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dappledpaintbrush · 2 months

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If it becomes more than a dream, what do you think a Super Paper Mario movie would be like?

Please write down everything you have to say, it doesn't matter if it's a 100 page essay I would like to read it.

When I finally get not only yapping permission, but also yapping endorsement

I think about the SPM movie a LOT. Not because I think it’s going to happen but because I’m insane. I also think it works better as a show, but I always must migrate to thinking of it as a movie lol. I talk a lot I’m gonna divide my thoughts into sections (Again, I’m turning off reblogs because reblogging an ask gets rid of the read-more, I’m sorry!! It’s for the best LMAO)

Rating:

I would LOVE if they addressed it like the FNAF movie. I remember people talking about how “oh it’s gonna be for kids because it’s a kid’s franchise and they’re gonna make more money if they made it for kids” but they made it PG-13 and. Everything was fine. They made a shit ton of money and everything was fine. Point is, I think SPM would work best as a PG-13 movie. And yeah it sounds like that one clip of SpongeBob and Patrick screaming in terror on a baby rollercoaster, but SPM does have elements that would be Difficult to put in a movie format and still make it rated PG. With the game, it can be passed off as cartoon mischief and thus be E for everyone, sure, but in a movie? I don’t see it. And let me clarify- I know they could make the hypothetical SPM movie be rated PG and still have its original plot, but I believe that is only if they cut down on a lot of things and make it very goofy and overall remove the heart of the story. But do I think it would be fucking PEAK as a PG-13 movie? Hell yeah. They could have a lot more leg-room to truly pay homage to the game, which is known as one of Mario’s darker stories for a good reason.

But do I believe they would make it PG-13? No. Definitely PG. Again, I know this is a Mario game and it’s not some super evil sick twisted story oh my god cover your eyes little timmy blah blah blah, but STILL. Pulling off some of its core scenes on the big screen where there’s SO much more detail in the animation and the voice acting etc etc etc would be hard to accomplish without making said scenes less impactful or even shallow. And if you still think I’m being dramatic, the mario movie is rated PG. The Mario movie. And all Mario did was get punched and got a bruise on his eye. I’m sure if there was a storyboard scene of him, Luigi, Bowser, and Peach getting set on fire and going to the afterlife, it would have been SCRAPPED. OR, it would have absolutely no emotion other than “erm… THAT just happened!” Take your pick.

All in all, if it were to happen, the SPM movie will lose some things. Nintendo would NEVER allow Mario to be in an PG-13 movie. It’s unfortunate :(

Speaking of the Afterlife:

Nintendo will have to cut out the Underwhere, Overthere, Grambi, and maybe even Luvbi and Bonechill. OR, completely revamp that whole thing to make it as religiously ambiguous as possible. No fucking doubt about it. At ALL. I can already see the change.org petition run by a Christian mother screaming at Nintendo for blaspheming God and making a joke out of heaven and hell “which are very real and you’re teaching kids it’s some silly fake thing in a fake Mario movie BUT NO PEOPLE HAS TO KNOW THEY WILL BURN FOREVER IF THEY DONT OBEY!!!” (Note: just in case it wasn’t obvious, I am mocking the Christian mother in the quotation marks). I’m surprised Nintendo even got away with it in the first place, ESPECIALLY regarding Luvbi and Bonechill. I put “maybe” regarding those two because it’s likely 2 and 2 won’t be put together about who inspired their characters, but at the same time. It probably will. Yeah it definitely will

Bonechill is directly inspired by Satan, and Luvbi makes indirect references to Jesus. Regarding Bonechill, to quote from his Wiki:

“Tippi's tattle says that Bonechill may have once been a Nimbi, which is supported by the fact that he has feathered wings on his back. This fits into the overall motif of The Underwhere and The Overthere, which draw heavily from both Ancient Greek mythology and the Christian religion. In particular, the concept of a fallen angel (Nimbi) is inspired by the Biblical story of Lucifer, who became the devil after betraying God. Furthermore, in Dante's Inferno (of the epic Italian poem, the Divine Comedy), Lucifer (now known as Satan) is depicted as a giant, six-winged beast imprisoned in ice in the deepest circle of Hell. This is all paralleled by how Bonechill has six wings, was imprisoned deep below the Underwhere, and is a self-styled "master of the cold dark" who uses ice breath to attack and is "something of an evil celebrity in certain circles of the Underwhere". Similarly, his being released during an apocalyptic event (the emergence of The Void) may be derived from the Book of Revelation, where Satan escapes from hell and he and his army are battled and defeated in heaven.”

Do you see that shit. Do you think Nintendo would risk doing this in a movie, let alone ever again in any game?The backlash would be INSANE. And they could easily call Luvbi a blasphemous mockery of Jesus because she sacrificed herself to save the world, AND CAME BACK LATER😭😭😭😭😭

Anyways, yeah. In the SPM movie, that whole chapter of the game is what’s going to be changed the most. It likely will be solely based off Greek mythology with no Christian themes involved. Or even LESS than that if they’re too scared. God I wish they weren’t. That chapter is one of my favorites in the whole game (mostly bc it’s crazy to me how Nintendo didn’t chicken out of making it), and it sucks so bad to know it’ll likely be almost nonexistent if the SPM movie were to happen.

Run-Time:

This game is. Long.

In my perfect world, I like to think of it as one big grand movie and it’s the longest animated movie ever made and it’s animated by Dreamworks in the style of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and it has 5/5 stars and critics are crying and screaming of joy and everybody who clowned on this game has personally showed up to my door to apologize for their wrongdoing and beg for my forgiveness. But unfortunately we can’t have everything we want

I don’t think they will cut out any of the dimensions, I just think that most side plots will be rushed through like a montage :/ It’s why I think it will work best as a series. Every episode could be dedicated to a Dimensional Door. But that also means it’ll likely have less of a budget which sucks

Blumiere and Dimentio:

Something will have to change.

First of all, Blumiere. I don’t exactly know HOW, but they will have to change about his story. The game itself has already gotten criticized for “romanticizing a toxic relationship” between Blumiere and Timpani, and that criticism will be MAGNIFIED with a blockbuster film. Again, I don’t know how the will do it, but they’ll have to adjust that plot to please the masses more than likely. It fucking sucks. But this is modern Nintendo. They are going to go the safest route possible.

That’s not the only thing regarding Blumiere that will have change. Yk how the game also gets criticized for giving Blumiere a happy ending but not Dimentio despite the fact that, regardless of their motivations, they both tried to kill everyone? That criticism will also be magnified with the release of a movie. They’ll have to modify the story to make Blumiere’s actions significantly less evil than Dimentio’s, which could be accomplished through making it so that Blumiere is mind-controlled by the Dark Prognosticus. OR, they’ll have to give Dimentio a happy ending too, whether that be he survives and changes his ways (BOOOOO🍅🍅🍅), or he also gets the “he’s alive somewhere” treatment like Blumiere and Timpani did. However, in order to accomplish that successfully with an audience of five years olds, they’ll have to directly talk about Dimentio’s own tragic backstory with as much weight as they do Blumiere’s. And l. Don’t see that happening. It would be absolutely CRAZY if it did and I would probably pass out in the theatre if we got to see the Pixl Creator, but yeah, it’s unlikely.

Mr. L:

Some good news! I see them making Mr. L recognizable

They probably won’t.

BUT THEY LIKELY WILL

In the first movie, Mario and Luigi’s bond was shown in ways they have rarely done before. Their love and care for one another is clearly shown, not just “that’s my brother Luigi wahoo!” or something. I mean come on, think of the hug scene. And you mean to tell me in the 2nd or 3rd or idk movie, Mario can’t recognize him with a blindfold on? Be serious

In a game, yeah haha funny gag, but in a movie, it’ll be met with more annoyance than anything and it’ll be really disingenuous, and it already does get that criticism in the game where it’s arguably “more acceptable.”

Conclusion:

There’s a lot more that can be discussed, but this is all I’ve put a significant lot of thought into about what I think the SPM movie would be like if I thought about it realistically. Basically, if it’s gonna truly be an SPM movie, Nintendo’s gonna have to grow a backbone. But even then, I still think it would be a great movie, especially in the eyes of those who haven’t played the game and thus don’t have the same “ARGHH BUT YOU FORGOT FLIP-FOLK NUMBER FORTY TWO” mentality that I have LMAO. And even THEN, I still think it would be a great movie. Nintendo will just have to be reaaaally careful to adapt to the limitations (that they put on themselves 💀) and still make it a movie about Super Paper Mario.

#spm #super paper mario

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midnightactual · 10 months

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Tenshiheisōban is the Title of Only the Head of House Shihōin

Setting aside for a moment what the title means literally, and what it refers to figuratively, I'm going to further clarify something.

I'm going to directly reject the assertion that Tenshiheisōban refers to House Shihōin, as stated by both Viz in the manga in chapter 154, and in Viz's official translation of CFYOW, and in fanlations of the same (listed below in order). They messed up. It's that simple.

No, this is Yoruichi's title. I can actually prove it to you definitively.

In chapter 159, we can see that the term is being applied directly and specifically to Yoruichi. Viz's own wording of "That is the Tenshiheisōban" (emphasis mine) shows it. They could have written, "That is one of the Tenshiheisōban" had it been the case it applied to House Shihōin. This is even clearer in the Japanese:

What's written here, verbatim, is:

〝天賜兵装番〟四楓院家の姫君だ

That is to say, "'Tenshiheisōban'. She is the hime-gimi of House Shihōin." First, you should notice that Tenshiheisōban is always put in double quotation marks in the Japanese dialogue. When things are being quoted by characters in Bleach they usually use single hook quotation marks. This usage of double quotation marks is extremely unusual. This is normally done to refer to quotes in quotes, or to refer to book titles, or text heard through a phone. Obviously none of those applies here, and a book title is the closest analogy. This presentation draws a tremendous amount of attention to this term.

Furthermore, the following remarks make it clear it is attributable to Yoruichi and Yoruichi alone. If the term applied to the entire clan, this scene would be like pointing at a specific American soldier and saying, "United States Army" or pointing at an American and saying, "United States of America." That would be bizarre. But we can go further.

In chapter 154, Soifon is insulting Yoruichi... but this is where Viz really makes their mistake. The same evidence could be used here of saying this conversation is specifically directed at Yoruichi, but maybe you find contextual arguments weak. So let's look at this in Japanese too.

What's written here, verbatim, is:

〝天賜兵装番〟の四楓院家も堕ちたものだ旅禍に肩入れしたなどと知れたら四大貴族の一角を追われることは確実だそ志波家の没落然り名家の落皖れる様は余り見栄えのするものではないな

Soifon says a lot here, but the important part is 〝天賜兵装番〟の四楓院家も堕ちたものだ, and the real core element of that is 〝天賜兵装番〟の四楓院家. The clause of possession here, の (of), is actually directing you to read this as, "House Shihōin of the 'Tenshiheisōban'", or "'Tenshiheisōban's' House Shihōin". It's possessive.

House Shihōin belongs to the Tenshiheisōban.

(For a more complete context, this sentence and the next read as to the effect of: "'Tenshiheisōban's' House Shihōin has also fallen, participating in this Ryoka misfortune. When they find out you did something like this, it's certain you'll be chased out of the Four Great Noble Houses.")

It's made explicitly clear in Japanese that House Shihōin are not collectively the Tenshiheisōban. Rather, an individual, the Tenshiheisōban, owns House Shihōin. And who is the only figure who can claim to own a noble house? The person leading that noble house.

It is therefore explicitly clear that the status of Tenshiheisōban must be broadly coterminal with the status of being the head of House Shihōin. They mean the same thing, and that is the official title of that role. It does not make sense to imagine Yoruichi has some extra title that supersedes head of house status, or that the role moves around between houses or whatever else.

Tenshiheisōban is the official title of the head of House Shihōin. It's put in double quotes because it's the true name of the title, rather than merely an allusion to it like 当主, tōshu, “head of the house”.

This is confirmed by the fact that Yūshirō has the title on his introduction chapter 606 of TYBW (thanks to an anon for pointing this out):

This leaves open the question of when he assumed it if Soifon was teasing Yoruichi with the title while being herself a Shihōin retainer some 22 months earlier; that wouldn't really make sense if he'd already held the position for several years. So presumably he picked it up during the time skip.

