#Some of them are. Ryan‚ for example. But the others... It's strange to refer to them as their boxing alias.

[blackmesa-vr]

🥊🏆

[msclaritea]

Patrick Stewart Calls Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Filming 'Frustrating and Disappointing' - IGN

Ryan Dinsdale

BY RYAN DINSDALE

UPDATED: JAN 4, 2024 9:50 AM

POSTED: JAN 4, 2024 9:42 AM

Professor X actor Patrick Stewart has called his experience filming for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness "frustrating and disappointing", though may still return to the character for the upcoming Deadpool 3.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Stewart was asked to confirm if he, like some other actors filming for the Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, were actually interacting with their colleagues or just playing the part solo.

"It was alone," Stewart said, shaking his head. "I think the big scene, each one of the leading actors had the same experience. They were shot on their own. It was a frustrating and disappointing but that's how it has been. The last few years have been challenging."

The "big scene" Stewart references saw Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange appeal to the Illuminati for help, which in this multiverse was made up from the likes of Stewart's Professor X, John Krasinski's Mr Fantastic, Lashana Lynch's Captain Marvel, Hayley Atwell's Captain Britain, and more. Each member of the Illuminati was then cut down by a savage Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen.

Despite the poor experience, Stewart admitted conversations were happening surrounding Deadpool 3, the upcoming Marvel entry starring Ryan Reynold's Deadpool, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, and seemingly a lot more of the characters from the X-Men films.

Stewart was first asked if he knew how many times Professor X had died in his eight film appearances before laughing at the answer: four, meaning a 50% death rate. "I don't know [what that implies]," he laughed. "But I do now have every confidence that he's still around."

Deadpool himself wasn't around for the Mutant Massacre crossover, but it's a story that would make for good fodder for the next movie. In this story, the X-Men join forces with several other Marvel heroes to prevent Mister Sinister's mercenary squad the Marauders from slaughtering the sewer-dwelling Morlocks. It's a conflict that would pair well with Wade's habit of protecting mutant underdogs. Given how Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Apocalypse have both teased the arrival of Sinister, it's about time we see this twisted geneticist pop up somewhere in the X-Men cinematic universe.

The first storyline on Deadpool's relaunched 2012 comic started the series off on a bizarre note, as Wade had to deal with the reanimated corpses of America's past presidents, not to mention the pesky ghost of Benjamin Franklin. Somehow, the franchise just doesn't seem complete until we get to see Deadpool and Abraham Lincoln go head-to-head in the boxing ring.

When neither Cable nor Deadpool's comics were selling particularly well in the early 2000s, Marvel combined them together and instantly reinvigorated both characters. The opening storyline in Cable & Deadpool set a strong example for the series, pitting the two unlikely friends against one another over possession of a virus that can remake the physical appearance of anyone exposed to it. If Cable is going to stick around this franchise, there are far worse places to look for inspiration.

Deadpool 2 featured a tease for "M-Day," a disastrous event in Marvel's comics where Scarlet Witch all but wiped out the mutant race. Why not lean into that tease and give us a full-blown adaptation of House of M, the story that culminated in M-Day? The bulk of this story explores an alternate reality where Magneto and his family reign supreme. We'd like to see how Deadpool fares in a world like that. That's not to mention the long-term consequences House of M could have on the larger X-Men universe..."

BIG MISTAKE. HUGE, COS.

Why? Because I discovered months ago that the entire Star Trek franchise has been under the thumb of the Cult of Scientology for years. Not sure about the original, but for those who don't know, it had some very subtle Queering, so I'm pretty sure they wanted to fully queer Kirk and Spock in the reboots, but ended up just doing a side character. In addition:

David Birkin, having not one, but two appearances, playing Captain Picard as a child.

Bryan Singer, a known Pedo and serial assaulter, remaining attached to the X Men franchise for years (and they are linked)

Majority of the actors being British, where Scientology and it's Satanic roots come from

Ian McKellen joined in promoting the actress, Ellen Page, as Transgender

IGN, a COS partner, actively engaged in harassment of Benedict Cumberbatch, through negative articles and by repeatedly tweeting a short video, detailing one of the most traumatic events in his life (the kidnapping in Africa)

A character in Strange New Worlds (note, the piggybacking of his mcu character) La'an Noonien Singh, who it seems 'whined' about being bullied because of her 'infamous' last name. Pre-Programming. If they bullied the actor once, they did it a 100,000 times on social media, because of his name

One of the Strange New Worlds writers, also wrote the last project that Tom Holland did, which gave him so much trauma, he decided to take a year off, for which the Cult tried to threaten him using social media

His tormenters also used trolls to accuse the British actor, again repeatedly, of stealing a role, Khan, from BOTH East Indians and Mexicans. After years of this we finally realized that if anyone was guilty of that, it has been Richardo Montalban. He is European Spanish...white European. So, it was another lie

Picard also engaged in that new, strange, activist writing that Hollywood has been into, whereby they ruin an iconic, white male character

They even try AGAIN, to promote Elizabeth Olsen, in this article. Let me make it plain, so that there's no mistake about this, because our group IS privy to info, sometimes and so far, it's usually correct. Elizabeth Olsen wasn't just acting as a meme thirsty actress on DS2. She acted as a SPY for Disney competitors. Now, if any of the COS partners, like Universal or WB want a piece of that chick, they can go ahead.

And ALL THIS, I actually just kept to myself, specifically out of respect for SIR Patrick Stewart. I should know better and if Hollywood doesn't stop pushing these actors to do and say stupid shit in public, they won't have anyone left, worth having any respect for. Good God, he even uses the same narrative that Olsen used during DS2 promotions, where she complained about the Green Screen. What's so ironic is that for an actor to show they can stay in character and work, using a Green Screen is to show real skill in your craft. These two say they can't hack it.

Deeply disappointed in this man.

[huanyukang]

Major study of Concept art :

Blog 23: Scene design part: . Secene 1：The external environment and architecture of the altar  （Focus on the external 3D design of the altar）（Blender 3D design).

Summary of some concepts and sources of inspiration related to Scene 1

some inspirations source

The concept artist who has had the greatest impact on me in designing the exterior scene of the altar is Ryan Lang

Ryan Lang is known for Doctor Strange (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

I particularly like the animated movie "Raya and the Last Dragon" (2021), and the concept designer of this animated movie is Ryan Lang. He used magical realism style in designing the palace and Dragon Valley, which is impressive. Ryan Lang intentionally used exaggeration and distortion techniques in his designs to create a unique and imaginative visual effect. This technique breaks the conventions of traditional architectural design, endowing the building with a vivid and eerie vitality, making the audience feel as if they are in a magical world. The design of the palace is particularly eye-catching. Lang makes the palace look both spectacular and mysterious through exaggerated proportions and distorted structures. The towering spires and twisted corridors seem to be telling the extraordinary and mysterious nature of this world. This design not only enhances the visual impact, but also brings a dreamlike experience to the audience. In addition, the slender architectural design of the palace symbolizes the sanctity and authority of monarchy, which is awe inspiring. Every slender pillar, every towering spire, seems to proclaim the majesty and status of the ruler, making people feel awe towards them. Longgu's design is equally outstanding. Lang combines natural and magical elements, creating a primitive and mysterious atmosphere through exaggerated terrain and unique vegetation. Every rock and leaf here seems to contain an unknown power, making one feel both curious and awe inspiring. This design not only enriches the visual hierarchy of the film, but also provides an imaginative stage for the development of the plot.

Raya and the Last Dragon | Lead The Way ，Youtube,(online)(2021). Available at:https://youtu.be/3UFWsEY8Hdc?si=O95Q4fDo7EExV7T3

Ryan Lang's magical realism concept design style not only fills the buildings and landscapes in "Raya and the Last Dragon" with fantasy colors, but also provides viewers with rich visual enjoyment and emotional experience. Studying his design style can help us understand how to cleverly combine reality and fantasy to create uniquely charming works of art. By using exaggeration and distortion elements, we can break conventions and create more diverse visual effects, stimulating the audience's imagination and resonance.

The Palace Museum（2021）Chinese ceremonial props. Available at：https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/defenses.html

Ryan Lang's conceptual design incorporates many famous architectural concepts from Southeast Asian countries, which was very helpful to me when designing the Chinese style altar in Scene 1. For example, I also learned the styles of Buddhist architecture and altars from other Asian countries, such as Talang in Laos, Borobudur in Indonesia, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Based on these styles, I combined the elements of ancient Chinese towers to design the altar in Scene 1：

Reference

Raya and the Last Dragon | Lead The Way ，Youtube,(online)(2021). Available at:https://youtu.be/3UFWsEY8Hdc?si=O95Q4fDo7EExV7T3（26 JUNE 2024)

Toby Rawal(2021）Easy Procedural Water Material - Blender 2.9 EEVEE，youtube. available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtlSIRh5r_EAccessed: （26 JUNE 2024)

Mandala(2021）available at:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala（26 JUNE 2024)

The Palace Museum（2021）Chinese ceremonial props. Available at：https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/defenses.html

[buddieisgoingcanon25]

Yeah but why would Ryan still have his long hair and beard too?

It was just a theory more worthy of fanfiction 😊 (I am on vacation and I am very bored), or something that I would like them to do when I said about the veterans, because their story with their crisis was quite forgotten when it's something that, due to their profession, it's not strange that it's still present in their life, that maybe he had a crisis and needs to relax (here my imagination is playing tricks on me with Buck included 🤔😛), in general, many times in the summer or when we are on vacation, for example, we take more liberties with our appearance that we may not be able to do throughout the year due to for our work, in this case letting our hair and beard grow. So I was referring to a possible little forward time-jump scene somewhere where he feel peace and can put his thoughts in order and he doesn't care about his appearance (come on guys, wouldn't you like to see Eddie's wild side? 😍🤤).

But it is very clear that it is some other project in which his brother is helping or is simply there with him, I already know that it has no relation to the series.

The image is very curious, now thinking about 911, what theory/storyline would you guys put to that image?

Okay thanks for the update anon.

[arctimon]

Multiverse Madness - A Big Hero 6 Discussion

(This post will contain ZERO spoilers for Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness...mostly because I haven’t seen it yet.)

Nowadays, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about the Multiverse.  Marvel (both in the MCU and in the comics) and DC have both delved into the other worlds that make up their universe.  Marvel has done it on a much grander scale, with it prominently being showcased in recent and upcoming films.

The What If...? series is kind of like this to an extent, but the Multiverse is not a new thing.  In fact, they’ve been around for a long time.  Earths upon Earths of realities with superheroes all in them, with Earth-616 being the main comic universe and Earth-199999 being the main MCU.

You can go to the Marvel Wiki, look up any character, and be treated to at least ten other versions of that character, all in different realities.  The one I’ll use for this example...

Is Wanda herself.

Going to her page on the Marvel Wiki shows that there are 191 other versions of her in the comics world, all stemming from different Earths.

Such as the Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610)...

Wanda’s mashup with Zatanna in the Amalgamverse (Earth-9602)...

And even her entry in the Mangaverse (Earth-2301). (As an aside, the Mangaverse is actually pretty good and you should try to read it if you can.)

There are many, many other Earths, of course, and very rarely will you find someone with only a few versions of themselves spread all across Marvel’s history. ...So you probably know where I’m going with this. Big Hero 6.

Oh.  Whoops.

This Big Hero 6. The team only exists on two Earths: Earth Prime (the -616 one) and their own one in San Fransokyo.

The movie (and the series) are set on Earth-14123, previously known as Earth TRN441 on the Marvel Wiki.  They use a Temporary Reality Number system for universes that don’t have an official Earth number.  Here is a list of all of the realities from a website I found, and here is one from the Marvel Wiki.  Be warned; it’s very long. Would BH6 ever get their own entry or presence in the MCU universe (Earth-199999?  Perhaps.  We already had rumors last year that they were in the works to appear, but those appear to have been shelved...for now.

I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll say it again.  Rumors don’t come out of nowhere.  Do I believe that Marvel Studios has a big filing cabinet with a ton of superhero names on file folders and one just happens to have “Big Hero 6″ on it?  Absolutely.

But as most things, it has to be the right circumstances.  Guardians of the Galaxy came at just the right time for its popularity to explode.  They were a thing in the comics, sure, but they weren’t as popular of a team as the Avengers.  Now, they’re more popular than ever before.

Of course, who would you get to play the LA version?  If they’re grown up, would you want Ryan, Jamie, Genesis, Khary, and Brooks playing them?  If not, you’d have to recast them to someone younger. But live-action BH6 pipe dreams aside...I’m sort of surprised that Earth-14123 didn’t explore a lot of other possible Marvel heroes in their show. I’ve made mention multiple times in the past (this post being one of them) about all of the references that this Earth has to other heroes, Karmi being one of them.

We already know that Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) exists in this Earth, because of Fred’s recommendation letter:

What other heroes of Earth-14123 could we want?

Monica Rambeau?  Nick Fury II (Grace)?  Nick Fury 1 (Callaghan)?  Linda Carter?  Timothy (Dum Dum) Dugan?

Lady Deathstrike (Momakase)? On a separate note, I wonder what Hiro and the others would look like if they showed up in some of these other universes, like the Mangaverse and the Ultimate Universe?  The possibilities are almost infinite.

But I’ll leave that to the fan artists of the world.  Not little wannabes like myself.  XD

But as a last thought...

I wonder what an Earth-14123 Wanda would look like.

Or do, for that matter.

[honesthammie]

Te amo

I am working on a few of the other prompts and a part 2 to prompt 4 the soulmate au I just recently got another puppy and I still have uni work to do so I'm a bit behind schedule with these and I'm so sorry. Hopefully this little kinda songfic makes up for it.

13th doctor x female reader

Warnings: swearing as usual, fluffy, sad thoughts, twist the original songs meaning, long as fuck.

Probably terrible as its my first songfic

I don't know much Spanish so some of the examples later on are Google translated and I know it can be wrong so I do apologise for any mistranslations

This is based off Rhiannas song Te Amo but I'm switching it up a little. I dont why 13th doctor came into my head when I was listening to it but it gave me this lil oneshot idea so enjoy! The picture is not mine but the rainbow effect added is done by me! Same for the picture later on.

I've been travelling with this amazing alien for a whole year now. The adventures are always amazing if she's there! The others sometimes complain and say its boring, especially on a junk planet but to see her face light up with excitement makes my day and it well worth the dirt we cover ourselves on by the time we are done. And when she finds something that she thought was useful and it turns out, it's not her scrunch is amazing.

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm in love with this alien. I know, weird, a human and an alien together? But I can't help it! I'm completely besotted with her. If she even looks in my direction, my legs go to jelly and I get butterflies. I know, cheesy. But thats exactly how I feel around her. I barely want to touch her because I nearly fainted the last few times. And I fear she may pick up on how I'm distancing myself from her. I don't want to break her heart and leave, the thought of her look kills me as is so I'm trying to get her to kick me off.

It doesn't seem to be working though. I've been distancing myself since I found out about how I feel, which is now 6 months ago and she's trying to get me to be as close as I was with her.

I'll tell her. On one of our amazing adventures but I can't do it straight forward, it's making me sick with anxiety just thinking about it. I'll fancy it up, make her work it out. Whenever we are next to each other and the moment is right, I'll tell her in another language!

I finally get out of bed after I finished writing in my diary. I slip some comfy clothes on and head out to the TARDIS library and hope no one is there, especially her. I'll be distracted and right now, I need to concentrate. I wonder the warm halls, grateful that the TARDIS had considered my preferences. I think the TARDIS likes me more than the others because I talk to her and show her gratefulness for taking us somewhere amazing and I chat to her regularly and I try to involve her in my conversations. The others find it weird, except for the Doctor, she just smiles and joins in with me. Im still learning how to translate her but I think I've sort of got it.

