the threat is eliminated, he passes off the spear to a man who identifies himself as being named “Lakey Boy.”

At the end of the “tour,” Rainn is led back into the parking lot, and he accuses Rivers of giving him a fake tour. Rivers admits to it, but then wins Rainn back by reminding him about their “watery names.” This comment again pleases Rainn, and he gets in his car and drives off.

Inside Quest - August 5, 2015 (link) (Less than 700 views)

Rainn once convinced Elon Musk to trade a Tesla for a bite of a sandwich. (link)

Rainn understands “spirituality” is an unsavory word to some (which often either means church or hippy dippy merging chakras), but he has yet to find a better alternative.

SoulPancake was Rainn’s attempt to produce something that his 19-year-old self would have enjoyed.

He urges people not to accept truths from parents, school, society, or religion.

He explains there are many similarities between humans and monkeys (i.e. social hierarchy, spend a lot of time on their hair, form tribes, have sex, (occasionally) throw feces at each other). Therefore, spirituality, as he explains, is everything we don’t have in common with monkeys (i.e. contemplation, conversation, making art).

Rainn was interested in kicking the younger generation’s ass to embark on any kind of journey that questions the status quo because saw young people getting tuned out, distracted, and cynical, and he worried the status quo was a materialistic dead end.

In his 2014 USC Baccalaureate speech, he mentions the Greek word, eudaimonia, used to refer to the pursuit of human flourishing. He believes leading young people to eudaimonia is the greatest service he could think of.

When he started SoulPancake seven years ago (at the time), the Internet was (according to him) filled with porn, credit score checking sites, and chat rooms, so the mission he came up with was using the underutilized online platform to feed the souls of young people.

Death is one of his favorite topics to discuss, and he adores the Native American saying, “Today is a good day to die.”

Justin Baldoni, of SoulPancake, had the idea to gleam lessons on living from people with terminal illnesses, which led to the show, “My Last Days.”

Rainn says he received letters from people who admitted to watching “My Last Days” videos every morning because it gave them immense clarity on the fleeting nature of their lives.

After his self-proclaimed long and difficult life, Rainn believes the greatest purpose a human may have is being of service to other people.

After he and his wife went to Haiti, they fell in love with the culture and the country. They were here two months before the earthquake. When the earthquake hit, the hotel they were staying in was completely demolished and everyone inside died. He cites that 300,000 people died in 45 seconds. (Same story, different stat as Lovett or Leave It interview.)

He praises Sean Penn’s charity for the great work they’ve done to improve Port-au-Prince.

He and his wife started teaching art to girls in tent camps. They were first skeptical to teach them photography and theater because they had so many other more vital basic necessities, but the improvement in quality of life he witnessed in those girls was astounding.

Upon asking girls in the camps what their favorite color was, he realized that no one had asked them that question before because in their society their opinions were completely undervalued, which is especially shocking because they do all the cleaning, childcare, and cooking.

Rainn explains the #1 way to end world poverty is to educate girls because teenage girls spread what they learn, so they will share it with their whole family.

At Soul Pancake, he claims they don’t have answers, but rather a bunch of questions.

He recently took his son to the Natural History Museum in New York City and was mind blown by the birth of the universe video, narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson.

He describes himself as Oprah with a beard and a dad bod.

After he got out of acting school, he was cast as the lead in the Brodway show, London Assurance, but he got negative reviews. These reviews crushed him, so after crying on the phone to his wife every night, he fired all his agents, decided he was done trying to be who everyone else wanted him to be, started being as weird as he naturally is, and finally started getting roles.

When he was a kid, there were only three television channels and five movie studios, but now, with the democratization of entertainment, he appreciates being able to use newfound tools to make the world a better place.

The co-founder of SoulPancake, Devin Gundry, decided their channel needed more “joy,” so he got in touch with “Kid President.” They started partnering with Kid President and featuring them in their videos.

He confesses if he could go anywhere at that moment, it would be Cuba.

He says the one thing he knows more than anything is that he loves his wife and son.

His son recently told him that more people died from coconuts falling and hitting their heads than shark attacks annually.

His favorite movie is Apocalypse Now because its taught him the most about life.

Ok Computer (by Radiohead) is his favorite album. He saw Radiohead three times in one summer.

Additional content (Tweets):

November 25, 2017 - “Invention idea: a toilet seat that takes your blood pressure and heart rate. Go make that.”

November 24, 2017 - Recently found a puppy in Bayonaise, Haiti that had chunks of its ears missing from a voodoo ceremony. Rainn rescued the puppy and named it Ti Bagay.

November 21, 2017 - Advertising a campaign called #5for5, which aims to pressure world leaders into prioritizing a child’s early education in their first 5 years of life.

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