Now, why we only learn this official title for the Shihōin, and not for the Kuchiki, Shiba, or Tsunayashiro, I couldn't tell you. They must each have their own specific terms reflecting their specific duties or specialties. The Shihōin one does indeed reflect martial prowess. We know that the Tsunayashiro record and "control" history, we can make some guesses about the Kuchiki and Shiba, and we know the final unnamed house is involved with Hell. Each should therefore have a unique rank title.

Do all other nobles have unique rank titles too? Or are they generic below the rank of Shōichī? I don't know.

#Out Of Character #Bleach #Meta #Yoruichi Shihouin #Long Post

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justsimmering · 4 months

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Dream's boundaries, with time stamps.

youtube

I'm seeing a lot of discussion about what Dream actually said in his video about his boundaries, reinventing what he said, paraphrasing, so here is everything he mentioned about them, with time stamps! If something he says is repeated in writing in the background, i will not mention it.

Actual quotes will be in quotation marks, anything that is displayed in text in the background of the video with be in [brackets].

While talking about the fanart account:

"I never supported NSFW art of minors or from minors. I think that that's weird and gross." [That's disgusting] (16:21 - 16:28)

"Generally it's just, I don't want anything weird drawn of me." (16:29 - 16:32)

Context: "I think it's incredibly unhealthy to be obsessive with someone, and I also think it's clear to anyone that's stepping back and looking at these situations, that people obsessively hate me, and are making up lies about me, which is also because of parasocialness. Parasocial love, turned to parasocial hate. And I have no doubt that the anonymous people making these fake allegations were once big fans of mine." (1:19:14 - 1:19:29)

Context: "i think part of why I'm in the position that I'm in right now, is because I started pulling away from my fans after my face reveal. Meeting fans in person made things much more real and i wasn't so chronically online anymore cause I actually had real life, and things to do. I think the fact that I'm a pretty relaxed person overall that has relaxed boundaries has encouraged that type of behavior too, so I'm just gonna re-clarify some of my boundaries." (1:19:41 - 1:20:01)

[I'm pretty relaxed. It takes a lot to bother me.] [But just because it doesn't bother me, doesn't mean it's okay] (1:19:55 - 1:20:00)

"One: I don't support any sexually explicit art of me or my friends. It never bothered me personally that much 'cause I don't really care about anything, but it is just weird. Especially if you're a minor nd drawing anything like that. That's gross. I don't support anything inappropriate from minors at all. Art, tiktoks, comments, anything. It's gross." [I don't support any NSFW art of me] [If you're a minor, do not engage sexually as a fan whatsoever, that's gross & unsafe] (1:20:01 - 1:20:16)

"Two: Serious shipping is bad. I think that prying into people's private relationships, being deeply speculative, or anything like that is terrible. I don't mind jokes, I don't mind doing it for fun, but anything serious really crosses the line." (1:20:16 - 1:20:27)

"Again I've always found it funny being shipped with George, because we're not dating. We're friends. But if you genuinely think we're dating and it's part of your personality, you need to get off the internet. That is not healthy." (1:20:27 - 1:20:37)

"I'm sure I'll make more clarifications in the future, but I just don't want anything weird. Don't obsess over me or my friends." (1:20:37 - 1:20:43)

Context: [Sometimes you guys being odd can make me look odd] (1:20:49)

"Be the passionate fan, not the stalker obsessive fan." (1:20:50)

If i missed anything, please let me know!

#dream's boundaries #dream fanart #dtblr #dreamblr #dnfblr #feel free to share this around i guess #im not here to give my opinion on if or how strongly you wanna follow or enforce these #just wanted to have it all in one place #js.p #Youtube

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phantomtutor · 1 year

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HCM 1143Research Paper The paper for HCM 1143 is to view one of the movies listed below and write a research paper on an aspect of the film related to healthcare administration. Movies The DoctorPatch AdamsOne Flew Over The Cuckoo’s NestArticle 99Something the Lord madeJohn QAnd the Band Played on Other Movie With Prior Instructor Approval PAPER Title should mention Movie nameYou will write a research paper on a problem or solution in healthcare administration. Write a brief introduction summarizing the movie. Make certain to point out the central conflict or problem related to healthcare. Your thesis statement is related to Healthcare Administration – How it was part of the problem, what it could do to fix the problem, etc. Required aspects are highlighted.• Please do not just summarize the movie; that will result in a very low grade. Relate the movie to Healthcare Administration. This can be to identify, clarify, and /or solve a problem in healthcare related to the content• A clear thesis is necessary. Be sure to state clearly the main point and make sure that all your research and supporting points back it up.• Address the entity(s) able to provide a remedy for the scenario whether regulatory, managerial, or in other ways.• As a general rule, when I say you must do a thorough exploration of the topic, that means that someone reading your paper who is unfamiliar with the topic does not finish with unanswered questions and a greater understanding of your original thoughts, backed by research.• Papers that are not researched are based on opinion, and if you could rely on what you knew before taking a class, why would you need an education?• All text is to be double-spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman.• Plagiarism is NOT tolerated. If you use more than a few words from the text (or another source) you MUST cite using quotation marks and appropriate in-text citations in APA style.• Most of the information in written assignments can be summarized in your own words. Be careful to note, when you use data or statistics, it MUST be cited. Otherwise, I am to assume you came up with that information on your own.• There should be both in text citations and a bibliography• Your citations may be limited, but you must have at least three credible sources, plus the citation for the movie itself. You must cite the movie. The strongest papers will back up the fictional concepts with real life, cited examples and other relevant cited information.• Keep scrolling down to view correct citation information for a textbook. • There is no length requirement, but the fullness of the topic must be explained. A good rule of thumb is at least 3-4 pages of content, not counting title and bibliography.Clearly, if your introduction takes a full page, your points cannot be proven in only a few paragraphs in order to be considered thorough. See the paper template for more guidance• PROOFREAD Once you finish, edit to make sure your sentences make sense and are grammatically correct. Simple spell checking is not enough Paper TitleOklahoma State University – Oklahoma CityHCM 1143 Penny Ridenour Student NameDate References (APA example of textbook references)Shi, L. (2007). Managing human resources in health care organizations. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning Citing in-textShi (2007) states “insert direct quotation here” (p. 37).Notice the following about this in-text citation:1) Only author’s last name is used, followed by year of publication in parenthesis2) No period inside quotation marks3) Page number in parenthesis immediately following the quote, and a period after the closed parenthesis.NOTE: There are many online citation generators online. In addition, Microsoft Word has one built in. Here is a youtube video on how to use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnVq_BpwP2E&authuser=0Research Paper Rubric4 90-100 pts3 80-89 pts2 60-79 pts0-60 pts Your Essay was a full exploration of the subject matter• Clear thesis• Referenced appropriate material

and source• Convincing point(s)• Authority to change explored• Excellent grammar• Proper citation Your Paper explored the subject matter• Thesis present• Referenced appropriate material and sources• Good grammar• citation Your paper explored the subject matter You attempted the assignment ORDER THIS PAPER NOW. 100% CUSTOM PAPER CategoriesAPA 7th edition, English Leave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Email * Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Post navigation Previous PostPrevious Instructions: NEED ASSIGNMENT BY SUNDAY PLEASE please TLMT311 Topic is the impoNext PostNext Topic selected comparing Average Length of Stay between Acute Care and Not Acute

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noodlesquad · 4 years

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Reading “Why Women are Blamed for Everything” by Dr. Jessica Taylor, Thoughts on chapter 2-4.

I had a lot of thoughts about the next few chapters of this book, but I noticed that they were basically about a few reoccurring themes, so I decided to, instead of reacting to individual statements, try and react to the underlying premises that the problematic (in my opinion) statements are founded on. So here we go.

The rejection of mental health diagnoses:

In this book, Dr. Taylor frequently seems to reject the idea that mental illness caused by trauma is mental illness at all, however, she never really clarifies her exact stance nor does she clarify which illnesses she is referring to. There seems to be a real ambivalence throughout chapter 2 in regards to this. She refers to mental illness as “So-called mental illness” and later she puts schizophrenia in quotation marks without clarifying why. She also states that she has met women diagnosed with “poorly-defined, imaginative and downright offensive disorders” but she never specifies which disorders she is talking about. For such a bold statement about recognised health conditions, she is being quite vague. However, her description of what “so-called mental illness” actually is, is very on point. She describes it as “a result of social, environmental and interpersonal pressures, abuses, oppressions and stressors.” Absolutely! Mental illness as a result of trauma is a natural and human response to unnatural and inhuman treatment. It is normal, justified, proportionate and rational, as Dr. Taylor puts it. However, I strongly disagree with Dr. Taylor when she insinuates that knowing the cause of the mental illness makes it less of a mental illness. Acknowledging that someone else caused my symptoms and that they are not my fault does not make my symptoms any less real, and I think it is counterproductive and dismissive of women’s mental illnesses to claim that because they are justified, they are not illnesses, which insinuates that they are not causing her distress.

I want to add that she brings up a very good point when she writes that women are often considered to be “more mad” if she rejects medication or therapy. A lot of trauma treatment is horrible, counter productive, sexist or simply does not work for everyone, and the idea that women must all commit to the same prescribed healing journey, decided by someone she sees once a week based on experiences with past patients that may differ a lot from her, is very dangerous. Especially when women who says the medication or treatment is not working for her are labeled as “difficult” or “treatment resistant”, rather than aware of their own needs and in need of taking control of their bodies and their own healing.

The claim that women are blamed for their trauma when held responsible for behaviour caused by trauma:

She claims that women are blamed for how they react to trauma, but this chapter is again vague, and does not draw any distinctions between who is to blame for the situation and who is responsible for the situation. For example, while a woman is not at fault for having a drinking problem as a result of trauma, it is her responsibility to manage her drinking problem. Keeping her accountable for her drinking problem is not the same as blaming her for having it in the first place. Another example: if a woman abuses her kids because she herself was abused as a child, her children are entitled to label her an abuser and holding her responsible for the abuse she committed. This is not the same as blaming her for the original abuse. My point is that while trauma related disorders are never our fault, they are, sadly, our burden to carry.

The idea that women should not be taught to protect themselves from male violence, because it is not fair that they have to:

Furthermore, the book seems to me to be written on the premise that teaching women to protect themselves from male violence is victim blaming, because it insinuates that women are able to control whether or not men commit violence against them. In my opinion, this is a glaring logical fallacy. Claiming that X will protect you from Y, does not mean that no X equals an invitation to Y. For example, claiming that wearing a helmet lessens your chance of getting seriously injured in an accident, does not mean that not wearing a helmet means you provoke, deserve, or invite as accident. Equally, claiming that learning self defence might come in handy if a woman is attacked, does in no way insinuate that women who do not learn self defence are inviting, deserving, or provoking an attack.

It is part of female empowerment to learn tools to avoid and fight very real threats against us.

I 100% agree with her when she later states that efforts to teach children how to say no to sexual abuse that is already going on will cause self blame and puts unjust responsibility on the child. However, she makes the same argument for adult women, that they should not be sent to programs for women abused by men to learn to “protect herself” and “realise what is happening,” because education on sexual violence is not “enough” to save women from sexual violence, and gives women unjust responsibility to resolve the situation herself. However, Dr. Taylor does not present any alternative way of helping that would be “enough,” and since it is illegal to kidnap a grown woman away from her abuser for her own good, without consent, I struggle to see alternative solutions that does not include women having to realise what is happening, protecting herself, and deciding to leave. If Dr. Taylor has any solutions in mind, she does not present them, and the whole argument seems to be that she would rather have no intervention than less-than-perfect intervention.

Dr. Taylor writes, and I quote: “The responsibility and blame is squarely with the oppressor and the oppressive structures that allow the oppression to continue. It is not on the shoulders of the victim of abuse and oppression to protect themselves from the oppressor.”

This to me seems like some sort of a perfect world scenario where the argument “but it is not fair” is likely to get you anywhere against someone who is purposely making it and profiting off of it being unfair. Women cannot sit around and wait for men to realise their mistake and stop attacking us. Historically, change is always brought about when the oppressed do stand up to the oppressor.

What ways to protect ourselves, stand up for women, and bring about justice would be most safe and efficient is still up for debate, but I cannot get behind Dr. Taylor when she insinuates that we should:

1. Avoid taking measures that might help some, because they aren’t efficient enough to help every single victim. (Because implementing these measures, according to Dr. Taylor, insinuates that women have the power to end violence against themselves but chooses not to by not always responding positively to said measures.) 2. Not protect ourselves from male violence, because it is not fair that we have to.