I reach my hand forward and grab the aged bronze doorknob and open to the giant room. There were so many floors that an elevator had to be used to access some of them as the Doctor said "walking would literally take weeks to reach some floors". Thankfully the TARDIS organises them to make them easier to find. I looked forward and saw an interactive map in front of me. My hands touched the screen and many subjects and categories came up. Anything ranging from kiddie tales to straight up smut, I have a feeling either River or Missy are to blame for that addition.

I've never met them but the TARDIS showed me videos from her database and brought books to my attention about them. They both seem very dirty minded people so I'm not surprised those are there. I wonder if the Doctor has ever stumbled upon this section or is it for none Doctor eyes only? If she does know about them, has she ever read one? No, don't go there you stupid brain! She probably doesn't know!

I quickly stop that train of thought and catch my breath. I've never thought about those kinds of things about anyone before. Stupid Timelord, making me go all weird and think dirty things. Now my face is all red, I really hope I'm alone in here. I quickly focus back to the task at hand, finding a new language to learn. The TARDIS seemed to know where to go and blue arrows appeared, guiding me to the right section in what could be a maze.

As I walking, I felt excitement rise within me. What if she felt the same way? What if she was impressed by how far I wanted to go just to say those 3 words? Would her hazel honey eyes sparkle with delight? Would she scronch her nose in amazement?

Before I knew it, I'd arrived at the language learning section and there were many alien languages but the TARDIS seemed to have a better idea of what would be perfect for me as a white hardback book fell off the 4th shelf onto the wooden floor. I picked it up and noticed how smooth the cover was and how old yet unused it looked. The white was a little off, almost a dull cream from ageing which made the gold writing harder to read. The title was simple:

Spanish basics and need to knows.

I did always find Spanish in school fun to learn, more than French or German anyway and I don't wanna stereotype this into a typical French is the language of romance. I never really found it romantic sounding compared to Spanish.

I picked up the book and quickly flicked through to the right page and took a note on my phone as to what the translation was and put the worn book away. I quietly thanked the TARDIS and rushed out of the library and back into my room where I could practice without getting caught.

A few weeks have passed since I picked up the new words and practiced them until I was confident and had the TARDIS' approval that I was saying it right. Today the Doctor wanted to take us to this party in the 18th century and we all decided to dress for the part once we landed.

Yaz was wearing a beautiful black and red ballroom gown, accented with little bows around the bottom and lace cuffs. She had her black hair curled into a ponytail. It was simple and cute, much like her style normally. Graham and Ryan wore similar suits but Graham wore green accents and Ryan wore yellow accents.

I let the TARDIS pick my dress. She picked a black and dark blue ballroom gown with blue roses on the bottom. It had black lace underneath and blue lace as the cuffs. The gown also seemed to glitter slightly in the light making me sparkle very subtly. I put my comfy boots on as you couldn't see my shoes as I walked anyway so why did it matter? With all the running we do, I'm not risking my ankles with heels, thank you very much. I had my (h/c) hair in (fave style). It suited my dress perfectly.

I nearly choked on oxygen when I saw how hot the Doctor looked in her suit. It took me a few moments to realise we match. We both blushed at the realisation. Of course the TARDIS makes us match! No wonder why she was more than eager to help me pick an outfit! Stupid sentient ship, shipping us already!

I quickly cleared my throat and complimented everyone on how amazing they looked but I just couldn't take my eyes off the Doctor for long. She was like a magnet for my eyes. Someone help before she realises!

"Don't we all look brilliant? Perfect for the party! 18th century Yorkshire to be exact! What a great century for you guys. Now then, this party is for Nobles and higher, as per usual in these times. Ryan, I suggest you keep in mind about any racist comments that may come out. But as long as you say your Graham's personal butler, you should be welcomed with little resistance. And Yaz, I want you to be (y/n)'s personal maid. That does mean you'll have to follow your so called "masters" around and do anything they ask unfortunately and Graham, (y/n), please act like the others around you and use them. Unfortunately this is the only way all 5 of us can join the party. You'll be fine as long as you bite your tongues. Now the Noble Edward Collins is the host so be sure to thank him for inviting you, even though you technically weren't. And try not to get too drunk, I know what you humans are like! Now follow me." The Doctor explained. I was going to tell the Doctor today, but I guess, I'll have to wait.

The Doctor opened the doors and we were in a cupboard under some gorgeous marble stairs. As we walked towards the party I noticed some family portraits along the walls. They were a very beautiful looking family. The mother had long blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The father was buff, long brown hair and daring brown eyes. There were two children, a girl and a boy. The girl had long brown hair and sparkling blue eyes, whilst the son had blonde hair and brown eyes. They also had a brown greyhound dog laying by the sons feet. The son must be the host, Edward. He looked not much older than 10 in the last painting but the daughter was no where to be found in the portrait and theu all looked mournful. Is she dead and is that the picture capturing the moment of grief? Why would anyone want that? It's so strange, even for this time period.

The Doctor held me and Yaz close, stopping us in our tracks. My heart was racing at the simple touch. But as soon as the touch was there, it was gone. "I hope its okay with you (y/n) but you're going to have to be married to someone."

My heart stopped for a moment and I nearly choked on air. "What? Why?"

"Because women like yourself would have been married as young as 13 or 14. Now your only choices are me and Graham. You can't choose Ryan as he's supposed to be a butler and you can't choose Yaz as she's your maid. The choice is yours, I just need to know wether or not I should refer to you as my darling wife or not?"

What. The. Fuck.

Why did her even calling me that l, turn me on? Obviously, I'm going to choose her but I'm going to have to perfect my reasoning here.

"As much as I love Graham, it's going to be awkward if I have to kiss him or anything because he's like my grandad! I guess you'll do Timelord. Come on then husband, we don't want to be late to the dancefloor!" I spoke clearly hoping she didn't notice how excited I actually was to have even a hint of a relationship with her. It may be fake but ill take anything when it comes to her.

We arrived at the welcome committee and handed our cards over, aka the psychic paper. We were going as Mr and Mrs (last name). The Doctor was holding my hand this entire time and it's driving me insane. I don't know if she can feel my racing pulse under her fingers but if she can I hope she puts it down to excitement! We walked down the most grandest staircase you would ever lay your eyes on.

First we walked around, greeting everyone as they came up to us or if she dragged me to someone she knew, but not personally. She was cute when she was fangirling over these people. Yaz found it annoying as she just wanted to party but I couldn't help it. The way her eyes shimmer with recognition was more beautiful than any galaxy she could ever take us. Sometimes her eyes flickered with admiration and it did make me have jealousy for just a moment before I remembered, I'm staying with her and they aren't .

As the party moved on we met the host Edward. He looked a lot different than in his paintings. He was around 20 years old now and his blonde hair was below his shoulders. He looked a lot like his father with his muscley build. And he was very charismatic which I did not like as he poured all his charm into the Doctor. Does everyone here know that he's gay or does he see through the Doctors disguise? Either way, it was rubbing me the wrong way. I quickly excused myself with Yaz and walked into the bathroom.

"I did not like him. I do not like this Edward guy. Something about him rubs me completely wrong. He's handsome but something is telling me he knows the Doctor isn't a man."

"I felt the same way. He knows something we don't. Before we go out there again, do you mind if I ask you a question?" Yaz asked. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour. She knows. The jig is up with Yaz. "How do you feel about her, honestly? One minute you 2 are inseparable, then you distance yourself and now you are a nervous wreck around her! I won't judge but I just want to make sure my theory is correct."

Shit. I guess I really was obvious. Does she know?

"If your theory is about me falling hopelessly in love with the Doctor then you'd be correct. I can't help it. I'm going to tell her how I feel without being completely stupid. I just need a right moment to say it." I spoke with a heavy sigh. Hopefully, Yaz can help create that moment thay I need. She nods her head and opens the door. We walk back to the Doctor and notice Edward has gone to other guests and she was talking to Graham. I looked around and saw Ryan flirting with a pretty lady near the food table. Why am I not surprised?

A few hours had passed and the Doctor seemed bored with standing and talking so I made a plan in my head. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to the dancefloor as the next song came on. I didn't quite know how to dance properly but I knew the basics if it. She has to lead and I simply follow suit. It took a few moments but I got the hang of it with the Doctors help. Soon we were dancing so gracefully underneath the most beautiful candelabra that lit up her face perfectly.

Her hair swayed to our perfect dance ever so gently. Her eyes sparkled with amusement and her lips were in a permanent smile. She even laughed a couple of times. Then as the music slowed down to a pace that was perfect, I grabbed her waist and looked her. My heart was going crazy and my legs were about to buckle but I had rehearsed my lines. I can do this.

"Hey Doc. Its been an amazing time with you but I can't continue this without being honest with you. But everytime I get close, I back down in fear. So I'm going to let you figure it out. Doctora te amo. Entiendo que si no sientes lo mismo y me iré si quieres. (Doctor i love you. i understand if you don't feel the same way and i'll leave if you want.)" I spoke with as much passion and intention as I could. I looked into her eyes and saw her confused and trying to work out what I said. I would find it cute if my heart was beating right out of my chest. "Well, I've had a great time but I'm fucking knackered. I'm calling it night. I'll be heading to the TARDIS if you need me."

"I'll come with ya. I'm knackered as well and we both need each other to undo the corsets and mine is starting to hurt a little bit. How we used to do this for a full day, everyday, is beyond my understanding. As beautiful as we look, I don't think its worth the pain this will bring in the morning." Yaz spoke with a slight mumble as proof of her mental state and finishing with a yawn. I chuckled at her state and walked back to the TARDIS with a small amount of chat along the way.

She is right though. These corsets really do hurt you after a while, I'm glad I chose not to wear heels or else I'll be fucked for in the morning. I would literally scream. I think the Doctor had the right idea in wearing a suit, no pain. I do feel bad for leaving her but I just need some space after basically admitting everything that's been built up within me for too damn long. Maybe I should tell Yaz how it went and maybe she can help determine if the Doctor is happy or not.

We walked back into the wardrobe room and I helped Yaz out of her corset. She immediately sighed in relief. She finished getting herself into comfy clothes and started to untie my ribbon.

"So did you tell her?"

"Sort of. I basically told her everything but in Spanish. I just hope it doesn't change anything, except in a positive way, of course! If she wants me gone, I've told her that it's fine and I understand. She's very socially awkward and as cute as I find it, it may not help me in this situation. Do you have any clues on how she may react once she figures it out?"

Yaz stopped untying my corset for a moment and placed 1 finger upon her chin in thought. Her eyes were almost shut and seemed almost completely black in the light. After what seemed like forever, she took her finger off her chin and beamed a toothy smile. Her eyes sparkled as she remembered something and seemed to gleam slightly menacingly. A smirk replaced her smile soon after.

"There's a few times she's shown affection towards you. And I mean romantic affection. She always chooses to hold your hand over anyone else's if given the choice. She always steps I'm front of you when an enemy threatens to kill us all or hurt us in anyway. When you go wandering around on your own, she's terrified thats she's lost you forever to an enemy we don't even know of!" Yaz starts explaining carefully as if she's worried on how to word it.

"Those are just friendly affec-"

"I wasn't done. I was warming up." Yaz interrupts me as I was about to go into a self deprecating speech on how I'm just a friend to everyone and never a lover. "She always looks to see your face on adventures because she secretly loves your reactions, bad or good. When the Master revealed himself, she looked straight at you for support on how she should react. When she came back from the Kasavin, she ran straight to you and made sure you were ok first before any of us. When we were in the Tsungra medical ship, the first person she asked for was you! Whilst she was unconscious on board the ship, she kept mumbling your name, over and over again. When she saw how gorgeous you looked today, I thought she'd take you right there on the spot! She fucking loves you (y/n)! You're just so unbelievably blind to it all!"

Yaz was almost red with rage. Did she really do all that, for me? The TARDIS mustve read my mind and seemed to hum positively in reply. If everything Yaz said is true then she'll be so happy about it and maybe we can be a thing! But then again, maybe losing so many in a similar position as me will turn her away. Maybe her soul is awry and she's asking why right now.

Once I had gotten changed I went to sleep almost straight away, I suppose all that dancing and social ques having tired me out more than I thought.

I woke up to a soft knock on my door. I rubbed my (e/c) eyes and told them I'd be a few minutes as I've only just woken up. It wasn't until I finished brushing my (h/c) hair that I remembered what happened yesterday. All the panic rushed within me at once and I nearly threw up. I took several deep breaths and opened the door.

"GRAHAM THANK FUCK ITS YOU!" I almost shouted at him. He looked a little bewildered for a moment before he seemed to remember what brought him here in the first place.

"Hello Love, I'm here because Doc wanted to speak with you privately in the library. She says that the TARDIS will guide you to her location. She seemed a little off after you and Yaz left. Did something happen? Is everything ok?" Graham asked cautiously. He must be so confused.

"Sort of. I'll explain more when I get back but what do you mean by "a little off"?"

"Well she seemed lost in all sense of the word. She kept muttering "Te Amo" all the time. She was all over the place aswell. She got me and Ryan back here not long after you guys. Something about not trusting Ryan to not get alcohol poisoning without her around. She hasn't really left the library since if I'm honest. She's been in there for 12 hours. I only know she wants you because she whattsapped me on my phone. Whatever is going on, please sort it out, she's starting to really worry me. She hasn't been the same since that Master guy came around." Graham spoke clearly, albeit confused. I nodded my head and walked in the opposite direction to him and hoped the TARDIS would take me there quicker than normal. I want to treat this like a plaster, rip it off in one go.

Sooner than I realised, I grabbed the all too familiar door knob of the library. I took a deep breath and walked in. A blue line appeared towards the interactive map. I awakened the console and I saw a black screen with a few words on it. It looked like a message with how it was presented.

Hello (y/n)! Don't walk until you calm. Breath deeply and try not to panic. I promise you, all will work out in the end. I see more than you realise and I know my thief better than anyone whoever stepped foot into my being. I know of her main problem about the situation. If she loves you, drink this. It won't hurt, she'll know what it is.

The TARDIS

I should have been surprised by this new knowledge that she could speak to me, in a way, but I've seen so much and I am so tender hooks so I didn't take much notice of it. I quickly sat down and tried to control my breathing. After about 5 or so minutes, I felt calm enough to finally meet up with her and hear what she has to say.

I followed the blue line carefully until I spotted her in a comfy room. She mustve gotten changed at some point as she was wearing her usual rainbow outfit, minus the jacket. She was sat on a deep purple sofa, legs curled into her body. Her shoes were on the carpeted floor underneath her, seemingly forgotten for the moment. There were many books surrounding us from many cultures and spieces. One wall had a cozy wood burning fireplace crackling within the silence that surrounded us.

Her face was scrunched within deep thought. Her eyes sparkling with an emotion that I couldn't quite put my finger on; hope, sorrow or excitement? Her lips had a small smirk gracing them and her teeth had bitten a small part of it. Her hands were holding a book in a way where I couldn't quite see what it was.

I didn't want to disturb her as she looked so ethereal with the warm glow of the fire highlighting her in the perfect way. Unfortunately, it's plaster time and I wanted this sorted sooner rather than later. I took a deep breath took in the picture for memory.

"Hey, Graham said you wanted to talk to me? Is everything ok?" I asked gently and as softly as I could so she was carefully brought out of her little world. I didn't want to scare her. She raised her eyes from her book for a moment and bookmarked the page she was at with a little TARDIS paperclip. She placed the book on the table at the side of her and patted the seat next to her.

As I sat down my nerves were through the roof. She gave nothing away as she stared at me for a minute, as if assessing something about me.

