#and clue also. there’s like one video on its filming and casting history and that’s all I can find

[zebracakesarecopingmechanisms]

ok so we know about the need to infodump, but what about the opposite? The need to absorb more information about your special interest like a sponge, but you literally can’t find any new material because you’ve already consumed every fact about it

[bersergner-blog]

Sources & Significance 1_1.4 - Gesamtkunstwerk

What is a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’? Gesamtkunstwerk is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Friedrich Trahndorff in 1827, it was popularised by German composer Richard Wagner in the mid-19th century. It literally translates to ‘Whole Artwork’ and represents a piece of art that combines a multitude of artistic disciplines into a perfect whole. While this term was largely applied to architecture and particularly theatre, I personally find the term to be needlessly pretentious as most works of art use a combination of multiple disciplines and techniques, I do believe that Video Games are the purest form of this concept. Combining 2D/3D Visual Art, Audio design/ Production, Architecture, Anthropology, Animation, Business, Cinematography, Communication, Psychology, Engineering, Creative Writing, Economics, History, Management, Mathematics, etc.

A more interesting interpretation of the term Gesamtkunstwerk is “an artistic environment or performance in which spectators are expertly maneuvered into dumbfounded passivity by a sinister and powerful creative force. It is often mistaken for a hazy mixture of art forms that intoxicates those who gather in its presence” - Ivan Phillips (2013). While I would argue against the term “sinister” I assume it is simply flowery language attempting to get across the ‘otherworldly’ nature of effective art, as well as the term “passivity” as I believe ‘acceptance’ or ‘suspension of disbelief’ is more fitting and less exclusionary to other forms of art. Beyond that I think this description is very interesting and gets at the heart of what takes Gesamtkunstwerk beyond simply a combination of art forms. It is deliberate, skillful and employs a variety of approaches to almost cast a spell on the viewer to pull them into the work. Again this is incredibly applicable to the genre of interactive media, and also why I would argue the word passivity.

This brings us to the argument of Medium specificity. The inherent differences in materialities and properties between particular forms of media. For example: a novel uses words to illustrate it’s world while a film version of that same novel would express this through imagery. Both are visual mediums. However in the lense of Interactive Media the lines become blurred. While it is a visual medium at first glance far more related to film than the written word, games like Resident Evil for example let you find notes that often contain important clues that allow you to progress as well as general information that fills in the world of the setting. So does Medium specificity still apply? I believe less so. In particular not when applied to interactive media forms. We must draw on all forms of art to deliver an experience which has interactivity at the heart of it, the user is an active participant so the spirit of the art is more important than the specifics of the individual medium. In the words of Krauss (2000: 10) - “specificity not of materials but of ‘the essence of art itself’”, Lev Manovich takes this even further in his article ‘Post-Media Aesthetics (2000) - “Various cultural and technological developments have together rendered meaningless one of the key concepts of modern art - that of a medium”. In this argument I believe the medium as a form of expression is replaced by the medium more as a form of categorisation. However he also speaks of the digital medium in his (2001: 208) article ‘The Language of New Media’ - “Regardless of how often we repeat in public that the modernist notion of medium specificity (“every medium should develop it’s own unique language”) is obsolete, we do expect computer narratives to showcase new aesthetic possibilities which did not exist before digital computers. In short, we want them to be new media specific”. This raises an interesting other side to the argument, that while we take from multiple mediums to develop the language of our work, we are pushed to define medium specific processes and creative culture. Similar views are reflected in the general understanding of Computer as a “metamedium”. Alan Kay posits in his (1984, 52) book ‘Computer Software’: “[a computer] is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, though it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated”. In another article (2013) ‘Software takes command’ by Lev Manovich he states “The computer metamedium is simultaneously a set of different media and a system for generating new media tools and new types of media. In other words, a computer can be used to create new tools for working with the media types it already provides as well as to develop new not-yet-invented media”. In this sense Video Games can probably be considered the purest form of a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ if such a definition is even necessary in the modern age.

[thecriticalbuck]

Movie Review - The Batman

Oh boy, this is a big one.

Matt Reeves’ The Batman is the latest iteration of arguably DC Comics’ greatest superhero character. This time around, Robert Pattinson portrays a younger, vengeful and mournful version of Bruce Wayne/Batman, who must work with the Gotham City Police Department to catch the Riddler, an elusive serial killer who leaves intentional clues at all his crimes. Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, Colin Ferrell, John Tuturro and Andy Serkis round out a star-studded cast as various other famous members of the Batman mythos.

Now, much like the characters of Superman and Spider-Man, Batman has a complex cinematic history. The Caped Crusader has had myriad actors and interpretations since the 1960s, from incredibly campy to hyper-stylized gothic, from dramatic realism to intensive action blockbuster. This time around, we have a blend of previous versions with a heavy emphasis on horror and thriller elements, similar to Batman comics Serious House on Serious Earth, Batman: Year One, and Zero Year. All eyes were on the movie, both in regards to its new style and to its choice of actor.

So what’s the verdict? How does Pattinson and Reeves stand compared to all previous cinematic Batmen? To put it briefly: The Batman delivers the most intense, gritty and raw take on the character and his world, while still maintaining the stylized and colorful feel of the comics. This film is an exemplar of everything Batman is.

Particular praise must be given to set design, costume design and cinematography. Gotham City feels like a modern city locked away in time capsule, built heavily on gothic architecture. It has the grime of Batman Begins with the color palette and layout of Batman (1989). Sweeping shots of the city fill the movie, and all are absolutely stunning. Each mainstay character is translated beautifully. This is probably one of the coolest Batsuits ever put to screen, and Riddler’s Zodiac-inspired design boosts his already unnerving presence throughout the story. The “proto” versions of Catwoman and Penguin that we receive are also well translated, and clearly meant to represent that these characters have not come into their own quite yet.

Speaking of characters, each of them are incredibly well casted and performed. Pattinson’s vengeful and angry Batman, paired with his reclusive, almost death-seeking Bruce Wayne is a big departure from previous interpretations. This Batman is, quite frankly, terrifying, the opening of the film establishing exactly how his presence inspires fear throughout Gotham. And you believe it. Kravitz delivers probably the best Selina Kyle/Catwoman since Michelle Pfeiffer, a young woman who clearly has skills, but has not built her reputation as the famed cat-burglar. Dano’s Riddler is equally terrifying as he is eccentric, reminding me at times of the Riddler from the Batman: Arkham video games. Wright is wonderful as Jim Gordon, and Ferrell is unrecognizable as the Penguin. I also appreciate that this movie makes greater use of the wider Batman mythos compared to other movies; having all these characters, each one utilized perfectly, makes this Gotham feel more realized that its predecessors.

The screenwriting on display here is as fine-tuned as possible. There is not a wasted detail, every word spoken and every shot shown play into the plot, either as clues to the audience or to the World’s Greatest Detective. Having a story centered around Batman solving a crime is surprisingly rare across the cinematic legacy of Batman, and it helps to show just how skilled and intelligent Bruce Wayne is. It also provides a unique perspective into Batman’s methods and his lifestyle. We get to see the full effect that becoming the Batman has on Bruce, and we see how he starts to transform from a violent vigilante and into the hero of Gotham. From a symbol of vengeance to a symbol of hope.

I’ve seen some criticism regarding the characterization of Batman in the film, however, that while Pattinson delivers a stellar performance, the departure from the traditional Batman into this more seemingly spiteful version was a bit too far for viewers to accept. I can certainly understand that opinion, but my response is the same as similar criticism levied against Man of Steel: let’s see what the future holds. While The Batman is a concise and singular story, it clearly leaves room for further exploration of this iteration of Batman and Gotham. Perhaps in time, we will see this Batman grow into the true superhero that audiences know and love.

Regardless, I loved this interpretation of Batman. Reeves incorporated his craftsmanship into the superhero blockbuster elegantly, making a compelling and thrilling story in a Gotham city that is equally realistic as it is breathtakingly stylized. Each character is perfectly realized from their comic book counterparts. Even in its realism, this makes Batman feel like the mythic and mysterious figure he is in the comics, and I cannot wait to see what this universe holds in the future.

10/10

[perksofhs]

‘So... the weather?’

This is a little AU piece that was requested! The prompt: Hey could you do a one shot where harry and famous reader are in a talk show and he has a crush on her. Maybe he accidentally hurts her while playing a game and he feels awful about it orrr maybe the host put a video where harry says that the reader is his crush and he gets nervous and embarrassed.

Promoting a movie was all but glamourous. It was a constant string of 14 hour days, 5am wake up calls and repetitive questions about working with this person or that person with very little time spent discussing the actual plot of the film. The savior of press tours was any interview where you werent alone, whether it was a joint interview with cast mates or a full couch talk show.

You’d been on the Late Late Show once in the past and you had to be honest, it was so much fun. Your first appearance included a 7 minute long musical medley involving fifteen quick changes and you very nearly faceplanting the floor.

By this point you were sitting in the dressing room, your hair being tugged one way or another by David your hairdresser, with your make up artist Cam working his magic on your noticabley exhausted face. “Who am I on with tonight Maggie?” you ask your manager, realising no one had actually told you. Maggie looked up from her laptop, a smirk on her lips. “James told me not to tell you so you’ll have to wait!” she said smugly. You rolled your eyes, “Of course he said that, that man has to stop trying to set me up”. James was a good friend, the two of you having met a number of times through industry parties award shows. He’d always try and find the mosyty eligible bachelor in the room and push you towards them just to shit you. Suffice to say none of them worked out.

Once your hair and makeup were done and you were dressed in a cute but entirely impractical and kind of uncortable outfit, a crew member came to get you and walk you down to the stage. “Ok so once we get to the stage, you’ll hear James announce your name, walk down the steps through the audience, wave or high five whatever you feel like. Then greet James and take a seat, then he’ll then announce the next guest”. You nodded along politely, already knowing the drill. “By chance, do you know who the other guest is?” you say shooting Maggie a smug look. “Yeah its Harry Styles” with that your heart skipped a beat, you’d always found him attractive and incredibly charming which is something you had stupidly mentioned to James once or twice. “That bastard” you say under your breath, you didnt have much time to think about it though because not even 30 seconds later you rounded a corner and there he was.

He was a gorgeous as ever, wearing what you could only assume with a gucci knitted jumper with a delicate lacy collared shirt beneath it, his signature pearls hanging perfectly around his neck, and a pair of cream flared pants. The outfit was quintessentially Harry. He was chatting to another random crew member who seemed to be giving him the same speech. You could hear James wrapping up whatever he was talking about, you were too distracted to follow it, you couldnt look away from the man 8 feet away from you. “You good?” Maggie says, pulls you from your bewildered state, Maggie’s words also caught the attention of Harry who finally looked in your direction.

Harry’s eyes landed on you and unbeknownst to you he was just as taken by the sight of you. Realising his gaze was lingering, Harry snapped himself out of it “Hey i’m Harry, nice to meet you” he said, taking a few steps towards you, his hand awkwardly out for a hand shake, something Harry was already kicking himself for doing. You took his ring clad hand in yours briefly “Hey I’m-” before you could finish you could hear James announce your name, you let out a laugh “that’s my queue”. It was probably a good thing that James has inadvertently introduced you, who knows whether you could have actually remebered your own name in that moment.

You descend the stairs, meeting James at the bottom with a friendly hug before taking your place on the couch. “Can you also put your hands together for the incredible Harry Styles!” James proclaims, the audience erupting once more, you watch Harry interact with the audience effortlessly as he makes his way down the stairs, having a bromance moment with James before he plops down next to you, sitting closer than you had expected him to. “So have you guys met before?” James says, knowing full well the answer is “No we haven’t, we met briefly backstage” Harry says. He couldnt stop thinking about how awkward he’d made the initial encounter but he couldnt help it.

Throughout the interview it was all too clear that sparks were flying bewteen the two of you. Harry had talked about his new music, you’d talked about your new film, an anecdote or two thrown in from the both of you. all was going smoothly until about 15 minutes in when James began to look very smug. “Now Harry, I know you two hadn’t met before but from what I hear you have quite the crush huh?” Harry’s cheek went bright red knowing exactly what was about to happen. You on the other hand had zero idea what was going on. “And how would you know that James?” Harry says trying to pretend he has no clue what James was referring to. “Funny you should ask my friend, this clip might just answer that for you!”

Your eyes darted to the nearest screen as the clip rolled, it was an interview from the press tour of the movie Harry had been in last year. The interviewer had asked the cast who they’d love to work with on future projects and to your surprise, Harry’s pick was you. The interviewer then asked why you were his choice, Harry’s response was “she’s just so talented, every time I watch her in something I’m just profoundly captivated. Her on screen presence is incredible.” One of his castmates laughed, playfully poking Harry in the shoulder adding "If it wasn’t already obvious he’s got quite the crush! He made us watch like 4 of her films during our set downtime” before the clip ended.

Harry dramtically buried his head in his hands out of sheer embarrassment as the audience let out a series of ‘oooohs’ and whistles and James burst out laughing. You let out an laugh as you awkwardly fiddled with your fingers, not entirely sure what you were menat to say or do in that moment. "Well then Harold, go on, ask her out. Nows your chance!” James goaded. Harry was utterly mortified but wasnt the least bit surprised. “So... the weather?” the audience laughed at Harry’s miserable attempt at changing the subject. “Alright alright i’l drop it but you can’t say I didnt try! Just remember this moment when you get married ok?” James said, throwing his hands up in defeat as he got in one last playful jab.

The rest of the interview went awkwardly by, although you were a little distracted. Did he really have a crush on you? How could he have a crush on you? You’re the one who had the crush on him, surely he didn’t feel the same?  James wrapped up the interview and once the cameras had cut both you and Harry made your way backstage.

“Well that was sufficiently awkward and I apologise for how uncomfortable I’m sure that made you. I’m honestly gonna fucking kill James for that” Harry said, you could only giggle in response. “He has no idea what’s coming the next time we catch up. In all fairness, despite how uncomfortable that whole ordeal was, it was lovely to meet you” the two of you smiled at each other. “It was lovely meeting you too Harry, no need to apologise, I bloody knew he was up to something. anyway, I have to head back to my dressing room, I���ll see you around” you say before starting to walk away. You only make it a few steps before Harry stops you “Hey wait! What are you doing this afternoon? This was my last interview for the day and I was gonna head from here to get some food. Wanna come along?” You pause for a moment to think about what the rest your day looked like before smiling back at him “Well, I had planned to go home and eat some left over chinese in front of a film... but I like your idea better. Swing by my dressing room on your way out?” Harry could conseal his happiness with your response, a giddy grin now plastered on his face “It’s a date, but we have to make a deal that neither of us tell James ok? You know how smug he’d be. Deal?” Harry said with a wink, reaching his hand out to seal the deal. You laughed as you shook his hand once more, this time a little less awkard than the first encounter. “My lips are sealed. Now you better not take too long, I’m starving!” you say as you walk away with a smirk and as they say, the rest was history.

Hey lovelies, I hope you enjoyed this one! And I hope the anon who requested it thinks I did an ok job! I havent done many request pieces. Also I know its not super long but I still think its pretty adorable.  Requests are open, just shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can do! xx

[themattress]

My Top 30 Favorite Video Games

Inspired by @ultraericthered’s Top 30 Favorite Anime post. 

Although I’m doing mine in countdown form, ‘cause it’s more fun that way!

30. Super Mario Bros. - Arguably the first “blockbuster” game to be released, not only does Super Mario Bros. still hold up over 35 years later but it’s a gift that keeps on giving with how many different incarnations, remixes, fan games using its assets, etc. that we have now.

29. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - OBJECTION! While I cherish the entire original Phoenix Wright trilogy of the Ace Attorney franchise, I’ll always be the most partial to the original outing. The sheer audacity and hilarity of the concept, which is grounded by endearing characters and compelling mysteries, shines brilliantly in this little, easily accessible game. 

28. Trigger Happy Havoc: Danganronpa - While similar in many ways to Ace Attorney, Danganronpa boasts a variety of more actual gameplay than mere point-and-click text scrolling. But what really makes this stand out, beyond gameplay or even the strength of its concept, story and characters, is the atmosphere it creates. For good and for ill, traversing the pristine, neon-lit hallways of the abandoned Hopes Peak Academy looking for clues as I’m forced to play by Monokuma’s twisted rules is an experience that will stay with me forever.

27. Star Fox 64 - Beyond all the entertainment this game provides through memes, it’s really just a fun, reasonably simple but just moderately complicated enough game that’s accessible to any player even if they usually don’t go for aerial shooters. It’s also one of the earliest console games that I ever played, so of course it’s going to hold a special place in my heart.

26. Batman: Arkham City - It’s an impressive feat when an open world game can still feel so claustrophobic in all the right ways, and that’s what Arkham City accomplishes. This game is essentially The Dark Knight to Arkham Asylum’s Batman Begins, escalating the action, suspense and sheer Batman-ness, providing unlimited opportunities to enjoy yourself playing as Gotham’s defender and facing down the greatest Rogues Gallery in comic book history.

25. Red Dead Redemption - Look, I know that Red Dead Redemption 2 is technically the superior game. But its complicated story, sprawling cast of characters, and vast canvas of a world can be pretty daunting, whereas I feel like the original Red Dead Redemption struck a much better balance. Allowing open world freedom within the confines of the straight-forward story of John Marston’s redemption really makes you feel like you’re in an old Western film, and the way that choices you make as a player impact the way that film ultimately turns out is one of the strongest arguments for video games being worthy of consideration as true art.

24. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - So, ten years ago an open world adventure video game series releases its fifth entry...and to this day, we’ve had no sixth, in favor of expansions and updated re-releases of said fifth entry. But that’s not a sign of laziness; it’s a sign the developers know they hit such a peak in quality that they have no need to rush anything further out the gate, as Skyrim is a gift that keeps on giving. Addictive in how unlimited in possibilities it is, with each playthrough never being the same as the one before, Skyrim is a gaming masterpiece that I don’t think I’m going to get bored with playing anytime soon.

23. Super Paper Mario - This may be an unpopular opinion, but I vastly prefer this game’s action-platform-RPG hybrid gameplay style to the prior installments’ traditional turn-based RPG style, which feels more at home in stuff like Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series. But gameplay aside, I think this has the strongest story of any Mario game, trading in the usual “save the kingdom/princess” fare for saving all of reality, with legitimate emotion and drama and even character development. It’s one of the Wii’s shining gems, to be sure.

22. Epic Mickey - This game’s graphics are by and large unremarkable, its gameplay is fraught with issues (that camera is unforgivable), and it’s nowhere close to the best on its system or genre. But Epic Mickey is a case study in where the effort put into crafting the game’s world and story, not to mention the obvious love and respect for the material being worked with, pays off. Any Disney fan will love this game for its story, which puts Mickey front and center as an actual character rather than a mascot and dives deep into his history as he meets his “half-brother” Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and its mystical, unique atmosphere - what the graphics can’t deliver, the fucking music more than makes up for. All of the game’s flaws mean nothing compared to the sheer heart on display, and I treasure it greatly as a result.

21. Batman: Arkham Asylum - I already mentioned that Arkham City is the superior game, but as was the case with Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, personal preference strikes again. The simpler story and narrower confines of Arkham Asylum just appeal to me slightly more, and I feel like the borderline horror atmosphere this game has could never fully be replicated by all of its sequels and spin-offs. Also, you can play as the Joker in this. WIN.

