#I’ve been getting out of my ‘feels like/is treated like a piece of meat’ era

[fireflyhwufanficwriter]

My thoughts on Dr. Stone’s S02E05 (“Steam Gorilla”)

My thoughts after watching Season Two, Episode Five:

01. (CHROME.) He… might need some lessons in… keeping quiet 😆 “Haha, your prison for me is so easy to get out of, and I’m going to do just that!” But later on he sees their traps, so he realizes why he was put there. That was pretty smart of Chrome to shout out all the details of his imprisonment to Suika! Not subtle at all… but smart 😁 Chrome is really motivated to escape on his own, using the power of science! 😡😁

02. (GINRO.) Looks like he was filling in for Chrome in calling Kohaku a gorilla… and he got the lumps usually gets 😲

03. (HYOGA.) Did Hyoga’s mask always have airholes? This is the first time I’m seeing airholes. Or at least noticing them. Have they been there this whole time? 😲

04. (KASEKI.) Hahaha! He really had everybody fooled at first before he elaborated that he just wanted to rescue Chrome so that he and Senku could gloat about building the Steam Gorilla 😆 He was so sad about changing his “adorable” Steam Gorilla, but after Senku told him about his plan, Kaseki couldn’t wait to get started 😁

05. (KINRO.) Kinro took down a TREE in one hit! 😲 (It looks like he has a pure iron shield now – and so do some of the other villagers!) Is it just me, or is this the first battle Senku has ever initiated? (I think all of his other battles were started by other people, or were part of the Grand Bout.) Okay… um… the spearhead looked like it was made of metal when Kinro used it on the tree, but from the way it crumbled to pieces after he used it on Senku, it was stone after all? So does that mean that the villagers’ only metal weapons right now are their swords and Ginro’s spear? But, stone spearhead or not, Kinro really, really freaked Senku out 😆 (And Kohaku was the first one to see the impact the battle had on Senku 😁)

06. (KOHAKU.) I like how worried Kohaku is about Chrome in this episode… she really cares about him! 😊 Her big hand from giving Ginro those lumps… 😆 She looked so casual afterwards while talking to Senku while her big fist was sticking out like that 😆 (Even Senku was a little nervous, judging by that sweatdrop, haha!) She looked like a sniper when she was using the telescope to spy on the Tsukasa Empire! Despite her initial guess about the tank being wrong, modern-era tanks really ARE covered in iron all around, so it’s like she leapt to a scientifically/historically accurate conclusion. Good job, Kohaku! 😊 In these past two episodes, Kohaku has been a bit like our link to Chrome… her thoughts about him lead to the episode showing us what he’s thinking about at the time 😊

07. (MAGMA.) He was so eager to fight the steam engine… and he lost. Poor guy 😆

08. (OLD PEOPLE.) I LOVED this scene. I loved it in the manga, and I love it in the anime (this scene had S-tier animation!!). this scene made me cry, even though I knew it was coming because I'm a manga reader. They did an incredible job with this scene. Senku calls them “pesky old farts who can’t walk fast enough,” but they aren’t fooled by the words he uses and they know he’s a good person because of his actions and everything he’s done to help everybody and improve their lives. Natri explains their decision so well and he doesn’t even ask Senku about what he had intended with the automobile because “we already know, Senku.” And his and Senku’s eyes were both shining while they were talking even when Senku tried to deny everything, and when Natri told Senku that they would surely defeat the Tsukasa Empire. The amount of faith they’re showing in Senku, and in the younger generations, is incredible, and everything else in the scene, like the camerawork when they were panning upwards, and the music throughout the whole scene… I’ve said before that a disadvantage of anime is that it doesn’t let you stop and process a scene because everything has to keep on moving, but this was a brilliant example of a scene with so much trust and love done right; done PERFECTLY. Their faith in everybody else added a greater sense of responsibility onto everybody’s shoulders – Kokuyou, Kinro, and everybody else looked so solemn and determined to not let everybody down. And in the end, Kohaku was the one to reply for Senku that their trust wasn’t misplaced... and I LOVE that she was the one holding his up flag… 😁 It reminds me of the scene in Season One when Senku parted ways with Taiju and Yuzuriha, and he held up the flag for them as a goodbye and as a promise… Kohaku’s doing the same thing, on his behalf, for everybody they’re leaving behind. This was my favorite scene from Season Two so far, no doubt about it, and I would have been totally fine if the episode had ended there. This scene was AMAZING 😭

09. (SENKU.) I feel like I haven’t heard him say “this is exhilarating” in a while, so it was nice to hear him say it here. It’s cool that Senku is really not afraid of hard work… even though he’s their undisputed leader, he’s still pushing the Steam Gorilla up the hill along with everybody else. After they arrived at the cliff, I loved that even though the pot he was carrying was only slightly larger than Suika’s, he was struggling with it SO MUCH, while Suika had no problem with hers 😆 Senku’s short paper shot had nice sounds and animation – anime does great things that manga can’t! 😊

10. (STEAM GORILLA.) Did NASA really make wheels out of bamboo weave? 😲 Then again, if Thomas Edison used bamboo filaments for lightbulbs… Bamboo’s really versatile! The guys look so excited about the car 😆 Kohaku, on the other hand… 😆 I feel pretty sorry for everybody having to push it him those hills, haha! I can just imagine Ruri telling the others about how gorillas look like before they made the front part, and Senku and Gen looking surprised at how Byakuya’s Hundred Tales described gorillas and them correcting her 😁

11. (SUIKA.) Senku must have been upgrading her vocabulary if she knows words like “hexagonal!” (Or maybe she didn’t say it at all and the subtitles just put it there?) I really like that Suika is given opportunities to make her own choices. She isn’t just a cute character with no other purpose, and she’s not just useful after others make decisions for her; SHE’S the one coming up with her own ideas and she executes her missions really, really well. (And I like that detail of her drooling when she watching those guys eating meat – it’s a small detail, but it gives you additional insight into Ishigami Village and food being an issue.) Suika (and maybe Shovel) gathered SO MANY WEEDS! She gathered an amount that was multiple times her own size 😆 (Is it just me, or does Shovel look much older here compared to Season One? 😲)

12. (TSUKASA.) Was the Cave of Miracles THAT big in Season One?? Tsukasa’s throne looks HUGE! And where is he collecting the nitric acid? Maybe he has a jar right behind the throne or something. And he anticipated Senku’s steam engine?! In Tsukasa’s conversation with Hyoga, he looks really smart, and what’s interesting is that he’s looks like that not because Hyoga is stupid (of course he isn’t; he was able to deduce Kinro’s eye problems from so little information!), but because knows he know how Senku thinks and what drives his decisions, in addition to Tsukasa’s own knowledge of science.

13. (FINAL THOUGHTS.) I loved this episode (my favorite one so far for Season Two!); I LOVED the scene with the old people SO MUCH. With both this season and last season, it’s incredible how much effort this animation studio and everybody else involved is putting in to make sure to treat the Dr. Stone source material and the characters as respectfully as possible, with the way they’re able to incorporate animation, sound, and even anime-original scenes seamlessly with canon scenes and moments to give us beautiful episodes like this each week. We Dr. Stone fans are SO lucky! 😭 And I love this season’s ending song! 😁

https://firefly-hwufanficwriterrrrr.tumblr.com/MyDrStoneEpisodeMangaThoughts

[jessicafurseth]

Reading List, Beautiful Things (double) edition.

“The pleasure of the streets and London itself unfolding in the autumn chill; everything tingling with newness and risk, glitter of frost and glow of body heat, the shock of finding and holding what he wanted among millions of strangers.“ [Alan Hollinghurst, 'The Line of Beauty']

[Image by Neon Talk] 

* 

“People don’t want to be human, they want to be right. I wanted to be right.” On the joy of being wrong about yourself. [Stephanie Georgopulos, Human Parts at Medium] 

"Everything is fun and everything is light and everything is rancor. Until suddenly, you are the one in danger.” Kelsey McKinney played the goose game [Deadspin] 

"I almost died of happiness every time I saw him. I couldn’t believe a person this attractive and this smart and this nice existed and that we actually liked each other. I realized that I had never really liked 95 percent of the people I had dated. Though I didn’t believe in soul mates and still don’t, I finally understood what people meant when they talked about really loving someone and feeling close to them. I had always thought of men as these sort of things that, if you were straight and wanted to have sex, you just sort of had to contend with. Tor was like an actual person.” Fuck I loved this. [Sarah Miller, The Cut] 

“Cora [Brooks] taught me that there are worse things than dying — that getting older is a process of losing your children to distance and coping with incontinence and memory loss, yes, but also of becoming more unapologetically yourself." [Devi Lockwood, The New York Times] 

“There is very good research showing that if you attain extrinsic goals, like financial success, fame, or popularity, it’s actually like doing drugs: you need a bigger and bigger dose to get high.” On ambition [Katie Heaney, The Cut] 

"I don’t spend a lot of time high-fiving, just like I don’t spend a lot of time agonizing when something goes wrong. I play the long game.” Kara Swisher on ambition [The Cut] 

On eating a lot of sugar to stay off booze [Grace Lavery, Vice] 

"The 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Doublemeat Burger walked so Beyond Meat could run” [Madeleine Davies, Eater] 

Van-life fail [Chris Wright, Outside] 

"I am now terrified and deeply suspicious of edibles and heartbroken that my mother may have been right about drugs all along.” Today in “just because it’s legal doesn’t make it harmless” [Roxane Gay, Gay Mag at Medium] 

In praise of the women who made the era of the erotic thriller [Abbey Bender, The Outline] 

"My change of circumstance made me hyperaware of what I wanted everyone to see: a woman in charge of herself. A Strong Woman Doing Well On Her Own. A woman (I’m sorry) thriving.” Monica Heisey goes spinning after getting divorced. [The Guardian] 

"But Sundays are no longer a day of forced noncommerce—everything’s open—or nonproductivity. Even if you aren’t asked to pull a weekend shift, work intrudes upon those once-sacred hours. The previous week’s unfinished business beckons when you open your laptop; urgent emails from a colleague await you in your inbox. A low-level sense of guilt attaches to those stretches of time not spent working.” On the loss of communal downtime [Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic] 

Tourism has never been “authentic” [Kyle Chayka, The Goods by Vox] 

"iI I live another 41 years to avenge what has happened, it still won’t be enough.” This longread on chemotherapy is incredible [Anne Boyer, The Guardian] 

"In my final few months of being 29, I’ve become obsessed with the gap between how special I thought I was – a typical by-product of being raised by loving parents – and how ordinary I’ve turned out to be. I’m taking driving lessons, but I’ve come to resent talking to anyone about something so common. So predictable.” [Jessica Brown’s TinyLetter] On perimenopause and the best fan money can buy [Jolie Kerr, The Goods at Vox] 

The revolutionary pleasures of Lana Del Rey [Emma Garland, Vice] 

"No longer dyeing my hair was like suddenly swallowing a million Valium. The shift in how people treated me was immediately palpable, but whatever sense of alienation this resulted in was balanced by a newfound lack of anxiety about the arrival of middle-agedness. No more fear about what it would be like. It was here now! I started noticing all the women around me who were naturally gray. I used to be like, Oh my God, do I look like that?and now I was like, Yeah, I do. Oh well.” [Sarah Miller, The Cut] 

On being very excited about a piece of news that’s of little general interest [Rosa Lyster, Popula] 

On falling asleep while watching Friends [Sarah Manavis, GQ] 

Paintings by Frank Laws, documenting the architecture of East London housing [Huck Magazine] 

50 horny photos of Bruce Springsteen [The Cut] 

Jenny Odell at the Longform Podcast - I’ve been thinking about this for weeks.

[blackbeerandcoffeemovies]

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

This movie came out in 1975 and I’ll be blunt: it has not aged well. You can take that as a warning.

In fact, you find yourself in various states of cringing, laughing hysterically and wincing at how mind-numbingly “campy” this movie is. It would help a lot to remember that this movie was made in a different era, with a different vibe throbbing in the culture. Personally, I watched this movie not just for the memories but to perform a symbolic gesture of sorts; like a wink to a beloved ex-girlfriend who you may have connected with recently.   

So if you are still curious enough to continue reading this review though, you’ll get to know more about arguably THE first superhero ever! The prototype from which all the other modern costumed, world-saving, aliens/monsters/despot-fighting paladins found their inspiration from.    

But first, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Way down. Thirty-eight years ago to be exact. . .  

I grew up with American comics. I was just a Malay kid who was so fascinated with this wondrous world of mighty men battling equally mighty villains. My memory is a bit hazy but I do remember that, as a scrawny 7-year old in 1982, I fondly remember clutching my first comic book with a stupid grin on my face as I left the store selling PX goods and “stateside” items (it was an issue of “The Flash” by the way). This literally and figuratively, colorful piece of literature not only served to enhance my facility with the English language but it also introduced me to a large slice of Americana in all its “Western” ways.

Later, this love of the colored pages unknowingly led me to appreciate another, more ancient kind of literature as soon as I was able to intellectually grasp it: mythology. I graduated from skin-tight, super-powered, 2D heroes to flexing my imagination about ancient stories of immortal gods who could throw lightning bolts, imprison giants, and command the elements. Was I sensing a familiar pattern here?

That underlying pattern, I ultimately found later in university, was called the archetype. To those unfamiliar, the archetype as is known in various fields of studies is basically an image or representation of a grander ideal that we recognize readily when we see it. When you see these beings, your insides get flooded with inspiration and comfort because you know they embody strength, protection, justice, restoring balance and all that good stuff. Such symbols have been around since the dawn of humanity simply because they give us an ideal to aspire to and not be simply hairy meat bags existing just to make it to another day.    

So who is Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze exactly? Created in 1933 (Yes, he’s that old. Years later, some super-strong alien with a big letter “S” on his chest would also rip-off the idea of having a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic and be called “Man of Steel” instead, but let’s not talk about him. . .) from a time that was before the modern comic book format. This was the era of the so-called pulp magazines, circa 1890’s to the 1950s. As the name implies, the paper used was made from wood pulp material with the pages having rough, untrimmed edges very different from the higher-quality paper used in magazines. In terms of literary style, think of them as short, “cheap”, unsophisticated works of fiction for mass consumption with almost no illustrations. Thus, the reader defaults to his/her imagination for further immersive experience. The heroes at this time were in the truest sense crimefighters or ordinary men having heroic exploits by uncovering plots and bringing wrongdoers to justice.

Clark “Doc” Savage Jr. would be the template for the rich, over-achieving polymath industrialist with limitless resources (think Batman, Ironman and Black Panther with a bit of Robin Hood thrown in). He was raised to be the peak of manly perfection having unmatched athletic ability, a photographic memory plus an inventive intellect that would rival Da Vinci or Newton and the discipline that would make a Special Forces operator blush! To add to his already considerable arsenal was his cadre: The Fabulous Five. This crew was made-up of his previous military comrades that included an industrial chemist, a construction engineer, a high-level electrician, a renowned archaeologist/geologist, and even a noted Harvard lawyer. Banding together with Doc taking the lead, they pooled their various skillsets and traveled the world having adventures and fighting for justice. Above all else, Doc Savage apparently had a character that was closest to the ideal of all humanity. This was exemplified in “The Oath” he and his team strove to live by: 

“Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.”