"Why are you so nervous? Calm down. You are right, It is to do with last night. You left pretty abruptly after basically confessing your feelings to me. I was so confused, not just about what you said but about myself and what I wanted to do about you." The Doctor spoke monotonously. Did she mean get rid of me? "I had to first of all, find out what you said, well done on learning a new language by the way, one even I'm not fluent at. I'm guessing the old girl had something to do with that idea. Not that, you aren't smart enough but you don't know what languages I do or don't know."

The Tardis seemed to chuckled at the accusation and I simply nodded my head. "I wanted to buy myself time and to impress you."

"You impressed me a long time ago Miss (l/n). That is just a cherry on top. After I figured out what you said, no thanks to my old friend here, I went through a lot of thinking. I've not been in many relationships and you know my history regarding the ones I have been in. You know, River and Missy? And I have such a bad past with it ending in nothing but tears for me. I always lose those I care for deeply." She spoke with tears spilling from her gorgeous eyes. I grabbed her face gently and wiped away the stray tears that managed to escape their home.

"That was when you were a man. You're a woman now, everything is so different. Relationships can be heartbreaking. I know what you're main problem is and the TARDIS has a solution to that. I just need you to tell me the truth. How do you feel about me? Do you want me to stay or not?" I stated holding the small shot glassed amount of liquid in my hand. The liquid was golden and sparkled slightly in the light. There were specks of orange and silver within it and it was as hot as a nice cup of (hot drink). Her eyes sparkled with hope and shock. Her lips were smiling wide. And she seemed to giggle at the sight of it. She held it for a moment as if examining it like a rare artefact, maybe it was. Either way, I trust her judgement and if she's happy about it, then so am I. Once she had analysed the drink, she practically leapt into my arms and pushed me down on my back. She smelled of custard creams and the TARDIS which was odd but completely her and I couldn't imagine her smelling any other way.

"That does solve our problem! What she has just given you is the rarest liquid in the universe seeing as only one thing in the entirety of space can produce it. That drink is known as the nectar of the chosen ones. It's rare as the race that used to make them has practically gone extinct. There's only 3 left in the known universe and you're living in one. That drink is the blood of the TARDIS. It grants you immortality if you drink it. It is said to resemble your favourite beverage no matter who you are. However, it only lasts 100 years and you must drink it every century or else your body clock will kick in and you will age and be as mortal as you are now." She speaks with a warning as we sit up holding holds.

"I have no problem with that. I would sacrifice everything if it meant I got to call you mine. Just please tell me and I'll drink it." I told her with adoration in my eyes.

She held me close and planted a soft and gentle kiss to my lips. It was short but it sent more fireworks than you can imagine through my body. I knew I had found her. She grabbed my waist and whispered next to my ear:

"Te Amo"

[teaboot]

But if one is defining gender as a specific thing, like 'woman=this' etc, then how can that definition shift for something like gender fluid? If gender is real, which I'm assuming it is, then it has to have a definition that is adhered to, so what differentiates between them?

Gender is real, but it isn't the same as Sex.

It's part of our society much in the way that names are- if Sex is like a person, then Gender is more like their name.

If your was is Ron, for example, you'd probably be pretty annoyed if someone kept calling you Ryan instead. And being called "Ronald" might feel bizarre at times- because maybe you get called that at home, but not in public. 

Like... In most families, hearing your full name shouted across the house means you're in trouble, right? So imagine the discomfort you'd feel if you were greeted that way at work, or on a date, or by your bus driver. Uncomfortable in a way you can't articulate, right?

Now, instead of different locations and different people changing how your full name feels, imagine it being more of an internal shift. A mindset that changes instead of a location. Something that might have felt fine a week, month, or minute ago is suddenly strange or upsetting.

Everyone experiences this a little differently- some folks might not mind, and others may be devastated. For me, it's more of a discomfort- like wearing a shirt that doesn't fit.

And sometimes the way I express myself has nothing to do with the gender I'm feeling that day! 

If I'm on my way to a formal event, for example, I usually like to wear skirts and heels and makeup and style my hair, because I enjoy how those things make me look and feel! I might be a man, but I'm a man who feels elegant!

Most days I don't know what I feel like- and again, everyone's different- and I don't even think about it until someone refers to me as "him" or "she" and it. Doesn't fit.

I don't know, it's like anything else, I guess. You wouldn't enjoy being in a fancy restaurant with crocs and a unitard, and I wouldn't enjoy leaving the house dressed masc and handsome, feeling like a guy, and then being hit out of nowhere with a "young lady".

Twenty minutes later, you're fine at the crazy costume party, and I'm chilling as a woman. It's about how you feel about your identity in the context of your reality.

At least it is for me.

Anyone else, got a take, though, feel free to add on!

[brunhiddensmusings]

an issue i have with movies

or, rather, that the movie industry has and im calling them out on it that the movie industry makes stupid assumptions about what does or does not work while ignoring the real reasons why a movie succeeds or fails because that would take too much effort and thought despite ‘filmography’ being a legitimate course of study that i would really hope that people paid tens of millions of dollars to make movies have some understanding of and/or hire people with the relevant degrees because i KNOW when a movie like ‘midway’ flops hard  the reaction of the movie industry is ‘i guess people dont like historical war recreation dramas’ instead of looking a bit harder and realizing ‘i guess people dont like a movie with no main characters, nothing to tie the existing cardboard cutout characters together beyond a vague setting, and a strange inability to make anything its showing on screen relevant as a plot rather then just listing things that happened with no explanation, narrative, or point of reference character’..... although im okay with ‘WW2 movies’ being put back into dormancy because theres more then enough of those and they have kind of messed up how every other war movie made after saving private ryan functions ive seen this time and time again that a movie that is badly made flops because its badly made, and the film industry then acts like some other element is why people avoided it its kind of crazy to think now but before LOTR came out the film industry had considered fantasy movies to be toxic for years, despite the 80s and 90s having some very well loved fantasy movies like ‘willow’, ‘neverending story’, and ‘labyrinth’ because of the number of really shit fantasy movies produced in that time. or if not shit then at least movies that didnt do well until much later when people started enjoying it for different reasons like ‘legend’.... but the sheer number of fantasy movies at the time that were given mediocre budget, garbage writing, and the only saving graces were how much effort the lead actors tried to give their inarticulate screams as the stabbening commenced made the industry think ‘i guess people dont like fantasy movies’ instead of ‘i guess people are not impressed by corny stories with no setup and are ultimately destined to be reviewed by drunk youtubers who heckle B-movies’. yall remember ‘deathstalker’? cause there were like 40 of that movie, conan was a rare gem in a sea of halfassery and then AFTER lord of the rings they try a fit of fantasy movies trying to cash in on this ‘hip new trend’ and while a few of them are okay, most of them are pretty blatantly trying to copy what LOTR did by the numbers as shamelessly as possible, then theres also quite a few that limply flop over the line of mediocrity until movies like ‘your highness’ where the drunk prince wears a minotaur wang around his neck as a battle trophy and ignores sexual molestation by a wizard (ah yes, great comedy recounting those times a wizard touched you when you were a young boy, hilarious for the whole family) ultimately bring people back to square 1 instead of asking ‘maybe if we made a -good- fantasy movie again instead of throwing larger piles of money at bad ones’ and so have movie genres been thrown under the bus for the failings of individual film studios making openly shitty decisions instead of acnowleging that a movie lives or dies on if its GOOD rather then by ‘i guess people dont like full costume period movies anymore’ and its the death of so much potential on the example of costume period movies you may have heard Lindsay Ellis talk about pirates of the carribean on this exact kind of concept, if you hadnt i will gladly add a link to her video on it upon request, but the point is that the assumption at the time was ‘people dont like pirate movies anymore’ because of the dearth of mediocre low budget and shit writing pirate movies made in the 60s-80s, and building on that people kept assuming that what we today would consider the ‘interesting bits’ about pirates of the carribean such as the zombies and jack being a loon the filmmakers at the time were considering ‘ruining the movie’. now i have many complaints about the pirates of the carribean franchise but the first movie is a cinematic classic that fully stands on its own merits, yet i would have been bored to tears trying to watch the version that would have been made if the cut out the zombies, curses, crazy people, and.... really what would be left of that movie? and yet still it happens time and again like clockwork when a robin hood movie is made once a decade, its either only alright or a complete flop, and then nobody wants to make that movie again for eight years then they make another robin hood movie copy/paste that last paragraph but replace ‘robin hood’ with ‘king arthur’ because holy damn are there a lot of bad robin hood/king arthur movies out there. granted theyre public domain so nothing to stop them but when will people learn? literally only two king arthur movies were unanimously good and one of those was monty python and the other was a disney animated classic. literally only three robin hood movies were any good and again one was a disney animated classic and one of the others was Mel Brooks making fun of the Kevin Costner one if public domain was the key element there then you would expect them to keep pumping out..... oh yeah, i forgot the movie where the frankensteins monster does parkour in modern cities to kill gargoyles was a thing, and the beauty and the beast remake where ‘the beast’ is a rich kid in suburban america who is ripped but bald and covered in tattoos and theres some shit about prom.... uuuuuuuugh, theres actually a lot of these ‘reimaginings’ that while the idea of reimagining a timeless classic is cool, they ultimately handle like a steaming turd and then, again, claim its that it failed not because they made a moist cowpat but rather it failed because nobody today likes the frankenstein monster- i for one would argue that an audience today would LOVE a faithful reimagining of frankenstein that really digs into the meat of that premise instead of making him a large green zombie that goes ‘fire bad’ and lets people get dug into the byronic shenanigans of that time im losing my train of thought but moral of the story is that people who make movies will always blame them failing on the -type- of movie it is rather then that they made a bad movie or draged something on way longer then it should be (just because one well written gritty retelling of batman did well does not mean every superhero movie must be dark and gritty without the well written, just because some of the marvel movies put the ‘fun’ back into comic movies doesnt mean we need 34 of them) blegh, i should have used visual aids for this but its too late to figure out what to use now discussion encouraged

[curious-minx]

Bob’s Burgers most reliable holiday  provides another lowkey enjoyable, but messy episode. Whereas the latest Simpsons strikes a really sore vocal node.

The second holiday episode of Bob’s Burgers’ 11th season, much like the previous Halloween episode, this one also fails to live up to the series’ even higher Thanksgiving standard

 That’s not to say “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid” is not a good episode, but it does fall into the category of Bob’s Burgers episode I typically respond to the least: Character-based storytelling vignettes. The writing on these segment driven episodes tend to be looser and  playful bending the show’s reality, but much like every time the other Fox family leaves the Springfield plane of reality into a pastiche styled playground for the writers to plug the characters into.

The overall animation and visual-based gags on this episode offers some of the best moments of the season and series in general. Having the Belcher stories revolve around action movie pastiches of 90’s action movie schlock like Air Force Once, Armageddon, and late 80’s Predator  are extremely punny and really grasping hard for satire. The walk to Louise’s Breadator is succinct and makes total sense for Louise’s character to tell this kind of story, whereas Tina drawing inspiration from Air Force One for her story sags the episode down. This episode also has the gall to bring in Gayle, a character that usually elevates all of her episodes nothing much to do until the third and best segment told by Bob. Teddie is also frustratingly nowhere to be seen and Teddie is one of those characters that really only needs a small scene explaining away  his absence like in the episode “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” which Variety and I consider to be among the best of Bob’s Thanksgiving episodes. 

Nitpicks and reminiscing on past glories aside, what’s most impressive about an episode as conceptual and overstuffed as this one, an episode that’s also poopy and gross-out from the very beginning, still manages to pack undeniable heart. Seeing a character as relatable and sad sack-y as Bob Belcher be passionate about his one favorite holiday reminds me of the everlasting and evergreen Ray Bradbury remark about how everyone is capable of writing poetry as long as you ask them to talk about something they are truly passionate about. Seeing how this episode climax revolves around Gene and Bob’s love of food and proves a powerful sentimental moment. Bob’s Burgers sentimentality works because the show’s core is silly absurdism, light and fluffy gross out gags and quirky twee-ness. Introducing the action movie element feels like the series trying to branch out its audience and try to catch some eyeballs of viewers looking for something more like Archer, American Dad, Rick and Morty, or even Treehouse of Horror style genre exercises.  Bob’s Burgers and action comedy feels like putting garlic pesto on cinnamon toast, but Ryan Reynolds doesn’t think so.

Yes, that’s right. The biggest news out of the Bob’s Burgers camp…probably ever…is that the Molyneux sisters, the writers of this very action packed episode, have been hand selected by Mr. Detective “VanWilder” Pickachu himself to be head writers on the upcoming third Deadpool movie. Seeing that we live in a post Russo brothers world and how Dan Harmon was conscripted to punch up Doctor Strange scripts none of this should really surprise me, but I am still very much surprised by this development. The Deadpool 3 creative team and Reynolds is still promising to deliver an R-Rated Comedy, a rating and promise that is very much why Deadpool is the sensation that it is. 

In the current media landscape the only way a big budget R-Rated comedy can get made is if it’s attached to something like a mega superhero sized brand. At this point in time Deadpool is the closest thing kids have to a Mel or Al Brooks and it is what it is. If anything Ryan Reynolds personally choosing the Molyneux sisters for a project like this makes me like Ryan Reynolds a little bit more. And he’s a man I previously had no real feelings or opinions about. The only other thing about Deadpool I know about is that the franchise has developed a particularly shitty reputation in terms of its treatment of main female characters and literally freezing them out of the plot. The future of comedy is being driven by the significant increase of women gaining these kind of writing gigs and it’s a beautiful thing to finally see witness. Especially when a company like Netflix has been really shitty to both of its own female driven comedies: Glow and Tucca and Bertie.

Sigh. I am thankful for all the sad little boys and girls wearing too much or maybe the right amount of eye shadow that will inherit this flaming Earth.

Three and half pear shaped pals out of an Oedipus Rex Complex. 

////

Nerds! Nothing but a lousy rotten sniveling dweeb! You dorkus-rex! You body pillow huffing geek get over here and let the Simpsons set some things straight for you: A Comic Book Guy driven episode of the Simpsons is often where the show goes off the rails. The Comic Book Guy marriage episode is was one of those late day Simpsons that feel like a bad piece of dreamed up fan fiction that you found on the cutting room floor. Is the show interested at all with the fact that comics and being nerdy have become as mainstream as the Bible? No? They’re still treating geek culture as some sort of low hanging piñata fruit lousy with cheap references in place of actual jokes? Good! I don’t know why I would ever allow myself to think for a second that the Simpsons would challenge its own status quo 32 seasons in, but I keep coming back. 

What I should really do is back up. The title of this episode is “Three Dreams Denied.” Ah, Dream Denial! That’s exactly what anyone watching an animated sitcom hopes for: dreams being crushed. This isn’t some kiddy Davy and Goliath feel good wholesome fable, this is the Simpsons where characters are given dreams, and those dreams get denied. The next part of the title I want to break down is the fact that there are specifically three dreams that being denied. Three! That’s a comedy number! As long as you have three of anything you’re doing comedy. Plain and simple.

During the Robert Zemeicks arc of the Blank Check podcast Griffin Newman, co-host and comedian extraordinaire and someone I generally admire a lot, has been bringing up the fact that he’s been spending a lot of his Quarantine rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons. By the episode of Used Cars Newman has already gotten past the Movie era and is in the 20th seasons. One observation he made about later day Simpsons is that these episodes have a tendency to end abruptly on a pile of unusable and reality bending plots still in the process of tying themselves up. And there’s no better/worse example of this than this episode. 

