#and about them not wanting to deal with many cut scene versions and consequently various dialogue options too

[dairine-bonnet]

It seems to me that Saul Karath is a revanasi shipper (or revastila one, it depends)...)

May I think that he's a secret revalek shipper too?:D

[shriekbackmusic]

Collaborations #1 (’Shriekback are Seeing Other People’)

Well, collaboration is everything really innit? No man is an island, not even the ones who pretend they are. That’s what I reckon.  Merging somebodys’ talents and energies with yours. What a thing. The very stuff of life.

Still, it can be a fractious business: politics will come into it. LIke: who’s in charge here?  Who gets to say whether your bit is better than my bit? And how do we work that shit out? A microcosm of the world or what?

Undeterred, we  seem to do it (collaborate) quite a lot. And these are some pretty successful tunes, I would say. Good for us. Bold and resolute Shriekback! 

So there’s Hope, right?

(BA)

MART’S TRACKS:

DROP BY DROP Barker/Burridge

Taken from my Album" Water and Stone." Exploring my rolling Gtr and groove in 7 with the wonderfully talented musician cellist Emily Burridge.

Inspired by the miracle of water, its rhythm, its music, its journey, its myths, its poetry and beauty 

FLYING SAUCER Barker/ Roedelius/Noah1

Lovely to have met and worked with the master of Ambience, Hans Joachim Roedelius for the Album Fibre.

Recorded up in the hills of Shropshire with George Taylor (Noah1) and Jez coed

This piece was inspired by my riff Im playing on the Hang Drum, hence the title "Flying Saucer"

GOLDEN MOON Barker/Young

Taken from my mini Album”  Blue” Talitha Rise.

This was my first big endeavour into the musical spiritual world and  collaboration with Jo beth young.

We are joined on the Riti by Juldeh Camara.

PILGRIM`S WAY Barker/Adams

My new project/collaboration still ongoing with the mighty talent of Justin Adams .

This first piece inspired by ancient walks.

This new whole album partly inspired by the writing of Robert Macfarlane "the old ways"

SANDLINES. Barker/ Adams

Second piece inspired the Ancient paths of the desert. 

THE LAKE Barker/Young taken from the album" Abandoned Orchid House” Talitha Rise

Another collaboration with Jo beth Young and another piece in 7!

Intense, energetic and rich with riddles.

THE SELKIE. Barker / Pynn

Second Piece taken from my Album "Water and Stone”

Inspired by the Myths and stories of the Selkie. With the magical multi instrumentalist Nick Pynn on Violin.

CARL’S TRACKS:

Words Fail Me

with AMANDA KRAVIT

(Barratt/Marsh)

David Barratt and I were introduced to Amanda by John Mrvos, one of the A&R team at EastWest Atlantic in New York (Happyhead’s label) - she was his girlfriend and he wanted to get her recorded, basically, so we came up with this. Dave had done some kind of publishing deal that allowed him to sample the company catalogue, hence Ravi Shankar playing sitar all over it. Backing vocals by Bill Clift; some of the drums sound like Jim Kimberley, sampled from HH sessions  (1992ish.)

The Longest Goodbye

with BILL CLIFT

(Clift/Marsh)

I’ve written loads with Bill under various banners, of course. This is a mid-90s demo recorded in Bill’s flat in Greenwich. BVs by Stella Clifford and Marilyn Gentle, bass (I think) by Gary Brady… not sure who did the wibbly organ. This song was later recorded by Bill’s band Fuzzbuddy, re-titled Killing Me Now - it’s just been re-released as part of their Complete Studio Recordings compilation.

THE PALACE DOGS

with GEOFF WOOLEY

I’ve collaborated with Geoff Woolley since Out On Blue Six, and in school bands even before that. These two tracks, from around 1995, are both built from sampled TV shows (and therefore subject to all sorts of potential copyright issues…).

Queen of Peoples’ Hearts

(Marsh/Woolley)

The self-styled QOPH’s Panorama special, cut up and pumped up with added Dario Argento and a spot of Jeremy Paxman. The Original is all-electronic; the Guitar Version has not only mine and Geoff’s rhythm bits but some wildfire lead from Steve Bolton (Atomic Rooster, Paul Young, The Who etc. and currently fronting the mighty Dead Man’s Corner). Take yer pick.

Crazy Dames

(Marsh/Woolley)

The main voice and piano on here are from a 1961 Twilight Zone episode called The Midnight Sun, in which the Earth is knocked out of orbit and is spiralling towards the Sun… it gets hot. Other vocals by Stella Clifford and Marilyn Gentle.

GASWERKS

The Ying Tong Song

(Milligan)

Basically the same format as The Palace Dogs with the addition of Bill Clift, whose idea it was to knock out a dance version of The Goons’, er, classic. Dig that crazy rhythm, indeed. We were told the novelty song market was a hard one to crack… by the singer of Black Lace, who should know, I suppose…

WOOLLEY/MARSH

The Girlfriends Of Dorian Gray

(Barratt/Marsh/Woolley)

David Barratt came up with the conceit of a modern Dorian Gray who preserves his youth (or immaturity) not by having a grotesquely ageing portrait in the attic but by having an ever-changing string of girlfriends who absorb the consequences of his many flaws and are discarded one after another. Dave sketched out the chorus and then proposed that he, I and Deni Bonet (NY-based violinist and writer that we’ve worked with on various projects) should write our own versions of the story, possibly with the idea of creating some kind of meta-version combining them all. That never happened, but I like the track Geoff and I came up with and the lyric is nice and tricksy - shades of Costello, maybe, if I say so myself.

You’re The Only One

(Marsh/Woolley)

A re-write of a Happyhead demo, switching New York electronica for some 90s Britpop vibes, it sounds like. Bit of a kinky ménage à trois scenario with reasonably loud guitars. Nice.

BARRY’S TRACKS

The Frances & Martine poems, with Hilda Sheehan (2014)

part 1: GLOW, GOOSE, CORN-REMOVER

part 2: COAT, ARM, KNOB OF BUTTER

I met Hilda Sheehan - through the (surprisingly vibey) Swindon poetry scene when I was stationed back there for 10 years in '04.  She was often the star turn at their spoken word events and, I thought, had the mark of a real artist in that she came with her own self-contained world (’magical realist Northern UK kitchen sink’, if I had to describe it).

I thought it would be fun to 'set' (as they say) some of her poems to music and so I did. From Hilda's considerable oeuvre, I picked the Frances and Martine series - I liked F&M's mutually abrasive dependence - the key ingredient in any sitcom - and the succinct and sometimes brutal nature of each of their adventures. 

Dame Hilda Sheehan

The Anaxaton6 EP with Mike Tournier (2013)

I first worked with Mike Tournier (Big Mike as opposed to Little Mike - these were Flukes' Contrasting Mikes at the time) as producer on their OTO album c.94. Techno outfit Fluke apparently liked them some Olde Shriekback (they had worked previously with Wendy and Sarah) and thought I might add something to the project. 

It turned out that producing a techno band is every bit as awkward as you might imagine (there’s only one computer screen for a start) and we abandoned the collaboration after I'd failed to insert myself into Fluke's process in any useful way (sandwich run doesn't count).

Anyway, we stayed in touch and collaborated rather more successfully on a Fluke/Shriekback tune and performance for MTV.  

It was the redoubtable Julian Nugent, Fluke's manager, who got in touch - in 2013 to suggest that Mike and I might like to try knocking up a tune together.

I liked the idea of this straightaway. Mike can produce huge, hi-torque productions and I had an idea of a songwriting approach which I though might complement this. The vocalist would be recognisably the bloke out of Shriekback but CG’d with florid new appendages. I fancied some mad-as-a-rat lyrics (Welcome to their secret sign: Boola Stack! Haunted Lego of the Mind! Boola Stack!) but the music would be slick and vivid and solidly crafted because that's always how Mike rolls. Thus you get something quite absurd being taken very seriously which is, to my mind, the best thing you can possibly have.

extract  from the sleeve notes:

BONE MARAUDER tells of a pure love, painful engorgement and hog sorcery. 

JUJUGRID (GO LIVE!) wrangles with hedonic guilt, ecclesiastical turpitude and leaves everything else the fuck alone. 

BOOLA STACK! - There are so many things to say of Boola Stack that to ennumerate them insults us both.

NO FOOL BOLETUS... let's just be clear about this: you got nothing to hide, there's no need to worry. Be lucky.

Michaele don Turino and Bleary Android are the naked mortals chained to the husky obelisk of ANAXATON6 

Anaxaton6 has some videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anaxaton6

Mike Tournier

[theseerasures]

Frozen 2 Reaction Post

surprisebitch.gif

this is 5000% because i don’t wanna do other stuff, but is it not poetic justice that i should come back to the tumbls for Frozen 2: Elsa Runs Away Some More

i’m gonna prologue this by saying that by and large i enjoyed the film tremendously; of course since this is 2019 i would have enjoyed anything that didn’t end with Elsa committing nonsensical war crimes before being put down like Old Yeller or pulling a no-homo to transcend time and space (that’s right, i’m hip enough to know about TWO of the biggest media fiascos this year, you jelly?), but the film was enjoyable even beyond that, mostly in how it affirmed my own opinions about the universe

HOWEVER, there were also huge problems that really have to be addressed, and we’re gonna start with those

cut for length and a truly immense amount of spoilers

things i didn’t like:

so the Iduna being Sami All Along thing was, um. bad! it was bad, and really reads like the team trying to cover their asses after the blowback from the first movie. why was it such a big deal for ~a Northuldran to love an Arendellian~ when Arendelle was 100% at fault in the conflict? were the spirits just like “oh the indigenous tribe that has cared for us and lived alongside us for centuries are fine i guess but OH LOOK the whitest among them just made googly eyes at the son of the guy who wants to colonize and enslave us, let’s root for those crazy kids and make their firstborn the avatar”

making Iduna a White Sami and leaning on the excuse that in real life the Sami people are linguistic and ethnically diverse and some of them can pass as white would have been fine if they didn’t EXPLICITLY RACIALIZE EVERY OTHER TRIBE MEMBER ON SCREEN. come on guys, just admit you liked Last Samurai but knew that that exact premise wouldn’t fly anymore

why couldn’t it be just a nice person who saved Agnar? why did we get yet another version of the old Pocahontas fetish?

why did Iduna being Northuldran REMAIN such a big deal to the point that she never told her kids about it and she and Agnar had to tell separate but equal bedtime stories about the same event??

whew i’m so glad this all happened so Elsa, the whitest non-anthropomorphic-snowman character in the movie, could save those savage natives with spears! They Needed Her Guidance

the songs this time mostly...felt like they didn’t really want this movie to be a musical but were contractually obligated to write songs for Disney until the heat death of the universe

case in point: Some Things Never Change was going for the Happily Ever After vibe that the Steven Universe movie had, but it...didn’t really feel earned. we obviously needed a place-setter song, but it didn’t really establish anything about what the characters have been up to or what might be still bothering them, because apparently everything is great! this worked for Steven Universe because it came off of five SEASONS of character development, but Elsa’s last big character revelation that we the audience saw was “wow guess i’m not the worst scum on earth after all.” the timeskip can only do so much, is what i’m saying

Kristoff got NOTHING to work with. i’m not like, horribly broken up about it since i know they had to keep it tight for the kids, but fucking OLAF got a heavier arc than he did, and it feels like a missed opportunity that they didn’t link HIS backstory to the Northuldrans, what with him being orphaned/abandoned/raised by trolls already set up. it doesn’t have to siphon into the White Savior main story at all, just have--i dunno, a few more scenes with the Northuldrans and him realizing that he’s probably descended from refugees who got cut off from the forest

the proposal thing was cute until i realized that they were going to just hit the same beats over and over again with each scene. it should have been resolved in act 1 instead of Kristoff disappearing for half the movie and then tacking on the proposal at the very end. not every subplot has to be stretched out to the end! in this case i feel like stretching it out actually REGRESSED aspects of Kristanna, since it relied on Anna misreading so many signals that it strained believability even for Anna. we’re supposed to think they’ve NEVER talked about this, despite having dated for 3 years and consistently trading off on being the most Extra person in the room?

the confirmation that Olaf’s fingers can wiggle will haunt my dreams

me when the stone giants interrupted Elsa’s conversation with Honeymaren: yOU COCKBLOCKERS

i find myself growing increasingly weary of the now token Disney Wink at Camera, and Elsa rolling her eyes and her past self doing Let It Go was probably the apex of that particular antipathy. showing that you’re so Over the song that made you billions in a movie that you’re shilling to the EXACT SAME CROWD is the most obnoxious humble-flex i can think of

as much as i liked Elsa jumping into the Pit of Past Misdeeds and freezing to death, i think the scene happened waaaaaayyyy too fast, especially if you compare it to how long it took for Anna in the first movie. she’s not really given any time to process what’s happening, and it kind of lessens the emotional impact.