Finally, the blessed movie itself. I really believe they could have treated the material better. If you’re a fan of the clownish Batman TV series of the 1960’s, you’ll feel right at home with how the makers of this film approached it. The ridiculously cartoonish characters, the contrived banter/bickering dialog between the team, the mediocre special effects, the lack of depth of emotion. . . Do I really need to go on?  I should let you know I’ve never had a colonoscopy before, but I imagine this would be the closest experience to it, with the procedure being done to you with minimal anesthetic as possible!  

If this movie had any saving grace whatsoever, it would be lead actor Ron Ely (“Tarzan” TV series of the 1960s). If we’re looking for an archetype of the “ubermensch”, Ely is the closest we have of him with his obvious manly presence and the dignity he carried himself with was convincing. That being said, the grand final fight scene between him and the villain/criminal mastermind apparently displaying their mutual mastery of several martial arts is best watched with strong liquor of your choice. Trust me; it helps numb the cringe!   

Yes, this movie was indeed like reconnecting with an old flame. The memories, both good and bad come tumbling back (mostly the good though), but REALITY suddenly comes down hard like the current jealous partner! That was then, this is now. It gives you pause to think that perhaps there’s a reason why it was only good in the past, and that is so you could appreciate what you have NOW in the present.   

Doc Savage has a tremendous amount of potential if given the right elements for proper flimhood. Still hoping this granddaddy of superheroes gets to have a worthy remake one day! 

[recentanimenews]

THE GREAT CRUNCHYROLL NARUTO REWATCH Begins with Episodes 1-7!

*guitar*

*shadows*

COME ON!

Welcome to The Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! I'm Nate, and I'll be your host this week as we make our way through all 220 episodes of the original Naruto. Last week, I told you how all this worked, but everybody who's new I'll go over things one more time.

  Each week, we'll be watching SEVEN EPISODES of the original Naruto, and sharing our thoughts on them interview-style every Friday at 5pm PST.

  This week, we're starting things off with episodes 1-7, featuring an introduction to everyone's favorite super-loud orange ninja, the rest of our main cast, and this world of ninja that they inhabit. Things move pretty quickly--it's not long before Naruto's assigned to Team 7, they have their first real test against their teacher and commander Kakashi, and they face their first life-or-death fights against the Demon Brothers and Zabuza!

  But, before we discuss these episodes, let's take a look at the comments and questions that you had from our last installment!

  The number one question we got last week was a simple one: ARE WE GOING TO SKIP THE FILLER?

  No. We are not skipping the filler.

  You may skip the filler, but be sure to tune in to see our reactions to it... there's gonna be a lot down the road.

  Now, let's see what the Crunchyroll Features team thought of this week's episodes!

Alright, this is where it all starts--I know a bunch of you are new to Naruto. How did actually watching it compare to your expectations?

Paul: Judging from my previous experiences with the fans, I was expecting Naruto (both the show and the titular character) to be a little more meat-headed and hyper-masculine. Instead, the show sets a laser focus on evoking sympathy with a protagonist who wants to be the best in the world simply so people will recognize him. I didn't anticipate such feelings of internalized inadequacy from the shouty, fighty shonen hero.

Peter: I’m rewatching and also decided to read the manga alongside. So far I’m really impressed by how strong Kishimoto’s aesthetic was from the outset. The environments and character designs are all unmistakeable and his action is like this perfect combination of piece-by-piece panels and splashes. I like the anime’s additions, especially some extra Naruto/Konohamaru scenes which drive home the difference in how they’re treated and an early Ino intro that sets up her rivalry with Sakura.

Kevin: I was one of the people watching the original Cartoon Network run of the show’s dub back somewhere around 2003 or 2004. Going back and rewatching, I forgot how much the early parts of the show focus on Naruto’s emotional struggle, first of not being accepted by anyone and just trying to get attention, then how he feels about his various failings as a ninja. As a result, the stakes aren’t as high, but it feels like a much more personal story.

Jared: I completely missed out on Naruto after dropping off anime around 2003, but going in I was more expecting it to follow a similar structure to other shonen shows I’ve seen. From the start, the opening episode completely shattered any expectations I had with how tight the entire episode was woven together with regards to its narrative, characterizations, and how much info it packed into 24 minutes. Outside of that, I think I’d missed out on knowing that Naruto can act like a brat early on in the series.

Joseph: I’m in an interesting position, because I watched maybe 40 episodes of this a decade ago and I’ve read around 50 volumes of the manga. I will say I was surprised at how nostalgic it felt to watch this compared to, say, Shippuden, which has a much different vibe. It’s also impressive how much groundwork is laid for the entire series via Kishimoto’s designs and world and the way the anime adapted it.

Carolyn: I was very surprised at how quickly they dove into Naruto’s backstory. I have seen the show many years ago and didn’t seem to remember that such a “big reveal” occurred so quickly. I… honestly find the story quite boring and hard to keep my attention focused on, I guess I’m just not super invested in the characters. However, I can absolutely see seeds of how this show has affected and inspired many that came after it. I hadn’t really noticed that when watching other anime, but going back and rewatching Naruto makes that pretty clear. Also, I am cracking up at the totally rad ‘80s Breakfast Club-esque opening sequence. I didn’t remember that music at all.

Noelle: Naruto was one of my first encounters with manga when I first really started getting into it, but it’s been a long time since I touched it. I read the whole thing, but I never reread it, so a lot of instances I completely forgot about. For example, I forgot how kind of gruesome it was at the start, focusing on serious injuries instead of just fantasy violence. At the same time, I’m impressed how strong the characters are established, along with themes such as kindness and proving yourself that will resonate throughout the entire series.

Kara: I was five years out of college when Naruto started, and I remember in the circles I ran in it was Not The Done Thing to be into it. I can’t remember if it was because it was considered a “casual’s anime” or if it was based on run-ins with cosplayers at conventions. Likely a little of both. Watching it has been a lot more chill than I expected, and while I see a lot of the tropes I figured I’d see, it looks like it’s leading somewhere interesting.

David: I basically grew up with Naruto, but I fell off of it in high school so it’s been more than a decade since the last time I actually watched an episode or read a chapter. Comparing it to my expectations, it’s much more focused than I recall--the first episode could stand alone as a very emotionally effective short story, for example. Kakashi is still the only side character who seems to have a lot of thought put into their long-term character arc, though.

Daniel: I like it, though Naruto has always kind of been a blind spot for me. I’ve seen a decent chunk of it, but it’s always kind of been background noise, something to have on so that when people ask me “Do you only watch One Piece?”, I can say “NUH UH. I ALSO WATCH THIS ONE ABOUT ANOTHER LOUD BOY.” That said, actually paying attention to it, it’s pretty fun. I dig Kishimoto’s world building, and the environment that he’s set up. I’m really interested in finally figuring out why so many people adopted this show as their gospel.

Danni W: I actually did watch the first dozen or so episodes of Naruto around six or seven years ago, so this was more of a refresher than anything. It never quite clicked with me the first time, so I was surprised to find I enjoyed it more this time around. I think it helped that the show gets real pretty immediately. We’re only seven episodes in and Naruto has already had to face real combat three separate times. The characters aren’t enough to hook me yet, so the early doses of action have made for a good on ramp for me.

I've always enjoyed how Naruto hangs on to its emotional core, and we see that very strongly in the first few episodes. What did you all think of this part of the story?

Paul: I'm not fully invested yet in the emotional stakes of the series, mostly because I don't really know the scope and scale of the world that Naruto inhabits. Why are these children being trained to be spies and assassins from such a young age? What dangers does the outside world present such that it prompts entire villages to weaponize their kids?

Peter: I feel like I never gave Iruka enough credit in retrospect, maybe because his act was the first in what later emerged as the series core. Without him, Naruto probably would have been another Gaara. I also never realized that Naruto is wearing Iruka’s headband the entire damn story. After Naruto’s hand stab I’m trying to remember if grand masculine gestures are regularly mocked as an inverse toward the important compassionate gestures, so I’m planning to track that moving forward.

Kevin: While I like seeing the cool techniques and fights from later in the show, going back to the beginning and seeing much more of a focus on each character’s internal conflicts is an interesting change, giving each of their actions a bit more personal weight. It’s not inherently better or worse, just a different focus on the same story.

Jared: It really seemed like a great way to start the series and let people know from the onset that this is a story that deals heavily with empathy. I figured eventually the series would go that route, but to do it immediately sets a tone that allows for these characters like Naruto to instantly have layers that otherwise might take a long time to see. With the show really bouncing between emotional moments and comedy pretty frequently, I’m curious whether it’ll continue that or try and lean more in one direction or the other.

Joseph: Naruto is the most three-dimensional character in these first episodes, mostly because we haven’t had much time to delve into the stories that drive Sakura and Sasuke. I think they do a great job of making Naruto sympathetic, which makes up for his brattiness. One other thing I appreciate is that they make it clear from the outset that being a ninja isn’t just cartoonishly huge shuriken fun and games. People die on the regular here, and Naruto and the rest of his upstart era would do well do remember that before taking the next steps.

Carolyn: Just let Naruto live! Everyone is so mean to the poor kid. Again, I was surprised at how quickly they jump into this and I have a feeling it is what kept me watching the first time around. They do a good job of making you feel empathy for Naruto even when he is being totally obnoxious.

Noelle: While I remember pretty vividly the general plot, I don’t remember a lot of the small moments that make up a scene. Naruto is set up really well, and I to this day really enjoy that he’s not just cast as a quirky problem child with no future, but someone who genuinely wants to be acknowledged, and acting out is the easiest way to get attention. Knowing how things end up, seeing everyone at the start and how they are introduced is a good refresher and sets up a lot later on. At its heart, this really is a story about teamwork, empathy, and growing up.

Kara: It’s been all right—some cute and funny bits, and I like what action scenes we’ve had. From a writing standpoint, it feels like (except for Naruto himself) everyone’s categorized largely by wanting to be the Hokage, wanting to kill someone, or having a crush on someone. But I can also see that we’re quickly moving forward from that. Being on the News team means educating myself fast about unfamiliar shows, and the wildest thing to me has been seeing Hinata in the background crushing on Naruto when I just recently posted an article about her wedding figure.

David: Iruka and Naruto’s relationship has to be my favorite single part from this section. Iruka is given every reason to not like or just give up on this kid, yet he sticks up for him the whole time (while also never letting him slack--no free pass on the exams for Naruto!). Kakashi is setting up to be a good role model, too, but I’ll definitely miss how intimate Iruka’s care for Naruto is.

Daniel: You can really sympathize with Naruto because he’s the “chosen one” character without being a prodigy. He isn’t impressive right out of the gate, but he has the potential to be impressive. I think you can relate to him easier than, say, Goku, who is ready to dropkick most of the world the first time you meet him. That feeling of being meant for bigger things, but still struggling to even get on the path to those bigger things is pretty powerful.

Danni: I think it’s showing some promise. I really appreciate the lengths it goes to explain why Naruto is a troublemaker in the first place. He can be pretty annoying, but the reasons for that are mostly justified. In the end, he’s a victim. I like that Sasuke can already see that and identify with him in that respect. They both have a lot of trauma to work though in the next *checks notes* few hundred episodes.

I know we're really early in, but have there been any standout moments or characters so far?

Paul: I know everybody else is probably going to go with Kakashi as the standout character, but also cool as Kakashi may be, my heart goes out to Akimichi Choji, the chubby ninja who is stuffing his face with potato chips in Episode 3. I also like the design of the oversized shurikens and other exaggerated weapons, and I dig the visual aesthetic of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Peter: This question is kind of hard to answer since I’m retracing old ground but I definitely did not recall Sakura being such a little shithead. Completely forgot her putting her foot in her mouth with Sasuke saying Naruto’s a troublemaker because he’s an orphan. Funnily enough, I think her hating Naruto for who he is rather than what he represents is a really important connection between the two.

Kevin: Naruto freezing up in his first real fight and then stabbing himself, swearing that he’ll never be a burden again was a scene that I feel is an exemplar of how the early story focuses more on Naruto’s emotional journey, rather than just trying to fight increasingly strong bad guys, but still has the kind of payoffs that the audience can rally behind.

Jared: Iruka is a good dude who really wants what’s best for Naruto, even if it means taking an oversized shuriken to the back. Naruto stabbing himself in episode 6 was an immediate “YO” moment from me. The entire atmosphere of the fight in the back half of episode 7 was incredibly good. I really hope that Konohamaru continues to show up with either worse and worse stealth or continuously better ways to try and fight Naruto.

Carolyn: Glad to see Shikamaru show up so early. Love him. As I mentioned before, I’m not sure I’m fully invested in these characters. I am quite disappointed in Sakura. I remember loving her when I was younger and she is not the strong female character I remembered. She’s kind of desperately boy-crazy. Which is fine! But it feels like it comes on strong and the first several episodes don’t give her many traits beyond that. She must grow throughout the series, or my memories were warped? Kakashi Sensei feels sooooo much like a Shoto Aizawa (My Hero Academia’s Eraserhead) prototype. The mystery, the aloof manner, but secretly a big softie that just wants his student to do well. Similarly, Naruto has a lot of traits that seem to overlap with Bakugo and Soul Eater’s Black Star. More evidence of the show’s reach.  Sexy Jutsu has not aged well. Also, the ending theme song is beautiful.

Noelle: Kakashi’s great, and knowing that he’s pretty close to my age puts a lot of things into context now that I’m an adult. Kakashi’s got a lot on his plate with these three problem children under his wing, but he’s still a pretty laid back guy personality-wise. Someone who stood out to me more in my rewatch was Iruka. Iruka’s presence means so much to Naruto, being the father figure he never really had. If Iruka wasn’t kind to Naruto, and he really was the only person to treat Naruto like a kid and not just a monster container, this would’ve been a very different series. Naruto truly did need someone to be there for him, and seeing their relationship really does make my heart warm. Iruka’s a good guy!

Kara: I actually cannot believe how much I associate with Naruto, and 12-years-ago me would faint at hearing that. The absolute need to prove himself, the feeling that he’s sliding backwards the harder he works, all that is something I (and others, I’m sure) can relate to. Obviously he goes a little harder than most people would in his situation—seriously, if you’re wearing Safety Orange constantly, you’ve gotta think really highly of yourself as a ninja—but it’s really something to see how much of his attitude is couched in fear of failure.

Joseph: Kakashi’s kancho, obviously.

David: Konohamaru only gets his one episode here, but I actually thought his bit was the most emotionally effective. He largely has the same issues as Naruto but in reverse. Konohamaru isn’t necessarily "royalty" but treated as such, infantilizing him from his perspective. Even his name is a point of contention for him, putting a burden on his very existence that others can’t relate to. To these ends, he looks up to Naruto for being a free spirit, but as the viewers we understand that they are more similar than they know. Naruto is the main character--we see his troubles garnering respect and even love from his peers and mentors in these episodes--but Konohamaru grounds that conflict by mirroring it.