Comic Book Guy goes to a comic book convention. Bart becomes a voice actor after befriending the comic book guy’s temporary replacement. Lisa feuds over her saxophone chair in the school orchestra with a new pretty boy voiced by the underwhelming Ben Platt. One of these plots is not like the other. This used to be the signature of a quality Simpsons episode that managed to tweak and divert expectations from the typical A & B sitcom storylines. This episode fundamentally fails to deliver on any of the three storylines and what makes it worse is that it’s an intentional choice. 

Now I know I have spent this review harping on Comic Book Guy, but he’s not even why this episode for me is such an abomination. And it’s not because the cutesy, flimsy Lisa subplot either (although I do find it noxiously amusing that a week after an Yeardely Smith took issue with the Queer Interpretation of Lisa would feature her going moony eyed over a boy voiced by a defiantly queer actor), no, what tips this episode into the territory of the truly terrible for me is the Bart becomes a voice actor subplot. 

The only defining quality of season 32 that I can discern is that the flagrant trolling on behalf of the writers. Can you believe we had three vignette driven episodes of the Simpsons in a row? Can you believe we would have meta reality breaking voice actor related moments back to back? When Lisa Simpson’s voice actor Yeardley Smith voiced the real world character of herself in the previous Podcast based episode it was clumsy and awkward as hell. Having Bart become a voice actor that ends up voicing a character of the opposite gender is the sort of kind of a funny thing that resembles a joke that the latter day Simpsons revel in. The characterization of voice acting work in this episode is downright insulting and explains exactly why this show suffers. 

The character of Phil that serves as the Comic Book Guy’s replacement is a working voice actor. He let’s Bart know this by doing a series of completely basic, broad and unremarkable impersonations that Bart is seemingly impressed by. All you have to do to become a successful voice actor is do a silly voice and you’re golden. Maybe from the perspective of a series as lazy and indulgent as the Simpsons is when it comes to voice acting. The complete denial of Julie Kavner’s deteriorating voice that at this point sounds like gentle elder abuse. There are times when Kavner is downright incomprehensible at times. The other oldest member of the Simpsons voice talent, Harry Shearer was wrongheadedly trying to defend his right to voice Characters of Colors because  in his words, “the job of the voice actor is to play someone who they’re not.” Obviously these words were not spoken by someone that thinks very highly of acting either. There is no one job an actor has to do, because the job  of an actor is always changing from job to job. The character of Phil is not even attributed to anyone! I have spent over thirty minutes getting testy with IMDB search engines and reading another website’s recap and no one can tell me who did the voice of the Voice Acting Character on Simpsons. Lovely.

Much like the Comic Book Guy the Simpsons heart is in bad shape. This is a show whose entire existence seems to be made out of spite. Or to garner enough funds for Matt Groening to prevent him from ever having to serve any prison time for his exploits on the Lolita express. Great, see I’m bringing up the Lolita Express at the end of a Simpsons review. This episode really left me in a bad mood, but thankfully that’s what Bob’s Burgers is for. 

SKIP. The only people that should watch this are people teaching a screenwriting class that need examples of what happens when you break your episode by haphazardly shoving three plots into one episode. If you can’t tie up one story in a satisfying manner then you really shouldn’t be telling a story at all. There’s also one really magnificent visual joke involving Homer and beer tea that is absolutely wasted on this episode.

[not-a-perfect-metaphor]

J2 tinhat summary

For a while now I’ve been wanting to piece together a more comprehensive version of J2 tinhat facts/observations/thoughts/etc., and although the project is obviously an incredibly lengthy one, I figured I would at least create a kind of summary to post in the meantime. Even the summary however is VERY long, and I don’t have the ability to do cuts, so I apologize for that! But I am going to post the summary in a few parts, so here is the first!

This does not follow a linear timeline by the way, just as a heads up, and I’m not including many examples that I’ve already talked about recently to save space.

1. The Js spending holidays together and also vacationing together, like their skiing trip to Whistler, Canada for example and the Padackles family vacation to the Turks and Caicos among others. Recently the Js traveled to Europe, Dubai, and Australia.

2. Of course Jensen’s public move from Malibu to Austin (conveniently near Jared’s house) is a strong piece of evidence. Jensen’s comments about being closer to friends and family don’t make much sense as most of his friends live hours away, and he has also stated several times in the past that he loved living in Malibu and being on the beach, yet he still relocated (to be closer to Jared, we know).

3. This Js have used the word “we” instead of “I” on quite a few occasions while talking about things that should not involve the other J (again, as far as the general public is aware). They have also done the same thing with the word “our” instead of “my” and “us” instead of “me.”

4. Both Danneel and her brother Gino were nearly bankrupt when Danneel began her ‘relationship’ with Jensen. Jensen 100% supported (even way back then) both Danneel and her brother financially, which is often one of the main benefits a faux-spouse receives in the bearding arrangement (financial security and/or the recognition that comes with marrying a celebrity/someone who lives in the public eye).

5. We know for a fact that the Js share clothes and belongings very frequently (and have for many years). Not only do we have photographic evidence of this, but they’ve also both admitted that it’s true.

6. There is now a vast amount of evidence that Jared and Jensen spend a great deal of time with each other’s children, together and by themselves, and keep in mind that even the evidence we do have is likely only a small fraction of the actual reality. They really do seem to function in a lot of ways as one family, which of course makes sense from a tinhat’s perspective.

A few examples that I haven’t posted recently:

Jensen talking about how he used to wear a sherif’s belt and nothing else as a child and then when Jared makes fun of him, reminding Jared that Shep also likes to go nude and that Jensen has to remind him to put clothes on at the breakfast table.

Jensen: “[Jared] was out, so I was watching the kids.”

^ the above blurb by Fangasm

In 2015, Jensen said during a convention panel that he has “kids now,” realizing the error and correcting it to “kid” (he only had one at the time according to public knowledge).

Along the same vein, we can look at things that Genevieve and Danneel have said as well, such as Genevieve stating that one thing she loves about Jared is that “he shows up as a co-parent to our kids.” The definition of co-parenting is “the experience of raising children together as single parents like when a divorce or separation occurs,” or in this case, an agreement to parent together alongside the guise of marriage.

7. At this point the Js have accidentally mentioned so many things that relate to sleeping with each other/being with each other late at night or first thing in the morning etc. that I won’t even try to list them all. But just know that there are many of these examples (I’m happy to specify if anyone wants to send me a message about it).

8. The Js have been spotted dining together (or out at bars/other venues together) on many occasions, less in recent years, some of which have even been described as quite romantic/intimate settings. And of course, again, these are just the ones noticed by the public, not the likely many times the Js have booked private dining arrangements or something else of that nature. I just posted a few of these examples separately if you want to check them out.

9. Jared has forgotten the specifics of his ‘dating’ timeline actually a few times, probably the most well-known of those times being during his Live With Kelly interview where he claimed to have been single at the start of Supernatural when in reality (according to the information given to the general public), he and Sandra McCoy were very much together at that point. He also told an interviewer that he was single and then later on claimed to have been dating Genevieve two full months before that interview took place.

10. I already posted a fantastic humorous account of the many different stories told concerning the period of time Jensen publicly lived with Jared (again, message me if you’d like me to send it to you), but suffice to say…the lies became quite immense and tangled up in each other and the whole thing made many people wonder about what might really be going on between the Js.

11. Jared posed in front of a mural by himself (without Gen) that said “Love will win” in response to Jensen posing in front of a mural earlier that same day that said “Love is love,” a well known LGBT slogan.

12. Jensen has rotated between several different wedding rings, which I have yet to see anyone come up with a believable-enough reason for, but whatever the reason, it certainly is something that makes you wonder.

13. When asked about “finding the one,” Jensen gave a very long, beautiful, thoughtful response during which he never once used the word “she,” “her,” “wife,” etc. (or Danneel’s name). His reply also contained several things that he had previously said (and would say again) to describe Jared and/or his relationship with Jared:

Another similar example is when Jensen was asked about his favorite memory of SPN and he responded with his journey from single-hood to marriage, again not using female pronouns or “Danneel,” who hadn’t had anything to do with the show at that point anyway.

14. This one I remember having to hunt down and verify back when I first started “hardcore hatting,” and yes it is true. Sandy, Jared’s ‘girlfriend’ from years ago, favorited a tweet once in which she was referred to as Jared’s “ex-beard.” I mean, it’s pretty hard to misinterpret that…

15. Gossip columnist Ted Casablanca once pretty much accused Danneel of her relationship with Jensen being fake. Previously to that spat, he had also written an article in response to double engagement rumors saying that “Jensen and Jared would sooner marry each other than who they’re currently rumored to be getting hitched to. If I’m wrong I’ll get Taryn Ryder a date with Ryan Gosling.”

16. Speaking of the engagements, nearly everything about them was highly suspicious. Both occurred on the same weekend under the guise that each J had no idea the other was proposing, despite having said multiple times that they tell each other everything and showing that to be true through their actions as well. When asked on the spot what his proposal story was, Jensen retold the exact proposal story that had taken place a year earlier with Jared and Sandy, changing only the location.

17. Another well-known mishap was the ‘dinner in Italy’ story, told first by Jared in which he claimed to have been with his wife at the time and told second by Jensen at a different convention in which JENSEN was in fact the one who had been with Jared. Of course ironically, nothing would have even seemed strange about the whole thing if the story had been told truthfully from the get-go, but keeping up with lies is far from easy.

18. This one I think we all know. Joanna Krupa, known for her role in The Real Housewives of Miami, has admitted to bearding for someone in the past, and the only real celebrity she’s ever dated was Jensen. Which of course, like many of these observations, is not proof as much as it’s, well…an observation. Albeit quite an interesting one.

19. It was revealed by Ryan Seacrest (who has been at the center of many “gay or straight or other?” whispers for a long time now) that he used to live with Jensen, which wouldn’t be odd if Jensen had ever mentioned it while talking pretty extensively about his past roommates/living situations.

Like, for example, we HAD known that Jensen and Ty Vaughn lived together for a stretch, and some hats believe (due to the seemingly very intimate nature of their relationship at the time) that Ty may be an ex of Jensen’s.

20. I saw someone point out the fact that Jensen’s oldest daughter’s middle name is Jay (a nickname Jensen has for Jared and actually something they’ve each said they call each other). On its own, this could just look like either a coincidence or a testament to the strong friendship between the Js, but it’s an interesting bit of information alongside everything else.

21. Richard Speight Junior has flubbed pretty famously a few times and nearly given away sensitive information about the Js being together. I’ve posted a few of these examples recently so I’ll hold off on including them here, but-, you know by now, just ask me if you’d like them!

And he’s not the only one who’s said some interesting things!

[aviewfromtheclouds25]

"Because as much as there's a part of my brain which keeps questioning some odd things about Robert/Ryan's exit" I wondered what these strange things are for you? because even I always thought something was wrong with its release but maybe it's just my wish 😂

And here I was thinking I’d made that comment subtle enough that no one would even notice it… :P Haha. Sorry it’s taken me a while to get around to this. Although since you sent me this, I’ve seen a fair few people voice this thought and have been discussing it quite a bit with @nooneelsecomesclose17 so we are far from alone in this, wishful thinking or not! :P Although I’d just like to note two things… One, I do keep trying to tell the “part of my brain” I referenced to be quiet and not get my hopes up but alas… And two, I guess it’s less specific concrete things and more of a vibe… And the vibe this whole storyline has been giving me is one I can only compare with 2015 when they tried to convince us Ross was really dead… Which he obviously wasn’t…

So it’s this vibe which then leads to overanalysing things which absolutely do not need overanalysing (unless we’re right and everyone involved are #LyingLiarsWhoLie :P) and these things become niggles of doubt… So, these are the niggles:

1. The current narrative. And by that I mean how involved Robert still is in the show. He’s been mentioned so much, and not just by Aaron. But almost every episode Aaron has been in over the last 7 weeks or however long it’s been (it feels like longer but also yesterday, you know) has directly mentioned Robert. I’ve never seen an exit like it. Look at Bernice; two unaired phone calls and that’s it. And she and Liam were supposedly “soulmates”. (#JusticeForAndy!) Which brings me to;

2. The references. To Robert. And to Robron. Not just within Aaron’s storyline. There have been what I consider multiple nods to them in other characters’ storylines too. Noah with the liars line during a big episode for Aaron/Robron is a prime example. Others include Graham filing for divorce shortly after Robert did and Kim telling Graham that he could only get the divorce right now "if I cooperate"… And Bernice’s own exit; in which she spoke of soulmates, lamented over the fact that she and Liam didn’t have a song, turned her nose up at the wedding gift of an engraved watch (which itself had already just been returned to in Robron’s storyline, as had the song) and instead gave Liam props for his murder mystery hobby (now imagine #WhoKilledGraham is also a smokescreen because there’s been another murder mystery going on all this time - that someone else finished Lee off in that hospital… And the poignancy of Robert hitting Lee with that shovel during the village's big murder mystery event... #LetTheLukeTheoryRiseED), then couldn’t bring herself to tell the man she loves that it was goodbye for good but gives back the sentimental wedding jewellery… Now, we can all say “It’s a soap. It’s lazy writing.” But these exits were so close together, to my mind these parallels had to be intentional. And I’m sure there have been others I can’t remember right now, but combine all of this with the regular Robert mentions, the fact that things like his car are still around (because Aaron taking Robert’s car to the woods wasn’t necessary to serve the plot any more than if he’d taken his own) and now this new mug, the new photo we know is going to be up in the Mill some time in the new year… Something about this just doesn’t add up. Ordinarily when an actor leaves, the plot moves on to ignoring their existence pretty quickly. It has to because otherwise the remaining characters involved would become stagnated and unable to move on. So why is this one so different? Why aren’t they ready for Aaron to move on?

Now, I’d love to think that it’s credit to Ryan / Robert / Robron and how much the show has valued the last 5 years of their story. That they’re giving the time for this drawn out (and more realistic) exit to give Danny/Aaron this character-driven story and by which keeping the integrity of Robron intact. If that’s what it’s all about, then that’s amazing and I’m here for it. But the fact is, Emmerdale is a soap and this is so vastly different to how exit storylines usually go… Which is why it kind of feels like Ryan’s on an extended break, rather than left for good… Because the other aspect of the narrative -

3. The 2017 parallels. So much of Aaron’s plot following Robert’s exit feels like an exact replica of the break-up parting in 2017 and Robert’s own breakdown. But the overall objective and destination that the 2017 storyline was always heading to was Robron 2.0. So why are they emulating so much of that plot now, when a reunion can’t be on the horizon?

So they’re the things we’re seeing onscreen which set off the question marks in my mind, but there have been a few things off screen, too… (Imagine being in the public eye and having such scrutiny over your lexical choices, I can only apologise to the poor people I’m about to quote haha!)

4. That tweet with Robert’s cell which used to be Maxine’s office. Specifically “#RobGone?”. Specifically the question mark which followed it. I fully acknowledge that this was nothing more than an innocent “does this hashtag work?” but how it read following the previous sentence couldn’t help but make me wonder if there could be a subliminal message to it; “Not much has changed. #RobGone?” So because of those vibes this storyline has been giving off, I couldn’t help but think what if..? What if Robert isn’t as gone as we all think?

5. Danny’s beautiful tweet after the final episode. “Farewell for now”. I’m sure for now just meant that Danny will obviously see Ryan again whatever, but what if..?

6. Ryan’s goodbye video. The whole of this seemed so final, but there was one tiny moment, when he was talking about Robert being a dad to Seb, where he said “I guess” we won’t get to see that now. I doubt it means anything beyond a turn of phrase but we’re overanalysing things here and in Theory Realm, everything means something. :P

7. #RobronForever. From what I’ve seen on here, Emmerdale have tweeted this a few times since it “ended”. They also set up that page on their website. While I strongly approve and support this, naturally haha, it does make me question what their long-term plans for Aaron are… Because if Ryan really isn’t coming back, as much as I don’t like it, at some point they will have to have Aaron move on properly… Which means somehow ending the narrative that Robert was it for Aaron… So why prolong it? Except what if..?

