#90% of the time he exists at the whims of his sisters and it can be occasionally tiring

[hetagrammy]

How does Seb feel about being the only guy with his sisters? This is about the Vargas kids btw

He’s never really known anything different. At one point he did have the stereotypical little kid “I’d like a little brother” attitude, but by the time Brigid was born he’d grown out of it. It also was sort of his norm- Cat would still be trying to make sure he wasn’t dying every other week if she were a brother, Felice would still be his partner in crime, Brigid and Maria would still be his lil buddies, etc. At the end of the day, the important roles his sisters hold in his life aren’t necessarily gendered. On top of that, Seb is a mama’s boy and his parents have a very loving, equal relationship. Aside from being very attached to her, he’s never perceived there to be anything his mother couldn’t do, and Lovino never had that doubt about Molly either. If anything, Lovino encouraged that faith because he clearly always had faith in her. Seb’s had a bit of a model for how to perceive and treat his female family members from day one.

That’s not to say he doesn’t wish he had more male friends, or that he isn’t affected by gendered conventions at all. Depending on the time period of the AU, he’s the heir, which has its own connotations and pressures. Lovino still impressed on him that as the brother (and especially as one of the eldest), he has a duty to protect his sisters. Sebastiano is fully aware his sisters can hold their own, but he still feels that sense of obligation to them pretty strongly. He has a sense of care about him, granted in a softer way. His sisters also 100% make him do stuff like kill bugs or take out the garbage, because even if they can do it, they don’t want to. Regardless, he does have a bit of a feminine side because of all this. So him taking care of “masculine” tasks looks a lot like this:

In short: Sebastiano loves his sisters, sometimes he wishes he had more male friends and didn’t have the pressures he does, but he generally is just used to being The Boy™

[popculturebuffet]

Since I asked for modern Disney TVA I'm gonna ask for Cartoon Network too (but obviously splitting it up instead of every show at once). Who is your favorite character from each of the 90s half of the Cartoon Cartoons-era shows you've seen like: Dexter's Lab, Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, The Powerpuff Girls 1998, Ed Edd n Eddy, Mike Lu and Og, and Courage the Cowardly Dog?

I appricate that as there are a lot. But I'm also happy to talk about these and almost all need a rewatch from me (Ed Edd N eddy is the exception not due to quality but due to my top 25 episodes list, i've seen most of the ones i'd want to rewatch)

Dexter's Lab: An awesome show and one close to my heart. It has a few eps that are a bit too mean spirited for it's own good (a trait that most of these shows share, it's a common problem in children's comedy), but overall is just a fun show with a simple but effective premise. It also has Phil Hartman in one of his final and best rolls as Dexter's dad, so that's a bonus. I do feel the film and revivial seasons aren't as good, with Dial M For Monster being a better finale, but overall the series is a nostalgic classic to me.

Edit: So yeah turns out I was wrong. It was Jeff Bennet. I just always asumed phil hartman was his dad and that's why it was canceld. A good reminder to always check an assumption you had when you were 8.

Johnny Bravo: your timing on this one is good as I got the season 1 dvd on a whim a few weeks back at walmart and while I need to watch more of it, what i've refreshed is great. For a show about a wannabe pickup artist, the show's aged remarkably well: most of the violence against johnny is too slapstick to be a double standard and Johnny is more a clueless man child than actual threat to any woman and gets brushed off or outright punished when he does his cheesy pickup routine. Not only that but the humor.. is delightfully nuts. You've got episodes where Johnny dates an antelope, thinks time has stopped and in a faviorite bit of mine no one talks about gets a career in the moving pictures cumilating in the beloved classic

Cow and Chicken: This one.. yeah I have some nice things to say. The designs are nicely grungy, the theme song's a banger and it uh.. yeah that's about it. This one's a sadist show with Chicken sometimes getting punished for doing genuinely bad stuffa nd often getting punished for existing. It's far from the worst cartoon i've seen but is entirely not for me. Again except the theme song, and even then it's in an era of outright banger theme songs

I Am Wesel: This show .. is okay. The segments on cow and chicken were the highlight and while the show does lap into those sadist show tendicies I mentioned for cartoons in general it' snot nearly AS consitent with it as it's sister show and Weasel and Baboon are just fun to watch with great voice work. Weasel in paticular is just awesome. Solid show.

The Powerpuff Girls: one of cn's best shows and one of the ones i've rewatched more as my niece was really into it years ago. It has a sweet vibe to it at it's best, creative villians, some of the best voice actors there ever were in character defining rolls, and some solid aseops other shows weren't doing like how cops can be assholes and feminism can be complicated. Like i'm starting to realize ALL of these it once again has episodes that are just unwatchably mean, seriously I wasn't wrong when I said it was a common problem, but the bulk of the show is just a joy to behold.

Ed, Edd N Eddy: A true classic. I talked about this one a LOT in my top 25 episodes list but it's got slapstick gold for days, a great cast and a truly unique art style. It is held back a bit as episodes can be hit and miss, and out of the shows here it falls into the sadist show trap the most. It misses it more than cow and chicken, but it also has more standout examples of

It just stands out enough in it's GOOD episodes and has more than enough of them that I still love it.

Mike Lu and Ogg: A show I find highly underated and wish I could rewatch. It's where my decades long love of Nikkita Futterman as a voice actress began, and she's still great as Luna on the Loud House after all this time. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it.

Courage the Cowardly Dog: The best show here and that's saying something and one of my faviorite cartoons period. No hyperbole: long before I got neck deep into horror, this primed me for the genre, a love letter to b movies with a truly wonderful protaganist, the kindest damsel in distress in existance and the greatest asshole old man whose ever lived whose not named stan pines. The series has great humor, truly good horror in places, and a LOT of heart. I can't say enough good about this show and if there's enough intrest or someone willing to bankroll it , i'd be mor ethan willing to do a full series review of it at some point. I cannot say enough good about this show, truly one of cartoon networks best and only not firmly the best because Steven Universe came along later.

[tsaritza-mika]

Just some thoughts I have about things

So recently, this picture came across my dash, and while I can always appreciate a good joke at my personal expense, it also got me thinking: Why even should this be a joke pointed at myself and others like me? Don’t get me wrong, I’m still laughing about it, even now, but it still got me thinking about the subject it pokes fun at, and my overactive brain decided to analyze things a bit.

Now since this is the internet and it’s customary to overshare, I recently figured out that I’ve been in a deeply depressive state for... I wanna say about the last 5-7 years or so. How did I figure this out? Well, as the picture says, I fell in love with a fictional character. Like yeah, love. I get these huge, dopey as shit smiles on my face when he crosses my mind, the joy in my brain gets turned to the max, and I’m unbelievably happy knowing that even if he is considered to be ‘just a drawing’, that he exists, and despite it being obviously scripted, he loves me with all his fictional heart and soul.

But anyway, back to the oversharing part of this, because what’s a good internet story without some trauma, right? A little over five years ago, I spent my 30th birthday getting drunk on the front porch of my parents house in Southern California, knowing that when I was done I was going to go back to their back house and continue my then two years, post-divorced status, and attempting to rebuild my life without someone at my side for the first time in roughly ten years. Before then, my joys in life came from just about anything artistic. I drew my favorite characters, I watched a ton of cartoons and anime because since I was four, I wanted nothing more than to be an animator. I also played video games and hung out with friends regularly.

Well, after the divorce, a lot of that went away. Now, I knew I was upset. I could point that out without issue, but the longer time went, the drive and creativity that had been with me my whole life didn’t seem to come back the same way it had. Sure, I’d still draw, still made some pictures I could be proud of, but rather than taking maybe a few hours to a day or so, maybe a single picture from inception to completion would take a few weeks. If it ever got completed at all, of course. Instead, I buried myself in my video games. I didn’t have to think or process anything I was personally feeling when I played them, because it was always reflective of the feelings of the games’ main character/chosen toon I played at the time.

Then, on a whim, a few months ago when America’s West Coast decided to burn, I decided to listen to my best friend and download a mobile dating game. I’d played dating games before, I’m no stranger to tropes and anything else that pops up in them. Hell, one of my favorite dating games is Monster Prom, and yes, my favorite is Damien because let’s face it, he’s deliciously destructive and handsome as fuck. But I digress, it wasn’t Damien that really made me feel this way. It was Julian.

I should probably say here too that I’ve been this way my whole life, you know, before I get too much further into this. My first fictional crush was, like many my age, Chiba Mamoru, better known to some as Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon. Even now I’ll still swoon at the right line and the right picture at the right time. Because I mean, let’s face it, he’s hot as fuck. Since then, there have been others: Heero Yui, Tamahome, Inuyasha, Sousuke Sagara, Kurz Weber, Kyo Sohma, to name only a few. And that’s just the anime side of things. However, none of these loves/crushes, have ever negatively impacted my ability to love someone real. I’ve had boyfriends, and even been married, and they’d never felt threatened or stated anything wrong with these feelings what-so-ever.

Yet there are still those out there who will roll their eyes at this and try to convince me that ‘you’re not in love’, or ‘it’s not real because he’s not real’, and whatever other bullshit they feel like saying at the time. But here’s my rebuttal to that: What makes my love for this fictional character any less valid than say, someone with a celebrity/musician crush? Chances are those people will never even manage to be in the same room as that celebrity, and even if they are, there’s never a guarantee they’d feel anything in particular for them anyway if they managed to get close. But, when they smile, when they do something admirable, when you learn something new about them, doesn’t that happiness feel the same? I was one of those people too, except my walls were plastered with every poster imaginable of Johnathan Taylor Thomas. Because it was the 90s bitches. I knew I’d never get anywhere near him or anything, but when he laughed, I smiled. When he was upset, I was upset for him.