#feminism #liberal feminism #trauma survivor #psychology #social justice #sociology

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maiji · 6 years

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Thoughts on Grasses of Remembrance (The Tale of Genji through its poetry)

Finally had some time this weekend to sit down with A Waka Anthology, Volume 2: Grasses of Remembrance Part B by Edwin A. Cranston. This book is the last in an impressive and intimidating collection translating a number of major classical poetry anthologies. It’s basically a speedrun through Tale of Genji (if such a thing were possible) filtered through all 795 waka poems written or uttered by the characters over the course of the novel.

Poetry was a Really Big Deal during the Heian era. If you were an aristocrat, not only were you expected to compose decent poetry, you had to be able to do it off-the-cuff appropriate to the occasion. AND to do this properly, you were expected to be able to recognize and respond cleverly to references to a ton of other existing classic poems from memory that people would just mention casually in conversation or writing (kinda like how people quote the Simpsons today lol). This was a prime marker of how intelligent/competent and - no joke - how sexy you were. So not surprisingly, these poems are extremely important to the development of character interactions and themes in the Tale of Genji which has a lot of romance and relationship plotlines.

However. Translating Heian era Japanese into modern Japanese is already challenging. Rendering Heian era Japanese waka poetry into modern English is, as you might imagine, harder for a bunch of reasons. Considering how dense the actual novel already is, it’s super easy to gloss over the poetry, and some modern translations simply integrate the basic intent of the poems right into the main text/dialogue.

I was really interested in finding something specifically focusing on and analyzing the poetry, and this book appeared to fit the bill.

Short review: IT TOTALLY DOES. If you’re into Tale of Genji, Heian era, classical Japanese history, classical Japanese literature, Japanese poetry, or just love reading translators articulating eloquently while sassing characters or flailing through linguistic complexities, I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK

Long review: blah blah blah thoughts follows, including some quotes/poem for reference.

The book starts with a quick 2 page intro setting the context of the Tale of Genji, then goes straight into the poems. TBH I personally found it more flowery and redundant than necessary (it repeats a few poems that are then explained later). But it’s only 2 pages, we’ll live.

Then, the poems. For every poem (or poems, in the case of an exchange - sometimes a flurry of them with multiple characters speaking or dashing letters off to each other) there’s an intro and summary of context followed by an analysis, including notes on meaning, narrator and character intent, structure, symbols and wordplay. The original Japanese is included in romaji alongside the English translation. The commentary also flags known references to other classic poems (WITH those poems in-line! This is awesome because I don’t have the rest of these books!), and even mentions poem and folk song quotations from the rest of the novel where the characters have not composed new poetry, but are reciting other existing known pieces.

Overall, I have only three real “warnings” about Grasses of Remembrance Vol 2b:

1) It’s very academic and flowery in tone. If you’re not used to it, it can be hard to read. But then again, if you’re not willing to get past that, how are you reading Tale of Genji? lol. In any case, I personally thought the commentary was a lot of fun. Cranston definitely has opinions and can get pretty sarcastic in places, which I found hilarious. Here are a few sample quotes:

“Tamakazura has remarked to herself how superior the Emperor [Reizei] was in looks to all the courtiers in his train (It is a principle with this author that superior people be dashingly handsome or ravishingly beautiful).”

“The ruefully witty poems exchanged between Yugiri and To no Naishi [Koremitsu’s daughter, the Gosechi Dancer] are rather more to my taste than the soggy ones Yugiri and Kumoi no Kari exchanged on their wedding night. Might it be the case that a totally sanctioned relationship is literarily uninspiring?”

“The old lady reaches for the melodramatic ultimate and dies just as Yugiri’s letter arrives.”

The overall effect is like an exceedingly well-educated, gossipy and sassy ride through the entire novel hahaha.

2) Minor typos. I noticed some speckled throughout the text every so often (e.g., Tamakazura being rendered Takakazura, Akashi as Asashi, instances of accidental extra letters, etc.). It was pretty clear what the correct spelling was supposed to be, and TBH considering this is the last of a huge-ass series of over 1300 pages I think it’s forgiveable. Maybe a few that spell-check should have caught, but oh well.

3) This book is NOT CHEAP. As I mentioned in a previous post, not only did I not buy the entire collection, I didn’t even buy a complete Volume 2 - I only bought the last half of the second volume lmao. And the Tale of Genji translations are only HALF of this half of a book. The rest is actually the footnotes, appendices, notes to poems, glossary, bibliography and indices (including indices for every poem by author and by first line) for this beast of a translation/compilation project. This includes a lot of additional commentary and other poems and makes for pretty interesting reading itself, even without the rest of the volumes/parts. The price can definitely be scary and an issue for a lot of people, so if you’re interested in it, I suggest try checking it out at your library or on Google Books first. (In fact, Google Books is how I learned of this book in the first place.)

For me, the depth of insight for the poems was fantastic. It gave me a lot more appreciation for the scenes, including the mental state of the characters, plus a million more symbols, metaphors and ideas for my own creative works like the Genjimonogatari illustration series, North Bound and other original stuff.

It also clarified several fuzzy translation questions I had that relied on specific knowledge of Heian culture and history/evolution of the use of the language and wasn’t easily found in Google searches or online language resources. And even if you’re already familiar with common allusions, metaphors and puns/homophones in Japanese poetry, it’s still helpful to see them all summarized. And sometimes lamented by the book’s author too. SO MANY PONIES EATING GRASS. SO MANY PINES. Especially the pines. (It IS an amazing pun though, especially because it works in both English and Japanese. Pine [tree] -> to pine, matsu/pine tree -> matsu/to wait)

In term of the actual translations themselves, you may still find them coming off a bit roundabout in some cases when comparing to the original Japanese. But overall I find Cranston’s translations more direct/flavourful than how they were rendered in the Tyler translation, partly because of how Tyler chose to juggle his set of translator’s challenges for rendering not only meaning but also more technical aspects of the poetic form. So the imagery ends up being, to me, a lot more vivid. The overall effect usually ends up more colourful, more emotional, more erotic, more cutting, more entertaining, and whatnot.

For example, Kashiwagi’s suitor’s poem in the Kocho/Butterflies chapter. When reading the novel, I was like, uh-huh, yah, OK. When I read it here, I was like whoa, dude, that’s a little intense lol. Cranston’s translation amps up the connotation of the heat of the water based on the rest of the line. For comparison:

(The original non-romaji Japanese in the samples following are thanks to the Japanese Text Initiative from the University of Virginia Library Etext Centre and the University of Pittsburgh East Asian Library. Their Tale of Genji page has a FREAKING AMAZING side-by-side comparison of the novel in original Japanese, modern Japanese and romaji. Bless them and the people who had to organize and wrangle that text together.)

Original Japanese: 思ふとも君は知らじなわきかへり岩漏る水に色し見えねば Omou to mo / Kimi wa shiraji na / Wakikaeri Iwa moru misu ni / Iro shi mieneba

Tyler version: You can hardly know that my thoughts are all of you, for the stealthy spring welling from the rocks leaves no colour to be seen.

Cranston version: Hardly can you know / Of the longing that I feel, / For the boiling wave / Is merely colorless water / As it drains away from the rock.

Here’s another example. Oigimi (Agemaki in the book, as Cranston used Wayley’s names for the sisters) telling Kaoru that he’s the only one who’s been actually visiting them and Kaoru is like all riiiight :Db! From Shii ga Moto / Beneath the Oak chapter:

Oigimi’s poem 雪深き山のかけはし君ならでまたふみかよふ跡を見ぬかな Yuki fukaki / Yama no kakehashi / Kimi narade Mata fumikayou / Ato o minu kana

Tyler: No brush but your own has marked the steep mountain trails buried deep in snow / with footprints, while back and forth letters go across the hills.

Cranston: Over the bridges / Clinging to the cliffs along / Our deep-snow mountains / No letter-bearer leaves his trace: / Those footprints are yours alone.

Kaoru’s reply つららとぢ駒ふみしだく山川をしるべしがてらまづや渡らむ Tsurara toji / Koma fumishidaku / Yamakawa o Shirube shigatera / Mazu ya wataramu

Tyler: Then let it be I who firsts ride across these hills, though on his mission, / where ice under my horse’s hooves crackles along frozen streams.

Cranston: In the sheets of ice / Covering the mountain streams / My steed crushes / Such letters as form my reason, / My first, to cross as a guide.

In other examples, Genji’s “*throws hands in the air* I give up” poetic reply to Suetsumuhana about how she keeps using Robes of Cathay/Chinese cloak imagery in her poems in the original Japanese alongside the translation cracked me up even more. And one of my favourites is a pair of poems between the future Akashi Empress (as a child) and her birth-mother the Akashi lady. It’s really sad, sweet and cute all at the same time and completely flew under my radar when I read the novel originally.

The poetry analysis for the Uji chapters is especially intriguing. The plot pointedly pits Niou against Kaoru as opposing personalities with particular similarities and contrasts that drive their relationship with each other and with the woman they’re competing for. Especially in the latter half of the story, a lot of their poems, even ones written independently (i.e., to Ukifune), are specifically composed to highlight those attributes and play off of each other.

Finally, it’s also super interesting to see my experience with the narrative changes through the lens of the poems. Obviously, as I mentioned, some things I easily missed without paying as much attention to the poems in between the rest of the story. But also, some prominent characters have very few poems, so the narrative shifts away from them. Meanwhile, a number of otherwise very minor or usually overlooked characters stand out even more, thanks to the fineness, loveliness, resonance, and sometimes just sheer consistent presence of their poetry. This book definitely gave me a lot of additional perspective on the Tale of Genji, and enhanced my appreciation of the novel and the skill behind its crafting!

#tale of genji #genji monogatary #waka poetry #a waka anthology #grasses of remembrance #edwin a. cranston #royall tyler #japanese #translation #japanese tranlation #heian period #kaoru chujo #oigimi #agemaki #kashiwagi

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nursingschoolessayexamples303 · 4 years

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About me

Dialogue

Dialogue But they help to clarify the character’s motivation for wanting whatever it's they want. Will the story nonetheless make sense if the dialogue is eliminated? It’s some of the common mistakes I see in in any other case good writing. – Allow readers to expertise the enjoyment of having a story naturally emerge rather than spelling out each detail. Real people rarely do this, and it typically appears planted only to avoid a dialogue tag. Another common error is having characters tackle each other by name too usually. There being a variety of quotes, by going through samples and templates you will be able to know the way to apply different codecs of the quotations. You will be able to perceive completely different formats of the dialogue quotes. When you undergo the work of other writers, you'll study completely different quotes available for software. Avoid too lengthy quotes in your essay- you must try to use brief quotes in your work as a result of the second they turn into too lengthy then the reader is more likely to fall off out of your essay and get confused. If fiction is like real life with the dull bits taken out, the identical is true of fictional conversations. Good dialogue is like a cleaned-up version of a real conversation. The position of the author is to pick what’s important after which distil it all the way down to its very essence. You will perceive tips on how to apply completely different quotes in your essay. And if you can get the job carried out in three words – and even with a simple gesture like a shrug – a lot the better. These revelations might not affect the plot. They may not be important for the telling of the story in any respect. It makes your assertion extra valid because you are referring to some extent through the use of the phrases of another individual. Having reference in your work helps your reader to know the origin of your factors and they are not going to doubt it especially should you quote a dialogue. If there may be the motion linked with a personality, describe it in the identical paragraph, then begin a brand new line. So you have to work hard at giving each and every character a singular speaking voice. Even if two fictional characters are having a conversation whereas sitting nonetheless in a featureless room with out home windows, they may still cough or scratch or choose threads off their garments. That’s not a blueprint, of course – only a “prime of the top” instance of how to shake issues up when writing dialogue. One essential rule of novel writing is to keep the readers studying. Never use ten words when five words will do. In case a quoted sentence is broken up, place commas after the first a part of the quote, while the second one should go after the meaningful verb. Put all punctuation marks inside quotes - If the citation is on the finish of a sentence, all the time put a full cease before the closing citation mark. The identical refers to exclamation and citation marks - they need to be inside citation marks if they are part of a quote. If the quote is part of a longer exclamation or query, put the punctuation after the citation marks. If your writing bores you, it’ll put your reader to sleep. Remember about utilizing commas - Put a comma inside citation marks if the verbs, similar to mentioned, asked, exclaimed, come after the quote. Use dialogue tags solely when the reader wouldn’t otherwise know who’s talking. Most writers—even bestselling novelists—by no means create such an unforgettable line of dialogue. But striving to create one is well worth the effort. Just like we shouldn’t inform what’s not occurring in a narrative, neither do we have to write that somebody didn’t respond or didn’t answer. Unless you’re including them to reveal a character as a brainiac or a blowhard, omit useless phrases from dialogue. If it can be eliminated with out leaving a missing hyperlink in the plot, scrap it. Trouble is, listening in on those conversations would be as thrilling as watching laundry dry. So ensure you don’t topic your readers to tedious, yawn-inducing dialogue in your novel.

