#but i liked the hypnosis aspect. there were some parts of this movie that really evoked a sense of magic

[vanillacorpse]

oldboy was such an insane movie. i watched it tonight. the fact that the only thing i’d heard about it was from a video i watched years ago of a couple of film bros hailing its action scenes... lmfao i went into that thinking it would be like john wick. it wasn’t!

[kinetic-elaboration]

November 24: The Menu

Decided to watch The Menu in the middle of the night because why not. Nothing could go wrong there. (This isn’t even sarcastic; I am and will be fine other than being up this late.)

I… feel like I have many thoughts and feelings but also no way to put them into words. I did really like it. I thought it was very well made. I really, really liked Ralph Fienes as the Chef, his mixture of utter sadism, cult-leader like charisma, unbearable pretentiousness and narcissism, and true pain and even vulnerability (as in the making the burger scene) that somehow all made sense together to form a coherent and very watchable character. He would be the rewatch element for me, should I ever decide to rewatch it.

I know it’s hard to put genre-straddling films in boxes because they’re pretty much always more one thing than another, but the idea of calling this a black comedy/horror is very strange to me. It had a couple jokes where I laughed out loud, in a snort sort of way (in particular, the yes-man to the critic agreeing with her when she said they were all going to die, and “No student loans? You’re going to die” and I think there was another but I forgot it already), and I suppose the introductory part was “funny” in the sense that the characters were being introduced as SO fucking annoying that I was impatiently awaiting their deaths, but generally I was not laughing. I was not finding this funny. Straight-up horrors should be funnier than this (see my reaction to Longlegs), which isn’t a complaint about the level of humor just my opinion that there was nothing in this that would warrant putting the label ‘comedy’ on it. Even black comedy—I mean I get that there were ‘so outrageous it’s funny’ aspects to it, especially as I went on, but…mmmm.

In general I actually found it incredibly horrific. Maybe it just hit my fears better than some of the other horror I’ve been watching, but really the whole middle part had this unpredictable and claustrophobic feel that just made me feel like I was losing it a little bit. The contrast between the incredible violence and the general acceptance of that violence by the characters. The calm and cult-like devotion of the staff. The smallness of the set. The slow ratcheting up of wrongness, from ‘wow that’s pretentious’ to ‘pretentious and off-putting’ to ‘subtly threatening’ to EXTREMELY VIOLENT. Tyler’s character in particular really sat on either side of the line of unbelievably over the top in his cliché foodie attitude (has the pretentious foodie lifestyle rotted his brain THAT much?) (yes) and evincing an attitude of such extreme wrongness, behaving in such an absolutely bizarre way even versus other characters, that he was frightening. I guess he was the black comedy all along.

There were also parts where I wondered if there was some degree of hypnosis (the clapping) and/or drugging (you must eat for the menu to work) happening, that was the level of psychological torture/horror I felt like I was witnessing.

This horror part, I think in retrospect, reached its peak with Tyler’s death and then started to go downhill at the fight in the Chef’s house. I sort of zoned out a little at that point, and though I don’t think the movie was too long—I think its slow pace allowed for building dread and I wouldn’t want it to rush itself—if I were going to cut it, say bring it down to 90 minutes, it would perhaps be in this section. From that point it was more thriller than horror, and I was primarily invested in seeing how it all turned out. I’d gotten the concept, so there wasn’t any more of that disorienting ‘what the fuck is that next turn’ feeling really left, and the torture was fairly out in the open. Was the last psychological trick, the asking for help that won’t come, really necessary? I mean, I suppose to explain why they all stayed. Emotionally it hit the least hard for me I’d say. And I thought the speech about the burger was a little expository and unsubtle, though I didn’t hate it. I mean in general I would call the film subtle as a horror but unsubtle as a movie with a specific message about foodie culture specifically and wealth/entitlement/service more generally. And it certainly played with some old-school, familiar tropes of locked-door mystery/horrors and retribution on the sinful and so on.

I did like the ending and found it satisfying. And that burger looked really good except for the onions. I laughed at the list of ingredients of the s'mores including ‘staff, guests, restaurant,’ so, yeah, there was another comedic element I guess.

[maxwell-grant]

Thoughts on the Shadow's Doppelganger, Lamont Cranston

The funny thing about Cranston in the original stories is that, yeah, one of the most famous scenes across all Shadow media is the “Lamont Cranston Talks to Himself” chapter in The Shadow Laughs, where we learn that The Shadow is not Lamont Cranston, but has usurped his identity, and now shows up at his bedside looking like him, talking like him, knowing more about his own life than he himself does, and ordering him to leave town, effectively blackmailing him into letting him use his face. It’s a very iconic scene that exemplifies a lot of what makes The Shadow unique as a character, and you can imagine why so many adaptations have gone with the idea of Cranston being either a hapless stooge bullied into submission, or an actual villain, because that whole scene is very much a horror movie scenario. 

Thing is, none of them seem to remember how Cranston and The Shadow’s relationship developed past this. I’ll post this excerpt from Atoms of Death:

"Good morning, Cranston," came a quiet tone from the foot of the bed.

"Good morning, yourself," returned Cranston, rubbing his eyes without noticing the visitor.

"You should say: Good morning, myself," chuckled The Shadow, dryly.

Cranston was pulling down the sleeves of his pajama jacket. He sat bolt upright, staring. Then a slow smile showed on his lips; one that was almost a replica of The Shadow's.

"So it's you," remarked Cranston, sleepily. "Well, I knew that last night. It was about time we crossed paths again. Well, old man, you landed me in for plenty this trip."

Cranston shoved bedclothes aside and perched on the edge of the bed. He found cigarettes on the telephone table; The Shadow supplied a flame from a lighter before Cranston could ignite a match. The millionaire noted that The Shadow's lighter bore the initials "L. C." 

"You handle every detail, don't you?" questioned Cranston in admiration. “Jove! I remember the first time I met you. In this very room. You dropped cloak and hat and left me looking at my own face as plainly as if I had seen it in a mirror. Just as it is today."

"And I advised you," recalled The Shadow, in Cranston's own tone, "to take a trip abroad, while I used your identity. You were a bit exasperated at first."

"I must admit that I was. I threatened to have you arrested, as an impostor, until you proved that you knew more about my affairs than I did. I really believe that if it had come to a showdown, I would have been proven the impostor and you the genuine Lamont Cranston. Jove!"

"Jove," repeated The Shadow, quietly, "You have acquired that expression recently, Cranston. I shall remember it for future reference. You have a penchant for acquiring anglicisms during your sojourns in British colonies. Jove!"

"Bounder and blighter," laughed Cranston. "Don't forget those. I still use them occasionally."

Or this excerpt from The Hydra, which is an incredible book where the chemistry between the two really shines:

Lamont Cranston woke up and wondered why his head still whirled. It took him about half a minute to learn that the motion came from the fact he was riding in his limousine. Someone must have put him back in the limousine and Stanley was driving him home. 

He didn't have to guess who had helped him on his way, for at that moment Cranston heard a low-toned laugh beside him. He turned to see the black-cloaked figure of The Shadow.

"What did you hit me with?" asked Cranston. "All four of your automatics?"

"I'm only carrying a pair tonight," replied The Shadow

Look at these two dorks, just palling around and getting into shenanigans and The Shadow outright joking around Cranston, like they are just two old chums having a laugh at the weirdness of their lives. The “real” Cranston didn’t show up very often in the original stories, especially in the last stories when Lamont Cranston essentially became the real identity of The Shadow, but when he did, part of what makes him stand out as his own character is that he’s funny. Gibson gets a lot of mileage out of Cranston as this guy who is completely nonchalant and chill about all the weird shit that happens to him, even in The Hydra after he kills a man with an elephant gun, he’s still more or less the same, he largely just walks out of it with a newfound realization. 

Relieving Cranston of the elephant gun, The Shadow steered his friend into the closet. Hauling the big weapon with him, The Shadow opened the door to meet and dismiss arriving servants who had dashed upstairs when they felt the house quake. 

"Whenever I see this gun," began Cranston, coming from the closet, "I'll remember what I did with it -" 

“Quite right," interposed The Shadow approvingly. "What you did to Mance will make amends for any elephants you may have killed. Too bad Mance didn't bring along a few more Hydra Heads.”

Slowly, understanding dawned on Cranston. He'd never compared his big-game hunts with The Shadow's quests for men of crime. He felt that The Shadow's cause was justified, but it had seemed outside the field of sport. It still was, but Cranston, now that he had dealt with a murderer who deserved to die, was realizing that his game hunts were more deserving of rebuke.

His encounters with The Shadow gradually changed Cranston from a useless millionaire wasting his resources and talents on idle pursuits, to...still largely a useless millionaire, except his resources and talents are no longer wasted and he’s gradually grown into a useful ally and friend to The Shadow. The Shadow tends to have that effect on people who work by his side and even Cranston, the guy whose main role in his organization is to just stay away and be useless somewhere else, can’t help but change a little into a better person when he appears. 

There’s an interesting article written by Bob Sampson called “The Third Shadow” which refers to the Bruce Elliot run of The Shadow Magazine, which is incredibly maligned by fans and not without reason, the stories all largely suck and the Shadow bears little resemblance to his former self, instead mostly feeling like a diet take on the radio show Lamont, more of an average detective. The theory Sampson puts out is that, during this period, it was actually Lamont Cranston who became active as The Shadow while Allard was busy overseas, and I definitely like this theory. It makes sense specially considering The Hydra sets up for Cranston to become more pro-active and serious:

While not the towering master-mind of Allard, he does become the next best thing: A post-war sleuth. He even indulges in wearing the cloak and slouch hat from time to time (to varying degrees of effectiveness), while trying to laugh like Allard (also to varying degrees of effectiveness) as if to fulfill that forbidden fantasy until he finally gets it out of his system. After all, The Shadow pretended to be him, why not the other way around?

As Bob Sampson put it: “It is always Cranston who explains all and takes the credit”. 

Probably very cathartic for Lamont, who for the last 18 years was relegated to being a distant supporting player in his own life. Cranston is still in contact with the agents however. He even receives "assignments" from Burbank. 

This entire arrangement could only be with The Shadow's tacit approval. Let us remember, Cranston was not merely some insipid fop. He certainly had done his own share of exploring and was indeed a hunter. He could handle a variety of firearms, was familiar with exotic peoples and their customs, knew how to stalk dangerous animals through the jungle and veldt, but he was not, nor ever claimed to be, a master secret-agent and soldier.

I think it is fitting that the writing is completely different for this period as well. Not the enigmatic journalistic style of Allards exploits, but the witty, modern champagne fizz of Cranston's odyssey in a Post-War world. He feels a full range of emotions. In the Gibson stories, The Shadow is at arms length. In the Elliott stories, Cranston is sitting right next to you on a train or an airplane or roadster. 

It’s also interesting to consider how Lamont Cranston has basically become the true name of The Shadow in pop culture. Often times it’s the name people use when they specifically want to reference The Shadow, the supposed “Ghost of Gay Street” hauntings in Gibson’s former apartment took the form of Lamont Cranston, and even in the stories, more and more people became aware of it as the years went by (which also helps reinforce the idea that the “real” Cranston eventually took to acting as a fill-in for The Shadow, to draw attention away from the real Shadow’s operations), and Gibson even mentioned a few times that Cranston was The Shadow’s “favorite” identity along with Arnaud. Which is kinda fascinating to think about and does hint at some weird underlying aspects of The Shadow’s psyche, that his favorite identity is one not his own.

And at last, there’s these passages from The Whispering Eyes, a book that does not mention Allard once, and the very last Shadow novel: 

From beneath the seat he was taking his black garb. Cloaked and hatted as he stepped from the cab, Cranston merged immediately with the darkness. He had become The Shadow. 

Cranston's switch to his other self could well be attributed to a hypnotic mood. The mental lapses produced through hypnosis were the sort that would often cause a subject to revert to habit. Now, as The Shadow, Cranston was still in what might be termed a haphazard mood. He was skirting through darkness, pausing, changing direction, behaving generally as though avoiding something that did not exist.

Lang had flung away his glasses; his eyes now showed the shining, hypnotic force that the lenses normally softened. He recognized the eyes that met his above a leveled gun muzzle.

The Shadow's eyes, yet strangely Cranston's, for this was one time The Shadow did not care to disguise them.

Which begs the question: Did Cranston succeed in fully becoming The Shadow? Or did The Shadow succeed in fully becoming Cranston?

[the-courage-to-heal]

Childhood:

The book Sybil and the subsequent 1976 movie in which Sally Field portrayed a girl with more than a dozen different personalities were the result of a collaboration between psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur and author Flora Rheta Schreiber. The goal was to have people better understand a child abuse victim who developed alternative personalities as a coping mechanism.

While the book and movie raised the profile of what is now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), they also created some significant misconceptions.

“Do people come into my office and switch personalities in a dramatic way, with different voices. Does their makeup suddenly change? No,” said Milissa Kaufman, MD, PhD, about the character Sybil. “It may feel like that to them internally, but there’s no dramatic thing that happens.”

Kaufman, director of the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program at McLean Hospital and medical director of McLean’s Hill Center for Women, said patients with DID, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often carry on very normal, high-functioning lives. She pointed to Robert Oxnam, a China scholar and president emeritus of The Asia Society, who shared his life story in the 2005 book A Fractured Mind: My Life With Multiple Personality Disorder.

That is because DID is a coping mechanism, usually brought on by childhood abuse, and is a kind of ingenious, unconscious way of displacing situations onto other aspects of themselves.

“It’s the ‘not me’ phenomenon,” said Kaufman. “Little children have magical thinking. It’s at this age in development where you believe in Santa Claus, or where little children personify stuffed animals. There are displaced thoughts and feelings that are difficult for them, so they are put on these other entities. It’s a normal developmental stage that children go through.”

Where DID veers from “not me” is when abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional—is introduced into their young lives.

“If you’re being abused at night, you think to yourself that can’t possibly be happening. It has to be happening to some other little girl. It’s not me,” she said. “If a little girl is being abused at night and has to wake up the next morning and go to school and do sports and do homework and have to do as much as they can to not have people get angry at them, they displace it onto another aspect of themselves.”

“A child doesn’t have many other ways to cope. They can’t go to their parents, since that is the origin. They feel like there are other people inside of them, and they can’t tell anybody.”

Dissociation can be found in 1-3% of the general population and as high as 20-30% in psychiatric populations, about the same prevalence as schizophrenia, Kaufman said. A 1986 study by Frank W. Putman and others in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found the average patient with DID has been in the mental health delivery system for an average of 6.8 years and has received three other diagnoses. This reflected either misdiagnoses or occurrences of other diagnoses or symptoms that delayed an accurate diagnosis.

Dissociation occurs along a spectrum, from “spacing out” while driving and missing an exit to being hyper-focused on a topic. Along the range are memory issues, like gaps in recall, often associated with PTSD. Further along are depersonalization and derealization—which Kaufman described as a profound detachment from sense of self or sense of body, a sensation of being apart from one’s self, perhaps viewing what is happening from a distance.

The furthest end of the spectrum is fragmentation of identity, where “my feelings or my thoughts or my body feel like they don’t belong to me,” she said.

Richard Loewenstein, MD, a psychiatrist in the Trauma Disorders Program at the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore, noted in a 2018 paper in Dialogues in Clinical Neurosciencethat dissociative identity disorders are among the oldest reported psychiatric disorders, with case reports appearing at the end of the 18th century.In more recent times, DID was viewed as being “rare and exotic,” except during wartime. Yet, the diagnosis was not without controversy, even among mental health professionals, with a history going back to Freud and questions about what real memories are. That was rekindled in the 1980s cases involving child abuse at day care centers in many parts of the country. Among the models developed at the time, one suggested DID could be produced in highly hypnotized, suggestible patients.

Rather than simply reveal forgotten traumas, the theory went, hypnosis could be used to implant false memories.DID can also be wrongly connected to malingering (exaggerated) and factitious (inauthentic) disorders, where patients make claims either with or without a motivation for personal gain. The best-known example of factitious disorder is the severe form once known as Munchausen syndrome.“That’s not what it looks like,” said Kaufman. “It’s a very real, very well-studied psychiatric disorder.”“It most often is chronic,” she continued. “It typically is at the hands of a caretaker. It can be sexual abuse, it can be physical abuse, it can be emotional abuse. But generally, people who have DID have had many different types of abuse at the hands of multiple perpetrators.

The women she works with at the Hill Center usually arrive with histories of childhood abuse, PTSD, co-occurring disorders such as eating disorders, or substance abuse issues. While DID affects men, she believes many are less likely to come forward for help.“I think there’s even more of a stigma for men to talk,” she said. “It may be that, or a lot of mental health professionals are not trained to ask questions. They may not be on alert for it, because the media depicts women most often as having this disorder, so maybe they don’t even ask.