Olaf is gone!! he’s gone, i miss him so much!! i cry myself to sleep!!!! OLAFFFFFFF!!! false. i do not miss him

i distinctly recall liking Olaf just fine in the first movie and actually found him tolerable here too, but wow i was not happy when they resurrected him, even though i knew it was a sure thing

maybe it’s because NOTHING had consequences in the end and even Arendelle, the place that all the characters have been treating like a thoroughfare for two movies, had to get saved at the last second!! Arendelle the place??? we were supposed to care enough about that to want it to be saved?? it’s not the fucking GALACTICA guys! there weren’t even any people left in the town! it’s bizarre that they tried to go so hard in the reparations route and then swerved at the last second. let Arendelle drown you cowards! let the Northuldrans offer help in solidarity if you really wanted the “bridge between worlds” angle, but come the fuck on! didn’t something like this happen with Life Is Strange already?

why didn’t Elsa go to her sister’s coronation is it just like a thing now for her to miss the major life events of her family members

the statues they unveiled at the end were horrifying

things i liked:

a lowkey thing that i’ve always appreciated about the first movie was its willingness to Go There when it came to depicting well intentioned parents who are still mired in various character flaws and wound their kids deeply, so it was nice to see that return and get expanded with parents who had Lives separate from their kids which made them That Way, and the consequences of those Lives often come back to influence subsequent generations no matter how much they try to keep it contained. it’s a good, logical extension from what happened with Elsa in the first movie.

and it’s another Steven Universe vibe, but they can go further with it faster because Elsa and Anna are the hegemony in this movie. they’re the history-makers, so their family drama very easily becomes political, and the lessons they pick up from family memories immediately end up changing the fantasy history landscape. it’s dope

baby Anna’s lil feetsies

Anna wanted to marry everyone and Elsa thought kissing was gross

everyone does feel palpably older! the first movie had a very teen feel insofar as everything was We Have to Do This or We Will All Die Immediately, but this time around all the characters feel much more comfortable in their own skin throughout the movie

everyone getting more than two outfits and all wearing pants

the revelation after so many headcanons of Elsa being a ruthless pragmatist, Elsa always being two steps ahead politically, Elsa being a literal and metaphorical chessmaster that Elsa is...actually just kind of spacey and weird was for me extremely welcome. i think part of this was done in service of Anna becoming queen at the end, but it makes sense. “attack it with ice powers” and “run away” are still pretty much the only two strings to Elsa’s bow. this is not to say that she was a bad queen, or that she didn’t try her damndest to be a fair and just ruler--when it comes down to it i think Elsa still knows more Facts about how to rule a kingdom than Anna ever will, it’s just that she’s also horribly averse to conflict and “pacing in place while blaming herself” is pretty much the extent of her productivity under serious pressure.

what sets Elsa apart (other than the ice powers) isn’t that she’s prodigiously talented, but that she’s kindhearted and extremely sensitive to the emotions and fates of others. (she’s the one who asks what happened to the spirits when Agnar is done with his half of the story.) she agonized over hurting Anna one way vs. hurting Anna another way for THIRTEEN YEARS and still couldn’t make up her mind until she was literally backed into a corner, and even that decision was “run away but FARTHER.” Anna wanting to reconcile with Elsa even after thirteen years wasn’t just because Anna’s love eclipses all; Elsa also left that door open for her, because she could never be quite as ruthless or even SELFLESS as to send her sister away for good. (”then leave! actually jk i’ll leave instead”)

but Anna wasn’t ever the exception for Elsa, either. Anna wasn’t the only corner of Elsa’s heart that she left open--Elsa’s like that with EVERYONE, even people she just met, or disembodied voices in the wild. Elsa can never do quite as many Right Things as she thinks she should, she can never be quite as driven, as strong, as single-minded as she thinks she needs to be, to fully commit to making decisions for other people. she feels too deeply and wants too much, even after all those years of trying to scour herself out with a lathe. it’s what ruins and saves her.

Anna and Elsa being horrible at charades in diametrically opposite ways was the most life affirming thing to happen to me this year

Elsa couldn’t act out ice

the two of them had MULTIPLE conversations with each other that didn’t immediately result in mortal peril!!! what a world guys

Into the Unknown fucking slaps but i’m now REALLY confused about the diegesis of the songs in this movie. i’d assumed they were all happening in story, what with the Voice and the multiple references to Let It Go, but Elsa literally bays at the moon in the middle of the night here and no one woke up??? maybe they’re all just really heavy sleepers who knows

or maybe the staff just take it in stride at this point--oh, Her Majesty is singing and crying again

Kristoff and Anna CANONICALLY FUCK, and not even in the typical cartoon “look they have kids, they canonically fuck” way in the “hey my sister and her snowchild that we’re all coparenting together are asleep on the sled, shall we fuck a mere three feet away without even putting up a divider or something” way

gotta give Jen Lee kudos for making the “Elsa has ice powers because she’s the fifth spirit” retcon make thematic sense. the most obvious way to go about this WOULD have been the avatar direction, but Elsa isn’t the union of the four elements but the union of the spirits and humanity, which is to say that she witnesses them and keeps their memories, bringing them to life and solidifying them with her powers. she’s obviously the best person for the job, since y’know. she spent thirteen years on one memory alone.

wait does this mean Elsa is basically the Resurrection Stone?? buhhhh i don’t wanna think about it

of course Anna’s sword just came from her grabbing it from an ice statue i don’t know what else i expected

i laughed at both of Olaf’s reenactments i don’t know what to tell you

i feel...Some Kinda Way about the discourse saying that Mattias being black is problematic because it suggests black collusion in indigenous genocide, but it’s not my place to comment on that, so i’ll just say that it was a pleasure to see Sterling K. Brown having fun in a role instead of his usual gravitas and misery

Elsa first making eye contact with the icemander, or Two Feral Creatures Recognize Each Other As Such--i can’t believe i thought Hiccup would be the weirdest horse girl i’d ever encounter in fiction when it’s OBVIOUSLY Elsa

ELSA COULDN’T ACT OUT ICE

what a novel concept to have Elsa charging forward while Anna tries to pull her back, telling her to slow down, that she’s climbing too high

appreciated the subtle seeding they did of Anna’s political savvy, what with her actually talking to the lost Arendellian soldiers and restraining herself from making outlandish promises to everyone she meets

Kristoff made a friend!

Elsa met one (1) girl that wasn’t her sister and immediately decided she had to live in the woods forever

Tribe Leader Lady’s reaction to Kristoff’s proposal

can’t believe Lost in the Woods invented cinema and music videos

the sisters at the shipwreck is hands down the best scene in the entire movie, aided by the drastically different palette they used to color this scene--all grays, browns, and blacks, even the surrounding environment, like Agnar and Iduna’s despair polluted the whole landscape. Elsa and Anna look horribly out of place here, like they can’t possibly be real in a world that looks like this.

it really snuck up on me how much this scene is a pivot for both of their characters: Anna’s instinct here is to look forward, to find clues that will point them to the next step; Elsa’s instinct is toward grief and, after the reveal, self-blame. for all her growth there’s still a part of Elsa that sees her existence as the catastrophe that keeps hurling the wreckage of the world at her feet. it’s something that i don’t think she’ll ever be able to completely move past.

Elsa, looking at Anna like she’s the only real thing in the world as Anna tells her that she believes in her, more than anyone or anything

“i just don’t want you dying trying to be everything for everyone else!” jesus fucking CHRIST guys

Olaf’s growing up crisis was mostly just...kinda there for me, but i will say the cut to his horrified expression when Anna said the word “dying” really did get to me

Anna switching between a Formal Court hairstyle and an Athleisure hairstyle is Bi Representation, Elsa getting increasingly more disheveled over two movies is Lesbian Representation

do i Get horse movies now

Elsa happy crying when she sees her mother in the cave made ME incredibly happy--her face is so much more dynamic this time around!

i wanna make fun of her for her stupid Dance Dance Revolution ice magic during Show Yourself but honestly..........fucking superb you funky little lesbian

aw Elsa you stood up to...an ice hallucination of your racist grandpa! in another three years (six years in production) you might be ready for Thanksgiving dinner

Elsa in the last movie: i’m never going back, the past is in the past!!!!

Elsa in this movie: brb gotta go hurl myself into a Pit of Past Misdeeds and turn myself into one of the embodied memories

Anna immediately understanding what went down at the forest before and that even if she wasn’t directly complicit in the violence she benefits from it every day, deciding to rip down Imperialism Dam without hesitation

The Next Right Thing didn’t really do it for me musically but as a core concept for Anna’s character and ethos it fucking ROCKS (pun obviously intended). i was so worried going in that they wouldn’t know what to do with Anna after the first movie other than give her powers, but instead we got confirmation that this IS her superpower: her ability to forge ahead with whatever life has given her has ALWAYS been her greatest strength.

this also explains why she felt so aimless and intent on protecting Elsa and nothing else before this point; Anna isn’t interested in delving deeply into the past, not when every other member of her family was consumed by it. with this she’s finally able to convert memory into action, and she shines.

(of course she couldn’t have GOTTEN to this point if Elsa hadn’t been so convinced that the past was worth pursuing, confirming my belief that the two of them share exactly one brain cell)

OBVIOUSLY action for Anna translates into “make myself bait for stone giants and STAND ON THE VERY DAM I WANT THEM TO RIP APART” Anna you fucking walnut

Anna threw the first brick at Imperialism Dam, actually

the understated moment when Kristoff just pushes aside his own insecurities and just asks Anna what she needs

the shot of Elsa falling into the water after she’s thawed nearly did me in

Elsa horseback riding over the water is. wow it’s the gayest thing i’ve ever seen

Anna’s coronation outfit made me kinda wistful. she looks so grown up! she looks like her mother

(i mean she always looks like her mother they literally have the same face but whatever you know what i mean)

me on my deathbed: eLSA COuldN’T aCT oUt ICE

stray observations:

is Arendelle just a tourist town where one day the guy who owned the largest house was like “this is a KINGDOM NOW I’M THE KING” and the 50 other townies who lived there were just too polite to argue

i mean it’d explain why the queen, her heir, and the heir’s consort could just waltz out of there for a week long trip and leAVE THE TROLLS IN CHARGE

when they first started getting chummy with the Northuldrans i lost my god damn mind and was like “are they gonna give Kristoff a boyfriend and Anna a girlfriend what’s happening”

is it required that female Disney protagonists have to go to a blue tinted place to realize that the magic answer was in them all along now the same exact thing happened to Moana and Rey

Elsa’s ice creations are confirmed to fade away if she dies, which...is a confirmation we needed i guess

why didn’t Mattias and Yelana fall in love to make the Chosen One instead, they had chemistry

(i mean. i know why)

i hope Anna got to yell at Elsa for at least five minutes and maybe slug her for pulling that “i’m going to Mordor alone!!!” bullshit

for a second at the end i was like “are they gonna do the HTTYD thing where we flash forward to ten years later and Anna and Kristoff take their kids to visit Elsa IS KRISTOFF GONNA GROW A DAD BEARD” but no we just had lesbian wind and origami instead

whatever your take on the movie i think we can all agree that the scene where Olaf calls the Irish “a plague on this planet which is slowly rotting it down to the rind and which must be excised” was NOT okay

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

Can you talk some more about this FMA-in-TMA-'verse AU? If you don't want it on this blog, then I'd be fine with something on your other blog, so long as you send me the link to the post (because I wouldn't otherwise see it prolly).