20. Metal Gear Solid - And on the subject of Arkham Asylum, it owes much to this game, which created the template of a lone badass hero having to use stealth and weaponry to liberate a government-owned island from the lunatic terrorists that have taken over. Hideo Kojima famously never wanted this game to have any sequels, and I can definitely see his point, as it’s a complete and wholly satisfying experience in of itself and I don’t feel like it’s ever been topped. At the very least, it’s certainly the most enjoyable of the series to me.

19. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Also, speaking of “borderline horror atmosphere”, we have the freakiest game that the Legend of Zelda series ever put out. What was supposed to just be a gaiden to Ocarina of Time mutated into this beautiful monstrosity that’s become just as iconic. Nobody who plays this game is ever going to forget that fucking moon and all the constant jumping back and forth in time across three days as you try to prevent the apocalypse of Termina. It’s the kind of gaming trauma that’s well worth experiencing.

18. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories - Like Majora’s Mask, this game is a case study where you can take a bunch of recycled assets and gameplay, and then make something unique from it if you have a well-crafted story with a dark and disturbing atmosphere. It’s hard to experience or appreciate the transition between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II without playing this midquel, which takes the narrative and characters to deeper levels without being pretentious about it and sets the stage for the proper console sequel perfectly. And if you can’t get into it being on Gameboy Advance, then just play the PS2 remake (which is arguably the superior version anyway) and you’re good! Just...don’t mind the cards, OK?

17. Sonic CD - And now we have another game about jumping back and forth through time to prevent an apocalypse! See the common threads at play here by this point? Sonic the Hedgehog is at his best in 2D gameplay, and I personally enjoy this the best out of all the 2D games in the series. As obscure as the Sega CD was as a system, it was powerful enough to take the blue blur’s speed to its maximum level, set alongside beautiful graphics and a kick-ass soundtrack (well, two different kick-ass soundtracks; and I actually prefer the US one). 

16. Pokemon Black & White - While there were advancements made to story and graphics and gameplay features in the third and fourth generations of the Pokemon series, nothing felt as truly ground-breaking as the second generation games until the fifth gen with its Black & White games. This was arguably the game series’ peak in quality on all fronts, but its specifically the story that lands it on this list, as its well-written and paced, subverts many formulaic elements from the previous games, is set in one of the most unique regions in the Pokemon world, and has a timeless message that has only grown more relevant with age. 

15. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - The whole series could really go here, but fortunately the most recent entry is the perfect embodiment of said series, with every playable character there’s ever been and then some. The sheer variety is unmatched by any other fighting game out there, and its story mode, “World of Light”, is quite possibly the greatest video game crossover in history given how many characters are featured as both fighters and spirits.

14. Super Mario 64 - I’m pretty sure this game used to be higher in my favor, but replaying it on the Nintendo Switch recently has made me aware of how, as the first game on the Nintendo 64 and the first 3D platformer, it’s poorly aged in several areas. However, I must stress that it is still a very good game. The fun of going to the various worlds within paintings in Peach’s Castle hasn’t changed, nor has how smoothly and seamlessly Mario managed to make the jump from 2D to 3D. Just like Super Mario Bros., the number of games that owe something to this one is too great to count, and that’s an achievement that remains timeless.

13. Dark Chronicle - Also known as Dark Cloud 2. I hadn’t heard a damn thing about this game before renting it on a whim many years ago, and I was caught off guard by just how good it was. It’s got a simple but effective story and likable characters, a timeless atmosphere, beautifully cel-shaded graphics, dungeon-crawling gameplay, action-RPG combat gameplay, literal world-building gameplay, and even a fishing minigame! This game can actually stand besides the Zelda series without shame; it’s truly an underrated gem.

12. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Oh, speaking of Zelda, this game goes full Lord of the Rings-style epic fantasy with it and it is glorious. Between the near perfect gameplay, beautiful 3D graphics, and one of the best stories in the series (with one of the best characters: Midna), Twilight Princess’ most prevalent complaint from critics all the way up to its own developers is that it wasn’t even MORE expansive and awesome given how long it was hyped, and if that’s the biggest issue with the game then I’d say it’s in pretty good shape.

11. Super Mario Galaxy - Super Mario 64 may be held back a little by how its aged, but no such thing is holding back Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Odyssey might be as good or possibly even better, but I just don’t hold the same feelings of amazement and respect toward it that I do for this game. From the blitzkrieg-style attack on the Mushroom Kingdom by Bowser to the discovery of Rosalina’s space station, this game had me hooked from the first few minutes, especially with it blaring that awesome orchestral score the whole way through. To this day, I maintain that this is Mario’s greatest 3D adventure. It’s simply magnificent.

10. Final Fantasy X - Ha! See what I did there? This game has caught flak for some of the awkwardness that comes from being the first fully 3D entry in the series, but I think that’s tantamount to nitpicking when compared to all it does right. To me, this was the last really good installment of the main Final Fantasy series, with a story and world so brilliantly developed that the game earned the immediate breakthrough success and acclaim that it found in its native Japan. 20 years later and, as the HD remaster has shown, it still holds up as one of the most engaging JRPG experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of having.

9. Banjo-Kazooie - At the time, this was basically Rare’s copycat version of Super Mario 64, although considered about as good. Now, however, there’s a difference: the aging issues I mentioned for Super Mario 64 don’t apply for Banjo-Kazooie. Whether replaying it on the Nintendo 64 or on whichever Xbox you’ve got, this game is still just as fun, imaginative and hilarious now as it was back then. It’s quite possibly the greatest 3D platformer ever made.

8. Pokemon Crystal - The definitive edition of the Gold & Silver games of Pokemon’s second generation, taking what was already a phenomenal advancement and improvement to the first generation and making it even better with additional features such as the ability to play as a girl for the first time and a more clearly defined storyline centered around the legendary Pokemon featured on the game’s box art. Pokemon had been written off as just a passing fad up until this point. This was when its staying power as a video game juggernaut was proven.

7. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Talk about a win right out of the gate for the Nintendo Switch! This game returns the Legend of Zelda series to its roots while also applying all that has been made possible in video games since the original game’s release, and the result is an enthralling, addictive, open world masterpiece that has set a new standard of quality for both the Zelda series and for many modern video games in general.

6. Kingdom Hearts II - The Final Mix edition to be precise, although in this day and age that’s basically the only edition people are playing anyway. This game is the apotheosis of Kingdom Hearts as both a video game series and as a concept; filled to the brim with Disney magic and Square Enix RPG expertise and paired with some of the most refined action-based gameplay there is. And when it comes to bringing the original Kingdom Hearts trilogy’s story to a close, does this game ever stick the landing. The series could have ended right here and I would have been completely satisfied (and its reputation would be a lot better off, too!)

5. Pokemon Yellow - While I maintain that this game, the definitive edition of the original first generation Pokemon games, still holds up as fun to play even now, I’ll admit that it’s pure bias that it ranks so high. It was the first proper video game I ever played, there was no way I was leaving it off the top 5! Its blissful nostalgic atmosphere is always such a delight to return to.

4. Banjo-Tooie - Remember when I said Banjo-Kazooie was “quite possibly the greatest 3D platformer ever made”? The “quite possibly” is because its in stiff competition with its own sequel! And personally, I’m in Banjo-Tooie’s corner; something about how inter-connected its worlds are and the addition of so many things to do all while maintaining your full moveset from the original game is just beautiful to me. Both it and its predecessor are like obstacle courses that I never tire of running through, which is the hallmark of brilliant game design.

3. Kingdom Hearts - Another case where the sequel may be the superior game, but my own personal preference leans toward the original. And in this case, it’s a highly personal preference: this game and my memories of playing it for the first time are so very dear to me. The characters and worlds of Disney put into an epic crossover RPG was like a dream come true for me and no matter how far the series it spawned has deteriorated, nothing can detract from the magic of this game. It’s got a certain, indescribable feel and atmosphere that’s never truly been replicated, and that feel and atmosphere still holds up whenever I revisit it. The gameplay may not be the best, particularly when compared to Kingdom Hearts II’s, but the charm of the story and the characters and the world and the very concept more than makes up for that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of Disney and Square’s greatest masterpieces.

2. Final Fantasy VII - I was aware of the hype this game got and was totally ready to call it overrated, but damn it, it got me! I don’t know what it is about this game with its blocky early 3D graphics, poor sound quality to its excellent soundtrack, and frequently mistranslated script that proved to be so gripping and enjoyable to play through, but man did it ever Limit Break its way into my heart. This is considered a JRPG classic for a damn good reason.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Do I really need to explain this one? It’s famous for being frequently cited as one of the greatest video games ever made, and like Final Fantasy VII, its hype is well-deserved and totally justified. Whether you’re playing it on the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the 3DS, and hopefully the Nintendo Switch in the future, there is a magic quality to this game that permeates through every step you take in its fully 3D world. It’s a triumph that has stood the test of time, cementing the Zelda series as truly legendary.

[fearsmagazine]

6:45 - Review

DISTRIBUTOR: Regal Theaters

SYNOPSIS:  Bobby Patterson is taking one last shot at saving his relationship with his girlfriend, Jules Rables by taking her on a romantic weekend getaway to the picturesque island resort of Bog Grove. The sleepy beach town is curiously deserted and as they ask around they soon learn about its notorious and bloody history.  Their relationship issues are quickly cast aside as they try to overcome a demented cycle of terror in which they’re seemingly trapped. No matter what great lengths they take to avoid it, Bobby and Jules awake at 6:45 each morning to a nightmarish chain of events with no escape.

REVIEW: Director Craig Singer returns to the big screen after ten-plus years since his last feature, “Perkins’ 14,” with a sci-fi horror thriller where a struggling couple are caught in a murderous time-loop. 6:45 is receiving a theatrical release through Regal Cinemas.

The story, by veteran screenwriter Robert Dean Klein, is a simple twist on “Groundhog Day.” After spending the night, the next day the couple become caught up in this murderous time-loop. In essence, it is the character of Bobby who relives the nightmare as he is the only one who carries over the memories of the previous days. His girlfriend Jules doesn't have any clue to what has transpired and each new day Bobby tries hard to convince her, adding more stress to their strained relationship. Ultimately Bobby does something that breaks the chain of events and sends him back into the reality of a nightmare he created. The story ends on a note that feels similar to “Psycho” or “Identity” as it moves into a psychological explanation as to what brought about the events. Bobby never comes across as a likeable character and Jules remained hard to access or feel anything for.

The supporting cast, a group of veteran actors and talent, attempts to add background and atmosphere to the tale. Actor Armen Garo adds some lighter moments as the strange innkeeper. He brings some interesting ticks to the role that delivers many of the film’s memorial moments. Also creating an interesting character is veteran actor Thomas G. Waites as the peculiar barkeep. He starts out as your friendly bartender and as the days progress it begins to feel like he might know more than he is letting on. The rest of the supporting cast feels more like name recognition than anything that adds to the film. The leads Michael Reed and Augie Duke are fine but I never got anything from them that fully immersed me in the drama. It was almost as if I was watching a stage production.

For a “home grown” independent film 6:45 has some excellent locations that add depth to the film. The inn is very nice, the shops in the area are quaint, the bar was your basic dive. There were a couple of scenes shot on the beach that felt a bit off for the lighting as the time of day felt off with the rest of the timeline. There is an interesting montage utilized to show the passing of days that was utilitarian, effective but lacked any emotion or artistry. The mysterious killer was simply a guy in a dark hoodie with a simple makeup/mask to obscure his features. It was okay but wasn’t scary, at best slightly menacing.

The score by composer Kostas Christides adds depth and emotion that was lacking in the cinematography. It also added edge to the tension, as well a bit more scare to the mysterious killer's appearance and actions.

6:45 looks fabulous in the theater. However, it lacks any passion or intensity to engage the viewer. After a while, it felt like I was being shown pictures and videos from a friend’s killer vacation. They may have made memories that will last a lifetime, but after a while I was bored and couldn’t wait for it to be over. I mean how many times can you see the same shots of their room, beach, quaint shops, over and over again before you’re bored. 6:45 isn’t a bad film, just not the time of my life.

CAST: Michael Reed, Augie Duke, Thomas G. Waites, Armen Garo, Remy Ma, The 45 King, Ray Mancini, Joshua Matthew Smith, Sabina Freidman-Seitz, Allie Marshall, Leonardo Mancini, and Sasha K Gordon. CREW: Director/Producer - Craig Singer; Screenplay - Robert Dean Klein; Cinematographer - Lucas Pitassi; Score - Kostas Christides; Editing - Sam Adelman; Production Designer - Erin LaSorsa; Special Effects Supervisor - Vincent J. Guastini. OFFICIAL: www.645movie.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/645movie TWITTER: twitter.com/645movie TRAILER: https://youtu.be/VivQxpbRbkc RELEASE DATE: In Regal Theaters August 6th, 2021

**Until we can all head back into the theaters our “COVID Reel Value” will be similar to how you rate a film on digital platforms - 👍 (Like), 👌 (It’s just okay),  or 👎 (Dislike)

Reviewed by Joseph B Mauceri

[mikkock]

Hey hi your murder mystery art is super totally cool and amazing and I'd like to Extra! Extra! hear all about it *rattles bells*

haha wow i cant believe ud ask me THIS! unbelievable! now im gonna have to make a long post!

all info under the cut cause im kind like that ♥

For reasons I felt like making a Fancy Ass murder mystery story, with you know, hella complex secret storylines and everyone having drama and shit, and one person died but the more the story goes the less people care about who did the murder and the more they want tHE JUICY DETAILs. X and Y had an afFAIR you say!!! well that’s thousands time more interesting than that murder that happened, who cares about the culprit its not like any of us are going anywhere anyway! tell me more about the marital issues!

The ultimate Vibes are Clue (the game, ya kno, it had a movie too, and that movie was shot with three different endings -fun fact- so that movie theatres could play one alternatively that way people wouldnt get spoiled or even if they did they would not get the ending they were spoiled or even if all three were spoiled you couldnt know which ending you were getting anyway, big dick move, cause its an old movie and film is expensive, also that movie stupid and campy, ALSO I ONLY LEARNED MAKING THIS AU THAT IN ENGLISH THE GAME’S CALLED “CLUE” wE CALL IT CLUEDO therefore my wip playlist is called cluedo. because. fuck it.)(i just have an emotional attachment to that game i even had a cd rom video game version and it was the spookiest shit for a 6 years old, trust me, i played it so much tho i didnt even understand the rULES i was just making scenarios like gathering the characters in rooms n making conversations outloud cause honestly the banter is the best part of a murder mystery) ANYWAY that sure is a whole paragraph of tangent. 

BUT YE the inspo from the Clue game. you can tell it from the Colours obviously, everyone’s colour codded.(even everyone’s name is colours as well you’ll see it’s real dang fancy! im just remaking that game but with 2932020 characters and more behind the scenes drama and also for gay people.)

So BASIC PLOT!

Sir Belyy, the dude in white, is The Rich Powerful Respected Fancy Boss, and he throws a Fancy Reception Party with his closest friends and associates to celebrate the opening of a new branch of his business. All the lads gather in his wonderful little very isolated mansion in the middle of nowhere, like ok he got a death wish or something or he’s very trusting of his business partners, but not a good move, cause in the middle of the reception, as A Phat Storm Starts (for plot convenience, we going with a campy vibe if you couldnt tell), his body is found, it’s awful, there’s a killer on the loose! All the guests gather, and attempt to maybe contact the authorities, to not avail, since The Storm ya know, phone lines are Broken my dude. Its clear that the culprit is among them, since no one could have entered the house, or left it (cuz once again, ThE sTORm). And then it’s all about interrogating each other, distrust, alliances and betrayal, revealing one’s deepest secrets when they form an alibi and revealing someone else’s deepest secret for they could be a motive! Meanwhile there’s a dead body in the mansion just chillin there. 

.

So as I mentioned, I changed everyone’s name to be colour related (or ya know, food or flowers of that colour cause sometimes a colour in a language would not work as a name given the way names work in that culture all that jazz) which is the trippiest thing cause tHATS NOT YALLS USUAL NAMES but its fun (also changed so many ages hgfhs it was a trip)(still no one’s really old i guess i got boomerphobia). The “Cast” is clearly the most important part, and if ur a True “My OCs” Connaisseur (hdfghd the most useful skill to have, knowing *MY* Charactersdshgd) you may have recognised some faces and can already read some vibes and predict who will be progressing the plot and who will be yelling at people throwing accusations ghdfgd.

(god i wish i hadnt slacked off making the portraits of everyone in that AU i only have 3 tho that’s so sad so ill just make little sketches just cause <3 only text??? i got too many hoes with no attention span for that)

.

Sir BELYY (the one who dIEs lmao)

(bust shot missing the fact that this man is the tallest beefiest lad around)

Intimidating, powerful, composed, wealthy, carries the name of a family who has generations of control to it’s reputation, he’s The Man that hoes who believe in the economy wishes they were. As in, the “self made” man who only just happened to benefit from having a wealthy background to uplift his plans. In his youth, he wanted to prove his worth, seperated himself from his father, started a business, that business became big, then got attached to the family’s business, bam back to square one but with Reputation now. There seemed to be VERY big tension between him and The Father, some speculate it had to do with his unknown mother, and some family drama there, and it never got resolved as old man Belyy died quite young (the jUICY speculations are that current sir Belyy mURDEREd old man sir Belyy, fucked up if true!). People love him though in general, as he has that reputation of “Cold Lad With a Gold Heart” aka he takes people under his wings, donates, doesnt treat his employees like the absolute worst garbage etc... you know, he’s rich and a half decent person, so obviously he’s an angel on earth. But does it matter though, he’s dead! that’s the concept of the story!  

Mr.GRAY (the grey guest)(who could have guessed from the name)

He’s one of Sir Belyy’s oldest employees, and benefits from a high rank in the company. But, sadly for him, he’s been stagnating lately, as newer, youngest employees seem to have Belyy’s favours, and are his prefered associates for important tasks and positions. Therefore he has Some Bitterness, Some Salt, Some Distaste, some unbriddled but professionally muted hatred for Specific people in the company. He can be an antagonistic figure, but the amount of time he spent in Belyy’s circle grants him an immense quantity of information about the man, but mostly, about his business. Anything about the company’s history, dealings, operations, he’s aware of, either having been told of them, or having snooped around to obtain, immune to being questioned due to his legitimacy in the company.

Mr.LIM (the green guest)

Remember when it was said that Gray had beef with some employees cause they were younger and rose to high ranks faster than him and became Belyy’s favourite over him? Yeah well here comes the one he hates the most for that (ofc he’s belyys fave cuz he’s Mine <3) Our lad caught Belyy’s attention for his Exploits in like, em fancy high school tournaments of smart people, it’s a thing its ridiculous, making kids compete on Smart stuff for the pride of their schools n shit, well homie Lim got clout when doing that, and Belyy was extremely interested cause that kid’s main thing was how “this young lad got mad strategic skills tf are u a war general or smth how fancy”, and that’s a coveted skill for ruthless business. So as soon as the kid is an adult, bam, join the company my dude. And because he’s just that Cool n Sexy ofc he met the expectations Belyy had, and old man Belyy got attached cuz it do be such a young lad, a kid, mentally i am adopting. That’s how you get a youngas employee becoming the right hand man of one the phatest CEO in a few years, and even make your way into being a Good Lad on top of a business partner. And that’s how you get Gray to hate your ass too. Now though, fine lad with mad strategic skills, rising to power that fast, and even infiltrating Belyy’s private life? If I were Gray I’d call suspicion there’s surely some shady stuff going no way we’re just dealing with a nice fella who just happens to work good and be friendly to the boss right?