Daniel: In my high school band class in Freshman year, a kid asked the teacher to be referred to as “Sasuke.” He also had a ninja headband that he’d wear around some time, and while I thought it was goofy then, I think it’s ABSOLUTELY DOPE now. So, while I still figure out the characters, I’m gonna nominate broody ol’ Sasuke in honor of that kid.

Danni: Kakashi covers like 75% of his face with ninja gear and to show how badass he is fought one-handed while reading a book called Makeout Paradise. I want to be that cool someday.

The action escalated pretty quickly--we started with Team 7 having to take the bells from Kakashi for the first full-on action scene (even if it wasn't "for keeps"), and then we have to worry about Hidden Mist assassins and our first real villain, Zabuza. Any thoughts on the action?

Paul: I like all of the action that I've seen so far, but the resolution to Kakashi's test wasn't dramatically satisfying for me. The payoff didn't match the build-up. I wanted to see Team 7 put up more of a show of resistance than simply refusing to obey Kakashi's instructions not to feed Naruto. The scene plays more like everyone being recalcitrant teenagers and less like anyone taking a principled stand.

Peter: I can’t believe the action is so sick even this early on. I always thought of Sasuke’s style as the most orthodox and the intricacy of some of his combos and the shots are so damn satisfying to look. Kishimoto made it super easy for the animators to make some stylish shots and they ran with it. The series is already building its vocabulary with a Sasuke attack that obviously builds into the Lion Combo and some underground shenanigans.

Kevin: I feel like this is the show’s action at its weakest. None of the Genin know how to fight yet, so once the actually dangerous fighting begins, they’re relegated to standing around watching Kakashi and Zabuza fight, and even that hasn’t gotten to the more impressive techniques. It’s not bad since at least there is still a fight between two experienced combatants to watch, it’s just weaker than what the show delivers on later when the protagonist and major characters are experienced enough to contribute.

Jared: I was surprised how subdued the action had felt before Team 7 took on Kakashi with there being pretty minimal fight scenes until that point. Kakashi messing around with Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura gave a good baseline of the complete difference in skill between all of them, but it wasn’t until Zabuza and his ridiculous cow print sleeves showed up that we truly get a sense of how much of a gap there is between Kakashi and Team 7. The beginnings of that fight truly gave the feeling of their being stakes involved which had been missing elsewhere.

Carolyn: Again, surprised at how quickly the show turns on a dime. They can go from goofy to serious in a heartbeat and it is very reminiscent of how things often progress on My Hero Academia. But I still find it hard to really get into the peril. I’m not sure why, exactly, I’m not very invested in the characters, but it’s early. I’m sure that will change.

Noelle: Since this series came out where it did, Jump was still very much comfortable with keeping pacing slow. As a result, the fights are a lot slower than what I’m used to, even if that was the norm back then. At the same time, the action itself isn’t bad--it’s pretty clever, and introduces the rules of the world in a way that anyone can pick up with ease.

Kara: I have a feeling a lot of my appreciation for the fighting will come as I start learning the different abilities in play. There have definitely been some cool moves, but I think we’re still in that exposition phase where we’re learning the types of things ninjas can do (and what our main cast’s strong and weak points are). A couple weeks from now when I’ve seen more of how this universe operates, I’ll probably be all in.

David: Sure, the action isn’t flashy, but the Kakashi training fight was much better than I remember it being for two reasons. One, it’s just funny. Kakashi doesn’t do anything truly harsh to the kids (well, aside from starve them, but that’s part of the plan), and what little physical combat he does with them is either light or just plain comedic. Two, it serves as a small show-don’t-tell of the show’s combat mechanics. For example, he calls out at the beginning that he’s going to use taijutsu, leading to his infamous kancho when he could have done a million other things; Sakura even believes he is using a more fancy technique before it happens. From there more involved strategies are used and by the end we have a basic primer of Naruto combat simultaneously serving as a team-building exercise for our heroes. Very efficient storytelling.

Joseph: The action is really clear and well-handled in these early episodes. I’m not sure how it gets later on, but I know in the manga I found some of Kishimoto’s action layouts much harder to follow than they should be. His designs and the intention behind his action translate nicely to animation, thankfully. Naruto is also really good at suddenly showing just how powerful a character really is within action, which is a total must-have shonen staple.

Danni: It’s not very flashy so far, but it is pretty tense. The high-level combat so far seems to entirely be a contest of clones and substitutions. The substitution jutsu seems way too broken. That being said, it’s a pretty cool technique. I hope we get to start seeing some good hand-to-hand soon.

For this batch of episodes, what were the highest and lowest points, respectively?

Paul: High point: Naruto getting caught in Kakashi's rope trap, grumbling about not getting tricked again while he frees himself, and then immediately getting caught in another rope trap. I love those kind of gags. Low point: ninja diarrhea.

Peter: In both cases probably the information reveals. Purely narratively speaking, a lot of the info that comes at the characters feels like common knowledge in retrospect. Kakashi is famous for having the Sharingan, how the village and mission systems work, and Sakura not knowing about her crush’s family being murdered seem like they should things the kids know. On the other hand, I’m super impressed with how much of a foundation Sasuke and Kakashi’s backstory have so early on and foreshadowing for both.

Kevin: The lowest point for me was the repeated use of the “Sexy Jutsu.” Once made sense to show Naruto as a troublemaker who could invent new techniques if he tried, and the Harem Jutsu showed that he can be creative and combine techniques for new tactics, but the other 2-3 times just feel like a joke being overplayed. The best moment was the fight against the Hidden Mist Chunin, since each of the kids’ personalities show through clearly. Sakura is terrified but keeps to her main duty, Sasuke starts retaliating to get rid of the threat, and Naruto freezes in place and needs to be saved, leading to an excellent emotional payoff when the fight is over.

Jared: The high points for me were Kakashi vs. Zabuza, Naruto’s hand stab, and Sakura and Ino’s incredibly ridiculous power walk competition in episode 3. Sexy Jutsu really beats you over the head with how many times they use that gag and Naruto’s stomach issues from episode 3 were just strange, so those would be my low points.

Carolyn: The music is a definite high! The emotional moments and humanizing of Naruto is nice to see. Using ninja skills to save a lost cat is completely adorable and feels like something All Might would do. Did the My Hero peeps grow up on Naruto? It feels like it. I also like how positive Naruto is in the face of adversity. He can make any situation a positive one. Laughing at the clunky exposition, “It’s going to take someone who is highly skilled.” Low point, again, definitely Sexy Jutsu (and teaching Sexy Jutsu to a little kid, WTF, these were different times) and Sakura’s desperate crush.

Noelle: Sexy Jutsu got old really fast. It was interesting to see Naruto expand it, as that showed he was learning, but aside from that, it’s an overdone gag. Glad they cut down on it. For good points, the Zabuza fight for sure, and each one of the kids standing up for themselves in the face of danger. And of course, Naruto stabbing himself in the hand to show his resolve!  

Kara: Low point was absolutely the diarrhea episode—add to that the weird middle school comedy of errors surrounding it. I only had so much tolerance for Sakura’s crush and Naruto’s willingness to either mess with or take advantage of it. High point for me was Konohamaru’s desire to be called by his name and not his function or association. It was such a goofy little episode, but something really resonated for me about being willing to go to ridiculous lengths just to be recognized for who he is.

David: The bizarre ‘love triangle’ dynamic as a whole is the low point--this is notably represented well in the “diarrhea episode,” but comes across everywhere else too in how obviously undercooked Sasuke and Sakura’s characters are at this point. On the other hand, the high point is how obviously fully developed Kakashi is despite us knowing so little about him at this point. Unlike the rest of the side characters, there is clearly a lot going on in both what we see him doing here and what is implied to be happening in his background, and that’s as exciting a hook as it was when I was in middle school.

Joseph: The gags are hit or miss, but mostly decent. For me, the low point is any time an information dump rears its head. Zabuza standing on top of his sword for an eternity while he and Kakashi trade off exposition about the Sharingan is sloppy. I dig most everything else, and the high point is how the story handles this early-stage version of Naruto. He is just straight up a bad ninja, and it shows. He’s loud, brash, and obnoxious in an all orange jumpsuit. He’s the anti-ninja. Best of all, he’s terrified, and he totally should be.

Daniel: I really like the show’s tone, usually. But the high point and low point were within five seconds of one another. In the first episode, it’s so rad when Naruto finally reveals his Shadow Clone Jutsu against Mizuki. And then they all beat up Mizuki, and you get these “BONK BOOP SCHWWWWOOOP” sound effects, which takes all of the power of the scene and kicks it out the door.

Danni: For me, the highest point of this batch was in the first episode when Naruto overhears Iruka defending him against Mizuki. That’s a potentially life-changing moment for Naruto, finally learning why so many in the village hate him. Had it been anyone but Iruka who had found Naruto, he likely would’ve ended up turning against the entire village in anger. It’s a touching moment of understanding not just between teacher and student, but also between a pair of orphans linked by the same tragic event.

The lowest point is anytime I‘m reminded the sexy jutsu exists.

  COUNTERS

Ramen consumed so far: 2 bowls, 1 cup

"I'm gonna be Hokage!" count: 8

Number of Shadow Clones summoned: 46

And that's everything for this week! Remember that you're always welcome to join us for this rewatch, especially if you haven't watched the original Naruto!

Here's our upcoming schedule!

-Next week, on JANUARY 25th, we'll be discussing EPISODES 8-14, hosted by KARA DENNISON! The mission in the Land of Waves continues! THIS IS THE ONLY INSTALLMENT WE'RE ACCEPTING QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FOR THIS WEEK!

-Then, on FEBRUARY 1st, we discuss EPISODES 15-21, with KEVIN MATYI hosting! Not only do we start the Chunin Exam arc, but we get our first FILLER EPISODE!

-On FEBRUARY 8th,we'll discuss EPISODES 22-28, with JARED CLEMONS as host! The Chunin Exam kicks into high gear!

Thank you for joining us for the Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! Have a great weekend, and we'll see you all next time!

Have any comments or questions about episodes 1-7? What about our upcoming installment, featuring episodes 8-14?

-----

Nate Ming is the Features Editor for Crunchyroll News and creator of the long-running Fanart Friday column. You can follow him on Twitter at @NateMing. Check out his comic, Shaw City Strikers!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[rochellespen]

Watching Doctor Who Season 37 (Series 11), Episode One

I’ve been reluctant to talk about the newest season of Doctor Who publicly, despite being a fan for years, having run a Doctor Who blog at one time and now slowly integrating that fandom onto the main blog I use these days. It’s not because there was a point where I stopped being a fan, even though my interest isn’t always at its peak. No, it boils down to another reason.

I am one of those fans who was wary/skeptical about having a female Doctor.

This isn’t the most popular fandom opinion out there and to some extent, I can understand why. Far too many “fans” (and I use that term with reluctance) used the announcement of Jodie Whittaker’s casting to spew all sorts of horrible, sexist (if not downright misogynist) opinions along with expressing disdain for “progressive” people/ideas in general. It was an ugly display of the worst in fandom politics.

Sadly, these people seemed to become the “face” of fans who weren’t enthusiastic about a female Doctor and hey, who wants to be associated with jerks like that? I certainly didn’t. And I certainly didn’t feel like having to explain my own reasoning over and over again at best or at worst dealing with drama and arguments just because I have this view. 

So, I just...avoided the new season and any fandom things related to it. Didn’t watch the episodes. Didn’t check out one iota about the new season on social media. Didn’t read any issues of Doctor Who Magazine that could give away potential spoilers or details about the newest season. I remained blissfully unaware of the most current episodes of Doctor Who Heck, I didn’t even know the names of the new companions or any of the episodes. It wasn’t easy, but looking back on it, I’m glad I made that choice.

However.....

I still consider myself a Doctor Who fan. Having a female Doctor, while not my ideal choice, wasn’t going to invalidate all the years I spent watching both Classic and New Who, all the hours I listened to Big Finish audios or all the time spent reading comics/published spinoff novels and fic. Also, this isn’t the first time I haven’t agreed with a casting or story choice, although if there’s one constant to Doctor Who it’s that it’s always changing. 

So I’m always aware that, if you totally love something on the show or don’t care for it at all, it doesn’t really matter. Because it won’t be forever anyway. 

Although that said, none of my concern for this new season was due to the casting of Whittaker in particular mainly because I haven’t seen her in anything and can’t really comment on her abilities as an actress. That’s actually the same boat I was in for just about every other Doctor before I saw them on the series (with the exception of Patrick Troughton who I had seen in a couple of movies before seeing him as the Doctor). 

No, my concerns were totally focused on how the change to a female Doctor would be handled by the writers and directors of the show. It seemed like something that could become cringey and regrettable so easily if handled badly.

Still, I knew deep down that I would eventually want to watch the newest season anyway. However, I surprised myself when I realized all the ways I kept putting it off and I kept wondering why I was so reluctant to finally watch the new season.

Eventually, I think I understood why: because the reasons why I never wanted this development were still nagging at me. Would a female Doctor be treated more like a gimmick the same way the concept had been in EU media for years? Would we get vaguely sexist and/or transphobic jokes about how she had been a man before and “hurr hurr, she do lady things now”? Would the show start to head in a direction I dreaded, such as making it more about soapy romance drama rather than friends having adventures in time and space?

Putting aside my own fandom preferences isn’t always easy, but today I finally decided to say “heck with it” and take the plunge. 

This post is the first of a series where I’m going to reflect on my first impressions each episode of the season as I watch it and see if and how my opinions about these changes evolves.

So let’s get started with....

The Woman Who Fell To Earth (nice Bowie reference, by the way....)

Spoilers aplenty under this cut....

Episode thoughts

If you’re going to start a new era of Doctor who, you’re probably best off starting it with a story with plenty of action and emotional intensity. 

On that count, this opening episode fulfills this mission well. It starts out nicely by giving the audience a mini-mystery about these aliens and their intentions that unfolds at the same time that it does for the main characters. It only seems a little disjointed at first, but in classic Doctor Who style, the pieces come together quickly and even manage to give us a surprise or two at the end, such as how the Doctor can still maneuver things around to her advantage without us even realizing it. I even liked the framing device of Ryan talking about this amazing woman she knew and the twist that it wasn’t the Doctor....

Although....I honestly just knew that Grace was going to die long before the episode ended. The foreshadowing was just a bit thick although, I can forgive it though, because it’s still less heavy handed than I’ve seen elsewhere.

The pacing was great too, giving us the right mix of peril and action and quieter moments where we get to know these new companions and they, in turn, are getting to know this new Doctor (once again, in tandem with the audience which I like).

If I had one complaint, it’s that the alien threat was a bit too pat. A Predator-type villain that we’ve all seen before and didn’t really have anything new to offer here. Maybe if we had learned more about his race and society it would have come off more interesting. As it is...he’s the blue guy who hunts those “inferior races” and who also has his teeth fetish.....

I almost had a complaint about the episode continuing on after the resolution of the main story, but after thinking some more about it...no, I actually like that they took the extra time to show us more of these people’s lives and who the Doctor has become. It’s too easy to stick to the “fix problem and then *boom* goodbye” way of ending a Doctor Who episode, so kudos for taking a break from that format.

