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keruworld · 2 years ago

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Why you should love Azuma Michinaga!

Actually Im not trying to convice anyone to like him. In fact if you hate him... go away plz XD... or if you want to read what I have to say... stay. OwO

I also im doing this because there’s a lot of unjustified hate towards him, that makes me wonder if we have watched the same show.

This is just my feelings about Michi... because it have been an experience to like him. He’s definitely not the type of character that I usually love, but here I’m loving him a lot. Shipping aside he’s definitely the best character in Geats for me. I will not cover shipping preferences in this because that could be another topic XD and you know... let’s be real, no matter who your fav ship in Geats is, it will never be canon. If Geats production team is pushing the AzuAce agenda is just marketing, they know very well that sells (and Im buying it XD).

I will also counter the usually speech of people that hate him: He’s evil, he kills people, he dont deserve redemtion arc... etc, etc... Excuse me? Have you pay attention to the show? Or we have not watched the same show?

So... let’s go to see why you should love Michinaga as much as Ace does:

Those that knows me or know this blog... know already that I hated 01! I was prepared to hate Geats the same way that I hated 01 just because Yuuya Takahashi (the main writer). I didnt expect to enjoy this series as much as I do now. Moreless to love a character as Michinaga: A tsundere boy, self centered with anger problems, revenge and the desire to crush all Kamen Riders. The boy sound exactly like everything that I could hate. X,D

Michinaga was my fav from Geats pressconference... why? because he looked like a Kamen Rider Blade character... in fact he looked like the combination of Kenzaki and Hajime. (and I still have my head canon that Michi is their son X,D But that’s for another post X,D).

So yeah my like for him in the beggining was just something totally unrelated to the show. Was just his looks. I didnt care at all for him in the first episodes... in fact I didnt care for anyone in the show. Nor Ace, Neon, or even Keiwa seems like good people to the heart in the beggining. Entering this DGP to fulfill their dreams and go with it without really asking why? how? and when? Ofc, this is what this story is about, specially with a main protagonist that we know nothing about.

Michinaga was an average character (may be annoying yes) till the moment he die in early episodes (ep 15 I believe), the scene of him dying in Ace arms was really significant, specially because is the first time we see the boy being true with his words, saying to Ace: Give me a reason to believe on you. before pass out.

Before the episode, every interaction of Michinaga and Ace have been interesting... because indirectly Ace have been advising him, with words: if you dont give up the chance to win will came. Surely... in those episodes Ace didnt see Michinaga as a rival at all... may be just like an annoying lad. But everything change when he returned from the dead. And this is where Michanaga character turn to get interesting for saying the least.

This point is where Michinaga turns into what we call an antihero. He returns from dead to know the other side of the coin of the DGP. He was almost killed by Niram. He was picked up by Beroba like a playing toy without escape from the womans hand (she literaly says: join me or I kill you right here). Michinaga was pushed between the sword or the wall, something that haters tends to forget, he had no option to join to Beroba’s side (he didnt enjoy any of that).

I was totally amazed by Michinaga’s guts. The boy survived Niram deadly attack, like an annoying insect that wanted to survive. Then Michinaga state: FUCKS the DGP. He stated he wanted to crush the DGP now that he knows more than the facade. And I was: GO KING, TOTALLY DO IT, even if it destroys you!! TTATT

I became a fan of Michinaga’s guts. It was the begining of the arc 2 of the series, and I was annoyed that the series totally forgot about the mistery of the DGP and Ace and the others decided to go along with all the DGP rules. So I was all go Michi go Michi, even if he looks like he was suffering because the buckle. TTATT

In this point we could say that Michinaga changed. Even his primary objective of revenge changed. And I was puzzled like Ace was XD because I truly didnt know what to expect from Michi. He was bad?! What he wanted to do? What the fuck is he thinking? Why he didnt join forces with Ace and others?. Deep down inside I wanted to believe that Michi was a good person even if he was converting in a Jyamato, because he didn't enjoy any of it, he didn't laugh, he didn't smile, he even had to overcome the shadow of his friend, and he did in the most cold way possible.

We could safely say that Michi fighted to the top of his position to be consider Geats rival. I believe that by the end of the JGP, Ace totally considered Michi his equall, his rival. It’s character development at his finest.

Now, since the bullgame that Beroba trampled (because she always got in the way of the true intentions of Michinaga, but he go along with her just for reach his objective) we start to know that Michinaga is not all EVIL, he even did the Bullgame for stop the casualities. And everything starts to fit together like a puzzle.

Michinaga became the biggest hypocrite, he won even if costed him everything. And now he has the power that he wished for (and is using it for good, even Ace knows, thanks sukiyaki scene of ep36) and to this point he have joined sides with Ace to get down the DGP. I truly LOVE IT. Michiniga embodies what a Kamen Rider is to it’s core: fight evil with the power of evil.

About Michinaga being the biggest hypocrite, I just have to say that there’s no better thing than a hypocrite that knows that is hypocrite. You know... everyone in Geats is a hypocrite to a degree, even the goodest boy Keiwa, after all Geats goes by the premise: trample on the desires of others to achieve your desires.

That Michinaga don’t deserve redemption? Why? The boy havent been bad and evil, he didnt have any option than join Beroba’s side, he didnt kill people, and all the people that died in the heaven or hell game was casualities, like any other DGP game before it. Kamen Riders couldn’t save all the people in the DGP games, there have always been people that died (like Keiwa’s parents for example). The better that our Kamen Riders could do now is to get down the DGP, Ace and Michi knows... and its only matter of time that Keiwa joins them.

Now I could truly say that I’m enjoying Geats and all it’s cast. We still have time for the power ups and for all the boys and girl to act as true Kamen Riders.

It’s a shame that Geats is not the best, but is not the worse either. I’m aware of it’s faults, may be there have been too much focus on Michi (and haters gona hate X,D)... but come on he’s great, and it’s obvious that his spotlight will have to tone down this last part.

Now there’s a lot of tiny details to say about Ace and the others (Keiwa, Neon) and also about the production, but probably I will write about it till Geats ends. We still have the last quarter to watch, there’s still things to happen. So I will wait till the end.

Thank you if you have read till here. Let’s all love Michi, because he’s more than a tsundere boy with anger problems. He’s a good boy to the heart, he’s a good little bull! U3U And like Ace, Keiwa and Neon... he deserves to be happy and smile from the bottom of his heart. TTATT

#Kamen Rider Geats #opinion #spoilers #Azuma Michinaga #Michi #Micho #Michito #little bull #i love him a lot #mokudai kazuto #Michi dont deserves all the hate #haters gona hate #please pay attention to the show #he's a true kamen rider #la vaquita #la creaturita #tokusatsu

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munchies-for-thought · 5 years ago

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The reason your favorite character is flawed and how it changed how I saw my life

Jun 18, 2020

Context: I’m a huge fan of the anime “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”. (Reading Part 6 pls don’t spoil kthx bai). Don’t worry. You don’t even have to know about anime to get my message. It’s just the example closest to me.

The revelation behind each flaw

Rohan Kishibe is a character that is incredibly talented as a manga artist. He is so obsessed in his craft that he goes to terrifying and ethically questionable extents to get inspiration for his stories. Sometimes a villain, sometimes a hero. His art is everything for him. Well worth risking his or someone else’s life. He is generally a good guy, and wishes good upon the world. He just won’t go out of his way to make it happen. He is also defeated almost immediately after we meet him.

Rohan Kishibe is indeed one of my favorite characters of all times for a multitude of reasons, yet when describing him, he clearly is a flawed character. Yet this is NOT about him. While you read this blog, please think on the coolest fictional character you can think of. Do you have one in mind? Can you answer the following about your favorite character?

Has your favorite character failed?

Has he been hurt badly?

Are some things out of his control?

Do most people in his world generally understand the struggle they go through?

You’ll see when comparing with friends that we mostly agree on these answers even when thinking on different characters. The interesting truth lies in the common factor behind these answers, and learning a bit from the power of good storytelling.

One of the most precious things that I have gained from playing videogames, watching anime and playing Dungeons & Dragons all my life, is the first-hand knowledge of the power of a good story. Although it is in the HOW you make a good story, where I found this revelation that helped me so much.

What I am trying to say might be simple and even obvious when read, but not truly understood. If you bear with me a bit longer, I will attempt not to say, but to explain. I’ll show you the building blocks of how I learned so you truly understand as I did.

Dungeon and Dragons’ Character Backgrounds

The first time I made a new character in Dungeons and Dragons (Drow Elf Bard btw) I was blown away when I found out that whereas you get to pick from options that greatly impact your likelihood of winning, you also had to pick background and personality options that held no significant impact on your success.

You could choose to be a triumphant noble, a devote acolyte, a successful guild merchant or even a lying charlatan. Hell, if you wanted to you could even pick an orphan who had lost it all in the edgiest way known to man!

The book was also quite good at giving you specific quirks that brought that character to life. All of this happened because D&D is focused on group storytelling. Everyone wants your character to be interesting so their adventure gets 10x cooler when their complex characters interact with yours in intriguing and unexpected ways.

For example:

The secret beauty behind flaws

I was just a tad... confused. I had to chose a flaw? Why would I want to do this? All of these options look just like ugly parts of your character’s personality and could easily affect them negatively within the story.

Was this a balancing feature? A rule simply put there to make you less awesome, so no one is too overpowered? I just could NOT wrap my head around it. I couldn’t understand how this could make things fun. They were ruining my character.

It was until I started maturing as an individual and learned more about game design and storytelling that I started to appreciate how genius that was. No one cares for the story of perfect, bland, basic individuals who always succeed and have never made mistakes before. Because that is not real, it doesn’t work for an interesting story if there’s no sadness. If there’s no pain, you can just simply look away.

It was to be expected of the game designers of the best roleplaying game in the world to know that having flaws, failures, challenges, weaknesses, mistakes, all of them are ESSENTIAL for a great story to be told!

Was there a moment in your favorite character’s story where his failures and his pain made you love them on a whole new level? Aren’t those failures what drives your characters to become who they are? Would it be a better story if they had always succeeded?

So who is this Rohan Kishibe and, as an artist, what is his take on good storytelling?

Rohan’s Philosophy

Not only is Rohan a good example of a flawed character, but he also has a very interesting philosophy. He is a famous and wealthy manga artist. You’ve got to understand that, to Rohan, his craft is EVERYTHING. It is the thing he does best and what defines him.

Let me just show you one quote of his, so you understand his artistic philosophy:

“Reality is the energy that breathes life into a piece of work, and reality itself is entertainment. People often think that manga are drawn from imagination and fantasy, but that’s not actually true! For me, drawing something that i’ve experienced, or something that has moved me, is what makes it interesting!”

His pursuit for inspiration is so great, that he constantly goes to insane lengths to gain inspiration. This unrelenting desire is why he was originally a villain. Yet even when the protagonist defeated him, all Rohan could think of was of how this set of unfortunate and unlucky events was within itself a hell of a REAL story to use as inspiration. He saw value even in his misfortune as long as it was honest, untapped, unadulterated and pure reality. That’s his trade secret as a famous and successful storyteller.

Understanding reality, storytelling and our identity

Warning: We’re about to get metaphysical. You might wanna take that bong hit right now. You’ve been warned.