”DID is also treatable with a three-stage set of professional guidelines established through expert consensus.The initial stage focuses on stabilization and safety. The goal is to

“get things calmed down and life in order. It can take a while for someone to feel comfortable and safe. It can take years.”

Once that is achieved, clinicians move on to the second stage, where the patient begins to process the traumatic events that have affected them. In the final stage, the emphasis is on

”getting your life back, mourning what you have lost and moving on without dissociation, learning how to be in the world without dissociating.”At the same time, scientists are exploring potential biological or genetic links that could predispose a person to DID. Studies to date have shown that in the classic form of PTSD, the brain’s amygdala—which controls the “fight-or-flight” response—is overactive while the prefrontal cortex is not, generating a hyper-aroused state. But in the dissociative subtype of PTSD, Kaufman said, the prefrontal cortex is overactive to the point where a person can be numb and detached.In fact, she explained, both the amygdala and prefrontal cortex become overactive in patients with DID.

“The trauma state in DID looks like classic PTSD,” said Kaufman. “In a numbed state of mind, it looks more like the dissociative subtype, where, the brakes are on too tight.”Scientists are also looking at the brain’s attentional activation system, how a person concentrates.“People who are dissociative have a really refined ability to focus attention, particularly in multitasking,” she said, saying researchers are working to understand how the brains of people with DID have a different allocation of resources toward attentional systems.Finally, there are also studies on potential genetic links.“You aren’t born with DID, but you can have a genetic predisposition to dissociate, so we are also looking for genetic markers.”But Kaufman stressed that people with DID should not give up hope.“It’s treatable. It’s a pretty phenomenal coping mechanism when you are growing up, but it becomes disruptive when you don’t need it anymore.”

source

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Evelyn Deavor

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Disney has been making a lot of films with twist villains as of late, villains who seem to be a friend for much of the movie but then, in the final act, reveal their true colors and suddenly are revealed to be the driving antagonistic force of the film. The only time this ever worked was for King Candy, because the twist tied to him wasn’t that he was an antagonist (he had been opposing the heroes and there was foreshadowing he knew more than he let on) but rather what his true nature was. Hans and Bellwether fell flat because of the inconsistencies of their characters and the lack of proper buildup beforehand, respectively, but at least this problem didn’t afflict itself on other Disney properties…

...And then came Incredibles 2. It’s a fantastic film without a doubt, and definitely a great thematic continuation of the first film that really helps to expand the world, but I cannot for the life of me find any way to defend the twist villain of this film. Evelyn Deavor is just the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to twist villains, because she combines all the problems of every other twist villain prior into one.

Actor: Catherine Kenner portrays Evelyn Deavor, and quite frankly it is endlessly amusing that she is yet again playing a villain who uses hypnosis to control people. Wonder if those goggles send the supers to the Sunken Place? For what it’s worth, I do think she does a good job, her performance is never bad or anything, and most of the reason Evelyn is a bad character is because of the writing, not Kenner’s performance.

Motivation/Goals: This is where Evelyn completely falls apart. She has constructed this whole elaborate false villain known as the Screenslaver, a character that actually has some pretty Interesting (though completely fabricated) motivations for committing crimes and who actually would help strengthen the themes of the film if his character was built on… all for the sake of making sure superheroes are illegal.

Now, her motivation comes from the same place as her brother’s motivation to bring heroes back: as a child, their father was gunned down by robbers when, instead of doing the smart thing and going into his safe room, he decided to try and call two superheroes on specially made phones to come save the day. Keep in mind this was after the initial ban on supers. In a way, you can kind of see where her motivation comes from; her dad was childish and stupid to think he could rely on heroes all the time.

But here’s the problem: heroes are already banned. It’s hard to comprehend exactly what she wants to accomplish; does she want heroes to get double banned? Sure, you could say that she’s just trying to sabotage her brother, who seems rather hellbent on legalizing heroes again, but considering he trusts her with a lot of the technical aspects of this there are a lot better ways she could have gone about undermining him, ways that would have been far less convoluted. Her entire plan seems to be to build them up to the top before tearing them down again, never stopping to consider how dangerous this is. These are SUPERHEROES, people who are known for finding a way against all odds to thwart evil schemes.

And going back to her creation, the Screenslaver, he actually has a far more interesting motivation, what with his big speech decrying the over-reliance on screens in society. There’s some interesting commentary there and it works well with the retro setting. This would have made a far more interesting villain, one that could actually say something about society, media, and so on while also reaffirming the positive points. It would have been the sort of bold statement that we need in a big film like this, in an age where, for good and for bad, we do rely quite a bit on screens.

Do I know for sure there would have been brilliant commentary there and not just the typical Luddite nonsense you see in political cartoons? No, I don’t, but I have faith considering the people working on the film. Do I know it would have been far better than the convoluted mess of a motivation that we got? Oh yes I do.

Personality: To her credit, Evelyn doesn’t actually change to much between her heroic and villainous personas. She’s still snarky, she still genuinely cares for her brother, she’s still brilliant save for her reliance on stupid and overly complex schemes… unlike other twist villains she doesn’t feel like two different characters between the time she’s a hero and the time she’s a villain. But I think this is where the praise has to end and veer into criticism, because with all this being said, it is obvious she’s going to be the bad guy from the moment she first appears onscreen. The reason why there’s no disconnect between her two personalities is because there never really was one; you either consciously or unconsciously pick up on there being something off about Evelyn from the get-go, which is not a problem Hans or Bellwether had.

Best Scene: Evelyn herself doesn’t really have any standout scenes, since in this exciting superhero action film she’s a non-action big bad, and unlike other non-action big bads like, say, Zemo from Civil War, her motivations are too stupid and convoluted to really get behind to enjoy her ranting. But I suppose she was technically behind the Screeslaver fight even if she was not directly there, so let’s go with that. Despite the issues the visuals caused when the film was first released, the fight is one of the most exciting moments of the film.

Best Quote: “Screenslaver interrupts this program for an important announcement. Don't bother watching the rest. Elastigirl doesn't save the day; she only postpones her defeat. And while she postpones her defeat, you eat chips and watch HER confront problems that you are too lazy to deal with. Superheroes are part of your brainless desire to replace true experience with simulation. You don't talk, you watch talk SHOWS. You don't play games, you watch game SHOWS. Travel, relationships, risk; every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance so that you can remain ever-sheltered, ever-passive, ever-ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life. You want superheroes to protect you and make yourselves ever more powerless in the process; while you tell yourself you're being ‘looked after’, that your interests are being served, and your rights are being upheld. So that the system can keep stealing from you, smiling at you all the while. Go ahead, send your supers to stop me. Grab your snacks, watch your screens, and see what happens. You are no longer in control. I am.” Oh darn, am I giving the fabricated villain credit over Evelyn again? It’s almost like this utterly boring and convoluted villain was far better at writing more interesting villains than she was at being an antagonist.

Final Thoughts & Score: Let’s compare and contrast to Syndrome from the first movie, since she actually has quite a bit in common with his motivation. Syndrome seemed to envy superheroes and wanted to undermine them by supplanting their place in the world with his own technology, making a world where everyone is super, which in his own words would mean “no one will be.” The catalyst for his descent into supervillainy is, of course, his rejection by Mr. Incredible, which made him lose sight in what was important and drove him mad, leading to his eventual criminal career. Syndrome ends up being rather effective as a villain, and even a twist villain, because his true nature is revealed about halfway through the film, and he is given plenty of screentime to be a villain and establish his evil personality. His plan made sense, wasn’t overly convoluted, and actually managed to cause permanent, lasting damage to the super community.

And then you have Evelyn. Her motivations are completely muddied and incoherent, a problem Hans had as well but with him there was at least a token effort to foreshadow why he might do what he does, as bad as said foreshadowing ended up; with Evelyn though, there’s really no attempt made to really make sense of her convoluted scheme, there’s no questioning the logic behind doing what she does. The fact her plan is just accepted, that not even Helen Parr, a very smart woman, does not see the glaring flaws in Evelyn’s plan and call her out on them, is ridiculous. And then, much like Bellwether, the more interesting motivations are completely wasted; but where Bellwether at least genuinely did have some vicious prejudices to her that were unfortunately glossed over, Evelyn just completely fabricated every little thing about the Screenslaver to make an interesting protagonist for the heroes to fight to make them look good so she could tear them all down. Evelyn is just the utter exacerbation of every single flaw of previous twist villains, except without any of the redemptive qualities. At best she is an interesting contrast to Syndrome, as their overall goals are polar opposites (he wants to become a super and normalize it, she wants them to go away forever), but that’s really more in theory; in practice she just comes off as convoluted and dumb.

Evelyn is a very disappointing 1/10. We deserved a much better villain in this movie; hell, the Underminer would have been a great foe, because even if he had simple motivations he was still very comic booky and fun. Or even if they just stuck with Screenslaver, and let him be the actual villain, and let all of the incredibly obvious signs right from Evelyn’s intro be nothing more than red herrings. You could have even give Screenslaver some sort of connection to the Deavors, maybe he could be a disgruntled former employee a la the Riddler in Batman Forever. It’s honestly really sad that the absolute worst Batman movie was able to do the Screenslaver better than the sequel to one of Pixar’s finest films, but such is the cruel world we live in. Evelyn isn’t one of the worst villains because she is utterly devoid of quality, like Weapon XI or, god forbid, Malekith. No, Evelyn is one of the worst because she is a frustrating waste of potential that squanders good ideas for nonsensical twists.

You want to know the saddest part? In his one single big scene, the fake Screenslaver is more interesting, compelling, and exciting than the actual real Screenslaver. This untrained pizza boy puts up an actual fight and is intimidating and creepy, and he manages to outshine Evelyn in a film that ostensibly has her as the big bad. I suppose I may as well rate him, seeing as this review sort of covers them both and I don’t think it’s worth it to do a Psycho Analysis on a fake villain; I give him a solid 7/10. He is easily six points higher on the scale despite not even being a real villain and all his motivations being completely made up by the real antagonist; that’s how utterly disappointing Evelyn is.

[creative-type]

Incredibles 2 First Impressions

Saw the Incredibles II today and came away with the same thoughts that a lot of other people are having: It’s pretty good, but not as good as the original. The action scenes were, for lack of a better term, incredible and definitely the highlight of the movie. I especially liked what they did with Elastigirl’s powers during her first solo set piece. The plot was a bit derivative of the first and the big twist could be seen from a mile away.

Still, I liked this movie and am considering seeing it again in theaters. Keep that in mind, because I’m about to get really really nitpicky about things I didn’t like.

Beware of spoilers below the cut.

My two initial thoughts coming out of the theater was that the movie was disorganized and shallow. What made the first Incredibles movie stand apart was that it deftly covered a lot of heavy, adult themes and each of the subplots directly contributed to the main message the movie was trying to convey. Everything from Dash’s desire to use his powers to Violet’s desire for normalcy to Helen’s frustration with Bob’s unwillingness to let go of the glory days all build up to the main themes of family and the role of specially gifted individuals in society. Actions had very real consequences and a lot of people--both good and bad--died in Syndrome’s bid for power.

The Incredibles II is much more lighthearted, and many of the subplots either don’t go anywhere or feel like filler while the main plot is waiting to get from Point A to Point B. Jack Jack is the worst offender here, with his battle with the raccoon serving no purpose other than to get some laughs from the audience. 

And again, this is fine, but it takes away time that could have been spent developing either the characters or the conflict of reintegrating superheroes into society. A whole new bunch of superheroes are introduced, but aside from Voyd they have no characterization and are literally there only to be enemies to be fought later. Voyd had the potential of being a really interesting as a starry-eyed newcomer new to the heroing business, but she remains almost criminally neglected. Sharp eyed viewers might notice she’s much more effective with her powers when she’s under hypnosis from Screenslaver, likely suffering from the same confidence issues that plagued Violet in the first movie. This aspect of her personality is never explored, which is a shame because Helen had literally just helped her daughter with the same problem and could have offered a lot of insight into her issues.

Underdeveloped characters aren’t helped by a plot that’s voyd void of nuance. I almost find it insulting that a single PR campaign was enough to get legal rights for supers reinstated, and was confused by how the superhero ban seemed to be a worldwide law. 

This is where I think it would have been helpful to have a time skip between the movies. Not necessarily a long one, but at least a couple of months. This would also address how Violet suddenly became more competent with her powers when she had just gotten comfortable using them in the first place. 

Having some time pass between movies would have given time for the groundwork for superhero reinstatement to take place, paving the way for the new law to pass. I mean, current events should show how difficult it is to make meaningful change to laws, and even if having superheroes around would be the best thing since sliced bread there would almost certainly be a vocal faction that wants them kept hidden simply because there is always a group that is resistant to change. 

It would have been nice if perhaps Evelyn was simply one member of a bigger group taking drastic measures to keep superheroes out of the limelight. You could still have her be Screenslaver, but why is she the only one voicing discontent? If she’s working with a team to undermine her brother’s efforts then it opens up room for more reasonable discourse to why superheroes shouldn’t be allowed than “My parents trusted in superheroes and now they’re dead”.

Is it weird that I really liked Screenslaver but kind of hated Evelyn? Also, I can’t be the only one who thought she looked like Roxanne from Megamind.

There was a lot that was left unexplored here. I was frustrated during the big family argument at the beginning of the movie when Violet’s asking why she can’t do proper hero work that no one brings up the fact that she’s a fourteen year old kid. Likewise, Dash had the largest onscreen kill count in the last movie, but not only does that not affect him in any way he’s eager to jump back in the fray because being a superhero “defines who I am”. 

Yes, I know it was a joke, but Dash is also, like, nine. Using his powers to run track isn’t the same as going against guys with guns. If you’re not old enough to work at McDonalds you’re not old enough to fight super villains. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. I find it worrisome that during the climax neither of the Parr children even consider notifying the police that the supers have been mind controlled. 

And just like there are a plethora of reasons society might not want the supers back--the movie itself lists a couple--I’m sure Bob and Helen would have reasons for not wanting to submit to too much government control for fear of being made to do something against their morals. Being used as weapons of war or abuse of police authority immediately come to mind. 

There is of course no rule that saying that the movie has to tackle these kinds of issues. Simply executing well on the basic premise of “The Incredibles, but this time with Elastigirl” is enough for a good movie, but Brad Bird has given just enough substance for it to qualify as a mindless action flick.

During Violet’s main subplot she has to deal with the fact that her boyfriend has been subject to a botched mindwipe and no longer remembers she exists. I expected the ethics of erasing someone’s memory against their will to be brought up, or for there to be major ramifications from Tony being forced to forget the existence of one of his classmates.

Nothing ever comes of it, and at the end of the movie Violet has a line where she says Evelyn’s likely to get away with all she’s done with a slap on the wrist because she’s rich. 

It was a line that was almost too real for such a lighthearted movie, but as I walked of the theater I realized just how hypocritical it was. Violet herself had gotten out of trouble with the police earlier in the movie because of her parent’s connections with the government. The government had gotten away with altering a teenage boy’s memory, using an “unprecise science” to protect the identity of someone who was--technically speaking--breaking the law. Her parents had knowingly and willingly used their superhuman abilities in an illegal manner to basically run an ad campaign with no negative consequences and ultimately getting what they wanted in the end.

Evelyn might get away her crimes because she’s rich, but the Parrs got away with theirs because they had connections. 

All things considered, I think that the Incredibles II could have benefited from another pass or two at the script. There was no single definitive moment that ruined the movie for me, in fact, there were some parts that I thought it surpassed the original. But small flaws add up to an experience I’d sum up as “could be better”. 

[angelofberlin2000]

Keanu Reeves Is Publishing Books That Are Beautiful, Socially Conscious, and Worth Your Time

X Artists’ Books is making its mark on L.A.

February 23, 2018 Catherine Womack Art, Books

Sex, drugs, books, runs, herbs, rhythmic breathing—High Winds tries them all, but still sleep eludes him.

High Winds is the title character in trans playwright and multimedia artist Sylvan Oswald’s loosely narrative, poetic art book. Sleeplessness is a theme throughout. In the book’s appendix, the author supplies an alphabetical list of more remedies for weary insomniacs, among them Ambien, Ativan, cannabis (Indica), ear plugs, eye masks, herbal tea, hypnosis, meditation, melatonin, and warm milk.

High Winds is a small, pastel-hued book with sunset-inspired geometric graphic designs by L.A.-based artist Jessica Fleischmann and pithy, all-caps text by Oswald. It is one of four books released last year by the new L.A.-based publisher X Artists’ Books (XAB). On Tuesday, February 27, Oswald will appear alongside XAB co-founders Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever for a PEN USA event featuring readings, projections of artwork from the books, and a moderated conversation. (Sadly, the event is sold out.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZeFnZelLXH/

It’s not unusual for Hollywood celebrities like Reeves to dabble in off-screen passion projects. L.A. is peppered with movie star-backed restaurants, boutiques, and clothing lines.

“I do have a fairly entrepreneurial aspect,” Reeves says. “That first manifested itself with producing. So this to me feels a little like that.”