And I really was not expecting that sort of ending for the episode. So I guess we’re back to the Doctor accidentally kidnapping people then. XD And that was a solid cliffhanger at the end. I just hope they actually take the time to give it a satisfying resolution. 

Character thoughts

This is where I think the true meat of the episode was and rightly so as it’s a whole new TARDIS team.

I like these new companions. I like that they aren’t complete strangers to each other while also probably having huge gaps in how well they truly know each other. I also like that this is going to be a diverse set of people who have differences in age, gender, ethnicity and life experiences. 

What I also like is that these feel like actual people rather than ideas. Graham clearly is skeptical and critical, but also has good ideas and wants to help out. Ryan has a huge chip on his shoulder, but keeps on trying. Yasmin seems to get frustrated when things fly out of her control, but she adapts quickly to new situations. 

In other words, we’re given glimpses into how these people are flawed and yet good potential companions for a new Doctor trying to find herself.

And speaking of a new Doctor....

I really had no idea what to expect with Whittaker’s take on the role and thus, I knew whatever I got would be a surprise. My only hope was that it wouldn’t be something that would make me roll my eyes. Thankfully, the former turned out to be true and the latter turned out to be something I didn’t need to worry about.

With every new Doctor I watched while going through the series, there was this sort of “waiting” during their first episode/storyline. A holding period while I looked for a moment where the latest Doctor went from “ok, this is different” to “ok, this is the Doctor” for me. That scene where they just clicked into the role and made that incarnation their own.

That moment came for me while she was tinkering about trying to explain what regeneration was like. Some Doctors are more blase about it than others, but here, I think we got a look at Thirteen’s mindset with the honest, earnest way she talked about it....with the fun moment of eccentric levity at the end. 

It is different as far as the energy and personality....and yet, I was so comforted by how Doctor-y it felt to me. That and the moment where she managed to make a sonic screwdriver out of stuff she found around a guy’s shop space....

By the end of it, I was finally able to let go of the tense feeling of worrying if this would work out to being intrigued with what Thirteen would do next. I was even laughing (in that friendly way you do with characters you like) at the quirks that she appears to be cultivating for this incarnation. 

The Last Word

Overall, a solid, intriguing way to start this season. The writers have some interesting characters to work with and it looks like they are going to have the episodes have some connection to each other. Both of which have plenty of promise depending on how they are handled. 

Most of all though, I am happy to say that I’m looking forward to seeing more. And that is the outcome I was dearly hoping for. 

[heirofworms]

Part One

It was actually one thing about me that this story is. No one knows about my background. I sit here writing this as I go on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the Second Era, year 562. My father is the King of Worms himself Mannimarco. He lead a worm cult in secret. The Empire doesn't know. Fools. But when my birth happened, I was born a girl instead of a boy. He almost had me killed but until he looked at my eyes. I had his eyes.

Something made him change his mind as he raised me in secret. I was more close to him than I was with my mother. I grew up to be very tall than any normal Nords. I was half Altmer and half Nord. My father was taller than me still however. But enough of this talk of whose height is better.

When I reached 18, I overheard my father talking about using me as a sacrifice for a ritual and I packed my things and ran away. I left the cult. I was discovered by an assassin from a guild called Dark Brotherhood. I joined the ranks and did contracts. I was trained to learn necromancy when I was in the cult. I also did assassin work there too when I reached my midteens. I got my payment and saved enough gold to escape.

I lived in the sanctuary for two years. When the cult found out where I was, my father wanted me to be brought in alive. I refused and fought my way out to get away. The leader of the dark brotherhood told me to flee. I had nowhere to go.

I go across Tamriel and fled to Skyrim. I came up with something to escape from my own father. It was a protection spell.

But as I went to the market there in Eastmarch, in the city of Windhelm, it was chilly but I had a home there. I was buying food and things for it. I noticed a family that was struggling there and I went over to hand them fifty gold. I had enough. It was only enough til their next payment.

They thanked me for it. That made me feel good about myself.

When I was on my way back, I was stopped by a beggar. He asked me for gold and I handed him ten gold pieces. That should last him for a week. I pulled away and went to go home. I didn't have much things in my home. I slept on a bedroll and pillows. I have a fortune behind me and I am always on the go.

I went hunting the next morning and when I got back, I saw that someone had broken into my home. Of course I took my twin blades out and went inside after setting my game down that I hunted. It was meat.

As I moved forward, I saw a shadow in the next room.

"A nice place to hide isn't it, Alessia?"

That voice. My eyes grew wide as I dropped my daggers and I saw the man turn around pulling his hood off. It was him. My father Mannimarco.

Mannimarco: You think you would hide forever from me? I been looking for you for two years now Alessia.

"I overheard you. You wanted to kill me."

Mannimarco: You're mistaken my dear.

I picked up my blades and put them away, but only took one out.

"Liar!! You want to kill me. I worshipped you for years!! And this is how you're treating me?!"

He stood there looking at me. He began to walk around until he stood behind me.

Mannimarco: I have special plans for you, Alessia. Do you know why I named you after her? Because you're a special kind. You're needed back at the cult. I've come to fetch you and make you stronger. Like me.

I looked at him as he still stood behind me. I turned around as I stared at him.

"How do I know this isn't a trick?"

Mannimarco: Oh, my dear you wouldn't. And it's no trick. I want you to become a Lich. Like me.

Like him?? Is he trying to get me killed? I know he lived a long time he's an elf. But wait........is he telling the truth?

"Tell me more first and maybe I'll decide on my fate."

He smirked at me and nodded.

Mannimarco: That's my girl. Pack your things. We got a long travel back.

He kissed the top of my head and stood in the main entrance waiting for me. I went to pack my things. I had an heirloom necklace that I valued the most. It was a gift from him. Has the insignia of the worm cult. Or was it the King of Worms emblem? I don't know.

When we got back to the lair, it was in Coldharbour. He performed a ritual that would turn me into a Lich. It was painful. Molag Bal granted me his blessing and that was when I became powerful. This was truly a beginning.

[bomberlandia]

Part II: Ranking Every Bomber Since 2015

We finish Ranking Every Bomber Since 2015 with the final stretch, a selection of players who were consistent, dominated, and held the team together through a pretty dark era for the club. 

In Part II, we get into the meat of the rankings. Most of the names you’d expect to be here are here and the Top 20 is as you’d expect although no-one probably thought of Ridley before this year to be ranked among the likes of Dustin Fletcher and Dylan Shiel. 

Enough with the prelude. Let’s see where things finished up. 

Players Ranked from 38 to 1

38. Adam Cooney

37. Shaun McKernan 

36. Patrick Ambrose

35. Mason Redman

34. Travis Colyer

33. Mitch Brown

32. Conor McKenna

31. Sam Draper

30. Jake Stringer

JR: If luck will let it be, Sam Draper will evolve into one of Essendon’s greatest ruckman and will become a Top 15 player. I hope I have not jinxed it. His first year was a real treat. Aggression is his friend. I wrote about Mitch Brown and how underrated he is and I sometimes have those feelings where I wish he was back at Essendon but then realize he plays one good game followed by three games where you don’t even know he exists.  

DE: Some serviceable players here. McKenna was entering his prime, but having lived overseas myself I know how difficult it is to be so far from family and friends, so I sympathise with his need to return home. McKernan could have been anything, but again consistency was a killer. Could tear games apart, then be barely sighted the following week. Stringer is similar. 

29. Kyle Langford  

28. Heath Hocking

27. Jake Melksham

26. Ben Howlett 

25. David Myers 

24. Courtenay Dempsey 

23. Michael Hibberd  

22. Tom Bellchambers 

JR: My favourite Hocking games were when he tagged a key midfielder, like a Chris Judd and would blanket them. He was a brute who loved to tackle inside the centre square and packs that formed around stoppages. He was disciplined and a defensive-minded trier during a time when the Bombers lacked defensive hard nuts. Probably cut with the same physical cloth as a Hardwick or Solomon.

DE: Hocking, Howlett and Bellchambers were warriors for us during difficult times. Myers had such potential, but for some reason never seemed to be in favour enough with his coaches. I felt he could have been a game-breaker like Isaac Smith at Hawthorn if given the opportunities. Dempsey was exciting to watch when he was up and about. 

21. Orazio Fantasia 

20. Martin Gleeson

19. Darcy Parish 

18. Dylan Shiel

17. Dustin Fletcher

16. Jordan Ridley

JR: Fletcher will have greater stakes on other rankings we do. He was at the end of his career. Fantasia has been disappointing. He’s a weapon that possesses speed and goal-kicking sensibilities but not having a body that stands up to the rigours of AFL limits his progression in these rankings. Ridley went from unsighted to best and fairest winner in 12 months. He plays the game like a veteran which speaks to his calmness around the chaotic packs. Expect him to make inroads in years to come.

DE: The great Dustin Fletcher only falls down this list because he was at the tail end of his career. Otherwise, he’d be top-five. I reckon Gleeson was becoming a reliable and attacking defender before his injury, so hopefully he can regain his best form in 2021. Ridley will be top-five for years to come. Expect to see lots of kids, including my son Ernie, wearing No. 14 on their backs.

15. Adam Saad  

14. James Kelly 

13. Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti

12. Devon Smith   

11 Mark Baguely

JR: Kelly came out of retirement to play 40 games for Essendon during a raw period for the Bombers. He excelled in making good decisions across half back and had sublime skills. He was a mentor to the young core of kids. I think he gave the club more than the Bombers bargained for on and off the field. He left Geelong at the end of 2015, started in 2016 at Essendon and he’s still at Windy Hill.

DE: Baguely’s high ranking might surprise some, but I really rated him. I thought he gave his all for us over a long period, even if he did turn it over sometimes. If Walla can get fitter, I’d love to see him throwing his weight around in the centre square more often. With Fantasia departing, more pressure will come onto his strong shoulders. Kelly was another who earned his way into Bomber hearts for the role he played (on and off the field) during the dark days. 

10. Brent Stanton

JR: Stanton was a whipping boy for all things that went wrong on the field. Played during a period where the Bombers just weren’t very good. I think we undervalued his metres gained and the run and carry he provided. Instead we think about the costly turnovers. People laughed when he was given the no.5 jumper. But he became a pivotal piece to the team, a long servant, and loyal player. And those things mean something.

DE: I’ve settled on 10th place for Stanton with some trepidation. He was a favourite with coaches and teammates, but was one of my most frustrating players to watch as I felt he turned the ball over far too often. In the modern game, however, a player’s ability to run seems to outweigh their skill deficiencies. He wore the beloved No. 5, which never sat comfortably with me. But there was no denying he gave his all for our club, for which he should be commended.

9. Joe Daniher

JR: Is Joe going to regret leaving? When I think of his time at Essendon there’s only a few things that come to mind – Anzac Day 2017, the All-Australian nod, and his screamers. What won’t be missed: his set shot routine and (often) poor body language. He only played 15 games in the last three years but when fit, he’s unstoppable. I think there’s always going to be debate and question marks on where Joe fits when pitted against other Bombers. 

DE: Unimaginable to think Joe will not be wearing an Essendon guernsey anymore, given the family’s involvement. But since becoming injury-prone he’s been a huge disappointment and, in terms of on-field output, I’m fine with him leaving. At his peak, he could have been Buddy Franklin-like, but sitting on the fence while your teammate kicks for goal is embarrassing. Imagine if Roughy had done that at Hawthorn…Clarko would have sent him home to Leongatha! Thanks for your service, Joe, but thanks, too, for the salary cap room.

8. David Zaharakis

7. Cale Hooker

JR: Both players have been very good servants over a ten-year period – Zaharakis has played 217 games; Hooker 201 games. Zaharakis gets credit for being able to stay relevant, playing roles, and doing what the teams needs him to be. If this was my all-time favourite Essendon player’s list, Hooker would be higher. The fact he shares the backline with Hurley – a superstar- probably takes inches off his position on this list. His reported displeasure about Bellchambers not getting a farewell game and the joy he emits when he kicks a goal only shows how much he cares for the club. Hooksy is all-time.

DE: Zaka has at times been dynamic, with his outside run and good decision-making as good as any in the league. Hooker could have accepted a huge offer to joining Fremantle, but stuck by the club and deserves to see out his career a one-club player. Sometimes makes strange decisions, but overall has been a terrific defender (at times forward) for us over a long time. Forget the footage of him chasing Buddy – Hook has given his all for our club. What more can you ask of someone?

6. Andrew McGrath

5. Brendon Goddard 

JR: Goddard was a proven elite weapon with deadly foot skills before he came to Essendon. His leadership proved valuable to rebuilding and supplements teams. I wrote about Andrew McGrath’s incredible rise this year for Bomberlandia and covered his journey to the draft for Sportsnet. The two things that stand out are his athleticism and his leadership. His work around the ball is now elite. He’s only 22.

DE: McGrath will lead this list in the near future. His 2020 season was outstanding and, to me, he was our number-one leader through a difficult period as he showed a will to want to carry his teammates to victory week after week. Certain to replace Dyson in the near future and hold the position for a long time. Goddard could rub people the wrong way, but he showed us all what type of attitude you need to be a winner. A victim of poor circumstances when he arrived, but led the team admirably.

4. Dyson Heppell 

3. Michael Hurley

JR: Hurley is approaching 200 games (193) and his longevity has seen him become of the best defenders Essendon has ever produced. I still think about what would have happened if he stayed a forward. If you think of all the games the Bombers have played since 2015, Hurley has probably featured in the best in most of them. I reported on Heppell during his Gippsland Power days for the Pakenham Gazette. On the field he changed games, made good decisions and was gutsy. Most of all his teammates looked up to him. That continued when he joined Essendon.

DE: As a fellow Leongatha boy, have followed Dyson’s career closely. Popular with everyone, he’s been a decent leader during difficult times. But it’s time for a more ruthless skipper, like a Voss or a Hodge or a McGrath. Hopefully he can keep his body healthy for the rest of his career. Hurley has been a warrior for us, crashing packs and putting his body on the line year after year. At one point I felt he should be captain. Like Dyson, I hope he stays healthy and finishes his career in red and black.

2. Jobe Watson

JR: I thought Jobe would be too slow to play in the midfield but he proved me wrong. I thought he wasn’t elite enough and then he won a Brownlow. He spent his career proving people wrong. A stoic leader. Stood tall during the supplement’s saga which happened during the twilight of his career which makes him, as Dan put it, “one of the greats.”

DE: Jobe would have been No. 1, but he was at the end of his career when this list starts. One of the best of his generation, poorly treated during the dark days yet remained a strong leader throughout. If a Team of the Century was picked today, he’d be on the bench at least. One of the greats. That he emerged from his father’s shadow to carve out his own fine career is a testament to his determination. 