Herra MUSTA (the black “guest”)

Belyy’s newest butler, assistant, house keeper, he multitasks. His family has been tied to Belyy’s for generations, fullfilling roles of help, but also of confidents. He’s been the head butler since only a short time, after his mother passed, and as such is still “in training” you could say, despite having served the family his whole life. There are rumours going around that the contract tying his family to the Belyys may end on his generation and need to be resigned. He known the manor by heart, and carries all keys to any locked room (and mostly, The Master Key, cause in an old house, some doors may be locked beyond all still existing keys). He also knows secrets of the family that no one else knows, but good luck getting em out of him, he’s under contract not to divulge em bro.

Mr. HASSEL (the brown guest)

Belyy’s childhood friend. They grew up together, pictured their dreams together, sworn to flourish together, worked together when starting the company, and then Hassel felt he should create his own thing instead of depending on his friend’s existing wealth, and while Belyy’s business went wild, his never took off. They still stayed very close, despite the massive difference in wealth. Belyy considers him his closest friend, the one person he can trust (fucked if hassel did the murder lemme tell u). So of course, he’s still always invited to the Prestigious meet ups where’s he’s free to feel uncomfortably out of place amongst all the rich and powerful people that he could have been a part of had he had a tiny bit of luck and a small loan from a wealthy relative...People LOVE saying he’s still hanging out with Belyy so much to leech off his wealth, cause of course they do! His bestie status means he has a whole different brand of information of Belyy than his butler does, the Most Intimate Stuff, the Childhood Stuff. The Juicy stuff ya kno...But Bro Code, its all secrets...

Sir RUZH (the red “guest”)

Deep dive into Belyy’s personnal history, the man has many employees working at his house keeping it working, clean, ya know the vibe. They live on the premice, one has a kid who’s just a Joy to be around, all the employees just vibe with that lad, he’s just a born socialite you know? Belyy gets to meet the kid, and also hella vibes with him. And because human are influenced by their feelings, he gives the kid’s mum a bit of a preferencial treatment, in the tasks she fullfils and all, til he gives her an important-as mission, and then there’s an accident n mama dies, and now Belyy got guilt and there’s this kid who just Vibes. So naturally the move is to take the kid in, and play on how his vibes are just so clean, and raise him to be the Perfect Entertainer for guests, bam, its soft power propaganda, if everyone loves your now son’s vibes, they associate them with you too. And also that’s kind of a clean rep, the selfless man who adopted his employee’s son to not have him fall to the streets, how heartwarming. Not at all traumatising for the kid too I bet! But anyway now the lad is just the most charming young adult, mission accomplished. He’s always present at any reception, ready to work his people-pleasing magic, and then going back to a gigantic empty manor to wait for the next and curate the perfect vibes to meet the expectations of dad. On the plus side, he knows everyone, and those who don’t know him cannot wAIT to, he’s just got that aura ya know. People skills for miles, and the insider knowledge that comes with being the son of the CEO, all this hidden behind the personna of the fresh innocent bashful party lad. 

Dr.FEN (the pink guest)

Do not get mistaken by the title, he’s no doc, he will not diagnose you with anything, he just studied long enough to get the sexy title. Study in what? Haha. Nothing shady. Just toxicology. He’s a world reknown poison expert basically, that’s his main thing. Oh but don’t worry, of course studying substances that may kill people is only for finding out how to cure them from it of course. What brings him in this circle? Simple, Belyy may or may not have started to suffer some weird illness that no doctor has been able to find the source, let alone cure, of. Him and Dr.Fen had met previously on some event, cause some rich man also love flexing how smart they are and attending sciencey shit, and he was contacted as sort of a shot in the dark. The lad does know how to treat some things, maybe he can treat The Mysterious Unwellness, since no traditional doctor was able to. He knows science, he’s trustworthy, bam, you’re hired to work on My Case Exclusively. Thanks to this, Dr.Fen has access to the whole health history of Belyy and his family, to many mANY dangerous substances, and also has The Respect of the hoes at the party. He HAS a doctorate after all. Epitome of knowledge. And he’s a kind to people and he wears pink like dang how can you nOT pour your wHOLE trust in him. 

Sir MOREVITCH (the blue guest)

Youngest son of an affluent family, who used to be close the the Belyys. The two families fell slightly appart after the death of the previous head of the family on the Belyy side, as they do nOT vibe with the current one (well current, til the first night of the story ig). But, unbeknownst to all, one strong link had been kept, between the youngest of the Morevitch, who dislikes his family and wishes to emancipate himself from them while also assuring his depart will not throw him basically in the streets, and our beloved Sir Belyy, who also dislikes the Morevitches but loves to see the rebellious energy of the young one (and ya know, my enemy’s enemy’s my friend or however you say that). So Belyy’s basically offering tips and helping Morevitch plant himself safely out of his family’s grasp, but it’s all taking quite some time isn’t it, slow and steady is fine until your parents try to arrange a wedding to secure more political power, and suddenly it is all quite urgent that you escape that situation because No Thank You Parents I Do Not Want A Wife I’m Too Young And Also Huh <3 Stuff You Won’t Like Hearing For Sure <3. The people who know they’re working together also know that it’s a big point of argument between them, the difference in vision between “you have to go slow and steady to be safe” and “I have very limited time to get to that safety anyway so I gotta risk it” “hell no you cant i can’t follow through if we’re going that quick that’ll put me at risk and you’re family’s gonna send gunmen to take me down”. A mess, it’d be much quicker to just obtain a few million bucks out of nowhere and bolt for sure...

Mr.GANG (the orange guest)

Morevitch’s trusted assistant. He hears the concerns, he helps the secret businesses, he lies to the parents about the whereabouts, and mostly, he’s basically a budget spy. The lad got that talent where people just don’t notice him popping behind them and catching all their dirty laundry as they confess it to someone they trust, and he always manages to break into places, get the intel he was looking for, and escape, putting everything back into place as if no one was ever there (wonder where he got all those skills from damn!). But what he’s even better at is being sneaky not only to benefit his boss, but himself as well <3. If he can catch all the info in the world, go any places, nothing’s stopping him from playing double agent and also going behind Morevitch’s back. After all the assistant life isn’t the most glamourous and rewarding, who can blame him from going and using his talents to build his own little exit route, right? Everybody sort of knows he cannot be trusted, but also no one managed to really incriminate or stop him, and as much as he has tea on many people, no has it on him, but bet once found that would be heeeella juicy.

M.MOUTARDE (the yellow guest)(this one is straight up the name of the yellow player in the french edition of clue too when i say its my main vibe)

Moutarde was an influential celebrity. He had a big break acting in a movie that the whole country stanned so hard they basically turned the script into their national anthem (they would have if it was a true democracy where the people really decide), he was so handsome and elegant, everyone’s dream husband. And then the fame fiddled out because it’s how fame is, one moment you’re the sexiest dish on the table and the next someone brings in dessert and baam, its all about that fresh cake, and no one pays any mind to your delightful aroma anymore, you’ve gone cold, they had a bite, their interest is somewhere else. Belyy really admires his work though, and mostly finds his image fits with the brand of his company, therefore the two are working on a collaboration to make Moutarde a representative. This WOULD boost Moutarde’s reputation, for his ads would be displayed on every imaginable surface of the country, and it would also benefit the company cause being represented by thAT sexy motherfucker? clearly that’s a deal. The freshness of the partnership means Moutarde is a newcomer in the guests, a fresh face, with no reputation, no relationships, no unfair biases against him. He’s just the new handsome charismatic lad with a squeaky clean image. Emphasis on “image”. After all, no one really knows anything of his background, right?

Kun.LAWENDER (the purple guest)