Talking about reality is like opening Pandora’s box. It is such a massively complex topic that before we can even get to the nitty-gritty of it, let’s just agree on the following for the sake of this conversation:

Depending on how skeptic you are, reality could be mostly subjective or arbitrarily objective. So just follow my lead on this one and match your understanding with mine at least while you read this blog.

NO ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES OR REALITIES

Fate is merely the belief that there is a predestined way things will happen no matter what. Since its only requirement is also its only consequence, (which is also impossible to prove) then even thinking on fate is pointless or even harmful to an individual as it removes agency from himself and turns him into a bystander in his own life.

Facts are limited to the provable physical world. If you can’t prove it, you don’t KNOW it is real, but you could still believe it to be real.

Our understanding of ourselves, comes partly from how others perceive us and their own subjective view of reality.

As mere humans we don’t completely control reality, but we control how it affects us.

Your own experiences and passions have a gargantuan influence on your interpretation of reality.

Storytelling could be simplified as “the way in which reality is described”.

Changing how you tell a story doesn’t change the facts.

That last one sounds a bit anticlimactic doesn’t it? Specially since we’ve talked so much about storytelling just to find out it can’t change reality. You might even wonder if its uses are only limited to art?

Fret not! This is where it all starts coming together.

My story

Before you disregard storytelling as just an art form, or an overglorified logbook, let’s think outside of the box and take a few leaps with me. Let me show you when was it that it clicked for me:

“Just when the COVID-19 lockdown was about to begin, I was at one of my lowest. I’ve always been someone very adamant on living life as he sees best. Even when friends or family wouldn’t understand my decision, I would still pursue my own path. I was proud of this and felt it made me immune to what other people thought. Yet, years of failed relationships were starting to make me doubt myself.

After an emotional breakdown at Denny’s after being stood-up (Great story for another day) I started worrying that the problem might be me. I’ve always been open to feedback as long as it makes sense to me in a logical way, but I had built so much thought behind who I was, that I didn’t even consider that maybe, I was more flawed than what I had originally assessed.

Maybe if all these bad things kept happening to me, there was a constant behind it all. Judging by the fact that these happened throughout the span of years and with different people, it was only reasonable to assume I was the only constant. Maybe my relationships, both in love and in friendship, were failing not because of individual and complex reasons, but because I was involved in all of them.

Maybe I just won’t build close friends or a family, but I guess I can still find a way to enjoy life. It’s just a lonely life, a very lonely life, but it’s best to face reality head on. That’s what I have always taught myself, right? It would be foolish not to do so when the answer is an inconvenient one. It’s still reality. Better get used to it I guess.”

Wow, that went to a very dark place didn’t it? It’s crazy looking at it in retrospective, but while it happened, it really felt like that was just the facts. I sucked at friends and love. That was just the cold hard reality to me. I mused:

“It’s like if I was a D&D character with low charisma doomed to suck at social encounters... “

and then a sudden realization froze me to the core...

Even if by mere accident, I ended up thinking of myself as a D&D character. Remember all that talk about flawed characters? Well, what if I would see myself as a flawed character? We already agreed that the best characters fail, struggle, suffer, cry, rage, and they make mistakes!

It’s like I had opened a whole new dimension that brought new light into who I was. Those weren’t horrible memories of things that broke me down and I wish no one would ever find out anymore. Those were just wild chapters on the bizarre adventure that is my life. These are badges of honor of what my very own story is!

Storytellers are already influencing your reality

I won’t stand here and tell you that everything bad happens for a good reason. Please be careful not to take the wrong message out of this. That wasn’t what I realized at that moment. I finally was able to see that there were two storytellers that had been affecting me all my life, and I hadn’t really seen their influence before!

Let me unmask these two powerful beings that through their storytelling, had changed my reality.

Powerful Storyteller #1 - Those close to you

Did you notice how the story that I was listening from my friends and love interests was sounding aggressively negative towards my self-value? I thought I didn’t care but I was indeed interpreting my life through their stories.

Since we already understand that we each have our own interpretation of life, good and wrong, then it’s not that hard for us to understand that we will never fully agree on what’s cool. Some of us love things that most people don’t even understand. So when they talk to you, they are inadvertently telling you a story about how you’re weird, instead of fascinating.

If only you could have friends or people who DID understand you, then maybe the stories about you would be seen in a much more positive light. It’s not your friends fault for not understanding, you were just asking something unreasonable from them.

Get yourself surrounded by those who are weird like you. You’ll notice that for the right crowd, you’re just the coolest person just for being who you are. That feeling is just invigorating in every sense.

Powerful Storyteller #2 - Yourself

Back in my story, you can see how I took a lot of my own “interpretations” as “facts” or even “reality” when I told myself my own story. You could have just as well told my same story but in a different way with a much more positive light:

“My relationships did fail, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect on my self-worth. I can continuously fail but love the fact that I’m the type of character that is still hopeful and positive even after repeatedly failing and suffering pain each time.”

It’s important you understand what makes you cool as a character. Because it is your job to tell yourself the story of who you are, what you’ve done, and who you will be. You have already been doing so for as long as you can remember, so you don’t even notice it anymore. You are STILL, to this day, re-telling yourself your story and changing how you feel about some parts of it.

What can we do about it?

So if you already are in charge of such a crucial and delicate task, why don’t you apply what we’ve learned so far? Can’t you see how you as the audience (from your own storytelling) would feel when seeing your main character in emotional pain? Don’t you feel empathy and love towards it because of all it has struggled?

You have the power to choose whether or not you will tell your story as the sad log of things you suck at, or as the crazy adventures of someone who’s just trying to do their best. Someone who is AWESOME because you do understand why he gets so excited when talking about that thing, and why he is so disappointed that that other thing didn’t work out again.

Those dark painful memories are beautiful crystallizations of true art! You already have what Rohan Kishibe is willing to kill to get. You already have an amazing REAL story, you now just have to use your storytelling skills to make yourself some justice, and talk about yourself like the amazing character you are when you tell that story to yourself next time you go to sleep.

At least when it comes to my story, well, the only reason why I would ever even think of writing a blog this long, is because I’ve changed the way I tell my story. I firmly believe that most people will never even have the opportunity to read this, but I have also seen value in these thoughts even if there’s no one besides myself who will listen to my story. If anything, at least I hope my story helps you love your character a bit more, just how I have learned to truly appreciate mine.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to my story. I would always love to hear yours.

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x-neurodivergent-reader · 3 years ago

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Updates

Hiya! Since I’ve been mostly inactive for a while, I feel like I should communicate about how various things are going, and what my plans for future stuff will be. (Don’t worry, I don’t have any bad news!)

I cover a lot of things and it got quite long, so it’s all under a cut.

So - I’ve now finished my final uni project for this academic year (despite all the issues I had in my personal life throughout, it went shockingly well... I got perfect marks on it! :D)

This means that, barring certain personal plans I have for the summer - such as going back to the charity shop I used to volunteer at, and continuing to improve the art skills I learnt in university - I now have a lot more time for writing.

Learning From You

First, I’m going to give an update about Learning From You - as I’ve acknowledged before, while I’ve had genuine issues figuring out the direction of this chapter, I still feel bad that it’s taken nearly a year(!!) since the last one to get it finished. I’ve added a bit more to the chapter, to the point that I can say that, unless it ends up being longer than I expected, it is now well over halfway finished.

I’m not trying to force myself too hard, for fear of getting burnt out like I did with my uni work - but I am making some progress on it again, and with any genuine luck, it should be out by either the end of the month, or the start of July - but I’m not promising anything, since this has worked out badly before.

I’m also planning on posting another little excerpt from the chapter once I’ve worked a little more on it, to make up for the horrifically long wait. This one will give an idea of the subjects the conversation between Loki and the reader will cover in this chapter - so be on the look-out for that!

Headcanon requests

I’ve also made a start on a couple of the headcanon requests from a few months ago. I’m not doing them in the order I recieved them, since this is likely to get me stuck on those that I would otherwise have an easier time with, but I am starting to make progress again.

The one I’ve started on today should be finished by either tomorrow or the day after, and I will keep working on them from there!

When will requests open again?

Once I’ve finished a comfortable amount of the requests I have, I will open them back up again - this will include both headcanon lists and oneshots.

While I’m incredibly reluctant to do this due to how LFY is going, I might tentatively also include mini-series in this. I have a few personal projects (unrelated to this blog - they’re fully original stories) that I would love to bring to life in the future, but would need to improve my ability to plan out and finish stories first, so doing it through this blog would be a good way to go about that, I think.

Either way, once they do open back up again, please remember to take note of my guidelines before requesting!

Other future content

Finally, some general stuff! Firstly, I’ve been working on a little oneshot, but I haven’t decided whether I will post it yet - mostly because it’s my first time trying to write a much sadder story, so it would likely have some embarrassing flaws that come with Baby’s First Angst™. It’s basically a story about a break-up, using that subject as a metaphor for losing a long-term special interest/comfort.

Again, I’m a bit reluctant because of my skills when it comes to subjects like this - but if anyone’s interested, then it may be posted!

A probably important note (pls read it all it’s not as bad as it seems at first I promise)

Speaking of losing a special interest lmao... I kind of lost mine in both Marvel and Doctor Who. I simply haven’t found Doctor Who engaging enough to scratch my little autistic brain recently (maybe the new Doctor arriving this year will help that?), and I’ve become very burnt out with the MCU - but I want to emphasise that this does NOT mean I will stop writing for either. I absolutely WILL continue to take requests for them, and write for any ideas I happen to come up with.

In the case of Marvel specifically, this only means that I won’t be writing stories related to characters or series/movies that have come out recently, since I’m not paying attention to them anymore. When it comes to suggesting characters for me to write for in the future (note that this refers to suggestions, NOT requests), your safest bet would be to go for characters who were introduced in the films up until around Endgame.

Final notes

I hope everything is cleared up here. I know I’ve been incredibly disorganised with this blog, and it’s probably a pain for anyone who is particularly invested in my work. Despite those issues, though, this blog is nearly at 300 followers, so I just want to end this by saying: thank you all for the support!

Since I tend to either be seen as annoying, or withdraw into myself to avoid that perception, I’ve never had that many people want to follow me on any social media before - and you’ve all been so nice and welcoming. It always makes my day to see the lovely comments and tags people leave on my work, and especially when I hear that it brings people comfort, and a little more confidence in themselves.

Even if it probably doesn’t come across at this point, I genuinely do believe that you all deserve better than the half-active mess my blog has been since I got back into education - so I want to keep trying to do better when it comes to balancing this blog with my obligations and other hobbies, so I can keep creating imagines and fics that you all can enjoy reading.