In addition to his production company, Company Films, the 53-year old actor also manufactures motorcycles. A custom-built, one-of-a-kind Arch motorcycle starts at $78,000.

The price point for XAB’s books is far more modest. The publisher’s available titles range in price from $25 to $60, and all four can be snagged for $130 with a subscription.

The tone of this project feels different, too; less turbo-charged masculinity and more subtle, socially conscious artistry. That sensibility comes in part from artist Alexandra Grant, XAB’s cofounder and Reeves’s longtime friend.

On a recent Friday afternoon in Hollywood, Reeves and Grant sat around a table of XAB books to talk about their new company. In conversation, the two friends share an easy rapport and speak in a comfortable shorthand fueled by inside jokes and knowing smiles.

It was, in fact, an inside joke among friends that led to their first literary collaboration seven years ago. Ode to Happiness is a tongue-in-cheek adult picture book with text by Reeves and illustrations by Grant. It reminds readers that things could always be worse as the miserable protagonist washes his hair with “regret shampoo” and dons “alone again silk pajamas.”

For Ode to Happiness and the pair’s second collaboration, Shadows, Grant and Reeves worked with the German publisher Steidl.

“We learned from that,” Reeves says. “Creatively, we wanted to work with other people and give them opportunity.”

“I have this memory of being at Steidl,” Grant adds. “And that world has a lot in common with the production world of film in that there’s a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting. But there was this moment there when Keanu, who is Canadian, said, ‘We’re going to show them some American can-do!’”

Grant laughs as Reeves repeats the line in a slow, exaggerated southern drawl.

“We really like ‘can-do,’” Grant continues. “Some people are the kind of dreamers who have a lot of ideas but don’t like to get things done. I think we both like to have the idea and get it into the world.”

And so XAB was born. (It launched officially during the summer of 2017). Grant explains that XAB’s goal was never to create exhibition catalogues or artists’ monographs. Instead, they were interested in publishing books featuring “unusual collaborations,” books that “don’t really have a place because they’re between genres.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZeFnZelLXH/

One of those in-between genre projects is The Words of Others, an English translation of Argentinian artist León Ferrari’s politically charged, cut-and-paste text from the 1960s. A mashup of newspaper headlines, excerpts from the Bible and quotes from Lyndon Johnson, Pope Paul VI, and Hitler, the book critiques the Vietnam war in graphic detail. Last fall, XAB participated in the cross-institutional Latin-American art event Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA with a performative reading of the text at REDCAT.

“Thematically we’re really interested in darkness and politics,” Grant says. “We’re also interested in marginal voices that are exciting, and in exploring the performative and experimental. I think a book can become a seed, a DNA for world-building.”

Like that live endurance reading of The Words of Others, XAB’s other titles have sparked events, performances and exhibitions. “Each book has gone on to stimulate real-world opportunities and possibilities for the artists in the same way that Shadows did for us as artists,” Grant says. She references that phenomenon as one of the reasons the duo likes to participate in events like next week’s PEN USA conversation: “To build real community, and also have an IRL experience.”

High Winds hits all those marks. Last fall, Oswald produced three performances derived from his book, complete with a live score by Jerome Ellis and projections of Fleishmann’s designs.

Reeves loves Oswald’s meandering, insomniac’s tale. “Quality,” he says, leaning forward as if to land a big pitch. (The actor is natural showman, a salesman, but a sincere one.) “High Winds is rock-and-roll, baby!”

[tylerstitties]

Sex, drugs, books, runs, herbs, rhythmic breathing—High Winds tries them all, but still sleep eludes him.

High Winds is the title character in trans playwright and multimedia artist Sylvan Oswald’s loosely narrative, poetic art book. Sleeplessness is a theme throughout. In the book’s appendix, the author supplies an alphabetical list of more remedies for weary insomniacs, among them Ambien, Ativan, cannabis (Indica), ear plugs, eye masks, herbal tea, hypnosis, meditation, melatonin, and warm milk.

High Winds is a small, pastel-hued book with sunset-inspired geometric graphic designs by L.A.-based artist Jessica Fleischmann and pithy, all-caps text by Oswald. It is one of four books released last year by the new L.A.-based publisher X Artists’ Books (XAB). On Tuesday, February 27, Oswald will appear alongside XAB co-founders Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever for a PEN USA event featuring readings, projections of artwork from the books, and a moderated conversation. (Sadly, the event is sold out.)

It’s not unusual for Hollywood celebrities like Reeves to dabble in off-screen passion projects. L.A. is peppered with movie star-backed restaurants, boutiques, and clothing lines.

“I do have a fairly entrepreneurial aspect,” Reeves says. “That first manifested itself with producing. So this to me feels a little like that.”

In addition to his production company, Company Films, the 53-year old actor also manufactures motorcycles. A custom-built, one-of-a-kind Arch motorcycle starts at $78,000.

The price point for XAB’s books is far more modest. The publisher’s available titles range in price from $25 to $60, and all four can be snagged for $130 with a subscription.

The tone of this project feels different, too; less turbo-charged masculinity and more subtle, socially conscious artistry. That sensibility comes in part from artist Alexandra Grant, XAB’s cofounder and Reeves’s longtime friend.

On a recent Friday afternoon in Hollywood, Reeves and Grant sat around a table of XAB books to talk about their new company. In conversation, the two friends share an easy rapport and speak in a comfortable shorthand fueled by inside jokes and knowing smiles.

It was, in fact, an inside joke among friends that led to their first literary collaboration seven years ago. Ode to Happiness is a tongue-in-cheek adult picture book with text by Reeves and illustrations by Grant. It reminds readers that things could always be worse as the miserable protagonist washes his hair with “regret shampoo” and dons “alone again silk pajamas.”

For Ode to Happiness and the pair’s second collaboration, Shadows, Grant and Reeves worked with the German publisher Steidl.

“We learned from that,” Reeves says. “Creatively, we wanted to work with other people and give them opportunity.”

“I have this memory of being at Steidl,” Grant adds. “And that world has a lot in common with the production world of film in that there’s a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting. But there was this moment there when Keanu, who is Canadian, said, ‘We’re going to show them some American can-do!’”

Grant laughs as Reeves repeats the line in a slow, exaggerated southern drawl.

“We really like ‘can-do,’” Grant continues. “Some people are the kind of dreamers who have a lot of ideas but don’t like to get things done. I think we both like to have the idea and get it into the world.”

And so XAB was born. (It launched officially during the summer of 2017). Grant explains that XAB’s goal was never to create exhibition catalogues or artists’ monographs. Instead, they were interested in publishing books featuring “unusual collaborations,” books that “don’t really have a place because they’re between genres.”

One of those in-between genre projects is The Words of Others, an English translation of Argentinian artist León Ferrari’s politically charged, cut-and-paste text from the 1960s. A mashup of newspaper headlines, excerpts from the Bible and quotes from Lyndon Johnson, Pope Paul VI, and Hitler, the book critiques the Vietnam war in graphic detail. Last fall, XAB participated in the cross-institutional Latin-American art event Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA with a performative reading of the text at REDCAT.

“Thematically we’re really interested in darkness and politics,” Grant says. “We’re also interested in marginal voices that are exciting, and in exploring the performative and experimental. I think a book can become a seed, a DNA for world-building.”

Like that live endurance reading of The Words of Others, XAB’s other titles have sparked events, performances and exhibitions. “Each book has gone on to stimulate real-world opportunities and possibilities for the artists in the same way that Shadows did for us as artists,” Grant says. She references that phenomenon as one of the reasons the duo likes to participate in events like next week’s PEN USA conversation: “To build real community, and also have an IRL experience.”

High Winds hits all those marks. Last fall, Oswald produced three performances derived from his book, complete with a live score by Jerome Ellis and projections of Fleishmann’s designs.

Reeves loves Oswald’s meandering, insomniac’s tale. “Quality,” he says, leaning forward as if to land a big pitch. (The actor is natural showman, a salesman, but a sincere one.) “High Winds is rock-and-roll, baby!” (x)

[allenmendezsr]

Panic Miracle (tm): Top Panic Attacks & Anxiety Offer On CB!

New Post has been published on https://autotraffixpro.app/allenmendezsr/panic-miracle-tm-top-panic-attacks-anxiety-offer-on-cb/

Panic Miracle (tm): Top Panic Attacks & Anxiety Offer On CB!

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    ATTENTION! If You or Someone You Love is Suffering from Panic Attacks or Anxiety, Then This Will Be the Most Important Letter You Will Ever Read…

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Even If You Have Severe Anxiety or Panic Attacks

Even If You Have Chronic Agoraphobia or Social Phobia

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Dear Friend,

Are you struggling to treat of your panic attacks or general anxiety? Are you frustrated, in pain, or feeling constant worry and stress for not being able to properly deal with your anxiety despite all your efforts ? Are you tired of the way your panic attacks and anxiety make you feel? Are you avoiding situations, or things that you wish to do or participate in because of your fear and anxiety? Do you feel that life is passing you by? Do you fear leaving the house, making holiday plans or business travel? Do you fear situations where you are asked to speak in front of people, or getting stuck in traffic? Do you feel like a prisoner to your panic attacks and anxiety that you have forgotten what it was like to be normal?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then let me tell you that I know exactly how you feel, because I personally had gone through the same experience years ago. I have battled with my panic attacks and social anxiety for more than a decade until I have finally found a treatment, and I am now a free and confident individual living life to the fullest.

You’re about to discover what might be the most powerful panic treatment system ever developed. It’s the same system thousands of people, just like you, used to permanently treat their panic attacks and achieve freedom from general anxiety.

My name is Chris Bayliss and over the past 14 years, through a long process of trial, error and experimentation, I have developed a sure-fire, 100% guaranteed, clinically researched system that is backed by 75,000+ hours of expertise for treating panic attacks and anxiety. This is a very rare, highly unique and potently powerful general anxiety treatment system, which very few people even know exists…

Do You Experience Any of the Following Mental, Emotional or Physical Symptoms?

If you are suffering from any of the above symptoms, and if you would like to learn how to treat your panic attacks and general anxiety … without drugs, without typical treatments, and without any side effects, then this will be the most important letter you will ever read. I guarantee it and I’ve got the results to prove it!

What Makes This Breakthrough System So Unique is That it Gives You The Power To…

Treat Panic Attacks and General Anxiety permanently. It’s a fact – 95% of the people who use conventional treatments are able to control their panic attacks temporarily and sometimes they end up worse than when they started. Now you can learn how to be in the successful 5% group that keeps it off forever. Note that conventional treatments such as medications, psychiatrics treatments and even lifestyle changes and breathing techniques, mostly calm the body and address the symptoms of anxiety and thus working short-term. Don’t believe those web sites that offer a fast remedy to panic attacks or anxiety. No magic pill or fix-it-all product exists. The solution I now offer is an intelligent, scientific approach that gets panic attacks under control and eliminates general anxiety within few short weeks (depending on the severity). My program also teaches you how to prevent panic attacks recurrence.

Treat Panic Attacks and General Anxiety holistically. It’s a fact- treating panic attacks can never be achieved by tackling one of the many factors responsible for generating the addictive and destructive panic and anxiety attack cycle. If you’ve ever tried to treat anxiety using a one-dimensional treatment like drugs, or breathing techniques and failed it’s probably because you have tackled only one aspect of the condition and in the wrong direction. Not only will this system teach you the only way to prevent the formation of panic attacks, you will also learn the only way to treat panic attacks and anxiety for good – the holistic way.

Treat Panic Attacks and General Anxiety without drugs or typical Anxiety treatments. Drugs to treat anxiety sometimes work in a partial way and temporarily but the side effects are nasty. The tiny handful panic attacks sufferers who have learned how to treat their anxieties from within and without ever using drugs or over the counters are the only people in the world who keep their mental and emotional system free of panic attacks, anxiety and phobias permanently. Now you can learn these panic treatment secrets from a nutritionist and a former sufferer who knows from real-world experience exactly how it’s done. Panic Miracle promotes a healthy mental environment while eliminating the destructive anxiety cycle and the fear of having another panic attack and preventing their recurrence naturally and safely within 8 weeks.

What The Panic Miracle is NOT!

The Panic Miracle program is NOT another drug, psychological therapy or a set of breathing techniques. It is not the usual diet and herbal supplementation program or another over the counter medication that most people pass around. It is not a medical procedure either. This unique holistic approach and order of protocols to eliminate all types of panic attacks, phobias and anxiety and control their recurrence is for the most part unlike anything you’ll find elsewhere. Everything covered in the program is safe & natural. Moreover, instead of learning how to deal with a panic attack once it happens, you will learn how to free yourself from any future panic attacks and anxiety permanently. My program is NOT something that tries to fix the problem by swallowing pills to clam the fear. With my approach, you will be able to experience complete freedom from panic attacks while preventing their recurrence usually in less than 8 weeks.

Why Should You Listen To Me?

There are thousands of panic and anxiety relief programs and dozens of people claiming to be experts. However, very few of these so-called “anxiety experts” practice what they preach or have the credentials to back up their claims. Since you’re probably wondering how this program is different, here’s the whole story:

I battled with panic attacks, general anxiety and social phobias for more than 14 years . Just like you, I have experienced all the fear, anxiety and panic attacks that have crippled my life to a degree that I was out of work and afraid to leave my home, not to mention talking to people (which was my bread and butter) or even driving to work. Similar to you, I took a myriad of prescription medications and over the counters to calm the fears and to take back control of my life but that showed little to no results.

I went to numerous doctors and psychologist and tried almost everything. I had experienced many breaking points in my life as an anxiety sufferer but after the last one (you can read about it in my story below) which really took the best of me, I had started the long, frustrating road of trial and error, trying and failing, until I have finally pieced a complete and comprehensive holistic system used by thousands of panic sufferers to permanently treat the cause of panic attacks and general anxiety, including myself.

After I the creation and first publication of the Panic Miracle program, I became involved in the alternative health industry as a medical researcher, health consultant, nutrition specialist and freelance writer for nearly 17 years. I’m also the author and co-author of several best selling alternative health books and dozens of articles.

Since Panic Miracle was first published in 2004, approx 378,000 people around the globe had used the techniques within the book an had completely changed their lives.

My Long Frustrating Battle With Panic Attacks and General Anxiety

It all began with a sweep of nausea at the mall in my late teens. The panic descended on me so quickly (and for no reason at all), that I didn’t even know what it was for the first few months. The first time I experienced an episode I was with a group of friends shopping for new school clothes. We were entering our senior year of high school and were out finding just the “right look.” I was having a great time, when suddenly I felt very woozy. My heart started pounding; I became very hot (as if I spiked a fever); sweat dripped from my brow; my skin became clammy; my face drained of color; I couldn’t breathe and I felt sick to my stomach. My friends knew right away that something was wrong and got me home quickly. Certain that I just had picked up a virus or maybe even some food poisoning, I headed for bed the rest of the day. By morning I was fine. I felt normal, so I went off to my part time job and forgot about it. But I wasn’t fine. This dreaded disease called anxiety had infiltrated my life and things were about to get worse – much, much worse. My mind had now associated the mall and hanging out with my friends with panic. So, of course the next time I was in the same situation it happened again…and again…and again. As is usually the case with panic sufferers, I began to avoid any situation that I thought would bring on an attack: the mall; the movies; busy places; my friends; and eventually even school. By Christmastime I was unable to leave my home without severe panic symptoms ensuring. I was sick and getting sicker. My parents didn’t know what was going on and dragged me from doctor to doctor looking for answers. In the meantime I bounced between fits of depression and obvious episodes of panic. I was convinced that I was dying of some horrible disease, which just deepened my sense of anxiety. Nothing could calm my fears – not negative test results and certainly not the assurances of dozens of doctors. Without any hope for a diagnosis, let alone a treatment, I continued with my life as best I could, avoiding any situation that might induce an attack, making changes to my plans at moment’s notice.

Like So Many Other Panic Attack and Anxiety Sufferers Discover, The Answers I Desperately Wanted Weren’t Going to Be Available To Me

The years that followed were wrought with feelings that I was losing my mind and that because of this panic that I would never have a real life. My family doctor ran thousands of dollars worth of tests, only to refer me to a psychiatrist, who sent me for more tests to rule out any physical condition. What they finally concluded was “it was all in my head.” Then came a multitude of medications which always managed to make me feel worse. I tried anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to no avail. Nothing worked. Not even psychotherapy or group counseling could treat me. Anxiety had a grip on me and it wasn’t letting up.

My Breaking Point…

I began having 10 to 20 monstrous and paralyzing panic attacks a day. I was crying, curled up like a baby in need of salvation. My life became a living hell with constant fear along with depersonalization, headaches, sweating, dizziness, and palpitations. I was terrified from having to experience the next panic attacks that I thought I was going med. I was positive that the next panic attack would surely kill me, physically, not only emotionally.