Private investigator, very useful to be around at a party it’s almost like it was expected there’d be a body to investigate, he’s a very close associate of Belyy, as there’s nothing more important to business than investigating the rivals and finding dirt on them to make them fall through infamy. He’s not exactly the PI who goes look for justice to be served, he’s just here for cash bro. He’s got intel on everyone, and will only let it out if offered the right thing in return (money, or sometimes other pieces of very secret intel, trade is good). Wouldn’t advise letting him and Gang team up tbh but they probably wouldnt, as Lawender is really more of a lone wolf player, going on his own for himself. The one thing that negates his usefulness as a PI on an accidental crime of scene is that even if he knew the whole truth of the event he would not spit it out unless he benefitted from saying it. He sure is a polarising lad, but at the same time, an untouchable one, he’s too knowledgeable to be taken down. Rather than sneaky, he’s extremely observant, noticing the tiniest details and engraving them in his memory, ready to be linked up to other details to deduct the big picture. He’s the upfront tea gathered basically (as opposed to Gang’s shadow tea gathering if you will, they are similar forces but using opposite methods)(also one of em got a licence n the other does not hAH).

~~~~

Now the secrets, all of em have them. One of em at least got the secret of having KILLED Belyy that’s that. But that’s to be kept for later (for if i ever use this story for more than daydream material gfhjgh) bet you can imagine what some of em may be just out of Knowing what i do, from having seen the characters in other contexts, or just because you’re a genius and reading the character profiles immediatly lit up the bulbs in your head forming the perfect theory, props to you, mad genius.

Honestly my thoughts are just how lit of a game that would be, you get to pick one hoe (maybe sum are locked til u find their secrets for juicy purposes) and you do your invetigation using your character’s perks and disadvantages, and maybe there could even be Multiple scenarios and outcomes, to spice it up, give replay value, i just think it’d be a game id spend hours on. tryin to get the spicy details of everyone’s life. walking around n digging through a rich man’s stuff, witnessing the drAMA of people fighting cause they’re locked in with a murderer and that’s stressful ngl. That or a long ass show @ netflix wanna give me a show maybe? give me hella budget we’re making it animated cause im too cultured for live action. 

whatever i make of it though, i hope i can make this story Flourish, just so that i can lay down all those secret backstories i’ve written. i want the satisfaction of throwing out the craziest secret drama between character n seeing peeps loose their minds, it just is a tasty experience.

also i gotta say, i plug the hell out of Clue for an inspo but when i was building the basics of the story my mind immediatly went “oH MY GOD THE VIBES,, THE BACKSTABBING AND tEAMING UP and all,,, its The Genius, that one tv show where peeps have to do the wildest games that require strategy n they’re in that fancy set that looks like a rich ppl mansion oh god the vibes” so yeah, i rewatched the whole first two seasons cause they’re my faves and that had an impact if only minimal in the aesthetic.

Anyway hope that quick presentation gave you a lil taste of the story, and maybe,,,, got you curious,,, craving to learn more like you never did before (im exaggerating the only real question we all got is just “so who’s fuckin with whom then how many of yall secretly dating” this the real deal)

[londonspirit]

Occasionally, Dan Levy will pick up his phone and send a text: “Can you believe it?” These messages are sent to Annie Murphy or Noah Reid or Emily Hampshire or Karen Robinson, former inhabitants of Schitt’s Creek, titular town of the series Levy co-created with his identically-browed father, Eugene. What Levy can’t quite believe is that a CBC and Pop network show that aired in the U.S. after reruns of The Young and the Restless became a no-shit international phenomenon and won every major 2020 comedy Emmy from Outstanding Series to Outstanding Contemporary Costumes, plus awards for the show’s four main cast members: Levy, Levy the elder, Murphy, and Catherine O’Hara.

Not that Levy has any qualms about the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Or, more accurately, the best thing he’s ever made happen: In addition to creating, writing, and starring as skeptical scion David Rose on Schitt's Creek, Levy occasionally directed episodes and sourced many of the award-winning costumes. But the endless wretchedness of 2020 is perhaps an inopportune time to publicly garner good fortune.

“What this year has done has opened so many people's eyes to so much of the social unrest that is happening in America and really forced people to learn more,” Levy says, sitting in the bland Toronto apartment the 37-year-old is temporarily renting until he can head back to LA. “Read more. Educate themselves more. Check their privilege more. And yet…” Levy’s magnificent eyebrows unfold from a furrow of probity to an arch of delight, and his mouth into a crooked tilde of a smile. “There are moments when I think it is important for your sense of self to also be OK to say, ‘Something good happened to me this year, and I worked really hard for it.’ And so did a group of really talented people that I love. You're kind of caught in this place where only you can talk about it amongst yourselves.” Levy’s conversations with his co-stars are couched in language familiar to anyone who doesn’t want to give off the vibe of an Instagram caption on a pandemic birthday trip to a private island: "Well, obviously, you know, this is not of much significance" compared to everything else that’s going on. Still, Levy has to acknowledge that, yes, a good thing did happen; after all, he says, “You're talking about breaking records at the Emmys!”

Since he began social distancing, Levy has engaged in something like a fame-offset program, matching his good fortune by taking, publicizing, and raising money for University of Alberta’s online Indigenous Canada course. Levy’s queasiness about his success happening with a 2020 backdrop seems to stem from goodness so pervasive he’s caught himself thinking, Am I going to seem too, like, sincere? (When I ask if he believes he’s a good person, Levy frets, “Is being a good person something you can proclaim? Or is being a good person something that someone has to observe about you?”)

And Schitt’s Creek itself is an oasis of kindness — it doesn’t seem coincidental that after a slow five-season ascent, the show’s viewership exploded in its final year as we quarantined with our own bad thoughts. Levy has said that the arc of the Rose family — a “Balenciaga” to “consignment Balenciaga” to “back to current season Balenciaga” story — is based on the question, “Would the Kardashians still be the Kardashians without their money?” To Levy, the answer is obvious: Yes, and they would be better for it because, he says, “There is a love to that family.” So of course when the Roses lose the fortune amassed from a video rental empire and are forced to move to a Canadian town purchased as a novelty gift, they learn what truly matters.

Levy’s father and collaborator, Eugene, who co-wrote Christopher Guest films Best In Show and A Mighty Wind, says, “There are people who work in the world of comedy where they like to push envelopes in terms of what they can get away with, but that may come at the expense of other people. If it's at all important to you to avoid then you, you know, avoid it.” With the notable exception of programs like The Great British Bake Off — Levy, naturally, used to host the Canadian iteration — it is quite a bit more difficult to be entertaining and kind than entertaining and cruel. But Dan Levy attributes some of Schitt’s Creek’s success to what he calls “a purity to the storytelling and the show that caught people off guard because it was so unexpectedly sincere.” “There was something badass about the fact that it didn't have the kind of edge that people had often equated with cable comedies,” he says.

Making Schitt’s Creek a source of goodness and light was an unrelenting crush for Levy. “How much anger and rage do I have to repress in order to get the light out?” he says, laughing and stroking his elderly dog, Redmond, so vigorously I worry about ginger fur getting on Levy’s David Rose-appropriate black and white JW Anderson T-shirt. “Um, at times a lot.”

When Levy was working on Schitt’s Creek, he was picked up every morning at 5 a.m. and driven to set, where he would rehearse and rewrite scenes. Next was making decisions about sets and wardrobe fittings for cast members like O’Hara. Moira Rose, the actor mother of Levy’s character with a grandeur as flamboyant as her choice of syllable emphasis, might have to go to meet someone who makes her feel exposed. Levy would supervise an outfit selection that functioned as a billboard for her emotional state. “How do you express vulnerability?” Levy asks. “Well, you put more clothes on, and more aggressive clothes on, so as to armor yourself.” Levy needed to approve budgets, which didn’t increase even as the show gained more attention. He would act and sometimes direct, and then be back in wardrobe picking out the right statement necklaces for O’Hara to wear to buy a used car.

After filming ended, Levy went to the writers’ room to work for a couple more hours. He’d get home at 8 p.m., quickly eat dinner, and write until 2 a.m. on some nights. Then he’d sleep for two hours and get in the car to go back to work at 5 a.m. When shooting wrapped for the year, Levy went into post-production, spending months in windowless rooms. Once a season was finally completed, preparation would begin for the next one. Levy charged himself with making sure every detail connected to each other and tracked with the personal histories he and Eugene had written for each character before the series began. Eugene can remember only one deviation from those bios during the entire run of the show. Originally, the father of motel employee Stevie had been a roadie for Fleetwood Mac before receiving a restraining order from the band; the detail was later transferred to the father of diner waitress Twyla, who was played by Levy’s sister, Sarah. Several times during the run of the series, Levy developed anxiety so literally paralyzing that his neck would seize up, forcing him to wear a brace and receive chiropractic treatments between scenes.

“Through every phase of Schitt's Creek,” Eugene says, “Dan had a very strong sense as to what it was he wanted the show to look like and what he wanted it to sound like and what the tone of the show was going to be and what the message of the show would be. He certainly makes himself responsible to make these things happen. He doesn't go with the flow at all.”

Total control let Levy create a perfectly realized world, from the menu size in the Café Tropical to the caws in Moira’s comeback film The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. But it’s perhaps not the healthiest arrangement when the confines of quarantine feel normal to you. “Over the past six years,” Levy says, “I really haven't been outside that much.”

When he was a boy, Levy became so anxious that he did not want to attend birthday parties. He did not want to go to summer camp. He did not, in fact, want to engage in any social situations. Levy’s anxiety physically manifested as iritis, an inflammation of the eye which doctors feared would eventually take his vision. It was as if the anxiety that drove Levy indoors had then decided to draw all the curtains.

“I think that came from a deep-rooted fear of knowing that I was gay and not being able to be free,” Levy says now. “By the time I got to high school, when your brain is starting to catch up to your physical impulses, it led to a very confusing time. Because on the one hand, you are now being introduced to things like self-awareness and anxiety. At the same time, you’re becoming more and more savvy when it comes to hiding it.”

The escape was theater. Levy began writing, directing, and performing in school plays, including a student-run stage adaptation of Clue produced during a teacher’s strike. “I was starting to develop a sense of confidence by way of being able to entertain people,” Levy says. “It was like a decoy version of myself that I was putting out there to not have to live with the reality that when the bullying was happening — if someone was calling me a f----t or whatever it was — they were speaking the truth.” What a cursed blessing to discover you have a gift but to understand it as a distraction from who you really are and not as a true part of yourself. No wonder that Levy says of creating a persona — naturally, in the self-distancing second person — “Your sense of self gets chipped away. You lose sight of your own value.”

Levy had a ticker of fears scrolling through his mind broadcasting what might happen if people knew who he really was: “Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of being othered. Fear of exposing something that I think a lot of high school students at the time didn't have the tools to process properly, to make it comfortable for me.”

Then, when he was 18, Levy came out. Actually, his mother, Deborah Divine, invited Levy to come out, over lunch. Levy accepted, and was accepted in return. It was one version of an inflection point that Levy has explored in some of his most impactful work. In Happiest Season, Hulu’s lesbian Christmas rom-com, Levy delivers the film’s high point in a monologue; filmmaker Clea DuVall tells me, “I cried during every take.”

“Everybody’s story is different,” Levy’s John says to Kristen Stewart’s Abby, who is planning to propose to a woman whose family doesn’t know she’s queer. “But the one thing that all of those stories have in common is that moment right before you say those words, when your heart is racing and you don’t know what’s coming next,” John goes on. “That moment’s really terrifying. And then once you say those words, you can’t unsay them. A chapter has ended and a new one’s begun, and you have to be ready for that.”

On the Schitt’s Creek episode “Meet the Parents,” David’s future in-laws discover their son Patrick is gay before he can come out to them. “Did we do something wrong, David?” Patrick’s father asks, inadvertently head-faking homophobia before saying, “The thought that Patrick was feeling like he couldn't come and talk to us about this…”

Obviously not everyone who comes out gets the response they’re hoping for. But like Patrick, Levy had a happy ending sitting in front of him: accepting and caring parents wondering when their son was going to tell them he was gay and trying to respect his timeline for doing so. When I ask Eugene if it’s painful knowing that he could have potentially alleviated the anxiety Levy was feeling by approaching him sooner, he concurs. “I would have done things so much differently, you know?” Eugene says slowly. “I would have gotten more involved in talking about what was going on.” But he doesn’t know that it would have changed anything — after all, the flow goes with Levy. “Not necessarily that we would have gotten any direct answers,” Eugene says. “You can only get back what you get back.” (Levy confirms he was not ready to discuss his sexuality before he was; despite his parents’ openness and love, he had created Schrödinger’s Eugene and Deb in his head, simultaneously welcoming him and rejecting him at the news.)

Newly out, Levy went to college and began dating. However, he says, “I was not in any place to be of great value in a relationship.” Like David Rose, Levy’s pitch tends to ascend on the back half of sentences, making him sound like he’s interrogating his own thought process. “You then get into these habits where you're dating people who are totally wrong for you because they're seeking out people who are a bit damaged,” Levy says, “and you're seeking out people who have one foot out the door so that you don't actually give yourself over in any kind of way.” (After I mention that while watching Happiest Season, I wanted Stewart’s character to dump her semi-emotionally damaging girlfriend and leave with Levy, he says, “In this conversation, I'm brought back to many a relationship [where] ‘RUN’ was just, like, the subtitle flashing for about a year and a half of my life.”)

Dating, then, became another way to keep people out. “I really got to a point where I felt like if I didn't make an active choice to pull myself out of this shell that was becoming such a comfort,” Levy says, “I would not be the adult that I want to be.” He spent a summer in England, answering phones at the ICM talent agency as exposure therapy for speaking, unscripted, to strangers. A month and a half later, he auditioned to be a host on MTV Canada. Levy says it was “the ultimate exercise in pushing myself and getting myself out there. If I could get a job on television asking other people questions — which had previously been on the top five things that I would never want to do — this could be the final kind of exercise in changing myself for the better.”

Like Levy’s high school theater work, his success as a host was a gnarled little monkey’s paw of unfortunate wish fulfillment. He was charismatic on screen and became famous enough to travel to New York on the weekends and get into the clubs he wanted to get into. Levy also pioneered the now-prevalent televised after-show with his The Hills discussion series, which exists in the same tonal universe as Schitt’s Creek: sharp enough to make you feel smart for laughing at it, but warm enough that Lauren Conrad herself was a guest.

But much of the work felt limiting. The questions he had to ask celebrities were pre-negotiated with publicists and written by producers — as Levy notes, “No one wants to sit down with someone from MTV Canada and have a revelatory chat about life.” One of his last appearances before quitting was the MTV Movie Awards red carpet. “You could see a kind of judgment in the people you're interviewing,” he says. “They're not rolling their eyes, but you can feel them thinking about rolling their eyes. And I know that a lot of the times they were questions I didn't necessarily want to be asked if I were in that situation.” Pretending to be the version of himself he thought people would accept, Levy says, “kind of just didn't feel worth it anymore.”

You know the next part. Levy realized he could keep the traits people had responded to when he performed — his charisma, his humor — add sincerity, and still be compelling. He spent half a decade grinding out something that was truly of himself. And through Schitt’s Creek Levy became, his father points out, “one of the top showrunners in the entertainment business right now.” Eugene says, “After the [Emmys] broadcast I think there were probably some executives who — if they even remember us going in to pitch the show — are probably kicking themselves.”

Based on what he does next, Levy is now in the unique position of being able to calibrate how famous he becomes. It’s evening in Toronto, and Levy mulls the question over what simply cannot be good wine; when I ask what kind it is, he says, “Red?” Levy knows he could choose to stay behind the scenes and work on the ABC Studios projects he has in development. But Levy is also in the early stages of a romantic comedy he would star in. He worries that he wouldn’t be able to handle uber-fame with the aplomb his co-star Kristen Stewart does. When they went out to a dive bar while filming in Pittsburgh, he says, “I was just so kind of in awe of her confidence and comfort in herself. She's so at ease — [I say that] as someone who I think will always be on their journey to have that for myself.”

“Dan’s assessment is actually incorrect,” Stewart says later. “But what I have done is try to keep that experience [of fame] fairly insular, not make other people I’m with take on the weight of my own self-consciousness — or, God forbid, have someone think I’m up my own ass and loving the attention. It’s easier for me to pretend [people noticing me] is not happening, even though on the inside I still feel like the world is a big school yard of giggling onlookers. Are they laughing at me? Yes, no… Who cares.”

If Levy ever does find himself in the position of being Stewart-famous, she thinks he’ll be fine. “What I did notice was how absolutely wonderful Dan is with everyone,” she says. “He is so loving and gracious towards people that recognize him. The positive force he puts out into the world is clearly reflected in how people come back at him.”

What Levy is putting out into the world next: “I would like to date more,” he says, shoulders bashfully rising ceilingward. “Circumstance plays such a huge part in what we accept for ourselves. When you're doing something that you love it’s like, ‘I have a full plate.’ Even though [Schitt’s Creek was] super intense and even though at times I need a neck brace, it was never not inspiring, and it was never not thrilling and exciting and totally satisfying. So to [want to] make space for someone else…in a way, it is the ultimate filter. You’re basically saying, do I want to carve out the space in an already full and fulfilled life for this person? And a lot of the time, the answer is no. But it only makes it that much better when the right person comes along.”

For now, Levy’s plate is full of his multiple simultaneous projects. (He says there are more than three but few enough that you could count them on both hands, though he doesn’t want to talk about them in detail until there’s actually something to talk about — if Levy follows the Schitt’s Creek model, he jokes, he’ll “get five seasons on television before anybody sees them.”) Before he begins writing, Levy must make sure his entire house is immaculate. Even today, months after the series finale of Schitt’s Creek aired, Levy is negotiating the length of the “fuck”-blocking bleeps of syndication. But as we have all learned this year, not everything is under our control, even if we are Dan Levy. Stewart remembers him panicking as he tried to decorate a new home and realized none of the furniture he bought made any sense together. “The idea of him left and right showrunning and developing and acting and writing — and then his sweater closet confounding him — was very cute,” she says.

A certain amount of acceptance will be useful as Levy figures out how to follow up a beloved hit show. “The goal was to make sure that the first season was exactly what we wanted it to be,” Levy says of his Schitt’s Creek thought process. “To use the resources that we have as best as we can to get that season out there, so that we can go to sleep at night knowing that if people don't respond to it and it gets pulled off the air, there was nothing more we could have done.” Levy leans forward with a sincerity he’d surely second-guess if he were writing this scene and explains the daunting task of living up to yourself. “That’s the goal of anything I'm gonna do from here on out. It's just, try and do the best job you can. Try to make sure that you're loving it.”

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History is a Puzzle Box of Rashomon

by Don Hall

I’ve often said that the scariest thing to ever come out of my mother’s mouth was the declaration “Let’s go on an adventure!”

For my mother an adventure must include a lack of preparation, potential for danger, and a sense of I can’t believe we just survived that! She once decided she wanted to do a charcoal sketching of a gravestone from the grave of one of our Appalachian Baptist fire-and-brimstone preacher ancestors. My dad drove her up into the mountains and they started seeing patches of purple paint on trees and rocks.

Turned out that was the locals’ way of telling outsiders they'd get shot if they trespassed. My dad clutched his pistol the rest of the way.

Mom got her charcoal sketch. I can’t believe we just survived that!

When I was a kid and we lived in Arizona, mom decided we were going on adventure. My little sister, mom, and I loaded up in her brown Gremlin, a bag of sandwiches, some sodas, and all of our swimming gear and headed out for an afternoon at Lake Pleasant.

All was copacetic until she thought she saw a shortcut to he lake. It was not a shortcut. It was simply desert. It started out as a bit of a dirt path that sort of petered out about an hour into the drive. We were driving in the open desert in the vehicle equivalent to a Pinto.

Of course we blew a tire. Of course we didn't have a spare.

Being a melodramatic kid, I went into a full-blown faux-survivalist panic. After a few minutes of wailing about our imminent demise I set out to figure how to get water out of cactus, the thorny testaments to the heartiness of desert foliage fending off my un-callused hands and delivering exactly no water.

This being decades before smartphones, we were stuck. We had no clue where we were in terms of the comforts of civilization and while mom put on a brave face (and occasionally got the giggles at my histrionics) our fate was sealed. Unless someone miraculously drove into the middle of the desert to save us, we were doomed.

And then the miracle occurred. A beat-up red Ford pickup truck coming from the other direction popped up on the horizon. I shrieked in relief; mom flagged the truck down.

We were about a mile from a highway but we couldn't know that. The driver of the pickup was taking a shortcut from the highway.

Here's where the story gets odd. To this day, my mother's version of this adventure and mine are identical. Word for word the same until we get to the driver of the Ford. On my life, I swear it was an older Native American man who stopped, hitched up the Gremlin to his vehicle, and towed us the mile to the highway and on to a gas station. 

My mother will go to her grave insisting it was a family of four Mormons.

What?!

We’ve had family arguments about this story. Both my mother and I are intractable in our insistence of our specific endings of either Native American man or family of Mormons. We both were there. We both can see ourselves in the tale. The endings are as different as could be.

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold. The more you tell the story, the more it transforms into something similar but wholly different in the margins.

If my mother and I can have such divergent differences within a memory of an event we both shared, how many splinters are there in a collective re-telling of a larger event encompassing many more tellers? How many completely incompatible versions of the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001 are there? How many versions that don’t quite line up with one another are there of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?

Moving forward and backward in history, if we are to accept (and I do) that our memories are more Silly Putty than Lego Bricks, how much does film, television, books, and social media come into play in the constant morphing of objective truth to the collection of subjective memories and finally commonly accepted reality?

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold.