And for anyone who hasn’t stopped reading and assumed the worst at “I’ve become burnt out with the MCU”, and is curious about what my new special interest is... my brain has latched onto the Final Fantasy series. I’ve been playing through the first game, and plan to do the same with VII once my copy of it arrives (I’ve low-key already become enamoured with the villain from that game it’s not even funny why do I love bastards with pretty eyes so much-)

So if any of you are into that series and want someone to infodump to about it, then I’m very new and would love to learn more, as it would give my brain lots of happy chemicals c:

#not imagines

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deadcactuswalking · 4 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 29/05/2021 (Eurovision, BTS, Olivia Rodrigo, Galantis/David Guetta/Little Mix, Anne-Marie & Niall Horan)

What better way to celebrate the end of a week in which I have been consistently ill and surprisingly busy? Sixteen new arrivals, of course! Shoot me, but first, congratulate Olivia Rodrigo for her second #1 as “good 4 u” gets the album boost to overthrow “Body” this week. I can safely say I think it’ll be there for a while. Let’s just start REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

Sixteen new arrivals and therefore, kind of a bloodbath. Why are there sixteen new arrivals? We’ll get to it. Other than six new arrivals from last week, we have a couple other drop-outs, the notable of which being those that spent five or more weeks in the UK Top 75 – which I cover – or those that peaked in the top 40. Therefore, those include, rather ironically on Olivia Rodrigo’s album week, former #1 “drivers license” (only dropping out because of a silly UK chart rule that only allows three songs per lead artist on the chart), as well as “Don’t Play” by Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals, “Another Love” by Tom Odell, “Calling My Phone” by Lil Tjay and 6LACK, “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon, “Tonight” by Ghost Killer Track and D-Block Europe featuring OBOY and “Miss the Rage” by Trippie Redd and Playboi Carti. I’m not complaining about most of this, sorry, Giveon.

We have no returning entries – thankfully – so instead we can just focus on notable falls and climbers. I guess we’ll start with notable losses, songs that dropped five or more spots from their placement last week, and of course we do have a few of them at least as a result of, say it with me, sixteen new arrivals. The first few of these are all harsh drops because of ACR, which happened to coincide with the rest of the chaos, including “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #24, “BED” by Joel Corry, David Guetta and RAYE at #25, “Friday” (Dopamine Re-Edit) by Riton and Nightcrawlers featuring Musafa & Hypeman at #26, “Peaches” by Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon at #29 and “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #33. We also have the losses for J. Cole staying surprisingly slim with “My Life” featuring 21 Savage and Morray at #27, “Pride is the Devil” featuring Lil Baby at #28 and “Amari” at #35. The rest are mostly just expected continuous fallers, like “Wellerman” by Nathan Evans and remixed by 220 KID and Billen Ted at #44, “Nice to Meet Ya” by Wes Nelson and Yxng Bane at #46, “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S at #50, “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)” by Fred again.. and the Blessed Madonna at #51, “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe featuring RAYE at #53, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals at #57, “Seeing Green” by Nicki Minaj, Drake and Lil Wayne at #58 off of the debut, “All You Ever Wanted” by Rag’n’Bone Man at #61, “Martin & Gina” by Polo G at #63, “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic at #64, “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max at #65, Travis Scott’s remix of HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” at #67, “Addicted” by Jorja Smith at #68, “Beautiful Mistakes” by Maroon 5 and Megan Thee Stallion at #70, “Sunshine (The Light)” by Fat Joe, DJ Khaled and Amorphous at #73, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi at #74 and finally “Believe Me” by Navos at #75. Phew.

Now what’s interesting is that we have nearly just as many gains, and they’re pretty unique, big surges in most cases, starting with “Cover Me in Sunshine” by P!nk and Willow Sage Heart at #52 thanks to the album boost that also prompted P!nk’s “All I Know So Far” to creep into the top 40 at #39, “Build a Bitch” by Bella Poarch at #32 off of the debut, “Starstruck” by Years & Years at #31 thanks to a bizarrely uncredited Kylie Minogue remix, “Little More Love” by AJ Tracey at #21, “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #20, “Higher Power” by Coldplay at #19, “Black Hole” by Griff at #18, Majestic’s remix of Boney M.’s “Rasputin” at #16, “Good Without” by Mimi Webb soaring into the top 10 and hence becoming her first at #10, and Olivia Rodrigo getting her third thanks to the album boost as “deja vu” is at #4. I think that’s more than enough that needs to be said about music that was already on the chart last week, so welcome back to the part of this series where I get either increasingly frustrated or exhausted every time I have to list another song.

NEW ARRIVALS

#72 – “Life Goes On” – PS1 featuring Alex Hosking

Produced by PS1 and Mark Alston

So, what better way to start sixteen new arrivals? A generic piano-house club track, of course. PS1 is a New York DJ and for this track with a 90s-esque piano and synth melody, bassy drop and tight, bland percussion as well as oddly-mixed anonymous female vocals made to sound robotic regardless of genuine emotive performance, he’s enlisted Australian singer Alex Hosking as well as co-songwriting from hit-makers GOODBOYS, both of which make remarkably little difference to the fact that despite being a faux-inspirational club track, this song is incredibly joyless and flailing in as pathetic and one-note of a fashion as possible. Yes, that is one exhaustive sentence chugging on as long as possible, but there’s no better way to parallel this disposable garbage than that.

#71 – “What a Time” – Julia Michaels featuring Niall Horan

Produced by Ian Kirkpatrick and RKCB

Niall Horan coincidentally has two unrelated female-male duets debuting with him in this week. Thankfully, Julia Michaels only has the one track debuting, and for the love of God, I can’t even figure out why she has the one, as this is a track from a 2019 EP that flew massively under every radar except seemingly mine as whilst I have listened to this EP, I cannot remember for the life of me liking any of it besides “Anxiety”, which makes sense since Michaels is at best an uninteresting songwriter and at worst an insufferable vocal presence. Regardless, I’m going to assume the surge is due to TikTok or some kind of residual Niall Horan hype, whatever there is of that, and look at this song two years after the fact. Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate the vaguely folkish guitar riff, even if it’s going to be drowned out immensely by Michaels’ approach to vocal takes, which is to put as little effort into that first take and then multi-track enough for it to sound listenable, particularly on that bizarrely unfitting chorus in which reminiscing on a wonderful, intimate time with your partner is demonstrated by rote piano chords, an awkward string swell and distant, reverb-drenched incoherency on the vocals. I guess I do like the switch in the final chorus as she changes “what a time” to “what a lie” to emphasise the bitterness of that break-up, but I don’t think that bitterness has to soak the entire master because this song is dripping in apathy that I just don’t have any time for personally in my pop power ballads. Wait, Niall Horan was on this song?

Eurovision Song Contest 2021

Whilst I may not do a special episode on this blog for the Eurovision Song Contest, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to watching and enjoying it every year. This year’s, the first since 2019 for obvious reasons, was hosted in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and was won by an Italian rock band, with the United Kingdom infamously receiving zero points yet somehow more applause than Israel’s performance. Telling. It’s not all politics though, obviously: the reason songs win is not just the lighting, stage presence, vocal performance or grandiosity, but rather the songs themselves, or at least ostensibly so. The winner this year didn’t have the best of any of those factors in my opinion – no, not even the politics – so it’s clearly about a mixture of this success criteria. This year had some particularly good songs and the most consistency out of Eurovision in a while, naturally leading to quite a few new arrivals, also factored in by the charts being weak, so we essentially get an album bomb. Let’s pile up every new arrival related to Eurovision and talk somewhat more briefly about each song, starting with...

#66 – “Dark Side” – Blind Channel

Representing: FINLAND

The Finnish entry this year is one of two heavy rock entries, both of which charted, and this is a genre represented by about one country annually. There’s always a Gothic-influenced or industrial-esque band in the shortlist or national finals if not the semis and international final, but it doesn’t stop them from being some of the most interesting Eurovision contesters. It’s in English and came sixth with 301 points. Is it any good? Well, it’s far from bad with that pumping electronic groove before it’s crushed by metallic, distorted and rather ugly guitars that remind me of, if anything, scene-era nu metal and crunkcore, especially due to the clean and growling vocal dynamic. The song is still anthemic as all hell and if we ignore the dog barking and stuttering vocals, as well as the fact that these vocalists don’t have that much grit to their performance, we can appreciate the clamouring rock track this is, and I’d be lying if I said that final chorus isn’t pretty epic. Next!

#62 – “Voilá” – Barbara Pravi

Representing: FRANCE

The French entry this year is one my staunchly Italian nationalist online friend immediately had a distaste for, and as someone with British citizenship, I am also legally obliged to give this Worst of the Week. Sorry, Barbara but traditions are traditions. It’s in her native French and came second overall with 499 points. Is it any good? Well, like many French entries and French pop songs in general, it’s in a chanson style that adapts very well to the modern western art-pop sound, as Pravi’s cooing vocals are at full focus in the mix as they skate around more subtle pianos, wonderfully elegant strings and this wistful tone that may or may not make sense for the content. What? I’m not learning a word of French past what was grained into me during primary school. Overall, I think this is a pretty great song with a lot of that almost Bjork-esque swell especially in Pravi’s vocal performance that I think makes for a pretty excellent listen, especially by the time that abrupt finish hits. I’d probably prefer it being a bit less minimal and scattered so the hook hits harder but overall this is one of the best Eurovision entries this year. However, she is French so, next!

#59 – “SHUM” – Go_A

Representing: UKRAINE

The Ukrainian entry, always successful enough to get to the finals, was particularly hyped up prior due to its... eccentricity and ended up in fifth place with 364 points. It’s in their native Ukrainian so they might as well be garbling acid both verbally and as a written text, so I guess I have to judge it on the fact that this is pretty bonkers, with a charismatic and energetic vocal performance that yells over triumphant bassy horns perfectly blended with the 80s bass synths but not so much with those chirping flutes that, whilst cool on paper, kind of just give me a headache when faced against this thumping dance beat that remains decidedly strained for most of its runtime, and annoyingly so as it means the song never has that cathartic of a release, at least to me, but what drop it has ends up deconstructed and janky in something that might fit on PC Music but I’m not sure it does on Ukrainian Eurovision. This has something there, but I’m not into it. Sorry.

#47 – “Embers” – James Newman

REPRESENTING: United Kingdom

A catastrophic loss is British culture at Eurovision, and it’s not the first time in this century that we’ve gotten the infamous null points. James happens to be related to the more noteworthy John Newman, but that didn’t avoid a “nil points catastrophe”, coined by Jochan Embley, who reviewed the song for the Evening Standard and is now set in stone as an utter fool as his quote predicting that not to be the case this year is now forever preserved on the Wikipedia page for this very song. Nice one, Embley. We finished at twenty-sixth and Newman should honestly be glad this embarrassment is charting. The worst part of this whole ordeal is that the song’s actually fine and definitely representative of British pop music with its 90s-esque piano, bassy drop and anonymous vocal performance – if any of that sounds familiar – and I do love the plastic brass added here for the sake of bombast. It’s nothing interesting, and a tad too long considering how little it does with its musical premise, but it’s not worse than half of any given Eurovision. Maybe next year we submit a UK drill song, I’m sure that’ll get the people going. Tion Wayne, do you want to take a flight to Italy in 2022? Maybe bring Young Adz here while you’re at it; that could truly be a fascinatingly out of place Eurovision entry but at least one of these countries – probably Russia – would vote for it. As for now, at least this was funny to see absolutely bomb, and Graham Norton become increasingly hopeless for its success as the night went on.

#43 – “10 Years” – Daoi Freyr

REPRESENTING: Iceland

One part of this guy’s backing band tested positive for COVID-19 so they had to isolate and just show the dress rehearsal again but it didn’t stop them from charting and delivering a pretty damn unique entry, as Iceland is known for doing nowadays. It’s all in English and finished in fourth place with 378 points, and is it any good? Well, for one of the whitest concepts in television, this is the whitest song of this year’s entries, starting with some gentle violins before abruptly careening straight into this Daoi Freyr guy monotonously droning over bass-heavy nu-disco straight out of the 2000s with a level of irony balancing out whatever sincerity there is in the quasi-R&B breakdown, and, you know, it’s fun, at least? I do think the stage performance is remarkably more interesting than this funktronica mess in the studio, but this is catchy and inoffensive, two good ways to get people to care about your song in Eurovision, so it makes sense. Also, that chiptune synth-solo borderline saves this song, even in all its brevity.