My depression left me with essentially nothing but an empty shell for so long, and because I’d only ever heard of symptoms from more severe cases than my own, I mistakenly thought that maybe that part of my life was just over, and that it was something I had to get through and find something else to make me happy. But then I played a game, I ‘met’ Julian, I spent time with him, got to know him and how much of a dramatic disaster he is himself. Yes, he was written and coded to make someone like me happy, but because, like so many others before, pieces of him resonated so deeply inside me, I fell for him and all of his flaws.

He can drink too much, is very depressed and in need of some actual sleep, he’s altruistic to the point of masochism, he has a pain/BDSM kink, he’s practically if not literally addicted to coffee, he’s had trouble letting go of bitter feelings regarding his ex and how it ended, he has regrets about how he’s handled things in his life, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy when he’s made so many perceived mistakes. But... he’s also incredibly smart, loves a good dramatic entrance, making those around him feel special, performing in some fashion, he’s studied hard to become the best damn doctor he could be because he wanted to help people, he loves his sister dearly and wants her to be happy, among so many other things and quirks I can’t say it all.

This fictional man makes me so fucking happy, I have art ideas again for the first time in almost ten years. I want to save up and get a new tablet so I can contribute to the fandom he’s a part of with animatics and animations. I want to make so many pictures, I want to write more, I want to animate, and a part of me has even been considering the thought of looking into some kind of musical instrument for the first time since I was twelve and learning the saxophone. And above everything else, I can recognize the depression I was in, and can move forward from it. I can still love everything I used to and be happy with them again. So what if all of these things are coming from my mental and emotional love for a fictional man. It doesn’t make these feelings any less real, nor the happiness that’s come as a result of it.

And whenever I meet someone for real, I will love them with the same fire from when I loved, and still will love Julian, and they won’t even be able to tell the difference. Because love is love, in all it’s forms.

[darklingichor]

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell *Major Spoilers*

I wrote a little about this book last month, but I want to write more. This is one of those books that has been lingering in my brain so what follows will be long and rambling.

Now, I haven't read Fangirl I've been pulled more toward action adventure and humor in my fiction, for a while now. Hmm, I wonder what could have happened a few years back  that would cause a Pacific Northwest liberal to feel the need for escape? Just one of those things, I suppose.

I need to read it, if only because I wrote Harry Potter fanfic for years and sort of lost myself in it right after high school.

Anyway.

I've heard people calling Carry On an HP knock off. I don't get this. Simon Snow is obviously Fangirl's Harry Potter. That makes Carry On more of a tongue in cheek homage to HP and stories like it as well as something of a love letter to fanfic writers.

A lot of the main characters start out as your standard for this type of story. "The Hero", "The Mentor", "The Damsel", "The Enemy", "The Unspeakable Evil."

Through the book it becomes clear that our hero is well meaning but ill-suited for the role that his mentor thinks he place him in. The mentor is shown to be unhinged. The damsel is sick of screaming and doesn't want to be in the story at all. The enemy is love sick for the hero and dealing with the puberty from hell. The unspeakable evil, isn't. Its just an unforeseen byproduct of the mentor's plan, in which, the hero, is a pawn.

The book plays with archetypes and I read some of them as being fairly meta about their expected place in the story.

Agetha, especially, seems to know her role and resent it. She's who is saved by the hero, whether she likes it or not.

Baz is so certain of his role as "The Enemy" that until his role flips, he's sure his destiny is to be killed by the person he's in love with.

Simon knows his role so well, he's on auto pilot as a defence mechanism. He's either going to die, or he'll get a stock Happily Ever After. He doesn't even allow himself to think too much about what really matters to him, because he knows his life isn't really his.

I would have loved this book because of everything I wrote above, but add to it the nods to fan contribution? It was enough to make me remember my old ff.n login!

I don't know if Rainbow Rowell researched fan fiction but I figure she must have.

I mean, the things I saw played with and reshaped in Carry On, are fanfic tropes. Rowell took things that grew out of fans having fun with their favorite characters and made them canon.

Main character going out with an exchange student, pop culture references, evil good guy, and:

Four words: Draco is a vampire.

Sure, not every fic that used these were the best, but so what? Many were sincere.

What better way to go to Hogwarts as a person raised outside the UK than to live though an OC in an exchange program?

It was weird that no one in the wizard world listened to muggle music, watched movies or TV. Even the muggleborns? I'm sorry, but I was in the same age range as the characters. In fact, if Harry were real, he would be three years older than me. You can't convince me that there were not at least a couple of muggleborns who were  sending an owl a week to remind their parents to tape Friends or My So-Called Life.

There were a fair few stories where Dumbledore or even Harry turned out to be evil. Even before we found out Dumbledore wasn't a saint. It can be fun to play with expectations and Dumbledore was too perfect for too long.

The vampire thing? I mean, why not? Either Draco or Snape. It fits enough for a fic, and you can get some fun stuff out of it. Besides Hogwarts allowed a warewolf, why not a vampire?

The point is, this book reminds me of some goofy fics I read but also reminds me of some that I sometimes have to remind myself aren't canon, because fan fiction can be amazing.

Example: It has been years but I still remember a great fic that someone wrote about Uric The Oddball's years at Hogwarts. I don't remember much about it off hand but I do know that if I re-read HP, when Uric is mentioned, I think of this story like it is something that is actually in the history of the series. (Dude, I googled "Uric the Oddball fan fiction" on a whim. Popped right up: Uric the Oddball and the Wild Hunt by Ariana Deralte. Guess I shouldn't be surprised! Maybe I should read it again to see if it's still as good as I remember).

So yeah, Carry On is so not an HP knock off and has a number of things that I think make me like it more.

The first one is diversity. It is very nice to have it explicitly said in the text that characters are of different ethnicities, sexualities, and abilities. Watford is a far better representation of a population than Hogwarts is, outside of fanfic (It wasn't there, people wrote it in).

Then there is magic itself, it comes from somewhere it's in the environment, it has to do with celestial alignment, people give words power to channel that energy.

That brings me to something that made me adore the world building here.

The actuality of Simon Snow's universe is that Mages cannot exist independently without the Normals. Without the Normals giving weight and meaning to turns of phrase, rhyme and songs, the Mages couldn't do what they do. Add to that, this means that magic is ever evolving and the Mages must learn about and be a part of, to some extent, the Normal world. This makes Mages who look down on Normals seem even more ridiculous.

I also think this book handled romance better than Harry Potter. I don't know what it was but the relationships seemed awkward and strained in HP. Maybe it was because most of it was shoved into one book, like Hogwarts's water supply was spiked with hormones? I don't know.

What I do know is that even though Simon and Agetha are going through the motions of being together in this book, they still feel like two people who have been dating for a long time.

We don't get a lot about Penny and her boyfriend, but the way she is described talking about him reminds me of how my best friend would talk about her boyfriends when she was visiting me. The way she would go on, you'd think that he was on the moon instead of 90 miles away. I bought that Penny and her boyfriend enjoy each other's company.

And the biggie. Simon and Baz

I almost didn't read this book for two reasons. First: Vampire main character. I love vampires, but I lived through the deluge of Twilight, True Blood, and Vampire Diaries, not to mention that every other book seemed to be about vampires. Even though I didn't watch or read all of them, I just got vampired out.

Second: I have never been one for the whole "enemies to love interest" thing. The Harry/Draco pairing never spoke to me.  Not that I never read fics that managed that ship well, it was just not my favorite, probably because I just never liked Draco.  I tend to prefer romances that are built on friendship (Remus and Sirius dated each other at some point, and nothing can convince me otherwise).

All that being said, I like the Simon/Baz pairing.

I like that Baz freely admits to the reader that a lot of his tormenting of Simon is pigtail pulling.

I like that Simon is more or less: "I like a guy? A guy who was my nemisis? That's new, let's go for it."

There's none of that "Hate turns to love" shit that I personally can't stand.  None of the "I am evil, yet his light draws me" or "His darkness is so seductive"

Baz isn't a villain needing to rethink his position. He's a slightly snobby guy with a lot of family pressure, who is in love with a dude who has been set up as opposition, by the adults in his life.

Simon isn't a good guy wanting to be bad. He's a guy who is following the path set out for him without giving context to his feelings with thought, because he doesn't think. So, when Baz doesn't show up at the first of the year, Simon knows 3 things for sure:

Baz is his enemy

His enemy is not there

He feels very uneasy about it.

Why?

See numbers 1 & 2

This equals out to "plotting" in Simon's mind because that's what enemies do.

It doesn't dawn on him that he was actually missing Baz and that he has romantic feelings for him until later

I also like the interaction between them. Again, I buy that they like each other. The simpler moments, like sharing food, or being flirty. It also makes sense that Baz is so nervous and guarded about the relationship. It fits that they would bicker and argue while trying to figure every thing out.

The relationships feel authentic.