I really wanted help and I have went crying for help to numerous psychiatrists and doctors and took anti-depressants and myriad of sedatives to calm my fears but the side effects were horrible and my anxiety and fears were worse than ever!

After years of therapies and drugs I still experienced severe and relentless panic attacks. The most significant one was 15 years ago and I still remember that night clearly. That panic attack was so intense it almost drove me to the edge of insanity. I had to do something and fast. Something had to be done and it had to be done quickly or I was going to lose my mind. It was time to take action! Deep down, I felt there must have been another option, a healthier alternative.

It was then that I had started the long, frustrating road of trial and error until I have finally pieced a complete and comprehensive holistic system used by thousands of men and women to permanently cure the REAL cause of panic attacks and anxiety.

14 Years of Study, Research, Trial, Error and Experimentation

After 14 years of doctors, medicines and ever increasing bouts of panic and depression, I finally managed to get myself together enough using relaxation and breathing techniques (coupled with weekly therapy sessions) to get a part time job and begin my life. Still, I could not escape these episodes of sheer panic. That’s when I began to anticipate getting fired because of all the days of work I missed due to an inability to leave my home. I bounced from job to job. Since I missed so much work I was always looking for somewhere new to escape to before my boss got fed up and fired me. My strategy seemed to work, except for the fact that I could never get comfortable enough at a job to really learn anything and gain the experience I needed to advance in my career. Than when I did find a job I loved I felt even worse about myself when I decided it was time to leave. I missing good opportunities and I knew it. Even falling in love didn’t help quench my panic. It only made it more intense as I brought another person into my world of panic and problems. I was in my mid-20’s and needed help.

I made a solemn vow that… No matter what it cost or how long will it take, I was going to find a LASTING solution for my chronic panic attacks! I started a desperate quest that spanned 14 years of heartbreaking frustration and disappointment… During my panic attacks quest I was treated by dozens and dozens of M.Ds, specialists, herbalists, naturopaths, hydro-therapists, and even spiritual “healers”. In addition to that, I researched literally hundreds of “health” and psychology related books, health journals, and health magazines…and spent hours upon hours scouring one medical study after another. And I have also spent numerous hours picking the brains of various “healers” or “specialists” in person or on the phone. When none of that worked, I tried every imaginable panic treatment I could get my hands on…including numerous breathing techniques, special diets, over the counters, herbs, Traditional Chinese Medicine, hypnosis, visualizations, yoga and affirmations. Yet despite years of intense effort…giving my panic quest ALL my heart and soul…

I Still Suffered From Recurring Panic Attacks!

After none of the above treatments could practically solve my chronic recurring panic attacks and anxiety and the myriad of symptoms that accompanied this condition or had any impact on my condition (some treatments made my condition much worse and my general health was deteriorating).

I came to the final conclusion that there were no magic pills or fix-it-all products to panic attacks. When the real cause of panic attacks and anxiety is neglected, your panic attacks will often become worse.

Now, After 14 Years of Desperate Research and Experiments I Have Found The Missing Piece I Was Searching For

One evening, I discovered a very important piece of information while talking with an alternative medicine expert and a holistic doctor about a book that had nothing to do with panic attacks, anxiety or fear. The piece of information stood out as the missing piece I was desperately searching for. I took that piece of information and, together with the other 14 years worth of information that I had collected, compiled a plan to eliminate panic attacks, anxiety and phobias. I followed that plan for 5 weeks and. . .

My Panic Attacks Were Gone and Had Never Retuned and I Was Also Finally Free From All Anxiety Symptoms

After learning, improving and applying this new set of strategies and techniques along with several tricks I have compiled over the years either from books or self experiments, all my panic attacks and anxiety were gone. Permanently gone! and life couldn’t get any better. I was so relieved . A simple holistic strategy had opened the door to my new and much more colorful fear free life. My plan had worked. I was finally from all anxiety and panic related symptoms. As such, fourteen years after beginning my mission, I got married and had become the proud parent of two beautiful, healthy children. I was also excited to see that other seemingly unrelated health issues I was suffering from had dramatically improved. The path to permanent panic and anxiety freedom has been paved! But it wasn’t there that my miracle cure surfaced. Now I am going to share this miracle with you.

Sharon Was Able to Control and Prevent All Future Panic Attacks in Less Than 7 Weeks After She Followed My Proven 3-Step System

Here’s an interesting story about a friend of mine who suffered from spontaneous panic attacks along with agoraphobia. She was a very bright mid 30’s women yet unemployed because of her condition. She was practically living on sedatives and other anxiety medications and was at one point in dire need of reassurance and help. I changed her name for privacy. Sharon was treated by 7 different psychiatrists over the years who advised her to keep taking the medications. She had followed my 3-step plan with some restrictions and limitations. I showed her how to reverse her condition by following the same approach you’re about to learn. Sharon committed herself to following the program. After less than 7 weeks (from the 15th of April until the June 4, 2014), Sharon’s panic attacks and agoraphobia had disappeared. For Sharon it was a life changing experience. I developed this program so I could share my proven system with men and women around the world. Everything I taught Sharon and discovered from my research is immediately available to you through this best selling Panic Miracle program.

Amazingly, Every Other Man and Woman Who Used This Method Got the SAME Results

I also started testing my system on other panic attack and other types of anxiety sufferers beside me and it yield the same shocking and groundbreaking results. In less than 7 weeks on average 28 out of 28 men and women participating in my experiment had completely got rid of their panic attacks and regain their lives. What’s even more exciting is that it worked on all types of panic attacks and on all levels of severity and with men and women of any age.

All men and women who used this method had experienced the following benefits:

No More Panic Attacks (Regardless of Type or Severity)

No More Anxiety Symptoms

No More Fear of Leaving The House

No More Fear or Driving Or From Getting Stuck In Traffic

No More Fear of Meetings or Public Speaking

Improved Self Confidence

Improved General Health and Quality of Life

So now I took the time, tweaked and refined the system to completion to ensure it will yield the most remarkable long lasting results. Since then thousands of men and women worldwide have used my 3-step system successfully and got rid of their panic attacks, phobias and anxiety quickly, safely, naturally and for good.

Your Brain Activity and Panic Attack

Actual scientific studies on the brain (scan demonstrations) show that once a person goes through a panic attack, the activity in his brain (the blood flow) shifts from the front of the brain (where rational thoughts are processed) to the mid brain (the part of brain which is most active in time of threat when a prehistoric/survival mode) which is characterized by a flight or fight response.

Why am I telling you this?

Simple. If your knew how to control your mental activity in a way that when a panic attack occures you can transfer your brain activity back to a rational mode (to the front part of your brain), you can easily overcome any panic attack, regardless of its severity.

With my set of simple and easy to follow techniques you will learn how to safely and without side effects control that activity not only during a panic attack but even before it occurs so you can permanently prevent any anxiety or panic attack recurrence.

The Big Discoveries That Changed Everything For Me…

In the past, whenever I experienced fear of leaving the house, general anxiety or panic attack due to public speaking, since they were so tormenting and scary I used to try to deal with the “event” itself the problems my anxiety was causing me, I used to try to handle the symptoms and stop the problem itself. Hardly did I know then, that by taking this route I will NEVER cure or prevent my panic attacks from recurring. In fact, trying to fix your condition this way will in most cases make it much worse in the long run.

You must first UNDERSTAND and then DEAL with the deep-rooted mental elements and barriers that are responsible for the anxiety, fear and panic attacks you’re experiencing. This is the only way to freedom. Here are 3 of these fundamental elements:

1. Panic and Anxiety Are Addictions Not a Disease

Prescription drugs or psychological therapy are the two main options that each anxiety sufferer is offered when searching for help. These two options are aimed at fixing the disease, to calm or eliminate the “thing” which is ‘all in your head” that’s causing you all this trouble and destroying your life.

The truth is, anxiety and panic attacks are not diseases or conditions you need to treat, fix or cure. Panic attacks and anxiety are addictions you need to get rid of.

The moment you understand that panic attacks and anxiety are addictions (these two conditions share many of the symptoms of conventional drug or drinking addictions) and not as a disease and handle them as such, you can literally control and eliminate almost all types of anxiety and panic attacks simply, easily and safely. My program shows you several quick techniques to utilize this approach.

2. Panic and Anxiety Trick You All The Time

Panic is a powerful manipulator. It uses its force to trick you into doing what it wants so you can make it stronger and stronger, all while thinking you’re doing what is necessary to stop it in its tracks.

The first trick that panic plays is trying to get you to figure out what is causing it. As soon as you have your first panic attack, your mind struggles to figure out what happened. If you can’t come up with a good reason for your anxiety (like an accident, a robbery or something even worse), than your mind will make one up. You gauge your symptoms and yourself a reason for it which is usually one of two things:

1. there is something terribly wrong with you physically

2. or you are losing your mind

The first thing people worry about when a panic attack strikes is fainting. The problem is, while you may feel dizzy and light-headed, you will not faint. You want to know why? Because people faint when their blood pressures dives too low and when you have a panic attack, your blood pressure soars upward!

Secondly, people experiencing repeated panic attacks worry that they are either dying (or at least very ill), or that they are going crazy. Don’t worry. Neither of these assumptions is correct either. You aren’t ill – either physically or mentally –you are just being tricked into thinking so. Your mind and body is tricking you into feeling fear –real fear – when there isn’t any reason for it. That’s how insidious panic works!

The Panic Miracle program will show you some very unique and powerful ways to overcome the Panic trick and set the road to freedom from fear and anxiety.

3. Panic and Anxiety Fears Are Not Real and Will Not Harm You

The fact is that we don’t have to be in danger to become afraid. Watch any good horror movie and your body will respond with fear, even though your mind knows there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. That is the kind of synthetic fear panic uses to grab hold of its victim. You are driven from a discomfort situation into a fearful one.

One of the most insidious tricks panic uses to get – and keep you – in its grip is to make you confuse danger with discomfort. Your body instinctively responds to danger –real danger – by fighting, fleeing or freezing (along with other symptoms such as: dizziness, rapid tingles (paresthesias) and rapid heart beat. That is nature’s way of keeping us alive, and safe.

When we are uncomfortable, the natural response is to chill out and relax. This makes it go away. But, when panic makes us think that an uncomfortable situation is actually dangerous, we respond in the exact opposite way that we should, which only increases our anxiety and keeps the cycle of panic moving forward. Before you know it, you have let panic trick you into believing that every corner hides danger.

Well, these fears are not real. The fear of leaving your house, the fear of driving, publicly speaking or the fear of having another panic attack, are all imaginary and don’t exist even in your head. Even if the bodily sensations are frightening, there’s nothing to fear. No damage will be done to you. Your fear is simply empowered by your bodily sensations. I know its hard to accept this now, but the moment you do accept the TRUE and REAL nature of fear and how it works on you, all of your anxieties and phobias will melt away- like that!

The Panic Addiction, The Constant Imaginary Fear and The Fear of Having Another Panic Attack Are the Root Of Your Problem

The ONLY way to achieve complete freedom from anxiety and panic attacks is to understand how to wave cycle of anxiety works, how you are becoming an addict to the imaginary fear and to the false notion that you’re sick and need to be cured and by finally breaking the vicious cycle of fear of having another panic attack.

The moment you overcome the fear of having another panic attack, the cycle is broken and you’re free.

Unless you break the cycle of fear and panic attack addiction, your next anxiety attack will always be lurking around the corner waiting to take control over you. Avoiding situations that make you anxious or calming your fear to the point where they are not bothering don’t work in 95% of the cases.

The Panic Miracle program has already helped thousands of people to become free from the destructive, crippling and addictive cycle of panic and anxiety and gain back their lives and you can too.

WARNING: Panic and Anxiety Drugs May Cause Serious Side Effects

The most common class of panic and anti-anxiety drugs are called: Benzodiazepines. They include:

Xanax (alprazolam)

Klonopin (clonazepam)

Valium (diazepam)

Ativan (lorazepam)

Benzodiazepines drugs act fast by reducing brain activity thus bringing relief within thirty minutes to an hour. Benzodiazepines are recommended to be taken during a panic attack or an anxiety episode. But they have some very unpleasant side effects, especially when increasing the dosage (what most panic attack sufferers often are inclined to do).

They can cause sleepiness, fogginess, and un-coordination even on low doses of benzodiazepines, which can lead to problems with work, school, or everyday activities such as driving. When benzodiazepines are built up in the body due to their slow metabolization, the result can lead to the following common side-effects of benzodiazepines or tranquilizers which include but are not limited to:

Drowsiness, lack of energy

Clumsiness, slow reflexes

Slurred speech

Confusion and disorientation

Depression

Dizziness, lightheadedness

Impaired thinking and judgment

Memory loss, forgetfulness

Nausea, stomach upset

Blurred or double vision

Benzodiazepines can also cause depression and suicidal thoughts and feelings, emotional blunting or numbness. There are also more severe side effects which can occur by taking anti-anxiety drugs, including:

Mania

Hostility and rage

Aggressive or impulsive behavior

Hallucinations

As you can see, not only do common drugs aimed at treating anxiety and panic attacks do NOT tackle the deep-rooted causes of anxiety, they can cause some serious, even dangerous side effects that can eventually worsen your condition.

The Only Way You Can Ever Cure Your Anxiety and Panic Attacks and Prevent Their Recurrence is by Correctly Diagnosing Your Condition and By Breaking The Destructive and Addictive Cycle of Fear and Anxiety

Instead of treating your panic attacks and anxiety as a psychiatric disease that you need to fix by calming the fear, lowering brain activity or using breathing, diet and lifestyle changes to relax, the ONLY way to permanently become free from panic attacks and gain control over your anxiety is to learn exactly how to break the addictive cycle of anxiety and overcome the panic trick. This can be done safely, quickly and without any side effects using the protocols you will learn in Panic Miracle.

When I finally figured out the missing piece to the panic puzzle along with what was going on in the anxiety and drug industries, I decided I had to take action so I put things on paper and began guiding other panic and anxiety sufferers using this new system I developed. Now, for the first time ever, the same panic cure system that helped thousands of anxiety sufferers all over the world to permanently cure panic attacks and eliminate all anxiety related symptoms is available to you in a single, jam-packed, 250 page e-book:

Introducing…

“Panic Miracle ”

The Only Holistic System In Existence That Will Teach YOU How To Permanently Cure Your Panic Attacks and General Anxiety, Regain Your Self Confidence, and Enjoy Life Without Fear!

“Panic Miracle System” is a 250 page downloadable e-book, jam-packed cover to cover with all the secret natural set of panic attack cure techniques, unique powerful protocols and the step-by step holistic panic attack system I’ve discovered in over 14 years of panic attack and anxiety research. This program contains all the information you’ll ever need to eliminate your panic attack permanently without drugs, without therapy and without any side effects.

A CLINICALLY PROVEN Holistic Plan for Quickly and Permanently Stopping Panic Attacks and Anxiety Naturally and Safely, Boosting Self Confidence, and Regaining Your Life Back

SUCCESSFULLY Used by 1,000s of Men and Women World-wide

BEST-SELLING Guide of its Type on the Web

INSTANTLY Downloadable

250 Pages JAM-PACKED with Invaluable Advice and Instruction

Presented in a Step-By-Step, Easy-to-Understand and Logical Format

Developed, Refined and Perfected Over 14 Years or Hard Work

Backed By Over 75,000 Hours of Intense Research

Accompanied by FREE Private eMail Counseling from Me for 3 Months, Plus lifetime updates Worth at Least $250 (see Free Bonuses below)!

Panic Miracle Is Completely Unique and Different From Any Other Information Source Or Anxiety Solution Because…

Panic Miracle (TM) is Customizable for Your Unique Condition Every person is completely different. No two reasons for panic attacks are exactly the same. That’s why the Panic Miracle TM system includes guidelines as to how you can customize the strategies and methods for your unique situation. You will be taught, step-by-step, how to be your own ‘scientist’ and detect subtle factors within your own body, lifestyle and environment that need attention while working with the plan to overcome your anxiety.

Panic Miracle (TM) is a Lifetime Solution As It Helps You To Permanently Prevent not Just Deal With Panic Attacks Rather than fully empowering you, most methods offer coping strategies on how to get over a panic attack once it occurs. Panic Miracle will show you a unique set of protocols that can free you from ever having another panic attack again, if followed correctly. The program delivers LASTING results. By using the correct approach found in the program, you will neer have to suffer from another anxiety attack or phobia in your lifetime.

Panic Miracle (TM) Was Authored By a Real Panic and Anxiety Sufferer.For more than 14 years I suffered from recurring often severe panic attacks and anxiety episodes, agoraphobia, fear of driving and public speaking. These are not theories written by some science geek that never had a panic attacks or suffered from anxiety in his life. I used this system myself and still follow it as we speak. I practice what I preach. Everything you will read and apply was written from a personal perspective, research and experience without any technical jargon.