The things which make me think this is all just wishful thinking is because I was convinced throughout Robert’s exit storyline that we would get a cameo around Christmas / the new year but that last episode with the montage felt so final I changed my mind on that. And also the people who have spoken about Ryan leaving, but especially Ryan and Danny’s interviews. They feel very real. But then again…they are incredibly good actors!!

So yeah, this is just a bunch of random things which individually probably mean nothing but together have given way to a whole conspiracy theory! Haha. Ultimately, it just feels like something is off… And maybe it’s because Aaron isn’t moving on yet (#I'dLikeThisToLastForeverToo)… Or maybe it’s because we ourselves aren’t moving on because we’re all still here, still talking about it… Maybe it’s just that lack of closure… But something, whatever it is, just doesn’t feel right.

I’m glad there’s a few of us feeling this though, whether it amounts to anything or not haha!

[bigfan-fanfic]

Darkside Bakes 6

Thanks to @libraryoffandomsuniverse for ideas!

So, there is a fine balance you have to strike.

You’ve gotta keep expanding - there’s no other way to explain away the influx of cash other than a really put-together-looking business.

But to maintain growth, you need new hires.

So you go through some interviewing processes.

It’s difficult to determine who is going to be... relaxed enough to be okay with this business.

You end up with more hires than you were expecting, but definitely a motley group of intrepid employees.

There’s a pair of sisters named Anji and Priya. Priya’s not a baker, but she does have training as a chef, and she and her sister seem like a package deal.

A former Gotham gang member named Ryan. Apparently he has experience with delivering things, and his history makes him very well suited to ensuring that there aren’t any more robberies like THE INCIDENT.

There’s a sweet young man named Nate, who’s just as enthusiastic as Anji and Ike about learning to bake - except he’s got some experience.

And finally there’s Alma, a real live pastry chef who studied in France.

They’re all really psyched to work at Darkside Bakes.

You assure them they can quit at any time, and you’ll make sure to provide a good reference.

And with that, the new team kicks off.

Your new employees synergize well.

Priya handles all of the cooking, including making caramel - which is a simple but awfully difficult process. She also tends to get stuck with the dishes while the rest of you bake. Ryan often helps her.

With so many more bakers, you are free to assign projects. For example, Nate is in charge of restocking breads, since he loves making bread the most. Anji and Ike are in charge of all the rest of the pastries, with Priya helping them with the cooking, especially for the meat pies and croquetas. Ryan helps out with prep and washing up, as well as overseeing all deliveries.

Meanwhile, you, Marcia, and Alma are the head bakers, and work on the commissioned pieces, the others helping out as needed.

And of course, everyone pulls double duty. Nate does the accounting for the business, Alma and Ike work together in marketing and branding, and Priya manages the real estate and property owned by the business. Ryan also manages security for the building.

Ryan’s also put in charge of the errand boy, Danny Malone. The boy asks a lot of questions for someone so angry-looking, and more often than not follows you around, glaring as you serve and take the orders of all customers.

Although, you sense his respect as you handle Killer Croc’s tantrum at your lack of lemon bars. You promise to add them to the menu.

Anji’s very excitable and flighty. She regularly pulls people into sleepovers. More than once she’s insisted you come across the hall into Ike’s apartment to play a board game with them before bed.

Nate, too, enjoys coming over, spending a lot of time with Ike. It’s good for Ike to be making friends, you think.

New people bring new ideas.

Anji has a fabulous idea after Two-Face comes in one day and gets in an argument with himself about his favorite cookie.

You make a series of cookies and decorate them with royal icing, and don’t use specific emblems, but designs evocative of each villain

For example, a black-and-white cookie for Two-Face, a smiley face with the mouth outlined in red on a ginger snap for Joker, a tuxedo on an oatmeal cookie for Penguin.

Pretty soon, the villains start sending in notes with the designs they want for themselves. It’s a shock when one of Poison Ivy’s “babies” delivers a hand-drawn picture of a simple flower.

Ryan works well with the delivery service, and he makes sure that the drivers are careful with the sometimes-shaky cakes you make.

You grow to enjoy the company of so many coworkers. Marcia somehow finds the time to knit you all matching scarves in black and white, matching the decor, and it basically becomes the uniform for Darkside Bakes.

One day, you are all working together on a set of desserts for Mr. Freeze, who holds a celebration each year commemorating his wife’s birthday.

Everything has to be iced or look frosted. Several hours have gone into making perfect meringue. 

During brainstorming, Nate came up with the idea to do Baked Alaska. It’ll be the centerpiece of the evening. He gets Ike to help him while the rest of you make other desserts.

 You make an abundance of Mr. Freeze’s favorite iced and chilled donuts. Alma makes perfect ice-blue macarons to decorate the simple angel-food cake Marcia and Anji made.

Ryan and Priya help with all the decorating and preparation, and when it’s time to cart them off, they oversee the process.

“We should celebrate!” Anji cheers. Everyone’s tired, but nobody wants to say no. You all agree to go home to freshen up and meet at a small diner near Crime Alley in an hour or so.

But of course, life doesn’t work out that way.

As soon as you walk out of the door, a bag is stuffed over your head.

You’re taken to an undisclosed location. A pair of goons is assigned to watch you, each pointing a gun at you.

It’s a whole day before a man in a lab coat walks in and smirks at you.

He says his name is Dr. Hugo Strange, and he believes you can help him to dissect the criminal mind

But, first, he’d like you to make a dessert for him, as a sample.

It’s embarrassing how bad they are at this. They didn’t even take your phone. You quickly text everyone from the bakery, telling them who’s kidnapped you.

You agree, and the goons lead you to a fully stocked kitchen that’s about as good as you could expect from an abandoned warehouse. You start making a cake, but you abandon some of the necessary processes. You crack eggs, but also put in the eggshells. You “accidentally” drop each ingredient and roll it around the floor with your foot before adding it. You burn the sugar for the caramel topping and put it on the cake anyway. Eventually you have a beautiful strawberry shortcake that is almost guaranteed to cause severe food poisoning.

You present it to the Doctor in his office, and he’s so cocky he doesn’t even hesitate to dig in. His eyes bulge when he comes across the unpleasant crunch of something that certainly doesn’t belong in cake.

He falls to the ground, coughing and retching, and as his goons go to help him, the door bangs open. Marcia’s there with a crowbar, closely followed by Ryan, who has a gun at the ready.

They take the guards by surprise, Marcia having already knocked out the Doctor and her guard by the time Ryan’s sleeper hold knocks out the other.

“How did you find me?” you ask them, relieved.

“Your message.” Marcia grins at you. “I’m glad you’re safe, honey.”

“Me too, Boss.” Ryan agrees. “Now, put on your happy face. Anji and Nate insisted on welcoming you back.”

You hear a maniacal laugh as they lead you out. The Joker is leading a bunch of villains past you three and laughing at how Marcia and Ryan were able to get to you first.

You are stunned by the group of people marching past you into the warehouse. It seems like every villain in Gotham banded together to come rescue you. You would not like to be someone involved in your kidnapping.

From above, Batman and Robin watch you leave while the villains enter.

“Father, the Baker is dangerous. The villains are working together now!”

Bruce sighs. “Only for the moment. It seems like the Baker really doesn’t have much to do with the criminal aspect.”

Damian starts to retort but Bruce cuts him off. “However, Darkside Bakes might be useful in the future. Maybe it’s time Bruce Wayne paid them a visit...”

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 10x02: We Are The End of the World - Details

Okay, let's talk details. I’ll go through them chronologically. 

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x02. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

We start with the woman in the car, which I talked about yesterday. I thought the blaring horn was a call back to the Wolves in S6. That’s interesting because this was about Alpha and Beta, and we think the Wolves were a foreshadow of the Whisperers. I can't help but wonder if some sort of loud noise or horn will figure and whatever happened to Beth after Coda.

When Alpha meets Beta in the hospital, Lydia wants to wash the off the walker blood. Alpha asks, "Is there water?" He points to where she can find some, and she does. Because they’re in a hospital, this is yet another example of water being available at Grady or, if they’re a part of the helicopter people, then with the helicopter people. The point is, they'll be the ones with access to water.

When the two sisters are walking, gathering walkers with Beta, one of them closes her eyes and talks about how the sun feels different today, like it's burning into their skin. 

I kind of wondered if that might be a radiation reference, especially as they see the satellite fall in this episode. Her looking up the sky also reminded me vaguely of Daryl and Beth looking at the sky in the Inmates. This is where the sister says that she should have left her behind.

We then see Alpha giving Lydia a bath. There are a lot of background things in the hospital that caught my eye. Mostly graffiti and posters. But a lot of them point to Beth dialogue. Some of them are simply about hope, others of them suggest “you are still alive,” “why am I still alive?” Etc. One of the posters has both the words “Still” and “Alone” on it. Ring any bells? 😉 Here are some if you want to study them:

It took me a few times watching it to realize it was Beta who wrote all the words on the walls. We know that because “I am the end of the world” is written in several places. It’s also important to note that he contemplated suicide. Things like “End it all?” followed by “No, not now,” are seen in various places.

Alpha picks up a can of tomatoes (perhaps tomato soup?) in the hallway. I've said before that tomatoes represent the state of the community. I think we see them here because Alpha and Beta are about to form a community together. This is the origin story of the Whisperers.

Something interesting happens. Beta is humming in the background. Alpha hears him and begins to hum as well. Beta doesn't like that. He stocks toward her and says, "Were you singing?" She answers, "I wouldn't call it that." He says, "Don't do it again."

So, while they didn’t say what his back story is (on TTD, Ryan Hurst seemed to suggest the country singer theory could be true) there is definitely a musical theme around him.

In terms of a parallel to Daryl, you could see it as him being uncomfortable with people singing because it reminds him of Beth. I started thinking about Daryl's, "I never," from the moonshine shock. One of the things he said is that he never sang out in public. We haven't really seen a fulfillment of that yet. But just as Alpha and Beta were sort of humming together right here, maybe we'll see Beth and Daryl sing together in some capacity in the future.

She also asks how he ended up at the hospital. He said he got into a tussle with the dead and they ran him out of his camp a few months ago. Again, I think that could be a Daryl parallel. In terms of ending up at the hospital in S5, it happened after walkers overran the prison. This is also when Beta says he likes the sound of the dead and it’s the only song he never wants to end.

Then we’re back to the two sisters rounding up walkers. The one who gave up her baby sees the walker with the baby carrier on it on its front and starts to cry. Something about the way she cried, the way she looked, reminded me of when Beth cried in Inmates.

The more I thought about that, something occurred to me. I’m just gonna throw this possibility out there. I feel like Beth is going to go through an arc where she loses a baby. It may not be hers biologically. After all, with plenty of foreshadowing after taking care of other people's kids. (Such as Judith at the prison.)

This woman who sacrificed her baby at Alpha’s behest has parallels to Beth. In that scene in Inmates, which this reminded me of, Beth actually was crying over the perceived death of a child. She thought the little shoes she saw belong to the kids they’d been tracking. She was actually wrong about that. They were tracking Lizzie and Mika, who were with Carol and Ty. But Beth and Daryl assumed the kids they been tracking were dead and the shoes belonged to them. She was literally crying of the loss of a child. 

There was that weird, creepy baby death thing around Denise in 6x14, and we know how big a proxy she was to Beth. We also know Connie lost a child at one point, and she’s being used as a Beth stand-in as well. I'm just saying we have a lot of evidence of this.

Back at the camp, Beta almost kills this woman for endangering them. Alpha shows her mercy, probably because she understands what it's like to abandon a child, because she abandoned Lydia.

Then we see Alpha making a room for Lydia in the hospital. She takes her in a room that's used for psych patients and is therefore padded. Lydia asks about the pillows all over the walls. The sequence was actually very interesting. It got my thoughts spinning.

First of all, Alpha offers Lydia her bunny and Lydia rejects it. Remember the bunny represents those who are weak. Specifically, those too weak to survive and who end up dead. (Lizzie killed the bunnies in the log in 4b, and then later killed Mika.) Lydia rejects the bunny says that she wants to be more like Alpha. That’s a mirror to Beth saying that she wants to change and become stronger. Alpha says she's glad to hear that, because if Lydia doesn't change, Alpha will eventually have to leave her behind.

In other words, a person must be strong enough to defend themselves, or else they get left behind. Definitely feels like a call back to Beth. Now, obviously it didn't go down that way with Beth and Daryl. He didn’t leave her behind because he thought she was weak. But we often like to say that Beth’s weakness died when she was shot and she’ll arise a much stronger person who can take care of herself. If nothing else, this is a reference to someone changing from being weak to being strong as well as being left behind, in the same sentence.

What struck me most about this sequence (along with something strange in the final scene) is the actual sleeping arrangement. It's about finding a bed for Lydia to sleep and feel safe. I know that sounds a little goofy, but it reminded me of something we saw back in S8 that has never been explained. When Daryl tries to escape the Sanctuary, he ran into Dwight's room. He ate peanut butter, changed his shirt, and opened the door into a secret room at the back of Dwight's quarters. No one was in there, but it looked like there was a bed with the pillow. Such a random detail, and it's never been explained. I was reminded of that part because there's an emphasis on pillows covering the walls.

Near the end of the episode, where we see Alpha keeping a shrine to Lydia, along with her bunny, there’s what looks like a gigantic bird’s nest. It’s actually more square than round in shape, but it’s made with twigs and vines like a bird’s nest might be. I think it’s supposed to be a place Alpha created for Lydia to sleep in and be secure. So, I think this is a theme about finding a place for loved ones to sleep where they will feel safe. It's possible the hidden room in Dwight’s place was there for Sherry. I don't know if she ever actually used it, but he might've created in case she ever wanted to hide there.

We can also relate this back directly to Beth and Daryl in the funeral home. Daryl laid down in the coffin saying, "this is the comfiest bed I've had in years." And while he laid in that “bed,” Beth sang to him, about laying in the lawn and being good. So it's about finding a place to lie down and sleep, feeling secure and safe with the people you're with. Because, by nature, everyone is vulnerable when they sleep.

Alpha tells Beta to send the baby’s mother to her in the “deep” place. I had to think about this one for a bit before I understood it’s significance. It's underground (sort of like a cave) and in darkness, so I knew it had to have symbolic significance. It was obvious that everyone thought Alpha would kill the baby’s mother, but, she didn't. She showed her mercy.

I think we could perhaps relate it to Beth going into the darkness and emerging into the light. We saw this theme around her with light and darkness at Grady. She goes into the dark hallway just before being shot. 

Emerging into light at the end of the hallway represents her living. So, similarly, the baby’s mother goes into the darkness and faces death by Alpha’s hand. Mercifully, she comes back out again into the light and is given a second chance. Her sister even says, "Alpha showed you her grace?"

At this point, we learn other whispers are also thinking about Hilltop and that it looked like a safe place and maybe they want to return. Alpha is already losing her pack.

We see Alpha and Beta killing walkers together in the hospital. They bond and she gives him the name of first Big Man, then Mr. B, and then just B. He asks what that make her. She says, “A.” 

She then proceeds to tell him about becoming the walkers. She says there are two kinds of people left in the world: those brave enough to walk with the dead, and everyone else. She tries to take off his mask, and he freaks out. He tells her leave at sunrise not to come back. Obviously, that doesn't happen.