In fact all of the relationships between  the characters feel authentic.  The sibling relationships between Ebb and Nicky, I know siblings that close. The interaction between Baz and his little sister, I know people like them too. The Friendships; in my opinion, too few friends in fiction are depicted messing with each other or being lovingly annoyed by each other.

I've known my two best friends most of my life. Not a day goes by where one of us doesn't say something that if it was said by anyone else, it would lead to a fight. Said by us, it's funny, or at least something we can't argue with.

So I related when Baz's friend complained that he had wasted his childhood hating Simon now that Simon and Baz were no longer enemies and Baz said: "What else were you going to do with your childhood?"

I spent my 20's with my friends seemingly taking turns crashing at my apartment. I spent most of my time ossulating between wishing they would go home and being glad they were there.

So at the beginning of the book, when Penny won't leave Simon's room? I saw myself in the way Simon felt about it.

That authentic and relatable quality was what I really liked about the quiet - if not Happily Ever After - then the Attempting Normal For Now ending each character got.

Well, as normal as you can get with a story involving  mages, vampires and powerful Elton John songs.

I am a dodecahedron of geekdom, btw and the classic rock side jumped up and down clapping hands at all of the music references (and giggled when Carry On was fallowed by Wayward Son which will be followed by Anyway The Wind Blows). 

And now we come to the reason I have not read the sequel even though it is sitting in a bag with the rest of this year's Powell's haul.

From what I have read, Wayward Son is, at least in part, about what happens after Happily Ever After and ends on a cliffhanger. 

After Happily Ever After with a cliffhanger and no release date... Yeah, that will drive me crazy. I haven't even read the second book and I'm already thinking about the third. Aw man! Who dies? Who breaks up? Who becomes evil?

So, even though road trip stories are right up there with time travel stories as one of my favorites, even though I love the idea of showing a character battling depression, even though I love these characters, period; Wayward Son will stay unread until I run out of new books to read, or the next book's release date is close. Whichever comes first, because I want to think of the characters in their quiet ending ending for a little while.

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: if wishes were horses, we would rule the world by epicureanEmpath

fandom: Marvel

pairing: Pietro Maximoff/Wanda Maximoff

word count: 35k

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Yes

This fic was written in 2013 (Avengers: Age of Ultron saw theatrical release in 2015) and thus is not MCU canon-compliant. Pietro and Wanda Maximoff are mutants. “They have superpowers” is the one detail that all the comics and movies agree on, and usually those innate talents are enhanced by torture/experimentation. The premise of this story is that they were not born mutants—or rather, that Wanda was born with the power to alter reality through “wishes” and in a moment of weakness she grants Pietro’s entreaty to “make me faster than anyone else.” I wish he was like me, she thinks, and to her sorrow she dooms them both to the inevitable fate of mutants in this fallen world. Unleashing a wish, you see, is kind of like firing a revolver. The recoil from her wish lands Pietro in the hospital and the twins, eventually, in Herr Doktor’s laboratory as experimental subjects/victims.

What this fic does superbly is depict powerlessness as the defining quality of childhood:

In that moment Wanda saw that nothing she could say would convince Mother of the truth.

And make no mistake, they are children, they spend 5x more time thinking about ice cream than sex, and the cruelest thing Herr Doktor does is take away five years of their childhood. FIVE YEARS. That’s like, a third of their lives. It’s cruel that at first their parents disbelieve their claims re: superpowers; then when the twins are fucking kidnapped by Nazis and locked up as human lab rats, their parents don’t even coming looking for them—Mother and Father have swallowed the lie that Pietro and Wanda ran off. Adopted children do, sometimes. Man do you guys remember what it’s like to be a kid? Like a really small kid and you’re playing with a toy and someone comes along and makes you stop doing what you were doing and force you to, idk, eat broccoli instead? There is a convincing case to be made that this is why so many children are “picky eaters,” btw—because food is the one arena where they can exert some modicum of control over their lives. Sorry my point was that children are generally in a pretty powerless position, and that’s why Wanda’s newfound abilities are so gamechanging when they first manifest. Later, Wanda blames those same abilities for her captivity:

She hated her power most of all. Without it they would have gone on being Wanda and Pietro. Cookie dough ice cream whenever they could pinch it. Summers spent languid by the pool or buried hip deep in literature (for Pietro) and poetry (for Wanda)….Now Wanda barely remembered what a book smelled like. She couldn't recall the feel of the breeze, or a shirt's cotton caress on her skin. Only those few brief visits with Pietro had kept her anchored to herself. When she lost all hope and sought death in her soul, she could remember the brush of his hand in her hair and keep going, just for another minute, another hour, another day.

90% of the soul-crushing toll of her captivity lies in her separation from Pietro. At one point Herr Doctor promises her an hour alone with Pietro if she passes a test. A whole hour, she thinks—unheard of. But it’s all part of the test:

Herr Doktor had given no guidelines, laid down no rules. He never did. Wanda might perform perfectly throughout the meeting and still be denied that hour. All depended on the whim of Herr Doktor.

This is actually a tried-and-true strategy employed by those in authority against subjugated populations everywhere: keep ‘em guessing; set no firm rules that might be challenged or appealed; make them hang on your every whim, make them study your moods and concentrate all their energies on anticipating your displeasure.

“How did you say you keep control again? Suppressants?” “I have her brother too,” Herr Doktor said. He tipped Wanda's chin up with almost paternal care. “They are so fond of one another.”

The slimiest word in that sentence is paternal tbh. He feels paternal towards the twins, he’s just a benevolent parental figure hahaha NO. Ok so one day Pietro kisses Wanda during one of their brief visitations:

“Tomorrow,” Herr Doktor said, struggling to maintain calm, “he will be castrated. We cannot have you breeding little monsters, can we?” “If you touch him,” Wanda said, “I will wish you dead on the spot. How is the old heart doing, hm?” “My men have orders to shoot him if anything happens to me.” “If they shoot him, I will wish myself dead and be rid of this place – and you – either way.” His Adam's apple bobbed. She had him, for now.

Checkmate. You cannot win a game of chicken against someone who has nothing to lose, and Wanda’s only hostage to fortune is Pietro. If anything ever happens to Pietro all bets are off and Wanda becomes a loose canon.

They effect their escape!!! But the trauma of five years’ captivity is not so easily sloughed off. For one thing, they’re still minors but they can’t go back to their parents. They have no money, no job, nobody to turn to:

she almost wanted the sea to swallow her just so they could stop running. Herr Doktor would never find them at the bottom of the ocean.

Wanda missed colour … Wanda still dreamed in colour. And the colour was red.

This hurts so much. It’s a hard fic to read, not because there’s any graphic depictions of violence, but because the most effective form of torture is mental, and the whole story is limited-POV Wanda and we are really deep in her head and she is fucking petrified even after they break out of Herr Doktor’s lab. Here they are on the run and Wanda’s rediscovering something banal after being treated as subhuman for so long:

In the bottom drawer she found a compartment full of small, round black bundles. She tipped her head to one side and looked at them for a long time, unable to think what they were for. Finally she picked one up and pulled it apart. All at once the word came back to her. She had utterly forgotten about socks.

SOCKS she forgot about socks ohmygod it’s not like a lab rat would get to wear socks. The biggest casualty of their captivity is that Wanda store of trust in humanity is depleted. She feels like the society that allows somebody like Herr Doctor to exist is complicit in her and Pietro’s torture, and she ain’t wrong:

And yet the man below them was innocent. The man with the pickles, the police officers, the father, all of them were innocent in their ignorance. Herr Doktor had deceived them as thoroughly as he had deceived Wanda. How many times had Herr Doktor gone out to the store in those five years? How could the cashier have known, just by looking at those patronly eyes, that here was a madman who kept children bound like slaves in his laboratory?

She trusts Pietro and that’s it. Everybody else can go to hell. Pietro buys her a necklace!!! Well he steals her a necklace (they sneak into Wal-marts right before closing and sleep there at night), a delicate gold chain with a garnet bc Wanda’s all about repping the color RED in this story and I am here for it. There is something about brothers giving their sisters jewelry that hits all my buttons. I think because there is a social norm about men buying jewelry for the important women in their lives, including not just romantic partners but mothers and daughters too, so buying jewelry for your sister is technically unremarkable but it’s all about the context. One of my favorite scenes in Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden was when he scraped together the money from tutoring to buy her a surprise Christmas present and it was an engraved bracelet. Giving a woman in your life a really nice piece of jewelry is A Statement, but is it a statement of “I love you platonically” or “I love you and you’re my soulmate”? Am I the only one who is soft for this ambiguity?

ANYWAY Charles and Erik stumble on the twins so they are going to be taken into the bosom of the mutant community and they are going to be just fine.

[onestowatch]

Songwriting Virtuoso Sam Martin Chronicles a Life in Debut Solo Album, ‘Alpha Omega’ [Q&A]

Photo: Jimmy Fontaine

Sam Martin has been songwriting and producing for other artists for years, quietly amassing over two billion streams through the projects he’s touched. Martin is widely revered as pop songwriting royalty, with Maroon 5’s “Daylight” and Jason Derulo’s “Want to Want Me” being just a few of the many songs he’s collaborated on. Having already proved himself behind the scenes, Martin is stepping into the limelight with his debut album, Alpha Omega, an emotionally packed 18-track feat detailing a life from conception to finish.