Panic Miracle (TM) is Interactive: The Program Shows You Exactly How to Overcome Your Panic and Anxiety Attacks WHILE You Follow It. As Soon As You Start Following The Methods in The Program: You Will Immediately See Results. With Panic Miracle, you will start noticing dramatic positive results almost instantaneously as you start following the techniques in the program and the more you advance with the program, the more you will feel empowered.

Panic Miracle (TM) is Practical, Not Demanding and Difficult and it Works FAST Many panic or anxiety programs are very demanding, difficult, and sometimes downright unrealistic. The Panic Miracle TM system is very practical. It’s easy to naturally incorporate into your current lifestyles. You will not have to go too far out of your way to follow the instructions, nor will you have to make unreasonable commitments to outrageous and absurd regimes or schedules.

Panic Miracle (TM) is Easy to Understand and Logically Laid Out Don’t worry about not knowing much about human anatomy, psychology or medical terminology. I wrote the Panic Miracle TM plan with the layperson in mind. It is presented in an easy-to-understand language and an easy-to-follow, logical and organized format.

Panic Miracle (TM) is Continually Updated I learn new things every single day from continued research, testing and experimentation. I also get a lot of ideas as to how I can improve Panic Miracle TM from the men and women that I counsel. I am therefore constantly in the process of refining and perfecting Panic Miracle. These updates, no matter how extensive, are made available to my previous customers for absolutely free!

Panic Miracle (TM) Offers Exclusive Personal One-On-One Counseling The Panic Miracle™ system is the ONLY panic and anxiety cure system in existence that offers FREE professional private email counseling and support from a nutrition specialist and a 14 year medical researcher with proven clinical experience. Let me ask you, how many more panic and anxiety treatments will offer you this kind of professional, personal and direct help, reassurance and support?

Here Is a Small Sample Of What You’ll Learn When You Download Your Copy Of The Panic Miracle™ System Today:

The unique and clinically proven Panic Miracle:3-step holistic anxiety and panic attacks cure system- 97.8% success rate at stopping anxiety and panic attacks permanently

The shocking truth about conventional panic and anxiety treatments and the medication trap and how you can finally free yourself and use the natural approach forever.

Discover exactly why panic attacks and anxiety hold you captive. There are several things that most panic and anxiety sufferers do WRONG when trying to escape these feelings of helplessness. Learn what they are and how to avoid these critical mistakes.

Panic is a great manipulator. It uses its force to trick you into doing what it wants so you can make it stronger and stronger. Discover powerful and original techniques to overcome the tricks panic plays on you.

Finally: Discover how to break the viscous cycle of trying to protect yourself using a unique set of techniques.

7 UNIQUE and EXCLUSIVE steps to analyze your panic attacks: learn exactly how to analyze your own panic attacks and anxiety episodes in the quest of figuring out what got it started in the first place.

REVEALED: Powerful 10-step self hypnosis plan to calm that inner chatter rushing through your head and triggers your anxiety

EXPOSED: Most of us who suffer with debilitating panic attacks quickly become expert liars. We hide our panic attacks through a veil of secrecy. Learn how to overcome this destructive habit quickly using a UNIQUE set of protocols.

SECRET#4: The EPE Plan: Discover how to incorporate 3 important elements in your pathway to anxiety ad panic attacks freedom

SECRET#15: a Proven set of techniques to explore the emotional impact your thoughts have on your panic attacks and anxiety: People with panic disorders tend to distort even the most basic thought into a catastrophic outcome event that creates an emotional response. Learn EXACTLY how to avoid this dangerous thinking pattern.

The 7 most important nutritional foundations to an effective panic and anxiety cure program (ignore these and you’ll it will become even more difficult to completely get rid of your panic attacks)

REVEALED: Why it is often so dangerous to follow your gut feeling: Here’s a great rule to follow when you find yourself in the throes of a panic attack.

WARNING: Unless you know when your negative thoughts have moved beyond the norm to become self defeating beliefs that can seriously aggravate your condition, you will never be able to control or prevent anxiety, panic attacks or any type of phobia.

Several of the best-kept anti-anxiety supplements that almost NOBODY knows about…compiled bya 14 year study

Why most people are trying to deal with their panic attacks using totally wrong methods… and how to modify your routines to make them twice as effective for stopping all panic attacks in their tracks and prevent their recurrence.

The amazing connection between physical activity and anxiety and why, when, where and how you can start ‘exercising’ your way to panic and anxiety freedom today!

The 2 breathing strategies that significantly help your body and mind to start heal itself, calm you thoughts and ward off panic attacks and anxiety thoughts before they occur

Why no special diet or detox program will ever cure your panic attacks, phobias or anxiety

SECRET#18: Trying to be perfect to everyone all of time isn’t just exhausting, it can be dangerous, setting you up for feelings of anxiety and panic. Discover why changing the way you think about yourself can be crucial to your success in fighting panic attacks and anxiety.

Anxiety can lead to procrastination. You feel so anxious about completing a task that you put it off. The more you put it off the more anxious you become, and there begins a new cycle of procrastination/anxiety to deal with. Discover the MOST effective method to break this downward spiral

SECRET#27: One unique way of working through the negative thoughts flooding your mind, tearing you down during a panic attack is to agree with them. Discover the most powerful technique for battling anxious thoughts: the Acceptance Paradox

5 Steps to handle any type of panic attack or anxiety episode: Our instincts tell us to resist a panic attack and to protect ourselves when one strikes. But that only makes it worse. By following these five basic steps you’ll find the right and optimal response to your panic and anxiety attack.

REVEALED: Learn the best and most effective method of facing your fears: using the Fear Hierarchy Table.

Memory Re-Scripting is a powerful tool that can be helpful in getting over traumatic events, strengthen your mind and confidence and prevent any future panic or anxiety episodes. Discover EXACTLY how to apply this powerful method.

REVELEAD: anticipating fear can and does have a powerful impact on the way you think and feel about yourself and on your panic attacks. Discover how to avoid the consequences of anticipating your fears.

Keeping a Panic Diary is One of the BEST ways to see the progression of a panic attack (and to get to understand it). Learn how to write manage a powerful panic diary using easy to follow instructions

REVEALED! The hidden truth behind your everyday activities and their negative impact on your panic attacks and anxiety episodes. Discover how to stop sabotaging your chances of getting rid of your panic attacks!

A secret yet very simple technique to stopping panic which deeply helps to rebalance any deficit of carbon dioxide in the blood that is often the result of panicked breathing.

A gentle method for reducing stress and anxiety. This method has been used for more than 4,000 years to channel negative thoughts and to control anxiety episodes.

The SURPRISING connection between posture and anxiety. Can the wrong posture aggravate your existing condition and lead to more panic attacks? The answer may shock you.

The CRUCIAL link between diet and panic attacks. Discover how your diet could be causing your anxiety and the role your diet plays in your panic.

And much much more…

Panic Miracle™ is so much more than just an “e-book” – it’s a complete holistic system for sure-fire freedom from panic attacks- possibly the most comprehensive anxiety cure system that has ever developed.

What The Panic Miracle System Can Do For You

The Panic Miracle System addresses the deep rooted causes of panic attack and general anxiety and stops them permanently. By tackling the addictive cycle of fear and anxiety using a holistic, multi dimensional approach it ensures the you will never have to suffer another anxiety attack or phobia in your lifetime. Thus you could enjoy lasting freedom from anxiety and panic attacks and finally be able to…

Leave your home, plan holidays or stay alone without any fear or anxiety

Dramatically improve your relationships with your loved ones and other people.

Achieve clarity of mind, peaceful feelings, relaxation and balanced thoughts

Experience peaceful nights without phobias or anxiety related symptoms

Boost your self confidence, and every morning enjoy the thoughts of what’s waiting for you each day instead of fearing it

Become more social, charismatic, talkative and likeable person

Enjoy flying ,driving or traveling by any means without fear or anxiety

Start experiencing activities you haven’t thought possible in the past like scuba diving or hiking.

Have complete trust in yourself and in your body that there is no danger awaits regardless of what’s ahead of you.

Take charge of your mind and thoughts. Enjoy utter freedom from unrelenting and disturbing thoughts.

Make appointments with others and socialize without concern, anxiety or worry that you will not be able to complete the meeting.

Give a speech or presentation with confidence without fear of having an anxiety attack

Save 1000’s of dollars otherwise spent of prescription drugs and therapies.

Have increased mental clarity, enthusiasm and vitality.

Your Case Is Not Unique! No Matter What The Causes or Symptoms of Your Panic and Anxiety Are, You Can Start Using This Powerful System RIGHT NOW To Pave Your Way To Permanent Freedom From Anxiety Attacks!

I am asked by many of my clients on a daily basis whether it would work for their specific case of panic attack, anxiety or phobias and I always answer the same question: regardless of how long you have been suffering from panic attacks and anxiety, I can guarantee that this program would work for you, even if you’ll need to make certain adjustment with my help to suit your individual needs and lifestyle. Take the opportunity now to free yourself from this crippling condition and fulfil your true potential. There are no unique causes for anxiety and panic attacks and the principles outlined in the Panic Miracle system required to cure and prevent your panic attack are basically the same; These principals have been proven to work and show outstanding results regardless of your age, gender of lifestyle.

The Panic Miracle System Has Been Clinically Proven To Work On All Types of Panic Attacks, Anxiety and Phobias

By following the simple 3-step approach found inside the Panic Miracle you will become permanently free from your anxiety and panic cycle and any future panic attack and its related symptoms. The best news is that the program works on all types of panic attacks, anxiety and phobias.

The Panic Miracle system has been clinically proven to work in all of the following cases:

Cued Panic Attacks

Situational Predisposed Panic Attacks

Spontaneous Panic Attacks

Agoraphobia

Specific Phobias such as the fear of driving

Social Anxiety such as the fear from public speaking

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Whatever your panic and anxiety condition is, when you finally decide to stop making the same anxiety treatment mistakes that have been holding you back and begin applying the techniques in Panic Miracle you can literally choose to become anxiety free. You will have the power to make it happen.

Why You Can’t Trust The Drug and Pharmaceutical Companies and Your Current Sources of Information

In the year 2014, Americans spent almost $3.7 billion on anxiety drugs, therapies and over-the-counter products aimed at treating anxiety disorders, according to Feedback Research Services, a health-care research firm. The anti-panic attack industry reaches billions in sales each and every year. There are hundreds of different manufacturers that produce thousands different products, which are consumed by nearly 37 million people in the United States who have panic attack!

With billions at stake, these anti-panic attack companies will tell you anything to get you to buy their products. They’ll even lie right to your face!

Many anxiety sufferers visit a psychologist or an online forum only to be given the same ancient advice: take pills or herbs, do some relaxation and breathing exercises and change your diet. Psychiatrists will gladly prescribe medication because it’s very effective as a band aid treatment and it works fast to numb the patient. Without being too judgemental, I know from personal experience and from that of my customers that both the above approaches don’t work and this is why I created the Panic Miracle program in the first place: if offers a new refreshing view on panic attacks and anxiety and tackles the deep rooted causes of this condition in the most effective way an therefore the results last a lifetime.

For more than 14 years I’ve researched and experimented with all these ‘very promising’ products only to find the true secret to lasting anxiety freedom just like you’re doing now, so I understand how it feels to be exploited like that and throw your hard earned money on the next useless pill, and over the counter and end up with nothing. I wasted thousands of dollars and was frustrated and discouraged just like you before I finally discovered what really worked.

An Important Reason You Should Try The Panic Miracle System Today:

Over 378,000 men and women in 128 countries have already used the program successfully over the past 7 years! And I’ve used the feedback from all of those men and women to refine the system into the current updated 2015 version. Not only that, but the Panic Miracle program has one of the highest satisfaction rates in the entire men and women’s health industry: 97.8% of Panic Miracle users are satisfied with the program. These reader satisfaction statistics above prove that if you apply the 3-step approach of the Panic Miracle, you WILL get results… plain and simple!

Life is Too Short to Try And Cure Panic Attacks On Your Own Through Trial And Error. Take Charge Over Your Panic and General Anxiety Right Now And Follow a Proven Step-By-Step System!

Why go through years of trial and error when you can read the Panic Miracle book and follow the practical step-by-step general anxiety and panic attack freedom techniques that took me 14 years to accomplish? By applying the “insider’s secrets” in this book you literally short cut your success by years! not to mention save yourself thousands upon thousands of dollars in the process. The methods outlined in the Panic Miracle System are methods most people NEVER discover by trying to do it on their own.

The proven and probably the fastest way to achieve any goal according to psychologists is to “model” someone who has already achieved what you want. With this system, you practically have an opportunity to model not one but thousands of people just like you who suffered from panic attack, followed the methods in the Panic Miracle System and are now completely free. You should be living an anxiety-free life, it’s your birth right. Why do things the hard way? Take Charge Over Your panic and anxiety Right Now And Follow This System!

Let Me Show You The Proven 3-Step Secret Program That Allowed Me and Thousands Of Other Women to Achieve Permanent Freedom From Panic Attacks and Anxiety For The Last 14 Years!

These are not theories written by some science geek that never had panic attacks in his life. I used this system myself and still follow it as we speak. I practice what I preach. Don’t feel bad – you’re not alone. I’ve been there too. I’ve learned slowly and painfully. I made all the mistakes, bought all the wrong products and trusted all the wrong people. I don’t want it to happen to you. I want you to know the truth about your panic attacks and how you can permanently cure it. You deserve it. That’s why I wrote this program. In my e-book I have laid out a unique easy to follow step-by-step treatment that can instantly get rid of your pain and start eliminate your anxiety by addressing the root cause. The Panic Miracle system has been tested and refined for years to make the system as easy as possible for every men and woman to follow, yet extremely effective at curing all types of panic attacks and phobias in the shortest amount of time.

ORDER TODAY and You’ll Also Receive the Following 4 FREE bonuses Worth At LEAST $557!

Exclusive Bonus #1: The Panic Miracle™ Relaxation Recordings

In this exclusive bonus you’ll get to listen to 7 one-hour relaxation MP3 audios. These wonderful audio recordings will help you relax and regain your inner peace in ways that you’ve never experienced.

-Real Value $170 or more

Exclusive Bonus #2: The Ultimate Stress Relief Guide™ By Chris Bayliss

The Ultimate Guide to Stress Relief is just what you need to finally take control and rid yourself of stress and welcome relaxation once and for all! Managing stress and knowing how to relax are both absolutely necessary to having freedom from anxiety and a healthy and happy life.

-Real Value $37 or more

Exclusive Bonus #3: Panic Miracle™ – Lifetime Updates

This program is by far the most effective and proven method to eliminating panic attacks permanently. However, I believe in constant improvement. I will always continue to research, test and refine what I have learned to make this program even better.

In fact, in the near future I plan on offering this program only as part of a membership package including several exclusive bonus reports and special updates at a substantially higher price. Order now and you are guaranteed to get all future bonus reports for FREE for life!

That is one of the awesome benefits of e-books. If a new edition of a hard copy book is released, you have to go to the bookstore or amazon.com and buy it all over again! Not so with ebooks. When a new, updated edition of Panic Miracle, is released, you get it for FREE! It’s easy – I will simply contact you through my private clients-only email list and send you instant download instructions so you can stay totally up to date on the latest anti anxiety breakthroughs..

-Real Value $100 or more

Exclusive Bonus #4: Panic Miracle™ – 3 Month Private Email Conuseling With Chris Bayliss

Yes, free private counseling, advice and guidance from a certified nutritionist and a life-long medical researcher are always just an email away. If in any time you feel confused, you can have your troublesome questions privately answered. I’d love to hear from you. Just email me. I promise you’ll get an answer in 24 hours.

This help is practically priceless. You’ll always feel that someone is there for you…so you’re never left to deal with your panic attack alone. With this free and unlimited email support you can practically be sure that… you are always on track, you are always encouraged, and… you’ll be able to complete the program more effectively and get quicker and greater results.

Mind you that because of the exclusive nature of the support I provide to my customers, and because I am a man that stands by his words, there is obviously a limit on the amount of emails I can answer a day (I already answer more than 100 daily). No matter how committed I feel to help other panic attack sufferers, this invaluable personal guidance will NOT be offered forever.

-Real Value $250 or more

So What’s the Bottom Line? How Much Does This Complete Life Changing System Cost?

The Panic Miracle System is by far the most comprehensive and effective system found online and in the physical world. It is the ONLY holistic step-by-step roadmap to permanent panic attacks and anxiety freedom in existence.

But the good news is it won’t cost you the average 1000’s of dollars a year or more for a year for doctor’s appointments and prescription drugs. And it won’t even cost you the $200 bucks or more of a single therapy sessions.

Nope. It won’t cost you anything even close to that. Normally, to get the complete 3-step program along with the bonuses and the e-book (250 pages loaded with everything I’ve learned in over 14 years of anxiety research) you would have paid $97. And at that price it truly is a bargain. But because of a very unique situation if you order now you get the program for… a one time investment of $47 (US Currency) That’s 52% off the regular price! Your investment in this life-changing e-book is now only $47!

