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lakambinimagph · 6 years ago

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PSA: Your skin care isn’t enough

Have you ever searched about skin care routines? Have you ever watched Youtube videos discussing skin care routines of your favorite stars? I bet, even if you never planned to achieve a tedious skin care, most of you reading this already did. The skin care trend has received global attention. From Youtube videos to online shops there is an evident given prime on beauty and skin care products.

It is interesting to note that the Korean beauty and cosmetic products seem to have invaded —if not the world, I say the Philippines. Well, for reasons like the notion of having white and clear skin is beautiful. I actually have tried some of it, and I can say it is handy and useful. Cost-effective? I’m actually not sure. Obviously, capitalism takes advantage of the craze people give skin care products in this day and age. And again, we consumers gladly patronize it. It is tempting to discuss how capitalism takes advantage of the skin care trend. Like, how pricey each beauty product can get even if they’re just all the same at the end of the day, or even if it does not actually work on your skin type (but you don’t know that until you use the product). So even if it gets pricey as hell, you still buy it. But this article isn’t about that, isn’t it? No.

What we’re gonna do is dig a little deeper into the role of mass media in molding our confidence and notions of how should we, as women, be beautiful. Even before the Korean beauty trend became the talk of the town, mass media has posited a certain kind of beautiful. In different teleseryes and even in other foreign dramas, a clear line separates the beautiful and ugly —and when I say ugly, it’s either fat, morena, or the one with the face full of acnes. Are you familiar with Betty la Fea? Or the Diary ng Pangit? These are examples of how the media had been putting a line between what is beautiful and ugly. It’s told in a fairytale-like story of an ugly duckling turning into a swan...

The Betty la Fea Effect:

Originally, “Yo Soy, Betty la Fea,” is a telenovela from Columbia that the Philippines adapted. Bea Alonzo played the role of Betty la Fea here in the Philippines. Big glasses, braces, unclear skin, weird hairstyle and sense of fashion —these basically describe the character of Betty la Fea. Her story pivots when she changes her whole appearance to be accepted by the society she’s in. Well, a lot of TV shows now are like that —somewhere in the beginning the protagonist must be someone with an “unpleasing” appearance, then gets knocked down by others, so she chooses to change or what they call “better” one’s physical appearance and, poof! She’s accepted and loved even more. That’s actually not the case in the real world. Or is it?

While it may be seen as a great love story, Betty la Fea and her dream guy Armando, it is problematic. At first, it looked like it was going to revolutionize notions of beauty today. It could have been a teleserye saying that beauty is not just seen from the outside, that it is not skin-deep. Unfortunately, it failed to convey that until the end of the teleserye. The sad thing about it is that the teleserye had remakes all over the world.

One example of this Betty la Fea effect also is the 2014 romantic comedy film, “Diary ng Panget.” Not that it was a really bad film… Somehow this movie, starring Nadine Lustre and James Reid, conveyed the idea “true beauty lies inside.” In the movie, you can see that Cross (Reid), a selfish dude, gets comfortable with Eya (Lustre) even if she has an unacceptable face in terms of beauty standards in society. Eya has all sorts of acne in her face, dark brown skin, unmanageable hair, and is poor. Because of her features, she is often discriminated. Even though comfortability and friendship were seen before Eya’s transformation into the beautiful swan she is, it still ended as predicted. The film still had to end with Eya having a “beautiful” transformation which means no more acnes, nice hair, and great skin complexion. Sadly, the said transformation appeared to be a prerequisite for Eya and Cross to be together at the end of the film. And of course, the discrimination stopped when she became what people would say “beautiful” and worthy enough to be beside Cross. I mean, does one’s worth depend on one’s looks? It’s a no for me, how about you?

What is love?

If you have watched the 2010 Thai film “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” starring Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul and Mario Maurer, I bet you all had the feels for it. No one could resist the urge to have butterflies flutter in their stomachs as (spoiler alert!) Nam (Luevisadpaibul) and P’Shone (Maurer) found their way to tell each other their true feelings, even if it is in a variety show and through a diary. I must say, the movie is a complete package chick flick. However, let’s look deeper into Nam’s --the protagonist-- character.

Nam has a long-time crush with P’Shone and did everything she could to get his attention. Nam did all sorts of transformation --throwing away her eyeglasses for a pair of contact lens, getting whiter skin, had braces-- and all the other stuff you can think about physical transformation (except for surgery, of course). It was all for the hope that P’Shone will be hers if she become the beautiful woman she really is. Amazing how she improved and pushed herself to change for the better. What’s the problem there? The problem is that she did not change for herself but for some guy to look at her beautifully. She despised her ‘old, ugly’ self before the transformation. Although it is actually revealed later in the film that P’Shone liked Nam way before her transformation. Yet, Nam gave the viewers of the film, the wrong meaning of how love really works. Indeed, love pushes you to do all sorts of things for the person you love. That’s the wonderful part of love that Nam showed. But, love does not require you to change yourself for others. Love is unconditional after all. Love accepts all flaws and inadequacies of a person.

Annyeong beauty!

K-dramas have invaded the interest of most Filipinos today due to its accessibility in the Internet. Hence, more people witness how their skin glow and how it doesn’t have a mark of acne or anything. The commercial industry of beauty products and cosmetics has taken advantage of this phenomenon. Commercials and advertisements in the Philippines today brand its products as a way to “achieve that Koreana look.” However, Koreans have a different kind of lifestyle, they have a different climate and a different environment from us Filipinos.

They have a colder climate than ours, which is actually good for the skin. They do not have to battle a lot with pollution with their advanced public transportation, compared to the Philippines’. Moreover, their products take thousands of money to purchase for an ordinary minimum-wage worker here in the Philippines. Yet, the beauty industry of the Philippines still strives to package “affordable yet effective” Korean-inspired products. Apparently, we still strive to buy those products.

The truth is…

These kinds of portrayal from the media frustrates and puts a lot of control into what its audience thinks about their physical appearance too. In the real world, not everyone affords to ‘improve’ their physical appearance the way television shows it. In the real world, most people struggle to live by to even care about their physical appearance. The least thing the media should have been doing is to uplift and inspire its audience to embrace what they have and who they are, from head to toe.

What I’ve been trying to say in this article is that we must embrace ourselves for who we are. Girl, you don’t have to change your physical appearance to be accepted and loved by people. If they truly want and love you, they will accept all your flaws, all your acnes, and shit. Beauty is not just seen from the outside but what’s really inside you. Truly, it is your preference if you let yourself follow skin care and beauty trends of all sorts, but you have to look good for yourself and not for others. More importantly, remember that no matter how many products you apply to your face, if you don’t truly love yourself first, it doesn’t actually bring much change. Confidence starts from inside you.

Words by Daoden Kate Sarmiento

Graphics by Jannah Lei Junatas

#beautiful #skin care #confidence #lakambini #beyond barriers #diary ng panget #red velvet irene #crazy little thing called love #mario maurer #pimchanok luevisadpaibul #betty la fea #capitalism #make up #beauty #ugly #venus with a mirror #keep reading #lakambini magazine