So, a couple things about this. We’ve seen the A/B theme since S4. It's very obvious that Alpha and Beta are being defined this way in the plot. This isn’t just symbolism anymore. They’re calling themselves and each other A and B. Yes, we also saw that theme with the helicopter people who also used the terms A and B. For me, that suggests that perhaps the Whisperers are tied up with the helicopter people in some way. It also shows that the Whisperers are much more endgame than Negan ever was. Everyone made such a big deal about All Out War, but we’re seeing the fulfillment of Beth-related symbolism that’s been around since S4 much more with this group than we ever did with Negan.

It's also interesting that we don't see Beta’s face. Alpha takes off her skin mask all the time, but we've never seen Beta without his. I wonder why he wants to hide his face. Back when she asked how he got there, and he said that he tussled with the dead. She asked if that's what he wore the mask now. There's an implication there that maybe, just maybe, he has scars on his face.

That would have some really interesting implications of true. Not only would it parallel him to Beth in a big way, but if Beth ever came into contact with Alpha and Beta, I almost think that they would be predisposed to like her, both because she's a survivor and also because of the scars. That might draw them both to her. At this point, Alpha and Lydia have seen Beta's face, but no one else has.

When the Whisperers see the satellite fall, the sister who lost her baby goes nuts and tries to kill Alpha. She dies because her sister betrays her to save Alpha.

Alpha asks her if she regrets what she did. The sister essentially says no. (I don’t know if this will mean anything to you guys, but that was very Charles Manson.) Then Alpha said something super disturbing. "Like a lioness who smothers her own cub, we are strongest when we kill our own blood." 

Now, obviously that's the opposite of what TF and most of us (hopefully) believe. It serves yet another antiparallel to Beth and TF in general. They try to save their own people and keep them alive at all costs. They believe that banding together through love and community is what makes them stronger. Alpha obviously believes the opposite.

Then we reach the final sequence of the episode. There’s a lot going on here and I watched it multiple times, trying to catch everything. Lydia covers herself in walker guts. She seemed to want to find a walker and prove to her mom that she could be strong. So her mother wouldn’t leave her behind.

Of course everything goes down where Alpha kills Beta’s friend, and Lydia comes out, saying she was strong. Alpha hugs her and says she did a good job and was very strong.

Then she turns to Beta and says some really interesting things. She says, "You are not broken. You were made for this." Beth said that exact same thing to Daryl in Still. "It's like you were made for how things are now.”

Alpha also says, "Stay with me and you'll never be alone." I don’t think Daryl said exactly that Beth, but I remember that he did say it to Bob. "You're not alone anymore. You never will be again." And Bob was a Beth proxy.

After watching it several times, what strikes me is the parallel to Beth and Daryl. While the actual events are different, Alpha and Beta basically see one another at their most vulnerable. In true states of anger and grief. Alpha over Lydia in the current timeline and Beta over the loss of his friend in the flashback. And that’s exactly what Still was for Beth and Daryl.

Beta then started chanting, "I am the end of the world. I am the end of the world." This is part of the Alpha and Omega theme. Alpha is, um, named Alpha, which means the first or the beginning. Then we have Beta saying he's the end of the world. Omega is another term for the end.

This is super-intriguing to me and I’ll have to think about it more. Maybe revisit the Alpha/Omega theme. Because a the two instances that always jump to mind for me of the Alpha/Omega theme are 1) when Abraham said it to Sasha in the flashback in 7x16. And he said, “Alpha to Omega, Battlefield to Beach.” (paraphrasing there, btw.) Well, they’re about to enter a war with the Whisperers, and they were training on the beach in 10x01, so it all feels very relevant. 2) Via Paula’s group in 6x13. And that episode a gazillion, ridiculously obvious references to Beth and Grady. Just saying.

Alpha says, “We’re the end of the world.” Beta says he can't leave his friend. Alpha says he won’t have to and gives him her knife. It’s then that we learn that the skin mask Beta wears around once belonged to his best friend. Just when you think these people can’t get any more twisted, right?

This is why I loved this episode so much. Creepy? Oh yeah. Twisted? Absolutely. But also fascinating and fantastic. On TTD, YNB said she wasn’t a fan of villains. Yeah, I am. I’m totally obsessed with their psychology. So I totally geeked out about the fabulousness of this episode.

But I digress. We then return to the current timeline, where Beta finds Alpha in her special little grove. As they talk, he comes to realize she didn't actually kill Lydia and Lydia is still alive. This is where we see the giant bird’s nest/bed. So, we have a connection to the bird theme here, with Alpha playing mother bird and wanting to protect her young. She’s created a bed for Lydia to feel safe in.

At one point, Beta says, “she’s GONE, Alpha.” That’s before Alpha admits she lied about killing Lydia. So we have yet another example of something thinking someone is dead, & saying she’s “gone,” when really, she’s alive and well in some other place.

Alpha gets upset about Lydia and starts to cry. (Note that Beta is the only one allowed to see her cry and live.) He reaches his hand out to her and she takes it. He basically calms her down and brings her back to herself. 

He tells her that there was smoke on the horizon. Alpha says it might be “the enemy” which means TF, and that they have to teach them a lesson and let the pack watch. That’s how she’ll ensure her pack’s loyalty to her. Not unlike Negan’s old tactics.

It's important to note that she was planning on attacking TF even before she realized they’d crossed the border. It's really not about her looking up and seeing Carol standing there at the end.

Then we see Alpha and Beta intertwine fingers. (Fascinating but creepy romance vibe.)

I said this was their Still/Alone episode. Think about all the things I’ve laid out here. It happened in a hospital. There was a bunch of Beth and Daryl dialogue. The words “still” and “alone” were literally written on the wall! And they forced a deep (albeit twisted) connection. When they were killing the walkers that got into the hospital, Alpha says, "I like kill with you." When she starts gutting the walkers, he says, "you're different," which really ought to be an insult, but you can tell he's drowned her because of that.

So at the end, they intertwine fingers, which always represents romantic love in TTD  and say their little mantra.

"We walk in darkness, we are free.

We bathe in blood, we are free.

We love nothing, we are free.

We fear nothing, we are free.

We need no words, we are free.

We embrace all death, we are free.

This is the end of the world. Now is the world. We are the end of the world."

This is twisted and heavy stuff, guys. This satanic little chant also brings me back to the Alpha and Omega theme. Like I said, I feel like Whispers are much more endgame than Negan ever was. Think of it this way. If the helicopter people have been around since the beginning (and they have been), and the Whisperers are tied up with them, then the “beginning” and the “end” makes sense here, right? I’ve even considered that maybe the helicopter people are the ones who caused or released the virus to begin with, whether by accident or on purpose. No idea if that’s true. It’s just something I’ve considered. But TWD is big on story arcs where the end mirrors the beginning, so this is a theme, a motif, and a pattern in the show.

Two more short notes. I’m not sure why Alpha doesn’t realize that making war on TF means coming face to face with Lydia again. She’s lying to her people about killing Lydia, and if they find out she’s lying (and they surely will) that will make them less loyal to her. Might be her undoing.

Also, just a correction. I said yesterday that Beta didn’t cry when his friend died. Upon watching it again, he actually does. I missed it the first time. You can’t see it because of the mask but you can hear him sobbing. Just wanted to correct myself on that.

Again, just a really fabulous and fascinating episode. I’ve watched it like three times and I totally want to watch it again.

[migleefulmoments]

Debunking

We’ve talked about this scene before- the Kurt rant given by Santana. Naya just said she was uncomfortable and she mentioned that Chris was upset.  sugdendingle just posted that Chris “liked” her Tweet where she called out how much she didn’t like it.  She added a second comment that includes: 

sugdendingle

None of the other cast were personally attacked in the ways Chris was and to the extent Chris was. I don’t know what Ryan Murphy’s issues were with Chris but he clearly he had some....I’m talking about real life here. About how Ryan Murphy and his writers used the character of Kurt to personally attack Chris Colfer on a regular basis and it’s clear Chris agrees to some extent as he liked my tweet.

That scene in season six was one of the worst examples but hardly the only one. Chris not being traditionally masculine was like a running joke on that show. As was remarks about his voice, his appearance, his sexuality, how he danced, etc. Yes other characters faced insults but it never got as personal as it did with Chris and it wasn’t as extensive either. The insults to Kurt went on right to the end of the show you can’t say the same for the other characters. It’s just really sad that Chris had to endure a work enivorment like this especially considering he was bullied when he was younger.

Abby adds: 

My opinion. The poor treatment stems from extreme jealousy. For many, many reasons. And of course c’s refusal to do as he’s told.(X)

Debunk #1 

None of the other cast were personally attacked in the ways Chris was and to the extent Chris was. Was Chris harassed by the writers “more than any other character”?  I spent a few minutes looking at Santana’s rants-and Santana seems to be the ranter on Glee. I don’t believe her rants about Chris’s failings is any worse than she she said about Finn’s weight. Rachel or really Lea’s nose being too big had an entire episode-and several comments through the years- and Kurt staged a flashmob at the mall to talk her out of plastic surgery. Sam was called Trouty Mouth as a running joke including a song “Trouty Mouth” sang by Santana. 

“Every time you open your humongous mouth to do an impression or to moisten a enormous stamp for a lazy giant you take on step closer to everyone seeing that you’re actually a dork” (X)

“I just heard the news that Trouty Mouth was back in town. I’ve been keeping a notebook, just in case this day ever came. Welcome back, Lisa Rinna. I’ve missed you so much since your family packed their bags, loaded them in your mouth and skipped town. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to enjoy a crisp pickle, but couldn’t find anyone to suck the lid off the jar. I assume you’ve been working as a baby polisher where young mothers place their infants’ heads in your mouth to get back that newborn shine. So glad you’re back. I haven’t seen a smile that big since the acclamation abominable snowman got his teeth pulled by that little gay elf dentist. Love, Santana” (X)

This gets loooonnnngggg so under a cut 

This one she also hit at Tina’s Asian eyes and Rachels nose- though I didn’t include that part. 

Santana: Hold up, could we all just get real here for a second? I hear that Rachel has a bit of a schnoz. I mean I wouldn't know because like Medusa I try to avoid eye contact with her. But can we all just stop lying about how there aren't things we don't want to change about ourselves? I'm sure that Sam has been at the doctor's office and riffled through pamphlets on mouth reductions. I'll bet Artie's thought about getting his legs removed since he's not really using them anyway. And I'm definitely sure Tina has looked into eye de-slanting. Tina: That's extraordinarily racist. Santana: Just keeping it real. Tina: Sorry Santana, I'm a beautiful person. I'm in love with myself and I would never change a thing. Mike: Is that why you're wearing blue contacts today, Tina? [whispers] Self hating Asian. Tina: Not too many Asian sex symbols, Mike. I'm just trying to mirror what I see in magazines. Finn: My dancing kind of bothers me. It almost killed Rachel but I like the way I look. Santana: Oh please. You have weird puffy pyramid nipples. Sam: [tries to look at Finn's nipples] Finn: [slaps Sam's hand away] Santana: They look like they're filled with custard. Or you could dust them off with powdered sugar and pass it off as some sort of dessert. Look, maybe Rachel is fine with having an enormous beak. Maybe she needs it to crack hard seeds. All I'm saying is if you look in the mirror and you don't like what you see, you should change it.”(X)

“I’ve kissed Finn, and can I just say… not worth a buck. I would, however, pay a hundred dollars to jiggle one of his man boobs”. (X)

Santana: “Please stick a sock in it or ship yourself back to Scotland. I’m trying to apologize to Lumps The Clown. I am sorry, Finn. I mean, really, I’m sorry that the New Directions are gonna get crushed by the Troubletones. And I’m also sorry that you have no talent. Sorry that you sing like you’re getting your prostate checked, and you dance like you’ve been asleep for years and someone just woke you up. Have fun riding on Rachel’s coattails for the rest of your life, although, you know what, I would just watch out for her come holiday time if I were him, because if I were her, I’d stick a stent in one of those boobs and let the Finn blubber light the Hanukkah lamp for eight magical nights.” (X)

Santana: “Why is everyone staring at me like I’m Finn and I just won a butter eating contest” (X)

She even hit him during The Quarterback “Okay, I know that Finn had his doubts about God but I am convinced that Squishy Teets is up in heaven right now plopped down next to his new best friend Fat Elvis helping themselves to a picnic of baby back ribs smothered in butterscotch pudding and TaterTot grease so this is for you Hudson” (X)

She also did a combo Finn/Sam rant “Not only am I giving you full visitation rights to the set of rambunctious twins that live on my rig cage, you get the chance to show that pastry bag Finn that he can’t mess with Sam Evans. And not just because you can unlock your humongous jaw and swallow him whole like a python…” (X)

The Kurt rant 

“Kurt I took what you said to heart, and I thought long and hard about it, and it occurred to me that you may have a point. Okay, maybe Brittany and I are too young to get married. I mean, after all, that's why it didn't work out with you and Blaine, right? Or maybe it didn't work out because you're a judgmental little gentrophile with a mouth like a cat's ass. Maybe Blaine got tired of hearing your shrill, self-aggrandizing lecture about how you felt the two of you were at the very apex of the gay rights movement every time you so much as cooked macaroni and cheese together or farted. Maybe Blaine didn't want to be with someone who looks like they just removed their top row of dentures every time they smile or someone who doesn't dress like an extra out of one of Andy Dick's more elaborate wet dreams. Maybe Blaine grew weary of dating a breathier, more feminine Quinn Fabray. Maybe he finally got freaked out about your strange obsession with old people that causes you to skulk around nursing homes like one of those cats that can smell cancer. Maybe he got tired of watching you drape yourself on every piano you happen to pass to entertain exactly no one with, say, some song that Judy Garland choked on her tongue in the middle of or some sassy old Broadway standard made famous by another dead alcoholic crone. Maybe Blaine woke up one day and said, "You know what I don't want to marry a sexless, self-centered baton twirler. Maybe I need someone who knows more than three dance moves: "the finger wag", "the shoulder shimmy" and the one where you pretend to twirl two invisible rainbow-colored ribbons attached to your hips. So, you know what, maybe that's why it didn't work out. Maybe it has nothing to do with me and Brittany. Maybe it's just that you are utterly, utterly intolerable. Maybe that has something to do with it."(X)

Conclusion: Chris was not attacked more than other actors on Glee.  The writers were pretty vicious about the physical characteristics of Rachel’s nose, Finn’s weight and man boobs and Sam’s nose. They also wrote about Damian’s height referring to as Leprechaun. All are very personal attacks about the actor; not the character.  Finn’s boobs were used as fodder for humor after he died so the idea that no other character was humiliated throughout the show is untrue.  

Debunk #2 

I don’t know what Ryan Murphy’s issues were with Chris but he clearly he had some. Ryan didn’t write Santana’s vicious lines-Brad Falchuk did.  I spent enough time researching this and finding late-season interview is hard but earlier interviews show that Ryan really respected Chris and Kurt.

Ryan did an interview with NYT in 2010  Q:Is this story in any way autobiographical or a reflection on your own experiences growing up?

A:It wasn’t really true to my experience at all. But I know so many people that it was true to. It was very true to Chris Colfer’s experience, and working with him for the past year, he would tell me stories. It’s amazing to me — last year when we did the “Glee” tour, every time Chris Colfer came out on that stage for his bows, 100 percent, he got the loudest cheers and applause, from all groups of people. Little girls, parents. A lot of people have embraced him and he’s part of their television-going family, so to see an episode in which he’s physically threatened is very upsetting for people, I think. But it puts a face on it. 

Q: It’s still rare to see gay characters on prime-time network programs, let alone one who is out in the way that Kurt is, and at a young age. Is there ever any pressure on you to tone down the portrayal of that character?