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Yes, this is a bargain any way you look at it!

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[onceandfuturekiki]

Classic Movies for Halloween :: Part 1: Silent Film

Halloween is in a few days, and if you’re anything like me you like to immerse yourself in spooky movies and other things that make you feel the Halloween spirit. Movies are a great way to do that, but I’m really not a fan of modern horror movies. I prefer the eeriness and creepiness of films made when directors could create an atmosphere and a genuinely unsettling movie with shadows, lighting, sets, camera angles, and performances, when it was about creating a mounting feeling of dread, rather than relying on jump scares.

Some of the best scary movies ever made were made during the silent era. During the 1920s, silent film was reaching an incredible high point of what could be done with the medium, and the combination of American filmmaking that was perfecting special effects techniques, and German (and other European) filmmakers that were perfecting the expressionism, a style perfect for the horror genre, made for a decade of amazing horror films and thrillers.

Lionel Barrymore stars in this atmospheric story about an innkeeper who is so badly in debt that he murders one of his guests so he can steal the man's money. For the rest of the film he's haunted by his guilt, which manifests in his own visions, such as objects morphing into nooses and blood covering his hands, and a creepy mersmerist who seems to know his secret. This is a psychological horror film, with the director going deeper and deeper into the mind of a murderer until we're left feeling like we're inside of a nightmare.

Watch on youtube

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is legendary among film buffs, for its style of German expressionism, to the way it uses every single aspect of filmmaking to explore the human mind, and its twist ending. The sets, some of the most exaggerate you’ll find in films that employ German expressionism, straight away leave you feeling off kilter and like you're watching something that's just outside of reality. In the early 1920s, stage hypnotism had become quite the phenomenon, and while many people were fascinated by it, the element of the unknown that existed there led to a lot of people feeling frightened by and uneasy about hypnosis. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari used those fears, telling a story about a mysterious doctor who, by day, has a sort of sideshow feature Cesare, a somnambulist, and by night sends Cesare out to kill people. By exploiting people's fears of hypnotism, as well as their fears about insanity and mental health, the film manages scares on a very intellectual level.

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This is the classic "will reading in a spooky old mansion" story, as well as being an early comedy/horror film. A young woman is set to inherit the estate of a distant relative, but she must prove she's sane before receiving the inheritance, and she has to do that while in a spooky house full of people who want that money. This film makes for a great study of horror tropes. You've got the classic, beautiful leading lady surrounded by a supporting cast of awful, ghoulish, greedy, and frightening characters. The film leans into the absurdity of the story and the genre, and in doing so manages to be a very effective horror movie, while also being self aware in a way that makes the silliness an asset. The combination of scares and silly makes for a movie experience that's just plain FUN.

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In the early days of film, John Barrymore was a matinee idol, one of the most handsome actors on the screen. He was also one of the first actors who was willing to ugly himself up for a role when he played one half of the title pairing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The fact that Barrymore was so well known for his looks made the main character's transformation even more effective for the audience of the time. But even on its own, without any expectations of what kind of roles an attractive actor should take, Barrymore's Mr. Hyde is genuinely frightening. His transformation, what he's able to do with his face and body, is on the level of the legendary Lon Chaney. The entire film has an sort of eerie beauty to it, but the thing that makes it so memorable is Barrymore's performance.

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There's something hypnotic about this French adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story. The focus is definitely more on style than on story, but that makes for an incredible, dreamlike experience of a horror movie. Everything is a little off: the cinematography, while gorgeous, always leads to a slightly strange feeling with a lot of strange angles. Fog and smoke are present in a lot of scenes. The house is large and filled with mirrors. It's equal parts intense and surreal, combining German expressionism with gothic styles, both a great deal of negative space in its sets, as well as light and shadow. There is a story here, but what the movie is trying to do is make you feel, both in an emotional sense and a physical sense. The atmosphere is eerie, but it also leaves you feeling cold with how empty the house feels. It will set your nerves on edge, manhandle your emotions, and leave you with a physical reaction you might not expect.

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Faust is the classic tale of man facing the temptations of the Devil. FW Murnau, who was known for experimenting with effects and technology, especially in the second half of the 1920s, took this classic tale and used modern technology and filmmaking techniques to tell the story, making this old, classic story into one of the most modern piece of filmmaking in 1926. Murnau constructed a flying sequence using miniature of towns, fields, rivers, waterfalls, and forests with running water, clouds, birds flying through the sky. The director used scale filming to manipulate the appearance of size. Beautiful sets were constructed. But the director also used very simple, traditional techniques to establish and atmosphere and create an eerie feeling. Expressionistic sets combine with the use of shadows and dark lighting to create a feeling of foreboding and doom. It's one of the most modern films of the time, but the things that make it scary are very traditional and classic, showing that so often simplicity can be the scariest thing,

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You know those stories where a person gets a transplant of some kind, but it turns out the person they got the transplant from was evil, and the transplanted body part starts to act out on its own in a murderous, evil way? Those stories come from The Hands of Orlac, which is about a pianist whose hands are destroyed in a train accident. They replace his hands with those of a dead person, and while it initially appears that the transplant is successful, the pianist soon finds the the hands seem to have a mind of their own, having come, unbeknownst to him, from a murderer. This is another German expressionist film, with sets and cinematography that help to create an unnerving atmosphere. Conrad Veidt is the key player here. It's his acting, his body language and facial expressions, that sells the horror of what's happening to him.

Watch on youtube 

This is early Murnau, one of his earliest surviving films (if not the earliest). Since it's so early in his filmography, and so early in the 1920s, the techniques he would become famous for exploring are missing here, but he still uses some interesting and creative techniques to create an atmospheric horror film. He especially utilizes rain well, with effective shots of fields and roads in a downfall of rain. The structure of the film isn't great. It doesn't flow very well, as it is distinctly separated into three acts. But the atmosphere and visuals more than make up for it and the mystery is intriguing and well handled.

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This is a Buster Keaton short, a fun, quick watch that you can pop on to precede your "feature" presentation. It doesn't have the memorable stunts as other Keaton films like The General, but it does experiment with some interesting techniques and effects in ways that lead to some strange, fun moments. There are also some funny gags, like Keaton not being able to "stick em up" during a bank robbery because he glued his hands into his pockets. The final sequence is particularly impressive in terms of effects and scenery.

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For some reason I'm so intrigued and freaked out by the kinds of stories like the one in The Last Warning. The movie is about a play that seems to be cursed. A theater is closed after a stage production leads to the murder of one of the actors. Five years later, the theater is reopened, with plans to put on the same play with the remaining cast. It's a mix of mystery, as the characters try to solve both the original murder and the mystery of the eerie goings on in the newly opened theater, and horror, with ghostly messages, strange accidents, and creepy visuals dressed up in shadowy cinematography. It's a beautifully creepy film, even if most prints you'll find are of a pretty crummy quality.

Download at archive.org

The Lodger would receive a sound remake in the 1940s (with the delectable George Sanders), but that remake doesn't come close to the spooky mastery of Alfred Hitchcock's original. This is an early display of the director's incredible skill at establishing atmosphere (and it really is a shame that he didn't get to make more silent films, because what he did with the medium was so wonderful and interesting). There aren't a lot of title cards (in large part because the film's producer had a lot of them removed, bothered by the suggestions that Hitchcock inserted of homosexuality and incest), so the story has to work mostly visually, and it manages to be both an easy narrative to follow and an incredibly eerie, surprising one.

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Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson had such an impression left on them by Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs that they created the Batman villain The Joker based on the way he looked. Veidt's character is the son of a noble who suffers the punishment of permanent disfigurement due to his father's pride. It's very much not what you would expect out of a horror movie, especially by modern standards. The content itself isn't traditional horror, but Paul Leni films it with the same dark shadows, eerie negative space, and creepy light and dark contrast as his other horror films, and that's because this is a horror movie about the horror of man, about the purest, realest form of evil and the horror they wreak on others. The title character, who should be the most frightening, is the most sympathetic, the one upon whom so many horrors are committed.

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Horror stories have been sent in asylums and mental institutions for centuries because that setting exploits people's fear of mental illness and the terrifying mystery the mind can be. 1925's The Monster is another in a long line of films set in an asylum. Lon Chaney is billed as the star, but his role is actually relatively small. He plays one of the original "mad doctors" of film, as a man who takes over the asylum, sending out patients to retrieve bodies for his experiments. When word gets out that weird stuff is going down, an amateur detective and his friends want to check it out. This is a strange movie, because while it is very creepy, it's also a comedy, one that seems like it's almost a parody of the kind of film that hadn't even really started to be made yet.

Watch at Dailymotion

Perhaps the best known silent horror film, Nosferatu is a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. FW Murnau wanted to make Dracula, but he couldn't get the rights from Stoker's estate, so Murnau changed the character names and made some small changes to the story (like the means of the vampire's death at the end). Despite the attempts of the Stoker estate to erase any evidence of the film's existence, it's one of the most beloved horror films, and is probably more famous and well regarded than any other Dracula adaptation. The combination of Murnau's expertise in atmosphere and lighting and Max Schreck's horrifying Count Orlock make this one of the best and creepiest horror movies ever made.

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While this film is often compared to films from the German expressionist movement, it's far more subtle and understated than something like The Dr. of Caligari. It makes brilliant use of darkness and shadow, yes, but the Scandinavian sense of despair and hopelessness is far much quieter than that of the Germans, making the whole thing far more personal and emotional. It's a claustrophobic, desolate story about a man who dies on New Years Eve and is made to relive his life, witnessing the multiple chances at redemption he refused to take. We know how the character ends up, know what his choices will lead to, so the horror of the hopelessness and sadness is just as palpable as the horror established by the dark, creepy atmosphere and the eeriness of the personification of death that ushers this character through his death.

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Before it was a melodramatic romantic musical, The Phantom of the Opera was one of the most chilling films Lon Chaney made. The Phantom is never romanticized, never treated as a romantic figure. Chaney, whose was willing to risk life and limb to portray his characters, transformed his face through use of some pretty horrifying means, including the use of fishing hooks, made Erik into a figure of horror and terror, an obsessed and murderous madman who, though at times treated as a man and not a monster, is still unmistakably the villain of the piece. His performance is complimented by the amazingly constructed sets, particularly his eerie, creepy lair beneath the opera house and the increasingly unnerving series of ramps that lead down to it.

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This film was thought to be lost for a long time. When a film is considered lost, it usually earns a pretty legendary reputation in terms of its quality. A lot of the time when these films are found, the don't live up to the expectations. Seven Footprints to Satan does. It's so fucking weird. It's an "old dark house" story about a young couple kidnapped and brought to an old house where they're kept by jewel thieves and a strange cult. It sort of detours from the traditional "old dark house" style with both its filming techniques and just the content of the film. It's both scary and bizarre, a sort of balls-to-the-wall-terror-and-weirdness happening, with lots of strange people and creatures parading around the story (dwarves, ape-men, gorillas, and some characters that would certainly be very un-PC and offensive today). It's kind of hard to even explain because it's such a weird and unique experience.

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This is an updated, contemporary retelling of Faust. It has less of a horror vibe than the more direct Faust adaptation, and it's not usually billed as a horror movie. It's modern, stylish, and opulent, in a way that kind of hides the horror of the story. It looks like any of the number of high class dramas, comedies, and love stories studios were making at the time, but beneath all of it, thanks to Adolphe Menjou's quiet menace and Ricardo Cortez's mounting desperation, there's something darker and incredible tense lurking, so when we do get those moments where the horror of the story become clear, they're not coming from nowhere.

Download at archive.org

The presence of mannequins automatically qualifies this film for any horror movie list. The fact that it stars Lon Chaney bumps it way up on the list. It's story would make it a pretty basic thriller, but the presence of Chaney and some bizarre story choices make this story creepy enough to qualify for a Halloween horror list. Chaney is a ventriloquist who, along with a "little person" and a strongman, decide to leave their sideshow and make their way as robbers. In order to pull of their crime, Chaney poses as an old lady, the caretaker to the dwarf who is pretending to be a baby. There's also a pet gorilla. It's this odd setup that gives the movie its eerie vibes, and the amount of strange twists give the movie a sort of unsettling dream logic.

Watch on Dailymotion

Tod Browning's The Unknown is considered by many to have Lon Chaney's finest performance. While he doesn't contort his face in the way his did for films like The Phantom of the Opera, he plays a supposedly armless circus performer who throws knives with his feet. He's a fraud and a charlatan, though, and in reality he merely binds his arms down. But when he becomes obsessed with a woman who doesn't want to be touched, he goes to drastic measures to give her what she wants. Chaney's character is pretty evil, and a great deal of the creepiness of this film comes from his performance. Browning used unique camera angles and filters to give the movie a dreamy, otherworldly quality.

Watch on Dailymotion

Warning Shadows is a fascinating piece of German expressionism. As early as 1923 the use of shadows and extreme contrast had become something of a hallmark of the movement, and the filmmakers behind Warning Shadows decided to embrace that, making a horror movie that's very much structured around shadows. There are new intertitles, making the film entirely visual (but it's still easy to follow). A wealthy man throws a dinner party, inviting the four men who have been making advances on his wife. He's so jealous he looks like he's going to explode over it. A mysterious entertainer presents them with a shadow play, giving the partygoers visions of what might come to be. This is a fascinating, unique film that absolutely rewards the amount of attention you have to pay to it.  

Watch on youtube

[clockworkopera]

LORD OF SHADOWS THEORY: PART 5: WHY JEMMA DOESN’T REMEMBER JESSA’S WEDDING

Disclaimer: My theories are built not just on the Dark Artifices, but from all the previous books as a whole, and will contain SPOILERS if you haven’t read them. These ideas are based solely on book canon.

(edit: This was written before the release of LoS. Some ideas may be a little out of date, but still interesting!)

ON THE NAME CORDELIA

I have seen this theory out there—I was glad someone else had it too. All the girls in my family have at least one name dedicated to a favorite grandmother, aunt or other female relative. Emma Cordelia and Cordelia Carstairs. The family trees are said to be either incomplete or a bit misleading, and I was thinking James and Cordelia had a daughter that was never listed, and Emma is a descendent of Tessa on a matriarchal side. Emma’s mother’s name was Cordelia too. That would mean she would have as much demon blood as the Blackthorns and Jace.

And everyone is comparing her to Jace. (I hope that Cassandra Clare puts in a scene where the two practice together—I’d really like to see who would be better!) This will come into play in a bit.

OH, MY GLITTERY MAGNUS ONE:

He’s up to his feline eyeballs in all of this. He’s the Clave approved warlock to call when you want someone to forget something…

Ever since CC told us ‘the wedding’ Magnus has been referring to, (which Emma and Julian have no recollection of) was Jem and Tessa’s I’ve been cobbling clues (LM pg157). I’ve organized the following:

--We know Magnus performed memory magic on Clary; more than just forgetting a simple memory, but a complex continuing spell of forgetting.

--We know he asked Emma and Jules about the wedding—almost as if it were a test to see if his magic was still holding. And if this memory is gone, how many others!?  

***But, here was the big question for me: Was this something Magnus did on his own, or did Jem and Tessa know? And of course, WHY?

I felt a bit like Ty going back and reconstructing a time line. During The Fiery Trial, Simon refers to Jem and his wife Tessa and they’d taught at the Academy as husband and wife in earlier stories. Ergo: Jem and Tessa’s wedding happened BEFORE Julian and Emma’s Parabatai ceremony, yet Jem introduced himself for the first time to Emma there.

***Whatever Magnus did, Jem knew about it—they had to have been in on it together or Jem wouldn’t have felt the need to reintroduce himself at the Parabatai ceremony. And the spell of forgetting happened before the Parabatai ceremony***

Theory: Some event happened that needed a magical cover up by Magnus. It wasn’t until I reread The Fiery Trial that I saw a possibility. Simon and Clary’s first parabatai test was the test of WATER: “The nature of the test requires that you have no knowledge of the test,” and I wonder with Emma’s terror of the ocean coupled with the hallucinogenic water from Lake Lyn (if that was part of their trial too), if something BIG happened during this magically induced rite of passage. Something like when James Herondale ‘accidently’ turned into a Shadow for the first time. This theory could work if Emma is a descendent, and even if she’s not, Julian is. And who knows what could have happened to Julian as he tried to help her. Jem might have then come to their aid. This might be why the book covers are in themes of water and drowning—and Emma’s recurring nightmare!

When Simon describes Emma and Julian’s Fiery Trial, he says that, “the room was occupied by a ring of Silent Brothers, maybe twenty in all…” Plus Jem. It is true that this is the first Parabatai ceremony we’ve seen and it may be standard to have that many Silent Brothers attend each ceremony, but the number seemed just a bit excessive to me. That is unless they were worried about the chance of another ‘incident’ happening.

But, why a cover up?