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canaryatlaw · 7 years ago

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alright well today was pretty good, all things said. I’m obviously still dealing with some of the fallout from yesterday’s events (or event I suppose) but I’ve been trying not to dwell on it because what’s done is done and there’s not much I can do about it now. It’s just annoying because I really don’t care about no longer actually having the job as I just feel hurt that it happened and I was deemed not good enough, even if I know there were other forces at work here I can’t help but think I must’ve fucked something up and like, that’s really hard to hear when I’d been working my ass off for weeks to do the best I can.....I don’t want to dwell on it though, it won’t help anything and just get me more worked up. anyway, today. I woke up at like 10:30ish (10:32 I believe) and got up to go to the bathroom but also checked my phone because I had a sense I would have a message (I always know) regarding hanging out and I did, I was still kinda sleepy though so I said give me till 11, but then I couldn’t fall back asleep and just ended up playing with kitty for a while before getting up. so I went to meet Jess at the usual place for brunch. I didn’t grab a hat for some reason and it was snowing quite a bit (like the clumps of falling snowflakes were rather large) so my hair ended up being like, wet by the time I got there lol. we don’t usually end up going around this time so for the first time ever we had to actually wait, but it was only like ten minutes and I just increasingly took candy from their bowl and put it in my jacket pocket the longer I stood there 😂 and then we got to sit at a booth where we always are and the waitress was legit just like “the usual?” and we just laughed and said yes, because we have gotten to that point where they know our orders perfectly. so we ate and talked and all that good stuff before going back to my place where we started with a few episodes of Sabrina but then stopped after one was particularly creepy and frankly disturbing (the sleep demon one) so we then marathoned the rest of the episodes of the Korean competition show that created the band that we’re now apparently fans of, and it was at least rather entertaining, I will give it that, and from what I’ve seen there’s more footage of them having to do ridiculous tasks that will also be entertaining so I can be down with that. After surmising that sadly we cannot get taco bell to deliver to us (it’s cold, okay) we ended up going with pasta from a place that also let us get soda because if I didn’t get some caffeine I was gonna pass out on the couch 😂 later of course it did occur to me that I could’ve just used some caffeine gum, but oh well. Once we finished the reality show we watched a few clips of them doing ridiculous tasks that were entertaining before finally getting around to watching last week’s Supergirl being that we are getting a new episode tomorrow that we’re presumably watching so we needed to be caught up. It was.....not great. Honestly they are just going SO HARD on the anti-alien narrative that is a honestly a great parallel to our current political climate but like, it’s getting to the point where it’s somewhat disconcerting to watch because you can tell they’re trying to get you to at least somewhat sympathize with the anti-alien people and like.....for me that’s so far out of bounds for what could be considered okay and I feel like it’s really not helping anything going on in reality right now. It’s not doing anything productive, it’s just kinda stoking the flames and getting people riled up, and I don’t like that, so I’m really not crazy about this season so far and I don’t know if that’s gonna change anytime soon. sigh. after Supergirl Jess headed home and I decided to watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that somehow always ends up at the bottom of my recorded list so I’m like, 3 weeks behind on it, and I started on the oldest one. that show is just like....it’s just exactly my life lol and honestly all the lawyer stuff kinda made me sad for the moment but it passed rather quickly. and after that I started getting ready for bed. a few other notes on things throughout the day, it occurred to me that HVFF San Jose is rapidly approaching and I no idea whatsoever what I was going to cosplay, I had been planning on doing a ton of Sara Lance cosplays this year at different cons (like all the outfits she wears) but since Caity’s been not doing as many cons I haven’t wanted to really do them without her there. but, Katie Cassidy is going to be there, and I mean, if Sara is out of the running my next favorite would of course be District Attorney Laurel Lance, because I just like her so much and have apparently become a stan of her in Caity’s absence. so all that to say that I’m doing the white suit look from 7x02. I already have white pants, and I was able to get a white blazer that looks like hers (they had the exact one of the arrow fashion site but it was, you know, $695 so I decided to go with a knock off instead) for pretty cheap, and I figured out the shirt she was wearing under it because she uses it in another scene later on (they’ve repeated a few of her shirts lately) and was able to find one close to that fairly easily, and I already have the wig so it works. I still have to figure out what my cosplay will be for the other day, Jess is rooting for me to dress as a bulletproof coffee mug to harass Brandon which honestly is not a terrible idea, but we’ll see. Alright friends, I think that’s all I got for now. Church in the morning, attending the 10 am and in with the babies for the 11:30. Since they moved the service times again (it’s because they’re trying to accommodate as many people as possible by trying to make the times such that there’s a more even spread of people at each one, but it’s still kind of irritating) I get half an hour less sleep on Sundays, but for now anyway it looks like I’ll have at least a few days to sleep in, so that’s not that big of a deal for now anyway. Should be good, and yeah I’m good to go now. Goodnight my loves. Hope you had an awesome Saturday.

#daily journal #November 2018 #Jess tag

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rwaggs81 · 7 years ago

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2-9

I left this trip open ended, as far as my return flight was concerned. I didn’t know where I’d be when it was time to come home, and I didn’t know when that would be. I gave myself 6 weeks total, but understood that it may only be 4 or 5. I had a sense that the time to leave would come on suddenly, and it turns out that I was correct. I’ve followed my initial plan to some extent, with a detour or an extended stay at one place or another. I had originally planned to end up in northern Thailand, and leave from there, but unfortunately, after a month, I think my batteries are worn out. I’m sure there are amazing things in Chiang Mai, Pai, Chiang Rai etc etc to see and do. The fact however, is that I’ve reached a point to where I’m forcing it. My thoughts are not in the here and now, but in the return to home. I do not believe that changing the flavor of the southeast Asian backdrop is going to add anything to my experience at this point, and whatever I was to take from this particular trip has been taken.

So, tomorrow at 5 pm or so, I will board a plane and fly home. Flying home is weird, as with flying back over the international date line, I will leave here at 5 pm, and return at just after 6 pm of the same day, regardless of the 16 hour travel time. I expect that to thoroughly throw me for a loop.

I want to thank everybody for the support and amusement you’ve provided me through social media during this trip. There is lots of advice to be had in travel books that the proper way to do this is to disconnect yourself from all of that. Certainly our parents and grandparents who trekked the “hippy roads” through this part of the world in the 60s would not have been able to do more than send a letter here and there. I think that there is probably value to this advice, and I think that it would probably work well for many...but at this point, I believe this to be out of my comfort zone in any practical sense.

I’m having an interesting time reflecting on this trip. As soon as I made the decision and booked the return ticket, I became oddly sleepy, like my mind has let down a guard that it had created. One thing that has been weighing on my mind was how I was going to find the materials in a foreign city to prepare my bicycle for the return trip. I went out earlier, blindly, to see about that. I found packing tape in one small market which was a hardware store of sorts, and in another market that mostly sold Buddha figurines (and apparently shipped them), I haggled my way into a length of bubble wrap. Based on my research, this should suffice.

People are going to ask me a lot of questions when I get back. (How was it? What did you do? Did the locals speak English? Did you feel safe? Would you go back?) These are going to be harder to answer than it seems. It was great, and it was lonely, and it was sad, and it was exciting and it was scary sometimes. It’s a month of time. At home, you seldom have a month of time which can be defined with one emotion or impression. I made some amazing friends I’ll never see again, and some that I may. I served as an ambassador for America in the Trump era to young Europeans and Australians who’s impression of us right now is largely based on this constant news cycle. I even served as an Ambassador FOR Trump, in a couple of cases, oddly enough. Not for the man himself, but for the reasons he was a predictable outcome.

I saw stifling poverty, uncommon industriousness, lives of sadness, historical sites of even greater sadness. I saw the indelible mark that the policies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford left on this part of the world, and yet was still treated gently and with kindness by the locals almost universally. I felt hot and uncomfortable 90% of the time due to the hot and very humid climate mixed with my propensity to sweat from the head. I often felt embarrassingly unpresentable in the face of people who seemed completely unaffected by the climate. I felt very lonely a lot of the time. It is admittedly this that probably took the charge out of my batteries ultimately, but it is not this alone...

The truth is that I do not resonate particularly well with the current cultures in this part of the world. I am not repulsed by them. I am not scared of them. I love people everywhere. I love the food, obviously (though I’ll probably take some time off). But I think that perhaps the volume of tourism here, overwhelmingly at the hands of young Europeans of various backgrounds, Australians and Kiwis, has left too deep of a mark at this point. To the hyper aware personality, such as myself, it starts to create a feeling of inauthenticity. (I do understand that the areas travelers commonly get pulled into are not representative of any country as a whole, but, especially when one is by themself and not a seasoned traveler, traveling too far outside these zones becomes uncomfortable for other reasons...language barrier coming right to mind. ) These are historically conservative Buddhist (and in some cases Hindu before that) countries. Was there really a history of happy ending massages and fake name brand products being sold everywhere before our influx? Everything here is commerce for the sake of commerce, and foreigners such as myself jump right in. I met a Swedish fellow who was legitimately upset when a Tuk Tuk driver wanted $3 for a ride that maybe should’ve cost $2. Another girl thought it entirely out of line to pay $4 for a perfectly good pair of flip flops. I’m positive that I paid more than I could’ve otherwise for a good many things because I just can’t find it in myself to look into the face of the lady who spends her day walking around peddling sunglasses that I need this one dollar we’re arguing over more than she does.

The other truth is that, compared to the U.S., these countries are extremely autocratic. I cannot escape the sense that a simple mistake could land me in the hands of an authority who doesn’t speak my language, doesn’t care if I want to talk to my lawyer but does want $1000 from me to clear it up. Or worse, end up somehow like the backpackers in Siem Reap who may not face trial for 6 months for being overly sexual at a private party (the official story, anyway). If I take anything away from this trip, it is going to be an extremely enhanced appreciation for living in a country which is more free than most (with some very notable exceptions). I will probably have less tolerance in myself for bitching over small things after seeing how hard life can actually be for people....how hard work can be...how little one could make...how deep corruption can sink its teeth.