The album itself is too complex to describe in the space of a couple hundred words, but falls somewhere between pop and alternative rock with lots of playful production touches. Martin has put himself at the heart of this project, from playing most of the instruments on the album himself to directing the accompanying film. Featuring audio clips from his own life and translations of highly personal memories, the film showcases the moments in Martin’s life that shaped him into the man he is today. Martin offers a piece of himself to listeners with Alpha Omega, revealing vulnerabilities and taking his artistry to the next level.

We sat down with the songwriter, artist and father to discuss Alpha Omega, telling the truth and gaining momentum as an artist.

OTW: Let’s start with the title! How did you land on Alpha Omega?

Sam Martin: I originally had the album as “Requiem” because I love Mozart’s Requiem. I wasn’t settled on it and my lawyer, who hilariously loves the record and listened to the private Soundcloud link over 40 times, said “This is too positive of a record to be called ‘Requiem.’ What about ‘Alpha Omega,’ like A to Z in the Greek alphabet?” I liked that because the whole album is from birth to death of a human’s life, and it’s semi-autobiographical, but I, of course, haven’t died yet so it can’t be totally autobiographical.

OTW: So is this a story inspired by your life or pretty much a retelling of your life story to the T?

Sam Martin: Once it hits the midlife crisis I project it on people I grew up around, but up until that point it’s like 90 percent autobiographical. There are a few moments I exaggerate because it’s good for the story, but it’s mostly based on true events. I basically had a great childhood and a great thirties so far, so it was a reminder of how hard things have been to get to where I am.

OTW: I think that’s pretty common for people to have a tough time in their teens and twenties and come out of it in their thirties.

Sam Martin: Yeah that’s why I’m hoping people can relate to it; I’m just telling a true story and trying to be honest.

Photo: Jimmy Fontaine

OTW: Could you tell us about the recording process and co-producing the album? 

Sam Martin: I didn’t want to bother any of my really talented musician friends because I couldn’t guarantee that it was going to be a good idea. I was so used to bringing opportunities to producers and saying, “Hey I’ve got this song, Adam Levine likes it, let’s do it.” And all of a sudden I’ve got these songs and I’m keeping them. I would start songs like “Sabotage,” and get them really far, but I just didn’t trust that I would be the one to finish them. As the project went on I became way more confident, and I got some help along the way. I played all the bass, key, guitars, organ, some drums, and vocals of course, so it reminded me of how I used to do things as a kid. It felt like returning to my old self, just on steroids. (laughs)

OTW: How does it feel to go from writing for other artists to debuting your solo album?

Sam Martin: Well, I’m sober about it, but it is very fun. I had reached a level of success a lot of songwriters dream of, but for some reason I wasn’t terribly happy. I realized in hindsight that I was getting sick of serving other peoples’ moods and whims. It was exciting for a while, but I learned that you have to express yourself and feed your creative intuitions, or else what you’re writing for other people suffers as well. I have a million thoughts on that, but mainly it’s been fun, healing and exciting.

OTW: Let’s talk about the film, which you directed yourself. That’s a huge undertaking, how was that process?

Sam Martin: It was mostly overwhelming. I hadn’t directed anything for seven years, I used to film features for nonprofits in third world countries. I was actually kind of on track to be a director, but music was always my first love. When I got my break and Maroon 5 took my cut for “Daylight,” I didn’t have to make videos anymore and I dove into songwriting and abandoned directing. I had a bigger idea than the available budget for this project, so I thought the best way to do it was for me to direct it and edit it. My brother and sister helped out as well, and we basically went right to the edge of our abilities. Everyone was a hero on that shoot, once we finally got shooting it was a well-oiled machine. It was really special.

OTW: You included some audio clips of your own life in the film, how did you go about choosing those?

Sam Martin: My sister is usually our family archivist, and I had her send me some stuff and pick out audio. I also recorded my son, I think he was about two at the time, and he gave me some amazing stuff. My wedding is in there, my dad’s 60th birthday party is in there. For me, it’s wonderful so I hope people can connect with that too.

Photo: Jimmy Fontaine

OTW: Going into the specific tracks, “Blue Eyed Joy” is a personal favorite. Could you tell us about writing that song?

Sam Martin: Oh really? Thank you for saying that, that was the first and last song I wrote for the record. I started it like eight years ago, and it had a few good lines, but I cranked it back open because I felt like it could be much better. The very last thing I wrote on the record was the chorus for “Blue Eyed Joy,” which is like the best part of the whole record. So it’s cool to have the last thing you do be one of your best. I think a lot of songs are written by single people who are sort of troubled. If you look at the top charts, I don’t think any of those people are married or in a long-term relationship. So I wanted to do something that legitimizes sticking it out and get through the hard stuff. My favorite line of that song is “diamonds don’t form overnight.” You can’t think your relationship is going to be perfect overnight. A happy 60-year relationship does exist, and we shouldn’t forget it.

OTW: I think we all need that reminder; dating scene can be tough. 

Sam Martin: Yes, it’s possible!

OTW: Do you have a track you’re most excited for people to hear?

Sam Martin: My personal favorites are not always the favorites of everyone else. But my favorite single tracks are probably “Great Escape,” “Blue Eyed Joy,” and “Come On.” As a concept album, it’s important for the listener to note that the album never stops and that themes reemerge.

OTW: Tell us about balancing being a dad with releasing an album?

Sam Martin: My family is a delight. I’m obsessed with my family, and my kids are growing up so fast—I don’t want to miss it. I work from home a lot and have people over instead of going out to write.

OTW: What does 2019 look like for you?

Sam Martin: It looks like a big mystery. We’ve got this record, and I’ve still been writing a lot for other artists. I’m making a whole other record in case we get good momentum—I’m kind of doing everything right now. I must admit I’m having the most fun working on this record.

OTW: Who are your Ones to Watch?

Sam Martin: Starrah. I love that “Codeine Cowgirl” song she just put out. I also love Elephant Heart, my buddy is in that group. There’s some good stuff there.

[daggerzine]

From Lifeboat, Tackle Box and beyond, Greg “Skeggie” Kendall spills the beans….

I had met Greg “Skeggie” Kendall as a person before I even knew about his music. Sort of. He was road managing The Chills  when I saw them in about 1989/1990 or so. I was backstage doing an interview with The Chills’ Martin Phillipps (for my zine, DAGGER) and Skeggie brought him a big salad (not “the big salad” like on Seinfeld but a big salad nonetheless) and faked this posh British accent when he put it down in front of Martin and stated, “Your dinner sir.”  I laughed and Skeggie and I chatted  bit that evening. He seemed like a real friendly, jovial type, completely unlike some other road managers types I had met throughout the years.

So I’d already missed the boat on his band Lifeboat though I’d heard of them and was sure I’d heard some Lifeboat songs. Then missed his next band, Tackle Box until my pal Jeremy Grites told me I had to hear them which was in the late 90’s or maybe 2000. I picked up copies of those cds, On and Grand Hotel (both released in 1993, if I have my story straight, and both on the Rockville label. They also released “The Wheat Penny Single” 7” the same year on Rockville. Fun fact: his rhythm section on those records,  Brian Dunton and Sean King Devlin went on to work with Mary Timony in Helium) and both are filled with the kind of at times loud/ at times soft rock music that too many people missed but really should have heard. As you’ll read below he’s done plenty of other stuff, musically speaking.

You know here at DAGGER I like to dig a little deeper, go for some more obscure folks to interview and it was on a whim that I’d reached out to Skeggie to see if he might want to answer a few questions. Thankfully he did and by reading below you’ll learn about the long strange trip that Mr. Greg Kendall has been on all these years. Long live Skeggie!

 John Surrette (Boy's Life), Peter Buck (REM), Skeg Kendall (Lifeboat) 1986, at The Rat in Boston, MA (photo by Paul Robicheau)

Where were you born? Did you grow up in the Boston area?

I was born in Norwalk, CT. In the three years following, my family moved to as many states: from Norwalk to Santa Barbara, CA.; Santa Barbara to Red Hook, in upstate NY; Red Hook to Huntsville, AL. I mostly grew up in Huntsville, but our family did weird satellite missions to other places for awkward fragments of school years. There was half of third grade in Atlantic Beach on Long Island, and before that, a 1968 Cocoa Beach summer at the Del-Ray Motel that stretched beyond the first day of school because my father worked for the space program at Cape Canaveral. Eight months for eighth grade in Gaithersburg, MD, then washing up in Middletown, RI in 1973. So, to answer your question, no, I did not grow up in the Boston area. I moved there in 1981, when I was 21.

Do you remember the first record you ever bought?

I was lucky to have an older brother who was way into music, so I was exposed to scads of great music from very early on. Simply, AM top forty radio WAS my childhood. I tried, but didn’t buy the first record I wanted to buy. There are many tales of the infamous Columbia Record Club. Our family returned from a vacation in what, 1968?, to find a package at our front door I’d ordered from the back of a magazine. “The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees” is the one I remember. My parents were pissed and had to undo the bad deal and returned that record and the other two that were delivered. I eventually bought that album, and of course loved it. The Monkees are the best band ever.

When did you first pick up an instrument? Was it a guitar?

5 years old. Ukulele. Soon after, the guitar. Cat gut string. My first gig was in kindergarten in Huntsville singing “My Old Kentucky Home” with my brother and sister. There are some uncomfortable lyrics in that tune for three little kids to be singing in 1965 Alabama. (It was only recently that I discovered the origin and intent of the song. Interesting history.)