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crishirecat · 4 years

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Just Use Quotes About Your Own Self To Produce A Fantastic Impression

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#Fantastic Impression

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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The Good Place (2016)

I chose to start watching this only because I was at a very low point in my life in terms of facing a dearth of TV-derived entertainment, having just finished Virgin River (2019) and Sweet Magnolias (2020). Both Virgin and Sweet are not what you'd call .. uh... productions of any real calibre or value or perhaps worth at all, like you can be certain that no niches were filled when they were realsed into the Netflix ether... But they also happen to be epic masterpieces by sheer fact of how banal and predictable and PG and saccharine and inconsequential they are, the best of the suburban vanilla Hallmark Movie genre, and basically they rock af ok?? and so when I finished both first seasons of the two series I was left empty and thirsty. And it was in this lostness that I turned to The Good Place, thinking it would be as enriching in it's simplicity, as palatable in it's shallow distraction, qualities I generally look for in the fodder to keep my eyes engaged on something that isn't the clock when I do my daily evening indoor cardio.

So maybe I should first set the stage by establishing that I simply fucking hated this series lol. I couldn't get past episode 12 (I know, this makes it sound like i already gave it way more time than it deserved, which is the truth) of the first season, because once I decided I'd had enough, it was really fucking enough and I couldn't give it one more second.

As always, here's my shoddily written premise of the series; I don't want to put much effort into capturing it's essence well because idgaf about this dumb show seriously fucking hate it lol but anyway: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies on earth, and goes to 'The Good Place', where all souls who were much more good than bad while living on earth go to upon their death, as opposed to The Bad Place, where the bad people go. There’s some mathematical calculation for this heaven and hell allocation basically. So the good place (i can't be bothered to capitalize it every time i type it anymore lol sorry), is run by a head architect who has designed and is in charge of the neighbourhood our characters live in, and he has a female robot assistant, Janet, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient right-hand lady who can also be called up by any good place resident who has any question for her, anytime. Anyway Eleanor, after dying on earth, was actually sent to the good place by accident, because she was actually a completely irredeemable asshole but due to some dumb boring never-happened-before error, she was sent to the good place instead of the bad place where she actually was meant to end up. Here she makes a small group of friends, some to whom she is eventually honest about the fact that she does not actually belong in the good place, and it is because of this incorrect placement that the good place is crumbling and its inner workings are going haywire etc and everyone suffers from the consequences. So blah blah blah soon we find out that it is not just her, but also some other guy who is here by mistake, and so blah blah blah etc yupp

So here are the things that suck about this show:

So there’s this other guy who also doesn't belong in the good place and who was also sent there by accident, his name is Jason okay but umm it's complicated because the person he was mistaken as (and the actual 'good person' who was intended to be sent to the good place while Jason was meant to be directed to the bad place) is named Jian Yu, a Taiwanese monk. Jason however is a Filipino-American from Florida and I guess his character is meant to be a stereotypical 'White trash' character, but it's meant to be funny or some shit so we aren't meant to be deeply affected by fact that his life was fucking sad, like how his small-town dreams were meant to be comedic relief for us to laugh at how pathetic he is when ... i dunno, I feel very uncomfortable making a joke out of real-life situations that umm aren't funny at all idk whatever... Oh also the weird (dumb/shitty/lame/thoughtless) thing about the show is how even once it is revealed that Jason is in fact his Jason-y, oblivious, infantile, one-dimensionally-tropey self, the characters who know the truth still continue to call him Jianyu throughout...? But like.... he's not Jianyu lol?

So anyway, Jason is characterised quite disturbingly to be honest as an extremely immature dudebro, to the extent that one could call him child-like. In his unhappiness at being stuck in this weird world where he can't be himself and has to pretend to be Jianyu most of the time (which involves being a complete ascetic as well as silent because the real Jianyu had apparently taken a lifelong oath of silence), Jason latches on to Janet the robot assistant. He says she is the only one who has been kind to him, etc etc etc, and begins ummmm, falling in love with her. But because he's painted as a literal baby with absolutely no rational or critical thinking skills, him falling in love with her is meant to be uhh earnest and sweet or at the very least inconsequential and jokey I guess? But like... this isn't funny...? Not when sex robots are a real thing and will probably lead to the abuse, violation, murder of millions of women in time to come because men will be so used to putting their penises into awfully, scarily 'life-like' dolls whose limbs have been programmed to move and who can even utter words of affirmation to their degenerate users that actual human females will no doubt bear the brunt of being expected to perform in life and in bed similarly to our robotic counterparts...? Yea so the good place disturbingly first makes us almost forced to feel some endearment toward Jason for finding a kindred "soul" in robot Janet, glad that he finally has "someone" to "talk to" (quotation marks cos once again she's a fucking robot), and it's all very "pure" and "wholesome" at first because again, he's portrayed as a fucking kid (one piece I read describes the character as "a sweet ding-dong human"). And then suddenly, about one or two episodes after they fall in love or whatever, Jason says:

You guys have fun. This is me and Janet's honeymoon, so we're gonna go try and figure out how to have sex.

Yeah umm so once again, in case any of you forgot, Janet's a fucking robot. If I use a scale of human consciousness out of 100 where a regular human's sense of self and awareness and independent thinking and authonomy and whatever else makes us human is at 100, Janet is probably at .... 10? at most? So yea.... i guess rape jokes are okay these days? I dunno? Literally how the fuck were there 3 entire seasons of this dumb show after this

Anyway when I attempted to put in *some* effort before I gave up, realising this show wasn't worth my precious weekend downtime, I googled Jason and Janet's relationship to see if there were any other similar voices of dissent but umm apparently, according to the headlines of articles, this is instead public opinion:

The Unlikely Romance of The Good Place’s Janet and Jason

Why Janet And Jason Are The Good Place's Ultimate Love Story, According To The Actors

How Janet and Jason broke the infinite love mold on The Good Place

From these disgusting articles, here are some choice quotes by the actors and crew involved themselves:

And the fact that this should not happen but it does makes it very special. We think that their relationship is really sweet. There's something very innocent and real about their love even though that is insane

Yeah, I always talk about this whenever I get the question, “How does Janet and Jason work?” And my response is always — and I’ve thought about this a lot — Jason is slowly becoming a little bit more aware and intelligent. He’s evolving a little bit, and through Jason, Janet is able to become more emotionally intelligent. She’s feeling these things, whether it be good or bad, through Jason because that’s what Jason is. He’s all these different emotions that he can’t tame, and Janet’s learning that. They’re kind of evolving.

Okay so perhaps I should clarify that Janet the robot goes through a couple of 'deaths' in which she comes back as a rebooted version, and supposedly more 'human' each time. So yeah I guess it's okay to have sex with robots if they actually become 0.0000001% more human-like each time they come back to life though!!!!! Sorry for overreacting guys!!!!!

Seriously though how the fuck are they even using the word 'romance' in good conscience to describe the 'relationship'

Actually as I'm writing this I'm reminded of this video by Pop Culture Detective on youtube, titled "Abduction as Romance". Jonathan the host/video creator goes through various movies through history and from contemporary cinema of this unbelievably damaging and disturbing trope, where women are shown to eventually fall in love with men who have essentially, in some way or another, abducted them, annyway here it is if anyone's interested

youtube

I’m calling up this video because in the shows used as examples in Jonathan’s thesis, the female characters fall in love with the men just because the men happen to be the only choice they have. Okay I actually only managed to get through a quarter of the video because it was too disturbing and too awful to think about how frequently such plot points are used till today and how so much of the shitty love we see on screen is completely abusive in nature (he’s also made another video called Stalking for Love which I’m sure is as eye-opening, i haven’t watched it cos i don’t need to lol, i’m already woke thanks), but anyway the bit that I did manage to watch does remind me of this stupid love story from The Good Place that we’re supposed to be moved by. We’re seriously supposed to believe that Janet, through her reboots and whatever awakenings of consciousness she supposedly has, also has feelings for Jason just because he’s the only pathetic dumbass immature enough to think that he has feelings for her because she’s the only person who’s willing to listen and talk to him properly? When ummmm she’s only listening to you because she’s programmed to...?

Honestly I can't be bothered to talk about freaking Janet and Jason anymore

There are other things that suck about this dumb show

I don't know what kind of character development Eleanor (protagonist) goes through in the seasons that succeed that I shall never be audience to, but she remains unlikable in almost every way in season 1. This is even though the entire premise of the plot is that she learns to become a better person with each day, struggling to distance herself from her past (on earth) where she was every caricature of a selfish, cruel, demeaning, unlikable person ever. The few and short flashbacks we get to her earthly past are so annoyingly annoying that it made it almost impossible for me to continue to care for this charatcer her in her afterlife. I know, being in the profession that i am, i should have a great deal more empathy for her and where she's coming from (and i would if the show was not so fucking shitty), so i'm not hating on the fact that she was such a bad person, more so that the creators of the show did little to give us anything real to hold on to at all. Between boringly unreal dialogue, stilted acting typical of American sitcoms, overly defined character traits again typical of dated, unchallenging and unsophisticated American sitcoms, I honestly can't understand how on earth this is rated 97% on rotten tomatoes... I mean I guess if I actually read the reviews I'd understand but hehe I'm not about that open-minded, balanced POV narrative okie? :)

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Updates: Haha so ummm eventually I was too bored / curious so I decided to give this show like it’s fourth chance or something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire series and yes I cried as fuck and yes this series made me feel many feels and no I shall neither take back anything of what I said above nor clarify how or what made me change my opinion on it nor elaborate on why I ended up rather enjoying it :-) bye bye

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writeessaywork · 4 years

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How to Write a Book Report

Book reports provide you with a chance to learn more about a book, understanding it deeper, and examining the author’s purpose. Book reports vary from guide reviews because they allow you to provide a straightforward summary of the specific text. To write an excellent book report, you must read the guide and note all necessary details. Start with a plan — it's a very useful thing that will streamline your whole writing procedure significantly. Clarify all information about your project to prepare for analysis. Make certain you know the deadline, options that come with formatting, as well as a required term matter. Spend special attention to citation formats. Read the whole guide, using notes. We advise finding a peaceful spot where you can focus and read without getting distracted. Note interesting facts about main figures and land twists. Don’t forget to simply take quick pauses every hour to let your brain organize the latest information. Additionally you require sufficient time for reading as the more time you have got, the greater amount of details you can easily note and employ inside report. We suggest not using various guide summaries available on the internet because they cannot provide you with all necessary data. You is not sure such summaries are accurate and real. Mark all details that make you puzzled or curious about. Highlight of good use quotations that will act as research inside report. Spend your particular attention to the main setting of this book. As soon as you’ve collected all necessary information, get to the overview. It’s your program of what the report will appear like. You have to establish the structure associated with the report, drawing up sentences within a proper purchase. Each part must express a specific point or explain a certain information. When you’ve done very first draft, look it over and make sure your paragraphs tend to be logically connected, offering a natural movement of ideas. Composing an outline may take time, but you’ll be rewarded with this task while writing the report. Understand that the planned construction is not tight: you can easily change it out throughout the writing procedure if you'd like. Start with the intro section which must range from the author’s title while the title of the book. The start of your report must grab your visitors’ interest by having an interesting fact or vivid quote that presents the key concept of the book. We suggest writing a brief summary of guide within the last paragraph for the introduction. Ensure your introduction isn’t too long: it must take from 2 to 10 phrases. Begin the primary part of the report composing by describing the setting of book, including most crucial places. After that write a summary of the land, mentioning the most crucial occasions. Explain the way they impacted characters, and talk about the factors behind these events. Introduce figures and clarify what role they perform into the guide and just why these are generally very important to the comprehension of the author’s concept. You'll compose a particular section of the report, considering the look of figures, their particular actions, and intentions. Read the full article

#exampleofagoodlabreport

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vondehnvisuals · 5 years

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Good evening every One, and welcome to the Tuesday ‘Tell A Vision’ Edition of The Good News Journal, I am Great-Full to have You here with Me.