A: No, surprisingly not. Three episodes into the series last year, when we did the “Single Ladies” football number with him, he became an audience favorite and people started to write about that character and Chris Colfer. I think that character is in many ways the most important character on television, particularly for kids. When I was growing up, there was nobody like that. I think that character changes lives. I think that character launches conversation, both good and bad, and that’s a very powerful thing. I’ve done shows where if a character is a little bit controversial, the network and the studio are like, “Could you please tone that down?” They never did that at all with this character, and they were all very supportive of the story line. (X)

“Growing up in Indianapolis, Murphy sang in his church choir and immersed himself in high school musicals. His father was a semi-pro hockey player who was baffled by a son who requested a Vogue subscription when he was 5 years old and performed in his bedroom, holding a hairbrush in front of a mirror. He may not have understood his son, but he accepted him, even when Murphy revealed that he was gay at 15″.

“Having a dad that loves you as a young man is a very powerful thing that you carry into the world,” Murphy said. “Because no matter what you do, in some weird, unconscious way, if you’re a guy, you always try to please your dad. I think it’s a great thing to put on television. You’ve seen the gay character that gets kicked out of the house or is beaten up. You haven’t seen the gay character that is teased a little bit, but wins and triumphs.”

“The scene in which he tells his father was taken verbatim from Murphy's own life. Murphy felt that the scene was "a great thing to put on television", because, while gay characters are often isolated and attacked, audiences have rarely seen an openly gay character who "wins and triumphs". He further explained, "The show is about making you feel good in the end. It's about happy endings and optimism and the power of your personal journey and making you feel that the weird thing about me is the great thing about me. I've done other shows with gay characters, and I will say that in many of those cases, the gay characters didn't have a happy ending. And I thought you know what? Enough."(X)(X)

We also know that Ryan created the role of Kurt specifically for Chris. 

We don’t know what happened with the fall out(s) on set. Chris said he wouldn’t work for Ryan and 

“To this day, I'm devastated by everything that happened with that show." (X)

Other interring things I found:

“Over the course of six seasons of Glee, which petered out earlier this year, there was plenty written about backstage drama, fractured relationships and the death of star Cory Monteith from a drug overdose. All Murphy will offer are his own misgivings about his role on the show. "I was there with them all day long, and then we'd finish work and we'd go out and have fun all night, and I guess in a weird, twisted way, I was trying to relive the childhood I never had," he says. "I thought they wanted a parent, and they didn't. They didn't want me to tell them what to f—ing do. They didn't want me to tell them how to treat each other or what the world was like at the end of the day. I wish I could go back and do that differently with a lot of those actors. Some of them I'm still very close to: Lea Michele, Chord Overstreet, Darren Criss — but there were some that didn't work out well, and I regret that. I guess I just wish I had been able to let them figure it out for themselves."(X)

Conclusion: Ryan is a grown man and didn’t have it out for Chris. He respected Chris and used the Kurt role to tell his story of being a gay boy in small midwest town.   

Debunk #3

The poor treatment stems from extreme jealousy. For many, many reasons. 

Abby has claimed Ryan is jealous of Chris many times over the years-it still isnt’ true.  Ryan is a very successful producer, writer, creator.  I found a few quotes to back that up.  

“It's a peculiar thing to be asked by Murphy, 50, the closest thing the TV industry has to a proven hitmaker, save, perhaps, for Shonda Rhimes. Over the past decade and a half, he's made pop-culture juggernauts out of plastic surgeons on Nip/Tuck, high school misfits on Glee and witches, nuns and nymphomaniacs on American Horror Story. And in that time, he's become a name brand himself, more famous than all but the biggest stars in his sprawling casts. The showrunner, both pop savant and provocateur, has one of the richest eight-figure deals in television and a coterie of loyalists that includes Gwyneth Paltrow(with whom he's about to pitch a musical dramedy), Julia Roberts, Jessica Lange and now Lady Gaga. He's hosted President Obama at his home for a $40,000-a-couple fundraiser, and when he mentions his friends Norman, Barbra and David, he's referring to Lear, Streisand and Geffen.(X)

"There's a limited number of creators in film or TV where if you put the title plus their name — if you say, 'Steven Spielberg's blah blah blah' or 'Marvel's blah blah blah' — you're going to get a different answer than if you don't," Landgraf says, "and Ryan is one of those guys."(X)

Chris is a successful writer and if he is successful in writing and directing the TLOS movie, he could be a power player in Hollywood. But right now- even with his Time 100 award, he isn’t anywhere near Ryan Murphy.  I suppose Ryan could be jealous of something other than Chris’s success but I have seen no evidence of that. 

Conclusion: Nope. 

[the-desolated-quill]

Okay, Enough With The Live Action/CGI Hybrids - Quill’s Scribbles

So the trailer for the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie came out...

Do I really need to say it? Everyone and their mums have already said it. Hell, you’re probably saying it right now.

Sigh. Okay. Fuck it. I’ll say it.

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?!?!

The trailer itself is shockingly bad. It looks bland and generic with almost nothing in common with the games. The jokes are forced and painfully unfunny (why are the people in the airport more concerned that the ‘child’ in the bag isn’t James Marsden’s rather than that there’s a fucking child in the bag in the first place?!), Jim Carrey is being his usual obnoxious self and is plain and simply a terrible choice for Doctor Eggman (isn’t the whole point of Doctor Eggman that he’s supposed to, you know, look like an egg?), and the soundtrack is utterly cringeworthy (Gangsta’s Paradise? Really?!?!). But that all pales in comparison to by far and away the biggest problem with the trailer. And I think you can all guess what that is. 

Yes I’m of course referring to the noticeable absence of Team Chaotix. An artistic decision so despicable, it’s practically a hate crime. For shame! Everyone knows that Charmy Bee is the best character in the franchise and yet they don’t have the guts to put him in the movie! Fucking philistines!

...

Oh yeah, and Sonic the Hedgehog looks like a monstrous abomination concocted from the fever dreams of Doctor Frankenstein and Walt Disney.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about just how grotesque and disgusting this CGI Sonic is. He looks like what your computer would produce if it caught pneumonia. What I especially don’t understand is why they veered away so heavily from the original, iconic design. I mean...

I don’t know about you, but I’d honestly have no problem if the movie just kept this look from the games. Hell, I think even giving him realistic fur would be pushing it. This is perfectly fine. I could totally see this design working in a movie. Instead we get the secret love child of Gollum and Papa Smurf.

He just looks so weird with human proportions. The leg muscles, the two eyes, the human looking teeth. Apparently the filmmakers wanted this Sonic to look as realistic as possible. Because when I pay to see a movie about an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog that can run at supersonic speeds, that’s my first thought. ‘Is it realistic?’

... Jesus Christ.

But of course the main problem with this live action Sonic movie is that it exists in the first place. When it was first announced, I assumed in my naivety that it would be an animated movie. Because that would make sense, right? There have been movie and TV adaptations before and they were all animated. Imagine a big budget computer animated Sonic movie. That would be really cool. But it was not to be. In Hollywood’s infinite wisdom, they decided to go the live action route because... Actually why did they choose to go the live action route? Well that’s what I hope to address in this very Scribble.

Live action adaptations and remakes are nothing new of course. Disney had tried it a few times in the past with movies like 101 Dalmations, there have been other live action versions of animated or illustrated characters such as the Grinch and the Cat In The Hat, Garfield, the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and there was of course the infamous Super Mario Bros movie, which answered the question of what it would be like if the Mushroom Kingdom took place in the same universe as Judge Dredd. But this is the first time live action/CGI hybrids have been huge money spinners. Disney struck gold back in 2010 when Tim Burton’s version of Alice In Wonderland made a billion dollars at the box office and now the company is mining through their back catalogue of Disney classics and giving all their movies the live action treatment. Initially I was okay with this because in the case of Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent they were at least trying to reinterpret the original films and put a new spin on them, but now they just seem to be copying the movies verbatim. Making live action remakes just for the sake of making live action remakes.

Now other studios are trying their hand at, the most notable being Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Here’s a picture of the original Pikachu:

Cute, right?

Now here’s a picture of the live action Pikachu:

Can you see the problem here?

(also why the hell is Ryan Reynolds the voice of Pikachu? I honestly can’t think of anyone more inappropriate for the role. It’s like casting Samuel L. Jackson as a Powerpuff Girl)

The fact of the matter is some things just don’t work in live action. Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon work in their respective universes because they’re animated creatures in an animated world, and their anatomy and design fit that world. In the real world, it just doesn’t work. Pikachu looks strange and kind of creepy in the real world. The same is true of the other Pokemon. Jigglypuff looks utterly adorable in the games and animated show with its spherical body and cartoon eyes and you just want to take one to bed with you and cuddle them like a teddy bear, but in the real world it looks fucking scary!

I wouldn’t want to cuddle that thing! It looks like it would go for my throat given the opportunity!

The same is true of Sonic. Paramount’s attempts to make him look more ‘realistic’ just makes him look incredibly alien and out of place.

Another example I like to bring up is the film Christopher Robin. Now we all know Winnie the Pooh. Silly ol’ bear. Charming, cuddly and endearing, right? Just look at him.

How can you not fall in love with him?

Now here’s the live action version:

When I first saw the trailer, I was utterly creeped out. He looks like something out of a horror movie. Add to that that they got the original voice actor from the Disney cartoons to reprise the role, and Winnie the Pooh pretty much became the source of all my nightmares for the next couple of weeks. That lovable voice should not be coming out of that... thing.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Look:

Charming and lovable.

Weird and unsettling.

Creative and fun.

Photoshop disaster.

Sweet and likeable.

Fetch my crucifix and holy water.

Emotional and expressive.

So ‘realistic’ to the point where he looks like he has the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Now I recognise this largely comes down to subjective opinion. If you like these CGI redesigns, that’s great. More power to you. But I know for a fact I’m not the only one getting increasingly weirded out by these computer generated demons from Hell.

So why does Hollywood keep making these films. Well obviously in the case of Disney it’s because they’ve ran out of original ideas and want to make a quick buck by exploiting their audience’s nostalgia. (the same can be said of the Star Wars sequel trilogy). But what about other studios? Yes they’re financially motivated too, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

I think it’s largely down to the stigma of animated movies. Animation has become synonymous with children. When you hear the term ‘animated movie’, you automatically associate it with ‘kid’s film’. And ‘kid’s film’ is often used in a negative context. Like it’s somehow lesser than quote/unquote ‘proper’ movies. Live action suggests a certain pedigree. A sense of prestige. But that’s obviously bollocks. The quality of a film isn’t dictated by whether it’s live action or animated. It’s determined by the writing, directing and acting. There have been live action films made for kids and animated films made for adults. And I’m not talking about Sausage Party. I’m talking about Finding Nemo.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Finding Nemo? Isn’t that a kid’s film? No. It’s a family film. And that right there is the problem. You heard me say Finding Nemo, an animated film about talking fish, and you automatically associated it with a kids film. But the thing is Finding Nemo deals with some very dark and adult themes and its moral message of not being overprotective and allowing children to take risks is intended for the parents, not the kids. Obviously kids can still watch and enjoy Finding Nemo, but it’s the parents who are clearly the target here. The same is true of Toy Story 3. Children can still watch and enjoy it, but the film is clearly intended for people who watched the original Toy Story when they were a kid and are now grown up. When you stop and think about it, it’s really sad that family movies are associated with kids movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with kids movies obviously. But why do people assume that family movies are meant for kids? Why can’t they be adult stories that are also accessible to children? Books have done it. The Artemis Fowl series is kid friendly, but its tone, themes and style suggest the author has an older and more sophisticated target audience in mind. A Series Of Unfortunate Events is popular with kids, but it’s adults that get the full experience because of the way Lemony Snicket uses postmodern and meta-textual elements in the books, which would sail clean over the head of a kid reading it. The idea that a live action remake is somehow more ‘grown-up’ than an animated movie is just absurd. The original Lion King was very grown up, thank you very much. There are lots of bright colours and fun songs for the kids, but it also doesn’t sugarcoat the darker themes such as death, betrayal, corruption and abuse of power. Mufaser’s death isn’t going to be made any more impactful in live action. The animated version was more than heartbreaking.

Shifting the conversation back to Sonic, this is also intrinsically linked with another problem with Hollywood at the moment. Movie adaptations of video games. And again, it’s a similar problem. People, especially critics, view video games as being lesser than movies. Roger Ebert famously said that video games will never be considered art. But that’s nonsense. There have been loads of video games that could be and have been considered art. BioShock, for instance, which scrutinises and criticises both objectivism and capitalism. There’s the Mass Effect trilogy, which is often described as this generation’s Star Wars. The Last Of Us is widely considered to be a masterpiece by gamers and literacy scholars alike. Hell, the fact that Hollywood wants to make movie adaptations of video games at all suggests that games do in fact have some inherent artistic value after all. And it’s not as if I’m wholly against making movies based on video games. There are some games that could translate really well to films, Sonic being one of them. (I personally loved the Ratchet & Clank movie, for example. It’s just a shame nobody else fucking watched it due to the almost non-existent marketing). However there’s an inherent problem with translating video games to movies as opposed to, say, translating books to movies. In book to movies adaptations, studios are adding something. Visuals, sound, performance, etc. In video game to movie adaptations, they have to take things away. The most obvious is interactivity. Unlike movies where nothing is required of the audience other than to just dumbly stare at the screen, video games require the audience to actively control the story. Move the character, kill baddies, solve problems and stay alive. You are an active participant in the narrative. As a result, the emotional connection you feel with both the plot and the characters is often stronger than that in a movie because you have direct influence over what happens. 

Also video games have the luxury of being able to tell their stories over the course of eight to thirty to even a hundred hours of gameplay. There’s no way you could condense something like The Last Of Us down to a two and a half hour movie. There would just be too much lost. Important character moments and plot points that would have to be chucked in the bin. Yes things get lost in book to movie adaptations, but nowhere near at the scale of a game to movie adaptation. A possible workaround would be to make game to TV adaptations instead, but then we’re back to the interactivity problem again. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that movies are better than books or that video games are better than movies. I’m just saying they’re each individually suited to tell their own kinds of stories in their own unique ways, therefore translating from one medium to the other is often difficult. The Last Of Us would never make a good movie, and that’s okay. The game is still amazing and the story is still amazing. Its artistic merit isn’t lessened because it can’t be translated to films, in the same way the merits of a bike aren’t lessened because it can’t fly. It’s just not designed to do that.

I guess the point I’m making is there’s no one way to tell a good story. There are an infinite number of ways it can be done. So lets stop Hollywood’s obsession with pigeonholing everything into one format and actually explore the possibilities, shall we?

[hasansonsuzceliktas]

What’s This Regression Therapy Thing That Can Radically Change Your Life?