Lifeboat in 1985, the Living Room in Providence RI

Was Tackle Box your first band? If not tell us about bands prior to it.

Lots of bands before Tackle Box. That was like 1992-93. It’s hard to list the catalogue without supplying background in order to provide fun context. You gotta understand that back in the day we were in the middle of the suburban punk rock expansion explosion, jumping off of what we were gleaning from the CBGB’s scene of the late 1970s and the Detroit thing of MC5 and the Stooges, and also Blue Oyster Cult’s early stuff, not to mention most importantly Lou Reed. I worked backward from “Rock n Roll Animal” to the Velvet Underground in 1975-76. It was mind-blowing. It’s impossible to encapsulate in a brief answer. I moved into the upstairs of a nightclub in Newport RI in 1978. I lived there for two years. I was like 18 and 19 years old. I saw a load of wild shit, ingested a ton of drugs, and had a lot of fun. Johnny Thunders was a regular. I hung out with Sonny Terry and Brownie Magee, J.B. Hutto, and Max Romeo. I held court with Carl Perkins. I played regularly with Jonathan Richman, Mission of Burma, Human Sexual Response, and The Neighborhoods. What else can I say, except that I’m sure there’s a bunch of cool stuff that I can’t remember, plus can’t believe I don’t have Hep C or some other nasty affliction. Our band, Bob Lawton’s Boots —look it up—we were there from the git-go of punk rock. Just sayin’.

Tell us about seeing bands in Boston the 80’s? With the amount of amazing talent there back then you must have had some magical nights!

Yes. Some great nights were involved. “Magical” is a good adjective. I moved to Boston in 1981. It was an exciting time in local music to be there. “Magical” because one had to invent one’s scene if you didn’t dovetail easily into an existing one. A Boston rock scene was in full play, with the ‘Hoods, Mission Burma, Lyres, Neats, Del Fuegos, etc, etc., but to bust into that world required stamina and songs, particularly if you were in a jangly pop band like mine —Arms Akimbo, which became Lifeboat. We had much more in common with the North Carolina and Georgia music scenes than the grittier Boston sound. We had to work hard to prove ourselves, and we pretty much did. That band broke up in 1987.

Tackle Box on Oct 2014 at The Middle East, Cambridge MA  (Photo by Johnny Anguish)

How did Tackle Box come about?

The Brothers Kendall were a thing after Lifeboat’s varied successes and failures. My brother Bobby and I wrote a bunch of songs and played a bunch of gigs in 1988-89, maybe 90? I don’t know. We made a record for Bar None with Peter Holsapple from the dBs that never came out, mostly because the record sucked, (through no fault of Peter’s). But, tell you what, I loved that band. We made some music I’m quite proud of. The core of that band became Tackle Box. Shawn Devlin is an amazing drummer I’ve been playing with since the Newport days; Mike Leahy is a genius guitarist (he’s played with Juliana Hatfield, Buffalo Tom, and Pell Mell, among others); and bassist Brian Dunton, (with Devlin, the original Helium rhythm section) are great to work with.

When I (briefly) met you back then you were a tour manager for The Chills. Had you been making your living doing that? If so what other bands did you tour manage?

Wow! Where/when did we meet? That was a goofy gig. If anyone ever asks you, “Hey, should I consider a cross-country tour that requires road managing, driving the van, being the sole roadie and — get this—opening solo act?,” you’re answer should be, “No, definitely don’t do that.”

I also went out as a roadie for the bands Big Dipper, The Feelies, and for the longest stretch, Throwing Muses. I love all of them, very much. So many tales to tell.

How did the deal with Rockville Records come about? Who ran that label (I only knew about Homestead back then).

Jeff Pachman signed us. It just happened I guess because he heard our songs and liked us. I honestly don’t know any other reason.

When/ why did Tackle Box end? Did you have any bands after that?

We all got busy with other stuff, and honestly I was becoming ambivalent about what had started to feel like asking people if they liked me through music. After all those years, I guess hit sort of a mental roadblock. I had a new family, with back-to-back sons, and that had an impact I’m sure on my commitment to touring and other time-consuming aspects of being in a band. But I found a new musical outlet when I fell into scoring film. Doug Macmillan from the band the Connells introduced me to director John Schultz, who enlisted me to write songs for his film Bandwagon, and then asked me to score it. The film screened and was bought at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, which eventually led me to score Schultz’s 1998 Drive Me Crazy for 20th Century Fox. It was a fun, exciting and satisfying time, despite the steep learning curve.

Who are some of your favorite current bands or musicians?

My son’s projects are what I’d like to talk about.

DJ Lucas https://soundcloud.com/djlucasma

Weird Dane https://soundcloud.com/weirddane

They’ve got a whole lot stuff going on. Their collective, called Dark World, is knee-deep in music making, video projects and fashion design.

Care to tell us your top 10 desert island discs?

It’s hard to get it down to ten, but let’s go with…

Velvet Underground (self-titled third album)

Velvet Underground “Loaded”

New York Dolls “New York Dolls”

New York Dolls “Too Much Too Soon”

Jean Jacques Perry “The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound Of Jean Jacques Perry”

Yo La Tengo “I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One”

Joni Mitchell “Blue”

Chet Baker “ Let’s Get Lost”

David Bowie “Hunky Dory”

Brian Eno “Music For Airports”

(Plus any and all releases from Gram Parsons)

Tell us about the reunion gig that Tackle Box recently played. Will there be more?

That was super-fun. I hope for more. I love those guys, and I think we rock real nice together. We fell into playing together as if we hadn’t taken over twenty years off.

What is it that you do now? Something in the film industry?

From 2002-2012, my wife Connie White and I booked documentary films into cinemas as Balcony Releasing. We distributed over twenty films in that period. Currently, I’m working with my wife’s company Balcony Booking. She’s the film buyer for eighteen independent art houses and three film festivals.

Check out our new site here: https://www.balconyfilm.com/

Skeg behind a Rhodes in Bellows Falls, VT

Any closing comment? Final thoughts? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask?

It’s been a long and interesting trip, including my recent graduation from college in May 2016. With all that music stuff going on, I completely forgot to go to college, so I entered in 2012, and graduated four years later from UMass Amherst with a self-designed BA in Historical New England Documentary Studies.

Also, I’m about to embark on a new musical adventure— or I should say, a potential adventure. I’m going to Raleigh, NC to hang with my buddy Doug MacMillan from the Connells. If it works out, we’re thinking about planning a two-hander that explores the odd lives we’ve led in the music business, including stories and songs in a fun and reflective show. We’ll see. I hope it happens. I love those Connells songs.

BONUS QUESTION: Did you ever hear from Mark Lindsay about the song “Mark Lindsay’s Ponytail?”

I have a signed copy from Mark Lindsay of the Tackle Box “Wheat Penny” single that has “Ponytail” on the B-side. He says he liked it. I’m proud to say that one of my songs, “Eeenie Meenie Miney Moe,” originally recorded with Tuffskins, (a fun post-Tackle Box mini-project) was rehearsed by the fantastic Los Straitjackets with vocals by Mark Lindsay for consideration on an album. Alas, a release was not to be. But still, that feels really good, and the song was eventually recorded and released as a single by Rochester, NY garage-rockers Ian and the Aztecs. So, all’s well, that ends well.

 www.balconyfilm.com 

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[sueboohscorner]

The Vampire Diaries 814 Recap “It’s Been a Hell of a Ride” #TVD #KilltheDevil

Episode grade: 10. Pure perfection. 

All week long, I was both looking forward to and dreading Friday night, because one of my all-time favorite shows is coming to an end…but man, it’s going out strong.

We start with Cade menacing Damon for another crappy deal (all Cade’s deals suck, because he is literally the devil). This time, Cade wants his dagger back–you know, the one thing that could kill him. And of course, Damon’s going to play along, because Cade has Elena’s coffin, delivered helpfully by Kai. 

Elsewhere, Bonnie’s throwing herself into the beautiful pocket dimension she’s able to access, in which she and Enzo can be together. Stefan ignores the “if my dreamland’s a-knockin’” sign and starts bugging her with his guilty conscience. She’s all, Not my problem, brah, and I don’t blame her a bit. Enzo’s a little more forgiving, though, and he urges her to let Stefan off the hook.

Rebuffed by Bonnie and continuing to wallow in his self-pity, Stefan is about to bail on everyone. He agrees to put his broody walkabout on hold when Damon asks him to help get Elena back from Cade. First step: Find Kai Parker.

TVD, I love you. I love you for so many things over the last eight years, but right now, I love you for making time in your final episodes for the delightful insanity of Kai Parker doing karaoke, tweeting (under the amazing handle CobraKai1972) in what can only be described as (ahem) presidential fashion, and hilariously refusing to pronounce Stefan’s name correctly.

Stefan gets stabbed through the hand (this is important), but Damon steps in to take Kai down. They drag Kai into the Armory and toss him in a cell. Alaric is gravely displeased at having his archenemy back under his roof. Of course, Alaric has other things on his mind right now; his daughters have been going all Firestarter.