#17 – “ZITTI E BUONI” – Maneskin

REPRESENTING: Italy

So third place didn’t chart – sorry, Switzerland – but we do obviously get the winner charting as high as the top 20. The chart’s weak and the lead singer’s hot and probably does cocaine – it’s a recipe for success, especially when they probably have mafia connections and can threaten or buy their way into the charts. Unrealistic and possibly xenophobic stereotypes aside, this is the Italian entry and whilst I was personally gunning for Portugal, who came twelfth, I can see how this gathered 524 points, even if they had to censor the lyrics for the sake of the contest, not that I can tell because I do not know a lick of Italian. Sorry, Ignacio. Anyway, this song kicks ass and rather disrespectfully at that, as the lead singer breathily sings over garage rock-esque guitar licks and some pretty manic drumming that delivers not only a catchy hook but an undeniable groove, assisted by some slick rapping that comes out of the blue in the second verse and honestly fits the song – and the singer – a lot better than it has any right to. Congratulations, Italy – you’ll be paying out the ass for the next contest. Ciao!

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Well, that got a lot out of the way. Not all of it, though.

#60 – “Topshottas Freestyle” – Potter Payper

Produced by Chucks

Potter Payper is basically some guy from Barking, East London, and that’s all you need to sign a record deal with the same label that has Stormzy on payroll so that’s why he’s here. With that said, there’s something deeper here, or at least in the first few lines of this singular verse – without a chorus – in which Potter Payper narrates a street lifestyle, far too common for young working-class British men, retelling what is probably his truth about the consequences of ignoring motherly advices and finding yourself in a situation surrounded by gang violence, drug trafficking and all the paranoia that comes with it. Of course, he then brags about his wordplay, gunplay and fashion, and the rest of the verse just feels aimless with nothing exactly restraining the meandering checklist of clichés, and zilch returning it back to what I thought was going to be the point of the song. I guess this trap beat is okay but this same acoustic guitar and oddly-mastered bass is so common and uninteresting that I find it hard to care. I don’t have an issue with British music being Americanised as that’s just the result of musical evolution and the sharing of culture, but when the only way you can tell this isn’t from the States is the accent does make me question why this is charting amongst Dave and AJ Tracey instead of Lil Baby and Gunna.

#56 – “GANG GANG” – Polo G and Lil Wayne

Produced by Angelo Ferraro

Polo G, after just having the biggest hit of his career with the US #1 hit “RAPSTAR”, follows it up with a Lil Wayne collaboration and thanks to a busy and just misguided release date and timing, it makes a lot less noise than it should. It absolutely deserves that level of attention too, with its chopped-up borderline ambient melody that creates a perfect foundation for this high-energy bass-heavy trap beat as well as Polo G delivering a lot more energy than on “RAPSTAR” (to the point where I think that’s the reason why his actually interesting songs don’t do as well). The chorus has a pretty great melodic switch-up by the end and whilst the flows are pretty rote, it’s hard to say they aren’t smoothly delivering all of the flexing and gunplay pretty typical of Polo G, and if anything that’s what it’s missing: an extra layer of depth, not that I care of course, because Lil Wayne’s on it. Wayne has been astonishingly great on features recently and this is one of his most impressive features to the point where I could barely write about it on first listen, with some of his slickest flow switches ever and whilst the content doesn’t get any more interesting than pouring his heart out for his lean, his pure charisma outshines anyone who could have been on this track and this means this ends up pretty excellent in terms of 2020s trap-rap. I don’t know when that Polo G album is coming but I hope it has more of this. Also, for the love of God, Wayne, keep this energy up for the next album. I’m begging you.

#42 – “SUN GOES DOWN” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

As his follow up to “MONTERO”, we have a new, decidedly less sexual Lil Nas X hit debuting again surprisingly low on the chart considering the last single’s success, finally delivering in the musical department as for me, there’s a constant conflict between wanting to like Lil Nas as a character, performer and personality rather than actually enjoying any of the guy’s music. Last time I talked about Lil Nas, I did bring up the Pitchfork album review that questioned if he really liked music and whilst it’s funny, I do see how Lil Nas could have perhaps taken Pitchfork to heart as a result as he practically explains his love of popular music as a way for him to feel like he belonged in a community, which is especially meaningful for a man constantly left alienated because of his own mental health issues as a teenager and struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality, to the point of suicidal thoughts. I just love how the verse ends on a happy note where makes the leap of faith to come out and how now he’s proud of himself, he wants to make sure his fans are proud of him since they’re the people who got him there. For me, those last lines recontextualise the chorus as becoming less about contemplating death but more about ascending to a happier place and rejecting all your struggles that you’ve overcome. It helps that this is all sang pretty soulfully over an almost emo guitar melody with some basic flows but gorgeous multi-tracked vocal melodies accentuated by strings that elevate this song even higher, even if it seems underdeveloped. Sure, it doesn’t have that second verse, but does a victory lap need a re-over?

#38 – “Mask” – Dream

Produced by Perish Beats and Banrisk

Nope.

#22 – “Our Song” – Anne-Marie and Niall Horan

Produced by TMS

Okay, so this is a duet where two ex-lovers – only in the song – attempt to get over each other but end up hearing a song they held special to their relationship and all of the memories and pain comes flooding back. Without the youthful exuberance of Taylor Swift’s song of the same name, this duet should carry some bitterness and resentment but mostly capture a hesitant nostalgia... and despite being oddly Niall Horan-dominated, I guess it does that pretty effectively, or at least would if Niall wasn’t crushed by a misshapen trap beat that drowns this pathetically fluttering guitar loop into a mush that not even Anne-Marie can over-sell. Everything here is so utterly basic that it kind of screws itself over by trying for any energy or passion, and therefore kind of just doesn’t. I’m glad.

#9 – “Heartbreak Anthem” – Galantis, David Guetta and Little Mix

Produced by Bloodshy, Henrik Jonback, David Saint Fleur, Thom Bridges, David Guetta, Mike Hawkins, SONDR and Johnny Goldstein

It really speaks to the power of Little Mix that even with only three members and only one of them not expecting a child, they can bring Galantis back of all people. Although given that Galantis is already a duo, I fail to see why David Guetta needs to be here, and the same can go for any of the other seven credited producers of this song, which actually only includes one half of Galantis! I question if a song ever needs that many, despite the fact that in reality they probably contributed zilch to the song each, just enough to get a pay check. None of that should matter, however, if the song isn’t good and I’ll admit this is far from the worst that any of these guys have delivered, with a string melody and swell not unlike 2015-era house Galantis themselves made, and vocal deliveries from the girls that sound like they were located in vastly different locations from each other (to the point where anyone harmonising with Perrie sounds really awkward regardless of how many vocal manipulation effects you can put on them). For seven producers, that’s inexcusable, but as a song, it’s just a shallow post-break-up song that kind of feels like a dig towards Jesy if anything (although I hope it isn’t). I’m not a fan – I never was going to be – but it works for what it is as this colourful house jam, and not much else. This is Galantis’ first top 10 since 2016, by the way. Yeah, Little Mix are that big.

#7 – “traitor” – Olivia Rodrigo

Produced by Dan Nigro

It couldn’t have been “brutal”? Or “hope ur ok”? Okay, well, if we’re going to have the dullest track on the album bar one I guess we’ll go with the one that follows the “drivers license” formula to a T but without as much passion in the vocals, without as much interesting songwriting quirks and with a whole lot of rote fluff removed far from any indie-girl influence that undercuts what is essentially a teen-pop product. I’m not going to pretend I cannot get caught up in melodrama and embrace that, but this is a slog of a ballad with an almost sing-song, condescending vocal melody in that chorus, multi-tracked and studio-produced to rid her of any of that natural rasp she has when singing live. The song is about being annoyed by an ex finding someone new and the more toxic thoughts that come with being the ex-girlfriend in that situation, but with decidedly low stakes this time around that just make her more unlikeable than relatable. I’m sorry, I didn’t think that album was half-bad at all, but please don’t make this the post-release hit.

#3 – “Butter” – BTS

Produced by Ron Perry, Rob Grimaldi and Stephen Kirk

See, I value my personal information, and I don’t know about you but I’m as scared of these guys as I am Nicki Minaj stans, or Minecraft YouTuber stans, or serial killers, so whilst I doubt my platform is extensive enough to reach that level, I also know that these people are so online that they could easily find me somehow somewhere. With that said, just to clarify, when I say I wish I could “Nope” myself out of this one like I did with Dream because I have consistently little to say about this band, it’s not because I in any way dislike BTS or the band members within, or their record label that manages them and many other K-pop bands which I also do not dislike, or, because I’ve seen this happen, East Asians in general. Is that enough stalling to just say I don’t care about this basic pop fluff? When BTS are in Korean, their lyrics aren’t embarrassing and their production tends to be more experimental or at least catchier, more interesting. I like a fair few Korean BTS songs as a result but I just do not see the appeal in making another stiff, cleanly-produced 80s-esque funk-pop song with some chiptune synths that are admittedly kinda cool other than getting on US radio. There’s some interplay between the boys here but it just leads to a pretty homogenised track where none of them have enough personality to shine through, not even SUGA and RM on the tacked-on rap verse that so awkwardly ends. The synth solo sounds perfectly out of an era of dated 80s synths that I’m not sure anyone other than Bruno Mars actually had nostalgia for, and not even some pretty vocoder can save it. The writing is too clumsy, the production’s not equipped to handle it and there’s not much to speak of in terms of performance. I fear for my life when I say it but I think this is actually pretty bad.

Conclusion

Okay, so, we’re finally finished with this week and God, I’m glad, as there’s not that much quality here to speak of, although what is here is here in droves, so Best of the Week gladly goes to Polo G and Lil Wayne for “GANG GANG”, with “Sun Goes Down” by Lil Nas X following closely behind as an Honourable Mention. In terms of Worst of the Week, it doesn’t actually go to they who shall not or he who should not be named, instead going to the pathetic “Your Song” by Anne-Marie and Niall Horan, with a Dishonourable Mention going to BTS for “Butter”. It’s just “Dynamite” again but with considerably less reason to exist. Here’s this week’s top 10:

If I make it to next week, who knows what’s coming? This is a slower week – hopefully – and I don’t think black midi will chart, though it’d be comical, so I’ll hold off on predictions and just thank you for reading. See you next week!

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pokemaniacal · 7 years ago

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Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye

Bloody hell, if I don’t hurry this up they’re going to announce another damn generation before I’m done with this one; we’re already expecting whatever this bull$#!t is supposed to be and I’ve got eighty whole Pokémon to evaluate in the next couple of months, as well as talking about Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, and Hau, and maybe Lillie too, and whoever I decide counts as the Champion, not to mention answering the neverending tide of ridiculous banal questions that keep pouring out of my goddamn inbox (obviously, gentle reader, I’m not talking about any questions you might have submitted, which are of course consistently insightful and thought provoking; it’s all those other bastards that are the problem).

I’M FINE

Let’s talk about Rowlet.