I’m fine with it here!

Okay there’s two versions. 1) Non-Archivist version. The journey is the same but there’s a statement at best. 2) The version where in his research to get his body back to normal, Ed ends up at an Institute possibly even The Magnus Institute or at least, the German branch of the Magnus Institute (bc Amestris is based vaguely on Germany), where Ed ends up as a researcher and then possibly as an Archivist. 

Either way the backstory is the same:

Ed and Al are very young when their Father leaves them with their mother left behind. Hoenheim was a strange man, memorable, but still, every strange. He had this gaze, not unkind, but it seemed far too long and far too sharp, and as far as anyone could tell, at the very least, Pinako would say, he seemed as old as he was the day they met him. But some people just age differently…right? Right. 

Either way, Trisha raises Ed and Al alone, and the two are free to explore their house…and eventually their father’s study. In there, they find various odd things. Books especially, some of which say from the Library of Jorgen Leitner…? 

Trisha finds them before they get a chance to read too far. 

But their interest in the supernatural is peaked, and in the little research they saw, they found a fascination with the power it could hold, but to use and to be wary of. They don’t go far, but they look into little things, ghosts, Leitners, even vampires, and with it, they gain knowledge that children shouldn’t have at their ages. 

And then Trisha dies.

Now, they know ghosts exist. They know powers beyond their imagining exists. They’re children, and they love their mother…so they try to bring her back. 

From here, idk the exact series of events. Maybe they still would go learn from Izumi (which since this is probably modern times, it wouldn’t be as okay to take children, but she probably would send them info. She probably would be Slaughter or Hunt aligned, I’d think? Maybe Beholding, but Hunt seems the best of the three). 

I think they’d try to research End specific things and a little bit of Flesh…and of course, it goes wrong. Their mother…she doesn’t come back.

Tbh, I would find it most interesting if they accidentally created a creature..and it lived. A weird combination of Flesh and End, not really living but living enough to have a heart and be made from the ingredients of what makes “people”. There wouldn’t be a door or Truth… just the End and the Flesh mixing and Al and Ed paying the consequences of it. 

I can’t think of a way where Al’s soul could be bound. I just can’t. The only way it could work… if we go FMA canon, where Al is in the body of the creature they made… but instead of dying the moment it was created, Al is just stuck in it. Ed meanwhile loses a couple limbs, but more importantly, he’s marked by the End and the Flesh….maybe gaining ability from the End in its mark. 

From here, Ed probably journey’s his brother. Al can’t come along because of the new monster form, so Ed would be alone. 

If Ed becomes an Archivist and researcher…well, he’s already marked by the End and the Flesh, he would make for a good Archive, no? 

I’m gonna go a little bit on the first one, not too much. But just imagine Ed, Roy, Riza, and all the others being stuck in a room together in an Archive with ED as their boss. Or or or, Roy was being trained as an Archivist bc he was marked by the Slaughter and later Desolation, and Ed being put with him as a back-up Archivist/researcher. 

King Bradley is probably the head of the Institute, with Father being a Web Avatar with a bunch of other avatars under his beck and control (all based off different powers. Envy: Stranger. Lust: Web or Hunt. Gluttony: Flesh. Greed: Vast Bradley: Beholding but with Slaughter tendencies. Sloth: Buried with a side of Flesh and Lonely. Pride: Dark). Father put Bradley there on purpose in order to keep an eye for any good contenders. 

Hoenheim and Father were twins years ago. Father manipulated Hoenheim into being a part of a Web ritual, and ended up making him an avatar in the process. The ritual, of course, failed, and Father after years of observation realized that bringing one person wasn’t enough, he needed many. 

Hoenheim left Trisha for similar reasons as in canon: he wanted to become human for him family. He just ended up being too late. 

Quick fire things in no particular order:

- Moral conflict between Ed and the others. He is a character who’s main thing isn’t killing in a killed or be killed world, so he’ll have to deal with that.

-Riza’s dad was probably involved in some desolation shit, and as a result, Riza got a fire tattoo on her back to which Roy burned off for her. 

-Listen I want Olivia in this but idk how, but she’d be marked by the Slaughter just by how hardcore she is. Alex Louis Armstrong might be a member the Archives as well, or he might just be a random dude? Hmmm. Maybe he would join the Archives later. 

-Hughes is def a part of the Archives. He realized something was fishy about this whole Institute business, but he got killed before he could tell anyone the details he found. 

-Nina and Alexander is part of a Flesh thing, and it’s just as horrific as canon. 

-Ed has HIGH empathy for all monsters, even the worst ones because of Al’s state. As a result, he nearly gets himself killed a lot trying to see the humanity in avatars that don’t want to be human anymore. 

-Al is at home getting used to his form. Possibly if there’s a scene where they have to hide or at the very least, get away from the Institute, they go to their place, and everyone in the Archives realizes what Ed’s been fighting for this entire time. Al is in fact, coherent in his new body, if in constant pain, and can barely speak. I feel like he does a lot of research while Ed is gone, in a different way. 

-Pinako and Winry are physical therapists. They help Al in whatever way they can. 

-Oh! When Ed first loses his limbs, they don’t bleed. They just cut off perfectly, so he doesn’t bleed out. He gets prosthetics. 

-Baby faced Ed says he’s 18. Keep in mind, he probably tries to join the institute when he’s 12. He is somehow let in to the bafflement of everyone and his own smugness. At 14, he’s moved down to the Archives. 

-Idk if his crew would lead to the end of the world, but it could easily lead to the end of the world with the Web at its center. 

[shinneth]

The Gem Ascension Reference Tour 1: Fatal Frame series

The above is referenced in what I consider to be GA3′s signature scene (or one of them, definitely a top 3), which happens very early on in the chapter (as early as page 33 can be considered for a 299 page part). I had a surprising number of Fatal Frame references in the series overall, so let’s go into detail further down.

Since Tumblr apparently ignores time stamping, the relevant bits for this top video start around 4:07.

Fuyuhi Himino’s unfortunate unintentional suicide in Fatal Frame V is very similarly in an early pivotal moment of GA3, as it directly causes Peridot to let down her guard just enough to allow for White Diamond to put a cap on her willpower, which allows her to succeed in making Peridot ascend to Chartreuse Diamond soon after. Very very similar scenario, though in Peridot’s case she’s directly resisting a giant blade of energy coming for her neck, but like Fuyuhi, she only has her bare hands to intercept the threat. 

Being a gem, of course, this doesn’t spell the same consequence for Peridot as it does for poor Fuyuhi, but it does kind of fuck her over for life. Since Peridot’s got a hard light body, this isn’t actually physically hurting her unless it hits her gemstone - and doing any lasting damage to Peridot is counter-productive for WD since she’s wanting to make a diamond out of her. Even the “superfluid light” I describe in place of blood from the reference, and the pain that comes from Peridot nearly getting her fingers chopped off by continually resisting this blade, is visual trickery on WD’s part to make Peridot believe it’s real. So, a Your Mind Makes It Real trope, as Peridot does feel a great deal of pain from this. Then again, gems can’t bleed and that was purely for visual effect to instill panic in a gem trying not to get her neck lacerated with something that’s big enough that looks more like it’d behead her. 

Peridot’s been resisting WD for almost a week at this point, mind you, so she’s been worn WAY down to the point where she’d actually fall for this. And how Peridot ultimately succumbs to getting her neck “sliced” is just like how it happens to Fuyuhi: the latter has a very close friend named Haruka who’s gone missing. She’s SUPER adamant about finding her, even if it means traipsing about in a mountain infamously known for being a popular suicide spot with regular hauntings. So this mirage Fuyuhi sees of Haruka in the distance makes her so relieved and happy, she completely forgets a ghost is this close to possessing this girl’s knife-holding hand into killing herself. So the moment she lets her guard down, Fuyuhi ends up slitting her own throat on accident. And it turns out it wasn’t even really Haruka at all; kind of a plus that Haruka (who at this point in the game WAS still alive) didn’t have to see her friend die like this directly, but it’s a pretty shit deal that Fuyuhi ends up losing her life over nothing.

In GA3, of course, it’s Steven (or more specifically, the imaginary Steven built from Peridot’s subconscious who gets to feature in all her daydreams about him) who takes up Haruka’s role. Peridot specifically told ALL the Crystal Gems not to go back for her if she’s the only one left behind in the mission. She’s had no way to gauge how much time has passed since they were forced to abandon her, and after 6 days she’d be considering the possibility that they listened to her if she knew that for a fact, but her gut tells her they’re not going to ditch her. And they don’t, of course. Unfortunately, it’s implied this happens literally hours before the Crystal Gems land on Homeworld for their Peri rescue mission, if not sooner. So yeah, this all could have been avoided if the CGs just took off a little bit sooner, but of course they had no way of figuring out what was going on in Homeworld while they prepared for their trip back. It’s all just one big unfortunate mishap, and it’s sort of to drive home the point that Steven, despite being the source of Peridot’s strength and resolve in the story so far, can just as easily become her biggest weakness under certain circumstances. 

This scene is later showed to Steven when he does reunite with Peridot later when he’s aiming to fix her since WD sealed away the sharpest bits of her wit and willpower (which consequently made Peridot and the initial Chartreuse Diamond pretty gullible fools, prone to panic and indecision, as well as self-doubt and greatly lowered self-esteem). He needs to see exactly how WD pulled this off to get an idea of how to get the 100% Peridot back, which meant he pretty much HAD to see this scene. While later the CGs are also “treated” to this when Peridot catches them up on the plot later, it traumatizes Steven. The moment Peridot slips up is replayed constantly in his head and not even closing his eyes can make him un-see it. It’s a pretty reasonable thing to get someone riled up about, especially if it’s a loved one (and even though they’re not officially a couple yet by this point, they become one very soon after this, if that’s any indication of how hard Steven really takes this) and it just keeps playing in your head and you can’t make it stop. It actually triggers a mental civil war in his head where part of Steven just wants to forego his morality and kill the shit out of WD for this, but there’s still the part of Steven who won’t let go of his pacifism no matter what. But no side is really gaining on the other, so it’s an endless fight while this clip keeps playing in Steven’s head. 

It has adverse effects on his human/gem hybrid body, inducing a growth spurt on said body so that Steven actually looks his age and various traits of his Pink Diamond part trying to dominate his body and power him up, because HE IS PISSED. This kickstarts the alternate form Steven can later take in Pink Diamond 2.0, where visually it looks like a fusion between Steven and the Pink Diamond iteration of his mom, but it’s not a fusion at all and is more of Steven’s “fully awakened” Diamond form where he can utilize 100% of his potential. It basically replaces Pink Steven from the canon finale, since GA is supposed to be a “Bad Ending AU” version of Change Your Mind where Yellow/Blue/White don’t survive and not every single loose end is neatly tied up.

So yeah, it’s a very pivotal scene for the protagonist and her late-game deuteragonist (since Steven had no role in GA1 and a pretty limited role in GA2, and there isn’t really a main character at all for the side-story). Still surprised one of the overall story’s pivotal moments comes from a relatively minor early plot development for Fatal Frame V. 

Speaking of the side-story...