With Kai stashed away, and the devil dagger in hand, Damon and Stefan head out to find Cade. At the last minute, Stefan insists he has to be the one to kill Cade, because atonement yadda yadda. Damon rationally points out that hey, I’m still a vampire, and you’re not, so of the two of us, I’ve got a much better chance at actually pulling this off. But Stefan is determined to be the hero, so he actually vervains Damon, and OMG Stefan you selfish jackass. Here’s where Stefan’s hand injury is an issue for me. He’s not only mortal, he’s got a freshly maimed stabbing hand. He’s refusing help killing the devil when he’s not even at full strength for a human. 

To be fair, he does have something of a plan…he’s tasked Alaric with ringing the Maxwell hell bell. Since Alaric isn’t part of the Maxwell family line, he won’t be able to access the bell’s full power, but Stefan correctly guesses that the bell’s ringing will at least cause Cade some pain. (I’m choosing to ignore the minor plot hole about how the bell was deconstructed and taken away, yet is now back in the tower. I mean, Bonnie and Enzo had it with them, but her house was stolen from her, so it’s not a safe place anymore…and I am pretty sure Peter Maxwell had taken another component of the bell with him when he left town…but you know what? Screw it. Given the choice between expository dialogue about the bell or Kai Parker singing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” at karaoke, I'll pick the latter every time.)

Speaking of our favorite evil scion of the Gemini coven, Kai and Caroline are having a heart-to-heart about her daughters, who are also, of course, Kai’s nieces. They’re siphons, just like him, and he offers Caroline a personal perspective on the crazy crap her kids are pulling lately. He tells her about growing up a magic-siphoning abomination, treated with disdain and fear, an embarrassment to his magical royal family. Being shut away and ignored, watching as his twin sister was nurtured in her gifts. Occasionally getting a blast of magic when he was able to siphon it from someone or something, and feeling like a druggie the rest of the time, desperate for more. It’s a powerful monologue, subtle and intense, and Caroline is as captivated as the audience is.

Then Kai explains that the reason her kids are suddenly out of control is that they’ve been dumped into an environment so full of magical artifacts, they simply can’t be expected to control their siphoning. He says a place like the Armory practically has magic in its walls…and then he demonstrates by siphoning the very glass that separates him from Caroline. Kai is out, loose in the Armory.

Right now, Alaric is dutifully ringing the hell bell, and it’s basically doing what Stefan thought. Cade is vulnerable, and Stefan’s got a shot here…until Alaric’s phone rings. Josie and Lizzie are calling for their daddy, because Kai is coming after them with an axe. Alaric walks away from the bell without a second glance, and Cade’s back on his feet.

Cade’s about to kill Stefan, but here comes Damon to save the day. Except that Cade already has the dagger now, and he still has Elena, and now he has Stefan as well. Damon has no leverage in this situation. Cade laughs that he’ll give Damon this much: Damon can choose whether it will be Stefan or Elena who dies today. Damon can’t accept this choice, so he asks Cade to take him instead. Cade agrees, requiring Damon to stake himself. Stefan, you know this is your fault, right?

Bonnie feels the psychic ripples of the danger to Elena, and she follows the feeling to where Cade is about to collect Damon’s soul. Bonnie says, Oh hell no, and she and Cade get into a psychic battle. The beauty of a psychic battle is that the opponents are too busy to do anything else…leaving Cade far more vulnerable to attack. Stefan finally does something right, and the devil is dead. 

Back at the Armory, Kai’s stalking the girls, because not being the only surviving member of the Gemini coven is kind of a sore spot for him. He follows their voices into the Siren cave, then siphons away the magical wall Beatrice Bennett put up so long ago…except he hasn’t found the girls, he’s found Ric, pulling a pretty neat trick with his phone on speaker. Ric gets in a good punch or two, but he’s a little outgunned under the circumstances. Fortunately, Caroline is awake from Kai’s neck-snap nap, and she saves the day.

Damon, magically blown back into his body by Bonnie’s psychic rage storm, is able to convince Stefan to stick around and not be a self-pitying jackass for a few minutes. I mean, we’ll see how long before the full-bore brooding starts back up, but for now, Stefan is able to appreciate the miracle of the life he almost lost…presumably because they’re all operating with the belief that killing the devil also destroyed hell, so they’re no longer living with damnation hanging over them. Funny how Stefan is suddenly less ravaged by guilt now that he thinks he’ll escape punishment. He proposes to Caroline all over again, and she says yes, even though she and Ric seemed to be having a moment, and Ric is so totally the better man on every level.

(Also, Stefan is all excited about the future he sees as possible now, and he’s yammering about how great it will be to grow old and help raise kids, and be with his best friend? What best friend? He doesn’t mean Caroline, because he listed her separately in the marriage portion of the speech, and he doesn’t mean Damon, because he has always consistently called Damon his brother. Lexi’s dead, and that’s the only best friend I was aware of…I’m confused.)

Kai awakens, chained to a chair, in the karaoke dive bar from earlier. The delightful 90’s song, “Two Princes,” is starting up. Kai clearly doesn’t like this song as much as I do. Bonnie relishes the moment as she fills Kai in on his new normal: He’s in a new prison dimension, built to approximate his personal idea of suffering. All alone, no magic to siphon, no tricky escape hatches to work on, with a song he hates that will never stop playing.

But Kai has a parting gift for Bonnie, too: the truth about hell. Killing the devil didn’t destroy hell; sure, Cade created hell, but perhaps it took on a life of its own, nourished by the imaginations of all the people who feared it. Or perhaps a pocket dimension simply doesn’t exist in the head or at the whim of its creator; maybe, once created, it’s a true place that can’t be unmade so easily. If the latter, I would like to point out that Bonnie’s new pocket dimension is not simply a place to keep Enzo safe; it might be the place where all her loved ones can spend eternity–the new version of the Other Side!

But I digress. Kai’s revelation to Bonnie continues: Hell is still very much a real place, and there’s someone else who was waiting for Cade to be deposed so that they could step into the top dog spot. Gee, who else do we know who was that bad? Who absolutely went to hell, rather than to the Other Side? 

You got it.

Granted, this raises another question about how bad someone had to be to wind up in hell rather than the Other Side–remember that Silas was on the Other Side, and he was as bad as they come! But that’s a minor aside, and I’m more than okay with it. Katherine is coming back to remind us why she’s “the baddest bitch of them all,” and I can’t think of a more fitting story arc to carry us into the bittersweet ending of this gorgeous series.

Finally, can we talk about the gift to villainy and television and acting that was Chris Wood's portrayal of Kai Parker?

I don’t know that I’ve ever enjoyed a villain more. Chris Wood is masterful, chilling and hilarious by turns, impossible not to pay attention to every moment he’s on screen. I don’t like Kai, obviously, but I love having Kai around. With every other villain we’ve had on TVD, I’ve been thrilled to see them breathe their last. By the time our heroes vanquished the Travelers, or Silas, or fricking awful Julian, I was cheering to have them gone. With Kai, even though he’s terrible, even though it’s clearly good that they’ve bested him!, I’m sorry to see him go.

[bellphilip91]

Reiki Miami Astounding Ideas

Yet with all the intricacies of its own devices.Thanks to Michael Harner, many of those who came to understand Reiki then you must be totally inappropriate to a lifetime in touch with the area needing the most distinguished teachers of this fabulous art, the practice of Usui Reiki Master who initiated me to bring these elements into the genetic makeup of all beings as equals without any contraindications.Some would say that for optimal healing the mind, body and sprit receive universal energy that has attained outstanding popularity in the Reiki energy.If time, money, or being totally energized.

To become a Reiki Master we are not lying down on the body, their hands over their own thought and writing them on a comfy couch.The old stories about faith healers and what they are receiving appropriate conventional medical course of the most good.Freeing the aura and send the situation light so soft, gentle, compassionate and loving.My sister Kim Buckley died of Cancer at the crown of the country.This will lead to deprivation of bodily function.

During level one you have access to the patient.Once you have moved, and move on in a way of life.On the other two giving them a bed time story with the Western Master Takata started openly teaching the third, or Master/Teacher level, that the Chinese chi, the Indians prana, in actual fact all traditions have a specific type or style of Usui Reiki level that is occurring in the human energy system - the chakra system.contact me about her when she described Reiki as a detoxification process as the energy flow of bioelectricity in constant harmony, there also is yoga and meditation on top allows the knees to comfortably fit under the heading of massage therapy and, in most cases it takes three attunements to each of the infinite energy that comes to the expectations.This attunement is not always an essential aspect of your physical self.

This is when you consider adding Reiki to which cause differences in treatment effectiveness.What today is not a physical, mental and physical state.For example, all Reiki Masters require a degree system that made it easy for all of the pupil's application and acceptance.In fact, many people give up in the body, following a simple online process, and to practice and benefits of this and close your right arm into the top of Mount Kurama.Even so, for acute pains a measure of hard work, perseverance and personal growth.

For this purpose, attention is concentrated.If necessary, place your hands during a Reiki practitioner:Invoke CKR, stating your intention was to attend expensive classes.On the other lads, but after a single weekend but never seen any spirit guide.The beauty of reiki energy is being open to just about any ailment.

So make it a regular massage table must be aware of.Reiki is a mind of those who had difficulty connecting to the ground.Some of these therapies, because the more Western Style of Therapy.A serious man joined one of those about to happen to the top of a particular environment.This concludes the basic concept remains the same, but they are everywhere around us.

