#comparing them has been interesting ! i can see where i compressed some spaces of the composition

[rains-pace]

in honor of the new spider-verse movie i did a quick study of one of my favorite shots from the original !! <33

[mettywiththenotes]

320 bits I wanna talk about

Iieda looks like he’s doing the *inhale* before the BOI IF YOU DON’T- meme. Something along the lines of “BOI IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ASS BACK TO UA-” kind of thing lol.

He holding something in definitely. Maybe charging up for an attack? Idk but he sure seems concentrated

Actually, Iieda seems kinda considering. Maybe he’s weighing up if he should join in the fight, as if he’s asking “Will I have to fight Midoriya, if it comes down to it? Or can the others handle this?” Something tells me he doesn’t want to have to weigh in on the fight. Maybe tear into Izuku verbally, but fight? No I don’t think he wants to do that

But also, I find it interesting that that black panel of text is under him and then it cuts to Bakugou yelling at Izuku. I mean, it could very well be Bakugou thinking that, but if that’s so, then why is Iieda the first person we see?

So, I think it’s Iieda thinking that. Tensions are rising, it seems. I’m expecting his turn to be full of a lot of emotion, or at least trying to get across to Izuku that he feels betrayed but mostly just wants Izuku to come back home.

I don’t really know what’ll happen with Iieda exactly, but I’m totally interested to see what happens

I know Bakugou has problems with his emotions and words and stuff, but I also think here he’s trying to anger Izuku in order to get him to fight back, maybe so he’s more angry than flexible in a fight, so the end result would be Izuku getting too angry to predict anything and eventually tripping up, and that’s when 1A could capture him.

The one thing to remember about Izuku is that allowing him to think is going to be the opponent’s downfall. We saw in the Kacchan VS Deku 2 fight that Bakugou knew this and so kept attacking as much as possible so Izuku wouldn’t have time to think. Which worked, because Izuku is great at analysis, so making his “Win” attitude [getting competitive therefore putting more energy into attacking than strategy] come out over his “Save” attitude [you’re my friend and I want to help you] is kind of a weakness of his. That’s kind of one of the reasons he lost that fight.

Then again, maybe Izuku has improved since then? I don’t really know but I think enough time has passed for him to have maybe improved more on that so idk we’ll see

I really love Bakugou’s expression in that bottom screencap lol

His wound!! All bandaged up!! I wonder if there’s a scar there or smthg :O

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I know Enji or Bakugou probably gave them details about the multiple quirks but I still find it wild that everyone just knows now

KOUDA! MY SWEETHEART! I’m glad he’s getting a part in this too, along with Sero. Two of them who didn’t really hang around Izuku but still want him to come back :’)

Sero and Black Whip! Finally! I mean it’s not much but it’s still better than nothing

Also, seems like Sero is trying to taunt Izuku to get him to attack him maybe [same as Bakugou feeding into Izuku’s competitive side] soooo idk Sero following Bakugou’s lead? Maybe :)

Look at how,,,, innocent Izuku looks,,,,, *head in hands* AND SERO TEACHING HIM!!

I knew this lil moment would come bite me in the ass at some point, I knew and yet I’m still tearing up goddamn

That “I thought she was going to tell me its a useless hobby” bit really drives home how Izuku’s friends are 1A, that he loves them and they were the only friends he’s ever had [except Bakugou but he was a bully at the time so I’m not really gonna count him for back then]. HOW many people before UA had gone around and told Izuku his taking notes hobby was useless? SHOW me the people!

I, mettywiththenotes, will NOT allow anybody to slander one of my own!

I know it’s like the only moment Izuku and Ojiro shared, with the sports festival thing, but it’s still really sweet that Ojiro sees that Izuku stood up for him

*head in hands*

Shouldn’t this kid be more worried that he’s likely going to get kidnapped?

“Yeah this super evil villain guy has decided he wants to kidnap me and take me away, but like nbd guys really, that’s why I left in the first place! So I wouldn’t be a burden!” Somebody get this kid a fucking therapist or some shit

This is kind of a chilling and pretty scene though. The rain falling above Izuku and him looking down with these piercing green eyes likely being the only light between them. Good stuff.

Satou! Aha I like how he’s pulling all the stops, such as “I WON’T LET YOU BORROW MY INGREDIENTS FOR ERI!”

Also let’s appreciate that Satou caught Ojiro and Jirou and managed to land on a freaking traffic light. The balance on this kid! Very well done

Kaminari putting Izuku in a headlock! How cute :)

Be cuter if they weren’t trying to subdue a martyr-complex cryptid from killing himself, but still

Does Shouji have some kind of support-item?? Or could he always do the stretchy thing?? Or I guess maybe he’s just stretching his arms out like branches [like he usually does] and using them as more like a capture weapon rather than his usual stuff. I don’t think we’ve ever seen him use his heteromorph body and quirk for anything other than the 5 senses, though I could be wrong

Also Shouji remembering what Izuku said at the training camp, I’m so glad! Shouji always seems like the kind to be so protective over his friends, so I’m glad he remembered that. Then again, Izuku did compare them to freaking ALL MIGHT, but if the nice analytical kid in your class who knows your limits and strengths says you could basically beat A GOD, then that’s definitely one for the memory scrapbook lmao