I had also hoped that somehow getting away from everything could help with some closure or insight about having lost my mom to cancer this year. It is actually what sparked the trip. I’m honestly not sure I can yet report on the effectiveness of this. She would’ve wanted me to do this, since I’d been talking about it forever, so I do take some comfort in that. I’m not sure, however, that there is any magic bullet to heal that wound, and that time rules the day, ultimately. Many outcomes of this I will not realize until later.

I am sad that I’m leaving at this point, but I don’t have any thought that I will end up regretting it. I have a pretty good imagination, and I think I can envision the places I missed based on the places I’ve been. I find myself wanting a road trip to Utah or something at this point more than another Thai, Cambodian or Vietnamese destination, and that’s okay. That speaks more about me than it does about here, in my opinion. A month is a long time to be away. I am beginning to feel unproductive and like I’m spending money and time just to spend them. I can’t honestly see how all of these 20 something gap year kids do this for 6 months to a year without feeling like they’re just spinning their wheels at some point, but to each their own. I look forward to more traveling in my future, but I think I have a pretty good sense now of my personal expiration date on any given trip. Your results may vary.

Mostly, I want everyone to know that I’ve missed you all very much, and I’m happy to be coming back to the place I count as home.

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glittergummicandypeach · 5 years ago

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Rejecting parents’ religion: parenting advice from Care and Feeding.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

All my life I have raised my child Christian, and now as she moves on to college and has a boyfriend, I’ve got it out of her that they are atheists. It devastates me, but I also know it is up to her to get her salvation.

The above statements are what I know my parents feel. I am the atheist child.

What do I do to help my parents feel less crushed? I know they only want me to accept God again, but I just don’t believe. I understand their faith, I just don’t want them to continue to feel hurt by seeing me.

As I move on to hopefully marry someone who agrees with me on my views, I feel they will continue to be devastated. And, will cry tears of agony instead of joy if they attend my wedding.

I know my views could change, but I seriously just want to hear what I can do to lower their agony.

—Child Turned Away

Dear CTA,

You are a kind and gentle person. I’m actually very touched by the concern you express for your parents’ feelings. It indicates they are not being total D-bags to you about the situation, which is great, but also complicated: When parents are being total D-bags about your loss of faith (which may not be a loss for you), it’s a lot easier to tell them to pound sand and move on with your life. When parents just seem fragile and sad about it, a lot of protectiveness and misplaced guilt can kick in. Fragility and sadness can also be very effective tools of control. Don’t feel like you have to apologize, equivocate, or take on the burden of their sadness.

You’re no longer a child. You’re their child, but none of us get any guarantees about our children, I can assure you. I’m a generic Protestant who is pretty into it without being an evangelical, so my lovely and mega-progressive shit-stirring Catholic mom is only mildly disappointed I’m on the JV squad of God and not playing varsity, and my lovely atheist dad is mostly bemused, as he really did lay out a great case for Only the Sweet Release of the Cosmic Void Awaits Us All (frequently a very comforting thought in its own right). They’re fine. I have no idea if my children will turn out to want or seek or find faith. I believe in God and that one day the circle will be unbroken, but today I cried for (checks watch) almost 45 minutes about John Prine dying, so it’s certainly not a magic balm that eases all lives and has the power to protect us from the fear of death. Religion can be a real motherfucker, as history past and present shows us.

My answer is that I want you to try to first release this weighty sense of obligation for their feelings that so clearly presses on you. You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t burn down their garage. They have experienced a form of loss and that’s for them to work through. But you do feel a sense of obligation to lighten their load, and I want to acknowledge that and offer some words of help.

Don’t dangle any “well, who knows what the future holds?” carrots in front of them. If a burning bush speaks to you, you can handle that when it comes. Expectation management is one of the true keys of human existence.

You are a person with values. Some of those values probably came from your parents. You can thank them for those values, if they have helped you become the good person you clearly are, without needing to buy into the belief system that provided them to your parents in the first place. You can talk to them about your own values. You do not have to be the Best Atheist in the World Who Cares About All Living Things and Climate Change and Systemic Inequality Every Single Damn Day; you can just be yourself. You’re the same kid they had last year. A good person.

You can also, down the road, absolutely say, “If you are gonna cry tears of agony at my wedding, don’t come.” That’s nonsense. If they try to win you back to Christ with teary phone calls in the more immediate future, you can say, “Let’s talk in a few days when you’re calmer.”

Just be yourself, all of yourself, be gentle but firm, maintain boundaries when necessary, and love them the best you can. That’s all anyone can do. I also encourage you to be aware of your own sense of loss, if you ever do perceive it as such, and to seek help from secular counselors if you need to process it. That doesn’t have to mean “I miss believing in God”; it can mean “I am sad that my natural progression as a human who lives in the world has affected my most foundational relationships and need to mourn that.” I’m glad you have found meaning and happiness in your life, and I wish you all the joy in the world.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a 4-year-old son who hums loudly while eating food he really enjoys. My husband thinks this is inappropriate behavior at the table and is a problem to be corrected. I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and assume he will grow out of it. He’s a completely normal delightful/crazy-making 4-year-old.

I don’t want my husband wasting quality time with his son harping about something that doesn’t really matter. Am I wrong on this?

—Loves a Pleasant Tune

Dear LaPT,

Oh, what a deliciously small problem, thank you so much for this. Honestly, at 4, I think your husband is right that it’s time to phase out loud vocalizations during dinner. (If your son has any markers for any developmental issues other than joyous food humming, and it turns out to be a verbal stim, I would probe that first, and I would be more inclined to let him enjoy his humming.) In the absence of such a reason, it’s not going to go over great at school, it’s clearly annoying the heck out of your husband, and I enjoy tremendous numbers of things I cannot do in front of other people at a sit-down dinner. It does not have an impact on my human flourishing, I assure you.

I don’t think “please do not hum at the table” is “wasting quality time.” It’s just parenting. He’s not going to look back on his life and say, “If only the two weeks it spent me to get my kid not to sound like a bumblebee when we had stroganoff for dinner could have been spent tossin’ the old pigskin around.” This will be over quickly, and you will barely remember it. If your husband is the only aggravated party, obviously you can expect him to be the “no humming” point person on this. You do not have to chime in, but I would encourage you not to actively undermine him in his quest, which is always a mistake for nonabusive familial situations.

See, too, if there’s a way he can take this musical impulse and do something a little less disruptive with it. I don’t mean “get him a harmonica,” but he might enjoy learning to sing. Exchange the behavior for a more productive one, if possible.

Congratulations on being an excellent cook! If your husband is the excellent cook, please pass on my compliments.

• If you missed Thursday’s Care and Feeding column, read it here.

• Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

Just like everyone these days, I fear COVID-19. I’m staying at home, going to the store only when necessary, etc. My boyfriend is a police officer, and although I know he is very cautious, I’m worried about him unintentionally infecting me due to him having to work and human interaction. I have an autoimmune disorder and have repeatedly told him these concerns, yet he still comes over daily. He knows it’s serious but at the same time thinks it’s completely overblown. I’ve been clear that I do not agree. He’s taking it personally which floors me. I’m at a complete loss on how to handle this at this point.

—Losing It in Longview

Dear LIiL,

I need clarity on one point: Have you told him directly that he needs to stop coming to your house? Because if you have, as opposed to just telling him you’re worried and concerned about your autoimmune condition and the possibility of exposure, then he is in direct violation of your personal autonomy and you need to a) break up with him and b) carefully, as he clearly does not respect a “no.”

If you haven’t said, “I need you to stop coming over until things are under control,” then you need to say it now, today, and if his response is that you might as well just break up, that’s his choice. If he continues to violate your wishes, see the above paragraph. Our essential workers are essential, but so is your health.

I am not a dating columnist, but you came to me and here I am. I do not like this situation for you.

Is It OK to Go to the Zoo During the Coronavirus Pandemic?

Dan Kois, Jamilah Lemieux, and Elizabeth Newcamp host this week’s episode of Slate’s parenting podcast, Mom and Dad Are Fighting.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m not doing well. Are other parents doing well? I feel like the only person drowning when I see Instagram posts of learning-and-chore charts. I have to “work from home” with two small kids, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day. We do our best to do the remote learning we’re given, but some days it’s “let’s read a few books and then watch educational shows on Netflix.”