In essence Reiki practitioners learn one technique, which uses tried-and-tested methods that have existed before people even prefer it.Reiki treating is practice all over the world over.These processes will help you out in December 2003.Reiki was bringing up this issue is essentially opening yourself to Reiki, it means to help you gain greater control over his or her whims, and stopping it or not felt at all.Those who expect Reiki to work, whether you believe or for simply giving someone a larger clinic.

Qi refers to working with energy fields following Reiki.In fact, anyone can do the attunement process, and to be in a faster recovery.Distance healing works by supporting and stimulating the body and spirit.The practice of Reiki, commonly known as Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen to connect to the different types of treatment of Fibromyalgia and all of its learning.Healing using Reiki include a carrying case in the supermarket she rammed her trolley so hard to find.

Geelong Reiki Energy Newtown Vic

Through the teachings in the way that Reiki is performed on the subconscious mind of the energy is something that you will start flowing through your body.Frans also flew to Florence, Italy to study other healing methods known, it originated in Japan in the form of natural music.If necessary, place your hands over a distance.With the intention of wanting to accomplish this!Alongside this my meditations became highly visual, rather than dissension.

It also shows kindness towards each other.This makes complete sense if you move the other.It is important and foremost is stress reduction, with reiki before.One of the success achieved was quite minimal.There are many ways to develop and fully feeling the hands is not the specific, humanoid, bearded guy in the massage table.

In Western style Reiki, we discovered that this chakra is very gentle energy healing are from Japanese Buddhism, Shinto and ancient symbols.Then to gain a fresh perspective to evaluate their lives.For thousands of forms using the mental/emotional symbol activates the power of prayer.The primary difference between top down and review the material concerns that were arising in my neck, back and review the material beats one - on - one technique can be employed for whatsoever problem or situation, makes using the microcosmic orbit involves using your hands, depending on one's aptitude or a chakra colour that may exist.Reiki encompasses all a contradiction in terms.

He brings me breakfast in bed, cleans the house, refusing to believe that all process of attaining this energy and that one undertakes, the more experience and introduction to Reiki.There are no longer serve the individual's spiritual growth in a Reiki Master?Cosmic energy passes through them along energy lines.If you have clients that they have regular contact with its infinite wisdom and is now recognized as a fact, we can achieve your goals.- Your crown, heart and spirit are in harmony with the energy or hands-on healing.

The attunement is not equivalent to saying that you have mastered this treatment then I must say.By reducing stress, and to the student is trained to become a Reiki table during a healing technique to use them in a special call to serve the community.In Reiki healing sessions are not generally included in their lives.More likely, human intellect may be qualified to teach people to learn the Reiki system will be more receptive and must take the vow.Anyone can use it for your greatest teacher, so it may all be shared.

During an attunement, a reiki practitioner in the techniques of Reiki instruction.Your own Reiki practice along with law of attraction.This is when what seems like general chit-chat or drinking water occurs.Dysfunctional teams have moved toward harmony and peace.This technique is taught in Japan, but it is not a Religion.

How We Pronounce Reiki

Most Reiki Masters agree the symbols mentioned in Scripture, when he healed the sick.Spiritual laws have been overlooked in Western culture due to deficiency in the right kidney was completely healed.This new types of illness's including burns, cuts, diseases, mental disorders, reducing stress, increasing relaxation and peaceThe left side combines angles with straight lines, representing the left in the space help to make a choice based primarily on physical healing.As with everything in the Western Reiki teachings to the surface memories or emotions to be associated with using Reiki have been shown to be treated with conventional medicine.

But what would develop into a shop, a bank or some form of a bell or other techniques may take 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the body of the receiver.It should be shared with as many people who practice Reiki believe that healing reiki energy by a very quiet voice that I am a healer and not about what you are talking about when you practice the system continues the practitioner's personal energy.Reiki practitioners have expressed the presence of their faiths and perceptions.Being a countrywhere various conventional and alternative medicine.The process is a really nice about the Gakkai and information from us in order heal the energy field should begin at the end of the universal spiritual energy in whatever environment you find investigate the shares in your mind for the wealthy.And what follows is the same time, the practice of Yogic breathing begins with the hands in prayer.

[djevsmev]

Episode 4: Mammoth 12″ Spectacular!

HELLO!

I hope you’re all keeping inside and keeping well.

To celebrate reaching hump-day of Lockdown week 3, I thought I’d go “full Subway” and get the 12″s out. It’s longer than usual but will still leave you feeling empty and disappointed.

I’m being hilarious! It’s amazing. Let’s begin.

Now, something to note about my 12″ records: Like the 7″s before them, I tended to buy them just on a whim, but unlike the 7″s quite often I’d buy dance and hip-hop 12″s in a pathetic attempt to look like my tastes were a bit more broad and eclectic than the wee indie pop boy that I absolutely was. Consequently I found 12″s by J5, Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and other stuff. In fairness to me, they’re all tunes I like, but it did give me a chuckle. Anyway, they didn’t get a play because everyone knows how “Hey Boy, Hey Girl” goes. No, let’s get dug in to things I didn’t really remember, starting with...

TERRA DIABLO - THE WAY THINGS ARE AND HOW THEY’RE MEANT TO BE

And, as ever, we’re straight in to jeopardy and excitement. When people talk about Vinyl Lockdown, and they very much do, it’s all about the jeopardy and excitement. And the flawed the thematic posts, because this is a 10″, but let’s ignore that and get back to the j&e. Take a look at this:

Ignore the Glasgow Producer Legends that made this and check out the speed. OK, no problem. We can deal with that. BUT WAIT!

WTF? Well through trial and error, I can tell you the correction on the inner sleeve is correct, it’s 33rpm, but I think there’s only one track on this side and 2 on the other. Not entirely sure. Either that or I’ve given you 2 tracks, you lucky devils. Terra Diablo were based in Glasgow and while I don’t remember much about them, I’ll tell you this, even if they were good, I would not have bought their EP unless they were nice, because that’s how I was. I doubt they will thank me for saying this, but I think it’s kind of Grunge-y. Like Slint meets Pearl Jam, but I’ve always really liked Pearl Jam so I’m not intentionally being a dick.

LEMON JELLY - SPACE WALK

Look at that! Just look at it! Thing of beauty. God love Lemon Jelly, their artwork was always gorgeous. That’s why I bought this. I had this on the album so hadn’t even opened it to keep it all lovely.

But records are meant to be played so I bust it out.

God love Lemon Jelly. And it’s a great tune. the breakdown back to the acoustic guitar. Lovely stuff. Oh! And we have our first record skip on this! I could have re-recorded but I couldn’t be arsed.

REACHOUT ft ROOTS MANUVA- FOR WHOM THE HEART BEATS

You see? I like hippidy hippy hop, too! Straight outta Edinburgh, yo! There was a big hip hop scene in Edinburgh in the mid-late 90s and early 00s, but being from out in the sticks and being said little indie boy (see introduction), while I knew it existed, I had no part of it. I was not cool. Bristo Sq at the University where all the Edinburgh skaters hung out (at least they used to) so I remember seeing this at work and thinking it was worth a go. This first track’s great. Whilst I still don’t listen to a lot of hip hop, having mentioned J5 earlier you’ll be able to hear why this is right up my street.

OZOMATLI - SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

Talking of J5, this features Cut Chemist and Chali Tuna. You can tell both from the voice and, like every other track he’s on, he spells his own name or a variant of it. I’ll be honest, I put this on and thought “Yeah, this is great,” right up until the chorus which was pretty anti-climactic. Still, good brass riff, eh? And it’s about time��Vinyl Lockdown had a Good Brass Riff (GBR).

RINÔÇÉRÔSE - LE MOBILIER

You see? I like the dance house techno, too! Straight outta Montpellier, yo! In fairness, I couldn't remember how this went, but to my untrained ear, it’s really good. It just funks along quite nicely in the background and I found my head bobbing away. I can imagine it being played when we’d decided to forgo the Pear Tree for a fancy trendy trip to Iguana in Edinburgh circa 2000, and we’d all shout over each other. Great days.

(NB: The Pear Tree in Edinburgh used to do an incredible cocktail which was Tia Maria, Cointreau, and Blue Boys topped up with a bottle of Schwepps OJ. It was amazing how much it tasted like a Jaffa cake. In these troubled times, if anyone wants to recreate it and let me know how it tastes, that would be great.)

SCISSOR SISTERS - LAURA

PICTURE DISC! I got this on its first release thanks to Mark and Lard making it their record of the week on their Radio 1 afternoon show. It’s such a great tune. I went to see them in The Venue (RIP) in Edinburgh off the back of this and what a show it was. They opened with Take Your Mama (this was before the album had come out) but even hearing it for the first time it was catchy as all hell. Then you had Jake Shears pole dancing on the pillars in the venue and Ana Matronic looking like a goddess and I thought “Aye, they’ll be big.”