Regression therapy is a fascinating experience that I’ve personally been through, and benefitted from, many times. However, before experiencing it myself, I had no idea what it was about, so to inform our readers, I interviewed at length two leading Turkish figures in this field. Tülin Etyemez Schimberg is one of the founding members of the Earth Association for Regression Therapy (EARTh), while M. Reşat Güner happens to be my regression therapist. Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: When I first heard about “regression,” I assumed that someone would come and hypnotize me, so he or she could delve into my past lives and tell me about them. But why did I think like this? I guess it’s because years ago, I saw some people on TV shows performing hypnosis, so when I went to see Reşat for the first time, I expected something like that. However, I later found that regression was something entirely different and more profound. I now want to put a question to you masters of this field: What is regression in the real sense? Is it an attempt to go back in time through hypnosis, or is it something else? Tülin Etyemez Schimberg: People often ask us, “What is regression?” In a literal sense, it means “to go back.” We could explain it simply as returning to the roots of our problems and reconstructing them. Yes, it’s frequently confused with hypnosis, and when people call us to make an appointment, they often ask, “Will you hypnotize me? Will I be conscious throughout?” What they’re really asking is, “Will I lose control?” This is people’s biggest fear. In reality, not everyone (maybe 9% or less) can easily reach a deep level of hypnosis, although many people assume they will. Moreover, it’s not even necessary, because when you go into a deep hypnotic trance, you won’t be in a state where you can speak clearly or unearth some information. When people are in such a state, a hypnotherapist generally gives some suggestions to them and aims to restore things subconsciously. Now, as we talk, what is your attention directed toward? It’s looking at the outside world, but where does it go when you close your eyes? It shifts toward your feelings, emotions and thoughts. What’s more, when we talk about past memories, it’s how we remember them, whether it’s in terms of images or the emotions and feeling they create within ourselves. In other words, memories of the past are actually nothing but images, emotions, and feelings. Therefore, in regression, going back to these memories of the past involves the images (if the person is visual) or feelings (if the person is kinesthetic) of those times. Note that the vast majority of people are kinesthetic, which means they sense things, such as through gut feelings. For example, after you shared your session stories in derKi and The Wise, your readers thought that they would experience the past as if they were watching a movie. People called us and asked, “Will it be like watching a movie?” Hasan, you are highly visual because you’re often watching movies and so on, plus you are already experienced in this field. Regression work, however, has different effects on different people. Some sense it more as feelings, but to summarize, I could say that we return to the past and access its memories. We cannot change the past, but we can change the feelings, blockages, and negative emotions (e.g., helplessness, fear of failure, and so on) that such memories inflict on us and cause us to shut down. Would you like to add something, Reşat? M. Reşat Güner: Yes. People experience many problems. We have two sides. There is the conscious side that we are focused on during our daily life and the unconscious side, which is also called the subconscious. These two terms mean much the same, but I prefer to call it the unconscious. We are not consciously aware of this side, yet it constitutes a very precious part of our being, an essential part. There is relatively little that we can consciously remember, and even our childhood memories often elude us. What we do remember are various clear-cut events, while the rest seem like they’ve been erased. However, 95% of our lives is ruled by the unconscious. Unless you undertake some special effort aimed at awareness (e.g., heavy meditation and long-term awareness work), everything generally proceeds along the unconscious patterns. In mainstream psychology, unfortunately, the unconscious is limited to people’s biographical past in their current life, from birth to the present day. However, in the light of both ancient traditions and modern research, we discover that what we call the unconscious is profoundly deep, containing everything from our current life plus the memories we can access from past lives. This means that as well as containing our present life memories, it also contains some memories that belong to our predecessors. All of these influence us, and moreover, these memories make up our identities and personalities, yet we are unaware of them. After all, what we call the self is nothing but the identity and memories of a person. Take away the memories and there is no identity, no self. Nothing is left. Therefore, these components make up our current being. Of course, not all the memories in the unconscious are rosy and perfect. When we look at the history of humanity, we see plenty of pain, suffering, hardship, conflicts, wars, and so on. The law of the world is this: everything advances within the duality and we learn within the duality... The people who read your own writings already know this. So, under these conditions, no one is perfectly clean. All of us carry many problems and issues at the unconscious level that need to be resolved, and this is generally referred to as karma. Regression therapy was specially developed after the 1960s. Pioneering therapists in this field found that not all the problems that afflicted people could be solved with established therapies. People were unable to transform in a real sense, and some people went through a psycho-spiritual crisis. By this, we mean that they experienced such compelling things in their lives (in a spiritual sense) that they couldn’t cope with them. Let’s say they felt they were under the influence of some energy, they had some past-life memory suddenly surface, or they began to experience strange, recurring dreams. They couldn’t cope with these. Stanislav Grof is one of the leading figures in the field of transpersonal psychology. Grof carried out some impressive work in order to transform and to dissolve the blockage material in the unconscious by taking people into an altered state of consciousness through the holotropic breath method and LSD. Work such as this later inspired regression therapy. Later on, Roger Woolger, Hans TenDam and our first teachers Jeffrey Ryan and Janet Cunningham, as well as other therapists, worked and trained in the USA and started experimenting with a new approach. They tried to see how far they could reach when they looked for the roots of a problem. They began to see that clients would recall past-life memories when asked about the root of their problems. Once such memories were unearthed, it became obvious that revealing them was not enough. These memories needed to be worked on with suitable methods, which we call reframing. To varying degrees, changes occur in people’s lives. For some, however, the changes can be major, even in a single session. For others, it may take several sessions or even longer. Shortly afterwards, the problems that couldn’t be transformed or solved through other methods can be dealt with easily. This then allows a person to progress in his or her spiritual development. We’ve personally experienced this, and we’ve also witnessed other examples. This field is also growing. The European Association for Regression Therapy, of which we are both members, has changed its title to The Earth Association for Regression Therapy, because within a short time, its membership has become global. We now have many esteemed colleagues working in many countries, although the Netherlands, Portugal and Brazil stand out. The two of us here work in Turkey and provide training through Unicorn, which we founded in 2011. Yes, it is a very powerful tool, and as you’ve already said from experience, there’s no need for a deep trance with this method. On the contrary, it is possible to access past lives from within a very light trance, and there’s a simple reason for this. When people suffer from carrying the memories of a past life, the root of these memories is already within their psyche (i.e., their own unconscious). For example, if a person says, “I feel an overwhelming fear whenever I need to speak to a crowd, and I have no idea why,” this person actually carries the root memory of when this fear first occurred in his or her energy field, and he or she carries it to the here and now. From that emotion, we rewind to its root and find the cause through a shortcut. Of course, much depends on whether people are ready for it or not. Regression is not always about going back to past lives; it is often used to go back to the past of the current life as well. For example, it is also used to reframe some memories of our time in the womb. Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: What’s the importance of the therapist during a regression? Moreover, how can we find a competent regression therapist? Imagine that I found someone who promoted himself as a therapist on the Internet. I mean, will he be able to do it? Does he have the necessary qualifications? How will I know whether he does? It’s possible to fix a problem, but it’s also possible to make it worse, and we see this frequently in spiritual practices. In fact, this also occurs in many other fields: People can inflict harm on others with their pseudo-knowledge, and many may be unaware of their lack of skill. Tülin Etyemez Schimberg: Let me begin with your first question: Does the therapist hold a magic wand, and when he touches you with it, everything becomes rosy? Ah, if only! In fact, there is a magic want, but the client holds it rather than the therapist. The client is just not aware of it yet. The path through regression therapy is actually walked by the client, and the role of the therapist is to provide companionship. When I meet clients for the first time, I tell them, “This is a path you will walk, and we will walk it at your own speed. I will merely accompany you.” Indeed, the more people open themselves, and the more they want to be healed, the shorter the journey will be. One, two, or three sessions can bring radical changes and breakthroughs in such cases. Let’s say you have a window, and you can only see outside through a gap in the left-hand corner. Through the work you do, this gap gets increasingly larger. Sometimes, this opening is reflected suddenly in life, and sometimes it takes longer to achieve this opening. People mostly expect things to change right away, but the patterns we have carried to this life have come about over a very long period, possibly many lifetimes. Despite this, we want everything to change immediately. The major obstacle to this desire comes from our own unconscious, because it does not want to change so easily. No matter how bad the situation is—even if you’re living in an abusive marriage, suffering physical abuse or insults, and so on—we don’t want to let it go because the situation is familiar to us. We are way too attached and dedicated to our pain, and over time, we become addicted to the hormones produced by our brain in response to the suffering and pain we experience. After all, it’s easy to see how our society feeds on pain and suffering; it is reflected in our songs, television series, movies, and other media. We hear and watch these things, and in doing so, we satisfy this emotion and become increasingly addicted to the feelings that such emotions evoke. We become addicted to the emotional states created within us. We therefore need to understand that this process varies from one client to the next. At the point you say, “That’s enough!” major changes occur. In other words, before the point when the last drop makes the water flow out of the cup, people need to go through many processes. So, what is the role of the therapist? It’s to accompany the client by asking the right questions at the right points, because the client has identified himself with his pain so much that he cannot separate himself from it. He has become one with it. The role of the therapist is to remove him from the thing he identifies with. The therapist disassociates the client, so he can look at this thing from the outside. By doing this, he can gain some insight. This does not happen during hypnosis, because the client cannot see the connections at such moments—he can only receive suggestions from the therapist, such as a suggestion to quit smoking or another bad habit. However, the person must first know why he started smoking. Often, people come to us and ask, “Why do I always attract the same kind of men/women?” or “S/he makes me feel unimportant.” We always blame others with statements like, “S/he makes me feel that way. S/he always does that to me. S/he makes me angry.” However, all of these things happen within us, so the role of the therapist is to disassociate clients from these things, allow them to look at things from the outside, and later upload a resource (because within our being we have these resources) to the client. This system, therefore, exists within the most efficient and suitable transformative therapies: disassociate, perform necessary cleaning (i.e., discover and understand the root reason and its connections), upload the resource, and reintegrate it, because that part is our own part. You could call it a past life or like Jung, you could say we draw it from the collective unconscious. You could even say it is a fabrication of our subconscious or unconscious. Many people ask, “Did I make this up?” and we tell them, “Even if you did, it’s no problem! If this anger of yours were made into a movie, what kind of scenario would it have?” We find that no matter whether it’s fact, past life, or a fabrication, when we properly address and resolve it, the client’s problem dissolves. The point is not the story itself but rather the message that the unconscious is trying to relay through that story. Now, in order to become a regression therapist and carry out such work, a person certainly needs to be properly trained and educated. In 2006, the European Association for Regression Therapy organized a meeting with 30 therapists and consultants working in this field in various European countries. Together with another friend, I attended this meeting. While we originally planned to meet the experts and learn from them, we suddenly found ourselves becoming founding members and the first board members of this association! This process was very educational for us. I worked as a board member for six years. We started with 30 members, and now we have 300 members from all over the world. The aim of this association was, and still is, to establish certain criteria and a code of conduct for therapists working in this field and provide continuing education, because this is certainly not child’s play. As a therapist, you touch very sensitive and very private areas of people, and this must be done competently and consciously. This is why EARTh members get together every year for an annual convention and for a world congress every three years. In 2011, the fourth world congress was organized in Kusadasi, Turkey. I was the panel chair, and 130 professionals from 29 countries attended and shared their methods. By learning various methods as a therapist, you widen the range of tools in your toolbox. Not everyone needs to hop from one past life to another, and sometimes what impacts us the most comes from episodes in our current life, and regression is important to this as well. To reach out to professionals, there are two organizations. The International Board for Regression Therapy (IBRT) lists on its website (www.ibrt.org) the various IBRT-certified therapists around the world. They also offer training. In addition, EARTh started as a European association, but it’s now truly global. It’s website (www.earth-association.org) lists all student and professional members under their respective countries. In this list, we can proudly say that we have many professional therapists in Turkey, all of which are properly trained and certified. We suggest that everyone refers to these lists when looking for a therapist. Hasan “Sonsuz” Çeliktaş: Is regression therapy suitable for everyone? Is it a useful method for every person? Tülin Etyemez Schimberg: It is not for everyone, especially not in cases of schizophrenia and heavily psychotic cases. Actually, the people we work with are generally just like you and me: ordinary people who want to progress in life but experience obstacles, relationship problems, and issues in business or family life. They are generally not experiencing extreme or profound personality disorders. After all, there are other experts for such cases. Let me give you an example: A client had constant aching in her back, ankles and knees. She had been to all kinds of medical experts and gone through all kinds of tests, but because no physical cause could be found, they said it was psychological and sent her home. When she came to me, we returned to the root of these aches and pains, and she found herself in a past-life scene. Her village was being raided, and the men of the village were gathered in the square. The women and children had already fled the village before the attack, and my client was the wife of the village’s leader. The raiders begin to kill the men, but some of them escape. The raiders then capture my client and torture her to learn the whereabouts of the escapees. She does not tell them, so they choke her and throw her into a river. As she lands, her back hits the rocks, and this was the trigger for all my client’s aches and pains, which had started suddenly on her 30th birthday. Well, in that past life, she was 30 when she died, so an age trigger occurred. When my client became 30 years old, her body began to express the pains because of this age trigger. So, what did we do? After learning the whole story, we returned to the moment of death and by applying psychodrama at this moment (where the client assumes the past-life personality’s body posture and so on), we lifted her up from the rocks by saying, “You are dead now. You are not in that body anymore. Whatever happened there is over now!” We then allowed her to go to the other side. That person was already within that memory, and her memories, thoughts and emotions had reflected in her body as well. Her helplessness and hopelessness literally clung to her back, and her body remembered the rocks hitting and the moment of death. At that moment, as the therapist, you say to the body, “Now you are dead and not there anymore!” Then, she takes this part and integrates it, and you allow her to react in the way she wanted to back then but couldn’t (we have methodological dialogues for doing this) because the body couldn’t defend itself. It was helpless and couldn’t do what it wanted to do, and all the other villagers were dead. There are so many cycles there to work on, and once you complete the whole story, you ask the body, “Do you really need to carry these aches and pains any longer?” The unconscious then says, “No, there’s no need anymore!” because the problem has been solved. Alternatively, you ask, “What did you bring from that life? What did you carry over? How does that life influence you now?” Let’s say that a woman refuses to start a family out of fear of losing children. Let’s say that in a past life, her children died and that person decided to never have more children to avoid losing them again. Such cycles influence your relationships and choices in your current life. When you resolve them, so that the unconscious cannot continue that cycle anymore, the physical aches and pains go away by themselves. M. Reşat Güner: Exactly. The unconscious is a multi-layered structure and so are our minds. We have somatic minds, which means our bodies have their own memory and nervous system. There is also another “brain” in our intestines and hearts, called the enteric, and it carries memories as well. None of our emotions come out of thin air. Some people hone their talents to perfection, and this doesn’t arise from nothing either. I’m a musician, so I notice many examples in the field of music. Children at a very young age can sometimes play with such maturity and ardor that it is inconceivable that they learned within such a short period. It follows that behind such talents there is also the effort spent in past lives, and these are somewhat connected to each other. Therefore, the emotions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs (i.e., the unconscious material, the material that constitutes our identities) is not known to us. Even though we are unaware of it, it influences our lives nevertheless. It follows then that if a person experiences some obstacles in his current life due to remembered experiences from a past life, then regression therapy may hit the target. Many examples prove the efficacy of this work. Let me put it this way: I have personally conducted at least five sessions with a client where we do not talk about topics such as regression or past lives. He or she comes to seek advice about various problems, and during the first session, he or she sits down and at the moment the client’s eyes are closed, whoosh! He or she is experiencing the past-life memory related to the problem. This has happened directly before I could even say anything... To evoke past-life memories, we normally use various methods and techniques that are specific for each client, but in cases like the above, we don’t need to do anything. The client closes his or her eyes and is in the memory. What does this tell us? No conversation has taken place yet, and there was no introduction or information given. This shows that memories are at the root of some people’s problems. Such memories are evoked or brought to the surface with various techniques, where they are then worked on and ultimately dissolved. The effect of this continues to work in the client’s life. Occasionally, we work with clients for only one session if the energetic change (which occurs slowly at the unconscious level) is deep enough to continue transmitting its energy. When the change at the energetic level is allowed to occur, after a while, the brain, nervous system, and the enteric nervous system digest this change and begin to adapt to it. We call this transformation. Hasan “Sonsuz” Çeliktaş: We are somehow like computers, and this sounds like software we carry over from the past. Think of how your computer starts to slow down over time because too many programs are working at the same time or you’ve inadvertently installed a virus. You spend your energy, but you still can’t get the intended performance from your computer. I think we can summarize regression work as identifying these unnecessary programs working in the background. They pointlessly waste energy, so they need to be shut down. Thank you both for the invaluable information you have shared with us in this interview. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Read the full article