Back in the olden days when one could watch something horribly incorrect in the political sense without it becoming a ringing endorsement of your personal "brand" or a scathing indictment on who you are as a fellow human, I went to a screening of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. It was at an esoteric video shop/screening theater on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago called Facets Multimedia and there were six or seven others in attendance. I was the only white person in the room.

Historically, Griffith's opus is significant in several ways. 

First, it was among the earliest epic uses of film. Released in 1915, it was the first blockbuster Hollywood hit. It was the longest and most-profitable film then produced and the most artistically advanced film of its day. It secured both the future of feature-length films and the reception of film as a serious medium.

Second, it was the first modern popular culture example of an artistic achievement attempting to force a certain perspective on the larger culture (the idea that the KKK were the heroes of the Civil War) it was initially released with the title "The Clansmen" and reframed the war, Reconstruction, and white hooded sheets in tandem with lynchings as the preferred story of American history.

Third, while propaganda has been around since men could talk and write, it was the most pervasive use of a medium that communicated on a newfound mass level to promote a horrifying ideology and was embraced by President Woodrow Wilson as a personal favorite.

Following the three-hour screening, there was a sense of discomfort as the lights came back up. My guess at the time it was the other viewers in the room wondering if I, the sole white person in the room, was as offended by the revised perspective the film espoused as the rest in the small cadre. I suppose I wasn't as offended because I wasn't black and I knew what I was getting into when buying my ticket. I can imagine seeing the film without some context would be like a slap in the face.

One of the things I learned doing stage combat around the same time was that a slap in the face never hurt as much as you'd think. It wasn't the pain of the blow but the surprise of it that gave it impact. Going in cold to see the KKK presented as the true patriots wouldn't hurt but the surprise might be a shock.

In a very different way but in the same vein, I remember being the only white face in a crowded theater in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the opening night of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The looks of inquisition for my reaction to the film from the predominantly black faces followed me out into the lobby and into the parking lot.

I read recently that one of the reasons the scars of that Civil War in America have never fully healed is that we’ve never, as a nation, agreed on a single narrative of why we fought the goddamned thing. The subjectivity of truth in the re-telling of that dark period is confounding and subsequent attempts to force one perspective or the other or multiple angles on the causes of the War of the States has only confused the issue. Thus the recent beheadings of statues glorifying Southern generals and the re-naming parties of public schools to eliminate anyone associated with slavery.

I understand and empathize with this impulse to reverse the whitewash of history from our streets and schools. So much of our literature and symbols in real life have been created with, maybe not a D. W. Griffith subjectivity, a revisionist historical perspective that paints over the ugliest parts of our history to re-tell the narrative and erase those most subjugated by it. I expect over-correction (like the New York Times 1619 Project which casts our history as steeped in nothing but racism and slavery without acknowledging the contributions set apart from those stains) and, after reading that San Francisco schools are eliminating Abraham Lincoln's name, I decided to re-watch Spielberg's Lincoln.

I don't know if it was actually Lincoln or screenwriter Tony Kushner who came up with the following analogy but I found it instructive in the push to reframe the story today.

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way.

If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... What's the use of knowing True North?

The film paints the fight for the 13th Amendment as a dark political game, cajoling and persuading the legislators of the day to codify in the Constitution a formal revocation and rebuke to the forced enslavement of other human beings. It also portrays Lincoln as a deeply pragmatic leader. The speech is one he gives to Thaddeus Stevens, a zealous abolitionist, who rightly sees true north but, up to that point, would rather be righteous than successful in abolishing slavery.

Both men are long dead so the question of whether both men would tell the same story, in their re-telling of those pivotal moments leading up to the vote, or if their stories would radically diverge, is wholly academic. That’s where the trappings of art collide with authenticity. This is the version Spielberg and Kushner decided upon and it will be the version millions who watch the film and decide to simply accept it as the one true version.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact.

On the other hand, we have celebrated author Mark Manson, whose book Everything is F•cked: A Book About Hope is being banned in Russia by Putin because it speaks directly to atrocities committed by Stalin. Putin is looking to re-write Stalin's history. 

There is a big difference between revising a history shown to diminish the effects of overt racists in one country and purging a country’s history of established monstrosities but the mechanism remains the same: reframe the story and tell it enough times that the meaning changes over time. Keep pushing the new narrative (right or wrong) until the soft memory of an entire nation bends to the will of the teller.

That’s all history is, after all. A slew of stories we tell over and over to indoctrinate a sense of national pride. It grows more perilous when those revising the stories weren’t present. The source of the tales becomes less reliable and the reframe more suspect. When the source is a film or video of an event, we feel as though we’ve experienced it but our perspective is entirely subverted by what the camera shows us and the narrative promoted when we watch it.

One of the techniques that Griffith practically invented was the camera’s use to tell the story from his view. Frame things in a certain way, in a certain order, and our very eyes are deceived, our minds accept the deception, and we believe.

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa gave the world the reigning example of individualized subjective point of view. Rashomon shows us three different perspectives on one specific event. The film makes the point so clearly that the term used popularly to label the he said/she said/they said dilemma is a rashomon.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact. Show me someone absolutely 100% certain of the sort of events they've only seen on an iPhone video moderated by Faceborg and spun by both the media and some random stranger and I'll show you someone deluded and quite probably dead wrong.

Even when we're there to witness events in person we get it wrong so the concept of getting it right through the mediation and manipulation of amateur videographers and activist pushing a narrative is nothing short of lunatic fringe.

Bizarrely, we all know this to be true.

We know that social media is almost entirely unreliable. We know that film is a highly manipulative art form. We know that Robert Downey, Jr. never flew in a suit of armor, that Keanu Reeves is not Neo, that as much as he embodies who I hope Abraham Lincoln was like, Daniel Day Lewis is an actor and couldn't possibly know what the man was actually like in person.

We know this to be true but we need to be right. We need to believe and so we take that leap of faith, that gut level adherence to what makes some sort of sense in the story and run with it. More so, if the fiction supports things we already have chosen to believe in, we are adding it to the arsenal of defenses against any other sort of view of our story.

We know there's more to the story of the Antifa takeover of Seattle. We know there's more to the January 6th breach of the Capitol. We know there are more sides to the story of Michael Brown. We know that with everyone filmed in a Walmart screaming about her right to forego a mask there is something else before and after that moment that may demonize her just a bit less.

We know but we don't care. Context and considering the framing takes too much work. Too much time. In an existence flooded with too much information, too many stories, too much video, too many opinions, it's just fucking easier to settle on the story that suits you and roll with that.

That's why—no matter what my mother says—it was definitely not a family of Mormons and I'll go to my grave with that.

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Family man season one of The Sopranos is one of the greatest episodes in television history. The series is known for some of the funniest, most hilarious episodes, which often include some really amazing stunts, as well as some truly great acting from some of the best actors in the industry.

In the first episode, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) makes his move against his wife Carmela, who is the head of the Carmelite community. Tony has been a member of the Carmelite community for the better part of twenty years, but has always had an issue with Carmela's control over their family, and is so desperate to get back at her that he will do almost anything to destroy their relationship. He decides to take matters into his own hands and take out Carmelita's unborn child with a shotgun he plans to shoot it in front of a synagogue. This will help him put a final nail in his family's coffin.

The story of The Sopranos is very interesting because it's about the relationship between a man and his wife. Tony is so jealous of Carmela that he will go to any lengths to get her back, and that includes taking out her child and putting it in front of a synagogue, which is a pretty crazy thing to do for someone who was supposedly a Catholic.

The best part of the season, however, is Tony's eventual betrayal of his wife. Once he finds out that she is having an affair with a man named Gabrielle, he is forced to do something about it, and he does so by sending Gabrielle and Carmela to the prison for a time of their lives. In doing this, he allows them to experience all the life that they've been missing out on, and eventually, Tony makes the decision to free his wife from prison and marry her.

It's hard to think that a man would ever do such a thing, but after watching The Sopranos season one, I can't blame Tony for it. Of course, Carmela is not convinced, and she tries to persuade Tony to get back at Gabrielle by inviting the man to dinner with her family. Unfortunately, Gabrielle gets caught in the crossfire, and Tony realizes that he needs to put a stop to her scheme before he loses out on Carmela.

Overall, the first episode of Family man was one of the best ever on television. The acting was amazing, and the stunts were incredible. The show really captured the spirit of its era and managed to make it fun to watch.

The Family Man, the television classic of the 1970s, is getting a reboot. Starring David Hyde Pierce as Phil Hartman, the series will be created by Matt Damon and Will Smith.

Phil Hesselsenpotter was an accountant who had recently divorced his wife, Pamela (Debra Messing), and was about to start a new life with his new wife, Robin (Carrie Carpenter). But things went wrong when Robin disappeared and Phil was assigned with finding her. The first clue Phil discovered was a clue hidden in his own briefcase that led him to the wrong track and eventually to Robin.

Phil started investigating Robin's background while juggling work and household chores. Meanwhile, Pamela went off with her ex-boyfriend, Martin Blank (John Candy). As it turns out, Martin was a member of a cult whose aim was to bring about an apocalypse - in a bid to help Martin, Pamela and Martin's family survive in the event of his death. Martin was the leader of this cult.

When Phil discovers that Martin was involved in a deadly plane crash, it becomes clear that the only way to find Robin is to locate Martin's mysterious associate, Dr. William Price (Ethan Embry). In order to do this, Phil needs to make his way through a maze of conspiracies, lies and double-crosses - the very reasons why the original series was canceled.

In addition to David Hyde Pierce, the cast for the new version of The Family Man includes Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Carol Kane. This spinoff will also star John Candy in a recurring role, alongside Pam's daughter, Kimmy Gibbler.

One thing that will remain the same about the new spinoff: The Family Man will continue to tackle issues surrounding family. Phil will find himself falling in love with a woman he met at work and an ex-convict who works as a janitor. The series will also follow Phil and Kimmy's quest to obtain a college education. If you haven't seen the original series, it would definitely be worth watching.

However, one major difference from the original series to The Family Man is that Phil and Kimmy won't have a home to call their own. Instead, they will have to move into a temporary apartment before moving into a furnished condo.

Although the premise may seem like a cop-out, it actually makes a lot of sense. The Web Series takes place over six years in the future. Since time changes so much in this fast-paced world, it's more convenient for the characters to go back and forth between the present and past.

In order to get the best out of the spinoff, The Family Man, make sure to catch up on all of the season one episodes before watching the new series. It may not have the same cast as the original series, but it's still going to be worth watching. and even better than the original.

The Family Man Cast is an upcoming American drama-comedy movie directed by Brett Ratner, based on the novel of the same name by David Diamond, and produced by Saturn Films. The film was released in January 2020. The cast includes Nick Cage, Téa Leoni, John Candy, Michael Gambon, Danny Glover, Billy Crystal, and Steve Martin. The film's story concerns a father (Cage) who goes on a trip to Mexico with his family to take part in a carnival.

The cast of The Family Man Cast is very diverse. The film's producers, Brett Ratner and David Weissman were hoping for Cage, who has appeared in the films A Few Good Men and Gladiator, to be cast as the lead character, a father and husband who have gone away for several years to Mexico to visit his ailing wife. However, Nic Cage did not get the role, which went instead to actor John Candy, who had been rumored to have the most screen time, but who turned out to be somewhat absent from the story.

Nic Cage also did not appear in The Family Man Cast, although he was rumored to be in the picture anyway. The role that Cage did end up playing, however, is the father of Danny Glover's character, Tia. Glover has said that he is still unsure whether he wants to be cast as a part of The Family Man Cast, but he certainly looks like a good fit for the part. He may have a chance to play a father and grandfather-type character, but it is possible that he will be seen as an ex-cop who has taken on a new role, possibly a police officer.

In order to make his character look like a possible father figure, The Family Man Cast gave Tia a very strong background. She was a high school teacher who was also married and had three children. In her spare time she spent with her daughter, played by Tea Leoni, and her son, played by Michael Gambon. Tia is shown to be more supportive than her own mother, who disapproved of her relationship with Danny.

Nic Cage also didn't get the role of a father, but he does have some fun moments. His character is played by Robert Downey Jr., and he appears in a few scenes throughout the movie. At one point, Cage plays the role of a father trying to raise his children while the movie's real father is away, played by Billy Crystal. He has his daughter leave the house to go shop and he is left alone with his son while the two are in the mall. When the family returns home, they find him shopping for things with his dad and his daughter.

Nic Cage plays the role of a character whose father is more supportive than his own father is. This makes the character's relationship with his daughter interesting. In one scene, Cage's character and his wife are discussing how she is getting old while his father is out with his work. Cage's character says, "She's got the legs of a horse, she's a horse. Who cares?"

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The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie We Almost Got

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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a cult classic amongst ‘90s pop culture enthusiasts and Power Rangers fans. Even with its fairly standard ‘90s adventure movie plot, wherein the Rangers lose their powers and have to go on a mystical quest to gain new ones, the film still sticks in the mind. Main baddie Ivan Ooze chews all the scenery, there are some impressive fight scenes, and the Rangers save the day by kneeing a monster in the balls. Yes the CG is dated, the story doesn’t hold up to some of the better episodes of the show, and it’s not in continuity with the series but if you want to have a movie night with friends of a certain age, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a solid watch.

While many love the film exactly as it is, it didn’t go from script to screen completely unchanged. An early draft of the script we discovered, dated October 15, 1994, written by Arne Olsen and David Kemper (the final film credits Arne Olsen with a story by John Kamps and Arne Olsen) has many changes that if included could have made for a very different viewing experience. The script contains new characters, fleshed out backstories, altered scenes, and makes us question the long-standing belief that the people behind the film didn’t “get” Power Rangers.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of every single change from script to screen. There are hundreds of them throughout but we’re focusing on the biggest changes that add new context to the film.

Fleshed Out Backstories

Even though this film isn’t in continuity with the Power Rangers TV series there’s still a lot here for fans to dig into that offer clues to a much bigger universe happening behind the usual stories we’d get in the show. While the script doesn’t have the opening voiceover, which originally gave much of the backstory for Ivan Ooze, here the characters themselves deliver it.

Zordon tells the team that Ivan Ooze “rid entire cities of their adult populations, then twisted the minds of the kids into following in his evil path.” So Ivan’s luring of children and getting rid of their parents wasn’t just a one-off plan for this film, there was some precedent behind it! He further explains that a rebel faction of young people “known as the Order of Meledan” rallied against Ooze and lured him into a hyperlock chamber that was then buried deep underground.

Some of that was given in the movie’s original intro but it still paints a more detailed picture of Ivan. The Order of Meledan, long whispered about in hardcore Power Rangers fan circles, paints an intriguing picture. Later in the script Dulcea tells the Rangers how she knows Alpha and in doing so reveals more about The Order.

She describes it as an interstellar peace keeping force headed by “the finest commander in all the galaxy… Zordon of Altare.” (Yes, they misspelled Eltar throughout the script as Altare.) Zordon was more than a commander though, Dulcea calls him a “legend” and without him the universe would be “a very different place from what it is today.”

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Power Rangers: A Guide to the Multiverse

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This is incredibly significant. Zordon’s backstory in the show was vague. We knew he had a physical form at one point and battled Rita but to get confirmation he was the head of a force of warriors? This is the kind of information fans always suspected before the 2017 film made it a central plot point and the recent Boom Studios comics began to address it. The film isn’t in continuity with the show (or the comics for that matter) but to know at one point Zordon was given more history and was all over the universe saving people, should give Power Rangers fans chills. We can only wonder if this build up of Zordon’s character was only to give added weight to this film or if they were laying the groundwork for further films to explore it.

Dulcea doesn’t directly mention what happened to The Order of Meledan but after “our enemies” were defeated she returned to Phaedos (where she resides in the film) and Zordon and Alpha moved on “to continue the struggle elsewhere.” Did they take The Order with them? Who else was a part of it? Questions we’ll sadly never get the answers to.

The script however does give us more details about “The Great Power.” In the film it’s mostly kept vague, a simple power source that gives the Rangers their suits back and allows Zordon to return from the dead. The script takes more time explaining it (which was likely cut out for pacing and time reasons) where Dulcea explains that it originated in another time and dimension, brought to Phaedos by the now all but extinct “Nathadian” race. They were the ones who built the stone monolith later seen in the climatic “Guardian” fight in the film and stored the power inside to keep it hidden from their enemies.

The Nathadians are continually brought up in the script, with the race actually being the origin of the term Ninjetti. During the team’s training with Dulcea (more on that later) she lays out that, in Nathadian, “nin” stands for “man” and “Jetti” stands for animal. Ninjetti is man and animal, together as one, “the highest state of being.” How does Dulcea know all this? She’s the sole living descendant of the race!

While the film itself gives us precious little about Dulcea and mostly leans on her past connection with Zordon. Here at least we get a bit about her culture and how that ties into the Rangers’ new powers. It makes Dulcea less of a plot device; she gets to be a person.

Perhaps one of the most fun backstory additions in the film is also tied to a changed scene. In the final film Alpha uses the last remaining power in the Command Center to transport the Rangers to Phaedos. In the script however they travel by a spacecraft that belongs to Alpha.

Hidden in the command center is “a Stinger PX-3000 with dual thunder-cams, long held to be the most reliable Interstellar Craft in the Galaxy.” Alpha relates that he arrived on Earth in the craft over four hundred years ago. Kimberly isn’t impressed, suggesting they swing by a car wash because it’s so dirty inside.

It’s a small beat but it’s fun and suggests that Alpha arrived on Earth independently of Zordon. Maybe the two parted ways at one point and he went off to have his own adventures. We know Alpha has karate chopping action, so maybe he’s the hero of a far off galaxy!

(Snoggle, who never made it into the finished film, can be seen all the way to the left.)

New Characters

While reading through the script I noticed that while the structure of it isn’t all that different from the finished film, a lot of sections were cut, likely for time or budgetary reasons. A few side characters didn’t make it to screen, one of which is the long rumored Snoggle. Glimpsed in behind-the-scenes photos and videos for years, Snoggle has held an air of mystery as a huge dropped part of the movie.

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Power Rangers and How It Adapted From Super Sentai

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For anyone out there wondering what his point in the movie was, his role in the script isn’t that significant and he’s mostly there to be a sidekick to Dulcea. He’s described as “a helper, an anteater-like creature” who doesn’t speak English. His biggest contribution to the plot is lightly mocking the Rangers as they train with Dulcea.

Far more interesting is the never before seen Queen Tengu. Yes, while in the film the Tengu simply obeyed Ivan Ooze’s commands. here they have a leader. She’s created out of a bolt of energy from Ivan and is described as having a different color than the rest of the Tengu along with “glowing red eyes.” It’s also specified that she speaks with “squawk subtitles.” She gets to play an integral part in a cut fight scene we’ll get to later.

Also, Fred’s mom is in script. She doesn’t do much but hey, she’s there for the lead kid character to worry about!

Changed Scenes

Most scenes in the script have at least a few differences, changed words, small bits of description that didn’t make it into the film, etc. We’re going to focus on the biggest changes, scenes and moments that would have made a significant difference to the film.

Remembering the Cast Changeover

Kimberly’s mini speech about how Zordon has been like a father to them all is in the scene just after Ivan attacks him. Her heart to heart with Tommy also take place not on Phadeos but on Alpha’s old ship as they travel to the planet. The other Rangers join in on the conversation with Aisha’s touching addition, “you know, meeting Zordon… teaming up with all you guys… it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Rocky chimes in with, “it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to ALL of us.”

It’s a great little moment that not only brings the team closer together but also acknowledges the then recent cast changeover that happened in the TV series.

Ninjetti Powers

The biggest changes though begin when the Rangers are given their Ninjetti powers. Instead of just a swirling light the Rangers put their hands in an urn. There they see and take on the shape of their animals, the costumes appearing as Dulcea describes their traits. In a bizarre omission most of the Rangers get flowery descriptions of their animals (“cunning and swift”, “agile and sublime”, etc.) Rocky doesn’t get any! Dulcea just says “Rocky, you are the Mighty Ape” and moves on. Ouch.

Adam’s now legendary line “I’m a frog” isn’t present in the script but a slight variation of it is. He simply says, “a frog” when given his powers. Dulcea at least tries to make it sound cool, calling the frog “the artful jumper.”

Added Stakes

There’s a bigger ticking clock added when the Rangers head to the monolith in the forest. Dulcea relays that once they cross the threshold to the inner sanctum they only have about two minutes to release the power or it’ll self-destruct, “causing a thermonuclear reaction of such magnitude that the entire planet will instantly burst into a billion flaming particles hurtling through space.”

That’s…. a lot. In the film we just had the threat of Zordon losing his life but here the Rangers themselves will bite it if they don’t unlock the power fast enough. If that idea was kept that would mean they couldn’t have a long fight outside the monolith so that’s probably why it was cut.

Tommy Is An Idiot

The scene at the monolith itself of course lasts longer than two minutes worth of screen time, with the Rangers all trying to find a way to unlock the great power. In the absolute funniest moment of the script, Adam suggests they have to break through as “our Ninjetti animals.”