If you pay any attention whatsoever to this blog for any length of time, one of the first things you discover is that I like Grass-types. The Grass-type has been my go-to starter for my first playthrough (and most subsequent playthroughs) of every generation since the first. Rowlet’s fate was bound to mine by destiny long before I ever laid eyes on him. And I’m basically okay with this. Rowlet isn’t really in contention to unseat Bulbasaur and Turtwig as my favourite starter Pokémon, but he’s fine. He’s easy and fun to use in a playthrough, we’ve never had a birdlike Grass-type before, it doesn’t hurt that he’s just objectively adorable, and in abandoning his Flying-type Decidueye becomes the very first Ghost-type starter Pokémon ever, which is neat. Rowlet and Dartrix are clearly barn owls, with the barn owl’s distinctive pale heart-shaped face, whereas Decidueye is maybe more of a hawk owl, although I wouldn’t read too much into that. Comparisons to Hoothoot and Noctowl, who seem to be horned owls, are in order, as one of my usual criteria for evaluating new Pokémon is “is this actually new?” and I think the answer there is… probably??? Part of the problem there is that Hoothoot actually has a much more clearly-defined and interesting “personality” than Noctowl, with his heavily stylised cuckoo-clock aesthetic and metronome-like rocking from side to side (actually though, as long as we’re here, why doesn’t Hoothoot get Metronome? I mean, I get that Metronome was still super-exclusive when Hoothoot was introduced, but they gave it to Snubbull and Chansey as an egg move). Noctowl is kinda just a big owl that does owl things. Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are a bit deeper than that, which I generally tend to think is good. Decidueye’s arrows and archery are an odd touch, but as with Talonflame, you can link birds and arrows conceptually via feathered fletching, so that makes sense. What might not immediately makes sense to some of us is the switch from Flying to Ghost when Dartrix evolves, and this gives me an excuse to begin one of my patented Bull$#!t Lore Digressions™, so let’s learn some more about owls.

Owls are associated with the spirit world in several different and unrelated cultures, and there are some pretty good reasons for this. Owls are night hunters, but more than that, they’re silent hunters – owls’ feathers are softer and smoother-edged than those of other birds, so the flapping of their wings is much more difficult to hear, giving them a ghostly, ethereal quality. Also, like many nocturnal animals, their eyes reflect light and seem to glow in the dark in a disconcertingly eerie manner. Not for nothing are owls omens of death in sub-Saharan Africa, of sickness and bad luck in the native cultures of the American southwest, or of catastrophe in ancient Rome. In ancient Greece, of course – mainly in Athens – owls had a more ambivalent role as the sacred birds of Athena and symbols of wisdom (an association that persists today and gives us Noctowl’s famous intellect and minor psychic abilities). Even there, though, the sinister scops owl was seen as a creature of the underworld, and the owl’s reputation for knowledge subsequently made it the familiar of witches and warlocks in mediaeval Europe. In New Zealand, where I come from, the small brown hawk owl known as the morepork or ruru is believed to be an oracle of the future in Maori culture, its different cries portending either good fortune or disaster. Finally, and perhaps most relevant for us today, on several of the islands of Hawai’i a species of short-eared owl called a pueo is one of the more common shapes known to be taken by ’aumākua, the spirits of a family’s honoured ancestors, who return to serve as guardians and as a link to the spirit world (sharks, lizards and turtles are also common; families must show respect and deference to all animals of a similar form to their ’aumākua). An owl Pokémon thus becomes an intermediary between this world and the next, a sort of warrior-shaman that protects its trainer from spiritual threats using powers of its own that are more than a little dark and sinister (we see a similar theme with Hoothoot in the anime, where he has the unique power to force hidden Ghost-types to reveal themselves with Foresight).

This “mystic guardian” aesthetic is conspicuously undercut by what Rowlet and Dartrix seem to be doing, because they have more of a “dapper gentleman” style in play – consider the Pokédex line that describes Dartrix as “a bit of a dandy” obsessed with keeping his wings groomed, or their leafy bow-ties (in Decidueye, that evolves into something more like a brooch or the clasp of a cloak, which has a more mediaeval-fantasy feel to it). It feels like a very odd fit for the direction that Decidueye moves in. If you had just given me Rowlet and Dartrix, and told me to come up with ideas for a final evolution, I might, after substantial umm-and-ahh-ing, have pitched a kind of James-Bond-esque super-spy-in-a-tuxedo concept. That seems like a more natural continuation, but easily could have turned out looking rather stupid without some very clever way of unifying the design elements (and if there’s anything this blog should teach us, it’s that I’m not quite that clever). The self-important “dandy” aesthetic, after a bit of thought, is oddly reminiscent to me of the vain, professorial Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh, genuinely wise (…relatively speaking) but perhaps just as much concerned with the appearance of wisdom as with wisdom itself, and eager to look the part of the sober, intellectual scholar of the arcane. Decidueye’s own description from the Pokédex tells us that this wise Pokémon is nonetheless easily startled and flustered (try slapping him awake in PokéRefresh and you’ll see what they’re getting at). It’s still incongruous with Decidueye as mystic archer and night hunter, but it is at least giving me a common aesthetic thread to follow through all three evolutionary stages, something that’s quite important for a starter Pokémon to maintain. Which is enough for the purposes of this review, I think.

Stats-wise, Decidueye seems to be built as a mixed attacker, with strong offensive skills, but isn’t very fast. That doesn’t bode particularly well, since he can’t really afford to not max his speed in training, leaving less to split between attack and special attack. There’s a passable physical movepool here, which includes Leaf Blade, Brave Bird, Sucker Punch, U-Turn, and… I guess Steel Wing if, like, you really hate Alolan Ninetales or something? There’s also Decidueye’s signature move, Spirit Shackle, which has several advantages. It’s a reliable Ghost-type physical attack, which a) is a rare sort of attack for anyone to have access to, and b) is something Decidueye clearly needs, c) it traps its target in play with Decidueye (unless the target is a Normal-type or Ghost-type, or has some escape mechanism), limiting your opponent’s options, and d) it fires a spiritual arrow that nails the target’s soul to the ground, which is super badass. This move is easily Decidueye’s biggest edge; you want to use him to set up critical moments where you can switch and your opponent can’t, then pressure their weak points with one of Decidueye’s teammates, or try to Swords Dance while they’re off balance. Leaf Blade and Spirit Shackle are actually a pretty solid combination; neither Grass nor Ghost gets a lot of super-effective hits, but Ghost has strong neutral coverage, so basically you’re resisted by all the Normal/Flying birds and a bunch of Dark dual-types. Sucker Punch is mostly redundant with Spirit Shackle in terms of type coverage, but it’s also Decidueye’s only priority move, and he’s fairly slow and doesn’t have any speed buffs, so at least considering it is sort of obligatory (just remember that it only works on targets preparing a direct attack, so be careful using it against support Pokémon). U-Turn is just generally a good move, because the free switch-out gives you a lot of flexibility in responding to your opponent’s actions (and especially switches), and it covers your ass against Dark-types, whom Decidueye tends to have trouble with. Trapping something with Spirit Shackle and then bouncing out with U-Turn is a decent little combo, if you like that sort of thing. Brave Bird adds a bit more of a sting than Decidueye’s other options, but lacks their utility. Some combination of four of these, or three plus Swords Dance, should probably be the default go-to. Decidueye’s kit lends itself to switching in and out a lot, and he doesn’t really have the speed to try and sweep a significant chunk of an enemy team, so I’d be more inclined to slap a Choice item on him than bank on Swords Dance, but to each their own.

Decidueye’s special attack stat is pretty solid, so in theory you can use that to mix things up a bit. Unfortunately, basically his only worthwhile special attacks are Shadow Ball and Energy Ball/Grass Knot, and if you cut Spirit Shackle for Shadow Ball then you’ve sort of forsaken one of the most compelling reasons to use Decidueye in the first place. That’s not quite the end of the story; you might be gunning specifically for some big chunky physical tank with a Grass weakness like Hippowdon, who gets stung much harder by Grass Knot than by Leaf Blade even with minimal special attack training on Decidueye’s part. Also, most human opponents are going to assume Decidueye is a physical attacker, so if you can grab him a free turn to set up with Nasty Plot (which he also learns), you might just be able to catch someone with their pants down. I’m not sure this is particularly a good plan, and again I’m not encouraged by the fact that he essentially has no third special attack, but the possibility theoretically exists. Decidueye does have a support movepool of sorts, but you can probably find better Pokémon for any conceivable support role he might try to fill. Like, Baton Pass is there as an egg move (via Togetic or Oricorio), and again, Decidueye does get both Swords Dance and Nasty Plot, so he has perfectly sound options for using it, but he just looks so unlike my idea of what a Baton Passer ought to be (poor speed, average defences) that my mind sort of recoils from the notion. Alternatively you could try to ply Roost and Light Screen with some HP training into some kind of weird tanky Decidueye – give up trying to outrun things, since he’s slow anyway, and focus on your defences. Just don’t tell anyone it was my idea.

As well as a signature move, Decidueye has a unique ability; it’s his hidden ability and isn’t currently obtainable, but I think we’ll probably get it eventually, so we ought to talk about it before we finish up. This ability is Long Reach, which lets Decidueye treat his “contact” attacks as ranged instead, bypassing enemy effects like Static, Rough Skin, Beak Blast’s retributive burn, and so on. This… ehhh, I’m not really sure what this is for. I mean, I understand conceptually why Decidueye has this: he’s an archer, so he should be able to make what would normally be close-range attacks from a distance. But that aspect of the design is already expressed by his signature move, and by the fact that he can use ranged special attacks effectively. Most contact effects aren’t that big a deal, most Pokémon that get them have better abilities to choose from, and even when they’re likely to turn up, Decidueye would often prefer Spirit Shackle to Leaf Blade anyway. I think Long Reach would probably give Decidueye an extra edge against… Wigglytuff, Electrode, Parasect, Bewear, Stunfisk, and (lord help us) Delcatty. Being able to one-shot Bewear with Brave Bird after a Swords Dance is not nothing, but I suspect the more general Grass-type damage bonus from Overgrow would probably still be more useful, even once Long Reach becomes available.

So, all in all, this is a decent start to generation VII. Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are nothing amazing; they have a couple of conflicting ideas in their design, and other than Spirit Shackle there’s not a whole lot to be impressed by in their skillset. They’re still interesting, though; as fighters they are at the very least passable, with an interesting niche courtesy of that neat little signature move, and I cannot stress enough that pinning a foe in place by the shadow is a very cool gimmick. I got my cool new Grass-type starter, all is right with the world, and I can now review the rest of the seventh generation joyfully and optimistically, without a hint of malice or discontent in my heart.

…well, I mean, I can try, anyway.

#pokemon #alola #alola pokedex #rowlet #dartrix #decidueye #grasstypes #ghosttypes #flyingtypes #starters

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maddiviner · 8 years ago

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Greetings, everyone. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. I’m here tonight to present you with a short guide to Tumblr for witches who may be interested in starting a blog here.

This post is obviously geared towards witches wandering the internet, but maybe some who are already here on Tumblr will enjoy it, too. I’ll be talking about the benefits to joining the Tumblr witch community, as well as some tips for getting started! Here we go!

What’s a “Tumblr witch?”

There’ve been culture-related magazines that have done huge articles on “Tumblr witches” and the witchcraft community on Tumblr, painting the whole thing as some kind of fashion trend or weird millennial hangout.

I’ve been involved with the Tumblr witch community for three years, and I can say that most of these articles don’t quite reflect what the witchcraft community on Tumblr is like.