Today I Will be tall King about a ‘new’ Netflix series that was ‘recommended’ for Me by Netflix as a 98% probability ‘match’. I checked out the brief intro which is tall King about a ‘secret’ group of individuals known as ‘The Family’ who are alleged to be controlling the world from behind the scenes. I put the Word secret in parenthesis because if it’s a series on Netflix, it’s really not that secret, is it?

I was very intrigued. Partially because I have been thing King about a new Show for the Tuesday Edition, but mostly because it was a 98% match. The odd thing about that, is that I’m not sure why it would be a 98% match. Lately, I’ve been watching ‘Marco Polo’, before that I watched the series ‘OA’, and before that I was watching ‘Sense8’ (though lost interest at the beginning of season two, but I may give it another try at some point). The point is, I really don’t watch programs like this on Netflix; Netflix is for when I Wish to Give My brain a break and enjoy something purely for entertainment purposes.

The other intriguing thing about the recommendation was the timing. I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been thing King about all kinds of alternative Ways to resolve My outstanding Issues with both the Salvation Army and the government of Canada without having to file any more law suits. If I could have My Wish, I would remain virtually anonymous with the exception of My Blog. I Wish I could spend My time Writing about potential solutions for the world’s problems that already do exist, and Trust that those responsible for making them happen would get things done. That’s really My dream. The more I’m compelled to drag dis-Honourable individuals into Court, the more attention I am drawing to My Self in My Microcosm, and that’s really not something I Wish for.

Returning to the topic at Hand, I decided I would check out the first episode of ‘The Family’, just to see what it was all about. Almost immediately, there were Signs that drew Me in. Soon I was Inspired to take Notes, knowing this would be My next ‘Tell A Vision’ Interpret-A-Sean. You Will notice the first quote mentioned in the series is 137, and for Me, the number 37 is always a Sign from the Universe to ‘Pay Attention’. Even more interesting, is the quotation itself, especially with respect to My de-Coding of ‘Babalon’.

“Oh daughter of Babalon who are to be destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh the little ones and dasheth them against the stones.”

Lust: The Central Quest-Ion of the Matter

TRUMPS XI – Lust Queen of Disks, Princess of Disks

The Tower; The Magus, Fortune.

Queen of Swords; 4 of Cups – Luxury, 10 Swords – Ruin

Prince of Disks; Prince of Wands, 2 of Cups, Love

I simply could not ignore the mention of Babylon, especially considering how much time I have spent tall King about it here, and what that represents in Man’s fiction of Law. Babylon represents the ‘Citizen Ship’, Sailing (for Sail) the [Holy] See of Commercial Admiralty Water. If We look at the sequence of the Cards, knowing that The Tower and the two Cards on either side represent the ‘Natural’ progression of the central Idea, even the Tarot is telling Us that the Tower of Babylon is about to fall. This is precisely what I was referring to yesterday when I suggested that The Tower represents a much Grander Idea than the Salvation Army, but because the Microcosm reflects the Macrocosm in all things, the Salvation Army is the ‘Seven Nation Army’ Standing in My Way (Presently), and may have some relation-Ship as to how long Man can expect to wait for the fall of Babylon in Man’s Macrocosm… Just an Idea, timing is one of the Elements of the Tarot I have never been Good at.

There were a couple of other Ideas that stood out for Me right away. The Family is a group of individuals ‘bonding in Christ’. That is the best Way I know to summarize the central Ideology of the group. When the undercover reporter gets into one of the fraternity houses, he is told that they ‘appreciate’ and read from the Bible, but they don’t Give it too much credence and don’t call themselves Christian because they feel the central Ideas upon which the Bible was founded are misunderstood and incorrect. Well, that just happens to be how I feel about modern religion, too. Nothing worse than sitting in a chapel and listening to a man recite Biblical Versus with little to no understanding of their True meaning and zero experiential knowledge of God; yet that’s what most of modern religion is, the blind leading the blind.

Then they showed a cover of a Bible with an Image of a butterfly on the front. Perhaps obviously, the butterfly represents Transformation. The journalist was also encouraged to ignore all sections of the Bible ‘except the apostles’, MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN. That got My attention because that is what My Friend had said to Me, too – the very same Friend who Gifted Me with the NEW WORLD TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES I cited yesterday. When a Man tells Me something he feels he was instructed by God to tell Me, I Heed those Words as if they were spoken by God (because Man is God’s instrument of expression). So GENESIS and MATTEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN, also happen to be the only sections of the Bible I have read in their entirety.

The other thing I have said to People who call themselves Christian or are interested in Christian teaching, is that the only thing One really needs to pay attention to is the example of Christ. ‘The Family’ has Created their own book that exclusively deals with the teachings of Christ, it is simply called ‘Jesus’. It is the only book they are to reference for guidance.

I Wish to cover all of the Notes/Quotes from My first Page before Signing off, though I Will likely do at least two more Interpret-A-Sean’s before continuing with the second of the Matrix trilogy (which Will soon be a quad-ology, as a fourth film has been confirmed with original Stars Carrie Ann-Moss and Keanu Reeves, and Lana Wachowski directing).

“They can’t handle the Truth.”

This is a line I Wished to speak about because I have suggested that this was the reason Jesus had to ‘die’ on the Cross. In ‘The Family’ they support this Idea by suggesting that only the disciples of Christ were ready for His teaching, the rest of the world was not ready and could not handle it. We simply had not evolved enough Spiritually as a collective for Christ to fully Establish God’s Kingdom at that Time. The ‘Second Coming’, when Christ is prophesied to accomplish Peace, represents a Spiritual evolution among the collective, a time when the world Will be ready to receive the teachings of Christ. That time is Now (or very near).

One of their other fundamental beliefs is that God chooses People for leadership.

“King David was chosen – the future King is Coming”

The other reason I decided to focus on ‘The Family’ for My ‘Interpret-A-Sean’, is because I have a very, very, strong belief that the People who are actually running this world, are Good People. I believe they genuinely know the Truth of God and Mimic that Entity in Man’s Macrocosm, Acting as the ‘Wizard behind the curtain’. There are even references to this Idea made in the series. And I should probably also clarify that I am not suggesting ‘The Family’ is that group of individuals, though I believe those individuals are responsible for bringing ‘The Family’ together and choosing its representatives.

“No One knows the Son except the Father, and no One knows the Father except the Son, and those whom the Son chooses to reveal Him Self.”

I am going to leave You with another quote from the Bible presented in the docuseries (though it is from GENESIS, which ‘The Family’ deems less important than the Four-mentioned apostles). It relates to Babylon, which was the Central Focus of My last Tarot read, so I don’t believe the quote to be a coincidence, as it speaks specifically to the destruction of Man’s Language. (From the New Earth Translation of the Holy Scriptures).

Jehovah then said; “Look! They are One People with One Language, and this is what they have started to do. Now there is nothing that they may have in Mind to do that Will be impossible for them. Come! Let us come down there and confuse their Language in Order that they may not understand One another’s Language.” So Jehovah scattered them from there over the entire face of the Earth, and they eventually left off building the city.”

Rather interesting, no? Why would God Wish to smite a People who had become like God? Are God and the LORD the same thing? (Jehovah is said to represent God by Way of Hebrew translation and in accordance with the proper Sound of God’s name by Way of the Tetragrammaton (הוה).

Finally, I Will leave You with ‘The Family’s Central Vision.

God-Led Leadership

The series does seem to Wish to paint a sinister picture of ‘The Family’, and I Will be tall King more about that in the next edition, but this is the Good News Journal, and the series very much supports My belief that God is the only real authority governing this Earth, and that’s a Good thing!

Love and Blessings,

Volume LXXVIII: The Tuesday Tell A Vision Edition; My Interpret-A-Sean of ‘The Family’ Good evening every One, and welcome to the Tuesday 'Tell A Vision' Edition of The Good News Journal, I am Great-Full to have You here with Me.

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valenzuelaclau-blog · 7 years

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reflection #5 technology class .

For search different information, I try to put the word exactly that I need to find. Because if I put something minus unspecific maybe appear one million of result about that word and I can have the information that really needs.

Another thing that I do, is remembered in the historial of google, is a good idea, because if I need to do some work or some investigation and before I visit the different page with a lot of information that can work me for this time, put in historial and this can help me. I use the minus operator this can remove many unwanted results and a have information more specific.

In my case, something that always does is, when I need to find something that I don't what is, first put the word in the search google, and take the item where says images this is very easy to my for have one idea more clarify about of the that I need to find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0DQfwc72PM How to search for exactly phrase or quote, when you put a phrase google privilege every coincidence inside the phrase for giving you a result, and if you need to find a real specific information in youtube showed how do you use the correct form to find a better result , for example for only put quotation marks help you to short the result that doesn't work . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsbp0GQHOGc# Google try to help you the more possible, because if you write a bad sentence or you don't write the correct way google says did you mean that or those, and give you a correct translation or some suggestion for you can find everything that you want.

I never preoccupated for if the page is fake or not. For finding a friend in another country, don't be easy, because many people doesn't serious and, I speak with a lot person and recently since one week ago I find one person, who share information .

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nostalgebraist · 7 years

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I saw a post about the Homestuck game and tried to remember liking Homestuck. I mean, I still like Homestuck -- the parts of it I liked have not changed (well, except for the blue arms) since I read them back in 2011, and although my taste has probably changed, that’s not what’s making me see it this way. I think what’s happened is basically that I’ve grown to dislike Andrew Hussie, and that makes it hard to immediately enjoy (as opposed to “enjoy by remembering how I used to enjoy it”) anything in his very distinctive style.

I should clarify -- Andrew Hussie may well be a great guy if you know him in person, I have no idea and don’t mean to suggest ill of him. By “dislike Andrew Hussie” I largely mean “dislike Andrew Hussie’s style,” but it’s more than that -- maybe “dislike Andrew Hussie’s creative persona.” His public comments on his work, and his pattern of behavior (in update schedule, interactions with fans, etc.) seems like it forms a continuous whole with the style. I’ll just write “Andrew Hussie” in quotes, to distinguish this from the real human being.

“Hussie” feels very . . . limited. There’s a brilliance to his style, but you get the feeling he couldn’t possibly create anything that wasn’t obviously created by him; you don’t get the feeling he ever learned the ordinary rules of art or fiction or humor or even the English language, although it’s easy not to care, since his breaking of rules is so often clever or interesting rather than just clumsy. He can write, for instance, in this particular tone of ironic grandiloquence which is full of crunchy, tasty turns of phrase and arresting images and metaphors, but you don’t ever see him dial this down to an “normal,” unironic, subtler elevated style -- you get the feeling he can’t do any of the constituent pieces on their own, just the whole thing, like a gesture he can do with his hands but can’t explain. He has his own distinctive sense of humor, which is obsessed with fiction tropes (specifically, declaring that reality “should” follow tropes, whether it really will or not), and with lovingly detailed ribbing towards “bad” media. This is often hilarious by anyone’s standards, but he does it -- that specific brand of humor, down to the individual beats sometimes -- more consistently and repetitively than anyone would unless they couldn’t do anything else.

“Hussie” also has a creative persona which resists all criticism and asks all to trust in the artist’s sacred creative vision. This fits with the style: he cannot adapt to criticism, he cannot be what anyone else wants him to be, he can only do the one thing he knows how to do, and push it to further and further heights, and trust in the fact that the rest of humanity has generally been delighted with this eccentric performance so far. The voice he uses when talking as “Andrew Hussie, creator of MSPA” feels not too distinct from “Andrew Hussie, the narrator of MSPA”; both write in a way that superficially feels very artificial, knowingly bombastic, hiding everything behind an ironic wink and an assurance that if you just relax and let yourself enjoy the show, the master magician will deliver. This can be immensely frustrating, because you want him at some point to let up the act, to step out from the various ironic personae and “this is so much like that one bad movie” framing devices and talk to you straight, as a creative adult who puppeteers personae and framing for fun and profit. But that never, ever happens. Whether or not this is as deep as Hussie goes, it is as deep as “Hussie” goes. Scratch the surface and you keep finding more surface; nothing is ever not a joke or a reference or a put-on, nothing is ever not implicitly in quotation marks (or more aptly, being recorded on a low-budget movie camera). The hall of campy mirrors is endless.