—I Feel Like a Schlub

Dear IFLaS,

We live in strange times, as did all previous generations at one point or another (Joni Mitchell spent weeks in a polio ward with essentially zero contact with her parents when she was 9 and still wrote “The Last Time I Saw Richard” eventually). You’re doing fine. Instagram is a lie. Be kind to yourself, do your best, and remember that every other kid is going to eventually return to school in a slightly more feral state and will need to catch up on things. The teachers know this. It’s just reality. You do not have to be a superstar; you just need to get through this. I also feel like I’m dropping the ball constantly, and I’m supposed to be a professional.

We’re in this together. Most kids have two months of essentially no education every summer, and yet they manage to grow and flourish and learn. One year where every kid gets double summer is not going to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Younger kids, like yours, are going to barely remember this.

I let my kids watch part of Thor: Ragnarok yesterday. We’re all just making it through the day. My friends who are teachers are struggling just like everyone else. I think you’re great.

— Nicole

More Advice From Slate

My loving, kind boyfriend of five years has spent the last 10 months in prison. He was off to a great start in his profession when a friend snitched and he got in trouble for possession with intent to distribute an illegal drug (that is legal one state over). He is now getting out of jail in his early 30s with more than $180,000 in student loan debt, a felony conviction, and is losing his professional license. We have stayed together during this ordeal, and luckily my family and friends are very supportive. I love him dearly and can’t wait for him to be home, but as his release date gets closer, I am starting to have a return of some of the anxiety symptoms I began having after his arrest. I work full time in a field I am very passionate about and could eventually be employed by the government. I am worried about how his record will affect me in the long term. I also sometimes feel that I am being a real idiot for staying with him due to his poor decisions. However, I am crazy about him, and we have so much fun together all the time. Any advice?

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radiopure · 6 years ago

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Interview: Telephone Explosion / Morning Trip

We are now broadcasting on n10.as radio each month. Watch our instagram for show times.

Telephone Explosion records has been releasing high quality music since 2007. Starting off with a focus on local garage rock, the label has expanded in the years since to include new music and reissues, spanning ambient, post punk, folk, and hard-to-categorize music of all kinds.

The label is an expression of the collective taste of founders Jon Schouten and Steve Sidoli, and Jon stopped by to deliver us a special guest mix of music he’s listening to, and to talk about the label’s history, and their new venture with imprint Morning Trip.

Telephone Explosion Bandcamp Telephone Explosion Instagram Telephone Explosion site Morning Trip Bandcamp

So the label started as a garage rock label, and I feel kind of a kinship to you because you have pivoted into a more open-format and outsider music label rather than sticking to the sound you started with. Yeah, I mean I feel it's what you're into at a time. I think the label is this physical record, documenting our movement through music as enthusiasts. And like even though it started, like you said, as a garage rock label and it was really genre-focused, that's the world we were in, that's the music all of our friends were playing, and that's the music that we were playing. I don't know if it was too much of one thing or something, but we grew out of it. We just wanted to be able to do anything we felt like, without being limited to a genre. We're at a point now where I feel good that we can do anything. Our next record is a free-jazz record, and that's our first jazz record.

I remember when you did the Steve Roach reissue — actually it was the Bruce Haack that started it. It surprised me and made me pay closer attention to the label. How did you get to that place? Yeah, I mean we were just fans of Bruce Haack. Bruce started the whole reissue side of the business for us. We did Electric Lucifer 2 which was our first ever reissue, and it's a bit of a weird one to start with because it wasn't Electric Lucifer 1, but that's the album that we gravitated to, and we got in touch with Ted who passed a few weeks ago, unfortunately. We didn't even know if there was a market for reissues, which, sitting here today [laughs] it's such a funny thing to think. That started it. I think we did a couple-a-year for a few years. But that led into us doing four albums by him. We just did Preservation Tapes which is an archival projects that we did last year. And then getting into Steve Roach, again it was just we discovered that album and had a conversation with him that was going on probably about a year, and trying to figure out how to do it. Eventually it just came together. But I mean Structures From Silence, again, it's just such a pivotal album for me. When I discovered it, I was like "this is insane, this music is so deep."

Tell us about some of the choices in the mix. Well I mean, I'm going to obviously highlight the Laraaji & Lyghte track Celestial Realms, because that's one half of the first release of the new imprint that we're doing which is called Morning Trip with a friend of ours Dave Nardi. It's a new imprint that we launched this year that we'd been working on for the last half year, and it's dedicated to experimental and ambient reissues. So Celestial Realms is a pretty obscure cassette-only release from I think '85 that Laraaji did with Lyghte who is a guitar player and his name's Jonathan Goldman. It's two tracks that are 23-minutes-ish apiece. It's kind of based in Laraaji's tonal palette, which is zither and bells, and Lyghte is playing guitar over top of it. You can't even tell it's guitar for the most part; it's just this beautiful ambient voyage that is perfect for background music. Perfect if you just really want to zone out and pay attention and get into an expansive piece. Yeah it's it's it's a fun listen, it's a trip, you know? It's a morning trip.

Yeah, let's talk about Morning Trip, how how did it come about and why did you want to do an imprint? Yeah I mean we wanted to do another imprint just because of capacity issues for Steve and I. Steve works full time, I'm freelance, and I work on this more. But still it's a lot of work to put out records. And we wanted to be doing more, so it just made sense to find the right person to do an imprint with, a separate imprint. We're facilitating Dave's vision and helping him with it, but it's purely you know curated by Dave. So yeah, we want to do more, we want to do something different and grow, and Dave has impeccable taste that's very much in line with where we're going.

How do you divide the labour up in a reissue imprint, between having the vision and executing? Yea, it's very collaborative. Dave presents ideas and we talk about it and we look at the details of it because obviously the reissue climate is like kind of insane right now. You know you'll stumble upon people, you'll find them, you'll e-mail them, communicate with them one way or another, and they'll be maybe paranoid that you found them, and they've left music for one reason or another, and maybe it brings up something in their past where they don't necessarily want to revisit that. And then there's other people that were maybe a bit more successful when they were doing music, and the music industry has changed so much that they're extremely unrealistic in terms of the finances of repressing you know 500 or 1,000 albums. So it's just kind of unpredictable.

Yeah I find it interesting, owning a label in 2019 seems as challenging as ever. Having been around for a little while, is it more challenging than ever, or are there just new modes of behaving? For us it always feels new because we're always pushing into new territory and trying to grow. We don't really know, I mean the label started as like a cassette-only label 10 years ago, we weren't really participating in the proper music industry, and it still feels like we're learning as we go. Every year feels like there's more successes and there's more challenges, and they're different. They change with the times. And everyone's always afraid of this vinyl boom coming to an end, and it always feels like it's kind of on the horizon but it never is. So there's a little bit of fear involved I guess.

So if you were starting from scratch in 2019, would you do cassettes again? Would you do digital? I think we would be kind of where we are today. I think offering a physical product is still really, really important. It gives people something to connect with, and I connect with it personally. It supports artists on the road, and it helps us diversify your revenue streams. You're not going to make pretty much any money [laughs] off of Spotify. I feel like everybody knows that. But Spotify, for us, and kind of the digital realm, we treat it more like marketing. It's marketing that kind of pays us vs. us to paying into it. Like if somebody sees a review or their friend posts something cool on Instagram and then they go to check it out, the first place they're gonna go to is Spotify and if it's not there then they're gonna go "OK, next."

youtube

Alright, give me another favourite moment from the mix. I'm going to go with Terry Riley and Don Cherry - Descending Moonshine Dervishes. I'm a huge Terry Riley fan, and this isn't a real album, this is a bootleg live session, I think it's from '75, There's a couple versions of it kicking around. When I heard this it just floored me. There's no other way to say it. It's classic Terry Riley, crazy arpeggiate-y micro-tonal organ riffage with this beautiful Don Cherry trumpet over top. And to me it's the perfect combination of two people coming together for a project. I'm kind of sad that maybe it wasn't released properly or whatever, but I also like the fact that it's kind of obscure and live and very of-the-time that these guys just got together, probably didn't rehearse, and jammed it out live and recorded it, and I'm just happy that exists.

#ambient #experimental music

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legendary · 8 years ago

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Constructing a Dystopian World

A Conversation with The Thinning Director Michael Gallagher

The Thinning is a new YouTube Red Original Movie from Legendary Digital Studios starring Logan Paul, Peyton List, Lia Marie Johnson, Calum Worthy and Ryan Newman. Set in a future where population control is dictated by a high school aptitude test, two students must take down the system before it takes them first. We had the chance to sit down with Michael Gallagher, director of The Thinning, to talk about how he went about creating an original dystopian world from the ground up, what it was like working with Logan Paul, and what real world elements inspired the film’s design. See what he had to say below.