Fatal Frame I & II

The tragic story of Fluorite when the Crystal Gems discuss gems prior to Peridot emerging with heterochromia naturally is a mish-mash of Kirie from I and Sae Kurosawa from II. More leaning towards Sae since it involved a friendship that many identified as twin-like and Fluorite’s described maniacal cackling comes from this little lady. This is the shit most gems on Homeworld heard right before they got shattered during the Lone Twin Massacre. Sae’s tragedy that led to the obliteration of her hometown and everyone in it (save for her twin, ironically, who escaped and never came back and had her own life and family... then ended up dying a few decades later via hanging, which is how Sae died) doesn’t exclusively have Sae’s missing twin Yae as the cause, though it is a prominent one. Long story short, hometown needs ritualistic sacrifices every decade or so that specifically require one twin to kill another - somehow this has worked in the past, don’t ask how. Still fucked up enough for one set of twins to try running away from this fate, but only one makes it out successfully. So the hometown is on the verge of collapse and they still have the twin who was set to be sacrificed anyway, so hoped they could salvage the situation by hanging Sae, but the Pits of Hell are PICKY and this results in Sae’s vengeful spirit killing indiscriminately. But she is REALLY fucking hung up on her twin sister never coming back for her. 

Of course, in GA the twin of Fluorite wasn’t that much of a savage - the diamonds just dragged the twins apart since one was special and the other wasn’t, and later the diamonds had the not-special twin killed off behind the other’s back to put an end to the distractions. 

That all lines up more with Kirie’s backstory, where in a mansion built over ANOTHER Pit of Hell, there was a scheduled sacrifice that started with rounding up girls to play demon tag, and the winner gets ripped from her family to become the head family’s rope maiden where she’s completely cut off from the outside world and not allowed to partake in anything that might give her a connection to worldly things, since a maiden sacrifice requires said maiden to be completely detached from earthly desires. Somehow Kirie got out for a short period of time not long before she was scheduled to be sacrificed and met a young man who she quickly fell in love with . The family caught on to this; after Kirie was solidly back in custody (I don’t think she ever actually tried escaping; she just somehow found a way to get out of the house for the first time in 10ish years), the man was killed in secret and tossed in the river. Kirie was never told about this, but she suspected it and had sixth sense-like feelings that he was murdered. She wasn’t able to maintain her maiden duties since she now had an earthly attachment to the man, so when she was finally sacrificed at the altar, her blood-soaked ropes weren’t enough to quell the gates of hell, and Kirie came back as a vengeful spirit who drove the head of the family insane and let him kill every single member of the household for her. And she would go on to kill anyone stupid enough to step inside the house after the fact. This one can be solely faulted on one singular incident, so GA Fluorite was basically the Kirie backstory, but Sae’s mannerisms, savagery, and the twin factor was also in there.

Fatal Frame III

Time Stamp: 038

There’s actually not much from Fatal Frame III to take away from this, save for the final line in the scene where Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-9FC is shattered while in the middle of brutalizing our Peridot. Once Peridot’s not only seeing her assaulter get brutally murdered right after being beaten within an inch of her life, but the remains of 9FC land right on top of her as well as the limb enhancers.

It’s an echo to the aforementioned times Peridot mentioned casually no-selling brutal shatterings that happened right next to her in her early Homeworld days where she’d just shrug off any gem chunks or dust that got on her.

It turns out present-day Peridot is extremely bothered by this and went into catatonic shock after the narrative expresses this desire that paraphrases one of Reika’s noteworthy lines:

“I don’t want to see anymore.”

Which Reika rightfully expresses when her lover who finds her doing her maiden duty (her backstory is heavily similar to Kirie’s) gets killed right in front of her and she’s forced to look at his dead face for all eternity...

Yeah, you wouldn’t want to see anymore either, would you? Let’s leave off on a fun clip that demonstrates how fucking batshit Sae was and I’ll readily admit she scared the shit out of me as a teen.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Venom review

You know, Venom really isn’t so bad.

Not that you’d know that. Critics everywhere are saying this movie is bad, with the more lenient reviews calling it “So bad it’s good.” It has been compared to The Happening, I’ve seen it compared to Catwoman, it has been called a disaster, it has been called a pile of shit… and frankly I’m still kind of unsure why after seeing it. I think the “so bad it’s good” argument has a bit more merit, but even then, I don’t actually think the film is bad enough for that. This isn’t Suicide Squad we’re talking about, my brain was on for this whole movie. It’s silly, a bit campy, kind of goofy… but I think Venom is a pretty solid movie.

Of course, right out the door Venom has an uphill battle: it’s a PG-13 version of the notoriously violent brain-eating anti-hero, so of course the lack of gruesome brain-eating is pretty disappointing. That being sad, Venom has been good in more family-friendly environments, like the PS1 Spidey game or the various cartoons, so it’s not an impossible sell. The bigger hurdle is overcoming the character’s connection to Spider-Man, but frankly I think people make a bigger deal out of that than is necessary. Venom is a cool character regardless of Spider-Man or not, and I think this movie does a solid job of establishing that. Venom doesn’t NEED Spider-Man, not necessarily. I certainly wasn’t crying over Spidey’s absence in this movie (though considering where Spidey is as of Infinity War… yeah, you know, probably a good reason why he can’t show up).

Anyway, here’s the story: Eddie Brock is a journalist, and one who kinda does what he believes is right, consequences be damned. Too bad he decided to go up against a corrupt billionaire and ended up destroying his own life and relationships in the process. Eddie gets a chance at redemption when one of said billionaire’s scientists gives him some secret details of what the guy is up to; Eddie sneaks into the labs this guy runs and ends up getting infected with an alien parasite. Now the billionaire wants his alien back, but that’s easier said than done when it has bonded with Eddie quite well, though it turns out to be more of a shoulder devil than a shoulder angel. Can Eddie curb this alien’s violent tendencies and figure out what to do before he gets captured?

Ok so that plot summary is kind of a mess, but then so is the plot. But it’s not a mess in the sense that something like, say, Suicide Squad is, where it’s a trainwreck to the point of being incomprehensible. No, Venom is more of a mess in the sense that the plot shifts gears so often it’s honestly a bit nuts. So much shit happens in the span of this film, it’s almost ludicrous. I believe Tom Hardy said in an interview that about forty minutes were cut, and honestly, it does kind of feel like it when some scenes end abruptly and some plot points just happen so fast. All that being said, the movie is still pretty straightforward and simple, and while there are bumps the ride is mostly enjoyable.

This really comes down to the absolutely brilliant and bonkers performance from Tom Hardy. Muttering in some completely unknown accent and just having the most epic freakouts and reactions imaginable, he seems to be channeling Jim Carrey from the 90s in this film, and I mean that as the highest compliment. While Eddie Brock is a bit cookie cutter in terms of character archetype, Hardy injects quite a bit of charm and likability while still making Brock a flawed but still likable character. Brock is a lot nicer than usual, but he broke into his fiancee’s computer for private files and ended up getting her fired and is okay with Venom eating people he deems as evil, so it’s clear Brock isn’t 100% nice. It really shows that a lot of Hardy’s performance was improvised, and frankly I think that was for the best; Hardy knows what he’s doing, and it pays off well as even in the duller moments Hardy carries this film.

The bickering friendship between Brock and Venom is really amusing, and Venom himself when he shows up is cool. Frankly there’s a lot of homoerotic tension here, which culminates in Venom possessing Eddie’s former flame and making out with him (as I’m sure you’ve already heard everywhere; it makes more sense in context). I guess that level of closeness just comes from being a symbiote. The best part of it all though is Venom’s eventual rationale for becoming a good guy: Venom was a loser on his home planet, just like Eddie, but together they’re a lot cooler. I am not fucking kidding. Seeing such a bizarre and silly rationale played straight like that (or IS it being played straight?) is so absolutely endearing to me; a lot of the stuff in this movie is like that.

The action is mostly ok, but it’s not anything too special. I think that neutering the film to a PG-13 was a huge mistake on Sony’s part, because they could have had a very impressive amount of black comedy on their hands. Oh, there’s still some good dark jokes here and there, but I feel like it would have been so much better if all the gory glory was on display. If they are gonna do Carnage, as the mid-credits scene teases, they better be prepared to up that rating because a neutered Venom is one thing, but a neutered Carnage is inexcusable. But yeah, the action is a bit generic but passable, which is also what can be said for the evil symbiote Riot. He’s an okay villain, but not amazing or anything. You’ll probably be wishing they had just made Carnage the bad guy, though I do have to give them props for using a character that not many people know about. I always like when comic book movies utilize less well known characters.

Overall, this film is a lot of goofy, cheesy fun. It is by no means a perfect film, but I do think it lays a decent foundation for sequels, and most importantly, unlike Sony’s previous attempts to make a Spider-Man movie, this film is very standalone and doesn’t try and shoehorn in a bunch of elements for an expanded universe like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did. So props for that Sony, you’re slowly learning! I’d definitely say check this out, especially if you’re a more casual comic book movie fan or are a big fan of cheesy early 2000s style superhero movies; I will say this is a lot more Raimi Spider-Man than theatrical Daredevil or Catwoman at least. If you’re a hardcore Venom nut who is appalled that he could be PG-13, just skip this and wait to see if they release an extended cut, because I think if there is one it could help the film be a lot better. Bottom line, it’s a fun film if you’re in the right mind for it, and I do think there is enough genuinely good elements to keep it from being bad enough to be “so bad it’s good;” with a little more polish this film could have been genuinely great, and I definitely think sequels can improve upon what was laid out here.

If nothing else, this is 100% genuinely better than the last time Venom appeared in a live-action film. I may have forgiven Spider-Man 3 for a lot of its sins to be able to find it unironically decent… but some  stains just run too deep to ever be fully cleansed. Topher Grace Venom is one such stain.

[shinelikethunder]

On “romanticizing” unhealthy things in fiction

This is a loose elaboration on @tanannariva‘s excellent post about anti-shippers’ tendency to sling around words like “romanticization” and “normalization” like they’re magic incantations that mean “QED, you are making this happen in real life!” (I’m going to leave “normalization” aside for the moment because my contribution would basically be an incoherent snarl of “shrieking that we need more taboos on offenses that are already taboo enough to lay a heavy burden of stigma on victims, offenses whose root causes lie in beliefs and practices that are already widely treated as normal, is just doubling down on the reasons the entire subject is such a clusterfuck and it’s the fucking opposite of radical or progressive.”) Let’s talk a bit about romanticization, using the original post’s definition of “to describe something as being better or more attractive or interesting than it really is.” In particular, let’s talk about stories whose portrayal of fucked-up, abusive relationships does romanticize them, and where exactly the connection is with real-life abuse apologism.

The thing is that stories, by their very nature, tend to portray things as more attractive and interesting than they really are. When you go through something harrowing and console yourself with “well, at least it will make a great story to tell later,” you’re explicitly planning on distilling the interesting parts from an experience that was a grinding nightmare slog of misery at the time. Many stories are also ways to rehearse the various kinds of shit life might throw at you and transmit models for how people deal with it--and in order to actually be transmitted, they have to be in a form that is interesting, memorable, and engaging.

Also, people fantasize all the time about stuff that’s attractive but too dangerous, costly, or immoral to actually pursue. A cliffside with a spectacular view is attractive. Sleeping in on a weekday is attractive. Taking gory revenge on people who’ve hurt you or cut you off in traffic is attractive. The problem isn’t the attraction. The problem is when people’s idea of the real-life consequences gets skewed. You don’t fix that by telling them to stop finding the thing appealing, you fix that by saying “hey, I know this is fun to imagine, but I feel like we need a reality check on how disastrous the non-fictional version is.”

And of course these two things--dramatizing and fantasizing--are often combined, in the form of stories where obstacles are downplayed or the extent of what people can accomplish is exaggerated. Which is generally OK and understood. Sometimes the execution is criticized for breaking suspension of disbelief or for the implications of what’s downplayed and what isn’t, but even little kids learn pretty early on that just because they read it in a book or saw it on TV doesn’t mean they should try it at home. When they don’t, that’s when the reality check becomes necessary.