If it isn’t already clear, I find this all very #relatable, and have often felt like I am doing tricks for the world in exactly this way. But maybe it’s this that makes “Hussie” just so frustrating to me. You want him to perform the final trick that is making the audience forget they’re at a magic show, to perform so hard he breaks through into the territory where you literally can’t tell his “acting” from anyone else’s “real behavior.” I feel like I’ve reached that point in a lot of my, well, life, and it feels wonderful. Whether he wants to or not, “Hussie” never quite gets there, and being who I am, it can be painful to watch.

Actually, he did get there, for a time. Homestuck at its height can give you this feeling of transcendence, where every frame you can try to box it into does not fully capture it, and for a time “Hussie’s” style feels not notably limited but notably limitless. The geeky, referential comedy is pulled off with such finesse that it feels like the work of some godlike being who’s whimsically decided to try its hand at a dorky webcomic and (accidentally, because it performs any act with equal godlike power) creates a dorky webcomic that is better than most things on planet earth. The absurd plot, full of tropes and comic book powers, is somehow sustained by a crystalline deterministic structure of incredible intricacy which you feel you’d need a seminar course to fully understand. The characters are crude cartoons, and yet they speak in such eerily animate voices you can’t quite believe any of them aren’t real people. Everything works on every level of irony and non-irony, self-awareness and naivete, crudity and brilliance. You stop checking Hussie’s antics for formal compliance with ordinary-person standards because he keeps passing your tests, even though he’s doing something clearly ridiculous.

Who cares if this weird kid’s fourth-grade teacher says he can’t do any of the homework and should be held back a grade? He just proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Admittedly, instead of concluding the proof with the customary “Q.E.D.” or Halmos symbol, he scrawled “OMG BUTT LAZERZ” all over the final page, but you see that’s actually a masterstroke of construction when one takes into consideration its echoes of his earlier work [five page explanation follows]. The weird kid is being being nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is for his novel Stacey is Annoying Because She Keeps Asking Why I Get to Have Cookies Even When I Have Told Her a Lot of Times That My Mom Packs My Lunch and I Don’t Really Get a Choice, Also She Keeps Talking About Weird Girl Stuff: A Comic Opera (in Prose). The synopsis doesn’t really do it justice, but read it, and you will understand.

uu: WHAT MOST GIFTED ARTISANS WILL TELL YOU. IS THAT. CIRCLES ARE BASICALLY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO DRAW. uu: TRUST ME. uu: IT'S LIKE A PARADOX. A SHAPE WITHOUT ANGLES. WHAT?? uu: SO I FUCKING CHEATED. uu: I NAVIGATED THE IRRATIONAL PERIMETER BY MAKING A LOT OF EASILY UNDERSTANDABLE, TOTALLY LOGICAL MARKS. FORMING A WHOLE BUNCH OF LITTLE RIGHT ANGLES. uu: THE CHEATING PART HAPPENS WHEN I DO THIS A LOT. SO IT GOES IN A ROUND DIRECTION. uu: THIS ONE CAME OUT WELL I THINK. BUT THERE'S ROOM TO IMPROVE. uu: I HAVE THEORIZED THAT IF I KEEP MAKING BOGUS CIRCLES LIKE THIS. uu: WHILE DRAWING MORE AND MORE ANGLES. BUT SMALLER. SO SMALL THAT YOU START CAN'T SEEING THEM. uu: THAT THE ILLUSION OF THE CIRCLE WILL BE COMPLETE! AND PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IN THE FAKE CIRCLE. LIKE A BUNCH OF SUCKERS. uu: I BET NOBODY HAS THOUGHT OF THAT CIRCLE STRATEGY. I THINK I'M THE FIRST AT THIS IDEA. AND BEST AT IT ALREADY. uu: PEOPLE THINK I'M DUMB. ESPECIALLY THE VOICE IN MY HEAD. uu: AND THEY MAY BE RIGHT ABOUT ME BEING DUMB. uu: BUT WHEN IT COMES TO THE SPECIAL WAY I DO THINGS. WHICH IS ALWAYS ACTUALLY. THE PERFECT WAY. uu: I AM. uu: A GENIUS!

But after 2011 “Hussie” was up to nothing except his old tricks, and those tricks got a little worn out, and “Hussie” was always -- reliably, infuratingly -- himself. The finale was an animation about a frog, which the weird kid had been dreaming about for a decade -- executed by a team of up-and-coming artists who had become his acolytes. It was, sources quote him as saying, “totally epic.” The weird kid’s next novel is also about a frog, because frogs are cool, but this one has a funny top hat and raps about how dumb Stacey is. The new frog’s flow is impeccable, but the critics focus sensibly on other matters, and they are ruthless this time.

In my fullest period of Homestuck obsession, I frequently compared “Hussie” to Nabokov. This was a cute way of elevating “Hussie” and making myself sound smart, but there’s a real similarity there: the arrogant, seemingly artificial public persona; the unique and somewhat cramped sensibility, which is always great without stopping to be good; the indifference to all creative work besides their own and certain cherished reference ponts; the endless self-satisfied running-the-hands-over the artist’s own prior work and pre-existing obsessions; the elevation of those obsessions, in all their petty particularity, to higher and higher reaches of formal brilliance and technical achievement. (See also.) They take the treasured trivialities of their former years and make them “worthy of legitimate attention” by associating them with ingenuities of formal structure; to coin a word, they’re “nostalgebraists.”

Nabokov fooled them all, and got his star on the canonical map in the end, but “Hussie” may never pull it off. It feels, anyway, like he had a chance and then lost it.

#blah blah blah #late night bull session #homestalgebra #vladimir nabokov #the northern caves

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webbygraphic001 · 5 years

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7 Ways to Convey Sarcasm in Web Content

Pop quiz: which of the following statements is sarcastic?

Edge is actually a kind of decent browser, just missing some features.

Writing CSS using JavaScript is a viable and sensible way to get things done, now that we use JS for everything else. We might as well.

Brutalism as a movement has, in some ways, made some of us into better designers.

It can be hard to tell, can’t it? For the record, it’s number 2. But really, you might have seen people say each one of those things somewhere on the Internet, and some of them even meant that second one. And then, some of them said it and didn’t mean it, but other people thought they meant it and got mad at them. Even in real life, I’ve occasionally said something out loud that I thought had a clearly sarcastic tone, only to have to clarify my statement afterward.

As web designers (who are often tasked with also making website content), you may run into a situation where sarcasm is called for, and you have to make sure people don’t get it wrong. That’s a tough call. We live in a world where it can be darned difficult to tell sarcastic opinions from trolling.

We live in a world where people aren’t always ready to see sarcasm, or even humor for what it is. You sometimes have to prime your audience to expect something funny, rather than something glaringly stupid or offensive. This is why comedians have “hype men”, or other opening acts to warm up an audience. This is why sarcasm on Twitter often goes very, very wrong.

So how do you convey this to your users? How do you tell them that sarcasm’s coming? Well, there are a few simple ways:

Don’t Tell Them

This approach depends on the apparent absurdity of your statement to make the joke work. Now, I already listed a few reasons above as to why you wouldn’t want to use this approach. Well, the fact is that it can actually work, but only under very specific circumstances.

Using sarcasm with no warning works only when you know your audience very well, and they are all on the same page already. For example, if you tell a sarcastic joke about plumbing to an audience of all plumbers who share the same baseline of knowledge, you can be reasonably sure they’ll all get it. Throw a few lawyers into the audience, and this approach fails.

Tell Them in the Most Literal Way

One of the safest ways of communicating sarcasm that I’ve found is with formatting. Yes, formatting. I’ll literally put my sarcasm in bracket-tags like this:

[sarcasm]XML has no practical application outside of MS Office.[/sarcasm]

It has the advantage of being simple, obvious, and very difficult to dispute. On the downside, it’s not very subtle. However, on the Internet, it’s usually not worth being subtle.

Less Literal Formatting

Okay, so you want to convey a sarcastic or ironic statement without tags. Fine. There are a couple of tricks that started with the print industry, and still sort of work online today. The first and most popular one is quotation marks. Quotation marks are best used to indicate a sarcastic tone for short phrases, or even single words, and are the basis for the every popular “air quotes” gesture people use in real life.

For full sentences or paragraphs, you can use italics. It’s especially useful if you’re actually quoting someone, like so: “Oh sure,” said Bob, “just go ahead tweet sarcastic things at people with no contextualization. That’ll work out well.”

Use Memes

Some memes are an almost inherently sarcastic form of communication. When people see a known sarcastic meme coming, they know what to expect. Mind you, this only works if your audience knows the meme in question, to it’s a situational tool at best.

Illustration

Illustrations (such as comics, for example) are a good way to visually set the tone for things you want to say. Show someone some comic strip art, and their brain will probably be primed for some humor and sarcasm. At least in the west, sarcastic comics are incredibly common, and form the basis of a collective experience of irony. They’re generally hard to misinterpret.

Use Audio or Video

Sarcasm is far easier to convey when people can actually hear you use a dramatic, facetious tone of voice. It’s not a 100% guaranteed solution, but it’s a lot more likely to convey your tone correctly if you keep the sarcasm relegated to your multimedia content.

(Just don’t be like me. Most of my sarcasm comes out with a very deadpan voice and blank facial expression. It’s a bad habit and it confuses people.)

Sarcasm in Microcopy

Microcopy isn’t specifically a medium for sarcasm or jokes, but it’s been used that way a lot. Designers often insert humor into microcopy as a way to “humanize” a user experience with any given product. Just once, though, I want to see a sales form with text that says “Wooo! Money! We like money!” buried somewhere in it. As of yet, I haven’t seen anyone who has the sheer cheek to pull off something like that.

Like everything else on this list, of course, you’ll have to watch out for context. If microcopy on your site is typically used for providing plain, helpful instructions, suddenly including an ironic statement might throw people off. If your microcopy is going to be sarcastic, it has to be sarcastic from the very beginning.

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hey-i-wrote-a-story · 7 years

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Chapter 14 The Four Young Hoodlums

They ran through the darkened streets laughing. They’d been doing a lot of laughing lately. It felt good, and made for a nice change. Aadesh and Kaitlyn took the lead, holding hands, doing their best to keep pace with one another. They’d been doing a lot more of that these days, too. Erin was close behind them, her requisite huge coat flapping in her wake. She was never without it, and kept it on regardless the weather. You’d think the weight of it would hold her back, but when the group took to running, it was almost as if it added to her speed, like a reverse sail. Freddie, as per usual, held up the rear, perpetually looking back over his shoulder to see if they were being pursued. They never were, not anymore. Freddie considered himself the team’s lookout, but in truth he had just never had this much fun before, and certainly not for this long, and was expecting it to all come crashing down any minute. His giggling and rush of excitement only increased when they’d get away with it again. Tonight they hadn’t gotten away with much, but it was a great rush all the same.

The quartet rounded a corner and slipped down an alleyway. Once in the shadows, Kaitlyn pulled Aadesh over to the wall and began kissing him passionately. Erin saw this routine unfolding for the umpteenth time and did her best not to roll her eyes right out of her head. She’d have muttered for them to get a room, had they any room to go to. Erin then spotted Freddie, lingering at the head of the alley, still craning his neck to see if they were about to get caught. Erin grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Get back here, out of the light, genius.”

“I just didn’t want anybody to see us!”, the nervous Freddie tried to justify himself.

“Well, sticking your head out under the nearest streetlight is the best way to avoid that, I’d think”, she snarked back, roughly pushing her red-headed companion to the back of the small alley where he collided with a dumpster. On contact with the rusty metal refuse bin, Freddie started and leapt forward by several feet.

“Hey! Watch it!”

Erin was about to make one of her caustic remarks, chiding Freddie for being such a big baby, until she glanced back and saw what she had unintentionally shoved him into. “Oh, hey. Sorry about that. I didn’t know that was back there. You oka—“

Freddie cut her off quickly, not wanting to have that conversation again. “Just be careful, alright?”

Erin held up both hands. Alright, alright. She looked back at Kaitlyn and Aadesh. Freddie looked to. The romantic duo were still going at it, romantically. Aadesh ran his fingers through Kaitlyn’s long hair, Kaitlyn gripped Aadesh’s shoulders tightly as they pressed against the alley wall, unmindful and uncaring about their grimy surroundings. The kissed passionately, never coming up for air. Erin grew irritated and Freddie was getting bored.