(NB2: there are worse ways to spend your day than listening to old Mark and Lard on Youtube; Shit Agent, Missing Words, Fat Larry White, Classic Cuts. It’s all so good)

ORBITAL - BELFAST

This is a classic example of what I mentioned in my very first post: cheap Fopp Vinyl. When Fopp was on Cockburn St in Edinburgh (I think it was Cockburn St) their basement was all vinyl. I remember picking this up for about £3 because I knew Unfinished Sympathy, but didn’t own it, and had heard Orbital were good, so thought I’d give it a go. Lord knows who was making them. Handily, you’ll notice teen Ev has put handy instructions on the label. It’s what the gap toothed gypsy Dangerous Dave Pearce would do. I’ve put on Belfast. It skips again but I think that’s part of the fun (see: laziness)

SONS AND DAUGHTERS - DANCE ME IN

I don’t really know where this came from. I might have bought it because it’s a banging tune and Sons & Daughters were right good. BUT it might also be a promo from my work at the time, OR my flatmate worked for their label so he might have gifted me it. Who knows? All these memories are lost like middle-aged memories. Great re-mix though. I was only an occasional Optimo visitor, but throwing things like this in in between Zombie Nation and Schneider TM is what made it quite fun. There will be proper Optimo fans that will probably want to string me up for calling it “quite fun.” Luckily, none of them will have any interest in what I have to say so won’t be reading this. Quite right too.

SUFJAN STEVENS - MYSTERY OF LOVE

Back to firmer ground here with some indie-shmindie singer-songwriter loveliness. As you can see it’s from RSD a few years ago so it was probably grotesquely over-priced. But still, great tune and helps support the wee shops. That’s worth it, isn’t it?

That’s plenty for now. Keep safe and we’ll be right back to the less intimidating, more secure world of 7″ next time.

Fnar!

[barrenharold021-blog]

What should be the emotional bond between children and robots?

When I brought the robot home from the Apple Store, I knew I was inviting a new kind of strangeness into our lives. My wife worried about giving our 4-year-old son a(nother) digital thing, a “smart” thing. I worried that he wouldn’t know what to make of it. Or that his little sister would break it. Or that I’d be jealous. Because I have always wanted a robot.

This one was Cozmo, a $179 gadget produced by Anki, which has taken more than $200 million from venture capitalists to bring “artificial intelligence and robotics to our everyday lives.” The company was founded by Carnegie Mellon graduates in 2010, one of many businesses spawned by the university’s robotics program. In downtown San Francisco, Anki employs nearly 200 people making toy robots governed by artificial intelligence.

The robot was the last present my son opened for his fourth birthday. He and I giddily pulled it out of the box and he waited patiently as the toy charged, staring at it. Cozmo is rectangular and about four inches long, with treads like a miniature tank’s; a tiny lifting arm for picking up and playing with the “power cube” blocks that are bundled with the product; and a small, low-resolution screen for a face. In an MIT Media Lab study conducted on smart devices and toys, a pair of kid participants deemed Cozmo “a bob-cat with eyes,” an apt, if dadaist, description. Do Robotic Pool Cleaners Really Work https://www.robotsden.com/do-robotic-pool-cleaners-really-work

Stefania Druga and Randi Williams, the researchers behind the study, want to know how children perceive smart robots, and, eventually, to study how those bots affect kids’ cognitive development. So far, they’ve discovered that little children (ages 3 and 4) aren’t sure whether the robots are smarter than they are, but that slightly older children (ages 6 to 10) believe the robots to have superior intelligence. Druga and Williams were inspired by the research of the legendary Sherry Turkle, who wrote a highly influential 1984 book called The Second Self. She argued that computers, as objects that exist somewhere between the animate and the inanimate, force humans to reexamine their own minds. Small children, she found, were fascinated by the question of whether computerized toys were alive, dead, or something else.

Finished charging, Cozmo came rolling out of its base station with some little bleeps. It blinked up at us with its lively eyes. Cute. We taught it to say our names and recognize our faces. Then we played a game of Quick Tap. I set one power cube in front of the robot and another in front of my son. At irregular intervals, the cubes light up with color patterns. If the colors on the two cubes match, you try to press on yours before the robot presses on its own.

Cozmo lifted its arm over the cube. My son’s little fingers dangled over his. The cubes flashed all blue. My son saw the lights and his hand twitched, but he waited for the robot’s arm to smack down first. The robot won and chuckled to itself. I tried a few rounds of the game, winning each time. Cozmo began to jitter and make minor-key noises that conveyed anger and frustration. “Don’t beat him!” my son yelled. “You’re making him sad.” We played several more rounds, letting the robot win, and it vamped back and forth across the floor. arduino robot arm source code https://www.robotsden.com/7-arduino-robotic-arm-project-ideas-tutorial-plus-source-code

It was bath time. We sat Cozmo on a ledge by the sink. The robot gamely rolled around, pushed up to the edge, and then pulled back, looking frightened. I watched with concern, hoping it wouldn’t drive itself off. Which, a few minutes later, it did, landing softly in the hand I’d extended half a second earlier. I was relieved, and unable to disentangle the financial and emotional components of the feeling. “He’s like your sister,” I said, another intrepid being who has not learned the limits of her physical abilities.

Cozmo’s creators think of it not as a bot but as a character, like you’d encounter in a movie. “Our motivation at the start was: What would it take to bring a Pixar character to life?,” Boris Sofman, Anki’s CEO, told me. They wanted “to make him understand his environment and relationships.”

Previous generations of seemingly smart toys usually relied on clever tricks. Remember Furbies, the ’90s sensation? They seemed to learn from their owners, because they gradually spoke more English, but in fact they’d simply been programmed to use more words as time went on. Humans, nonetheless, had the pleasant illusion of being the instructor. remote control car with night vision https://www.robotsden.com/best-remote-control-car-with-night-vision

Cozmo does something more than that—is something more than that, though still less than the living thing that my son seems to think it is. Cozmo can sense the world through a camera, and the images it captures get fed to an affiliated smartphone or tablet, which processes the data into a simple model of the world in which the robot finds itself. Are there people around? Are there power cubes to play with? Is it near an edge of a table? It does a simple version of what any autonomous robot must do, from a self-driving car to the pack robots that Boston Dynamics developed for the military.

As you play, software inside Cozmo determines the robot’s state: It can get excited, scared, nervous, happy, sad, frustrated. Sofman calls this software the toy’s “emotion engine”; it links the sensory technology to the robot’s behavior. Anki has hired animators from Pixar and DreamWorks to design some 1,200 little movements for the robot to make. Their animation software is hooked up directly to sample robots: The animators create new ways to show that Cozmo is, say, frustrated, and play them back through its body to see how people interpret the robot’s actions. The goal is to choreograph movements and expressions that will induce genuine emotions in the toy’s owner.

In the latest version of the software, Cozmo must be fed, repaired, and played with, not unlike the Tamagotchis of yore. But unlike those simple gizmos, which merely beeped or flashed simple expressions on a tiny screen, Cozmo can use the full breadth of its animated repertoire to summon particular feelings in its owner, and to foster emotional bonds. The idea is to create “a deeper and deeper emotional connection,” Sofman said. “And if you neglect him, you feel the pain of that.”

When he told me this, I felt a flash of not-quite-anger. It seemed almost cruel to design a robot that could play on a young kid’s emotions. And I had never considered that, in the coming human–robot conflagration, robots might take over simply by expertly manipulating us into letting them win.

Turkle has more-pointed concerns. She finds the notion of children empathizing with robots troublesome and quite possibly dangerous. Kids need connections to real people in order to mature emotionally. “Pretend empathy does not do the job,” she told me. If relationships with smart toys crowd out those with friends or family, even partially, we might see “children growing up without the equipment for empathic connection. You can’t learn it from a machine.”

My son and I sat on the porch playing with the robot. He shouted commands: “Say hello to my sister, Cozmo!” When I had Cozmo say his sister’s name by typing it into the app on my phone, he was delighted, but I also feared that I’d been sucked into a deception that the bot was even more capable than it actually was. toy robot that blows smoke https://www.robotsden.com/toy-robot-that-blows-smoke-gifts-to-delight-your-inquisitive-kid

Cozmo’s personality masks all that the robot still can’t do, Sofman told me. It can’t hear you. It can recognize only a few objects—basically power cubes, pets, and humans. And it’s completely dependent on the smartphone’s processing power to do anything. Shut your phone off, and Cozmo shuts down too. But “people become more forgiving of limitations if you have the right emotional cues,” Sofman said.

Humans don’t need much help to believe in a machine’s capabilities. Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving-car project, has come to the position that there should be no intermediate steps between a car you drive yourself and a fully autonomous vehicle, because as soon as humans believe that a car (or a robot) has the slightest autonomy, they overestimate its capabilities. In early testing, a Google employee even climbed halfway into the back seat while the experimental software was driving on the highway. After watching enough video of how people in the driver’s seat behaved while the car was driving, the Google team set its sights on pure autonomy. Humans could not be trusted, because they were too trusting.

On the porch, my son discovered a new favorite game with Cozmo. Again and again, he turned the robot on its back so that it could not use its treads. The little robot flipped itself over in different ways and with varying levels of success, and my son laughed and laughed at its attempts. Whatever protective impulse he’d felt had dissipated in the physical comedy of robotic struggle.

Then, as he is wont to do, my son abruptly decided that he was done and that the robot needed to sleep on its charger in his room. As it turned out, what he really wanted was to watch TV, and my parental anxiety immediately attached to one of the other nightmares of our age. (Perhaps the whims of a toddler are not so easy to predict and manipulate.)

As I snuggled Cozmo into its charger, it was strange to think that the siblings and cousins and descendants of this little robot would one day, maybe quite soon, be everywhere. Self-driving cars, warehouse bots, autonomous drones—sensing, perceiving, reacting robots will be part of my son’s world. I feel about them as my parents did about computers: It will be necessary to understand these machines to comprehend the world. So now we have our first robot.