In the specific case of stories about abusive relationships... a lot of the most compelling ones are about taking something wild, something that hurts people and would happily hurt you, and domesticating it. Not just taming it, not just making its dangerous qualities work for you, but befriending it and loving it and incorporating it into the fabric of your everyday life. It’s a story that humans find perpetually attractive because that’s what we do, that’s what’s behind a lot of our success, we’re the crazy fuckers who turned wolves into border collies and wild horses into Shetland ponies. The more resistant something actually is to domestication, the more we like stories about the crazy fucker who pulled it off anyway. The attraction isn’t the problem. The problem is that in real life, when it comes to human personalities and relationships that will probably hurt you, there is widespread denial of how dangerous, harmful, and resistant to change some types can be. There is widespread playing-up of the romantic appeal and widespread ignorance of how illusory and manipulative the appealing parts are. And YOU WILL NOT FIX ANYTHING BY DENYING THE APPEAL OR TELLING PEOPLE TO STOP FINDING IT ATTRACTIVE. 

Yes, it is helpful to tell stories about how the cycle of abuse really works, but not because they’ll refute or replace the romanticized fantasy, or destroy its appeal. They won’t. What they’ll do is similar to what an out-of-story reality check or an “abusive relationship” tag will do: they’ll say “hey, when this does happen it’s actually pretty awful.” And they’ll go beyond that to give people models for what shit looks like and possible ways to deal with it. They’ll do that even if some of their edges are filed off and some of their agony is distilled into drama, which is why it’s the opposite of helpful to lump everything you think is flawed/ambivalent/insufficiently realistic into the “romanticizing” category and try to exterminate it all. That actively suppresses resources that might actually reach people who are into the romanticized stuff and have picked up distorted ideas about abuse, whether from the fiction itself or from the culture they were raised in.

(By all means, criticize and discuss the depiction... but with the goal of illuminating nuances the original story glossed over or bungled, not making the bad thing go away. That’s the other thing that’s so nonsensical about focusing these book-burning campaigns on fanfiction of all things: not only does it come with built-in warning labels, it comes with a built-in book club and author Q&A session. You want context, author clarification, cautionary notes about the narratives the story seems to be pushing, alternate narratives, education about the realistic outcome? They’re all just as easy to attach to the work itself as screeds about what a terrible person the author is.)

Basically, the world is full of stuff that’s great fun in stories but wretched IRL for everyone except the 1% of freaks lucky enough to be Into That Sort Of Thing. Wilderness survival. Swordfights with no safety gear. Extreme painplay as kink. Emergencies where a non-pilot somehow has to land the plane without killing everyone. And since society is messed up, “whirlwind romances with brooding, jealous, obsessive antiheroes” are only intermittently acknowledged as part of the “even more miserable IRL than they are thrilling on the page” club. Even when they are, it tends to get vehement blowback from people who feel compelled to defend what they like, not as an id-scratching fantasy but as the highest and best ideal of True Love. That’s what’s out of whack and needs fixing.

You will not fix it by trying to convince people that swashbuckling duel scenes aren’t fun if the characters aren’t wearing safety gear. You will get even-more-vehement blowback if the people who enjoy the romance equivalent of swashbuckling have even the slightest reason to suspect your PSA about safety is a front for an attempt to take away their unrealistic fantasies, replace them with fencing-tournament footage, and make them watch gory cautionary tales about what will happen to them if they leave their protective gear off. The only way to get anywhere is to accept that it’s okay to see the appeal in romanticized depictions of relationships that would be abusive IRL, because the appeal is separate from understanding how the IRL consequences would play out. Work on people’s understanding of the consequences. In the end, all the hand-wringing about the appeal boils down to worrying that it will distort people’s understanding of the consequences. So focus on what really matters.

[meeedeee]

Shin Godzilla: Disasters, Tropes & Cultural Memory RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Warning: spoilers for Shin Godzilla.

I’ve been wanting to see Shin Godzilla since it came out last year, and now that it’s available on iTunes, I’ve finally had the chance. Aside from the obvious draw inherent to any Godzilla movie, I’d been keen to see a new Japanese interpretation of an originally Japanese concept, given the fact that every other recent take has been American. As I loaded up the film, I acknowledged the irony in watching a disaster flick as a break from dealing with real-world disasters, but even so, I didn’t expect the film itself to be quite so bitingly apropos.

While Shin Godzilla pokes some fun at the foibles of Japanese bureaucracy, it also reads as an unsubtle fuck you to American disaster films in general and their Godzilla films in particular. From the opening scenes where the creature appears, the contrast with American tropes is pronounced. In so many natural disaster films – 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, Armageddon, San Andreas – the Western narrative style centres by default on a small, usually ragtag band of outsiders collaborating to survive and, on occasion, figure things out, all while being thwarted by or acting beyond the government. There’s frequently a capitalist element where rich survivors try to edge out the poor, sequestering themselves in their own elite shelters: chaos and looting are depicted up close, as are their consequences. While you’ll occasionally see a helpful local authority figure, like a random policeman, trying to do good (however misguidedly), it’s always at a remove from any higher, more coordinated relief effort, and particularly in more SFFnal films, a belligerent army command is shown to pose nearly as much of a threat as the danger itself.

To an extent, this latter trope appears in Shin Godzilla, but to a much more moderated effect. When Japanese command initially tries to use force, the strike is aborted because of a handful of civilians in range of the blast, and even when a new attempt is made, there’s still an emphasis on chain of command, on minimising collateral damage and keeping the public safe. At the same time, there’s almost no on-the-ground civilian elements to the story: we see the public in flashes, their online commentary and mass evacuations, a few glimpses of individual suffering, but otherwise, the story stays with the people in charge of managing the disaster. Yes, the team brought together to work out a solution – which is ultimately scientific rather than military – are described as “pains-in-the-bureaucracy,” but they’re never in the position of having to hammer, bloody-fisted, on the doors of power in order to rate an audience. Rather, their assemblage is expedited and authorised the minute the established experts are proven inadequate.

When the Japanese troops mobilise to attack, we view them largely at a distance: as a group being addressed and following orders, not as individuals liable to jump the chain of command on a whim. As such, the contrast with American films is stark: there’s no hotshot awesome commander and his crack marine team to save the day, no sneering at the red tape that gets in the way of shooting stuff, no casual acceptance of casualties as a necessary evil, no yahooing about how the Big Bad is going to get its ass kicked, no casual discussion of nuking from the army. There’s just a lot of people working tirelessly in difficult conditions to save as many people as possible – and, once America and the UN sign a resolution to drop a nuclear bomb on Godzilla, and therefore Tokyo, if the Japanese can’t defeat it within a set timeframe, a bleak and furious terror at their country once more being subject to the evils of radiation.

In real life, Japan is a nation with extensive and well-practised disaster protocols; America is not. In real life, Japan has a wrenchingly personal history with nuclear warfare; America, despite being the cause of that history, does not.

Perhaps my take on Shin Godzilla would be different if I’d managed to watch it last year, but in the immediate wake of Hurricane Harvey, with Hurricane Irma already wreaking unprecedented damage in the Caribbean, and huge tracts of Washington, Portland and Las Angeles now on fire, I find myself unable to detach my viewing from the current political context. Because what the film hit home to me – what I couldn’t help but notice by comparison – is the deep American conviction that, when disaster strikes, the people are on their own. The rich will be prioritised, local services will be overwhelmed, and even when there’s ample scientific evidence to support an imminent threat, the political right will try to suppress it as dangerous, partisan nonsense.

In The Day After Tomorrow, which came out in 2004, an early plea to announce what’s happening and evacuate those in danger is summarily waved off by the Vice President, who’s more concerned about what might happen to the economy, and who thinks the scientists are being unnecessarily alarmist. This week, in the real America of 2017, Republican Rush Limbaugh told reporters that the threat of Hurricane Irma, now the largest storm ever recorded over the Atlantic Ocean, was being exaggerated by the “corrupted and politicised” media so that they and other businesses could profit from the “panic”.

In my latest Foz Rants piece for the Geek Girl Riot podcast, which I recorded weeks ago, I talk about how we’re so acclimated to certain political threats and plotlines appearing in blockbuster movies that, when they start to happen in real life, we’re conditioned to think of them as being fictional first, which leads us to view the truth as hyperbolic. Now that I’ve watched Shin Godzilla, which flash-cuts to a famous black-and-white photo of the aftermath of Hiroshima when the spectre of a nuclear strike is raised, I’m more convinced than ever of the vital, two-way link between narrative on the one hand and our collective cultural, historical consciousness on the other. I can’t imagine any Japanese equivalent to the moment in Independence Day when cheering American soldiers nuke the alien ship over Las Angeles, the consequences never discussed again despite the strike’s failure, because the pain of that legacy is too fully, too personally understood to be taken lightly.

At a cultural level, Japan is a nation that knows how to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. Right now, a frightening number of Americans – and an even more frightening number of American politicians – are still convinced that climate change is a hoax, that scientists are biased, and that only God is responsible for the weather. How can a nation prepare for a threat it won’t admit exists? How can it rebuild from the aftermath if it doubts there’ll be a next time?

Watching Shin Godzilla, I was most strongly reminded, not of any of the recent American versions, but The Martian. While the science in Shin Godzilla is clearly more handwavium than hard, it’s nonetheless a film in which scientific collaboration, teamwork and international cooperation save the day. The last, despite a denouement that pits Japan against an internationally imposed deadline, is of particular importance, as global networking still takes place across scientific and diplomatic back-channels. It’s a rare American disaster movie that acknowledges the existence or utility of other countries, especially non-Western ones, beyond shots of collapsing monuments, and even then, it’s usually in the context of the US naturally taking the global lead once they figure out a plan. The fact that the US routinely receives international aid in the wake of its own disasters is seemingly little-known in the country itself; that Texas’s Secretary of State recently appeared to turn down Canadian aid in the wake of Harvey, while now being called a misunderstanding, is nonetheless suggestive of confusion over this point.

As a film, Shin Godzilla isn’t without its weaknesses: the monster design is a clear homage to the original Japanese films, which means it occasionally looks more stop-motion comical than is ideal; there’s a bit too much cutting dramatically between office scenes at times; and the few sections of English-language dialogue are hilariously awkward in the mouths of American actors, because the word-choice and use of idiom remains purely Japanese. Even so, these are ultimately small complaints: there’s a dry, understated sense of humour evident throughout, even during some of the heavier moments, and while it’s not an action film in the American sense, I still found it both engaging and satisfying.

But above all, at this point in time – as I spend each morning worriedly checking the safety of various friends endangered by hurricane and flood and fire; as my mother calls to worry about the lack of rain as our own useless government dithers on climate science – what I found most refreshing was a film in which the authorities, despite their faults and foibles, were assumed and proven competent, even in the throes of crisis, and in which scientists were trusted rather than dismissed. Earlier this year, in response to an article we both read, my mother bought me a newly-released collection of the works of children’s poet Misuzu Kaneko, whose poem “Are You An Echo?” was used to buoy the Japanese public in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami . Watching Shin Godzilla, it came back to me, and so I feel moved to end with it here.

May we all build better futures; may we all write better stories.

Are You An Echo?

If I say, “Let’s play?” you say, “Let’s play!”

If I say, “Stupid!” you say, “Stupid!”

If I say, “I don’t want to play anymore,” you say, “I don’t want to play anymore.”

And then, after a while, becoming lonely

I say, “Sorry.” You say, “Sorry.”

Are you just an echo? No, you are everyone.

      from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows http://ift.tt/2wJXCVQ via IFTTT

[kayawagner]

Trouble for Hire Review

My brother and I had a weird ritual when I was in high school. On Easter, we would stay up until my niece fell asleep, hide eggs for her, and then watch the Blues Brothers. There was something oddly comforting about watching an obsessed pair of ex-cons on a crazy quest as they traveled cross country and ran into various obstacles, including homicidal ex-girlfriends, the police, and Illinois Nazis (which I probably would have hated even without watching this movie, but it was nice to have the validation in place).