Tommy takes this hilariously literally and the script delightfully describes how he “dives through the air, hits the monolith with a resounding crunch.” Don’t vote for dummy, am I right? For all of Tommy’s status as the most legendary Ranger of all time, in the show itself he’s actually pretty stupid. How he became a doctor I’ll never know.

Bringing Zordon Back to Life

The Rangers do finally unlock their powers thanks to a communication from Zordon just before the monolith explodes. He tells them to keep their spirits up which somehow makes the Rangers realize they have to master the spiritual side of their Ninjetti powers.

The team wins the day but instead of teleporting from Phaedos to the city as they do in the film, they instead go back to the command center. There the scene largely plays it as it did later in the film with the team using their new powers to restore the command center and bring Zordon back to life.

It’s hard to know whether this scene was shot in the film with the intention of it being used after they left Phadeos but was switched around in editing but eagle eyed fans might want to give it a watch again.

With the Rangers bringing him back to life Zordon gives the Rangers new power coins as “a reward for your amazing bravery” which will unlock their new Ninja Zords. No explanation is given for where the Zords came from which… is the most Zordon thing this script could do. He always had an extra Zord fleet just hanging around whenever the Rangers learned a lesson. Maybe the writers of this film understood Power Rangers more than we give them credit for!

The Final Zord Battle

The Megazord fight in the city goes for much longer than it does in the film, the CGI costs most likely preventing some of the wilder events the script describes such as the Megazord getting tossed into Angel Grove First National Bank and the Megazord delivering double punches, drop kicks, roundhouse hooks, and spinback kicks. Would have loved to see that PS1 cutscene Megazord try and pull those off!

Later in the fight Ivan grabs the Zord and takes them to “Westside Bluffs” where he tosses them off a cliff but of course Tommy saves the day by swooping in with the Falcon Zord and attaching himself to the back so they can fly. This is almost immediately undercut as the fight continues underwater. Ivan ends up landing in an active underwater volcano, which was, again, probably deemed too expensive to pull off with the limited CGI resources of the film.

New Powers

One of the most well known cuts from the film is that the Rangers were originally shown without the visors in their helmets. This was done to better convey the actor’s emotions during filming of the action scenes. The idea was thankfully scrapped but it’s prevalent in the script. Alpha tells the team he’s retro-fitted their helmets with new “Omni Scan devices.” We aren’t sure if this is just another power-up or if “Omni Scan” is just a fancy description for “we took the visors out of your helmet so I guess you have a slightly bigger range of vision and your identities are now completely exposed.” The Rangers go visorless again later in the film when they get their powers back.

The Rangers also get new individual powers. Billy has an “Audio Enhancer” that takes the form of an “Auto Phonic Receiver” that pops out of the side of his helmet. Rocky has a Power Tracker that’s basically a scope that snaps into place over his left eye. Presumably this would have been inside the helmet. This is an earlier version of the scanner he ended up using in the finished film.

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Power Rangers: The Unproduced Episodes

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Ivan Ooze also gets a few new powers of his own. Instead of the scene when he tricks the Rangers into thinking he’s a security guard and then morphs into his true form, in the script Ivan makes an even showier entry. The Rangers spot a “grotesque horned creature” that springs out of a cave and lands in front of them. It snarls, exposing long dripping fangs. Only then does it shape into Ivan Ooze. He then doesn’t unleash the Oozemen on the team but instead zaps six rats. Previously mentioned in the script, they’re transformed into “six hairy rat-beasts.”

These rats were built for the film but were scrapped for not being high enough quality. However, they did find a use when filming on the movie went over schedule and they had to shoot episodes of the TV series in Australia (these scheduling issues caused several planned episodes to be scrapped and lost to time, which you can read more about here). The rats were deemed good enough for the show and appeared in the “Return of the Green Ranger” mini-series.

Back in the film, Tommy gets to show off a new power when he shoots laser blasts from his eyes. Saba, called the “Saba Saber” here, doesn’t get to save the day as he does in the film. When the rats are incinerated by Tommy’s blast they turn back into the six original small rats.

Even the Megazord gets a cool… old/new power? While in the film the Rangers just whip out a sword, here the script describes the Rangers summoning the “POWER SWORD.” It even drops from the heavens like in the show! This probably wasn’t supposed to be the original Megazord’s power sword… but what if it was? How much of an amazing callback would that have been? Mostly likely though it would have been the same design as in the film, just dropping from the sky like the original Power Sword did.

New Scenes

The biggest sequences cut from the film feature the Rangers training as Ninjetti. While in the film they were given the powers very quickly, here we get several extended training scenes with Dulcea. She trains each of the Rangers individually, walking along a bamboo log on her hands with Kimberly, lifting a giant boulder with Aisha, fighting Billy with a whistling stick blindfolded, and Tommy flying through the air from a rope. Adam and Rocky don’t get any training because I guess this script really has it out for those guys. Throughout all this Snoggle watches and is just a sassy little jerk to them.

These scenes were probably scrapped either for time or the fact that they’d been shot with Mariska Hargitay, who’d replaced Gabrielle Fitzpatrick after she was injured just before filming began. However after months of shooting the producers then decided to reshoot all of the Dulcea scenes which they brought Fitzpatrick back for. We’ve seen behind-the-scenes footage of Hargitay performing these scenes so perhaps they were deemed too expensive to mount again or simply cut even after the reshoots.

In what is perhaps the best idea cut from the script, the Rangers are all struggling to master their Ninjetti powers. Rocky, at least getting one moment of character, lashes out at Dulcea,

“I don’t even know why we came here in the FIRST place! Without our Morphin Powers, we’re just a bunch of TEENAGERS!”

Duclea doesn’t let this stand when she tells the team, “you have been relying on your Morphin Powers for so long that you’ve forgotten how to rely on yourselves.”

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Power Rangers Seasons We Never Saw

By Shamus Kelley

Putting aside that the Rangers regularly fight unmorphed, this is actually a really great idea. This could have made a fantastic arc to the film that would justify only having one morphed ground fight at the beginning. The Rangers learning they need to be powerful even without their powers could have been a great test of their characters. By undergoing this training they’d realize the value in not just relying on their morphed abilities. This lesson isn’t really stressed throughout the script but it’s still an absolute gem of an idea I wish had been expanded.

Later during a new action scene that replaces the bone dinosaur fight; the team goes up against the Tengu Queen. This fight takes place near a chasm, with the Tengus blocking the team’s path across a tenuous rope bridge. The Rangers get to show off their new skills and even deliver some groan inducing one-liners such as “pheasant dreams!”

In a move directly ripped from the show, the Rangers can only defeat the Tengu by aiming for their beaks. Z Putties, much? Adam gets his moment to be cool when he defeats the Queen Tengu by leaping toward her, looking her dead in the eyes and quips, “polly wanna cracker?” This is how he defeats her, I kid you not.

This fight is the main action set piece for this part of the film. We don’t get the “Guardian” warrior fight outside the temple. While those designs would be missed it at least keeps the Tengu a bigger threat in the film than simply being blown up by Ivan.

The film ends not with a display of fireworks but with perhaps the cheesiest scene in the entire script. The Rangers are in the command center and Alpha holds up a camera and asks them to say cheese. I’ll just quote the description of the rest because it’s perfection.

The kids share amused looks and all together they LEAP INTO THE AIR, PUMPING THEIR FISTS UP VICTORIOUSLY.

“POWER RANGERS!”

WE FREEZE FRAME.

Okay, the writers of this script DO understand Power Rangers.

Was The Script Better Than What We Got?

With all these changes in mind, would the movie have been better if this draft of the script was left intact? Not really.

In isolation some of these changes are fascinating but taken as a whole the script really isn’t that much better than the movie we ended up getting. Yes some of the little additions of lore are fascinating for Power Rangers fans but they don’t add much to the story. The movie still doesn’t have a character arc for any of the Rangers or the rest of the cast for that matter. It’s a generic 90’s adventure movie with the Power Rangers mixed in.

It also suffers from desperately trying to give all the Rangers something to say in every scene they’re in. While I appreciate the sentiment, this leaves large chunks of the script dedicated to giving each Ranger a line of dialogue whether it’s needed or not. That dialogue is also completely interchangeable. No work has been done to try and distinguish how each of the Rangers talk (you could say the show had this issue too). They’re all just generic heroes, except for the odd smart guy line from Billy or heartfelt declaration from Kimberly.

Without that the movie just moves from set piece to set piece, only wringing emotion out of Zordon’s near death which is undercut by his revival before the Megazord climax. The filmmakers made the right call by placing this scene later on.

But if we’d gotten this script as is it’d still maintain its cult classic status. Power Rangers was an absolute juggernaut at that point in entertainment and that alone would earn it a warm place of nostalgia in fans’ minds. Yeah it’s a sloppy movie but who cares when you can watch (or read it) and get that same feeling you had when you saw it for the first time as a kid.

But for real, why does this script hate Rocky so much?

The post The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie We Almost Got appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Jordi Maquiavello: THE END of Game of Thrones - Analysis of the theme of Jon and Daenerys - Translated to English

Hey - so I was looking at this video the other day and didn’t see an English translation for it. Thankfully, the video wasn’t very long and so I decided to translated for the non-Spanish speakers.

In the video Jordi discusses the version of “Truth” that Ramin Djawadi presented during his appearance in KCRW. As those of you who have heard the version know, it’s quite different from the original version that appeared in season 7. Jordi believes it contains clues about the fate of Jon and Daenerys in season 8.

TRANSLATION  TO ENGLISH

1:00     The truth is that this composition as well as Jon and Daenerys’ romance gives us pause as to how it [their relationship] will affect the war against the Wight Walkers. Especially if when we were to examine the past romances of the series. However, the question I was asked the most when I analyzed and explored the theme was if it sounded too dramatic or if things would end badly because of the tone of the song because it was to sad or melancholy. Honestly, I’ve never felt it to have a tinge of sadness, it was simply romanticist.  No theme in the series has happy sound to it, exactly.

1:28     This takes us to the second question, well, what is so special about Ramin Djawadi’s radio version of the song. Simple, not only does it turn the [original] composition of the song upside down and add bits of other themes, it also gives us some serious spoilers for season 8. I repeat, this is a theory, based on music analysis, but it’s well grounded.

1:46     However, we need to review past materials. The theme of “Truth” fussed together the romantic themes of Jon and Ygritte and Dany and Drogo. The composition did this because Jon like Daenerys had not fallen in love again since those two previous romances. Thus, the theme established a point of melancholy in the use of its influences. Additionally, the theme includes a third part, that would be considered their actual theme, which is not influenced by anything else. Therefore, the last thing we had in the series of this theme was this:

[Plays soundtrack version of a Truth.]

2:10     -First Part of the theme (Dany and Drogo)-

2:20     -Second Part of the theme. (Jon and Ygritte)-

2:30     -Third Part of the theme (both themes combined)-

2:40     -Fourth Part of the theme (their own theme)-

3:08     -Fifth Part of the theme (final crescendo)

3:35     Well, after the final look on Tyrion’s face and the Jonerys haters many asked themselves, is this [romance] the right thing?  Will this turn out well? Will love be the death of duty once again? Well, I’ve already done a video explaining why Jon and Dany’s theme is unlike any other themes/ It’s because it makes use of the cello, in a way in which the other romantic themes of the series never do, and because both represent fire and ice, A Song of Ice and Fire, like the original title of the series of novels in which the show Game of Thrones s based on. 

4:00     Additionally, throughout the series these two words are referenced together. This is [the reason] why I believe this is the definitive romance of the series. And Ramin Djawadi makes this even clearer with his interpretation [of the song during his appearance] at KCRW. The filming of the 8th season of Game of Thrones began on October 2017.  So, by then all the cast and crew should have had access to the script for season 8. This tells us that by that time Ramin Djawadi’s obtained a copy of the script by that time and began working on the soundtrack for the season 8.

4:29     So, by now he should have made good progress. This interpretation of “Truth” [that appears] in the US radio station was prompted by Ramin Djawadi’s and his trusted team of musicians on the 13 of December of 2017, two months after the start of filing of season 8. So, what this Ramin do, this is a theory, he presented the world with what the version of “Truth” will be during season 8.

4:51     Let me tell you all, it disappoints me. Not as a composition, Ramin Djawadi’s is a genius, and all his compositions are a pleasure to listen to. I’m disappointed me from discussion level. You all know that I’m pro Jonerys and all that but my preferred endings for Game of Thrones were Littlefinger or the Wight Walkers on the throne. Why, what can I say, I love chaos.

5:10     Seriously, Game of Thrones is not a Disney movie where everything will end well, as we’ve seen in multiple instances. 

[Montage of GoT deaths]

5:34     But no, George RR Martin has talked about the ending of a Game of Thrones on many occasions and has said that the ending will be bittersweet like the ending of Lord of the Rings.

[Interview with GRRM]

6:04 This sounds familiar to me…

[Scenes from the end of LotR “The Return of the King]

6:07     -King’s Landing-

6:14     -Jon-

6:19     -Daenerys-

6:25     -This is a bittersweet ending? -

6:45     The Lord of the Rings, as a trilogy is the best thing that has been made in the history of cinema and no one doubts it, but it has a happy ending. Despite Frodo and Gandalf’s departure, which could make it a bittersweet ending, the rest end up happy as clams. Will the same thing happen on Game of Thrones?

7:00     Well, let’s analyze the version of “Truth” the Ramin Djawadi plays on KRCW which will be [the version] that will appear in season 8. The las evolution of Jon and Daenerys theme.

7:10     Many have said [asked] if the fact that there is a vocalist means anything, as the royal themes of Game of Thrones usually use vocal. To clear this up, no. In the final version of “Truth” there will not be any vocals and if Ramin introduced vocals here it’s because the singer is a trusted collaborator who accompanies him to all the concerts and sings many themes that don’t have vocals. For example, the main theme.

[Shows video of the main theme with vocals]

7:38     Unlike in the series, where he uses an orchestra, in this version Ramin uses a piano to substitute the violins and this is an important detail. As I’ve already explained what the instruments mean to the composer. Ramin wouldn’t have had any issues bringing 3 or 4 violins to the radio recoding but instead he chose to bring a piano because it was more comfortable, and this means the violins won’t important to the final version of “Truth”. 

8:01     What does this tell us? Total freedom for the cello which eliminates the conflict between love and duty that had us so worried.  For which the last evolution of “Truth” proposes a pure love, without worries about duty or anything else, simply love. Let’s look at how the cello ends in the first part of the theme. 

[Cello being played]

8:28     Contrary to how it ends in the original theme, this [version] ends in a major note. If we remember, the original theme ended in a minor note because we see Tyrion preoccupied.

[Plays scene showing Tyrion preoccupied]

8:42     Once again, we eliminate another problem.  And now, another part of the theme begins with an accelerated tempo, contrary/ strangely different to the originally theme, which had opted for a, let’s say, more bittersweet sound and over major chords. Perhaps this is foreshadowing something, I don’t was to give spoilers, but this sounds to me to be like...

9:03     [Plays that section of “Truth”]

-Preparations for an event? –

[Scenes from the coronation in “The Return of the King]

9:26     Now we get into the special part of the song, the theme of Game of Thrones. We’ve already studied this theme thoroughly and it’s clear it represents power, it represents victory. But why introduce the opening theme of Game of Thrones in a romantic theme song? Because it’s [the romance] the one destined to happen, it’s the one that represents the Song of Ice and Fire. It’s the culmination [where it has brought us] after so many seasons. The victory over the Wight Walkers represented in Jon and Daenerys.

9:52     [Plays section in “Truth” where the main theme plays]

-“Truth” movement major + the theme of Game of Thrones [played] in an acceding scale-

[Scenes from the coronation in “The Return of the King]

10:10   Once again, there is a pause over sharp chords, which can represent something else ...

10:18   [Continues to play music]

-This melody so soft and playful in Doric mode could be in reference to the son or daughter of Jon and Daenerys-

10:32 The theme begins to grow, once again over major chords, joined by once again the theme of Game of Thrones is added and song ends in a climax that combines both compositions. 

10:40   [Continues to play music]

-Will this be the theme that plays during Jon and Daenerys coronation? –

11:08   -I BET YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT-

11:56   I am one hundred percent sure that this is the theme that will play during Jon and Daenerys coronation after their victory over the Wight Walkers. This composition is revealing to us the ending of Game of Thrones. Truthfully, I really didn’t want it to end this way, but seeing the evidences and the proofs that the music gives us, which are many as we’ve already seen, I think it’s pretty clear what this means. I repeat, this is a theory, but well-grounded and not conjured from thin air. I’ve based this on proof and sources that you all can easily corroborate but in the end it’s still a theory. There is still a long way to go until 2019 and the last result of the composition of “Truth” but we have a clue of what it will be.

12:34   I hope you’ve liked this.

[brokehorrorfan]

Event Report: Rhode Island Comic Con 2018

Rhode Island Comic Con takes place in the smallest state, but the show gets bigger every year. Its seventh incarnation took place November 2-4 at the Rhode Island Convention Center, the Dunkin Donuts Center, and the Omni Hotel in Providence, RI. While the congestion of people between buildings during peak hours is seemingly unavoidable, this year's updated layout across the three locations (all connected to one another) proved to be the best use of space yet.

When not browsing the massive vendor room full of cool geek memorabilia, I spent a good chunk of the weekend in the two panel rooms at the Omni, listening to various celebrity guests discuss their storied careers. Between the gregarious speakers, the considerate fan questions, the enthusiastic hosts (some of whom were celebrities themselves), and the overall energy of the convention, every one one of the eight panels I saw over the course of the three days was supremely entertaining. The first one I attended was with Tim Curry, who received a standing ovation from the adoring crowd, moderated by voice actor Charlie Adler (who worked with Curry as the voice director on The Wild Thornberrys). Curry proudly remarked that it has been almost exactly 50 years since he started his acting career as part of the original London cast of Hair in 1968.

Although a 2012 stroke left the beloved actor in a wheelchair, Curry is still quite sharp on the microphone. The audience went wild when he briefly broke into his sinister Pennywise voice from It as well as his smashing accent from The Wild Thornberrys. When asked about his thoughts on the new It, Curry defiantly responded, "I didn't like it very much." He shared anecdotes about many of his beloved roles, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show (his favorite scene is the floor show, "Because it was all about me. It was very sexy!"), Clue, Legend (for which the makeup took 10 hours to apply the first time), Muppet Treasure Island, and even The Worst Witch (he admitted to getting so drunk on an actress's homemade gin that he later had to re-shoot his big song). He also revealed a few fun facts, such as how he was almost in Alien as John Hurt's chest-bursting character, Kane, which is what eventually led to him being cast in Legend. "I just thought Ridley Scott was the most amazing director," he remarked. He also loved the script for The Silence of the Lambs and was interested in the role of Hannibal Lecter.

Four members of the Loser's Club from It (2017) - Jack Dylan Grazer (Eddie), Chosen Jacobs (Mike), Wyatt Oleff (Stanley), and Jeremy Ray Taylor (Ben) - reunited for a panel that evening as well. The young actors noted that they had immediate chemistry upon meeting before filming and that they are very similar to their characters, which was apparent during the Q&A as well. The camaraderie is palpable when the friends interact with one another with youthful exuberance. Everything except Taylor watched the original It before filming, although he's now coming around to horror movies. Although they were unable to speak much about It: Chapter 2, which just wrapped production, they noted how surreal it was to meet their older counterparts. Friday evening concluded with a rousing screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show featuring a shadow-cast by local favorites RKO Army.

I anticipated kicking off Saturday with an Elvira panel featuring the Mistress of the Dark herself, but Cassandra Peterson was unfortunately feeling under the weather and was forced to cancel. Thankfully, the session's guest host, Brian O'Halloran (Clerks), was willing to become the subject of the panel instead. He discussed working with Kevin Smith at length. They are mere weeks away from shooting the new Jay and Silent Bob movie, which he promises will be fun and cameo-heavy. Not unlike his character from Clerks, an audience question about Star Wars sent him on a humorous tirade about the franchise. His personal top three Star Wars movies may surprise you: The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One, Solo.

It was fun to see Danny Trejo - known for playing tough guys in the likes of Machete, The Devil's Rejects, Desperado, Heat, Con Air, and Sons of Anarchy - cracking jokes and being so jovial during his panel. "I play a badass, but I’m not," he remarked as he recounted some of his surprising upcoming projects: the live-action adaptation of Dora the Explorer, a comedy titled Grand-Daddy Day Care, and an AMC sitcom, Food & Familia. He shared stories about the conception of Machete, which dates back to Desperado and then Spy Kids, the time he autographed a living tortoise in tribute to his Breaking Bad role, and his recent branching out into the food (with his Trejos Tacos restaurants) and music (with his newly-launched label, Trejo Music) industries. Perhaps the most interesting moment, however, was when he shared the story behind his signature chest tattoo, which involved being worked on by the same artist in three different prisons after being arrested for armed robbery at 14. It's truly inspiring to see how he turned his life around.

The Office reunion panel with Kate Flannery (Meredith) and Creed Bratton (Creed) was among the most highly-attended of the weekend. It took place in the smaller of the two panel halls, causing a long line of fans to be turned away. Those who were lucky enough to make it into the at-capacity room were treated to a lively conversation that was as funny as watching the show. Flannery was vivacious, while Bratton, true to his character, was dry and straight-faced. In addition to recounting their favorite moments in the series' nine-season run, they expressed their willingness to return for a Christmas special or other such revival if the writers can find a way to make it work and the rest of the ensemble cast is on board.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show panel was an unexpected highlight. Barry Bostwick (Brad) and Meat Loaf (Eddie) needed no moderator; they were old friends having an open conversation with one another. The first 20 minutes were essentially a comedy routine, with Meat spinning a fictitious story about the origins of his stage name while Bostwick occasionally interjected with a question or a dry quip. There was nary a mention of Rocky Horror until they opened up to the crowd for questions. When asked about screenings during which the audience talks back to the movie, Meat was brutally honest: "I wouldn't go to that to save my life." He went on to say that he loved seeing fans dress up, but he found it disrespectful to the movie and those who worked on it to speak out during screenings. Bostwick was quick to add that he believed such screenings are why the film has had such longevity. Meat also relished the opportunity to roast the audience. The actors' remarkable rapport caused the panel to go long, but, since it was the last of the evening, no one seemed to mind.