1. Zach Merrett

JR: What else needs to be said about Zach Merrett? The fact everyone was up-in-arms during the trade period at the thought of him going to a club like Carlton or Collingwood, says a lot about who he is and what he stands for. He’s been super consistent and reliable for a five-year stretch during a time where the Bombers haven’t been easy to read. I can only see McGrath or Josh Dunkley (if the club gets him) as two players that could surpass Merrett. Until that happens, it’s Zach Merrett over everyone. 

DE: While Zachy isn’t a game-breaker in the way a Patrick Dangerfield is at Geelong, he has undoubtedly been our most consistent player over the period in question. No frills, just gets the job done. But it shows our lack of top-end talent when Zach stands alone for the Bombers on league leaderboards for stats. 

_______________________________________

Historian Dr Dan Eddy is the author of 12 books, including “King Richard” and “Always Striving.” A life-long Bomber supporter, you can follow him on Twitter @DanEddyBooks35 and read his sports books at www.daneddybooks.com.  

[robedisimo]

Blade Runner 2049 [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

I’ve seen things – not many, but a few – you people wouldn’t believe. One of them is an empty theatre at the premiere of a Blade Runner sequel. All things considered, it’s not hard to understand why audiences, all hope beaten out of them by fifteen years of prequels, sequels, remakes and reboots, would initially shy away from this obvious candidate for disaster.

Yet we few, we happy few, who dared to sit down in a darkened theatre hall with low expectations and a hole in our wallets came out three hours later with the most unexpected of feelings: that of just having seen one of the best films in 2017, and possibly in quite a longer while than that. Thirty-five years in the making and likely one of the most warily anticipated films in our collective lifespans, Blade Runner 2049 is a small modern miracle. The ways it could’ve gone wrong were almost innumerable – two of them, Harrison Ford and Jared Leto, are right there on the poster – but, somehow, it managed to push through it all.

There’s very little I can say about this film without spoiling its plot, so let me get a few technical evaluations out of the way before getting to the true meat of the matter. Blade Runner 2049 is, first and foremost, a gorgeous piece of cinema. Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) once again proves to be one of the most prominent rising stars in contemporary filmmaking, elevating this sequel – and the blockbuster genre as a whole – to pure cinematic art. It doesn’t hurt that Villeneuve is probably more in touch with the description of “arthouse director” than Ridley Scott was at the beginning of his career, either; still, the bulk of the praise must go to director of cinematography Roger Deakins, whose now-inevitable fourteenth Academy Award nomination could result in civil war if this film doesn’t get finally get him a damn Oscar.

There’s little point in my describing the film’s visual feel: you have to see it for yourself. I’ll just say that the use of light in its scenes is some of the most arrestingly beautiful I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in a movie, and that the number of shots worthy of being framed and put on exhibit far exceeds my ability to recall at the moment. This is a supremely good-looking film, expanding and building upon the original’s seminal aesthetic in ways that update the franchise for a 2010s audience while staying true to the first film’s retro, neo-noir vibe.

The world 2049 creates is a deeply immersive one, believable and tactile in its concreteness. Everything that made Blade Runner’s cyberpunk design memorable is remarkably echoed and scaled up, resulting in often monumental sets of majestic dystopian grace. A great deal of credit for that also goes to Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, booming and rumbling with ominous tones and never quite content to simply recycle Vangelis’s iconic original soundtrack. Add a few legimately good ideas about the (near and far) future of consumer technology, and this Blade Runner sequel comes out an extremely poignant example of sci-fi entertainment packaged within a rounded, cohesive audio-visual experience. If you were worried the earlier release date of Ghost in the Shell – itself a Blade Runner-inspired franchise – would end up stealing 2049′s stylistic thunder, you can rest easy: this is a whole other level of spectacle.

Narrative-wise, the film moves assuredly on the strength of a solid plot and compelling characters, supported by generally valid performances. Villeneuve and screenwriter Hampton Fancher allow the film a relaxed, contemplative pace – not dissimilarly from its predecessor – but, thanks to a suitably expanded runtime, can devote time enough both to the setting and its atmosphere and to character development. Ryan Gosling’s protagonist – an alternately steely and emotional character reminiscent of his visceral role in 2011′s Drive, aided by a fantastically compelling turn by co-star Ana de Amas – is one we get to know deeply and personally, unlike the original film’s Deckard. Ironically, it’s in 2049 itself that we finally start knowing Harrison Ford’s enigmatic eponymous character as a man, outside of his professional detective persona.

For his part, Ford does his job to satisfying results, topping both his return in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (by roughly a cinematic light year) and his more recent revival in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There’s something about the fact that these legacy sequels seem to get proportionally better the less screentime Ford gets in them, but I get the feeling that’s something best left unsaid. Meanwhile, Jared Leto and Syliva Hoeks work okay as the film’s eerie antagonists, but their characters’ motivations are, in fairness, the least explored, leading to their coming off as slightly more cartoony and melodramatic than the rest of the cast.

As to complaints, my only gripe would be that 2049 feels a bit like one film and a half, and not just because of its runtime. Clocking in at over 160 minutes, there’s a feeling at some points in its third and final act that the Blade Runner sequel we sat down to watch ended at the two-hour mark, and that the film’s climax is in fact a heavily condensed version of what could’ve just as easily been a third chapter in the franchise. Still, the movie ramps up to a tense and – ultimately – meaningful finale, and most remarkably one that manages to tie into the original’s while resisting the temptation to ape its ever-quotable monologue.

All that should do it for a critique of the film’s substance, but it’s its role in modern cinema that still deserves a fair deal of discussion. To begin with, Blade Runner 2049 is already being talked about as one of the best sequels ever produced, although we probably shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking Hollywood will now know how to get sequels right: 2049 is less a messiah ushering in a new era and more a happy exception to a well-established rule. On the contrary: its mind-bending importance isn’t aimed forwards – despite the fact that everyone attempting a sci-fi thriller from now on will have to hold it as an inescapable measuring stick – but rather backwards, rippling all the way back to the original.

When I first became interested in cinema, Blade Runner was already a piece of film history. After all, Ridley Scott definitely had a sizeable role in shaping the concept of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking between the inception of this very franchise and his debut with Alien a few years prior. 2049 can’t touch that status, no matter how hard it tries; instead, it subtly works to change what its forefather was about, and how the two instalments relate to each other. Amazingly, brazenly bold in their narrative scope, 2049′s plot developments are of such pivotal magnitude in its world’s history that the original Blade Runner’s story becomes positioned as set-up to what we didn’t know was coming.

In more than a way, 2049 eschews the performance anxiety so common among sequels by completely refusing to act as a narrative appendix to its predecessor, instead actively working to turn the first film into a prologue to this new chapter’s much bigger, much more momentous events. Even more than that, it could be argued that 2049 consumes its final act of defiance by treating Blade Runner as somewhat unnecessary viewing, though that’s entirely unintentional. Make no mistakes, this sequel treats its predecessor with nothing but the utmost reverence; it just happens to be assembled so competently that all you need to know about the first film’s role in the latter’s plot is conveyed, with grace and effectiveness, within the sequel itself, with very little need for the viewer to have actually seen the original.

Thus 2049 finds itself in an extremely eccentric position: that of being one of those few fabled sequels that manage to vastly improve upon the original – The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being the most readily available examples – but, unlike most direct follow-ups, being so remote from the first film in terms of chronological separation that its status as the superior product can’t be acknowledged without an impressive measure of awkwardness. Blade Runner is simply too iconic to be knocked off its pedestal, and yet 2049 is, plainly speaking, the better product... even if a lot of what’s so great about it owes a vast creative debt to the original’s groundbreaking nature. Like a snake eating its own tail, it’s very likely we’ll never hear the end of this debate in the coming decades of academic film critique.

In conclusion, Blade Runner 2049 is the closest thing to a masterpiece I’ve witnessed in quite a while. As science fiction, as a sequel, and as a film unto itself, it’s a prime example of something done very, very right. Could the minds behind it choose to tempt fate once more and dare to go for a threequel? Who can tell. As I type this, 2049 is headed for what could very well be a way more contained opening-weekend box office than projected, poetically joining its iconic parent film in the ranks of critically-acclaimed commercial failures. Perhaps, in modern Hollywood’s sea of cinematic replicants, the only thing viewers can no longer stomach is a film with a soul.

[Verdict: VERY POSITIVE]

[thetraveljedi]

TRIP REPORT: Budapest, Hungary

After a lovely day in Vienna, we continued down the Danube to our final stop of the cruise- Budapest, Hungary. As we cruised down the river through the night, we were treated to lovely views of Bratislava and the countryside of beautiful Slovakia. We arrived just as the sun rose over the hills of Buda, and had a prime docking location on the Pest side, right near the Chain Bridge.

Some background before I begin- Budapest wasn’t called Budapest originally. It started off as three separate cities- Buda and Obuda on the western side of the Danube, quieter and full of hills, and bustling Pest, an important Hungarian commercial center, on the east side of the river. Eventually the three combined in 1874 to become Budapest- though the government did consider calling the city Pestbuda before settling on the opposite. As a result, the city is sprawling and the sites of Budapest are quite scattered throughout. So due to my limited time in the city, I decided to book a private tour with a car so I could get to see as much as possible.

We started off with a short drive over one of the several crossings over the Danube, the famous Chain Bridge. The bridges over the Danube in Budapest were destroyed in World War II; only the towers of the Chain Bridge survived the destruction. Fortunately, the bridge was rebuilt and maintains much of historic glory thanks to the gorgeously restored towers.

Once on the Buda side from the Chain Bridge, we passed through the Buda Castle tunnel, seeing the remains of Buda Castle, once the home to the royals of Hungary. The castle was heavily damaged during World World II, and is now home to the Hungarian National Gallery and History museum. Once through the tunnel, we continued up one of Buda’s most notorious hills, Gellért Hill.

Gellért Hill is home to some of the more controversial pieces of Hungarian history. A huge stone Citadel looms around the hill, built by the Hapsburgs after the Hungarian Revolution in 1848. Hated by Hungarians due to its symbolism of the Hapsburgs long reign over Hungary, pieces of it were symbolically destroyed after it was handed over to the local government at the end of the 19th century. Standing on the very top of the hill is the Liberty Statue, erected after World War II during Soviet occupation to commemorate their victory in World War II and the end of the Nazi occupation of Hungary. It is one of only two Communist era statues that remain in the city of the hundreds that once stood on Budapest’s streets; most of them were removed and now form Memento Park, an open-air museum on the Pest side, including most of the several Soviet soldiers that used to surround the Statue of Liberty atop Gellért Hill. The Statue of Liberty is an impossible site to miss in the skyline of Buda, a reminder that despite a turbulent history of occupation, an independent Hungary has emerged from the rubble.

After that somber look into Hungary’s more recent history, we moved into the historic core of Budapest, called the Castle District. Home to several of Budapest’s most well known historic sites, such as Matthias Church and the Fisherman’s Bastion, walking through the Castle District truly feels like you’re stepping back into time. For lunch, I had to try one of my favorite dishes in its native land- goulash- and sampled some Hungarian wine. My guide told me winemaking in Hungary has just begun making a huge comeback in the wine industry, and since red wine is my favorite he suggested I try Egri Bikavér, aka “Bulls’ Blood,” a famous full-bodied red unique to Hungary. It was really delicious, so much so I made it a point to find some to bring back to the ship with me.

Following lunch, we hopped back over the Danube to Pest, starting with one of the most famous architectural sites of Hungary, the stunning neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament Building. It’s so expansive you’ll feel tiny standing next to the sprawling building. Next to the Parliament is Kossuth Tér (Square), home to important government buildings and also the site of the Kossuth Tér Massacre, where in 1956 hundreds of demonstrators protesting the Soviet occupation of Hungary were gunned down by Soviet troops. There are still a lot of missing details about the incident, including how many people died; estimates generally believe the number to between 300-800, but some recent research indicates that number could be in the thousands. Many of them were kids and college students. An underground museum detailing the event lays under the memorial honoring the victims, and asks anyone with any additional information about massacre to report it officials to complete the missing pieces in this dark chapter of Hungarian history. Even more haunting are the bullet holes still visible in the government buildings that surround the square.

Next we drove through the bustling streets of Pest, down the major avenue Andrássy Út, which is *the* big shopping hub of Pest and is lined with gorgeous historic buildings, including the Hungarian National Opera House. At the end of the road is Heroes’ Square, a statue complex devoted to celebrating some major figures in Hungarian history, such as Stephen I, the first King of Hungary.

Heroes’ Square also marks the beginning of City Park, Budapest’s crown jewel of a park, which is home to several important sites, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Palace of Art, and the Budapest Zoo. The Park and many of its buildings were constructed as part of a huge millennium celebration held in 1896 to commemorate 1000 years since the establishment of the Principality of Hungary, when the Magyars, the ancestors of Hungarians, first settled into their current spot in the Carpathian Basin. You’ll hear and see the number 96 all around Hungary because of its key spot in Hungarian history- the Parliament Building, for example, is 96 meters tall in commemoration. Just don’t remind Hungarians that the committee organized to determine the year of Hungarian settlement actually found that the Magyars arrived in 895, not 896; the committee was asked to add a year onto their findings because the city leaders knew all the construction necessary for the grand festivities wouldn’t be ready in time for 1895.

Another staple of City Park is the Széchenyi Baths. Hungary lays on top of a vast network of thermal hot springs, so much so that when the Romans first settled in Hungary they named the settlement Aquincum- “abundant waters.” You’ll find tons of thermal baths in Budapest, but the Széchenyi is one of the largest and most historic. It was packed with people enjoying the benefits of the warm mineral water. If I had more time, I definitely would’ve hopped in!

But I still had a few more sites left in Budapest I needed to make my way to. Next up, we headed over to the Jewish Quarter and the Dohány Street Synagogue. Before World War II, 5% of Hungary’s population and 25% of Budapest’s pre-war population was Jewish. But as anti-Semitism in Europe grew in the early 20th century, the Hungarian government began to enforce “Jewish laws,” and Budapest’s Jews were forced to live in a miniscule section of the city surrounding the synagogue. Hungary would go on to join the Axis, which gave Hungary some more freedom as to how to interpret Hitler’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Jews. Hungary opted to deport, inter, or send Jews to Hungarian military labor camps rather than engage in the genocide. This wasn’t enough for Hitler, though, and in 1944 he sent the Arrow Cross regime to Hungary to ensure his orders were carried out. The Jewish Quarter was turned into an even smaller walled ghetto, where Jews were forbidden to make any contact outside the walls. 600,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust. Today, only .5% of Hungarians are Jewish.

After World War II, the Synagogue and the surrounding neighborhood were left to decay, leaving the iconic synagogue and Jewish Quarter buildings in disarray. But as Communism finally left Hungary, renewed interest in restoring the temple helped bring the building back to its former glory, much thanks to the financial support of a famous Hungarian-American Jew, renowned cosmetics entrepreneur Esteé Lauder. Built in 1859, Dohány Synangouge is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, and is one of the most beautifully unique houses of worship I’ve ever had the privilege of laying eyes on during my travels.