Proving that there is a gaming experience for just about any pop culture memory you might have, Trouble for Hire is a game that deals with completing not quite legal missions while on a road trip, with gonzo events following hot on your bumper. There is a LOT of inspirational material listed, but if you never thought you would find a game that would help you capture the feel of The Blues Brothers, The Cannonball Run, Pulp Fiction, or Death Proof, you may want to keep reading.

Kicking the Tires

This review is based on the PDF version of Trouble for Hire, which comes in at 123 pages. This product is most definitely in color. There are some seriously bright 70s and 80s inspired color schemes in this book, including some enormous block letters for the chapter headings.

There are a few symbols to call out rules or just random facts to help reinforce the themes of the game, as well as big, bold, red sidebars to call special attention to various topics. Many of the actual character illustrations are restricted to simpler pallets to convey the tone of the image being presented. There are also some photographs of various southwestern United States locations as well. Its contained chaos selectively harnessed to convey a specific feel, and if you are familiar with the source material, it creates some serious resonance.

There is some violent imagery, as well as some nudity, so if those kinds of images are problematic for you, it is something you may want to know up front.

Introduction and Spirit and Setting

The first two sections of the book introduce the concept of the game, and what tropes and genres that the game is hoping to invoke. This is where we are introduced to the #HTP symbol, which is placed in the text when the book is specifically addressing rules and how they are engaged, and #DumbFact, which is put in the text when something is being conveyed that may give you some useful trivia for the overall tone of the story, but isn’t all that important to the game itself.

The game isn’t a broad game that deals with a larger genre. There are a limited number of roles that players will take, but the overall story is about a particular smuggler who takes dangerous jobs. He goes on road trips to complete them, and bad people and people from his past show up to complicate the job.

We get a section on the protagonist of this series of stories, and some details on his car. At this point, you may be wondering what kind of game this is. You don’t learn that quite yet. It’s a storytelling game that will detail the jobs that Ruben Carlos Ruiz takes, and the challenges that develop along the road as he works as a smuggler, courier, or wheelman.

This text is written in a very conversational tone, and in a tone that is in keeping with the source material. For example, when the game posits that you might ask when the game takes place, it then scolds you for asking a stupid question. More broadly, the game is billed as presenting “Post-Western” stories, stories where the protagonist would have fit in the Old West more than modern times, and never really has a place in polite society. It also mentions that even if you are portraying stories set in modern times, it is perfectly in keeping with the tone for everything to look like something out of the 70s until you introduce a modern element.

The Rules

This section dives into the mechanics of the game, but also early on jumps ahead of a debate that might be had about the game. There is a sidebar where the text indicates that this isn’t a roleplaying game, but it is a game that role-players might enjoy. I’m going enter my own opinion here and say that, if you consider a game like Fiasco a roleplaying game, this is definitely a roleplaying game, but let’s look at the mechanics so you can make your own decisions.

Each player in the game gets currency, called RPM, that they can spend to trigger effects from the sheet for various roles in the story. Once 10 RPM has been spent, the scene progresses, and everyone picks a new role. The player that is running Ruben may have to roll to resolve challenges, but the other roles in the story don’t resolve challenges, they only present them or help Ruben resolve them. There are also themes, which award RPM to players when they introduce the theme into the action they take on their turn.

The roles in the game include the following:

Ruben Carlos Ruiz (the protagonist)

Los Campanero (Ruben’s sidekick)

La Villanos (the antagonists of the story)

The Editor (a role that allows twists to be introduced and that can introduce narration and scene cuts)

The Road Through the World (the various things along the way between point A and B)

Los Espectadores (bystanders, characters that may be caught up in the story without being for or against Ruben)

The Rider (a friend, mentor, rival, or wildcard from Ruben’s past—she is presented as a force of nature that could be anything from Racer X to Yoda to Ruben—if Racer X or Yoda rode a motorcycle topless)

La Extrano (supernatural or unexplained events going on in the story)

Each adventure will have a plan. The plan has mile markers that show when the story progresses, but only in broad strokes. For example, a mile marker might just say that in this phase of the game, we find out something new about what Ruben is hauling, and what that thing is or how it is found out is left open to the players.

The plan might also spell out that some roles aren’t available in a story, or that those roles aren’t available until a certain mile marker. So, if a story isn’t about the supernatural, La Extrano isn’t a valid role for the adventure. If Ruben meets up with a character that counts as a sidekick at the third mile marker, the plan may say that Los Campanero isn’t available until after Ruben meets that character.

Players can spend RPM to trigger challenges, frame the situation, and then Ruben’s player will describe how they plan on overcoming the challenge. Ruben’s player will then roll two dice, then picks one die to be the results die, and the other will get measured against the chart for the Kick dice selected. The Kick dice have a separate set of “extra” results that happen, separate from the success or failure of Ruben’s actions. The Kick dice include:

Wild Card (the default if nothing else applies)

Fighting

The Driver

Los Campanero (only available if the sidekick is part of the story and contributed in some way)

If Ruben doesn’t quite get the job done, he might have to pay out RPM, or take a consequence, like a hard jump to a new scene, injuries, or finding out that previously established facts aren’t actually true. The consequence is set by the player that introduced the challenge.

The game also includes the Three Lights. This concept is both a reward mechanic and a built-in safety mechanic. There is a green light, a yellow light, and a red light in play in the game.

Green Light—Keep doing what you are doing, and cash this in to pay up to 3 RPM

Yellow Light—We introduced concepts I don’t want to delve into too deeply, let’s keep any future references off screen

Red Light—I don’t want this content in the game, we shouldn’t use it anymore from this point on

Any player can pick up one of the lights and use them, but if you pick up the green light, you can only use it to award another player for the direction they have taken the game. Once they have it, they can spend it or award it to another player. Yellow and Red lights are always available to anyone that feels they need to use them.

Adventures

This section goes into greater detail on how to create your own adventures, getting your friends to play, how to hack the game, teaching the game, and advice for play.

While I have sometimes seen a game go into detail about searching for online groups or visiting an FLGS or conventions, I don’t think I’ve seen many discuss the broader topic of picking out which friends would be likely to play this game and why it might appeal to them. For example, the text discusses the reasons that Role Playing Gamers, Film Enthusiasts, and Actors, Writers & Creative Types–as discreet groups–might find the game interesting.

The section on hacking the game delves into what roles might not make sense in other genres, and how the individual roles might look in other settings.

Appendices

This section includes Characters You May Meet, Locations Out West, Adventures, and Inspirado. Characters you may meet include NPCs you can plug in and use in specific roles (other than Ruben and the Rider, who are who they are). Locations Out West have some noteworthy places to use for proper locations in various adventures. Adventures are more fully detailed scenarios that can be played out. Inspirado is a list of the various movies and media that inspired the game and its tone.

There are some colorful extras detailed in Characters You May Meet, from recurring perennial screw-ups, to creepy federal agents, to roadhouse owners, to scary criminal bad guys. While many are specific characters made to fit a mold, it is interesting to note that when dealing with some archetypes, the text introduces them, but doesn’t fully endorse using them, such as The Roadside Mystic, which is discussed as a trope, but not given an actual example character.

The Locations Out West section gives some example locations that might come up in the game. Some of them are very broad, just suggesting the types of locations that are appropriate for the kind of story being told, such as “a field of shipping containers.” Others are specific, notable real-world locations, like New Idria, California, a ghost town that doesn’t show up on most GPS.

The sample adventures include:

Delivering a package for a washed-up porn producer while dealing with a crazy rival courier

Kidnapping a pageant queen while dodging a federal agent

Dodging cartel agents while delivering Canadian weed to Texas

Participating in an illegal road race

Working for a witch to dig up something valuable that’s been buried since the prohibition

Doing a job for a vampire casino owner

Some of the elements in the above jobs reflect some of the inspirational material, at times in ways that may not mesh well with the table. As an example, the pageant queen is specifically described as morbidly obese, and I’m not sure what that would bring to a story given the context of the job. Other elements are going to depend on exactly what kind of criminal activity the players are going to be comfortable portraying.

On A Mission From God

 The game provides a tightly focused package for telling very specific stories, with lots of room for variation within that prescribed band. 

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I really like the pacing of this game. I like the mechanic of using the currency of action to pace how quickly the story progresses, and I like the ability to match die results in either succeeding at an action or causing secondary effects.

Gaining RPM specifically when you introduce themes from the story into the game is a great way to mechanize recurring elements. I love the way that the safety tools are integrated into the mechanics of the story by turning them into traffic lights and fitting the overall theme. The game provides a tightly focused package for telling very specific stories, with lots of room for variation within that prescribed band.

You Boys Drank $300 Worth of Beer

The genres that serve as an inspiration to the game have lots of problematic elements, and while the game itself has built-in safety elements, and even addresses the problematic content of those foundational stories in various places, the example roles and stories still include elements that could easily be used in a manner that is less than sensitive. It’s a very careful balance between risk and reward, trying to call back to certain tropes while not letting them devolve into something less healthy for storytelling.

The discussions about elements found in the inspirational media aren’t shy about pointing out what’s wrong with things like racism or cultural appropriation, but because of the overall conversational, generally humorous or sarcastic tone used throughout, some of that frank discussion may have less impact than it should.

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

I can’t help but compare this game to Fiasco, and in that comparison, I think this game holds up well in that company. It’s telling a narrower band of stories but provides more tools for pacing, themes, and the ability to turn the dials to make humor more or less of an element in the individual game session.

The biggest downside to that is that narrow band of stories has a lot of baggage that must be carefully navigated to keep the content from becoming overly exploitative. Because of that, people that might enjoy the pacing or the mechanical twists might still want to be sure they know what is part of the overall package before they dive into playing the game.

What are your favorite games for telling crime stories? What are your best practices for keeping gritty or controversial content safe at the table? What is your favorite movie and why is it Blues Brothers? Let me know in the comments below!

Trouble for Hire Review published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[mrmichaelchadler]

An American Hero Returns in Thrilling New Series, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan

Those who tune into Amazon’s new series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” are in for a big surprise, in more ways than one. First, its vision of international espionage proves that thrilling action storytelling doesn’t require gun lust, motorcycle chases, or brashness with death to hold a tight grip. Even more, the series is packaged like the sharper version of a Paul Haggis movie, illustrating the various sides to its conflict, reckoning that terrorism is a tragedy more complicated than one-dimensional villainy. Expertly plotted by creators Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” is all the more impactful for its restraint and scope, offering excellent character-based drama that’s concerned with much more than just its namesake.  

The poster boy for this exciting, sensitive take to worldly anxieties is John Krasinski, who continues to ascend as our current contemplating everyman, coming off the artistic rejuvenation of nervously glancing and not speaking in “A Quiet Place.” His take on Jack Ryan, very much his own after the character has been played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine, is a financial analyst with a military past, but a nervous rookie when it comes to preventing global terrorism. In the six episodes offered to critics (of the eight total available on Friday), I hardly saw him fire a gun, but I watched him do a whole lot of thinking. 

In a thrilling opening episode directed by Morten Tyldum ("The Intimidation Game"), Ryan is thrown into the mix when he starts tracking multimillion dollar payments abroad made to a suspicious account. Suddenly, the man with a doctorate in economics is now in Yemen to help interrogate a suspect named Suleiman, about money that could have leads to the next Bin Laden (“9/11” and “Bin Laden” are admittedly referenced with such weight in these moments that the button-pushing just becomes goofy.) Nevertheless, this pilot is a great display of how Krasinski can involve us in his characters’ quiet calculation of the information around him, but also in his anxiousness concerning the unpredictable. The series in turn doesn’t try to tell us that he’s not scared when dodging gunfire during the pilot’s explosive climax, or uncomfortable when negotiating with shady characters. It all does wonders for slowly, believably pushing his reinvented character out of the office, with Jack feeling as vulnerable as the story itself feels alive. It’s a steady build for this character, but for like much of this compulsively watchable series, proves to be incredibly rewarding. 