A lot of them tend to paint it as an ideologically, culturally, and aesthetically monolithic trend, when in reality, it’s not. While it’s true that many Tumblr-going witches enjoy similar things or share fashion trends, witchcraft itself is not a trend, nor a fashion statement, nor is it the sole focus of the community.

In reality, a “Tumblr witch” is just what the name implies. A “Tumblr witch” is a witch who uses Tumblr as a blogging platform/CMS. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s true that there’s a large community of us, but we’re quite diverse.

While many of us are young (millennials), not all of us as (I’m not), nor are we all of the same religion or mindset. You might even say that “Tumblr Witch” isn’t even a useful term, at all! Still, Tumblr is a great content management system for witches.

I think what makes Tumblr strong as a blogging platform for witches is that there’s an extremely diverse community here already in existence. So, in short, don’t buy into too much nonsense about what a “Tumblr witch” does or believes, because everyone’s unique.

Again, the only real way I can see to define a “Tumblr witch” is just “a witch who uses Tumblr.” It’s as simple as that! It’s definitely not some kind of tradition or mindset for witches - it’s just a matter of what blogging platform the witch uses.

Continue reading for information about why you should consider Tumblr as a blogging platform, tips for using the interface, and more! Tagging @witchypixie by request. :-D

Why join Tumblr as a witch?

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re a witch, like me. Or, maybe you’re a magician or chaote or something related (that’s cool, too). If I may, for a moment, I’d like to discuss the benefits and reasons why witches all over should consider using Tumblr as their blogging platform!

Obviously, other platforms exist. I’ve used Wordpress in the past, but Tumblr outpaces it (at least for witchcraft-related posts) in my opinion. Lets discuss why this site is great!

Firstly, Tumblr is more than just a content management system or blogging platform. Tumblr’s tagging system is extremely user-friendly and allows for the quick and quite intense sharing of information.

Since, to me, magick is about building connections to the universe and learning as much as possible, this is wonderful. I personally feel that a blog of any sort can supercharge your development in magick - mine definitely did for me!

Why? Reading blogs and blogging yourself (of any sort, but especially on a site like Tumblr) supercharges your ability to share information and learn more from other people. Granted, you could learn many of the same things at a library or from books, but blogs give a personal perspective not often seen elsewhere.

It is particularly helpful because you yourself can post your thoughts, experiments, and what you’d like to know. Then, others can comment (or, on Tumblr, reblog or reply) and share what they know, helping you. While you obviously can’t trust everything on the internet, the wide perspective provided by an active blogging community can really help you if you’re feeling stuck.

Tumblr itself is good for this, because the community is very open and accepting. This means that a wide variety of people participate, from many different backgrounds.

You thus receive a broader perspective by interacting with everyone. The openness also means that you needn’t be too intimidated or shy yourself. While skirmishes and arguments do exist in any community, for the most part, witches on Tumblr are not overly-critical of Craft differences or religious diversity.

There are many knowledgeable people on Tumblr, as well. While plenty of witches on Tumblr are newbies, there are also many experienced practitioners of different ages and skill specializations.

These blogs can be great, both to lean more, and to just see how other people do things. Another thing: don’t discount the newbies! New witches are definitely not without their own ideas to bring to the table and you can learn from them, too!

There’s also the most obvious benefit of joining such an existing community: making friends! I’ve personally met an befriended many awesome people on this website, and it’s a great cure for the loneliness some of us might be experiencing if there are no other witches living in our areas.

Lets Do It

So, how do you get started keeping Tumblr blog about your Craft? It’s actually quite simple. If you need help navigating and understanding how Tumblr as a content management platform works, sites like this one have you covered.

I suggest giving that a read if you’re new to Tumblr or unfamiliar with the system it uses. Explaining the ins and outs of actually creating an account and a blog on Tumblr is beyond the scope of this guide. Links like the one above, as well as just Googling, will be helpful to you if you have any questions about that.

Before you begin, perhaps before you even sign up, consider what sort of blog you want to have. What will the focus be? Some witches blog about specific topics, such as chaos witchcraft, divination, or other particular practices. Others take a more general approach.

To get the most out of your experience here, consider what you want your blog to be. Obviously, this can and probably will change over time, but it’s good to have a starting point! Some witches use their blogs for a short record of what they’re doing Craft-wise.

Others turn their Tumblr accounts into a veritable online grimoire. Still others keep a general blog covering all their interests (not entirely about witchcraft), and use that blog to participate in the community. What kind of blog do you want to have? It’s all up to you!

As you know if you’ve read about the site, Tumblr uses a tagging system to aggregate content and help users find what they’re looking for. If you’re interested in witchcraft, great tags to check out include the #witchcraft tag, #tarot, #divination, #magick, and plenty of others that you’ll discover as you go along. These tags tend to be incredibly active, and get many posts popping up every day.

Less-active, more specific tags, such as #sigils or #grimoire are also worth checking out, depending on what interests you personally. A small tip, though: regardless of how you feel about the spelling of magic(k), it’s much more convenient to spell it with a K on the end when tagging and searching Tumblr posts. This helps you find other witchcraft posts and separates the search from things like Harry Potter and video games.

Realize that no matter what tags you want to follow or use, none of your posts will appear in the tags at first.

This means that, until you’ve been posting for a while, other users won’t see your posts when searching for #witchcraft or whatever you’ve tagged them with. It’s tricky, and nobody really knows the formula for when it kicks in, but Tumblr blocks newer blogs from the tagging system for a short period of time, just to cut down on spam.

This is a mild annoyance, but does help keep the site free of spam. To get past this, make a few posts, or perhaps reblog some things that interest you over the course of a few days, and your posts will start appearing in the tags before you know it!

Third-party browser apps designed to augment the Tumblr experience are also useful and enhance features for the site. I use several. Among them is “Tumblr Savior,” which allows you to blacklist posts containing a certain word or phrase from showing up on your dash or in tags as you view them.

This is pretty useful, because, very occasionally, the #witchcraft an #magick tags do get hit with a barrage of spam about unrelated stuff and “special offers” selling handbags or whatever. When this happens, you can just add the keywords the spammers are using to TS, and never have to see any of it.

Once your posts begin appearing in tags, it’s pretty fun to introduce yourself! You could just make a short post explaining who you are, what kind of magick you practice, and what interests you most!

This will help you meet likeminded people. Another good idea is posting a short message in relevant tags, listing your interests and asking other witches who share those interests to reblog or like the post, and then follow them. This will fill your dashboard with great content in no time.

Best Practices

To round out this article, I’d like to just talk a bit about some extra tips I’ve found useful as a Tumblr blogger who focuses on witchcraft!

I personally do recommend you tag almost all the interesting posts you reblog. Why? While reblogs never appear in the tag pages themselves, tagging them will allow you to search your own blog more easily. In this way, you can use reblogs to gather information and build a sort of online compendium of content related to your interests.

For example, if you reblog a post about sigil-making and tag it #sigils, it will be easier for you to find on your own blog later on! I definitely believe it’s useful to have a well-organized blog! It’s also useful to tag all your original (non-reblogged) posts with a specific tag, so you can find them later!

You can create pages on your Tumblr blog, too, just like in many other content management systems. This is really quite cool, because it allows you to have a nice, full-length About Me page if you like, and you can also create pages about your interests and with quick information for your followers.

I recommend creating a page just introducing your blog, too. I personally have a page listing all the spells I’ve written - sometimes things get lost when you’re just going by tags, so it can be useful to list them all on page. You can do the same for longer articles or content you write. A lot of witches have a “Master Page” where they include links to all their best and most useful content, so give it a try.

As with any online community, I obviously recommend you treat your fellow Tumblr users with respect if at all possible. Don’t send anonymous hate messages - that’s just rude, and even if you’re anonymous, there are ways for the blogger receiving them to discover your identity.

It’s just not worth it, no matter how angry someone is making you. If you see someone behaving disrespectfully or promoting hatred in the community, I recommend not engaging with them, and just blocking them. That’s usually the best response!

If someone is saying something factually inaccurate or that you personally disagree with, you can always debate them, but I recommend doing so respectfully if they’re not vitriol-filled themselves.

On that note, regarding the tagging system, if you have something negative to say about a particular topic, think carefully about the tags you use. For example, if you find certain chaos magic practices annoying, you might not want to tag a post about that with “#chaos+magick...” unless you’re reading for a (hopefully respectful) debate about the topic.

Many people think online debates are unproductive, but I find them illuminating and I’ve been educated through a lot of them. If you feel similarly, feel free to engage in them, but please be respectful!

I hope you found this article about Tumblr’s usefulness to witches informative and helpful. If you do decide to sign up, why not message me and say hi? I love meeting newcomers, and a lot of other people here do, as well. If you decide to join us, welcome!

#magick #witchcraft #witch #witch community #occult #eliza.txt #long post #tumblr #tumblr witch #community #blogging

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elizabethcariasa · 5 years ago

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Congress extends some extenders, makes other tax changes in last-minute holiday funding spree

Congress just came up with more tax breaks to wind down 2019 than the number of ornaments we have on our upstairs' mini Christmas tree! (Photo by Kay Bell)

Congress finally decorated its Christmas tree early this morning. The ornaments were myriad tax breaks. Or, in some cases, elimination of taxes.

With Dec. 25 bearing down and special interest groups sending more requests to Capitol Hill than kiddos' letters to Santa, the House and Senate negotiators finally agreed on, among other things, what to do about those expired tax provisions popularly known as extenders.

They OK'ed a handful of them and plan to tack them onto government fiscal year funding legislation that must become law by Friday, Dec. 20, to avert shutdown of federal offices.

Extended tax gifts for individuals: Yep, Representatives and Senators operate most Decembers just like you and me doing our holiday shopping.

We have the wish lists from all our loved ones — in Congress' case, they're "I want" requests from constituents and lobbyists — but we don't pick up the present — or enact the law authorizing the tax breaks — until the last minute.

Among the gifts to individual taxpayers is renewal of a handful of popular tax breaks that technically had expired.

Around two dozen of these tax breaks ended with the 2017 tax year. A few were renewed retroactively just for the 2018 tax year and then evaporated again.

Now they have another new life, retroactively for the 2019 tax year and through the 2020 tax year.

The resurrected, at least temporarily, Internal Revenue Code provisions include:

The ability to exclude from gross income the amount of discharged debt in connection with the reworking of a mortgage on your principal residence.

The option to count private mortgage insurance (PMI) premiums as qualified residence interest and deduct it as an itemized expense.

The continuation of the 7.5 percent deduction floor for itemized medical expenses;

The renewal of the educational above-the-line deduction for tuition and qualified fees.

That certainty is welcome by those who can benefit from these tax breaks, both from filing and planning perspectives.

If any of these provisions apply, you can file your 2019 return on time next year. There's now no need to extend filing in the hopes the provisions will be renewed.

As for planning, with the extension through the coming New Tax Year, you also can evaluate your 2020 tax moves with more confidence.

Retirement changes included: The massive spending measure — both in size (1,773 pages without the add-on tax provisions) and cost ($1.4 trillion over 10 years) — also makes substantive changes to retirement provisions, many of which will affect our taxes.

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019, or SECURE Act, was rolled into the funding bill. The House handily approved the retirement bill 417-3 in May, but had stalled (like most other measures sent over by Representatives) in the Senate.

Here are some key provisions that could affect you and me as we save for our post-work years.