Rhode Island Comic Con put together a worthwhile after-party on Saturday night. After 90 minutes of DJ Darth Fader spinning music, dancing, cocktails, and mingling with some of the celebrities in attendance - including James Murray (Impractical Jokers), Joey Fatone (Nsync), Bam Margera (Jackass), Bai Ling (The Crow), and Spencer Wilding (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) - it was time for Epic Rap Battles of History. The creators of the viral YouTube channel, Peter "Nice Peter" Shukoff and Lloyd "EpicLloyd" Ahlquist - took the stage to perform many of their fan-favorite rap battles live, full of energy and the occasional prop. They performed such favorites as Goku vs. Superman, Rick Grimes vs. Walter White, Terminator vs. Robocop, and Zeus vs. Thor, in addition to medleys with verses from various battles. They occasionally invited fans on stage to perform verses, and in the middle of the set they made their way into the crowd to perform a few songs, including a freestyle created on the spot by audience suggestion: Spider-Man vs. Christina Aguilera. Although they haven't released a new video in nearly two years, Shukoff and Ahlquist clearly haven't missed a beat. They concluded their hour-long set by revealing that they have a new video featuring Elon Musk coming in December.

Sunday kicked off for me with a panel featuring Impractical Jokers' James "Murr" Murray and Nsync's Joey Fatone. While no one was entirely sure what to expect, it was a standard - but highly entertaining - question-and-answer session, with Fatone essentially serving as moderator and occasionally offering his input. Fatone first bonded with the Jokers over their mutual love of Superman. He quickly befriended the gang, then appeared on the show before becoming the host of the Impractical Jokers after-show, After Party. Murr teased the upcoming Impractical Jokers movie, which is due in theaters next year. He said that it's a road movie, with a scripted beginning and ending, but the rest of the film features the guys pranking one another around the country. While Fatone revealed he makes a cameo in the film, Murr told the crowd that it features "the most embarrassing moment of my life," which left him in tears. He also shared plenty of fun stories from the show, including showing off his driver's license photo with no eyebrows.

Later in the day, the Stranger Things panel with David Harbor (Hopper) and Noah Schnapp (Will), and moderated by Clare Kramer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), capped off the weekend on a high note. They have one week left of shooting the hit Netflix series' third season. They were unable to speak much about it, but Harbor called it "the most Spielbergian thing we’ve ever done," while Schnapp remarked, "It's even bigger than season two." Harbor revealed that we'll see more of Hopper's backstory as a Vietnam veteran and a New York City police officer, while Schnapp hinted that there may be a love story between Will and Eleven. Hopper also discussed his titular role in the upcoming Hellboy reboot. Filming in Bulgaria proved to be difficult, and the three hours of make-up each day wasn't a lot of fun, but he promised lots of practical effects and a storyline that would be closer to the comic on which its based. He also shared a funny story about a run-in with a wild bull during shooting.

In addition to the numerous celebrities mentioned above, Rhode Island Comic Con's exceptional guest list included Hayden Christensen (Star Wars), Gwendoline Christie (Star Wars), Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys), Jason Patric (The Lost Boys), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Tom Felton (Harry Potter), Natalia Tena (Harry Potter), Zachary Levi (Shazam), Tom Welling (Smallville), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville), Alan Tudyk (Firefly), Finn Jones (Game of Thrones), Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings), Tony Danza (Who’s the Boss?), Levar Burton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Michelle Trachtenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story), Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead), Sarah Wayne Callies (The Walking Dead), Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead), Jenna Elfman (Fear the Walking Dead), Zach Galligan (Gremlins), Morena Baccarin (Deadpool), Ice-T (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), Billy Zane (Titanic), Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Jason David Frank (Power Rangers), and many more.

Although all comic conventions have slowly become more of pop culture expos and celebrity autograph shows over the years, Rhode Island Comic Con stays true to its roots by inviting many comic writers and artists. This year included Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, among others. I had the pleasure of meeting Eastman, who graciously signed one item - complete with a quick sketch of a Ninja Turtle - for free for everyone throughout the weekend. He was very personable, striking up a brief conversation with each fan who waited in line. In addition to dozens of comic creators, aspiring artists were invited to have their portfolios reviewed.

While the headlining guests were the main attraction at the Dunkin Donuts Center, I was very excited to see an It (1990) display, curated by John Campopiano, writer-producer of the upcoming Pennywise: The Story of It documentary. The crown jewel of the collection was one of Tim Curry's actual, screen-used Pennywise costumes, of which fans were allowed to take photos, but he also had many editions of the film and Stephen King's novel from around the world, among other memorabilia. I was disheartened to hear, however, that two props were stolen from the booth during the event, and as a result the collection will no longer be displayed at conventions. I hope the missing items surface, because the display was a real treat for Stephen King fans.

Impressive costumes - from movies, TV, comics, anime, cartoons, video games, wrestlers, pop culture figures, and mash-ups - could be found walking around the showroom floor throughout the weekend, but many of the best cosplayers competed in a costume contest on Sunday evening. Everyone's efforts were extremely impressive, but the cosplay celebrity judges ultimately awarded the winners in three categories. Eleven from Stranger Things (complete with a Demodog) won for beginners, a group dressed up as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers villains shared the prize for intermediate, and a female Pennywise from It (2017) was selected for the master class. But it was a couple dressed as The Sorceress and Battle Cat from Masters of the Universe who were awarded Best in Show. It was a fun way to end the weekend.

In addition to the celebrity guests signing autographs and taking pictures, celebrity panels, cosplaying, and hundreds of vendors with anything a pop culture nerd could ever want, Rhode Island Comic Con includes exclusive merchandise, fan panels, film screenings, geek speed dating, kids activities, live tattooing, and more. It's impossible to experience it all in one day, so I recommend springing for the weekend pass when next year's event rolls around on November 1-3, 2019.

Click here to see all of my Rhode Island Comic Con 2018 photos.

[ts-autumns-world]

Episode 1: “Autumn you are a crazy fucked up host” - Giraffez

AHHHHHHH AUTUMNS WORLD HI!!!!!! THIS CAST IS AMAZING IM SO EXCITED AND SCARED!!! JINX YES!! AND 4 KILI PEOPLE INCLUDING LILY?? cant wait !!!

Omg! first day and im placed on the Eener tribe <3 love the way it sounds like an alarm so much ! xo love the tribe divisions and love my tribe mates! super excited to get to know them more, and reconnect with others :)

https://youtu.be/9P1GrFrTHnQ

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it’s the way i keep putting my birthday as the date...as if this is a doctors office and not autumns world...I DONT NEED NO DOCTOR THO I AM CURED IN AUTUMNS WORLD ‼️‼️‼️ anyways manifesting a jinx win 🕯 hi my name is jinx and i am the winner of tumblr survivor 103: autumns world. i keep telling myself that. it’s okay to be hungry for the win like i am this time. i can’t let it blind me but it’s okay! it’s okay to say i’m gonna win! if i fail, it’s not smth i haven’t done before. but. im taking a page from autumns book and speaking it into existence. my name is jinx clementine and i WILL BE the winner of tumblr survivor 103: autumns world. *uptown funk vc* don’t believe me just WATCH ‼️

It feels absolutely insane to be back. I feel like I’m a bit oversaturated tbh

I can’t believe this cast. Packed with icons. So many people from Kilimanjaro?? I’m just like??? I’m just so excited to play and hope that our team does great. I just don’t want to lose cause I really don’t want to vote any of these other people out! 

when i’m the annoying overactive player... i keep putting my birthday as the month/day/year 😭 so watch out for that. anyways, important announcement: the only song i ever listen to is potential breakup song by aly & aj. i never listen to anything else. if i feel like listening to music that’s what i listen to. it’s been on repeat since 2007. my itunes consists of 1 song, potential breakup song by aly & aj, and the play count is somewhere around 50,000 plays. if you ever see me listening to music, don’t even ask what song i’m listening to, because you know it’s potential breakup song by aly & aj, so why would you even ask

I don't give one fucks, two fucks, red fucks, or blue fucks, I'm gonna put all my effort and energy into this season. I have a point to prove, not to just myself, but to every person who has doubted me in any way. The biggest concern I have is meta gaming, alot of it but its going to be okay. Chris and Jinx? Vibing. Mikki and Captain? that group chat was made 5 minutes into the game. Monty and Lily C are gonna be vibing since they're winners. Lily O and I played fr*nce, but that's... no good. I'm going to just let go and have a great time. This is Autumn's World, and sometimes, we all need to just relax and let nature take its course

Autumn you are a crazy fucked up host....... Legit i was like oh come in have some fun then BOOM FUCKING MESOPOTAMIA FLASH BACK OUT THE GATE so sevice to say I'm nervous as hell about this challenge i so don't want to get voted out first .....or on the same challenge as before so even if we do have to go to tribal hopefully the winning tribe will take pitty on me and you know give me safety

feeling delusional for writing what i wrote about winning 😭🌚 LIKE DKKDKDKDKDKDDKDKKD IM TRYING TO BE MY BEST POSSIBLE SELF AND APPARENTLY THAT FACILITATES DELUSION GOOD NIGHT 

https://youtu.be/FJM9fQW7evY

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autumn not letting me in the game at first bc i’m mixed. i can hear my ancestors screaming

Yknow I’m not exactly thrilled that the song decision was made without everyone being present but like my stupid night shifts make it completely understandable at the same time. On that topic, though. Party in the USA for our music video, hmm. Not even bleach is that basic.

good morning it’s day 2 in autumn’s world and i don’t feel any better about the whites. ps. daily i love monty 

https://youtu.be/DAXdEjZW1mc

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mQ3vUbaX1nEnsp2Z9

My tribe has a varying amount of timezones which makes it harder to connect with them socially as I cannot PM them as much as I would like to. Additionally, I am finding it difficult to message them because I have to work from 8 to 5 everyday of the week. This sucks because I know I can at least make people like me in the per-merge enough to keep me. However, I can no longer reliably use this strategy. I just have to hope others are way more inactive than me and that my tribe somehow wins immunity. On that note, I am really liking that Mikki and Benj took a leadership role in the tribe. So, they are definitely people I want to keep on this tribe. It would have to be Blake or Khalid that gets the target from me. We'll see how talking to them goes before results.

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!!! Ok so starting with my tribe:

Mikki - ABSOLUTELY THE FAV!!! We got along right away on day 1 and are def the closest in timezones which is so great to have someone like that. Sooo fun and easy to talk to really wanna be #1 allies. I know shes amazing at orgs and won and probs is getting along well with everyone but who cares i wanna play w her!!!! The main thing is too have fun and i just know it will be with Mikki

Captain - Also amazing!!! Super active in helping with the challenge and great personally love that hes gonna do english teaching which is smth i was looking into and also in a closer time zone to me and had fun discussing stuff w him so far!!

Blake - We played Kili together!! Shoutout Autumn for getting 4 Kilis back omg. I was on a tribe with Blake and Autumn together for like 2 rounds and we did vote together once so have some positive history at least hes a bit more quiet compared to the others but hes cool and i think we could do good!

Raffy - Iconic parts in the video challenge and also fun so far!! Havent talked as much as the above 3 but still feeling good about him!

Khalid - Seems nice and friendly but we havent messaged yet and no clue if he will do his lines in the music video :O we'll see But overall love my tribe and the overall cast. LILY THE KILI WINNER QUEEN???????? Cant believe shes back would be so awesome to play w her again since last time we were mainly on opposite sides. JINX MY ONE MONTE FRIEND??? YES!! SO excited i hope we get to tribe swap together since in Monte we werent that close and i voted them off i know such a disgrace but since then we have become more friends so would love to play together!! Also played w Chips in Kili and were sort of friends! Chris we are hosting a season together but i think itll be cancelled tbh no ones applying and we dont know each other at all outside of that but i loved his intro and just started getting into agatha christie literally ordered 2 of her books a few  weeks ago sdhksa cant believe he mentioned her in his intro so super excited to properly meet him. Joey we are sorta friends but i voted him out recently in other game so dunno how he feels abt me!! Everyone else i dont really know but will meet some soon surely WOOO AUTUMNS WORLD

SO THE GAME JUST STARTED so there's not really that much to spill right now but I do really enjoy my tribe. I have my bestie captain who I will protect as much as I possibly can. and I've spent all day yesterday and today talking to benj who I LOVE so so so much. I feel so good with him. SO UM ASAHJSHSJAJHASHJAS IM ON THE SAME TRIBE AS RAFFY WHO UM ASHJSAHASHJ I played with once before where I was super chaotic and I literally fought him (playfully) and it was so messy and chaotic and stupid BUT I DIDN'T RECOGNISE HIM AND HE DIDN'T REMEMBER ME SO WE JSUT WERE LIKE "nice to meet you" and I didn't realise until later and idk if he knows yet and I am not bringing it up COS LIKE IDK I DON'T WANT IT TO GET WEIRD AND MAYBE HE DOESN'T REMEMBER BUT MAYBE HE DOES IDK but besides that I love him a lot he's so fun and his videos for our music video are AMAZING he's so full of life. Khalid hasn't been on much but I really enjoy his energy when he is. he's so cool and lovely. Blake is nice!!!!! but I can't help but feel my instincts being like WATCH HIM. like something inside me is saying beware of this white man.LIKE IDK WHAT IT IS but I just get instincts in games with people sometimes where I just feel like unsettled??? and that's how I feel right now. we're all in different timezones so socialising is the opposite of overwhelming. I've never had a game so quiet in the beginning like this before. but I've never played survivor either. I think I might be okay??? if we went to tribal but I really don't want us to go to tribal pls....

JINX IS OVER ON THE TUA TRIBE BTW and I'm sitting here with grabby hands. I wanna play with them so bad and just get to have our redemption arc because we didn't play on the same side the first time we played so LET ME HAVE THIS I just wanna play with them and have fun with them but they are so far away :((((

I'm so excited overall tho the whole cast looks amazing and I'm having fun so far. this challenge has been a blast and. a great way to bond with everyone. I feel so close to benj already. I really love him a lot. so I'm having a good time yes ashjshajjahs YAY

oh and I also did my tarot and idk where things are going to go exactly but I'm very :eyes: raffy got the tower and Khalid got the devil....hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

also I wanna play with women at some point PLS PLS I haven't been this surrounded by men since I was a closeted 15 year old surrounded by posters of Robert Pattinson and Taylor lautner

Benj just submitted his version of the music video and it is..... bad. I don't know why Mikki filmed vertically? Like, I feel like that's the first rule of music videos? You have to always film horizontally. Also, some of these people's energies were not giving at all. The beginning waking up part was cute though. It's just.... these people aren't giving what they think they're giving is all I'm saying. And Benj put this weird filter on all my videos that makes it hard to see what's actually going on tbh. Anyways, time to kick the socializing into high gear so as to not get voted out! Or pray that Mikki's version of the video is better

hello autumn's world.. this is captain's speaking. sorry i'm one day late to this confessional booth stuff but i'm here and i'm ready to give u some tea. *ahem* thanks jarod for these questions.

1. How do you feel about your starting team? Anyone you are happy/upset to see? OOOOH i feel like my team is very CUTE! like i didn't think autumn was gonna put me and mikki in the same tribe lmao .. i thought it was gonna be divided from ur race and u know mikki is white and i'm not. ANYWAYS, im happy to see mikki in my team of course. thats my ride or die and i know i'm gonna have someone i can 100% trust no matter what for sure. but blake knows for sure that mikki and i are very close so thats gonna be interesting. which leads to the next part, i'm kinda eh with blake in my tribe thats only because our previous experience in CoW so i just hope that its gonna be better here this time *prays*.. for others, i don't know them before so i'm excited to get to know them!!!

2. Who are you most excited to play with on the cast? Most afraid of? oh of course mikki for sure and another person is geekoffilm cause u know we're like besties besties and i love both of them so much. most afraid of... probably monty tbh. they tried to gun for me/mikki(/cora) in jarod's mini so i think they know that mikki and i are gonna be tight so i'm just gonna have to keep an eyes on them cause they are a great player.

3. What are your first impressions of everyone based on this first challenge? OH GOD. i love benj!! benj is very organized so we started off pretty well. i threw out lush life randomly and then we decided to go with lush life, how cute!!! but yea, benj and mikki have done lots of works and i love THEM. RAFFY ALSO DID AMAZING in his parts!!! like he has PROPS and his camp is sooooo summery and AHH he's so great. blake.. ahem if blake didn't look at his lyrics at the first part, it would've been a bit better. and idk about khalid. i'm very worried cause khalid hasn't sent any of his parts yet. and like he seems inactive??? so idk but i don't wanna lose the points for full team participation :oooooh: I DIDNT JUST SHOW ANYONE I CANT DANCE TO LOSE AND I DIDNT HAVE TO DANCE AND MAKE MY LEGS ACHE JUST TO LOSE!!! SOBS!! but that is a sign that tells me i should exercise more x ANYWAYS!!!! its just interesting point to add x

4. What is your strategy going into the first portion of the game? trying to lay low and build some connections with ppl from my tribe. benj and raffy for sure. i rlly like their vibes so i need to stick with them. and just try not to lose challenges cause its gonna be suck voting one of them out. also, if we somehow win, i want to send someone who i can trust moving forward to exiled island.. but we'll see. its gonna be a lot of thinking and convincing people.

5. How do you want other people in the game to view you in the early stages of the game? as someone who they can trust and talk to and someone who always puts effort into challenges cause thats what most important in the first stage of the game.. i'll come back here after results x

HELLO AUTUMNS WORLD IM PISSED! not about raffy getting sent to the outback. its what raffy deserved. i like raffy so thats fine i just need to work on my relationship with him after he comes back. BUT KHALID. GOD. he just doesnt care about the challenge AT ALL. he was inactive. he didnt even talk about the challenge. and then coming to the chat and telling us SORRY after we have submitted… god thats BS. we literally all put our effort into this. and for someone who just dont care about the pandemic (idk about the uk but i guess they allow partying now) and go out and party. GOD i mean he’s going back to bahrain anyways WELL GUESS WHAT, HERE IS ANOTHER PLANE TICKET HOME. take that and sashay away babe

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cause thats just FUCKED UP. everyone put their efforts in. benj — his leg is HURTING he cant move much btut he still did his parts and helped us with the editing. RAFFY — he literally worked 8 to 5 but he still found time to just shoot his parts and like more random parts. blake — well even though he didnt study the song much, he still did it and he is a team player. MIKKI — well u know i love mikki and ik how much shes in her head for this challenge but every scene she is on, i smile watching her because she just did it SO WELL PLUS she stayed up late for khalid and her health is not good. fucked up khalid u done fucked up enough. hope u enjoyed ur short time at autumns world.

First challenge, done, middle of the road WOOOOOOOOOOOOO, absolutely love that my music video streak has been continuing! Coming into this game, I felt absolutely nervous as hell about playing with 2 winners on my team, but in all honesty, I’m gonna take the Jinx approach- Embrace it, you don’t get another opportunity like this. I love the fact that I’m being more engaged than before and that’s what I want to be, especially in confessionals. I’m always trying to be better, and how can I better myself I HATE THE WAY MARV ALBERT PRONOUNCES PARENTHESES, YOU DON’T SAY IT LIKE “THE C’s”? JESUS MARV ITS GONNA BE YOUR LAST GAME YOU CALL IN YOUR CAREER COME ON MAN.

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I hate to be called Joestradamus, but when Captain or Mikki get voted out first because of how tight knit they are, don’t @ me

*slides into splits* WE WON YES YES YES YES WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO YEAH

re khalid missing the challenge: no everyone in our team worked rlly hard on that except khalid who went out fucking partying then he lied about going to send the vid soon cause you know what if he already filmed his parts, looking for a vid and click send are not that hard he fucking told us he was about to send ASAP and then disappeared and then had the NERVE to tell us AFTER THE DEADLINE that he's so SORRY OH PLS

This tribe name is Autumn's last name backwards! https://thumbs.gfycat.com/VigorousBiodegradableIrishterrier-size_restricted.gif  

Now that that is out of the way, let me list my tribemates... Giraffez Joey Lily C Lily O Monty. Something is incredibly amusing about how there is a tribe with someone named Chips and someone named Giraffez. What is not amusing is that I get a "I don't like/want to speak to/etc." vibe from Giraffez? I could just be a delicate and annoying flower but our conversations have been short and dry. Joey has some great high energy and excitement and I love that he loves being part of this game. He is also pretty fun to talk to. Hoping that we can keep an open dialogue and that perhaps I can rope him into a future alliance of sorts. Lily C is a sweetheart truly and I adore her personality so much. She is such a go-getter and goes to bat for those with who she feels can be loyal. I'm hoping that we can build loyalty and trust together. Lily O has been busy with work at a bowling alley. That's actually really cool because when I was a child that was my dream job. Not even joking... my parents were in leagues when I was growing up and my brother and I entered ones designed for children. It was a big thing in my family and I thought that I would love to be in that "atmosphere" all the time. Anyway, we haven't spoken until after the results were announced so honestly if I had to guess I was their intended target if we had had tribal council and they were mine?? (perhaps...) It has been really nice getting to connect with Monty and really cool finding out that they are beginning job searching after college and thinking of pursuing education as a career. I have a soft spot in my heart for all educators.

Okay so I'm just going to say this now. Autumn needs to simplify the twists to more like Blue's Clues with an OBVIOUS large blue paw prints where I'm supposed to look. I have no idea what that announcement was about war rooming someone into the game and feel like I"m fifty million steps behind these big-brained people who figured it out. https://media2.giphy.com/media/m59avtxDzXeiQ/200.gif

I think that I missed the message about what we do with tickets or I'm still just as clueless as previously stated but I am intrigued nonetheless. I think even if I knew what to do with them I would just hoard them like I would Chuck E. Cheese tickets in case something else came along. Hope they're not like Fire Tokens and let you buy like Peanut Butter and Idols because I am anti- fire token. https://media.tenor.com/images/d7de1f75f2c43f8e044e958b964430fa/tenor.gif

On a side note, I'm paranoid when I see people on calls because even if they're not talking about me or plotting they are potentially aligning with each other and that does not include me. I don't really know much about how calls work on Discord as I am a pretty big noob generally speaking with the platform but it did say that Joey and Giraffez were on a call earlier?? I'm stressed. https://media0.giphy.com/media/3o7TKRwpns23QMNNiE/200.gif --- http://www.purplerockpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/survivor-pearlislands-lillian-morris-post-savage-blindside.gif

https://voca.ro/1lb9WKsDr6xA

Ok.....so after talking to Joey a little ive learned a few things mikki is a bit of a beast Benj is well......social to and everyone despised Mesopotamia........which i get from the stuff that pumped me up to 16th place that season but I'm mostly hoping that i can make it to the end this time....... So far I've talked to pretty much everyone Lilly and Joey and monty not sure which one really but the one whose discord is 13survivirgirl13 so hopefully soon i can work out some kind of an alliance with them and if we swap or merge from three to two either next week or the week after (probably the week after honestly) i feel i can maybe set us up as one and us four can really rule the roost for a moment....hopefully.....who knows i could just he a delusional old queen whose doomed to be nothing more then premerge every time i play tumblr survivor......or maybe I'm just crazy *shrugs* either way it should be a damn good hoot