***Possible reasons why Magnus, Jem and Tessa did this: Julian and Emma had so much of their childhood lost to them, and Tessa having been James and Lucie’s mother knew the toll and responsibility an unusual warlock talent in a Shadowhunter could be for someone so young—especially taking into account the prejudices within the Clave for a family that is already under suspicion because of Mark and Helen’s fey blood. (This would also be a good dovetail as to why CC decided to go back and do a Lost Hours book before she finished The Dark Artifices—James difficulty with his talent I think will be front and center in that series)

Like Clary, maybe an agreement was made to shield them from this knowledge until they became adults: at that point any ancestry with Tessa could be revealed—and anything that may have held hints to the truth was ‘forgotten’. Until then, Jem and Tessa keep their distance not wanting to provoke unintended memories. (It’s always bothered me that they live in L.A. right by the Blackthorns, but have never dropped off for tea or just to say hi—five years and Emma had only met Jem once? And didn’t even know how to contact him? That made no sense to me and I actually found myself disliking Jem and Tessa for it. This explanation would redeem them a bit in my eyes.)

And I wonder if that was why Jem sent Emma the gifts of sea glass that made up Julian’s bracelet—some sort of talisman to anchor Magnus’ magic? There is something about the glass…

And now:

(LM pg311) Cristina: “I heard about you. Everyone said you would be the next Jace Herondale. The next greatest Shadowhunter warrior.”

“I’m not going to be that,” said Emma. Her own voice sounded calm and small and distant in her ears. She couldn’t believe she was saying what she was saying. The words seemed to be coming out without her thoughts forming them first, as if they were creating their own reality by being spoken. “I’m not special, Cristina. I don’t have extra Angel blood or special powers. I’m an ordinary Shadowhunter.”

--If she were descended from Tessa could those words create a ‘façade’ of that belief shown to the world—like she was shape changing into the guise of normalness? Where did those words come from? It sounds like a subliminal hypnosis thing…from Magnus?

There is also this:

-------------------------

(LM pg43-44) Emma took a deep breath. She remembered Julian telling her once that when things got to be too much, he imagined locking certain situations and emotions away in box. Shut them away, he’d said, and they won’t bother you. They’re gone.

(And she does, but not without consequence) … She imagined placing the box somewhere she could get to it easily, somewhere she could find it and open it again. “Emma?” Cristina said anxiously. “Are you all right? You look a little as if you might throw up.”

Click went the lock on the box. In her mind, Emma set it aside; back in the world, she smiled at Cristina. “Ice cream and bad movies sound great,” she said. “Let’s go.”

-------------------------

Thinking of Arthur’s Greek influence, it sounds a bit like Pandora’s box.

But, it’s not just Emma, there is Julian too: Julian’s talent is probably more along the lines of persuasion and politics (we still don’t know what Lucie’s talent was). His masks come from his ability to lie; like how he’s managed to convince the Clave that the LA Institute is running fine: (LM pg631) Julian: “How he didn’t know who he was sometimes, how he was capable of doing the things he did, and yet how he couldn’t not do them.” I really hope CC writes more about that in LoS too—that we get to see more from Julian’s POV.

An unintended consequence of this ‘shielding’ is that there are entire aspects of themselves they have learned to hide not just from themselves, but from each other. From the time of their Parabatai ceremony, in my opinion, they have always been in love. Magnus’ work may have hidden it, just out of reach from each other, because they both needed to be normal. It’s also might be what is hiding their growing parabatai magic from the Clave.

(LM pg619): “He hadn’t been a boy in a long, long time. It had been that boy that Emma had thought could be her parabatai. She would never have fallen in love with that Julian. But she had fallen in love with this one, without knowing it, because how could you fall in love with someone you only half-guessed existed.”

AND:

Their night on the beach: (LM pg428): Julian: “We never said we loved each other,” he said. “Not once.”

That couldn’t be true. Emma searched her memories, as if she were rummaging desperately through her pockets for a lost key. She’d thought it. Julian Blackthorn, I love you more than starlight. She’d thought it but she hadn’t said it. And neither had he. We’re bound together, he’d said. But not: I love you.

But, it also makes me wonder who Emma would be if she let her masks fall. And if Magnus’ magic wears off sooner than expected and they begin doing strange things, would Emma believe it was a symptom of parabatai madness? Would they even get back any of their lost memories or are they mostly gone like Clary’s? And if Julian and Emma find out they’ve been magically interfered with how will that effect their relationships with Magnus, Jem and Tessa? Would they feel betrayed, not feel very trusting when it comes to asking for help in really important matters like figuring out the Parabatai curse? Remember how furious Clary was with Jocelyn.

Simon suspects the truth about Julian’s feelings, although he never spoke of it to Clary in TotSA. I can’t imagine it has never come up since. As for everybody else (Magnus, Jem and Tessa)—I think as long as Emma and Julian keep repeating Magnus’ mantra they won’t see it either.

I wonder if Tavvy knows though. Julian stormed off that night to save Emma when she nearly drowned and I don’t think he took the time to lock his secret door behind him. If Tavvy came looking for him or had a nightmare he might have seen Julian’s artwork of Emma—and how many times has Julian fallen asleep with the Law book opened to the Parabatai page. He’s a smart kid who put together who Lady Midnight was and is probably reading about Silas Pangborn and Eloisa Ravenscar in his copy of A Treasury of Tales for Nephilim. I think he’s observed a lot more between Julian and Emma than anyone thinks. I wonder if that is one of the roots for his nightmares—if he’s afraid he’ll lose his family.

Cristina also knows the truth, and I think she saw hints before she even knew: (LM pg80) “The room was full of bright light, and it cast an odd halo over Emma and Julian blurring out their features.” And Jem says in the Fiery Trial, “When a parabatai bond is true, when friendship runs deep and honest, it can be…transcendent.”

***Also, consider all the Blackthorn kids could have a latent talent of some kind. They might be hiding that knowledge from all of them, not just Emma and Julian.

***And if Parabatai aren’t meant to be magicians is that still true with the ones with a warlock flair?

I know these theories are long. Thanks to everyone that’s hung in there. I have two more parts to go:

Part 6:  Predictions on who Dies and Forecast of Final Ships (I think that box of Emma’s, and all Magnus’ protective magic will get smashed if a Blackthorn dies)

Part 7: Miscellaneous Characters throughout the Series Spectrum

Let me know what you think!

-----------------------------------------------

P.S. Treasure hunting in CC’s books is so cool. After I wrote this draft I had a question on TMI Source about Clary using a resurrection rune to raise a Shadowhunter. I completely blanked on it, so I went back and it was in the apropos chapter title of CoFA Wake the Dead. I read through it again and Brother Zachariah/Jem was there :)

But I also found a quote!  (In case you haven’t figured it out yet I like quotes)

(pg127) “Valentine had killed nearly all of them (Silent Brothers) while searching for the Mortal Sword, leaving alive only the few who had not been in the Silent City at the time. New members had been added to their order since then, but Clary doubted there were more than ten or fifteen Silent Brothers left in the World.”

Emma and Julian’s ceremony was only two years later—Even if the Silent Brothers managed to double their ranks in that time and Simon was right about 20 being there, then that could mean almost the entire Silent Brother contingent was at Emma and Julian’s ceremony. Again, is that number normal, or overkill?

Huh, things you didn’t know:)

And again, where might the Silent Brothers find new recruits? Go back to Theories Part 1

[whatwillyoudodifferently]

What Is The Shape Of Your Monster? – Get Out and Thought-out Horror

Get out.

No, I’m dead serious. If you haven’t already seen Jordan Peele’s Get Out yet, I need you to do me a massive favor. I need you to bookmark this page, close this page, and absolutely do not read this page— or any other essay or article on Get Out— until you’ve finished watching it.

I’m not just saying this because this essay will contain major spoilers for a movie that is best enjoyed going in knowing as little as possible— I mean, yes, it will— but most of all I just want as many people to see this movie as possible. It is by far the most socially relevant American movie to come out this year, at time of writing, if not one of the most socially relevant pieces of American art of the past decade.

It’s also just a very good movie.

(SPOILERS START NOW)

If there was really any complaint I had about Get Out, it would be that the trailers gave a little too much away. If you’ve seen even one you’ve basically got a pretty decent Wikipedia summary of the first two-thirds of the story. Chris Washington, a young photographer, goes on a weekend get-away with Rose Armitage, his girlfriend of four months, to meet her parents for the first time. It’s a pretty big step in any relationship, but Chris has an extra level of anxiety: Rose is white, he’s black, and apparently she’s forgotten to mention that to her family. Despite Rose’s reassurances, her family is awkward, if well-meaning, whenever the topic of Chris’s race comes up— but as the weekend goes on, Chris begins to pick up traces of something more sinister about the Armitages and their entourage of cultured friends.

The trailers establish that, no, Chris is not just paranoid, something terribly wrong is going on here, and (perhaps unfortunately) a lot of the most terrifying scenes are featured prominently in the movie’s marketing— the lingering, uncomfortable shot of Georgina’s tight smile as she weeps uncontrollably, for example, and of course, the almost-sure-to-soon-be-iconic “sink into the floor” scene. During my first watch of the movie I was surprised to see that it’s established very early on that Rose’s mom, Missy, is a psychiatrist who uses hypnosis as a treatment, so I felt a little less irritated at the trailers seemingly spoiling the use of hypnosis as a part of the story.

But here’s the thing— it WASN’T a spoiler. Hypnosis is a part of the plot, but the way it’s presented made me (as well as Chris’s friend Rodney) initially assume that the Armitages were hypnotizing black people into becoming slaves— and amazingly enough, the truth is actually far more horrifying.

I don’t think this was an accident.

You see, what makes Get Out good (and different!) is that it flips several conventions of horror films. The horror genre as a whole is usually based around a fear of “the other,” be it monstrous or metaphorical, but Chris, as a black man among white people, is actually the true Other, and the movie examines how terrifying it truly is to be “Othered.” Rose, the likable, charming, seemingly pure and innocent (white) ingenue who might be the coveted Final Girl of another horror film turns out to be the coldest, most manipulative, and by far the most vicious member of the Armitage family. And Rod already would be an anomaly in most horror movies simply by virtue of actually going to authorities and loudly questioning (alongside the audience) the shady things happening around Chris. But Get Out takes his character a step further, because Rod— portly, goofy, a little on the uncouth side— would almost certainly be on the Killed-Off-Comedy-Relief block in most other movies. Instead, it was the sight of him stepping out of a car that signaled to viewers that Chris was finally saved. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a theater of moviegoers as happy as the one I sat in when Get Out turned the Funny Friend character into the hero of the movie.

This is why I believe the marketing of Get Out was intentionally leading the audience towards the “hypnotism” angle: because Get Out is a seriously well-thought out movie. I can’t describe it any other way— it’s smart. Not simply in the sense of the very relevant themes it covers, but in how it works as a horror movie. Here where I’m going to ask you to do a second thing— whenever you can, go see Get Out a second time (third and fourth and so on, that’s up to you), and see how many things either foreshadow later events or hold important double meanings. I was very surprised to learn this was Jordan Peele’s very first foray into the horror genre (his typical genre of choice is actually comedy) because he’s slipped into the role of “horror writer” like he was made for it. Apparently Peele is at least a little confident in himself as well, because he’s mentioned in at least one interview now that he would like to direct several other films fitting in the “social horror” genre of Get Out, and I know I for one will be eager to see more from him.

Speaking of the idea of “social horror,” you really can’t talk about Get Out without the politics behind it. All art is, by nature, political in some way, but Get Out really gets into it, pulling double shifts as psychological horror and biting social satire. Get Out is a movie about race, but specifically about being a black person in modern America (specifically-specifically, about being a black man in modern America).

As such, as much as I found myself nodding sympathetically at some of the awkward party scenes and finding some of the lines of Rose’s parents familiar (recognizing those words on notable ‘woke’ white lips), I rather not write about what Get Out says about how it’s like being black in this country. I’m not white, but I’m not black either (Venezuelan-Cuban, if you’re curious), and Get Out is a movie very specifically and firmly about black people. I much rather leave that part of the discussion to black writers— this piece by Robert Jones Jr and Law Ware is a good place to start— and I encourage other non-black writers to do the same.

Instead, I’d like to talk more about something Get Out does differently that can apply to all stories, regardless of politics, genre, or medium. Specifically, I want to discuss the way Peele writes his antagonists.

Lanre Bakare wrote a very good essay about his thoughts on Get Out, and I definitely recommend it alongside the Jones/Ware piece. In particular, this section jumped out to me:

“The villains here aren’t southern rednecks or neo-Nazi skinheads, or the so-called “alt-right”. They’re middle-class white liberals. The kind of people who read this website. The kind of people who shop at Trader Joe’s, donate to the ACLU and would have voted for Obama a third time if they could. Good people. Nice people. Your parents, probably. The thing Get Out does so well – and the thing that will rankle with some viewers – is to show how, however unintentionally, these same people can make life so hard and uncomfortable for black people. It exposes a liberal ignorance and hubris that has been allowed to fester. It’s an attitude, an arrogance which in the film leads to a horrific final solution, but in reality leads to a complacency that is just as dangerous.”

I’ve bolded the most relevant parts for emphasis. I can’t remember who said it (there’s probably several mis-attributed sources) but there’s a quote somewhere out there about how the best villains don’t realize they’re villains.

There’s a very small but telling detail in one scene, in which Rose’s brother, Jeremy, plucks at a small guitar while eyeing Chris. It’s a pretty clear nod to the famous banjo scene in Deliverance, which may seem odd at first. Rose’s family is as far as you can get from the crass, degenerate rednecks who terrorize that movie’s protagonists. But that’s it exactly. The Armitages and their friends are cultured, intelligent, even funny and charming at times—and yet they’re all still doing something that’s utterly, completely, uncompromisingly terrible, because they don’t see it as terrible at all. In fact, they most likely believe what they’re doing is actually good—what could be evil about extending the life of loved ones, or allowing friends to “trade up” physically? There’s actually a twisted implication that they believe they might be doing a favor for their victims, giving them a “superior mind” to control their “superior genes.”

This is where I would like to bring up one aspect of the movie that, as of time of writing, has had very little attention, despite the massive role it plays in the themes of Get Out. The video in which the above photo comes from seems to be the only Get Out interview specifically focusing on Stephen Root and his character, Jim Hudson. It makes sense—from what I can tell, Hudson doesn’t actually show up in any of the movie’s marketing, and he only appears in three scenes. Still, I think he might the best written character in the entire movie, as well as an example to hold up for any writers who want to create believable and terrifying antagonists.

After a series of uncomfortable, cringe-inducing scenes of the Armitages’ party guests, Chris meets Jim Hudson, a blind art dealer who surprises him by saying that he knows his work. Jim is the lone person at the party who doesn’t say something belittling, insensitive, or overly familiar to Chris. He openly scoffs at the ignorance of the other guests and connects to Chris with something personal and important to him. In short, he’s the only person who really treats Chris as an equal—really, as a human.

So of course, it’s all the more shocking when it’s revealed that he’s the winner of the auction.

Hudson’s final scene is when he speaks to Chris in the basement. He’s casually cheery as he explains everything, seemingly unperturbed by the horrible fate he’s about to sentence Chris to. It’s almost comical that the one thing that seems to really trouble him is Chris’s obvious question: “why black people?” Mind you, he’s not troubled because of guilt— he seems to be worried that Chris thinks he’s a racist.

“Honestly though, personally..? I couldn’t give two shits about race. I don’t care if you’re black, brown, green, purple... whatever. What I want is so much deeper: Your eye, man.”

Here’s the thing: out of all the guests bidding on Chris’s body, I believe that Hudson legitimately is the only one who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about race, as far as he thinks. As Chris finally pieces everything together, he flashes back to the party, and suddenly all the seemingly well-intended-if-insensitive interactions betray the true intentions of the guests— a chance to regain glory days for an aging former golf player, a life of better opportunities for a Japanese man, a revitalized young body for the old and sickly husband of a gold digger interested in “the rumors” about black men— all of them are interested in the “benefits” of being black. Jim’s biggest motivation for the procedure is being able to see again, and from what I know there’s no stereotype of one race having better eyesight than any other. I highly doubt he’d care about taking the body of a white person, or any other person. I truly do believe the movie is positing that he’s being honest.

The movie also posits, of course, that doesn’t absolve him at all. Jim treats Chris kindly and respectfully, he doesn’t make any of the gaffs his acquaintances do, he doesn’t believe any of those ludicrous misconceptions about the bodies of black men— and yet, he has no qualms about benefiting from their exploitation. Of course, he’s not racist, he’s just willing to look the other way of black people being violated and dehumanized if it means he can get ahead.

I stay away from most things that self-advertise as “satire,” mostly unintentionally but also because there’s few things that are as painful to watch as bad satire. Luckily, Get Out is extremely good satire, just painful in a different way. I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten what people meant by “biting satire” until watching this movie. It really burrows to the heart of this kind of thinking, and this type of person. It’s brilliant from a standpoint of social commentary, as well as serving as example of how to approach writing a believable, fleshed out antagonist.