My final stop in Budapest was the Great Market Hall, an absolutely enormous 3-floor market that has everything Hungarian you can imagine. The basement boasts the fish and pickle market, the ground floor has all produce, meat, wine, and other snacks, and on the top floor you’ll find tons of souvenir shops and a restaurant. It was built in 1897 and heavily damaged in World War II as its located right near Chain Bridge. It sat neglected during the Communist occupation, but was fully restored and reopened only in 1997. I got to sample some delicious cheeses and Hungarian wine, and learned all about the different kinds of Hungarian paprika there are- be careful for the spicy varieties if you do the same!

I still can’t believe I managed to squeeze all of those Budapest sites into a small period of time, but I definitely felt like there was still so much more left of the city to see. I returned to the Viking Vili having fallen in love with Budapest and eager to return so that I can experience more of the city. Of all the cities I visited on this trip, Budapest had one of the most unique histories and friendliest people I encountered.

And now we’ve reached the end of my Trip Report! It’s been so much fun reflecting and sharing this trip with all of you. I leave for my next trip in less than week, heading across the pond to London for a week and going to a longtime favorite footie/soccer team of mine, Arsenal. I can’t wait to share this trip with all of you too! But in the meantime, I’ll be switching up some of the articles to include more travel tips, destination guides, and special interest travel- foodie, sports, and history travelers should get excited for those!

[fromtheringapron]

Observations from ‘92 WWF Episodes of Superstars

After years of demand, the WWE Network has finally uploaded episodes of WWF Superstars, although not without a catch. They can’t yet upload any episodes before April 18, 1992, which is when the show’s named was shortened from Superstars of Wrestling to simply Superstars due to some legal wrangling over the “Of Wrestling” part. This date also happens to be just a couple of weeks after I was born, so please begin your conspiracy theories on how these two events are somehow related.

Regardless of the controversy, these episodes are a blast. Each hour is packed with the perfect amount of nostalgia and leaves you wanting more. Wrestling on Saturday mornings as a concept may seem like a such strange one to audiences in 2019, but there’s so much to these episodes that three-hour Monday Night Raws can certainly learn from. It’s also a nice glimpse into what the WWF was like in 1992, which was just as much a transitional year on-screen as it were a tumultuous one off of it. Allegations of steroids and sex abuse had damaged the WWF’s public image, familiar faces who’d been on the roster for the past several years were beginning to disappear seemingly by the week, and the wrestling business in general had entered a recession. Perhaps the biggest game-changer was the absence of Hulk Hogan, which caused Vince McMahon to start shifting focus to the likes of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.  

I’ve been breezing on through these episodes as of late. They’re a sweet treat that goes down easy, like a tube of mini M&M’s. I’m up to July 1992 in my binge watch, and here’s the most notable stuff from them so far:

The WBF and Grade-A Beef

The first few months of episodes on the Network are stuffed with Vince hyping his failed venture into bodybuilding, the World Bodybuilding Federation. He can’t stop talking about the weekly show WBF Bodystars, the WBF magazine, and the upcoming the WBF pay-per-view special (which turned out to be a commercial dud and ultimately spelt the end for the organization). Worst of all, he refers to both his wrestlers and bodybuilders as “100% Grade-A Beef” which makes me vomit just thinking about it. Note to anyone: referring to any appendage on your body as any sort of meat is disgusting. Seriously, I get grossed out when dudes on Grindr refer to their piece as “beef.” It’s just not a good look. Interestingly enough, a few of the articles in the WBF magazine talk about the dangers of steroids, which feels like Vince desperately trying to deflect attention of himself. This also marks the beginning of the ICOPRO era and to be honest, all these years later, I still don’t know what the fuck Vince was thinking if he believed the kids in the audience would’ve cared about creatine.

Unscripted Promos

Each episode features cuts to the Event Center hosted by Sean Mooney, where the superstars give promos on their feuds, grudges, house show programs, plans to challenge Bush Sr. and Clinton in the presidential election, etc. The magic of these promos, outside of the excellent characterized green-screen backgrounds, is how unscripted and ad-libbed they are. In a time where superstars are now force fed lines from TV writers, there’s something about this approach that feels so refreshing in contrast. Truthfully, a lot of what comes out of these guys’ mouths is nonsense but, in a way, that’s precisely why it comes off more realistic. If a reporter held a mic to Tom Brady right after his umpteenth Super Bowl win, chances are that he’s not gonna give this five-star, ultra-rehearsed promo. He’ll probably ramble on a bit, give a vaguely satisfying answer, and move on. The characters and storylines are still campy as hell, but still feels like something within the realm of real-time sports. That’s exactly how this era works best.

The Fan Reaction Shots Are Everything

These episodes also unintentionally serve as audiovisual evidence of what human beings in 1992 looked like, in case you didn’t know. As with anything in the early ‘90s, there’s a lot in terms of fashion that still makes everything look like the ‘80s. The hair is still pretty big and teased out, the neon is bright and unrelenting, and you’re bound to find a few dads in the crowd with some pretty thick mustaches (and if there’s isn’t a mustache, you can except some thick-rimmed glasses instead). Crowd reaction shots are an underrated aspect of getting an angle or character to over to the audience. A more modern example would be that shocked, hapless Edvar Munch painting of a man when the Undertaker lost at WrestleMania 30. Here is no exception. I particularly love the shots of terrified children when Papa Shango walks down the aisle, most notably an adorable little red-headed child who looks like he just saw a ghost.  

Cartoon Violence! Cartoon Violence Everywhere!

At some point during the early ‘90s, the WWF had successfully captured the feel of a darkly humorous comic book, and these episodes boast plenty of it. The Berzerker tries to stab The Undertaker with a viking sword! Rick Martel stealing Tatanka’s feathers and blinding him with cologne! The Repo Man hanging the British Bulldog! The Mountie shocking Sgt. Slaughter with a jumbo-sized shock stick! What makes these angles so fun is that they’re completely ridiculous yet manage to stay true to the characters. Of course The Repo Man wouldn’t just use a steel chair or any other ringside weapon on the Bulldog. Of course The Model would try to maim Tatanka while also promoting his signature fragrance. Sure, Lou Thesz wouldn’t have liked it, but you can’t deny it sells the characters to the audience pretty well.

The Papa Shango/The Ultimate Warrior Saga

 And speaking of a darkly humorous comic book, the Papa Shango/Ultimate Warrior feud is perhaps the most infamous of this particular era in Looney Tunes hijinks. As you may know, this involved Shango putting a curse on the Warrior, which later caused the Warrior to spew green vomit Exorcist-style and have black goo drip out of his head. A visual feast, indeed. The craziest part is that none of this resulted in a huge blowoff on TV, which would be considered a cardinal sin in today’s climate. It was instead used to promote house matches between the two. Maybe they thought people in Fort Wayne, Indiana or wherever the fuck would attend their shows hoping Warrior would puke all over them? I don’t know, but I can’t help but the feel all of this was supposed to be some sort of artistic statement. Was this commentary on our collective ennui? A hard look at the appropriation of Haitian voodoo in pop culture? An obscure nod to the then-recent fall of the Soviet Union? Send me your thesis papers, grad students!

The Big Bossman Deserved to Get His Ass Kicked

The Bossman/Nailz feud has aged poorly. It was easier for viewers to gobble up the narrative the WWF were trying to sell back in 1992 but we, in 2019, know better due to the shift in rhetoric surrounding law enforcement and the abuse of power that system can often breed. If you’re not familiar, promos began to air in the spring of ’92 where a mysterious voice accused the Big Bossman of abusing him when he was in prison. The man later turned out to be Nailz, who then attacked the Bossman on an episode of Superstars and gave him an absolutely brutal thrashing. 

And the Bossman deserved it. You see, for as much as Vince McMahon tried selling the Bossman’s innocence, there’s plenty of evidence supporting Nailz’ allegations. From day 1 of his WWF tenure, the Bossman loved to beat poor, defenseless jobbers with his nightstick and handcuff them to the ropes, even when he turned into a happy, smiley babyface. In fact, right before Nailz beats him up, he can be seen taking his anger out on a barely conscious jobber. It’s not that much of a stretch to believe he did the same to several of his inmates in Cobb County. And don’t even get me started on the Confederate flag on the Bossman’s sleeve, or else this post will take a seriously dark turn on the extent of his brutality and prejudice. When you consider all of that, is there any surprise this is the same man who killed Al Snow’s dog and crashed the funeral for Big Show’s dad later in the Attitude Era?

The Tornado’s Last Spin 

I hate to discuss an even darker topic, but I was so stricken by how these episodes are essentially some of the last recorded moments of Kerry Von Erich’s career and, ultimately, his life. It’s often forgotten that he lingered on in the WWF until August of ’92. He was arrested for forging painkiller prescriptions in February, which led to his suspension from the company. He made his return to the ring two months later and would toil around on the undercard for the next four months before leaving/getting released altogether. It’s next-level tragic to watch him cut promos on repurposing his life toward God and his family, knowing he’s making allusions to all the trouble he’s found himself in. It’s even sadder knowing how much more trouble he’d find himself in before his untimely death, including a possible prison sentence that, had he served fully, wouldn’t have seen him released just a few years ago. 

The Jobbers Are Ugly

This is going to sound mean, but the jobbers on these shows are not attractive men. I mean, seriously, some of these dudes look like they just got off their shift at the local liquor store before they hit the arena for their scheduled thrashing. I do wonder how much of this was a deliberate choice by the bookers themselves. You need guys who are going to make Nailz and Sgt. Slaughter look appealing by comparison because that only enhances their star power. The lone exception to this rule is Ron Cumberledge, who would be classified as a hunk in any decade. A true renaissance journey man.

Squash Matches Galore

Even if you’re only slightly familiar with the WWF’s old syndicated weekend shows, you’d know most of the matches were these quick squashes where a superstar would easily trounce one of the jobbers I discussed previously. Matches between name superstars would only happen occasionally on TV, as it this was still an era where those were kept to draw buys to pay-per-views and house shows. While it would be highly unrealistic for the WWE to just revert back to them 100%, and they still do them on the main roster occasionally, it’s definitely something they’d benefit using more. And don’t just give your top talent squares either. In these episodes, Virgil gets squash matches. The Bushwhackers get squash matches. Repo Man gets squash matches. Obviously none of these guys were key players or anything, but it still gave them TV time and wins under their belt. Imagine if they did that today for, like, No Way Jose or Dana Brooke. It doesn’t seem like much, but it goes a long way in building credibility to your roster.

So that’s that. Or at least for now, anyway. I’ve still got plenty more episodes to watch for 1992, and who knows? Maybe in the future the Network will upload episodes from 1993, 1994, and so on. In the meantime, I’ll go back to chilling out, binge-watching, and daydreaming about Ron Cumberledge.

[fiirelords]

TAG GAME BONANZA!!

I’ve been tagged in a shit-ton of games and I haven't done them bc I’ve been busy (but the real reason is bc I’m trash™) so I’m just gonna post them all here under the cut; if you tagged me in any of these, I’m tagging you to do another one, choose whichever you like (or all of them lmao)(or anyone else who wants to do it, just say I tagged you lmao)(also people from nataliesroyalfamily and my bimblebubble fam u are tagged) do feel obligated to do it, this is not optional. (there’s a dot at the end, that’s how we know it’s official)(also I might have already answered to yours before, but idk to which (oops) so yeah :)) I spent a lot of time on this, I’m exhausted, please at least read it and get to know a bit more about me :))

Rules: Answer the 20 questions and tag 20 amazing followers you’d like to get to know better!

Tagged by: @opuggno​, @sirjsblack​ @njmphadora​ @simplywolfstar​, @tlnagoldsteln​ @billspotts​ <33

Name | ana Nicknames | most people just call me ana or *cringes* ana lourdes *sigh*, my mom calls me anita, my friends call me shitface, dog or bitch, @njmphadora​ and @findfyre​ call me ana banana (but I secretly, ok, it’s not that much of a secret, but I hate bananas)(or any fruit for that matter)(shhhhhh don’t tell them!!),and that’s about it Zodiac sign | aquarius Height | 1.65m or 5′4′’ Orientation | Straight Ethnicity | latin american Hogwarts house | ravenclaw  Favourite fruit | limes Favourite season | idk ok?? either fall or winter Favourite book | harry potter Favourite flower | I’m not really a flower person, I just don’t get it?? they’re just plants that smell like plants lmao Favourite scent | cleaning supplies, permanent marker (u know, the ones that smell nice), books (old and new), lime juice lmao, freshly baked cookies, fries (ofc) and idk what else Favourite colour | idk. black?? white?? it might be white bc it’s so neat?? but black is bold af asdfghds idk Favourite animal | cats?? turtles?? the fish emoji?? foxes (like dayumn) idk Last thing you googled | froot loops (my friends thought it was fruit loops lmao) Coffee, tea, or hot cocoa | ICED tea, hot cocoa, never coffee Average sleep hours | 3-4 hours (I should sleep more Cat or dog person | both lol (I love pets!!) Favourite fictional character | James Potter?? Number of blankets you sleep with | one Dream trip | london Blog created | December 23rd 2016 Number of followers | 1936 (excited but idk what to do for 2k!!)

RULES: answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions. I was tagged by @quidditchplayer​, @hagridsrubeus​ <33

1. coke or pepsi: COKE!!! (VANILLA COKE IS LIFE!!)

2. disney or dreamworks: disney


3. coffee or tea: ICED tea


4. books or movies: both! but tbh I have been watching a lot more movies than I have been reading books!


5. windows or mac: mac 

6. dc or marvel: MARVEL!! (sorry dc!! I still love you <3)

7. x-box or playstation: where’s nintendo though?? bc I still own a super nintendo lmao and a nintendo 64 does this make me hipster/vintage or smth??

8. dragon age or mass effect: … *cricket chirps in the distance* idk what this is lol


9. night owl or early riser: definitely night owl

10. cards or chess: cards
!! (I actually have a playing card collection lmao)

11. chocolate or vanilla: most of the time chocolate

12. vans or converse: converse


13. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: ummmm *more crickets come bc idk what this is either*


14. fluff or angst: angst I guess?? idk, it’s more entertaining lmao

15. beach or forest: idk, sorry… beach??

16. dogs or cats: both!!

17. clear skies or rain: clear skies


18. cooking or eating out: getting food (specially junk food)(McDonalds is life!!)

19. spicy food or mild food: I don’t eat spicy food, but I do eat this spicy sauce powder called tajín, I love it!! I have an obsession and it’s getting out of hand!! I have like 4 regular sized bottles, a big one, and a fun sized one…

20. halloween/samhain or solstice/yule/christmas: we don’t celebrate halloween (which sucks) so christmas 

21. would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: a little too cold
!!

22. if you could have a superpower, what would it be? shape shifting (I’m copying megan’s answer lol)(we are clones, so I guess it’s ok)


23. animation or live action: both!1 I am not choosing here!! just no!!!!

24. paragon or renegade: *more crickets come in, they start getting cozy, bring out some wine bc a party is starting*

25. baths or showers: I don’t understand baths tbh (just like music and flowers…) so showers


26. team cap or team ironman: team avengers!! (I may or may not have cheated…)


27. fantasy or sci-fi: fantasy??