we won the first challenge, god bless. which brings up something funky i realized: that the best part about winning immunity is having the day off. and also…idk something just doesn’t sit right…the way autumn was emphasizing that someone would be eliminated from the game…like….hm……….idk….never trust a bitch named after a season!

omg we lost AHHHH but thankfully we have an easy boot sorry khalid im glad i dont have to vote mikki captain or blake eeek pls lets win the next one

I'm totally pumped for this game! Like when I saw my tribe and Jinx is on it I screamed! I want us to have the same success of being together at ftc!! Jude honestly is great to me and I'm enjoying getting to know her a lot, Ricky I remember from HvV4 but we both say no to that and start anew! Bryan I am hopeful to talk more since its been dry and that is okay. Sucks we ended losing Michelle early but I am sure it was for the best! We WILL reign successful

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Yesterday was so stressful to me like editing I have no problem with but I thought my biggest worry was that I needed Bryan to submit stuff late-ish. But turns out an hour before due time thd program wanted to stop working 🙃🥲 and I felt so close to wanting to forfeit- which is something I never do but I just felt hopeless and guilty and even imagined getting voted out. So I had to call Jinx who assured me something could be salvaged and they'd make sure I would stay (rip Bryan) but after the extension by cool hosts I found encouragement and did my magic stuff. SOMEHOW we won and to be honest I dont think anything will top that feeling of relief in the org (give me 3 days) but man what a ride yesterday was for me!

I got a Super Idol! Well, at least I now know that I can fuck around in this game a little bit more since I have this extra insurance in my back pocket which guarantees I stay around in the long run. I want to start getting into alliances because being a solo person with not much time on their hands is definitely a scary position to be in. Preferably, I want an alliance with Nikki and Benj (though I suspect that they already have an alliance with at least one other person on the tribe). It does suck that I am not at tribal considering that it will help build my bonds even stronger. I guess I just have to suffer for the time being

i think this is gonna be an easy vote cause khalid needs to go. but idk you can never feel safe in survivor :/ but so far everyone has been telling me they're voting khalid so lets pray

Omg that immunity was so hard, I literally did not know what I was doing and I think out of everyone I was a bit lackluster. I will say on the tribe I have not really talked to all of them but I will say I trust Jinx the most and we have talked a lot and I think that moving forward we will have each others back. All I need to do is talk to the rest of the tribe and form bonds that will last me to a swap or merge. 

https://youtu.be/kKOciJGjrzw

https://youtu.be/mx7WPjx8zCk

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khalid babe this ones for you 🥺 https://youtu.be/QX2boYNUbxw

[rndyounghowze]

Giving Tuesday!!! Help Support These Amazing Artists and Organizations!

A quick run down of a few Giving Tuesday fundraisers you can support! #givingtuesday

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Mays Landing, New Jersey

This year we wanted to support the arts and not the big companies of the world. Sure you can get things on sale but that same $20 could be the difference between surviving and thriving for a theatre company. Here are some great theatre companies that are having Giving Tuesday Fundraisers that reached out to us. Are you ready to meet your new favorite artists?

The Young-Howze Theatre Journal

Venmo: @rndyounghowze

Paypal: nyllad99@yahoo.com

We have been reviewing digital theatre since lockdown happened and since April we have reviewed over a hundred digital productions from artists all over the world! The only money we have been relying on since this all began have been Ricky’s unemployment check and small contributions from community members like you. Now as December is nigh approaching we are hoping to open a merch shop, sell ads, and start teaching workshops. However the bulk of our survival may still rely on you wonderful readers showing up and supporting our work. So please help us continue to eat and pay the bills this upcoming year.

Sour Grapes Productions

It has been a crazy year for this small production company that made the leap to digital. Genny Yosco and Chris Weigandt have brought the weekly show Bard Brunch to your screens every Sunday and numerous other digital productions throughout the year. Most notably Yosco’s “Im ur Hamlet” claimed one of three positions of Hartford Fringe’s “Best of The Fringe”. They have a sequel to that coming up in January and are hoping to raise money for administrative expenses and to help support their main cadre of actors during these tough times. If you like Punny food and irreverent Shakespeare then you have to donate to them.

Frigid New York

Dana and I first got acquainted with this company through the Queerly Festival. They must have taken a liking to us because they have opened their digital doors to us and have let us in just about anywhere we asked (and places we never thought to ask). They have been using donations and ticket sales to their digital events to keep their proverbial lights on and their artist paid during a time when a lot of theaters are closing their doors nationwide. Please consider donating to them to help further their work.

Heritage Alliance

I first met Anne G’Fellers Mason on my first year of grad school when I still thought I was destined to be a cisgender southern boy from Tennessee. We became such good friends that we quickly became the “Tennessee Twins”. Through the Heritage Alliance they have done so much hard work to keep History alive in Jonesborough, TN and the work that Anne did to start the applied theatre program and eventually helm the whole museum will leave its mark on the region for years to come. Please consider donating.

Black Lives, Black Words

Reginald Edmund likes to say that Dana and I “came out of nowhere” to review his the first in their season. Really we just followed a trail of breadcrumbs of great Black artists that led straight to his door. He keeps very talented and experienced group of artists around him and strives as hard as he can to keep Black theatrical excellence in the forefront at all times. The money you give today will help Black Lives, Black Words keep supporting great artists and to continue bringing you great Black plays.

DANA Movement Ensemble

We first became acquainted with Nick Daniels through his highlighted work in the Reparations Show by Kevin R. Free. Anytime we interface with their work we are just floored and they are trying to raise money to do even more next year. This money will go to artists fees, travel expenses, and other things so that they can continue to bring you high quality multimedia artistry.

Gorilla Repertory Theatre

Gorilla Rep broke new boundaries by taking some of their amazing cast members during quarantine and filming a new feature length production of Macbeth on their smartphones. We reviewed it and were immediately invigorated by the work. They are trying to raise money now to film a production of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet the same way. Chip in whatever you can and help them continue to forge new frontiers.

Kinetic Etchings

We first met Amile Clark Wilson while we were embedded reporters at Hollins University’s Playwrights Lab. While you’re embedded with Hollins all you’re ever thinking about is writing writing and more writing. When Amile shared that he also ran a dance company we had no clue! Kinetic Etchings has been working as a venue for exceptional concert dance in Jackson, MS for a while now and they need your help to keep this vital mission going!

Any little bit that you can do to help these artists, from $1-$100 will go a great way into ensuring their survival in these trying times. On this Giving Tuesday please consider voting with your dollar and proclaiming to the world that you want to keep the arts alive!

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We have a YouTube Channel. We’re working furiously to get new videos up weekly.

https://youtu.be/pRDy8DtXioc

We are so thankful for the outpouring of donations we’ve received! We graciously accept all donations through our Venmo (@rndyounghowze).

Wanna be a sponsor? Email us for rates at rndyounghowze@gmail.com

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Politics from Time: Revenge of the Never Trumpers: Meet the Republican Dissidents Fighting to Push Donald Trump Out of Office

Jack Spielman has been a Republican his whole life. But over the past four years, he has come to two realizations.

Increasingly upset by President Donald Trump’s “appalling” behavior, his cozy relationships with dictators and the ballooning national debt, Spielman says his first epiphany was that he couldn’t cast a ballot for Trump again. But for the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, the final straw was the President’s retaliation against impeachment witness Lieut. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who retired in July after Trump fired him from the National Security Council in February. Spielman decided he had to do more than just vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden; he had to persuade others to do the same. So Spielman filmed a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), explaining his views. “I want to do some part,” Spielman tells TIME, “to try to correct the wrong that I did in voting for this man.”

RVAT, which launched in May, is among a growing number of Republicanled groups dedicated to making Trump a one-term President. Since December, longtime GOP operatives and officials have formed at least five political committees designed to urge disaffected conservatives to vote for Biden. The best known of these groups, the Lincoln Project, has since forming late last year gained national attention for its slick advertisements trolling the President. Right Side PAC, led by the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, launched in late June; a few days after that, more than 200 alumni of George W. Bush’s Administration banded together to form an organization called 43 Alumni for Biden. There’s also the Bravery Project, led by former GOP Congressman and erstwhile Trump primary challenger Joe Walsh. And plans are in the works for a group of former national-security officials from Republican administrations to endorse Biden this summer.

Since 2015, pockets of the party have bemoaned Trump’s Twitter antics, his divisive rhetoric and key elements of his platform, from the Muslim travel ban to his trade tariffs to his family-separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. But with the President’s approval rating in the party consistently around 90%, and GOP lawmakers terrified to cross him, the so-called Never Trump faction has proven largely powerless, with a negligible impact on federal policy.

Now, in the final stretch of the President’s term, the Never Trumpers could finally have their revenge. Four years ago, Trump won the Electoral College by some 77,000 votes scattered across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. If even a small slice of disillusioned Trump voters or right-leaning independents defect to Biden in November, it could be enough to kick Trump out of office. “They are the constituency that can swing this election,” says Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican operative and founder of RVAT.

This constituency now appears more willing to vote for Biden than they were six months ago, in no small part because of Trump’s faltering response to the corona-virus, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans and ravaged the economy. Between March and June, according to a Pew Research poll, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters dropped seven percentage points, to 78%. A June 25 New York Times/Siena College survey found that Biden has a 35-point lead over Trump among voters in battleground states who supported a third-party candidate in 2016. “Any small percentage of voters who no longer support him could be critical in closely matched swing states,” says Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

It’s too early to gauge how effective the raft of Never Trump groups will be. They’re dismissed by many Republicans as self-serving opportunists profiting off the polarization Trump has exacerbated. Trump also remains hugely popular among Republicans. “President Trump is the leader of a united Republican Party where he has earned 94% of Republican votes during the primaries–something any former President of any party could only dream of,” says campaign spokes-woman Erin Perrine.

Even if the Never Trump activists are able to help oust the President, it’s unclear what will become of a party that’s vastly different from the one they came up in. Trump has transformed today’s GOP into a cult of personality rooted in economic nationalism and racial division. And while the small anti-Trump faction wants to return to the conservative ideology that reigned for decades before Trump, many Republicans believe Trump has changed the party forever.

Sitting in front of a packed book-case, Rick Wilson looked surprised as he peered over hornrimmed spectacles at an overflowing screen: “There’s 10,000 people on here,” the onetime Republican operative marveled of the Zoom audience assembled for the Lincoln Project’s first town hall on July 9.

Grant Lancaster—AM New YorkThe Lincoln Project’s ads criticizing the President’s performance have helped it raise nearly $20 million

Wilson formed the Lincoln Project in December, along with lawyer George Conway, the husband of Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, and veteran political strategists Steve Schmidt and John Weaver, among others. The Republican stalwarts had grown disgusted with the President’s behavior and their party’s acquiescence to it. The launch met little fanfare, but in the months since, the group has demonstrated a knack for quickly producing memorable videos and advertisements that get under Trump’s skin. In early May, with the unemployment rate soaring toward 15%, the group released an ad dubbed “Mourning in America,” a play on the upbeat Ronald Reagan classic, which depicted the woes of sick and unemployed Americans under Trump’s leadership. “If we have another four years like this,” the ad’s narrator intones as dead patients are wheeled out of hospitals on stretchers, “will there even be an America?” The President took notice. “Their so-called Lincoln Project is a disgrace to Honest Abe!” Trump tweeted. “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad.”

Irritating the President is part of the point. “It’s not trolling if you get a fish in the line,” says Reed Galen, a veteran of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns and one of the project’s co-founders. “We kept dropping a hook in the water, and eventually the President bit.” The attention has been a boon to the group’s finances. The Lincoln Project raised nearly $17 million between April 1 and June 30.

If the Lincoln Project tries to needle the President, other groups in the Never Trump ecosystem have found complementary roles. Instead of using polished editing and ominous music to make a splash online, RVAT has gathered more than 400 testimonials from disheartened Republicans like Spielman. “I did only vote for Donald Trump because I couldn’t believe someone who acted as goofy as he did on TV actually meant it,” Monica, a self-described evangelical Christian from Texas, says in one video. “Since that time, I have been riddled with guilt.”

Longwell, RVAT’s founder, believes hearing from people like Monica will show waffling conservatives that they’re not alone in their dislike of the President, and encourage them to break away. “The thing that people trusted wasn’t elites, it wasn’t Republican elites, it certainly wasn’t the media,” Longwell says of her focus-group research. “But they did trust people like them.” The group says it plans to showcase those voices in an eight-figure ad campaign in five swing states before Election Day.

RVAT identified recalcitrant Republicans through email lists Longwell had built at Defending Democracy Together, its parent organization. Founded in 2019, Defending Democracy Together created online petitions whose signatories often offered clues of their disillusionment with Trump. Petitions supporting Vindman and thanking Utah Senator Mitt Romney for voting to convict Trump of abuse of power during the impeachment trial proved especially fruitful in finding former Trump supporters, according to Tim Miller, RVAT’s political director and a veteran Republican communications strategist.

To test new video messages, Longwell held a Zoom focus group on July 15 with seven Florida voters and allowed TIME to watch. Each participant voted for Trump in 2016 but was now dissatisfied with his leadership. Several mentioned his handling of COVID-19 in the meeting, noting Florida’s dramatic spike in cases. Long-well showed the group a few of RVAT’s testimonials. “It resonates with me,” one woman who works in the travel industry in Orlando said. “It does make me feel less alone.” But while three people on the call said they’d likely vote for Biden, two said they were unsure and two said they would still vote for Trump again. “I don’t think there’s any hope for him,” the Orlando woman said. “But I don’t see Biden doing a good job either.”

Matt Borges of Right Side PAC recognizes that Republican voters’ uncertainty about Biden needs to be addressed. As the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party watched Never Trump groups roll out advertisements, he worried there was too much focus on why Trump was bad and not enough on why Biden was a good alternative. “We need these people who know they are not [going to] vote for Trump but are not sold on Joe Biden to hear some messaging from fellow Republicans that says, ‘No, it’s O.K. to vote for this guy,'” says Borges, a lifelong Republican who disavowed Trump three years ago. In an unrelated development, Borges was arrested on July 21 for allegedly participating in a $60 million bribery scheme involving top political officials that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio decried as the biggest money-laundering effort in the state’s history.

In June, Borges teamed up with former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci to form Right Side PAC, which plans to spend up to $7 million targeting these voters through mailings, digital ads and phone banks. Their first focus is Michigan, where Borges commissioned a pollster to conduct research on Republican voters in swing districts. After spending more than a week in the field, the pollster delivered the results to Borges and Scaramucci on a Zoom call, which TIME observed. Support for Trump among Republican voters in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District had dropped from 80% in January to 67%, the pollster said. The district had swung for Trump in 2016, then voted for a Democratic Congresswoman, Elissa Slotkin, two years later. Voters who ranked the coronavirus as their top concern were seen as more likely to break for Biden. While the group had planned to target all white Republican women over the age of 50 in Michigan, the pollster said the data suggested those over 65 were immovable in their support for Trump. These insights, Borges says, will form the basis of Right Side PAC’s “final sale” to voters on Biden’s behalf.

As the presidential race heads into its final months, another group of Republicans aims to help Biden in a different way. A group of more than 70 former national-security officials from GOP administrations, led by John Bellinger, the senior National Security Council and State Department lawyer under George W. Bush, and Ken Wainstein, Bush’s Homeland Security Adviser, plans to endorse Biden and publish a mission statement describing the damage they say Trump has done to America’s national security and global reputation. They will also fund-raise for the former Vice President and do media appearances in battleground states when the group launches later this summer. Some of the same people wrote an open letter denouncing Trump in 2016. But, says Wainstein, “our effort this time is going to have some staying power throughout the campaign.”

How much impact these groups will ultimately have on voters remains unclear. As they try to unseat an incumbent with a massive war chest, their first hurdle is money. Right Side PAC raised just over $124,000 in the first two weeks, disclosure filings show. The bulk of that haul came from one person, New York venture capitalist Peter Kellner, a long-time Republican donor who began giving to Democrats in 2018 and who has forked over the maximum amount to Biden’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The group’s prospects were also clouded by Borges’ July 21 arrest. Borges did not respond to requests for comment.

43 Alumni for Biden, the group of former George W. Bush officials, announced its formation on July 1, which means it doesn’t have to file disclosure reports until October; had it announced a day earlier, it would have had to publicize its finances in mid-July. A member of the group declined to provide specific figures but said it had received contributions from more than 500 individuals. The Bravery Project officially launches July 23, and a representative declined to provide any fundraising figures.

Longwell tells TIME that RVAT has raised $13 million this year. As a 501(c)4, or political nonprofit, the group does not need to disclose its donors or exact figures. But the number she provides puts the group on par with the Lincoln Project, whose biggest donors are primarily prominent Democrats. While disclosure filings show that nearly half of the Lincoln Project’s donations were “unitemized” or under $200, it raked in $1 million from billionaire hedge-fund manager Stephen Mandel and $100,000 apiece from business mogul David Geffen and Joshua Bekenstein, the co-chairman of Bain Capital.

This influx of cash has enabled the Lincoln Project to ramp up advertisements against vulnerable Republican Senators like Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana. “We made it very clear that this is not just about Trump but Trumpism and its enablers,” says Galen. “The Republican Senators we have held to account are the President’s greatest enablers.”

The strategy of going after Senators has provoked the ire of many Republicans, who say the group is prioritizing profit over party. “It’s purely grifting and making a name for themselves. It’s not based on principle at all,” says Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bush’s and Romney’s presidential campaigns. The Lincoln Project, he says, “is essentially meant for raising money off the resistance and lining their own pockets.”

The group’s finances have also raised some eyebrows among government watchdogs. Two consulting firms, one run by Galen and another by co-founder Ron Steslow, received nearly a quarter of the $8.6 million the group spent between January and July. While other committees use similar methods, it is “not at all standard,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. “It raises red flags about whether the operation is taking advantage of a situation where donors are giving to what they think is supporting one effort, but there are other patterns at play.”

Krumholz notes that the Lincoln Project does not publicly disclose all of the vendors who have done work for them, which suggests they are funneling money to organizations that then hire subcontractors. This method is not unheard-of, but the lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern who is ultimately profiting. “The public doesn’t know the extent to which Lincoln Project operatives may be profiting, or if they’re profiting at all,” Krumholz says. When asked about the group’s finances, Galen says, “We abide by all reporting requirements laid down by the FEC. No one at the Lincoln Project is buying a Ferrari.”

For now, the Never Trump Republicans say they aren’t looking beyond November. “We’re all in a grand alliance to beat a very big threat,” says Miller of RVAT. “We’ll see how the chips fall after.” But regardless of the election’s outcome, Miller and his cohorts face challenges ahead. They will either be failed rebels, cast out by a party taken over by its two-term President, or facing down a Biden Administration, which would bring unwelcome liberal policies and perhaps Supreme Court vacancies.

If Biden wins, Trumpism won’t disappear with Trump. The President’s rapid rise revealed the extent to which many of the ideological pillars of modern conservatism–its zeal for unfettered free markets, its devotion to deficit reduction, its attachment to global alliances, its faith in a muscular foreign policy–were out of step with actual Republican voters. Many of the ambitious lawmakers rising in the party, like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, have seen in Trump’s political success an example to emulate. The next generation of Republican leaders may try to replicate his policies without the self-defeating behavior.

It’s led many to wonder whether traditional conservatives will have a home in the GOP after Trump is gone. “There is a growing feeling that we need to burn the whole house down to purify the party of Trump enablers in the Congress,” says a former White House official in George W. Bush’s Administration. Some see the prospect of a rupture, with disaffected Republicans cleaving off and either forming a new party or making a tenuous peace with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. “There’s a very real possibility … that the party will split,” says Richard Burt, former ambassador to Germany under President Reagan.

The modern Republican Party was always an uneasy alliance in some ways, with fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives and neoconservatives jostling for influence, and a white working-class base voting for policies that often favored the wealthy. Steven Teles, co-author of Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites, envisions a Republican Party in which Trumpism dominates but the dissenters make up a vocal resistance faction. “I don’t think anyone is going to have control of the Republican Party the way we’ve seen in the past,” he says.

The irony of the Never Trumper activists is that while they are encouraging Republicans to vote Democratic for the first time in their lives, that is bringing some Republicans back into the party by creating a community of the disaffected. Spielman, the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, had become so disenchanted with Trump that he turned his back on the party altogether, voting for Democrats in Michigan’s 2020 primaries. But the Never Trump groups are “giving me hope that there are still some people out there with some decency that want to go back and save the party,” Spielman says. “It’s allowed me to come back and say, Yeah, I’m a Republican. I’m not leaving the party, but I want to fight for what’s right for the party.”

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Mariah Espada, and Josh Rosenberg

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