The closest that “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” has to a “classic” macho hero is in Wendell Pierce’s James Greer, Ryan’s no-BS boss. And even then, he’s not a typical construct: Greer's a former key player in the CIA who was damned to a desk after an incident he won’t talk about, and he’s a Muslim. Leading with cutting wisdom and unblinking certainty, Pierce makes for a sturdy opposite to Ryan and a good companion; it’s very funny, too when Pierce rips on Ryan’s brainy aspect, irritatingly calling the titular hero “Peabody.” Together, the two are a formidable home base for the story’s American side. 

But the world is far bigger than its titular hero, the series reckons. In one of its most honorable narrative ambitions, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” takes a considerable amount of screen-time to explore how two brothers were radicalized, after surviving a bombing in Lebanon in the 1980s, and later facing racism in France. The now-middle-aged Suleiman (Ali Suliman) and Ali (Haaz Sleiman) are even introduced to us before we even see Jack Ryan in that first episode, and bookend the pilot with a delicate embrace after the Yemen battle. Beats like these are emotional and not menacing, and the emphasis on family is all the more immediate when the present day plot involves Suleiman’s wife Hanin (Dina Shihabi) trying to distance her children from Suleiman’s secret life. These parts of the story are emboldened by uniformly strong performances, and heartfelt character building that examines how both sides of good and evil think they are doing the right thing. It enables "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" to factor in various, difficult subjects like the state of Syria, the refugee crisis, cultural identity and more, without the exploitative nature of so many previous action stories that just want to look worldly. 

(Full disclosure: I read Omer Mozaffar’s incredible piece about consulting on “Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan” before I had finished episode four, which all the more confirmed my excitement that this show was actively working towards an understanding view of Muslims who choose terrorism.)

With a “cool kill” nowhere in sight, this action enterprise does not remove its various chess pieces lightly; there are consequences, and the act of killing is often accompanied with sadness, if not desperation. A third arc brings this home, involving a young American drone pilot living in Las Vegas, played with incredible focus by John Magary (“The Big Short”). Perhaps by no coincidence, he’s got a bit of “Krasinski Face” when dealing with the horror of his desk job, making for a haunting motif: these men are not emboldened by killing for justice, but hollowed out by it. In an excellent third episode directed by Patricia Riggen ("The 33"), we get a long look at the messiness of being an eye in the sky, and it has the face of a bruised pilot who begins to recognize the lives on the other side of the control panel.  

“Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” looks forward in a lot of aspects when it comes to the critical and entertainment purposes of a modern action story, particularly when handling post-9/11 politics. Which makes it all the more clear one improvement that can be made when “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” returns for its second season—namely, Cuse & Roland put too much effort into making Jack smart. For a show that gets its highs from sharp storytelling and showing its characters' imperfections, it becomes tiresome to see them bend over backwards to present “self-righteous Boy Scout” Jack as the one who always has the right answer, whether he's challenging his superiors or enemies. Given that the show bares his name, we already know that he’s the capital-E Exception of a White American savior, that he’ll have impeccable timing when it comes to being at wrong place at the right time. But sometimes Jack’s luck is just too dumb.

Yet as a fan of the Jack Ryan movies ever since I was a pre-teen who pretended to understand all of their geopolitics, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” took me back to the battle of wits on the submarine of “The Hunt for the Red October,” or to the tense diplomatic stakes of “Clear and Present Danger.” This is the type of action series that invests a great deal of time in characters not directly related to Jack and trusts its audience; it’s not even concerned with laying clear the terrorists’ plot or clear motivations, it just tells us that they're up to something terrible. Instead, the show embeds you on both sides, which makes it all the more intense whenever they clash. A high-stakes chat-room interaction is one of the series’ best scenes, and it comes from another thoughtful, taut episode by Riggen. 

In a way, the ambition of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” reminds you of the clear divisiveness in our own homeland, and the ways to fight it: we need heroes who lead with intelligence, compassion, and maturity. People who understand good and evil is not just a simple decision of right and wrong. That we’re getting all of this food-for-thought within a blockbuster streaming event is all the more exhilarating, and I can’t wait to see more. Welcome back, Jack.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2N0OfKh

[hectorheil2733-blog]

The Marketing Mix For Business Marketing

Marketing strives to comprehend clients' demands and also build a strategy that satisfies those requirements. Marketing communications (advertising and marketing, item positioning, sponsorship), cross-cultural advertising and marketing (validation from advertising and marketing versions around lifestyles) as well as buyer practices (buyer handling of health-related info, behavioural improvement, communications between advertising, private market values and annoy power). That functions considering that unlike emails as well as tv commercials folks. only do not shut down their phone when they obtain a text message in. Therefore using this relevant information in palm all you have actually left to perform in order to obtain your organisation on the forefront of marketing is actually find the correct business to get you started. 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On graduating along with a MA in advertising you will definitely have a observational and academic understanding from marketing and worked with a range of academically based marketing procedures as well as practices as well as an essential understanding from current problems at the cutting edge from advertising and marketing in culture. Following the table is actually even more info regarding some crucial marketing items that are actually REQUIRED for any kind of service. Some procedures require complicated statistical analysis that are typically administered and also comprehended merely through advertising and marketing organizations specializing in market division. Save money on Promotions recognizes that marketing items create a large part of a business's advertising and marketing tactic. The mixture of a personal item along with a personalized promo tactic transforms web internet users in to your customers and, consequently, has paramount significance to a rise in ROI. Hence, the standing from successful firms can be looked at as marketing measures. Regardless, socials media may be utilized by non-profits to boost their visibility, perform their core goals (like assisting people discover jobs or borrowing for pet shelters), as well as to enhance understanding about significant issues. Listed below are 3 such advertising tactics that continuously be effective regardless of what type of modifications the atmosphere could deliver! In Condition 2, the program features extra modules to enable you to obtain advanced-level instruction in present-day marketing and also monitoring. There will also be guest lectures offered by practicing advertising managers and various other market and also subject professionals. The conflation from online search engine Advertising as well as Pay Per Click (Pay Per Click) campaigns offers a successful information to promote your product on global internet. Today, Web marketing is actually looked at as incredibly faster and economical channel for promoting product and service growth. The most effective advertising teaching fellowships will definitely allow you to use the advertising and marketing knowledge that you have actually know in institution and also will certainly show you the globe along with true marketing adventure. Home based business ended up being popular throughout the 1090's as well as it is utilized through many providers today. Thankfully, there are several Internet marketing providers that can show you the ropes concerning the sector to ensure that you may take advantage of along with your online venture. Off Segmentation to Fragmentation: Markets As well as Advertising Technique In The Postmodern Period, European Diary of Advertising and marketing, Vol. If you are interested in advertising measures, check this web-site to get more information about advertising kpi. Internet marketing strategies like online search engine advertising (SEM), emails constitute an indispensable portion of digital advertising and marketing. If you locate that the prospecting business is even more helpful in comparison to advertising and marketing, you can reapportion advertising bucks to the prospecting business which reduces your cost per brand new customer. Internet Marketing is actually a broad condition that could include every thing off pay-per-click monitoring to a full-blown internet marketing project that constructs visitor traffic and also tracks site website visitors to boost transformations coming from all channels.

[recentanimenews]

How "Concrete Revolutio" Redefines the Meaning of Heroism

A hero's world is inextricably tied to his or her identity. Batman has the gritty darkness of Gotham. Superman, the sprawling cityscape of Metropolis. The Avengers, their own fictionalized version of our world and a fantastical cosmos beyond. And although each of these settings may bear their own resemblances to reality as we live in it, they also carry with them a necessary distance. After all, in our world, there are no superheroes.

  But what if there were...?

  So goes the alluring dream, the wonder of what it might really look like to have heroes in our messed up, often ugly world. Would Superman stop our wars? Would Wonder Woman find a way to shake us out of our technology-induced apathy for life? If heroes of this kind were real, how would they navigate the morass of reality? While I'm sure there are some comics, movies, novels, and other forms of media out there that tackle this question, we're fortunate here in the anime world to have gotten two fantastic shows in the last few years that provide their own unique answers to this question: Gatchaman Crowds and Concrete Revolutio. Earlier this week, we discussed Gatchaman Crowds, so now it's time to talk about director Seiji Mizushima and writer Shou Aikawa's Concrete Revolutio!

  Concrete Revolutio & the Impossibility of Justice

  At first glance, Concrete Revolutio might not seem a world all that similar to our own. Although set in an alternate version of Japan's own history (particularly during the 1960s and 1970s) and using interpretations of actual historical events to anchor its fictional story within that period, Concrete Revolutio's world is also flush with giant robots, superhumans, strange beasts, magical girls, gods, aliens, and many other beings cribbed from the annals of Japanese pop culture. On the surface, it's easy to see only the blender mix of genre influences and ideas, but as the show wears on these familiar tropes are appropriated by the show's thematic concerns in many different ways. The chaos that results is what becomes the most important parallel between the world of Concrete Revolutio and our own –  and it is also the characteristic of the setting that most impacts the Superhuman Bureau.

  The Bureau, an odd collection of characters who generally serve as our primary windows into Concrete Revolutio's story, is a government agency set up to manage and protect superhumans, placing it right in the middle of the whirlwind of the setting's numerous conflicts and questions. With so many disparate groups and individuals with their own distinct priorities knocking about within the show (a feature emphasized by the show's preference for non-linear, episodic storytelling), the Superhuman Bureau and our main character, Jiro Hitoyoshi, have their work cut out for them trying to make sense of it all. Guided by their personal histories and beliefs, each member of the Bureau seems to have his or her own way of engaging with situations they face – even to the point of bringing them into violent conflict with each other. And this, then, leads to Concrete Revolutio's fundamental question: Amidst the chaos of humanity, is it even possible to be a hero?

    Most episodes or arcs of Concrete Revolutio play out in a similar way. The Superhuman Bureau is alerted to an issue that has arisen related to a particular superhuman or other supernatural entity. They arrive on the scene, but when they do, their course of action is obscured by something – orders from their superiors, their own ideas about what the right thing to do is, or even just complexities of the situation they didn't know about beforehand (whether practical or human). This episodic structure allows Concrete Revolutio to spend time with the characters at the center of these various events, diving into their lives and circumstances and giving us a chance to understand them, if we are willing.

  While this structural choice leads to some disjointed (but often fascinatingly clever in retrospect) storytelling at times, it also allows Concrete Revolutio achieve the goal of getting its audience to understand just how many different kinds of people their are in its world and how divergent their worldviews can be. In one episode, we meet a little robot programmed to help anyone in distress without consideration for the context or consequences. In another, we meet a family of immortals who value nothing more than they do each other. In another, an android detective who can see no nuance in his world. In another, a pair of aliens who speak truths so obvious that they dazzle the masses. In another, a pair of robot lovers. There are many more besides, and the addition of each character adds yet another layer of complexity to the show – because as we understand them, we also understand how insufficient a one-size-fits-all method of dealing with them is. As colorful and eye-catching as the setting of Concrete Revolutio may be, this is ultimately a world of grays.

  "Justice." We're all familiar with this ubiquitous rod of the hero, the "rightness" that he or she dispenses upon evildoers. But in Concrete Revolutio, we are constantly shown that justice is not so conveniently concrete as traditional superhero media would have us believe. And it is with this inconsistency that the show, primarily through Jiro's series-long character arc, struggles with. From beginning to end, Jiro makes clear that his personal definition of a hero is similar to the one we're all most familiar with: a powerful being who is unambiguously good, who embodies fully the concept of justice. But, as Concrete Revolutio demonstrates time and time again, actually applying that goodness to such an unclear world is basically impossible. Jiro wants to do the right thing, to make the choice he believes his image of a hero would make – but, as he discovers, knowing the right thing to do is hard. And, for Jiro, this ends up meaning that he can never truly become the hero he wants to be. At best, he can be only be an ally of justice.