Q: Legendary has a history of putting an emphasis on “world building” and The Thinning very much follows that trend. Talk about what it was like creating an entirely original dystopian world from the ground up for this. Did you pull inspiration from any other dystopian/sci-fi/young adult geared stories or worlds to help you create this one?

MG: The movie is set in a sort of not-too-distant future / bizarro version of America— an authoritarian government runs all schools like prisons. The failed students are sentenced to death and passing students are thrown lavish parties. Designing the high security school was key. We have a fictional task force called the Department of Population Control— DPC for short. Showing a high school run by militarized guards forcing students into a scary TSA-style search really helped warn the audience that this is a new America. I was heavily inspired by paranoid thrillers of the 60’s and 70’s like The Parallax View and 3 Days on the Condor. I love movies following an innocent thrown into a conspiracy plot and having to prove that nothing is as it seems or they will lose their life in the process. I am also a huge fan of the social satires of John Carpenter, who is such a master at exploring current issues in a sci-fi setting and making them edge-of-your-seat, entertaining thrill-rides.

Q: The Thinning feels timely and relevant in so many ways, even aside from any political themes. The film feels like it resonates with young people and their anxiety about school and getting into college and test-taking in particular, especially as there’s more and more focus put on learning differences and test-taking abilities. What was it like satirizing this in a way that hadn’t been done before?

MG: School always felt like it had life-or-death stakes to me. Kids are trained from literally pre-school, that they have to do well on tests, get good grades, and get accepted into the best college or your life will be a complete failure. And most of the emphasis is put on the weekly/monthly results as opposed to actually learning and retaining information. And the fact that colleges are becoming so expensive that students are taking out massive loans that they are stuck paying long after school is over. So really students are becoming imprisoned in debt by following the system. I don’t want to discourage teens from going to college, but I do think it’s important to not just follow what everyone else is doing and find your own path.

Q: Talk a little bit about finding and shooting in the high school location – that was a real school right? It looks so futuristic and cold in a way that feels like it should have been made up just for this film.

MG: We found this real, public high school called Diamond Ranch out in Pomona, California designed by Thom Mayne. I never thought we’d find a school that already looks like a high tech prison. All we had to do was add motorized metal shutters to create the lockdown effect, a few metal detectors, guards, and we were good to go!

Q: The officers in the film definitely have some twisted Stormtrooper vibes to them and go a long way in creating the tension of the world. What was the process in designing their look?

MG: I was heavily influenced by riot police imagery, particularly in other countries like the Taiwan— we used the same ballistic face masks that they use. I think using real items in a new way can be an efficient means to stay grounded and keep costs down while building a new universe. I love the tactical feel of Sicario and how brutal the police imagery felt. But I realized that the feeling of a tough and punishing task force was achieved by just watching these soldiers waiting for something to happen. This led me to take time early on in the film and show the DPC Guards watching the students, waiting for someone to get out of line. The threat of violence is often more terrifying than showing acts of violence.

Q: : It’s not easy to make a scene of kids taking a test particularly exciting, but the film succeeds in making those sequences perhaps the most tense of any in the film. How do you go about constructing that tension in the cinematography, visual and sound design, and editing?

MG: I was so lucky to be surrounded by an incredibly talented team. Our Composer, Brandon Campbell, did a phenomenal job scoring this movie. His music creates so much heart-pounding tension. Our camera team— Greg Cotten, Director of Photography, and Arjun Prakash, Gaffer, really nailed the lighting and atmosphere of the testing sequences— we wanted an eerie blue-green glow from the tablets as the main source of light on the students faces to give them a sickly look as they nervously punch in answers. But the biggest props go to Brian Ufberg, Editor, who really built an amazing pace for the testing sequences. It was their combination of talents that made those scenes so cinematic and tense.

Q: Logan Paul is obviously a big talent but this was one of his first ventures into dramatic acting. What was that like working with him to bring Blake to life?

MG: Logan Paul is an enormous talent. He came into audition for the movie, as this role was worlds different from the type of persona he normally portrays online, and he just nailed it. I was honestly amazed at how controlled and dedicated he was to creating this character from the ground up. When he walked out of the audition room, we all knew Logan was our Blake Redding. And throughout rehearsals and production, Logan was so focused and incredibly fun to work with. He has an infectious energy and kindness that rubs off on everyone. I really can’t wait to work with him again...

Q: The film feels oddly relevant with some aspects of our current political climate. When you were developing this, were there any real-world headlines you were pulling from as inspiration or is it mostly a coincidence that the film has turned out to be a sort of satire of our current political landscape?

MG: Our running joke is that The Thinning is a vision of “post Trump” America— and that if we do a sequel it will just be a documentary. The film was meant to feel more dystopian than I think it actually does because of the recent political promises of restoring “law & order” back to America. The only person who I hope doesn’t watch this movie is President Trump. I’m afraid it might give him some ideas…

Q: The film hints at the larger world beyond Texas and the US in the creepy video before the little kids take their test. Can you tell us what life is like in any other countries with the way they handle the need to cull the population? Any possibility of exploring other parts of the world going forward?

MG: We originally expanded on the bigger population questions in our screenplay. Because the story is so centralized to America, we felt it might be confusing to have so few mentions of other regions. The idea is that every country can choose how they will meet their quota of eliminating 5% of their population annually. Some countries would have mandatory birth control, others would eliminate 5% of the elderly— you can see how it can quickly raise so many questions. If we were to continue the story, I hope to explain that the thinning is a controversial law that some US states are attempting to replace with other solutions— which explains the Governor’s charge to run a pro-thinning platform and make it a federal law.

Q: Talk a little bit about the film’s color palette and how it changes throughout the story. I noticed early on how gray the school was before all hell breaks loose and a lot of reds and blacks obviously work their way in once the breakout begins. How did you go about mapping that out?

MG: In the script, we had a clear idea of using the red light as a sort of mood setter— to show that this world we know is being disrupted and our heroes are in immediate danger. There is a major power shift at that moment in the script so it’s nice to visually convey this to the audience with a dramatic change in color palette. Our production designer, Alec Contestabile, was really terrific in helping determine the colors and moods of various locations— we landed on cool metallic blues for the school and dry yellows for the desert to really create that desolate sand-swept Texas vibe.

Q: Without spoiling anything, the film ends with a big surprise that still leaves many things open-ended. Can you give us any hints at what’s to come next?

MG: Honestly, I am just following the political news as closely as possible to get ideas. I feel like any continuation of The Thinning will have to be more comedic since real life is basically devolving into a long, sad, episode of VEEP. But in all seriousness, any sequel would follow our characters further down the rabbit hole and show how deep the corruption goes within the government. And we will definitely add more fuel to some of the love triangles because if there is anything I love more than crazy politicians, it’s love triangles.

The Thinning is currently streaming on YouTube Red and is NOW available to rent or purchase on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. Storyboard art by Amy Umezu

#Worlds

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swipestream · 7 years ago

Text

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 4

This is part 4 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. In this part of the review, I’ll finish up my comments in this series with Game Mastering through Appendices.

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

Game Mastering

The section starts off with six bullet points to give overall guidance to the GM. I think the guidance misses the mark a bit, but it’s a good start. Unfortunately, the advice given out in that brief segment makes it appear as if the bulk of the work for the world, characters, events, and storytelling land firmly on the GM’s shoulders. This is, to some extent, true. However, I feel that this was a grand opportunity to let the GM know that they are not the driver in the storytelling effort, but a participant with the players in the storytelling. The advice given is solid, but the tone here sets the stage for making new GMs think they are in charge. Any veteran GM will certainly tell you that this is not the case once the players start rolling with their own ideas.

Starting a Session

The segment that covers how to start a session is fantastic! I hope to see this expanded a bit in the final book, but this is a wonderful set of advice. I even learned a few new tips and tricks in this area. Well done, Paizo!

Adjudicating the Rules

This area gives great advice about not looking up specific rules and gives guidance on how to “wing it” when necessary. This is something every “core” rulebook for every RPG should have.

Sharing Responsibilities

This section is given in a brief sidebar. I have a problem with this because quite a few readers of RPGs will skim those areas thinking they are not important. This is a perception thing because if it were important, it would be in the main text, right? I think the six bullet points I mentioned above could be combined with this sidebar to create a new approach to collaborative gaming that excels at great fun and excellent storytelling. Merging these two concepts, I think, would lead to a more powerful statement.

Modes of Play

Just as a refresher, modes are split up into encounter, exploration, and downtime.