And now, I’ll ask you do one final thing. Convince as many people as you can to see Get Out. Blog about it, tweet about it, talk about it— to friends, to family, and especially to people who don’t especially like horror movies or “political” movies. Get Out is a testament to how powerful and provoking horror can be when approached thoughtfully, and it’s bringing up discussions of topics that have never been more relevant to this country. This is the kind of movie I crave to see more of, and I can only hope Peele’s success will allow him to make more of the same while inspiring other creatives to explore what their art can comment on.

Now, go on. Get out of here.

Get Out is now playing on at theaters nationwide.

[hypnokinkwithmrdream]

Virtual Handout:Playing With Dolls:Hypnotic Bondage

Posted to Fetlife 9/7/2012

This is a Virtual Handout Sheet For the September 7th, 8pm presentation

Intro

One of my earliest experiences in hypnosis involved the transformation into a doll. As a subject this was extremely powerful stuff to me. The sense of objectification and the almost limitless surrender was new to me. While it has really been many years since I have been a subject for this sort of trance, I find that for many people, there is something unique about the mind set that I have heard called "Dollspace". In this presentation I talk about hypnosis and bondage, and introduce ideas on how the natural catalepsy and dissociation available through hypnosis, can be used to create various bondage experiences.

Definitions

Bondage

For my purposes I consider bondage as anything that involves temporarily limiting the subjects control of their body. This includes limiting motion, controlling motion.

Hypnosis

If you ask 10 hypnotists you will get at least 11 different definitions and all the hypnotists will tend to agree that everyone else is correct. That being said the simplest definition that I use is that hypnosis takes advantage of our ability to enter into altered states of consciousness, in which we may have access to resources that are less available during our more common mental state.

Suggestibility

A person can be hypnotized but not suggestible. The two states are not necessarily linked. That being said suggestibility tends to be an openness to information. Suggestions are intended to be acceptable as true. In different contexts we may accept different information as true (for example when watching a play, we may accept fictional information as meaningful and real, and allow ourselves a complete emotional response to something we logically would recognize as not true).

Catalepsy

Catalepsy in terms of hypnosis is a phenomenon associated with trance states, even the lightest, in which a person is unable to move some part of their body, and possibly their entire body. This is similar to the kind of stillness that occurs during sleep or intense focus (ever been stuck at the edge of your seat during an intense moment of a movie?)

Dissociation

Characterized as the detachment from external stimuli or reality, dissociation ranges from daydreaming to identity disorders, amnesia and many other pathological states. While often discussed as a symptom of trauma, dissociation itself is not necessarily related to trauma, although modern theories suggest that it may be a defense mechanism when dealing with trauma. Hypnosis itself may merely be a technique that takes advantage of our capability to detach from 'reality'. Typical dissociation found in a hypnotic induction can include losing track of and feeling in ones body and in more involved scenes, changes in personality, and hallucination.

Doll space

Dollspace seems to be under-described, however in my experience and the independent experience of a variety of people I know both in regards to hypnosis and in other related methods, it is characterized by a sense that one is in fact empty of will, and an object. Variations include the sense of being a puppet, manequin or statue. Dolls may experience rigidity or total relaxation as part of mobility. Poseability may vary.

Exercises

Focus on what moves when we try to be still

This demonstration simply involves awareness of how we actively attempt to sit still. The increased body awareness of just how much motion exists unconsciously is a good introduction to the idea of the subconscious and unconscious nature of movement. >> This worked ok. Since part of the purpose was to get some compliance, and group activity warm up, it was ideal since there was no success/failure.

Eye closure Elman Style

Part of the classic Elman Induction involves two different aspects of catalepsy, so we will explore the simplest one, being eye closure. >> This probably was less succesful than I liked but I think it got enough people to be worth it. The issues with the miking may be part of the problem

Balloon hand

Typical hypnosis shows use this as a method for demonstrating how our imagination can allow us to experience physical phenomenon without our conscious minds involvement. >> This totally failed but everyone said it was because the miking made it distracting.

Magnetic hands

We will explore another hypnosis mainstay, the magnetic hands suggestion. >> We did a typical thing where you imagine the magnets in the hands, make the effort to keep them apart. The result was good. Nearly half the room had their hands together, and it led nicely into the next item.

Glue

Taking the experiences to a simple conclusion, we will create a similar experience that can be used for bondage purposes, hypnotic glue and other variatons. >> Had folks place their strongest magnet hand on their heads, this seems to have been successful in demonstrating the ability to put in a suggestion pre-trance, that was bondage like.

Demo

Subjects from the audience will be invited to explore this more deeply, depending on time and interest

Doll

Sculpture garden

Sex toy

The demonstrations went very well. As usual, I tailored them to what I felt would be best for the two volunteers.

The first volunteer came up with no experience or even really interest or fantasies involving hypnosis. I was able to get her into a cataleptic state relatively quickly, thank goodness. She held poses pretty well, and I think was an excellent subject for hypnosis, given that she was on stage and doing something completely new. I posed her arms in a way that was relatively uncomfortable, and suggested that when I woke her she would stay in the same position but be able to talk. On waking, I asked her how she felt, and she said relaxed and good. I asked her if she normally relaxed with her arms like that, and she looked over at her arm and started laughing (without really breaking pose). I gave her the release command and she answered a question about the position from the audience with "I thought my hands were in my lap. I felt very relaxed with them where they were". So at least some amnesia, real catalepsy, rationalization, and hallucination. I have to say that I would have loved to have twice as much time with her, as we could have done some amazing things, but her Dom was 5 feet away, and without real negotiation I am going to generally play it safe as far as how much work I do.

I was hoping to skip to sex toy/fuckdoll with my next volunteer, but he was a Dom so I switched to the idea of how one can do a form of control that allows for movement. He was a good subject and I felt like we were able to get him to a light trance. He laughed a few times, which I like, although most subjects think they are breaking the rules doing that. I was going for a ballerina barbie type (with my finger on the top of his head) but he wasn't going for that even when I switched it to the Ballerina GI Joe Action Figure. What did work was that he held position and yet swayed every time my finger was on his head, in increasing circles, and then stopped when it was released. His experience also let him get a handle on self trance (I gave him some suggestions in trance on how to use the experience so that he could get there himself). In the end he said that the experience of giving up control was relaxing.

So no fuckdoll demo, but otherwise very much what I wanted to do.

This was one of the least stressful and yet most challenging events I have done. I had very little worry, and yet I didn't bring a demo sub and I had to rely on the audience to be enthusiastic. They met my expectations, as I know that people who come to kinky events tend to be pretty open minded and willing to explore.

Thanks to everyone who made my evening exciting and fulfilling. If anyone has questions or comments, feel free to post them here, or directly to me.

David

[gregoryferrell]

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[comic-watch]

Brainwashed and buried. On his journey home from New Orleans, Luke Cage passes through a small town under the control of the villainous Ringmaster. Thinking that the hero is there to stop him, Ringmaster orders Cage’s imprisonment and wipes his memory. Cage and his fellow prisoner Gonzo are sentenced to mine toxic chemicals under the prison, which Ringmaster is using to magnify his hypnotic powers. In an attempt to escape from the mines, Cage is shot and the ricocheting bullets destroy the support beams of the mines and bring down the mine down on top of the hero.

LUKE CAGE #169 Writer: David F. Walker Artist: Guillermo Sana Cover Artist: Rahzzah Colorist: Marcio Menyez Publisher: Marvel Comics

What You Need to Know:

With regards to Marvel Legacy, this arc strips Cage back to his origins, no memories of who he is or what he can do, throughout this arc, it has been a key way of showing who Cage is without the strength and invulnerability that cements him as even more of a badass. However probably more interesting from this story arc is the villain, Ringmaster. The arc has focused primarily on Ringmaster’s scheme to amplify his powers to enable him to rule a small Southern state town and while this may not seem ambitious it really helps put supervillainy in perspective, showing that not every villain wants to carve up control of the world, most just want their own little corner.

What You’ll Find Out:

The issue opens with Ringmaster berating the prison guards for shooting the bulletproof Luke Cage in the mine causing it to collapse. One of the guards claims that Cage couldn’t have survived, which of course then cuts to Cage shielding Gonzo from the rubble from the cave in. While he struggles to hold up the rock Ringmaster’s hypnotic control on Cage begins to fade, giving him access to his memories. Now knowing the level of strength he has Cage manages to free himself and Gonzo and begins attempting to break through the rock wall separating him from Ringmaster. Ringmaster gathers the prison guards in an attempt to ensure that Cage is killed or to give him the chance to re-establish his mind control just as Cage bursts through the walls, his shirt tied around his head to prevent Ringmaster sound based hypnosis from being able to impact him.

Seeing that his hypnosis is now ineffective on Cage, Ringmaster attempts to flee, ordering the prison guards to kill Cage who, promptly beats down all of them, However Ringmaster is able to reach his command center and orders the entire prison populace to attack Cage, though this appears to push the limits of his mental control seeming  to free the townspeople.

In the midst of this Gonzo leaves Cage, and follows Ringmaster, destroying his microphone through which Ringmaster issued orders. Ringmaster then attempts to strangle Gonzo, only to be confronted by a very angry Luke Cage, who then proceeds to beat down the villain.

The issue then moves to the aftermath of Ringmaster’s defeat, with the town being freed from control and reunited with their friends and families. Cage has a final conversation with Ringmaster as he is being escorted away and then moves to leave himself, finally returning to his own family.

What Just Happened?

I think everyone has their own idea when reading a comic that’s part of a story arc about how it should end or their own expectations of what would make the ideal ending. I’ll start by saying that overall for me I didn’t think that this arc ended as well as it could have but there’s a lot of things that I did enjoy and for the most part I’ll try and take the issue as it is, not what it should be.

Now onto the rest of the review.

Firstly, Luke Cage is a badass. An unstoppable badass!  The sequence where Ringmaster throws wave upon wave of his minions against him is dynamic, and brilliantly drawn and then on top of that his beatdown of Ringmaster while berating him for control is savage! I think this arc has done well at highlighting numerous aspects of the character and this issue we finally get to see him as the tough as adamantium nails street brawler.

Next, Ringmaster. I felt most let down by Ringmaster. I think that so much emphasis was put on him trying to maintain his own little corner of the world and the lengths he went to achieve, having him be merely beaten and arrested doesn’t seem like a fitting end for the character. Having him lose everything should have had more of an impact on him. Aside from that Sana’s art for Ringmaster’s hypnosis is still fantastic and the close-ups of his face are still brilliantly creepy.

Looking back on this arc as a whole, as part of the Marvel Legacy rebranding, it covered much of what made Luke Cage a hero prior to his relationship with Jessica Jones and the birth of his daughter which is something that I think we’ll see explored in the upcoming story arc. I think to see the character like this works. While Cage in recent years has slotted more into the traditional superhero role, this arc and this issue, in particular, does give us a flash of a more angry and brutal character, someone not to be messed with. I also loved the reference to the Netflix series that the issue opened with. Something I found that both and didn’t work on some levels was how comedic this issue felt. It almost gives off a Tarantino-ish vibe where the moments of violence also carry a humorous quality to them. I think in some instances (i.e. Ringmaster questioning his henchmen in front of the collapsed mine) it works and in other instances (when Cage slaps Ringmaster repeatedly) it diminishes the impact of the scene.

Finally, this may just be me but I recently re-read Remender’s uncanny Avengers run and through one issue they had a back and forth between Captain America who had been deafened and Havok. There was a similar gag this issue and I enjoyed trying to work out where I felt I’d read the gag before.

Rating: 6/10

Final Thought: Overall a solid conclusion to the Behind Bars arc. I feel a little underwhelmed at how they handled Ringmaster’s defeat but the action sequences were done superbly and had a really nice flow to them. It’s been great following Luke on his journey home and the following issues are surely not going to disappoint.

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Sweet Christmas!! Cage is alive and madder than ever! Watch your back Ringmaster! Check out this new issue! What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments! #comicwatch #iamawatcher Brainwashed and buried. On his journey home from New Orleans, Luke Cage passes through a small town under the control of the villainous Ringmaster.

[writesailingdreams]

Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier [conclusion]

Or Act 2

Sorry, I left the liveblog hanging. As I’ve said, I felt...drained from watching it. Not because of the story but because it took longer than I had planned. Logically it would have made more sense to take a break, watch the other movie I had scheduled, and then come back to Twisted and liveblog Act 2. But I just wanted it to be done. So, that was the context of situation. Sorry.

Aside from the story and Disney aspect of the musical I learned two (well, three) new things about myself from watching Twisted:

I am very...detail-oriented. Like when I watch things, especially Disney, I’m going to notice all these context details. And if I write about them, I think it comes across as very...cold?

I like Disney (or animation over live action) because I associate a lot of characters, especially those in romantic relationships, with a low sexual or non-sexual existence. When animated characters express attraction (which, for me, has it’s own signals for recognition) it’s not as weird as live actors.

I can recite the entirety of Hercules, including sound effects, from memory. (I did everything from Herc and Meg meeting while she was accosted by Nessus to when Herc continues on his way to Thebes).

So, onto the actual musical...

I enjoyed Act 2 a lot more than Act 1 and that might be less because of the context and more I wasn’t stopping for (almost) every thought I had to type it up. The action and behaviors and story could just flow naturally. I could have thoughts and reactions but it was a single fluid experience. (Although I feel a little bad because I feel like I might have posted more enthusiastic posts, if I had...)

I’m not sure why, but for some reason, it was in the first scene of Act 2 that the whole Pixar vs Disney (and the eventual merger that happened) finally hit me. So, I got a kick out of that.

Spoilers below

Jasmine’s character arc was good. I liked that she ended up seeing Aladdin for the lying, thieving, potentially rapist guy he was

Genie’s humorous quips were done, as with a lot in the musical, in the context of how he would literally come across to people -- a lot of confusing but funny nonsense. What’s equally amusing is that Genie’s humor, for me, was just humorous voices. It didn’t mean anything to me, because I didn’t know what or who most of Genie’s voices referenced.

I wasn’t comfortable with Aladdin being portrayed as having a split personality, not because he killed his parents but because of the stigma of mental illness being correlated to murderous behavior.

The twist with Jasmine being Jafar’s daughter with Shahrazad made me think of Ramayana variants where Sita is Ravana’s daughter, but where Ravana would actually care about Sita in a fatherly way. It was actually at the end, when Jasmine and Jafar were singing together, that I thought: Yep; this has given me a familial love story and that’s one of my favorite kinds, so yep, worth it.

I’m not sure if there was more in Act 2 but the nods to Disney rumors seemed more noticeable to me. (There was an entire song devoted to subliminal messages.)

Also, it finally hit me (after listening to/watching various Aladdin paraodies) that correlating “A Whole New World” to wanting sex or potential date rape is semi-common? Like my biggest take away from “A Whole New World” is touching clouds, flying on a magic carpet!!!, and the ability to show others wondrous things. (There’s a reason “I can show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid” and “I can open your eyes, take you wonder by wonder” are a prominent creative mantras for me and my identity.)

I actually had more thoughts about this, but it got really long, so I’m putting it in a separate post. Since it’s less about Twisted and more about Disney couples, attraction, and dialogue.

The biggest highlights of Act 2 was the song where all these villains appeared. (I loved when they all yelled Cruella off stage.) It was literally one of the best parts. I also loved the nods to earlier drafts of The Little Mermaid. Of course, Gaston makes use of the Stockholm Syndrome critique (which, like Cinderella and dreaming, isn’t accurate in the context of the movie.) I mean, because Belle literally runs away because the Beast is a jerk and only stays after he apologizes, after which he stops being a jerk.

That actually brings up how I felt there were different ways to approach Twisted:

in a precise literal Disney movie context

in a Disney rumors and ancedotes and popular culture context

in an alternate pov of context

I was also amused about how, at the end, Jasmine made everyone a princess, alluding to the Princess Franchise. (In Twisted it was all gender encompassing, which I liked.)

Jafar’s rationalism and science-bent spoke to me. Additionally, I thought it fit in-context just for Jafar’s character in general. Like, he’s obviously not a sorcerer in the original movie and uses other means to get what he wants (hypnosis, magical artefacts, disguises). This also reflects what I call the Ron and John villain principle: the villain is often presented in a relatable position in the opening:

Jafar has to detail with the incompetent Sultan

Hades has to deal with the other gods’ disdain

Facilier has to deal with racism and classism

Ursula has to deal with being banished

yes I know there’s Ratigan and Silver and Te Ka/Tamatoa but the principle doesn’t apply to them, imo

I was also amused that Aladdin was the Peddler at the beginning of the film! Which explains why the story was told the way it was. I thought it was a clever twist and explanation.

Finally, my favorite aspect of the musical was the complexity of stories: who tells them and what part of the story endures and, is thus, remembered. Lost and forgotten and overlooked stories -- literally and as a creative impetus -- are like a metaphor about blooming flowers that I can’t quite put into words.