Part-time workers would be allowed to participate in 401(k) plans.

The age at which required minimum distributions (RMDs) must be made would go from 70½ to 72.

Contributions could be made to traditional IRA contributions by those older than 70½.

New parents, including adoptive moms and dads, could make penalty-free retirement plan withdrawals from qualified retirement plans.

Inherited IRAs, instead of being stretched out tax-deferred over beneficiaries' lifetimes, now must be drawn down completely within 10 years.

Obviously, these provisions will variously and simultaneously delight and enrage affected individuals.

Also obviously, each of these provisions is worthy of a blog post on its own. Until I get around to unwrapping at least some them here on the ol' blog in the coming weeks, I suggest you check out a couple of Forbes' articles with more on the SECURE Act from staff writer Ashlea Ebeling and contributor Jamie Hopkins.

Toasting the bill: In addition to the individual extenders, the tax proposal also renews breaks for several industries.

Among those literally toasting the late-night tax work are specialty brewers and distillers.

"We are thrilled that lawmakers included a one-year extension of the federal excise tax reduction for distillers in the year-end legislative package," Distilled Spirits Council President and CEO Chris Swonger said in a statement.

The Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act's provisions were rolled into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) back in December 2017. That reduced federal excise taxes for a range of producers, including brewers, winemakers, distillers and even importers.

But unlike other parts of TCJA that are permanent for big business, this potent potables tax break was temporary. Without the extension that is set to be part of the federal government measure, craft distillers and brewers across the country could have faced a tax increase up to 400 percent on Jan. 1, 2020.

Presents for other businesses, too: Other industries also thrilled with the Congressional tax gifts are

A cause near and dear to extender supporting Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (D-Iowa) and his corn-growing constituents made it into the measure — the $1 per gallon biodiesel blender's tax credit. It will be extended through 2022 and retroactively to when it expired beginning in 2018, a move welcomed by an industry that has seen 10 plants shut since the credit lapsed.

The credit began in 2005 as a way to help farmers and reduce petroleum imports by supporting biofuels, particularly biodiesel, a fuel made from cooking oil, soybean oil and animal fats. It costs nearly $2 billion per year, making it among the most expensive U.S. energy subsidy programs.

Added tax horsepower also is gifted to owners of racehorses and motorsports complexes.

The healthcare industry also was rewarded rewarded with the elimination of three Affordable Care Act, still popularly known as Obamacare, taxes that had been disliked by both Republicans and Democrats. The so-called Cadillac tax on health insurance benefits, an excise tax on medical devices and the Health Insurance Tax, an excise tax paid by, you guessed it, health insurance companies are axed under the measure.

And a TCJA provision that was bipartisanly disliked also is gone. The 21 percent unrelated business income tax (UBIT) on certain benefits churches and other nonprofits offer to their employees, such as parking benefits, will be repealed.

Congressional coal for others: In both personal and Congressional gift-giving situations, some folks don't get what they wanted.

That's true with this Congressional package. Although it's huge, lawmakers couldn't find a way to include provisions that both Democrats and Republicans were hoping would be in the year-end legislation.

Democrats had wanted tax extenders to be paired with the expansion of tax credits benefiting low- and middle-income families. The also wanted expansion of several renewable energy tax credits.

Republicans had wanted to use the end-of-year effort to fix some errors in the hastily written 2017 tax reform law.

Both sides were disappointed.

And advocacy groups across the ideological and political spectrum who wanted Congress to let the expired extenders stay that way were upset. Their main complaint is with the cost of the bill and tax amendments.

"This budget deal just keeps getting worse," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "After massively increasing spending caps earlier this year and agreeing to eliminate important revenue sources designed to fund the Affordable Care Act and slow health care cost growth, policymakers now want to charge more to the national credit card by reviving zombie tax extenders. When will the madness stop?"

Holiday legislative tree trimming: Such end-of-year legislation gets lots of attention because of its timing and also because, in large part, the bills usually are, well, large.

But the tactic is not new. The latest-until-now example is the previously-mentioned TCJA, which didn't become law until Dec. 17, 2017.

I lived in the D.C.-area for almost two decades, spending my working hours first in House and Senate offices, then as part of a government relations — OK, lobbyist — office in the National Capital. I saw and participated in this procrastination firsthand.

Since becoming a [semi]normal U.S. resident, I've blogged over the years about the tedious Congressional tradition of "decorating" an annual legislative Christmas tree.

This metaphorical holiday fir even has made it into official legislative glossaries.

Lexis Nexis says Christmas tree legislation is "Any bill 'adorned' like a Christmas tree with unrelated amendments. Generally occurs when the Senate takes up a relatively minor House-passed bill and 'trims' it with any number of non-germane amendments. Frequently occurs at the end of a Congress, but recently supplanted by omnibus reconciliation legislation."

The Senate glossary is more succinct, avoiding sugarcoating of who, per its definition's last sentence, tends to get the best gifts:

Christmas tree bill — Informal nomenclature for a bill on the Senate floor that attracts many, often unrelated, floor amendments. The amendments which adorn the bill may provide special benefits to various groups or interests.

Even in the few years when there is no last-minute, just-before-holiday-recess scramble, I still think about the process, thanks to the Congressional ornaments — those are pictures of some of them scattered throughout this post — that are on our own Christmas tree.

When we take down the holiday paraphernalia in early (maybe) January, I and other taxpayers still will have this year's Congressional trimmings to provide tax cheer through 2020.

You also might find these items of interest:

Tax extenders 2015 winners and losers

Extenders one of top tax issues for 2019

3 fiscal & tax matters facing Congress as 2019 winds down

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gigglesndimples · 7 years ago

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Pro-Pot Congressman Received Campaign Donations from Manafort

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) may be a friend to marijuana legalization, but that’s where his liberal leanings stop. The Congressman is a major backer of Donald Trump and has been implicated in Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Though his name has not been mentioned so far in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the election, it’s now known that Rohrabacher attended a 2013 meeting with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who’s been indicted by the special counsel.

Rohrabacher, Manafort and former Rep. Vin Weber, a Minnesota Republican who’s now a lobbyist with Mercury, were at the meeting on Mar. 19, 2013, which was disclosed in retroactive filings with the Justice Department last year that detailed Manafort and Rick Gates’ work for the European Center for a Modern Ukraine. Gates, a former Trump campaign aide, pled guilty on Feb. 23 to felony charges of conspiracy and making false statements in a plea bargain with Mueller.

Gates lied about the 2013 meeting and his Ukraine-related work with Manafort. He’s charged with “admitting to take part in a conspiracy to hide tens of millions of dollars that he and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort obtained from their consulting work related to Ukraine.” Gates later helped Manafort prepare “a report that memorialized for Ukrainian leadership the pertinent Ukraine discussions that Manafort represented had taken place at the meeting.”

Rohrabacher said the meeting had taken place at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington. “In retrospect, I don’t remember [Manafort] talking about specifically who it was who had given him a contact,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t remember if it was the Russians or the Ukraines… He certainly wasn’t trying to twist my arm on any policy issue.”

Described as “one of Russia’s most reliable defenders in Congress,” Rohrabacher told Politico on June 28, 2017 that Manafort was “an old friend” of his. “After the dinner I think he gave me a very modest campaign contribution,” the Congressman recalled. Manafort subsequently donated $1,000 to Rohrabacher’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to campaign finance records. Rohrabacher said they talked about Manafort’s work in Ukraine, “but it wasn’t the main focus of the dinner.”

Record of Paul Manafort’s $1,000 donation to Rep. Dan Rohrabacher’s re-election in 2013.

While the 2013 contribution has been reported, a second one in the same amount from Manafort to the Committee to ReElect Dana Rohrabacher in 1997 has not. According to campaign finance records researched by Freedom Leaf, “Paul J. Manafort Jr. of Alexandria, Va.” gave $1,000 to the similarly named Committee to Re-Elect Congressman Rohrabacher on July 28, 1997. Manafort was listed as a partner at Davis, Manafort & Freedman.

Record of Paul Manafort’s $1,000 donation to Rep. Dan Rohrabacher’s re-election in 1997.

That makes a total of two contributions of $1,000 each from Manafort to Rohrabacher between 1997 and 2013.

Rohrabacher’s Meetings with Michael Flynn and Julian Assange

On Sept. 20, 2016, Rohrabacher met with another now disgraced Trump associate, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who’s been indicted by the special counsel. “All I remember about that meeting is that they were promoting some kind of idea about having Gulf State countries invest in building nuclear power plants of some kind, I think,” Rohrabacher stated.

According to The Daily Caller, “The special counsel is also reviewing emails traded between Flynn associates and the Congressman’s staff.”

On Aug. 16, 2017, Rohrabacher met Julian Assange (along with conservative journalist Charles C. Johnson) at the Ecuadorean embassy in London for three hours. Assange released the hacked Democratic Party emails via WikiLeaks, which bolstered Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton. Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012. Sweden had hoped to extradite him over rape and sexual assault allegations dating back to 2010.

Rohrabacher believes Assange is a hero and should be released. “If he is going to give us a big favor, he would obviously have to be pardoned to leave the Ecuadorean embassy,” the Congressman told TheDC the next day. “He has information that will be of dramatic importance to the United States and the people of our country as well as the government. Thus, if he comes up with that, you know he’s going to expect something in return. He can’t even leave the embassy to get out to Washington to talk to anybody if he doesn’t have a pardon. Obviously, there’s an issue that needs to be dealt with, but we haven’t come to any conclusion yet.

“I can’t remember if I have spoken to anyone in the White House about this. If I had to bet on it, I would bet that we are going to get the information that will be mind-boggling and of major historical significance. And there already has been some indications that the president will be very anxious to hear what I have to say if that’s the determination that I make.”

Rohrabacher added: “They can’t fool the American people all the time, especially if there’s some monstrous fraud that’s been perpetuated on the American people and thus undermining an elected president and his ability to take responsibility given to him by the voters.”

Assange denies the contention by U.S. intelligence agencies that he acted on behalf of Russian operatives seeking to release the hacked Democratic emails.

President Reagan faking a punch to Dana Rohrabacher aboard Air Force One during a trip to California on Nov. 26, 1986.

The Conservative Marijuana Advocate

Rohrabacher was born on June 21, 1947 in Coronado, Calif. After campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1980, he worked as a White House speechwriter and special assistant to Reagan from 1981-1988. He was elected to Congress in 1989. He chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

In marijuana circles, Rohrabacher is known for his sponsorship of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which prohibits the federal government from using funds to target cannabis patients and business in legal medical-marijuana states. It passed in 2014. (The amendment is now named for Rohrabacher and Rep. Earl Blumenauer.) Last year, he, Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) formed the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

In 2016, Rohrabacher said that he used cannabis to treat arthritis. After applying a topical product to the area, he explained, it was “the first time in a year and a half that I had a decent night’s sleep because the arthritis pains was gone.”

He’s spoken at a number of marijuana events, including Seattle Hempfest and the International Cannabis Business Conference.

RELATED: Rep. Rohrabacher Defends AG Sessions

But when it comes to most issues, Rohrabacher follows the Republican party line. He calls concerns about global warming and climate change “liberal claptrap,” voted to repeal Obamacare and opposes same-sex marriage. “The attacks on my conservative positions are unrelenting, nefarious and underhanded,” he said.