The encounter section is too brief. This is the most technical part of the game, and this can lead to it being the hardest to adjudicate properly because of the number of rules, feats, spells, skills, powers, items, monsters, and characters involved. I know. I know. Many books (and articles!) have been dedicated to this very topic, and I don’t expect Paizo to replicate what’s already been covered. However, I think a deeper dive into encounters would be best.

The exploration and downtime modes are covered very well. These two sections are lengthy and solidly give the GM the right information to execute what is a new concept for Pathfinder. The guidance and tips found within these two sections will make running them go very smoothly for an experienced or fresh GM.

Now that I’ve read the entire “Modes of Play” section, I think I figured out what is bothering me with the encounter section beyond its brevity. The encounter section was written for experienced GMs. The exploration and downtime sections were written in a manner that targets new GMs. I feel that Paizo needs to take a fresh look at the encounter section and rewrite it (and expand it) as if they were attempting to teach a brand new GM (as in, brand new to RPGs, not just Pathfinder) how to run an encounter. If they revisit and expand the encounter section with this in mind, I feel it would be a much stronger contribution to the GM section of the book.

Difficulty Classes

I’m going to be brief here. These three pages are well thought out, clear, and give some great examples on how to come up with target numbers on the fly or apply adjustments where necessary. Paizo’s team did an excellent job on this section.

Rewards

I’ve been looking forward to hitting this section ever since I learned that each level requires an even 1,000 XP to obtain instead of an upward-climbing slope of more experience points for the next level than the current one.

Unfortunately for me, the “kill a monster” XP is listed in the supplemental bestiary, which I haven’t taken the time to flip through the PDF yet. I guess that’ll be next on my list of reading (but not reviewing). On the flip side, the XP awards for minor, moderate, and major accomplishments are laid out as 10, 30, and 80, respectively. Even though they call it “group XP” it’s not divided between all the characters. If the group accomplishes a moderate goal, then all the PCs involved gain 30 XP.

There’s a sidebar for “Story-Based Leveling” that is in this section that calls for the GM to decide if and when the characters level up. This puts a sour taste in my mouth. It’s a personal opinion here, but I really don’t like these approaches at all. The players should see the steady gain of XP for their characters (even if they don’t level yet), so there is a sense of accomplishment in that area. Having the GM suddenly decree, “You go up a level.” feels too much like the GM is controlling things. Of course, this could just be me and my experiences with GMs wanting to have too much control. Your mileage may vary in this area.

Environment

There are several pages dedicated to terrain, climate, and hazards. While the lists aren’t complete (I’m assuming they will be more comprehensive in the final, larger book), what is listed there and how the various environmental conditions impact the game are well stated. I like what I see as a set of building blocks toward more content.

The hazards section is very well done. A hazard is the generic term for traps, pits, dangers, and magical effects that can harm or impede the PCs. There are ways to find, trigger, disable, destroy, and/or dispel various hazards depending on their nature. The playtest book came with a sample of three hazards. I had kind of hoped for a few more, but I’m assuming they didn’t want the playtest book to bloat up too much. I’m looking forward to seeing what the final product (and the various expansion books and adventures) have along these lines.

Treasure

The loot! We’re finally at the gold and shiny and magic and wonderful stuff portion of the book. Yeah, I’m a little excited here because I’m interested in seeing how things change up in this section, if at all.

This section opens up with the usual text explaining what they’re going to be talking about, teaching some keywords, and generally laying out the approach to treasure.

After this comes all sorts of tables outlining (almost proscribing) what treasure different level parties should (must?) receive for a fair and equitable game to be run. The fact that the treasure allotment is so heavily proscribed makes me extraordinarily sad.

No more random treasure.

Yeah. You read that right. There are no more dice rolls involved in generating treasure with Pathfinder. This breaks my heart, to be honest. As a GM, I always loved rolling up treasure because it would spark new ideas, thoughts, plot arcs, and cool stuff in my brain. Yeah, if I happened to roll up a majorly disruptive magic item for a low-level group, I’d probably shift things around a bit (or re-roll). However, randomly creating magic items for folks to find is gone. I’ll be over here in the corner shedding a tear for days gone by.

Okay. I’ve had my cry. I’m mostly better now. Looking at the new approach at handing out treasure is fair and balanced. It will assist new GMs from overloading their group with disruptive items while keeping the party well-equipped for future challenges. This is super helpful for new GMs, and I can appreciate this approach at handing out goods. I just wish they’d kept gems, jewelry, and/or artwork as a form of gaining wealth because those can, once again, inspire stories and side plots, not just a gain of wealth. Now, the party will just gain some gold from the hoard and move on.

If I ever run this version of Pathfinder, I’ll most likely break out my 2nd edition AD&D treasure generators (or the first Pathfinder versions) and run with those. They’re more fun than hand-picking treasure, to be honest.

After the list o’ treasure tables ends, the book delves into materials, which is one of the best write-ups of “non-normal” materials I’ve ever seen. Excellent job here. Obviously, the list isn’t complete, but I expect it to expand in the final version.

While flipping through the treasure section, I hit the sections for snares (crafting, detecting, triggering, etc.) and I was baffled here. I’m not sure why these were listed here under treasure, instead of above with the hazards. Did the wrong pages get dropped into the layout in the wrong place?

After snares, comes the alchemical items. This is a cool section. I highly encourage everyone to check this part out. There are oodles of examples, tons of ideas, and great information about how they play in the game. Loud applause for you here, Paizo.

Runes come next, and this is the part of enhancing weapons and armor with special powers. I love how weapons and armor must now be etched with cool-looking runes to become super special. This adds flavor to the world and storytelling options (as well as some neat intimidate/perception uses when someone wearing a well-etched suit of armor walks in the door) to the whole feel of the game.

Last come the details of the various magic items that don’t fall into “weapons and armor.” This comprises the bulk of the treasure section, and I’m not going to detail each item or neat thing. I do want to say that I really want to play an archer (preferably with the elven ancestry) with an Oathbow.

Appendices

This is probably going to be my shortest write-up of any of the sections in the book. The appendices simply are: traits and glossary.

The traits are all of the capitalized keywords (such as Strike) used within the book. The glossary is a good collection of phrases, terms, and things found within the book that may not be readily known to every player.

Final Thoughts

I think the most telling part of “is this a promising product” would be to answer the question, “Would J.T. play this game?”

The answer is, “Yes.”

This is a good foundational book for what promises to be a pretty cool system. There are some rough edges (as there are with any playtest document), but I figure Paizo is wise enough to listen to the feedback sent to them (and hopefully this series of articles) to improve the game.

There is another question looming, however. That question is, “Would J.T. play this version instead of the original Pathfinder?”

The answer is, “No.”

There are a few reasons for this.

The first is that I’m already heavily invested with knowledge, money, habits, and familiarity in the first version of Pathfinder. I have too much “edition inertia” going on to abandon Pathfinder 1.0 for Pathfinder 2.0. If the shift were more subtle between the two, I could see picking it up. However, everything will require major conversions to get from 1.0 to 2.0.

The second is that I’m extremely concerned with the lack of random treasure. Yeah. It’s that big of a deal. I feel it’s a departure too far from the “source material” that was created way back in the 1970s. I don��t like that one bit.

The third is that I don’t see anything drastically improving the game that much. There are tons of incremental improvements and quite a few major changes in the playtest document, but none of them really blew my socks off. There are some new concepts and ideas in here that I think I could shift back into a Pathfinder 1.0 game, but that now leaves me with Pathfinder 1.0 and some house rules (which I already have).

Final question is, “If J.T. were completely new to RPGs and presented with both versions, which one would he pick?”

I’d probably go with the playtest version, to be honest. It’s a better game, and my prejudices built up from playing RPGs for decades (and my Pathfinder edition inertia) would not be a factor in choosing which game to go with.

I know. I know. I’m giving a mixed message here, but there are different angles to look at things.

Paizo put out a solid effort here. I’m impressed with the amount of thought, care, effort, and experience that went into developing this game. They’ve certainly evolved the game. There are some high points in the evolution and some low points as well. I think the high drastically outweighs the low.

I’m very much looking forward to the final version of the game. I’ll take a look at it then and reevaluate things at that time to determine if my stance on moving forward to the new version will change.

Thanks to the Gnome Stew readers out there that stuck with me through these very long articles!

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 4 published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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kayawagner · 7 years ago

Text

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 4

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

Game Mastering

Starting a Session

Adjudicating the Rules

This area gives great advice about not looking up specific rules and gives guidance on how to “wing it” when necessary. This is something every “core” rulebook for every RPG should have.