    So, is that Concrete Revolutio's answer? Does the show believe that being a hero is impossible? I don't think so.

  Instead, what Concrete Revolutio does in bits and pieces throughout its story is propose a new idea of what we ought to believe about heroes. Despite its many fictional elements, Concrete Revolutio's use of real-world events makes clear that it wants us to understand the ambiguity of justice and heroism not only within its story, but also in relation to our own reality. Like the real 1960s or even like the real 2017, Concrete Revolutio paints a portrait of an ambiguous world – dropping our conception of heroes as "doers of justice" right into the whirlpool of human conflict and challenging the simplicity of it. Our belief that heroes as the magic bullet that will heal all the world's problems, Concrete Revolutio says, is a fantasy. The world is too vast, its inhabitants too different, for any one of us to believe that we can always know what the right thing to do is.

  And so, the real heroes in Concrete Revolutio are the ones who still pursue justice even knowing that it will elude them. Heroism isn't being right all the time – it's understanding that always knowing the right thing to do is impossible, but believing it's worth trying to figure out anyways. In Jiro's words, "there is meaning in searching." As long as we believe that, we can be heroes too.

  -----

Isaac eases his compulsive need to write about anime on his blog, Mage in a Barrel. He also sometimes hangs out on Tumblr, where he mainly posts his drawing practice as he seeks to become a renowned idol and robot fanartist. You can follow him on Twitter at @iblessall or on Facebook.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[kayawagner]

Trouble for Hire Review

My brother and I had a weird ritual when I was in high school. On Easter, we would stay up until my niece fell asleep, hide eggs for her, and then watch the Blues Brothers. There was something oddly comforting about watching an obsessed pair of ex-cons on a crazy quest as they traveled cross country and ran into various obstacles, including homicidal ex-girlfriends, the police, and Illinois Nazis (which I probably would have hated even without watching this movie, but it was nice to have the validation in place).

Proving that there is a gaming experience for just about any pop culture memory you might have, Trouble for Hire is a game that deals with completing not quite legal missions while on a road trip, with gonzo events following hot on your bumper. There is a LOT of inspirational material listed, but if you never thought you would find a game that would help you capture the feel of The Blues Brothers, The Cannonball Run, Pulp Fiction, or Death Proof, you may want to keep reading.

Kicking the Tires

This review is based on the PDF version of Trouble for Hire, which comes in at 123 pages. This product is most definitely in color. There are some seriously bright 70s and 80s inspired color schemes in this book, including some enormous block letters for the chapter headings.

There are a few symbols to call out rules or just random facts to help reinforce the themes of the game, as well as big, bold, red sidebars to call special attention to various topics. Many of the actual character illustrations are restricted to simpler pallets to convey the tone of the image being presented. There are also some photographs of various southwestern United States locations as well. Its contained chaos selectively harnessed to convey a specific feel, and if you are familiar with the source material, it creates some serious resonance.

There is some violent imagery, as well as some nudity, so if those kinds of images are problematic for you, it is something you may want to know up front.

Introduction and Spirit and Setting

The first two sections of the book introduce the concept of the game, and what tropes and genres that the game is hoping to invoke. This is where we are introduced to the #HTP symbol, which is placed in the text when the book is specifically addressing rules and how they are engaged, and #DumbFact, which is put in the text when something is being conveyed that may give you some useful trivia for the overall tone of the story, but isn’t all that important to the game itself.

The game isn’t a broad game that deals with a larger genre. There are a limited number of roles that players will take, but the overall story is about a particular smuggler who takes dangerous jobs. He goes on road trips to complete them, and bad people and people from his past show up to complicate the job.

We get a section on the protagonist of this series of stories, and some details on his car. At this point, you may be wondering what kind of game this is. You don’t learn that quite yet. It’s a storytelling game that will detail the jobs that Ruben Carlos Ruiz takes, and the challenges that develop along the road as he works as a smuggler, courier, or wheelman.

This text is written in a very conversational tone, and in a tone that is in keeping with the source material. For example, when the game posits that you might ask when the game takes place, it then scolds you for asking a stupid question. More broadly, the game is billed as presenting “Post-Western” stories, stories where the protagonist would have fit in the Old West more than modern times, and never really has a place in polite society. It also mentions that even if you are portraying stories set in modern times, it is perfectly in keeping with the tone for everything to look like something out of the 70s until you introduce a modern element.

The Rules

This section dives into the mechanics of the game, but also early on jumps ahead of a debate that might be had about the game. There is a sidebar where the text indicates that this isn’t a roleplaying game, but it is a game that role-players might enjoy. I’m going enter my own opinion here and say that, if you consider a game like Fiasco a roleplaying game, this is definitely a roleplaying game, but let’s look at the mechanics so you can make your own decisions.

Each player in the game gets currency, called RPM, that they can spend to trigger effects from the sheet for various roles in the story. Once 10 RPM has been spent, the scene progresses, and everyone picks a new role. The player that is running Ruben may have to roll to resolve challenges, but the other roles in the story don’t resolve challenges, they only present them or help Ruben resolve them. There are also themes, which award RPM to players when they introduce the theme into the action they take on their turn.

The roles in the game include the following:

Ruben Carlos Ruiz (the protagonist)

Los Campanero (Ruben’s sidekick)

La Villanos (the antagonists of the story)

The Editor (a role that allows twists to be introduced and that can introduce narration and scene cuts)

The Road Through the World (the various things along the way between point A and B)

Los Espectadores (bystanders, characters that may be caught up in the story without being for or against Ruben)

The Rider (a friend, mentor, rival, or wildcard from Ruben’s past—she is presented as a force of nature that could be anything from Racer X to Yoda to Ruben—if Racer X or Yoda rode a motorcycle topless)

La Extrano (supernatural or unexplained events going on in the story)

Each adventure will have a plan. The plan has mile markers that show when the story progresses, but only in broad strokes. For example, a mile marker might just say that in this phase of the game, we find out something new about what Ruben is hauling, and what that thing is or how it is found out is left open to the players.

The plan might also spell out that some roles aren’t available in a story, or that those roles aren’t available until a certain mile marker. So, if a story isn’t about the supernatural, La Extrano isn’t a valid role for the adventure. If Ruben meets up with a character that counts as a sidekick at the third mile marker, the plan may say that Los Campanero isn’t available until after Ruben meets that character.

Players can spend RPM to trigger challenges, frame the situation, and then Ruben’s player will describe how they plan on overcoming the challenge. Ruben’s player will then roll two dice, then picks one die to be the results die, and the other will get measured against the chart for the Kick dice selected. The Kick dice have a separate set of “extra” results that happen, separate from the success or failure of Ruben’s actions. The Kick dice include:

Wild Card (the default if nothing else applies)

Fighting

The Driver

Los Campanero (only available if the sidekick is part of the story and contributed in some way)

If Ruben doesn’t quite get the job done, he might have to pay out RPM, or take a consequence, like a hard jump to a new scene, injuries, or finding out that previously established facts aren’t actually true. The consequence is set by the player that introduced the challenge.

The game also includes the Three Lights. This concept is both a reward mechanic and a built-in safety mechanic. There is a green light, a yellow light, and a red light in play in the game.

Green Light—Keep doing what you are doing, and cash this in to pay up to 3 RPM

Yellow Light—We introduced concepts I don’t want to delve into too deeply, let’s keep any future references off screen

Red Light—I don’t want this content in the game, we shouldn’t use it anymore from this point on

Any player can pick up one of the lights and use them, but if you pick up the green light, you can only use it to award another player for the direction they have taken the game. Once they have it, they can spend it or award it to another player. Yellow and Red lights are always available to anyone that feels they need to use them.

Adventures

This section goes into greater detail on how to create your own adventures, getting your friends to play, how to hack the game, teaching the game, and advice for play.

While I have sometimes seen a game go into detail about searching for online groups or visiting an FLGS or conventions, I don’t think I’ve seen many discuss the broader topic of picking out which friends would be likely to play this game and why it might appeal to them. For example, the text discusses the reasons that Role Playing Gamers, Film Enthusiasts, and Actors, Writers & Creative Types–as discreet groups–might find the game interesting.

The section on hacking the game delves into what roles might not make sense in other genres, and how the individual roles might look in other settings.

Appendices

This section includes Characters You May Meet, Locations Out West, Adventures, and Inspirado. Characters you may meet include NPCs you can plug in and use in specific roles (other than Ruben and the Rider, who are who they are). Locations Out West have some noteworthy places to use for proper locations in various adventures. Adventures are more fully detailed scenarios that can be played out. Inspirado is a list of the various movies and media that inspired the game and its tone.

There are some colorful extras detailed in Characters You May Meet, from recurring perennial screw-ups, to creepy federal agents, to roadhouse owners, to scary criminal bad guys. While many are specific characters made to fit a mold, it is interesting to note that when dealing with some archetypes, the text introduces them, but doesn’t fully endorse using them, such as The Roadside Mystic, which is discussed as a trope, but not given an actual example character.

The Locations Out West section gives some example locations that might come up in the game. Some of them are very broad, just suggesting the types of locations that are appropriate for the kind of story being told, such as “a field of shipping containers.” Others are specific, notable real-world locations, like New Idria, California, a ghost town that doesn’t show up on most GPS.

The sample adventures include:

Delivering a package for a washed-up porn producer while dealing with a crazy rival courier

Kidnapping a pageant queen while dodging a federal agent

Dodging cartel agents while delivering Canadian weed to Texas

Participating in an illegal road race

Working for a witch to dig up something valuable that’s been buried since the prohibition

Doing a job for a vampire casino owner

Some of the elements in the above jobs reflect some of the inspirational material, at times in ways that may not mesh well with the table. As an example, the pageant queen is specifically described as morbidly obese, and I’m not sure what that would bring to a story given the context of the job. Other elements are going to depend on exactly what kind of criminal activity the players are going to be comfortable portraying.

On A Mission From God

 The game provides a tightly focused package for telling very specific stories, with lots of room for variation within that prescribed band. 

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I really like the pacing of this game. I like the mechanic of using the currency of action to pace how quickly the story progresses, and I like the ability to match die results in either succeeding at an action or causing secondary effects.

Gaining RPM specifically when you introduce themes from the story into the game is a great way to mechanize recurring elements. I love the way that the safety tools are integrated into the mechanics of the story by turning them into traffic lights and fitting the overall theme. The game provides a tightly focused package for telling very specific stories, with lots of room for variation within that prescribed band.

You Boys Drank $300 Worth of Beer

The genres that serve as an inspiration to the game have lots of problematic elements, and while the game itself has built-in safety elements, and even addresses the problematic content of those foundational stories in various places, the example roles and stories still include elements that could easily be used in a manner that is less than sensitive. It’s a very careful balance between risk and reward, trying to call back to certain tropes while not letting them devolve into something less healthy for storytelling.

The discussions about elements found in the inspirational media aren’t shy about pointing out what’s wrong with things like racism or cultural appropriation, but because of the overall conversational, generally humorous or sarcastic tone used throughout, some of that frank discussion may have less impact than it should.

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

I can’t help but compare this game to Fiasco, and in that comparison, I think this game holds up well in that company. It’s telling a narrower band of stories but provides more tools for pacing, themes, and the ability to turn the dials to make humor more or less of an element in the individual game session.

The biggest downside to that is that narrow band of stories has a lot of baggage that must be carefully navigated to keep the content from becoming overly exploitative. Because of that, people that might enjoy the pacing or the mechanical twists might still want to be sure they know what is part of the overall package before they dive into playing the game.

What are your favorite games for telling crime stories? What are your best practices for keeping gritty or controversial content safe at the table? What is your favorite movie and why is it Blues Brothers? Let me know in the comments below!

Trouble for Hire Review published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com