28. do you have three or four favourite quotes, if so what are they: I don’t get quotes either lol I’m bad at humaning

29. youtube or netflix: both!! I’m such youtube trash tbh and netflix as well

30. harry potter or percy jackson: H A R R Y  P O T T E R !!!! (duh)

31. when do you feel accomplished: when I win
 (omg megan!! same!!)

32. star wars or star trek: S T A R  W A R S


33. paperback books or hardcover books: hardcover (I can hit so many people with them)(my friends love me ok??)

34. to live in a world without literature or without music?: music lol

35. who was the last person to make you laugh? @siriusblsck​ with her twitching eye

36: city or countryside? city

37: favorite chips? Caribas


38: pants or dresses? los pantalones


39: libraries or museums? idk, libraries I guess


40: character driven stories or plot driven stories? idk idk idk

41: fairy tales or mythology? not much into these

42. pen or pencil? PENS!! but math is done in pencil people!! 

43. toilet paper over or under? OVER IS THE RIGHT WAY!!!

Rules: tag nine people you want to get to know better

tagged by @hogwarts-underground​, @lilyevcnz​, @billspotts​, @tonqs​, @shriekingshxck, @thatmarauderer :)

Relationship Status: single

Favourite Colour: black or white probably

Lipstick or Chapstick: chapstick, I don’t own any makeup

Last Song I Listened To: idk

Top 3 TV Shows: I don’t have a top 3 but you can check out my common room aka tv room and see which ones I have in the faves category I guess

Top 3 Characters: don’t know (I’m bad at faves)

Top 3 Ships: HP wise Jily, Romione, Wolfstar

Books I’m Currently Reading: the same 3 books I’ve been “reading” since december lmao, What if? by Randall Monroe, The Thing Explainer by Randall monroe as well and Gravity Falls Journal 3 (such trash™)

i was tagged by @lunalocegood​

rules:

you can only say guilty or innocent.

you are not allowed to explain anything unless someone asks you.

tag 10 people.

asked someone to marry you? innocent kissed one of your friends? innocent danced on a table in a bar or tavern? innocent ever told a lie? guilty had feelings for someone whom you can’t have? innocent ever kissed someone of the opposite sex? innocent ever kissed someone of the same sex? innocent kissed a picture? innocent slept in until 5pm? guilty af fallen asleep at work or school? guilty af held a snake? innocent been suspended from school? innocent stolen something? innocent done something you regret? guilty laughed until something you were drinking came out of your nose? guilty caught a snowflake on your tongue? innocent kissed in the rain? innocent sat on a roof top? guilty sang in the shower? innocent been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? innocent slept naked? innocent made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? innocent been in a band? guilty (does backup singer for 1 song count?) shot a gun? innocent donated blood? innocent eaten alligator meat? innocent eaten cheesecake? guilty have/had a tattoo? innocent been too honest? guilty ruined a surprise? innocent ate in a restaurant and got really bloated that you can’t walk after? guilty erased someone in your friends list? innocent dressed in a man’s clothes? guilty dressed in a woman’s clothes? guilty joined a pageant? innocent been told that you’re beautiful by someone who totally meant what they said? guilty?? still have communication with your ex? innocent cheated on someone? innocent got totally drunk one night when you had an important exam the next morning? innocent a total stranger treated you by paying your fare? innocent got so angry that you cried? guilty tried to stay away from someone for their own good? innocent actually murdered someone? innocent thought about mass murder? innocent actually committed a mass murder? innocent rode in a stranger’s vehicle? guilty (do cabs count?) stalked someone? guilty had a girlfriend? innocent had a boyfriend? innocent totally drunk during a holiday? innocent

tell us one favorite character from ten shows and tag people

tagged by @njmphadora​, @zabiniblaisee​

friends: chandler bing

sherlock: sherlock

gossip girl: blair waldorf

himym: barney stinson

parks and rec: andy dwyer or april ludgate

the office: dwight schrute 

white collar: neal caffrey

pretty little liars: aria montgomery

suits: mike ross

brooklyn nine-nine: jake peralta

put your music on shuffle, list the first 9 songs and your favorite lyrics from each, then tag 9 people

i was tagged by @njmphadora​, @tonqs​, @euphemiapottcr​ @zabiniblaisee, @percweasly, @lilyevcnz, @anything-with-strawberries (I know it’s not the same game!! but I’m tired lmao)

sidenote: I’m gonna suck at this one bc I don’t listen to music :) (also I swear I have some other music ok?? my phone just really wanted me to listen to la la land and popstar lmao)

1. confucio - el trio de los tres

era un chino japonés, era el gran maestro kong, ganaba en el boliche, badmintong y ping pong, en la pista de baile no tenía comparación, ser el mejor en todo era su ilusión

2. another day of sun - la la land soundtrack

without a nickel to my name, hopped a bus, here I came, could be brave or just insane, we’ll have to see

3. mona lisa - the lonely island

mona lisa, you’re an overrated piece of shit, with your terrible style and your dead shark eyes, and a smirk like your hiding a dick what the fuck is this garbage?

4. city of stars - la la land

A look in somebody’s eyes To light up the skies To open the world and send it reeling A voice that says, I’ll be here And you’ll be alright

5. incredible thoughts - the lonely island

TV is free, but what is the cost? We have GPS and yet, we’re still lost A carrot in the desert, a camel in the garden A man with giant ears begging your pardon bonus: Imagine if a fish could play guitar And also sing, it would sound bizarre like My name is Mr. Fish These guys thoughts have granted my wish

6. rap god - eminem

But look at the accolades these skills brung me Full of myself, but still hungry I bully myself ‘cause I make me do what I put my mind to When I’m a million leagues above you Ill when I speak in tongues But it’s still tongue-and-cheek, fuck you

7. hey there delilah - plain white t’s

Hey there Delilah What’s it like in New York City? I’m a thousand miles away But girl, tonight you look so pretty Yes you do Times Square can’t shine as bright as you I swear it’s true

8. the greatest - sia

I’m free to be the greatest, I’m alive I’m free to be the greatest here tonight, the greatest The greatest, the greatest alive The greatest, the greatest alive

9. I’m so humble - the lonely island

I’ve got it all and I’m gettin’ more But I never fall, beat 'em all Cause you know I’m so humble I’m so humble, I’m so humble I’m a superstar, I kick down the door Got the money and the girls And I’m also so humble I’m so humble I’m so humble, I’m so humble

tagged by @fleuvrdelacour​, @ameljiabones​, @kingscross​, @thatmarauderer, @opuggno

APPEARANCE:

I am 5′7″ or taller

I wear glasses

I have at least one tattoo

I have at least one piercing.

I have blonde hair

I have brown eyes

I have short hair

My abs are at least somewhat defined (kinda lol)(I’m fatty bc junk food)

I have or have had braces

There is something I would change about the way I look

PERSONALITY:

My Hogwarts house is: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin

I am an introvert

I like meeting new people (sometimes)

People tell me that I’m funny (More like I tell myself that I’m funny)

Helping others with their problems is a big priority for me

I enjoy physical challenges

I enjoy mental challenges

I’m playfully rude with people I know well

I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it

There is something I would change about my personality

ABILITY:

I can sing

I can play an instrument

I can do over 30 pushups without stopping

I’m a fast runner

I can draw well

I have a good memory

I’m good at doing math in my head

I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute

I have beaten at least 2 people in arm wrestling

I know how to cook at least 3 meals from scratch

I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES:

I enjoy playing sports

I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else

I’m in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else

I have learned a new song in the past week

I work out at least once a week

I’ve gone for runs at least once a week in the warmer months

I have drawn something in the past month

I enjoy writing

Fandoms are my #1 passion

I do or have done martial arts

EXPERIENCES:

I have had my first kiss

I have had alcohol

I have scored the winning goal in a sports game

I have watched an entire season of a TV show in one sitting

I have been at an overnight event

I have been in a taxi

I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year

I have beaten a video game in one day

I have visited another country

I have been to one of my favourite band’s concerts

RELATIONSHIP:

I’m in a relationship

I have a celebrity crush

I have a crush on someone I know (counting crush as my boyfriend)

I have been in at least 3 relationships

I have never been in a relationship

I have asked someone out or admitted my feelings to them

I get crushes easily

I have had a crush on someone for over a year

I have been in a relationship for at least a year

I have had feelings for a friend

MY LIFE:

I have at least one person I consider a “best friend”

I live close to my school

My parents are still together

I have at least one sibling

I live in the United States

There is snow right now where I live

I have hung out with a friend outside of school in the past month

I have a smartphone

I have at least 15 CDs

I share my room with someone

RANDOM SHIT:

I have breakdanced

I know a person named Jamie

I have had a teacher with a last name that’s hard to pronounce

I have dyed my hair

I’m listening to one song on repeat right now

I have punched someone in the past week

I know someone who has gone to jail

I have broken a bone

I have eaten a waffle today

I know what I want to do with my life

I speak at least 2 languages fluently

I have made a new friend in the past year

get to know me (better!)

I was tagged by @quidditchplayer​, @kingscross​, 

Blog: @oblviqte​

(nick)Name(s): ana, anita, shitface, ana banana (I still don’t like them…)

Preferred Gender: female

Star Sign: aquarius

Height: 1.65m or 5'4”

Sexual Orientation: straight

Favourite Colour: black or white or both

Favourite Animal: all animals!!

Cat or Dog person: both!!

Favourite Fictional Characters: ugh idk lmao

Number of blankets I sleep with: one

Favourite Singer/Band: none

Dream Trip: london

Dream Job: systems engineer/ programming, coding all that jazz 

When was this blog created: december 23rd 2016

What made you create this Blog? HP IS LIFE!!

rules: list ten of your favorite people from ten different fandoms and then tag ten people!

I was tagged by @ameljiabones​

1. James Potter (HP) 2. I can’t choose an avenger, I’m sorry I love them all (MARVEL) 3. eleven (STRANGER THINGS) 4. Jake Peralta (B99) 5. Dipper and Mabel (bc they are both me af!!) (GRAVITY FALLS) 6. Marty McFly (BTTF) 7. Peeta Melark (HUNGER GAMES) 8. aslan (NARNIA) 9.  Sherlock (SHERLOCK) 10. Spencer Reid (my bby omg I love him so much why is he not real??!)(CRIMINAL MINDS)

I was tagged by @billspotts​

Star sign: Aquarius

Favourite musical artists: I’m super weird and don’t really listen to music aah

Song stuck in my head: the la laland soundtrack is stuck on my mind forever!! (pls send help)(I hum while I take exams and people look at me!! heeeellplp!!)

Last movie i watched:  idk man, the last movie I saw was probably la la land lmao (I need to watch some movies!!)

Last TV show i watched: Skam

Hogwarts house: Ravenclaw

Lucky number: 3, 7, 618

Favourite characters: at this point just scroll up lmao

Favourite fruit: limes

Favourite season: winter or fall

Favourite colour: black and/or white

Favourite animal: all animals

Coffee, tea or hot cocoa: ICED tea

Cat or dog person: both!!

Dream trip: london!!

tagged by @kingscross​, @hufflefck

What is your name? ana

How old are you? XVI

What houses are you in? ravenclaw

What kind of blog do you run?  idk, HP/multifandom I guess??

Your patronus? rottweiler

wand core? phoenix feather

Your Pottermore house results? Ravenclaw

Ilvermorny house? Wampus

Which book is your favourite? idk

Which book is your least favourite? hbp??

Which movie is your favourite? idk

What is your least favourite movie? sfx wise ps lmao but leaving that aside, idk

What is your favourite quote?I’m not a quote person

Favourite Potter? James Potter

Favourite Weasley? Fred weasley or Charlie, Charlie is cool

Favourite Malfoy? Draco Malfoy.

Favourite Black? Sirius Black.

Favourite Marauder? Remus Lupin (bc I already put everyone else lmao)

Favourite Golden Trio? Hermione Granger.

Favourite Silver Trio? Neville Longbottom

Favourite female character? Hermione Granger

Favourite male character? James 

Favourite professor? Lupin ofc

Favourite House? Ravenclaw

Which character do you dislike the most? snape and umbridge, but snape more, fuck that guy

What ships are your favourite? Jily, Romione, Wolfstar, Remadora (but not the way it happened in the books), Deamus, flintwood, Hinny

If you could make up your own house what would be the traits?tbh, idk

What would your Amortentia smell like? permanent markers, books, lime juice, freshly baked cookies

Which do you prefer, owls, cats or a frog? Owls are more practical and all, but we would probably have a family owl and I’m trash™ for cats

Which is your favourite Harry Potter era? marauder era

5 things tag

tagged by @burkesandborgin​

5 things you’ll find in my bag (I don’t carry a bag, unless my backpack counts…)

my phone

my Gravity Falls Journal 3 

my bag of sharpies

my pencilcase

my phone’s charger

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom

my cat

tajín

stuffed animals

my playing card collection

some books

5 things I’ve always wanted to do in life

get a tattoo

go to london

become successful

be part of a film/play production or smth

own a cool house

5 things that make me happy

tv shows

friends

making stuff

eating lmao

HP

5 things I’m currently into

decoding/deciphering ciphers/codes that stuff

plain colors

minimalist stuff

annoying people

making people laugh (but that’s always lmao)

5 things on my to-do list

watch all the movies I haven’t watched

catching up with tv shows

making a shit-ton of moodboards

buy swimsuits/beach clothes

send college recomendation letter info to some teachers 

5 things people may not know about me

I love plantain chips

I have a birthmark on my right knee and everyone thinks it’s a scar

I have a scar on my left knee and idk when I got it lol

I love super paper mario (it might be my fave super mario game)(after smash lol)(i love smash sm!!)(someone play smash with me!!)(dibs on kirby)

I know a bunch of digits of π (pi lmao) bc I’m a nerd

🌻🐝A body positivity tag game 🐝🌻

i was tagged by @njmphadora, @lilyevcnz <33

🌻🐝Tag people you want to feel pretty af 🐝🌻

Post your some selfies where you feel cute af ~ x x x x

Something you love about your hair ~ I love my hair sm tbh like it’s pretty lmao

Something you love about your eyes ~ like you can tell it’s me?? from when I’m a baby so I like that :P

Something you love about your mouth ~ it’s not bad, it’s goot a nice mouth shape I guss

Something you love about your nose ~ I LOVE MY NOSE!! like?? it’s just asdfyhs idk, I just like it and I get complimented on it a lot and people describe me by it, idk, I love it :D

Something you love about your legs ~ they’re long and they’re not totally skinny, like they’re curvy and they have a nice shape

Something you love about your butt ~ I guess it’s ok, it has a good butt shape?? it’s good…

Something you love about your tummy ~ even though I don’t eat any fruits or veggies it’s not like super chubby, like ofc I’m not a victoria’s secret model, but I’m skinny :)

Something you love about your chest ~ lol ok, so it’s like not too big but not too small, so it’s like a good chest size 

Something you love about your height ~ I’m like regular height (but my legs are long and my torso is short so finding clothes that fit me just right is hard, but also most clothes are kinda made for my height I guess??) I can wear heels or flats and look normal??