Sharing Responsibilities

Modes of Play

Just as a refresher, modes are split up into encounter, exploration, and downtime.

Difficulty Classes

Rewards

Environment

Treasure

This section opens up with the usual text explaining what they’re going to be talking about, teaching some keywords, and generally laying out the approach to treasure.

No more random treasure.

Appendices

This is probably going to be my shortest write-up of any of the sections in the book. The appendices simply are: traits and glossary.

Final Thoughts

I think the most telling part of “is this a promising product” would be to answer the question, “Would J.T. play this game?”

The answer is, “Yes.”

There is another question looming, however. That question is, “Would J.T. play this version instead of the original Pathfinder?”

The answer is, “No.”

There are a few reasons for this.

Final question is, “If J.T. were completely new to RPGs and presented with both versions, which one would he pick?”

I know. I know. I’m giving a mixed message here, but there are different angles to look at things.

Thanks to the Gnome Stew readers out there that stuck with me through these very long articles!

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 4 published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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yasbxxgie · 7 years ago

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More than 20 years before “Get Out” transformed widespread anxieties about racism into a riveting horror-comedy, Rusty Cundieff’s “Tales From the Hood” got the ball rolling. Taking a tip from “Tales From the Crypt,” the 1995 horror anthology tackled the issues that terrorized black communities in America, from racist police officers to gang violence and the KKK. With those themes still very much a part of the national conversation, “Tales From the Hood” is finally receiving a long-overdue sequel. With Spike Lee again attached as a producer, “Tales From the Hood 2” premieres this month at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal ahead of its direct-to-DVD release later this year.

For those who missed out on the original: Cundieff, whose 1993 hip-hop mockumentary “Fear of a Black Hat” was a breakout Sundance hit, used a framing device that stretches back to the E.C. Comics days. Creepy funeral home director Mr. Simms (Clarence Williams III) welcomes a group of gun-wielding gang members into his abode for a series of grim stories that merge real societal issues with B-movie scares: a Civil Right activist murdered by the cops comes back from the grave for revenge; a household wrecked by domestic violence becomes an outrageous monster-in-the-closet dilemma; a white supremacist running for public office faces the ultimate reckoning when dolls endowed with spirits of a former slave plantation come to life, and so on.

“Tales From the Hood” brought a representational angle to horror that was in short supply, and the movie made nearly twice its production budget when it was released.

For the next several years, Cundieff struggled to get a sequel off the ground. Eventually, he turned to directing television, where his credits include “Chappelle’s Show,” “The Wanda Sykes Show,” and “Black Jesus.” On “Tales From the Hood 2,” Cundieff shares a directing credit with original co-writer Darin Scott. Plot details are under wraps, but enough time had passed that Cundieff had to recast Mr. Simms, since Williams III retired from acting years ago. (Keith David now plays the role.)

Cundieff spoke to IndieWire by phone about his ongoing efforts to resurrect “Tales From the Hood,” and how the recent interest in black horror driven by the success of “Get Out” helped the sequel finally get made.

When did you decide that “Tales From the Hood” could use a sequel?

We wanted to make a sequel since the first one. We just were not able to get it done. We finally ended up in a position where we could get a sequel made. But it’s been something I wanted to see happen for a long time. My relationship with the first one has been interesting. Over the years, it keeps growing its audience. People keep finding it, which is very cool. It’s also been kind of sad to see a lot of the main issues we dealt with in the first one become so relevant again — not that they’ve stopped being relevant, but it seems like right at this moment they’ve even more relevant.

How has the climate for a film like this changed since the first one?

There are a lot of issues that are still out there. Police brutality, dealing with sexual politics. One of the things that happened with the first one is that I’ve had people who were once gang members come up to me and say they stopped being gang members because of “Tales From the Hood,” which is an awesome thing to have happen. The “Crazy K.” segment made them rethink what they were doing.

What’s the reasoning there? Afraid that Mr. Simms will drag them to hell?

I think it’s more the sense that black-on-black crime was doing the job of the white supremacists for them. That resonated for a lot of people.

What was your feeling about the role of black cinema in the film industry when you made the first film? Movies like “Boyz n the Hood” and “Menace II Society” dealt with issues like gang violence, but as straight drama. “Tales From the Hood” stood out because you were working within the confines of the horror genre.

I thought those films that were coming out during that period, which were popular, had a service. They had a community they were talking to, stories you hadn’t seen before in the way they were told. So I thought they were extraordinarily valuable.

What we wanted to do with “Tales From the Hood,” and what we continue to do with it, is to deal with problems in the African-American community and showing how the scariest things that happen to you are the human things that happen to you. We wanted to use the supernatural as a redemptive element as opposed to the thing that you’re running away from. It’s the thing you’re cheering for. That’s what creates the entertainment value. You’re really happy to see things happen to people because they really deserve whatever comeuppance that they get. I don’t know that we set out to necessarily do something opposite from what “Menace” or “Boyz” was doing. I think it was just something that was inherent to the genre of horror films that we could take advantage of.

What was your reaction when you saw “Get Out”? Much of the attention around the film reflects the way you were using horror tropes in “Tales.”

Obviously, I thought “Get Out” was amazing. I’ve heard a lot of people say that “Tales” was doing what “Get Out” did first. In some ways, you could say that we were, but I do think there’s a difference. “Get Out” is one film from beginning to end, so there are more opportunities for nuance and character development. We hit things hard in “Tales From the Hood” because it’s an anthology. I couldn’t be more thrilled that “Get Out” happened and look forward to the opportunities that come for a lot of filmmakers to do stories that are like that, playing around with the genre a little bit more. I also think “Get Out” opened the door for us to do “Tales From the Hood 2.”

You felt there was more interest?

I don’t know what the conversations were on the studio side, but I do know that when “Get Out” came out and did the numbers that it did, a lot of people started to approach me and my writing partner Darin Scott, saying, “Oh, you’re doing ‘Tales From the Hood 2’ now, right?” I was like, yeah, we’ve been trying to do that for about 20 years.

What sort of hurdles did you face when you first tried to get a sequel off the ground?

One, the movie went from being distributed by Savoy Pictures to being a Universal property. [Universal purchased Savoy in 2006.] We finally got a nice Blu-ray transfer. That was difficult because Universal lost all the prints. To be quite honest, I don’t think Universal saw the value of the property. They had it for years and years. We approached them a few times. No one seemed all that interested in it. I don’t think they realized the audience that was out there for it. I’m not even sure they realize the audience that’s out there for it right now. Now we’re doing it with Universal 1440 [one of the studio’s home entertainment labels], and they’re releasing it as a Blu-ray. I don’t know, outside of some screenings Darin and I set, that this movie will be shown in a theater.

Did you ever try to recover the rights?

We looked at that, but from a financial standpoint, we couldn’t make it work. We had a few different moving parts. We tried to get Spike’s involvement back. That was a little difficult. I’m just glad we got it to this point. It was very frustrating for quite a while.

How much does the sequel pull from material you’ve considered over the years?

We came up with a lot of new material. In some ways, we go over the same ground, but in other ways not really. I do think this one does some things that are subtler than the first one. We definitely still have some scares and really big, over-the-top moments. But there are a few quieter stories as well. It was interesting to go back and deal with it again. I’m sure if we’d done it 10 or 20 years ago, it would’ve been a different movie because of our growth as filmmakers.

Did you ever try to talk Clarence Williams III out of retirement?

Absolutely! I begged Clarence. I think he felt like he just wasn’t up to it. He gave us his blessing to move forward. It’s something I know he wanted to do years ago. He’d have different ideas about what the devil should be doing. Every now and then, I’d run into him and he’d say, “I think the devil should be in the Bahamas!” Okay. So I tried to get Clarence back. We owe him the hugest debt, because he really created a character. When people talk about “Tales From the Hood,” the two things that most often come up are the dolls and Clarence Williams III. We didn’t even realize how great he was going to be when we cast him.

The gap between the first movie and the sequel leaves me wondering about the eras you didn’t have the opportunity to comment on. You missed out on the Bush and Obama presidencies. “Get Out” tapped into this unconscious liberal white racism. What was your feeling about the nature of conversations about African American identity — and race in America as a whole — while Obama was president?