Finally, Freddie tapped the shoulder of his best friend. Aadesh came up for air and glanced at his ginger pal, his expression almost one of surprise that anyone else was there. Freddie tapped his wrist in a checking-my-watch gesture and then spun his index finger in quick circles. Wrap it up, bro. Aadesh smiled, stifling a laugh, and then gazed into Kaitlyn’s eyes.

“Just showing some appreciation for my awesome psychic girlfriend.”

“Technically”, Kaitlyn corrected him, “I don’t know that I qualify as psychic, given the parameters of my gifts.”

Aadesh drew her close again, resting his forehead against hers. “Like I care.”

Erin scoffed. “The parameters of your gifts. Spare me, you guys.”

“Don’t be all huffy!”, Freddie scolded her. “We had an excellent night. Another score for us!”

Again Erin rolled her eyes. It was becoming her signature look. “Some score. We got onto the Whitmore Club’s golf course and had a golf cart race. Big time, guys.”

“No, we cleverly broke onto the Whitmore’s private golf course”, Freddie stressed.

“Thanks to information gained from the lovely Kaitlyn’s psychic visions”, Aadesh interjected.

“Thanks to that”, Freddie amended, “and engaged in a spectacular race of golf carts which evolved into a genuine golf cart joust.” He clicked his tongue, snapped his fingers and pointed at Erin. “Beat that.”

“If only you’d give me the chance”, Erin grumbled.

Aadesh shot her a look of disapproval, his arms still around his girlfriend. “Oh come on, it was fun.”

“You were cheering right along with the rest of us up until Freddie upended your guys’ cart”, Kaitlyn pointed out.

“That was a strategic move that went unexpectedly awry”, Freddie declared.

Erin shrugged. “Okay, yeah. It was fun. I just think we’re underutilizing the new tools we have at our disposal.”

Kaitlyn raised her eyebrow in an ironic show of offense. “Are you calling me a tool?”

It was good they could all make light of it now, especially Kaitlyn. It had certainly not started out that way. When Kaitlyn first told her three closest friends (her only friends) that she had been having “visions” as she called them, there was great concern for her grip on reality, particularly with the other three knowing of her mother’s mental history. But as her claims persisted, growing more and more vivid and detailed each time, Aadesh had arrived at the perfect solution to dispel his girlfriend’s delusions; they’d simply put them to the test. Showing her that her supposed hidden glimpses into the recent past were only bizarre dreams or stress-induced moments of imagination was the best way to show Kaitlyn that all was still relatively okay. His method would be doubly effective, Aadesh thought, with her three closest friends showing their mutual support. So they investigated the next “vision”.

And it panned out.

“Never heard anybody scream at such a high-pitch before”, Erin said, shaking her head while suppressing a laugh.

“Especially not a guy”, Aadesh remarked.

“A guy who happens to be country prosecutor Anthony Taguine”, Freddie emphasized.

“Coke-snorting, easily-bought, money laundering county prosecutor Anthony Taguine”, Aadesh elaborated.

“He sounded like a little girl”, Erin grinned.

“A little girl on helium”, Freddie agreed.

“I give up”, Aadesh said to Kaitlyn. “How did you know Tanguine was deathly afraid of goats?”

“Or which part of the Emerson’s back fencing had fallen so we could nab such a goat to tie to his front porch railing?”, Erin probed.

Kaitlyn was all smiles. “It was because of something that happened to him at a petting zoo once”, she explained. “He never got over it.”

The other three exchanged puzzled glances. “I’d think we would’ve heard about something like that at some point—“, Erin began.

“It was when he was 7”, Kaitlyn clarified.

Okay, that may have been a lucky guess. Or perhaps Katlyn had overheard something somewhere, noticed some bit of news or local gossip on some online bulletin board she’d scrolled past, not even realizing she was absorbing the information. Another test was called for.

And that one passed, too.

“Damn”, Freddie marveled, leaning over Erin’s shoulder to read the headline on the screen of her beat-up laptop. “Decorated police officer Louis F. Morse arrested for involvement in illegal dog fighting ring.”

“This the same Officer Morse who shot that little Chihuahua because he said it had quote-advanced on him in a threatening manner-unquote?”, asked Aadesh.

“The same”, Erin, said, scrolling through the article, silently relishing the various names of hated authority figures who were embroiled in the scandal.

“An anonymous source alerted local News Team 15”, Freddie read aloud. He glanced at Kaitlyn. “I wonder who that could be?”

“You don’t have to wonder”, Erin stated. “Considering she told us about it beforehand.”

Kaitlyn sat in the corner, arms folded over her chest, smiling. “Morons shouldn’t have held the fights in the same place every time, I guess. Oh, well.”

So three times’ the charm, right? But that vision (no longer framed with quotation marks) proved to be right as well.

Kaitlyn tossed the new cell phones to her friends, who examined them with wide-eyed glee. “Delivery guy doesn’t believe in locking the back of the truck when he takes his lunch break. Guess he won’t make that mistake again.”

So it went. The following vision was correct, as was the next and the next. Worry that had become suspicion was now growing excitement. Tests had become adventures.

It was progressively easy to sneak out of the halfway house, now that Kaitlyn had glimpses into current security rounds schedules, habitual employee trips to the vending machine or the toilet, and the odd fault in the system. Faults had become easy for Kaitlyn to spot once she learned how to look for them. Faults like a certain gate that a night watchman at the exclusive country club left unlocked for extramarital rendezvous with the club’s buxom events planner. A gate which provided easy access for four young ne’er-do-wells to slip in and engage in a bit of golf cart joyriding.

That little adventure behind them, the foursome mused about what the watchman’s face might look like as he returned from his tryst to find the course and the carts in a disheveled state. They laughed as they made their way home, or to what currently passed as their home.

“I’m thinking he’ll go like this”, Freddie said, striking an exaggerated pose of shocked surprise. “Can you hone in on him”, he asked Kaitlyn, “So you can see how close I am?”

“You know it doesn’t work like that”, she chided.

Considering that, Aadesh, his arm still draped affectionately around Kaitlyn’s shoulders, looked at Erin. “What did you mean by saying we’re underutilizing Kaitlyn’s visions?”

Erin shrugged. “I just think there’s a lot more we could be doing than wrecking a golf course, is all.”

Kaitlyn furrowed her brow. “Such as?”

Erin’s expression became one of the sly plotter. “You ever think about how we might get ourselves some wheels?”

“We’ve got my truck”, Freddie jumped in.

“I mean some real wheels”, Erin said, ignoring Freddie’s crestfallen look. “If you were to concentrate on something specifically…I dunno, a general idea or desire…you think you could find us a car?”

Kaitlyn offered a slight frown and considered it. She had no idea.

“It’s worth a shot”, Aadesh nudged.

Kaitlyn’s fingers danced across the small keypad, deactivating the building’s alarm system.

“So how did you know about--?”, Aadesh started to ask.

“Owner’s nephew runs the place on Thursdays and alternate Saturdays. Has a memory like a sieve, so he’s got the alarm code written down and stashed over there for him to refer to.” Kaitlyn jerked her head in the direction of the now-dark neon letters that adorned the building’s façade. Everyone looked quizzically in that direction. Before anyone could ask the question, Kaitlyn added, “Behind the ‘L’. The first one.”

There was a soft beep and the door opened silently. “Come on”, she said.

Inside the roller rink, Freddie wheeled in large circles across the floor as lights from a mirrored globe danced across the ceiling as music unchanged or updated in twenty years played on crackly speakers. Aadesh laced up his own skates, looking forward to a slow song to skate along to while holding Kaitlyn’s hand. It was a bit corny, but he was a romantic at heart.

Erin was the only one not getting into the spirit of things. She sat nearby on a worn vinyl seat looking annoyed. It was kind of her default expression. “When I said wheels”, she said, an edge in her voice.

“Roller skates have wheels”, Aadesh pointed out. “Don’t be an old grump. Relax for two seconds. Grab some skates and join us for a spin already.” He held his hand out to Kaitlyn, who took it, gliding gracefully up beside him.

“I told you it wasn’t an exact science, these visions”, Kaitlyn reminded her. She and Aadesh wheeled over to the rink and joined Freddie, who spun in tight circles with his arms extended as some disco diva sang about how she loved the night life.

“Thing is”, Erin said, not getting up, “I actually like Mr. Sanocki. He’s an alright guy.”

“Everybody likes Mr. Sanocki”, Aadesh said, rolling slowly past. “But it’s not like we’re robbing his place. We’re just having a late-night skate without the price of admission. Just this once.”

“We’ll set the alarm when we go”, Kaitlyn said, taking Aadesh’s arm and making a slow turn to the left. “No one will ever know we were here.”

“So we roller skate for free”, Erin huffed. “What a thrill.”

“And eat popcorn!” Freddie fairly slammed into the partition between the rink and the sitting area. He leaned over it, balancing himself on his elbows as he kicked his feet in the air behind him. “We can eat a TON of popcorn! You ever see how much he has to throw out every night?? We’ll be doing him a favor.”

“That’s a great idea”, Aadesh teased. “Popcorn for everybody!”

“If you’re not going to skate, you can at least get us some snacks”, Kaitlyn joined in.

“I prefer grape soda, by the way”, Freddie grinned as he pushed off the partition back onto the rink. The night life lady had been replaced by some guy with a deep voice proclaiming someone to be his first, his last, his everything. Whatever that meant. Erin trudged over to the snack bar, wondering whether or not she should spit in Freddie’s grape soda. She flipped up the portion of the counter that allowed for staff entry and grabbed up some striped popcorn bags. She nearly tripped on what lay unseen at her feet.

Then she saw it. Then she screamed.

The other three sped over as fast as they could skate. Erin was not one to scream lightly. And she hadn’t now.

On the floor behind the counter, vacant eyes staring up at the pock-marked ceiling, lay the body of Mr. Sanocki whom everybody liked, his head bashed in by a pair of bloody skates. The floor was sticky and dank, the puddle covering the cracked flooring something other than the usual syrups used to flavor the snow cones. Freddie sped across the carpeted floor and threw up in the drinking fountain.

Aadesh pointed beyond the snack counter to a portion of paneling that had been torn away from the wall. Behind it was a safe, old and flimsy, easily broken into, with its door off the hinges. The roller rink was hardly a huge money maker. The haul could not have been worth the trouble. It had to have been done either out of malice or by someone lost in a narcotic haze.

Popcorn and old music forgotten, the delinquent quartet fled the building. They did not reset the alarm. But they did call 911.

It was another week or so before they dared venture out again in response to one of Kaitlyn’s visions. They opted to keep things small. No focusing on cars or anything on that level. Instead, Kaitlyn thought of simple things like knickknacks and tchotchkes. She hoped it might lead them to the leftovers of some basement rummage sale or an equally innocuous destination. As the four of them stood outside the weather-beaten door of just such a shop, Kaitlyn felt that perhaps she was finally getting the hang of directing, or at least reading, her visions.

“I can’t believe you actually found a place called Eloise’s Attic”, Erin remarked under her breath. There was a clunky wooden sign out front, the type you might have made at a craft fair, of an old woman holding a cat in her arms above a poorly-painted logo compete with little flowers. Charming, Erin thought sarcastically.

“I didn’t even know there was a strip mall over here”, Aadesh said.

“I’m not sure that four ramshackle old shops stuck together in a row constitute a strip mall”, Erin said.

“That was impressive”, Freddie added. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word ‘ramshackle’ in a sentence before.”

Erin was about to smack him upside his ginger head when Kaitlyn spoke. “From what I could tell in what I saw”, and she tapped her temple to indicate what she meant by “saw” as if anyone needed reminding, “this place has been dark for well over a week. So the old lady who runs the shop—“

“That would be Eloise, I’d imagine”, Freddie chimed in.

Kaitlyn continued as if he hadn’t spoken, easily prying open the back door with a credit card. “—is probably out of town. Maybe visiting relatives or something.”

“Probably attending a funeral”, Erin commented.

“So we have a little bit of time”, Kaitlyn finished.

“Okay, remember what we decided”, Aadesh said. “We have a bit of time to explore, but no wrecking anything. We can each take one thing—“

“One small thing”, Kaitlyn emphasized.

“One small thing”, Aadesh agreed, “as a memento of this little adventure, but that’s it. Got it?” Erin and Freddie nodded. And in they went. But they didn’t go in very far.