Something you love about your weight ~ tbh for the amount of junk food I eat, I’m very happy with my weight :D

When do you feel prettiest ~ when my hair is down and it’s clean (so never lol)

When did you last feel beautiful ~ last saturday?? on tuesday?? idk lol

tag game!

i was tagged by @percweasly

rules: enter your answers then tag 10 people! use the first letter of your name to answer each question. real answers only. if the person who tagged you has the same initial, you must use different answers. you cannot use the same word twice.

name: ana

a four letter word: ants

a boys name: andrew

an occupation: astrophysicist

something you wear: apron

food: apricot

something you find in a bathroom: aloe vera body lotion

a place: azerbaijan 

reason for being late: andrew garfield was getting into a bus and I had to chase him

something you shout: aaaaaaaaa!!!

movie titles: ant-man

something you drink: a soda (lmao I cheated, sorry)

an animal: ape

a type of car: audi

title of a song: another day of sun - la la land soundtrack (that music tag got to me…)

tag ten people u want to get to know better

i was tagged by @fallxng-stars name/nickname: ana, anita, shitface and ana banana (still don’t like them…)

relationship status: single favorite colors: white, black, gold, silver, and others probably last song i listened to: look at the last song from the music tag game lol

favorite tv shows: can’t choose but you can see them at my common room aka tv room first fandom: HP hobbies: reading, scrolling thru tumblr, chatting w friends, using photoshop (editing!), procrastinating, watching tv, decoding ciphers, learning how to do stuff, drawing, and more books i’m currently reading: The Thing Explainer, What If? and Gravity Falls Journal 3 worst thing i’ve ever eaten: fruits and veggies (eww) favorite place(s): home, where the wifi is 

tag game

I wish there was a store where you could just pick up a fictional character and they could be your best friend, significant other, or even arch nemesis. Copy the idea, write who your best friend, significant other, and arch nemesis would be. Then, tag 5-10 friends to do this!!

tagged by: @fleuvrdelacour

best friend(s): Hermione Granger, Fred & George, Dipper and Mabel Pines, I wanna be bff’s with everyone tbh

significant other:James Potter, Dr. Spencer Reid, Jake Peralta and I’m probably forgetting someone

arch nemesis: ughh Snape, Umbridge, and Gideon Gleeful 

[solemn-demons]

Rant #1 Equality

I’m putting this here for three purposes. 

1.) It’s a great stress reliever and sometimes you just have to pretend like your actually talking to someone. 

2.) No one is ever likely to read this besides my future self. 

3.) Because I’m tired of this shit and even if no one ever reads this and everyone disagrees, at least I’ve put it out there. It’s almost impossible to make everyone happy, so I’m not going to try. 

I’m going to place this based on topic because otherwise this will be a giant ugly rant and no one likes giant text blocks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Equality~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I get where everyone is coming from on this topic. Going on just the bare basics:

Women want to be treated with respect, seen as an integral part of society, and honestly not treated like a piece of meat every day. 

Men want to feel secure and conform to the beliefs and ideals they grew up with.  

People of different skin tones want to feel safe in their daily lives while also being given the respect and acknowledgment they deserve. 

People classified as white want to conform to what they have been taught as a child and have grown up believing is true while also wanting to remove the stigma of their skin color and what people with it have done to others.

LGBTQ people want to be accepted and uplifted rather than seen with disgust and scorn.

Disabled people want to be seen as people not just their issues.

Mentally ill people want to be treated like their issues are more than just a simple inconvenience for other people and more like someone that’s fighting a serious illness. 

Overweight people want to be seen as beautiful.

Skinny people want others to understand that just because they have the “ideal body type” doesn’t mean their happy, along with the hard work they put into these body types. 

Yes, I am well aware these are bare bone statements and there will always be exceptions to this. However it is, for the most part, correct. Now from this we can conclude a couple things. Everyone seems to want respect, everyone wants a change in the societal standards and everyone wants to change how their seen by others. This is a rational and frankly reasonable desire. How it’s being dealt with, however, is not. 

To start I’d like to look at the definition of Equality. 

“The state of being equal, especially in status, rights and opportunities.” Google dictionary.

“the quality or state of being equal” Merriam Webster. 

Now your thinking: “Yeah? What’s your point?” Well my point is that based on the definition of equality everyone should be given the exact same designs of life. 

Now lets look at the definition of Justice. 

“Just behavior or treatment.” Google Dictionary.

The quality of being fair and reasonable.” Google dictionary.

“the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” Merriam Webster.

“The quality of being just, impartial or fair.” Merriam Webster.

“The quality of conforming to law.” Merriam Webster.

Now, you’ve probably rolled your eyes at me but just listen and then you can always just scroll away or leave a bitchy comment about how I’m racist or antifeminist or antigovernment or I’m for murdering children or whatever made up BS your going to put so you can discredit my opinion. 

If we we’re run by a system of equality it would mean that everyone has the exact same opportunities. Meaning that even if, for example, I wanted to be an actor I would get that opportunity and I would be given the part I want no matter what, but so would every other person that wants to be an actor and wants that part. This would also mean that everyone has the opportunity for the same house, the same yard and eventually it’s likely that everyone will want the same abilities all together. 

With that said lets look at an extreme case, which is fiction of course, of this lovely concept. Anyone ever read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut? This lovely short story is about equality laws being taken to the extreme. To create the perfect equality based society they put handicaps on everyone. No one was special, no one was different and no one was free. Of course your first thought is “but thats fiction, it would never really happen.” Humans have proved that fiction can be made reality once you understand the fundamentals and pieces of the design. Fiction is simply something that seems impossible based on the knowledge of that specific time. Humans use to attribute the impossible to gods or magic until they began to understand what was creating these things. Hell, I’m pretty sure they thought fire was magic until they understood its properties. 

Before you start with your religious rebuttals, I’d like to remind that this isn’t the religion rant and I won’t deal with this BS right now. 

Now lets go to a more trivial idea of equality. I have a friend who is severely allergic to peanuts, to the point he has to carry epipens on his hip at all times. So if we look at this situation, theres not an equal balance from the beginning. He can’t have a snickers bar or a nutter butter while I can. Equality wise I should not be allowed to eat snickers or nutter butter because he can’t and with the high percentage of peanut allergies, peanuts would probably be banned because it’s to unequal. 

So I’d like to suggest we think not in terms of Equality but in terms of Justice. What in these situations is fair? What isn’t? 

So lets look at fair separated out into our categories. 

Women: 

To be treated with the same respect as men.

To not be looked at for their gender but for their merits in jobs.

To be allowed to walk down a street without being worried about who might be following.

To be able to choose what type of person they are and to not be forced into archaic stereotypes.

To not be looked down upon if they want to stay in the same lifestyle

as those archaic stereotypes 

To be seen as strong and fierce.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes.

Men: 

To be treated with the same respect as men and alpha males.

To not be looked down on for being emotional.

To feel safe when talking to a woman or asking one out.

To not be called a predator based on looks or merit alone.

To be allowed to be the weak one in a relationship and in society.

To be a stay at home dad without being made fun of.

To be able to be taken serious when they say they’ve been raped or

taken advantage of.

To be judged on their actions not on their stereotypes.

People of different skin tones:

To be treated with respect.

To be acknowledged for the integral part they are to society.

To be looked at for jobs not because of skin tone but because of merit.

To feel safe.

To feel included.

To be able to use their native languages and cultures without being looked down on or yelled at based on the idea that they are in America.

Actual freedom of religion.

To be judged on their actions not on their stereotypes.

People of white skin tones:

To be treated with respect.

To be released from the stigmas of those stuck in the past.

To be taken serious based on their merits not their skin color.

To feel included.

To feel safe.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes.

LGBTQ:

To be treated with respect. 

To be accepted.

To be free.

To feel included.

To feel safe.

To be seen as normal.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes. 

Disabled people:

To be treated with respect.

To not be pitied.

To not be dismissed.

To feel safe.

To feel included.

To be understood.

To be seen as more than their disability.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes. 

Mentally ill: 

To be treated with respect.

To be seen as having an actual issue.

To not be dismissed.

To be understood.

To have no stigma.

Feel comfortable in sharing their issues.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes.

Overweight: 

To be treated with respect.

For people to understand that sometimes it’s not by choice.

To be understood.

To feel safe.

To feel included.

To be seen as normal.

To be judged by their actions not their stereotypes.

Skinny: 

To be treated with respect. 

To be acknowledged for the work they go through to stay in shape.

To feel safe.

To feel included.

To be understood.

To be judged based on their actions not their stereotypes.

While there is always exceptions to everything, the basic understanding is that everyone wants to be respected and judged not on a generalized scale but by their own actions. 

If history could be wiped clean and remade I don’t believe it would be any different. Ignorance, greed, pride, and desire are sadly one of the few consistencies in all cultures and era’s of the world, and while history may be ugly or boring or conflict with our own beliefs we must learn from it. To see all that ugly, all the losses, all the victories, and learn from those mistakes. To take history with a grain of salt and to look at multiple sources. 

The point is, knowledge is power and power is how you cause a change in the world. So maybe next time you read about some white officer shooting an African American, the new plans for that ridiculous wall that Trump has decided to build, some poor girl that lost her innocence to violence, or see that one bully that is being particularly mean to someone. 

Remember that school isn’t the only place people are educated, and even then schools are not completely blameless. Each person learns from their experiences and each experience makes a new person. 

Stop looking at situations in black or white. 

Stop advocating for a system you don’t fully understand just because it seems like a good idea. 

Stop bitching about societal norms, when you don’t put in any effort to change them or if you are but your not looking at all societies. 

Please if nothing else: Remember that every person has been through something horrific, that every person has been through a wonderful situation even if they don’t realize it. That everyone will hurt you and you will hurt everyone, but its how you respond to a situation that matters.

Alrighty thats the end of this rant. Hope you enjoy it future me. 

[blogwritetheworld]

From My Desk to Yours with Michael Lydon: The Op-Ed

by Michael Lydon

“Op-ed pages,” Wikipedia tells me, began in 1921 when a New York newspaper editor, bored by the gossip columns that filled the page facing the paper’s weighty editorials, decided to devote the “opposite editorial page” to opinion pieces for and against the paper’s usual stance on the issues of the day. The page soon became the paper’s best-read feature, and now, three decades into the online news era, many readers, after a quick scan of the day’s headlines, still settle in to read and digest the day’s op-ed columns.

Why? Because news-hungry readers want and need more than meat-and-potatoes facts; they want and need ideas and insights that can put those facts in context. Here, from ElenaH’s entry into WtW’s op-ed competition, is a perfect example of the op-ed perspective:

I am Mexican-American. But, don’t look at me like a criminal. Don’t look at me like a drug-dealer. Look at me like a human being. Look at me like you would look at yourself. We’re all people. Why do we treat each other differently based on where we come from, what we look like, and everything in between? We as Americans need to change our way of thinking towards others based on their origins and looks.

I agree. So much history and so many stories in the daily news prove conclusively that we Americans—many of whose parents and grandparents came from foreign lands—do need to change our thinking about people from the worldwide spectrum of cultures and nationalities. The bold clarity of ElenaH’s argument boosts my determination to see the people around me as human beings like myself.  

Eva Vallo’s op-ed discussion about vegetarianism offers me no hard and fast answers:

Have you really researched being vegetarian? Are you vegetarian?  If I were you, I would check your facts.  This isn’t the best for you.  Some people think that it is not okay to eat meat. They think it is gross and harmful to animals.  Others think that it’s fine.  There are pros and cons of both.  People should eat meat because it’s healthy for you.

Instead she challenges me to check my facts, and her balanced approach—“Some people think that it is not okay to eat meat…Others think that it’s fine” challenges me to figure out what diet would be best for me.

Xojadex, from Australia, compares American and Australian healthcare, finds the American system wanting, and argues for the importance of free and/or subsidized health care:

Today in our generation, the government are making us citizens pay to visit the GP and hospitals. People with a disease or just a simple bone fracture are expected to pay for their needs and care. Medicare covered all the costs from a simple medication to life saving surgeries but our government is taking that away from us. In Australia, we are lucky that we have been provided with Medicare and our hospital costs.

Erin E GCL calls the CIA “America’s Eye,” a necessary weapon but one that’s susceptible to abuse:

Every country needs a way to protect themselves. An eye into what is going on in their country and around the world. The United States’ eye is the CIA. The issue relates to where the line should be crossed. How far can the CIA go before they have invaded our civil rights and privacy? This topic is not black and white especially since their purpose is to protect and defend our nation.

These op-eds I’ve quoted cover only a few of the subjects that WtW’s writers are ready, willing, and eager to speak their minds on. AudreyDGCL questions the value of homework in high school: “More harmful than helpful?” Zoe Skaggs hates breeding mills that sell puppies weeks before they should be separated from their mothers. Tiffanys20 quotes studies showing that “when students are not permitted cell phone use during school they become more academically involved.” BenjaminR20 thinks that sports improve students’ “dedication…and focus.” What matters most to AlaynaK is “gender equality”:

“… [inequality] is not fair for women. Women work just as hard as men and they get paid less. Your gender should not get in the way of how you support your family. Also your gender should not get in the way of your education.”

Planned Parenthood, abortion, game animal trophy hunting, taking classroom notes with a pencil or a laptop, childhood beauty pageants—whether on big issues or small, the op-ed articles you young writers are submitting go on and on, all well-written, all passionate, and all, if not convincing, at very least, eye-opening and mentally stimulating.

I know, of course, that writing op-ed pieces may well not be what pulls you to your desk. You may hope to write novels, poems, plays, movie scripts and memoirs, and I say, more power to you! Yet I also urge you to keep your opinion-writing skills sharp. Why? Here’s one reason: because writing logical argument requires many kinds of writing excellence. To win readers to your side of any issue will require clarity, simplicity, empathy, and humor. You’ll need to tell stories, to create resonant metaphors and pulsing rhythms; you’ll need to build climaxes that ebb to resolute endings.

Yet there is a reason to write in the op-ed style that’s more important than penning distinctive prose, and here’s that reason: democracies around the world depend on people of every kind and color speaking their minds with a forthright confidence in order to create real social change.  

So, about any issue of current interest that awakens your “I gotta speak my mind” impulse, learn all you can, then speak up! Write up! Tell your friends, your neighbors in your town, your state, your country, and the world we all share, how you feel about any debate that interests you.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall's bold “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is now a foundation stone bequeathed to us as a most fortunate inheritance, but remember, when Hall first declared the idea at the turn of the twentieth century, it was the voice of one person, a person like yourself. So in the months and years ahead, let’s all keep putting in our op-ed two cents worth—they may be more valuable than we think!

About Michael

Michael Lydon is a writer and musician who lives in New York City. Author of many books, among them Rock Folk, Boogie Lightning, Ray Charles: Man and Music, and Writing and Life. A founding editor of Rolling Stone, Lydon has written for many periodicals as well, the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, and Village Voice. He is also a songwriter and playwright and, with Ellen Mandel, has composed an opera, Passion in Pigskin. A Yale graduate, Lydon is a member of ASCAP, AFofM local 802, and on the faculty of St. John’s University.