Someone tweeted to me a week and a half ago that I was on a podcast with Neil Brennan, who’d worked with Chappelle, prior to Obama being elected. They were saying, “Rusty predicted Donald Trump.” I was like, “I did?” I went back and listened to the audio. Basically, what I was saying was that if Obama got elected, there would be a significant pendulum shift hard to the right and it’s going to be ugly. That’s exactly what has happened. I forgot I’d said that, but it makes sense. I’m always telling people about my pendulum theory of life, which is that anytime something happens on one side, it’s going to swing to the other side. It always happens. You hope that one day the pendulum will swing to the center so people will get over some things.

I wasn’t terribly surprised when the reaction to Obama’s presidency became what it was. I think a lot of people — especially some of my wife’s friends — were like, “Well, there we go. We’ve done it! We’ve slayed that dragon!” No. That dragon’s coming back, and he’s just going to be angrier. That’s all.

What’s next for you?

I’m hoping we can start “Black Jesus” Season 4 soon. Last year, I was the showrunner for “Black Jesus” Season 3 and it’s been caught up in the pipeline because of the TimeWarner/AT&T merger. Now that it appears to be settled, I’m hoping we can start on Season 4. We’re also talking to Spike about doing some other stuff. I’m hoping to get “Fear of a Black Hat” a new lease on life in some format.

Generally speaking, how do you feel about the climate for African-American filmmaking today?

The climate now for black filmmakers and storytellers is really exciting. What you’ve seen is that the corporate community has discovered they can make money doing these stories, so it’s obviously opened up a lot of different avenues for people to share experiences. I’m hoping that it continues. Look back at the ’90s. You had the period of the Hughes brothers and Matty Rich, Spike, Robert Townsend. Then it kind of petered off, and now we’re back into another phase.

Previous to all that, of course, there was blaxploitation, and then that died off. I don’t know how long it’ll go this time, but at the moment, it’s a very exciting time to see so many voices that you haven’t normally heard in the African-American community — and, hopefully, in other underserved communities as well: women, Asian, Hispanic and Latino voices. I think all those communities have stories that can be engaging to audiences beyond their insular communities. I think that’s happening with black projects. I look forward to seeing what else is coming and how long it lasts.

When “Fear of a Black Hat” came out, the New York Times profiled you and also ran an actual glossary of hip-hop terms used in the film. Today, it reads tone deaf — the internet would’ve gone wild. How do you feel about dealing with perceptions of your work beyond the African-American community and the way that has changed?

Wow. I don’t remember that article. That’s really funny. It would be laughed at today. But during the period when that came out, I guess for that audience — by which I mean, people paying for the New York Times — it was probably appropriate. A lot of those readers probably didn’t know that lingo at the time. I would guess now they probably would. It’s interesting to see how quickly phrases and terminology, particularly from the African-American community, meanders its way into general discourse.

People are saying things you wouldn’t expect them to say. How quickly those things become dated. You can’t even keep up with them anymore. It’s a real fast turnover. Trying to keep something to yourself now is almost impossible because of social media and all the different outlets you can watch something on now — on YouTube, Instagram, etc. Everyone involved in the culture of social media sees it, then it’s quickly co-opted by advertisers and Madison Avenue. Then the people who first started saying it are going, “Well, I’m not saying, ‘That shit’s so on fleek’ anymore because it’s so over now. The words just traverse through all strata of cultures and ages so quickly that they become punchlines for a white person on a sitcom.

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itesfashion · 7 years ago

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What Are Some Major Environmental World Views In A War-Torn World?

In the world today, we have a variety of environmental perspectives that differ vastly. People around the world disagree on the severity of different environmental problems, even though everything is extremely obvious. The disagreements are related to individual principles and ethics regarding the environment, along with individual roles within society. Thus, how people believe the world works and what they see as their role in society is inter-connected. These world views must give us a sense of purpose and meaning. There is much data for analysis and unfortunately people will arrive at very different conclusions due to differing assumptions and values, or maybe some are even coerced in to doing things, or at the very least forced indirectly. Some of these different conclusions regarding environmental world views are “human-centered” or “anthropocentric”. These world views center around human being needs and desires of people. Other views are “life-centric” and “earth-centric”. These biocentric views focus on the entire biosphere and different species within our planet.

Unfortunately, most world views today and in the history of our time have been human-centered which should not be a shock because people lose sight of morality in the face of Darwinism (not possible). We really cannot blame people for the shape that our planet is in since ultimately our society does not have any trust for one another. People cannot be blamed for trying to survive and protect their flocks. This is why the “Planetary Management” worldview can be seen deeply rooted within our society. This view sees humans as being separate from nature and is arrogant and short-sighted enough to believe that we can manage nature to always take care of our increasing needs and desires. But, we must always keep in mind that these people may simply have more pressing issues at hand -- like staying alive. Proponents of this view are comfortable in believing this fallacy because of the advance of technology. These people think that science will save the day no matter what and that the planet has infinite resources, anyways. Rather than acknowledging that we live on nature’s terms or at least together, these people see management of the earth’s resources as a necessity solely for our survival and value the potential for economic development more than the sanctity for life.

The “Stewardship” environmental worldview believes that humans have an ethical responsibility to be proper caretakers of our planet. This view believes that the earth’s resources will probably never run out and that, however, they shouldn't be wasted. This worldview, also focuses on encouraging environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and discouraging environmentally harmful ones. How well we support the earth’s eco-systems should not only benefit us, but also the rest of the planet.

The “Environmental Wisdom” world view is quite different and possibly the most in line with our understanding of God, in my opinion. This is because it believes that humans live within nature and that we are totally dependent on it, and that nature exists for not only humans but many different kinds of species (still one family though, like my dog). This view also realizes the fact that resources on planet earth are finite and therefore must never be wasted. When thinking about economic growth, society must encourage sustainable enterprises and eschew supporting earth degrading ventures. We must go out of our way to prepare for the future, together. The problem of having limited resources is a product of our own mistrust for one another. This is what happens when humans follow the law of Darwinism, or survival of the fittest. This is obviously not a viable standard for human behavior. Darwinism is compatible with other species that are more primitive than us. For whatever reason — nature — the circle of life depends on Darwinism when regarding these other species. And, they were equipped with the necessary tools. Safety valves, so to say. Humans do not need Darwinism to survive. Humans need humans to survive. Our success as a whole is dependent on figuring out how nature sustains itself and enforcing these guidelines, together, for all of us.

I favor earth-centered world views because humans and all different types of life are inter-connected parts of the earth’s eco-system. Thus, it is very simple. We are living not on our own property but on someone else’s property. We have no say in how things work on planet earth. That is already predetermined by nature. Thus, it is in our own self-interest not to behave in ways that destroy the overall system. From this point of view, the earth-centered worldview is more practical than the human-centered worldview. People with earth-centered world views feel that humans are not in control of the world and that our economies and other systems are dependent on earth’s life support systems. This view is a holistic one. All of earth’s inhabitants are interconnected and interdependent. It is earth’s natural capital which keeps us and all of the other species alive. This view also realizes that not allowing for the depletion and degradation of this natural capital is the best way for promoting a sustainable society. The earth, does not need us to manage it in order for it to survive and thrive. This is contrary to our need, however, for the earth in order for us to survive.

There is much evidence and agreement that humans have been in the process of degrading our own life supporting system at a disturbing rate, and that inevitably, this behavior will most likely encroach upon human existence and promulgate the extinction of up to half of our world’s species. One of the major problems that we must contend with today is the lack of environmental education that we have in our society. We live in an environmentally illiterate world and people are ignorant about how our planet works. Addressing this issue starts with understanding three important tenets which form the basis of environmental literacy. First of all, we must understand that natural capital, or earth’s natural resources, are very vital because they provide all species with the ability to live. In our case, our economies are completely dependent upon earth’s resources. Second, we must recognize that our ecological footprints are impactful and that they are growing rapidly. The sad and elusive truth is that our ecological footprints already exceed the planet’s estimated capacity. Third, we must take seriously the scariest of all facts — that ecological and climate change tipping points are irreversible and that we should never even get close to crossing those lines due to the serious consequences that await us and the future of human kind.

The earth’s status quo and the world views of humans must be compatible in the future. We are not owners of this planet, but mere stewards. This is not our property. We must approach our developing world not in a way where we consider ourselves to be in charge of it, and subsequently working against it, but in a wiser way, where we learn to work with the earth, on earth’s terms. Unfortunately, again, this cannot be accomplished in a Darwinistic world where society fosters a false sense of necessity for consumption and competition. Instead, we must focus on valuing cooperation and moderation. However, this cannot be achieved until basic human rights and liberties are safeguarded equally, and for all. Until we have human citizenship, there will be no peace. Unfortunately, achieving this will always be an impossibility so long as we have the existence of force.

Can we come together please?

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