Rohrabacher is being challenged for his House seat in November. One of his Democratic opponents, Hans Keirstead, says about the incumbent: “We’ve got a Russian-tainted congressman. Why should the constituents of the 48th district vote for an individual whose interests are elsewhere?”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said about Rohrabacher in 2017, ‘“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump. Swear to God.” Expect Rohrabacher to continue to play a tangential role in Mueller’s investigation.

If you enjoyed this Freedom Leaf article, subscribe to the magazine today!

The post Pro-Pot Congressman Received Campaign Donations from Manafort appeared first on Freedom Leaf.

Source: https://www.freedomleaf.com/rohrabacher-manafort-meeting-donations/

The blog post Pro-Pot Congressman Received Campaign Donations from Manafort See more on: Giggles N Dimples

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oranjemaan-blog · 7 years ago

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Analysis - Unforgotten Realms

I intend for there to be little talking about video games on this blog other than what I make and what influences me in game design. However, I do want to talk about this game at the moment and analyse it. Sure, I may be a very small blog right now, and that anything I say here will probably never impact the game development or its popularity. Yet, I feel that it is worth discussing the good, bad, and ugly of some games to learn from them. Thereby, I want to talk about URealms for analysis.

I've been viewing the creator, Robert Moran (A.K.A. BruceWillakers or OldManWillakers on youtube), for a long time, back to when he was making Youtube videos of minigames in Minecraft. He made some interesting stuff in Minecraft, such as an assault-type game called Dwarves Vs. Zombies. As the title implies a group of players as Dwarves must defend against players that are zombies. He had himself (as OldManWillakers) be a playable character in the game for a single Dwarf player each game. The game ended when all the Dwarves were dead.

Now, of course, he didn't make this game himself, I need to give as much credit to his friend Nisovin. The two, along with a bunch of other major minecraft youtubers of a while ago, helped to make it a good, popular game. While the Minecraft server it was on was never as popular as the mega-servers around that time, it showed how great a minigame can be in Minecraft.

A while later, he and the group Buffalo Wizards formed another Minecraft server called Lords of Minecraft. This was a server to accompany a youtube series of them roleplaying on the server as rulers of certain districts within the server. It did not get as much popularity as his previous game (though it attracted much of the people from that game), but he made an interesting series from it.

Yet, neither of those things, as great as they are (I may make an analysis of those later), are what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about his roleplaying game: Unforgotten Realms (Urealms for short).

The concept of the game was created many years ago by Rob over 11 years ago. URealms started off as a series of animations on Newgrounds. It later got remade on the Escapist in 2009. Unfortunately, I have seen little of that besides the first few episodes. Yet, again, I'm talking about the game loosely based of these animations.

What originally started as a campaign with friends to help fund a kickstarter in 2015 quickly became a tabletop roleplaying game that was played live every now and then. Rob usually played as the dungeon master with his friends Coestar, Roamin, Justin, and Deadbones as players in the stories. Sometimes other people would come along such as Nisovin or his friend Milbee. This livestream event quickly took over as much of the content of Rob's channel.

Originally, there was no public version. People made mods in Tabletop Simulator with all the cards, tiles, and maps they could find. Finding people to play it with was hard. However, over this summer, the group released an official and free mod for Tabletop Simulator along with a forum. This gave many fans, including myself, access to the game. I've played many campaigns now, and understand the game in a way different from when I was simply watching people play it. I've also seen people on sites unrelated to URealms starting to play the game. Sure some things, such as the puppet program used by the group, have not much good public equvivelints. Yet, I say that anyone can play URealms. It's the only tabletop game I've been able to understand.

Now let's talk about this game rather than its history. One of the most interesting parts is its character creation. What's interesting is that there is not much to it. When making a D&D or Pathfinder character, I constantly have to check the guides to see what affects what and what I should write down. Sure, it let for much depth, but as much complexity as well. Meanwhile, mostly everything in URealms is on a card instead of a book. While I do think that a guide would help dungeon masters by having all information of the game in one place, the cards help the starting player out by showing all the information about what that card is for.

In URealms, character creation is simple: One picks a cards for their race, class, cornerstone, and atrributes. One then picks up your abilities and items from the amount of money one has (which is determined by a dice roll and the prior cards). It may not exactly be that simple, as some cards can affect character creation, but that's the basics of it. With that, you got a character. The only stats you really need to deal with is your stamina (which is basically a health stat), and the amount of money you have. I find this to be better than the complex system of multiple stats that come with things such as D&D. However, this lets for less definitives, so dungeon masters will have to do more judging of actions and events. Yet, I find that to be a good trade off.

I find this simplification to also help bring back what people want to experience in the tabletop rpg, being the character. Now, I do like the world of D&D and other games like the World of Warcraft, they're really good fantasie. Yet, I find that my immersion in these is halted if I have to make sure that I am keeping my stats up to date or if what I'm doing is technically the best option. With few stats and simple character creation, the immersion of the game is less interrupted. I can focus more on the story of the campaign.

I now want to move onto the combat section. Unlike the character creation, there is not much simplification done here. I am pretty much always checking my abilities cards to see what I can each turn. I am not saying that as a complaint though, as I do think that I should always be checking what I can do. Then again, usually I find myself doing the same few abilites or actions over and over in combat, unless there is some special rule or addition made before combat. I've even seen this sometimes on the livestreams, though I will say that Rob and his friends have made a good way of avoiding those points by having events triggered by donations. While that can't be done over a private game done at 11:00 pm on a Saturday, I think that preventing the combat from getting repetitive is something that the dungeon masters have to resolve with instead of Rob and his friends.

I now want to move on to the live streams, and how their impact. I'm going to talk about how the livestreams affect gameplay instead of the lore of the game, which they do a lot. In many of the streams, I am finding gameplay that is made to be somewhat appealling to people simply watching the game instead of playing it. That's probably why nearly everything in the game is on a card instead of a guide and why there are few stats, so the audience can keep up. I find that to be interesting and somewhat true. I find it easier to evaulate actions in URealms than in D&D. Then again, Rob's campaigns are the only ones I've seen on a livestream.

I am a little worried if one day Rob may implement a mechanic or feature that would work well on the livestream, but poorly in a regular game. There are already some cards that are only for the show. Yet, I don't think that will happen anytime soon or have much impact, as dungeon masters can modify the additions to make them better for their campaigns. Also, due to the somewhat ease of adding cards to Tabletop Simulator, anyone can modify the game by adding cards to make their experience better.

In conclusion, I find that URealms brings simplification to tabletop roleplaying. I find this to be a good move for the genre, as I've seen many who want to play D&D or pathfinder, and give up because they can't understand it. Perhaps we'll see more tabletop roleplaying games like URealms later on. I am interested to see what Coestar, Roamin, Nisovin, Justin, Deadbones, Rob (as I probably gave him too much credit over this), along with artist such as Sixelona and Meganzoor. come up with with their URealms livestreams and later developements.

This is probably one of the only analysis of a game I will be doing for a few post. If I ever do another, it will probably be about some small flash game or steam game I found. I will continue with game development in the next post.

#urealms #unforgotten realms live #analysis #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop simulator

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 8 years ago

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Pharma Does Social Media: The Medtronic Diabetes Advocates Forum

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/pharma-does-social-media-the-medtronic-diabetes-advocates-forum/

Pharma Does Social Media: The Medtronic Diabetes Advocates Forum

Two years ago, Roche was the first to take the plunge, inviting a bunch of diabetes bloggers to visit their headquarters for a day of frank conversations and an "inside look" at how they make the products that keep us ticking. And they hosted us again last year at the CWD Conference.

On Friday, about 25 of us online advocates from the diabetes community were invited to Los Angeles for a day of similar interaction with Medtronic. Admittedly, we always jump at the chance to gather in person for a DOC pow-wow — yet we were once again somewhat leery of what the day would entail, especially since the agenda was kept secret until the last second (when we arrived by multiple cars from our downtown LA hotel to Medtronic's HQ in Northridge, CA).

The day turned out to be surprisingly relaxed and informal-feeling, aided by the convivial demeanor of the featured (famous and well-revered!) speakers Dr. Fran Kaufman and Dr. Richard Rubin, both former presidents of ADA.

Kudos to Roche for paving the way. I think none of us were as tense as in those first two years, when we were really wary of what a pharma company might want from us...

... so instead of grappling over the impact of social media itself, we were able to focus on much bigger issues in patients' lives: like where is the technology going at what pace, and how can we help patients everywhere deal better with the psychological and social struggles brought on by diabetes?

Not that we solved all the world's D-problems in one day, but it definitely felt like Medtronic, the biggest pump company and a leader in the Artificial Pancreas effort, "got" what we were saying about what's hardest for patients. (And the fact that we all hate that floppy-shell-shaped sensor that's part of their Guardian CGM — uncomfortable!!)

A lot was discussed. Here are some highlights:

The News

We were privy to a preview of some exciting news: Medtronic D-management software program CareLink is finally available for the Mac beginning this very day! Check out the announcement here.

We also got a "sneak peek" look at their brand new iPhone app for pump customers called MyMedtronic Connect, in the usability testing phase now. It allows users to record their pump settings and order supply refills online, and also contains video tutorials and info on alerts and alarms, etc. It's initially available for iPhone, iPad, and iTouch and they say they're "looking at Android too."

Our group was less than enthusiastic, given that this app is a just a place for Medtronic customers to store settings and get product-specific info — yet it's not an actual logging program and does not connect with CareLink (?)

Behind the Scenes

At one point in the day, we were divided up into small subgroups for about 20 minutes of "one-on-one" time with Medtronic executives. This was an excellent chance to speak our minds on what we think is wrong with industry now, and where they ought to be going. And also to ask a lot of probing questions — although the FDA was always looming in the background, so lots of answers included the obligatory "that's all I can say at this point."

We also got to don hazmat suits for a tour of the "cleanroom" facility where Medtronic currently manufactures ALL of its CGM sensors for the entire world.

It seemed rather small to me for that... but when you view the amount of expensive, intricate machinery, the precious metals being meticulously processed, the scores of diligent workers threading tiny filaments into plastic molds by hand — it certainly gives you another perspective on the supplies that we generally take for granted! And on the costs thereof. This stuff ain't trivial. Each and every sensor goes through a 33-step manufacturing process, including being driven down to San Diego for a specialized sterilization process and then returned to the Northridge plant for further processing. Wow!

Tidbits

Finally, I wanted to share some interesting "trivia" I picked up throughout the day:

* Medtronic has rights to conduct "data mining" in its CareLink database — meaning they can access "anonymized" customer data to conduct studies. Seems creepy, but probably a very useful thing

* The company's launching a new eLearning system to train people before they start on the pump, etc.

* In their sensor-augmented pump therapy research (toward the closed loop), they learned:

patients who are most successful use more smaller boluses more often, taking more corrections

so best practices for pump use = more boluses/day

four or more basal rates are sensible. About 4-5 is a reasonable number

* The reason the Paradigm Veo system with automatic shut-off is held up at FDA is because FDA considers it having "crossed the line into the artificial pancreas area — it's the first time a sensor is telling the pump what to do"

* One idea is for companies to push for a first step: closed loop at night only?

* The new Dexcom and Insulet combo product will be called the "Vibe" (unrelated to Medtronic, but I happened to hear it Friday)

Thank you, Medtronic. This was a useful gathering. We have our issues with all of the vendors of course, but I do believe that exchanges like this one help patients everywhere.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

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