“Eeww!”, Freddie exclaimed, recoiling. “What stinks in here?”

“It is the shop of an old lady” Aadesh said, placing the back of his hand under his nose. “There tends to be a bit of reek along with that, right?”

Erin stepped forward between the two boys. “That’s a hell of a lot more than old person smell”, she stated. The stench hit her harder as she moved further into the shop, her stomach lurching despite her strong constitution. “Somebody get the lights”, she hissed.

“What?”, Freddie said. “We’re gonna get caught!”

“As if anyone’s gonna see a light on in this place way out here”, Erin snapped. “Besides, if this what I think it is…just find the lights!”

They did. After a bit of stumbling around the wall by the back door, a light switch was found and flipped. Dim yellow lighting from a couple standing lamps with dusty shades illuminated the room as well as their low wattage could. Around the kids was a typical curio shop. Rickety shelves and small stands were littered with run-of-the-mill castoffs and leave-behinds; incomplete tea sets, long-obsolete children’s games, hideous scatter rugs and throws, musty hardcover books absent dust jackets but with plenty of browning pages and boring prose, and an excess of unattractive keepsakes no one wanted to keep. And there, in the midst of it all, behind the centrally-located sales counter, lay none other than old Eloise herself, flat on her back and long dead. Her twisted expression of shock and dismay indicated a sudden heart attack. Her unappealing shop indicated that no one visited enough to either find her or even notice she was missing. Atop her chest was her pet cat. It was jet black (of course it was) and sat proudly over the whole it had ripped in its owner’s chest as it tore into her in order to eat something after being locked inside for so long.

“Oh my God!”, Kaitlyn proclaimed, and turned her head away from the ghastly sight. Aadesh quickly took hold of her and pressed her to his chest. Freddie felt the nausea churning inside him. Erin just stared in disbelief. The cat, on the other hand, licked its lips as it gave the foursome a disdainful glare, clearly annoyed that they had interrupted its extended repast. Without emitting a hiss or a meow, it went back to enjoying its feast.

“Hurry up!”, Kaitlyn cried. “Can’t this thing go any faster??”

Freddie growled behind the wheel of his pickup. “How many times have you ridden in my truck? You think it can suddenly improve on its speed??”

Aadesh put a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Hon, you’ve got to calm down.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Kaitlyn was frantic.

“I understand that if this is because of another one of your visions”, Erin said, “which, by the way, we agreed not to pay attention to anymore for the sake of our collective sanity, we should be moving fast away from whatever this is instead of toward it.”

“I hear that”, Freddie muttered under his breath.

“This time it isn’t about us!”, Kaitlyn snapped. “It’s not just for us to have fun or get away with something—it’s about them!”

“Who?”, Aadesh asked desperately. “Who is them?”

“Gah!”, Kaitlyn rubbed her temples as if her brains might burst out of them. “You’ll see! I don’t want to go into all of it right now, we just need to—come on, Freddie! Go faster!”

“The pedal’s to the floor! What more do you want?!”

What Kaitlyn wanted was not what she, or her friends, was going to get, as they found out soon enough when Freddie rode furiously down the pitted dirt road right up to a dead end. He slammed on the breaks, fishtailing the truck, very nearly smashing into the sign warning of the cutoff and the trees that lay just beyond it.

The four friends were shaken, jostled about the truck by its violent movement, and fumbled about to right themselves and get their bearings.

“What the hell was that?!”, Erin snarled, looking daggers at Freddie.

“Don’t look at me! This is the way she told me to go! Kaitlyn said to take this road, this one right here—apparently not caring what it would do to my axle, or my shocks, such as they are--!”

“Not now”, Aadesh scolded. Then to Kaitlyn, he said, “Where were you taking us, honey? What’s this all about?”

Kaitlyn leaned out the window to see the sign lit by the pickup’s glaring headlights. Three harsh words stared back at her. NO WAY OUT. She stepped out of the cab, legs unsteady, knees shaking.

“I was so sure…”, she mumbled under her breath. “This has to be where it’ll happen…it has to be…”

Aadesh was already behind his girlfriend, hands resting on her shoulders in an attempt to steady her. “Kate, if you would just talk to us.”

Erin was halfway out of the cab, her expression showing that she was about to unleash one of her trademark caustic comments when suddenly she stopped, her head turning quickly to the right. “Hey. Any of you guys hear that?”

The others strained to listen, at first hearing nothing. It was Freddie who picked up on the sound next. “Yeah, I do. People talking…yelling.” At that point, everyone could hear the not-so-distant cries coming from somewhere in the darkness. “Somebody’s having one hell of an argument”, Freddie realized.

Kaitlyn blanched. “We’re on the wrong street”, she gasped.

Spinning on her heel, she dashed around the back of the pickup truck to peer into the woods. There, perhaps some two hundred feet off, were the lights from house windows. The shouting was coming from there, echoing dimly through thick grove of trees with overlapping branches and interwoven roots above ground, which obscured some of the sound. Kaitlyn looked back the way they had come. If they were to pile back in the truck, drive back down the lengthy road, then take the main thoroughfare of lazy curves until they reached the proper street to turn down in order to reach the house, they’d never get there in time. So Kaitlyn started running right into the darkened woods, ducking around trees and avoiding branches with partial success as she raced toward the distant house.

“Kaitlyn!”, Aadesh shouted. “Wait!”

He turned to Erin, who was already a step ahead of him. She had snatched a large metal flashlight which Freddie had tossed her from his glove box. She lobbed it to Aadesh, who caught it easily. Turning it on, Aadesh aimed the beam in Kaitlyn’s general direction and took after her. Erin and Freddie were not far behind, with Erin using the flashlight app on her phone to guide them.

“You’re gonna get hurt!”, Aadesh called after his girlfriend, who paid no attention to him as she stumbled and lurched her way through the legion of tree trunks with their clutching outstretched limbs and twisting uneven roots. “What is going on with you? What is it??”

Kaitlyn stopped for half a heartbeat to turn back to her boyfriend. Hair flying in her face, her eyes wild, she responded, “He didn’t clean his gun!!” Again she was off like a terror.

Aadesh had no idea what she meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it. He quickened his pace as best he could, given the surroundings, and tried to keep up. As they drew closer to the house, the noises became more distinct. A man and a woman arguing, their voices raising in volume and pitch. As they shouted, a baby cried a frightened wail. Kaitlyn and Aadesh were nearly a dozen yards from the house when a shot rang out accompanied by a flash of light. The cries of the baby stopped. A few seconds of terrifying silence were followed by the voices of the man and woman again. The shouts were now shrieks, screams, and tearful babbling. Another shot sounded, the flash that came with it illuminating the house for a split-second. The hysterical voices were gone. Silence took hold once more.

Kaitlyn was crying, her long hair sticking to her face where the tears stained her cheeks. “No, no, no, no, no!”

She made it to the house’s back porch to find the hideous scene laid out before her. To the right, a baby’s crib and wall behind it spattered red. To the left, a woman caught in the struggle to take away the weapon, hung limply from her husband’s arm, her hands still wrapped around the hilt and trigger. Her chest and torso saturated with blood, she slipped down to land on the floor with a sickening thud. In the center of it all, a man, his eyes wild with shock and confusion. In one hand he held a gun, his arm now slick with dripping red. His mouth moved in disbelief, trying to form words of regret and apology, but no sound came out.

It had become a routine. An unnerving, horrible routine. Carl, the husband, had grown to resent the woman whom he felt he had been forced to marry after learning she carried his child. It was her fault, hers and baby’s, that he had to work the godawful job he hated to support them. His life and dreams cut short by responsibility he never asked for. Each Wednesday night, Carl went to the shooting range to blow off steam. Each Thursday evening, he went through an elaborate ritual of cleaning his gun, taking it apart and putting it back together. Any bullets that hadn’t been fired at the range were stored carefully in a hinged wooden box. After work let out Friday, Carl proceeded to get drunk. He came home angry and inebriated, letting all his anger and frustration spill out through foul remarks and shouted obscenities. His tirade would end as it always did, with Carl taking out his gun and waving it around, making mock targets of his wife and child. First he’d point to the bassinette, claiming the child was to blame for his predicament. If that kid had never come into his life, he wouldn’t be trapped as he was. He’d pull the trigger of the empty gun. Click. Then he’d turn on his wife, going on about how it would be even better if they’d never met. If she’d only be gone, too…he’d take aim again. Click. Carl would then shuffle to the bedroom and collapse onto the bed. Saturday would be spent with tears and apologies, declarations of love and a promise to change. Sunday would be filled with flowers and outings, trips to the lake or long drives in the country. All would be forgiven and Monday saw Carl back to work at the job he hated, the job that would by Wednesday, send him back to the shooting range to blow off steam. But this past Thursday, as Kaitlyn saw, Carl’s routine had been interrupted when he was called back into work to help out the night shift. As a result…

Kaitlyn looked the stunned man, this unintended murderer, in the eye as she whispered, “You didn’t clean your gun.”

The man put the gun to his temple, eyes gushing tears as he hoped there was at least one more bullet in the chamber. There was. He fell to the floor beside his betrothed just as Aadesh made it to the door.

“Holy God”, he gasped.

It was perhaps twenty or thirty seconds of terrible silence until Erin arrived. “What the hell is going on here? Were those gunshots? Why did you bring us all the way out here to—“ She also froze upon seeing the aftermath of what had transpired. Freddie was right behind her. Erin turned swiftly, blocking his view. Grabbing Freddie by the shoulders, she spun him around so his back was toward the house. She spoke quietly but sternly in his ear. “Go back to the truck. Just walk and do not turn around. Get in the cab and wait for us. Do not under any circumstances look back. Now move.” Erin gave Freddie a firm shove and Freddie did as he was told. He knew his friends’ moods and behavior well, and he understood that Erin would not have said what she did, the way she said it, if it were not an extreme emergency. Whatever was behind him, Freddie did not want to see it. Rapidly, he returned to the truck.

After more strained silence, Erin said softly, “I thought you couldn’t see what’s going to happen. I thought you could only see glimpses of the past.”

“She can’t”, Aadesh said. “But she can piece things together from what she’s seen and figure out what might happen next.” He swallowed hard. “We have to get out of here. We have no idea who else might’ve heard the shots.” Then he turned to his side, saying, “Kaitlyn, don’t blame yourself for—“ only to find she was no longer there. Both he and Erin looked left and right, expecting to find Kaitlyn right next to them. She was not.

“Where did she go?”, Erin said.

Kaitlyn ran through the woods away from the house and away from the pickup truck. She sobbed, fighting to erase the bloody scene from her mind which lingered before her even when she closed her eyes. Is this what her visions were for? To bring her and her friends to one scene of horror after another? It was bad enough that the three most important people in her life had begun to fear her abilities. Now Kaitlyn was afraid of them too.

There was a distant rumble of thunder and soon thereafter, lightning split the sky. Rain began to fall, mixing with the tears that streaked Kaitlyn’s face. Had she not been so overwhelmed, she would have scoffed at how cliché it seemed to have the scary thunderstorm follow on the heels of the tragedy she’d just witnessed. Thoughts of greater importance occupied her mind. Was she psychically drawn to the bad things because she was a bad person at heart? Were she and her friends inherently evil? Or was she seeing visions which led to the horrible and dark because that was how she saw herself—how all four of them saw themselves? Was this just a prelude to the dark, destructive life the courts predicted for them? Perhaps there was no way to change their course. If so, all that lay ahead was bleak.

Desperate and afraid, for herself and even of herself, Kaitlyn did something she had never done before and would never do again. She forced her visions. Her head was ravaged with the pain of a thousand razor blades as she cried out into the night. Falling to her knees, she shouted up into the downpour as the thunder covered her cries. Take the visions away, she pleaded. Get them out of my head, out of my life! She pushed harder, doing all she could to cast her powers away, to bid them begone. Why couldn’t she and her friends have had different lives? In bringing them to see the darkness, did they expose themselves for that darkness to claim them?

Once more she pushed, even harder than before, and as a stake of sheer pain sliced through her mind, Kaitlyn felt something give. Her visions…or the power that caused them…shot outward from her mind, firing off in all directions. But they did not leave her. If anything, she still felt tethered to them, and no matter how distantly her visions spread, they would never leave her. As she lost consciousness, Kaitlyn asked the universe if she could not be rid of the visions, could she at least see something—anything—good, if only once. Could she please see a glimmer of hope amid all the darkness and horror?

And just this once, the universe answered.

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