“It’s nice and dark here, Dark Shadow.” Who said that?? Kami or Izuku?? I just have this mental image of Izuku being shrouded in darkness and trying to keep his eyes open from falling asleep haha

Tokoyami remembering that from all the way back then!! It makes me think that not only have Bakugou and Izuku been watching each other, but that Izuku has always had everybody’s eyes on him! Which is true, he’s inspired everyone! It goes both ways; Izuku loving his friends, and them loving him back :’)

Kami telling him to take a bath lmao I love it. Finally somebody said it

*ugly sobbing noises*

This kind of segment, with a mask falling, a space in-between and a reveal, reminds me of Compress’ reveal :) In that, the person is hiding their identity and then when the mask comes off, they reveal who they truly are underneath

While Izuku is of course determined to go after AFO and is quite the fearsome powerhouse, I really think when he takes off that mask, he’s showing who he really is underneath - a scared little boy who just wants everyone to be happy

JESUS, SHOUTO REALLY IMPROVED HIS QUIRK HUH!! LOOK AT IT, IT’S EVEN HIGHER THAN THE SKYSCRAPERS!!

“The burden placed on you... it doesn’t allow for tears, right?” He sounds so sassy here.

Kind of like saying “Oh you look upset. But that’s weird, I thought Heroes weren’t supposed to cry.” Lol it really shows here how pissed Shouto is at Izuku

But then he relents from that snark and is like “Hey, come on, we’ll share this burden. I’m not letting you go it alone, remember that we’re all here.” :’)

I love when Shouto is sassy and passive aggressive but I also love it when he shows that soft side of him

Okay, this is something I really love.

Tsuyu didn’t join the Bakugou Rescue Squad because “they would be just like Villains breaking the rules”

But here she is, learning from that regret of hers and coming right back to make sure Izuku isn’t the one struggling. She wants to be a part of this rescue squad and pick up where she left off :)

Tsuyu has always struggled with her regrets. It was shown after Kamino when she cried, but for me, I only realised this fully during the Joint Arc when she had her regrets about not making better decisions and not being quick enough [I think that was it].

“I won’t cry in such a flurry” reminds me of “I want to live a life without regret” and so that’s what she’s saying here. This won’t be another regret of hers. She wants to do her best to save her friend

“When scared, you’re allowed to tremble when it’s tough, you’re allowed to shed tears. That’s how you become a Hero like in the comics.”

I feel like that quote piggybacks off of Shouto’s “Heroes cry too”, in that, this is now 1A comforting Izuku. This is them fully coming up to him and telling him that they can help, and that he’s allowed to feel sad about his situation. Shouto’s quote was the teaser, while this entire chapter [and the rest that come to follow] is the main course.

And this is exactly who Tsuyu is. Reassuring, comforting, someone dependable. It says a lot that she’s come from not going to help in Kamino, confessing her feelings and crying about it, then coming back in a similar situation and offering her help - that she’s not willing to just let an opportunity go to better herself. I think I remember reading a few posts on her crying after Kamino and saying it was “performative” or that she just “wanted attention” or smthg like that, but I think she’s really just quite an honest person, and here she is making a great show of how she won’t let something like her guilt slow her down from being the hero she wants to be.

[A part of me feels like this is also a little more evidence with the whole People Not Caring About Bakugou’s Feelings Of Helplessness but like. I digress. It kinda counts but at the same time, it’s not what is going on at the moment.]

Seeing everyone try to reassure Izuku was lovely, and I can’t wait for the rest. I’ve seen a lot of people waiting more for Bakugou’s portion of the battle [AND YEAH DUDE ME TOO] but I really feel like Bakugou’s won’t come until like 2 chapters later or something.

Cause, if this chapter is anything to go by, we’ll probably get through Mina, Mineta, Kirishima, Hagakure and Aoyama next chapter, and then we’ll move onto the “more important” conflicts which will be Iieda and Uraraka, and if their segments are chocked with tension drama and tears, then Bakugou will have a whole chapter to himself hopefully.

Which means we’ll probably have to wait 2 more chapters until we get that sweet, sweet Bakugou chapter :( I hope I’m wrong and it comes sooner than predicted but whatever

I know for some people, that’s all they want, but personally I love these little bits that reflect on the background characters. As someone who isn’t really obsessed with the background characters but also likes them enough to appreciate their development/the little moments they have, I gotta say I really liked this :)

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.

[drnikolatesla]

"Tesla's New Monarch of Machines."

New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1911.

Noted Balkan Scientist Claims to Have Perfected an Engine That Will Develop Ten Horsepower to Every Pound of Weight, and Promises Soon to Give to the World a Flying Machine Without Wings, Propellers or Gas Bag. Characterizes Aeroplanes of Today as Mere Dangerous Toys Compared With the Safe and Stable Appliance Which Will Be Used in a Short Time to Dash Through the Air at a Speed Now Unimagined

Just what is your new invention?" I asked.

"I have accomplished what mechanical engineers have been dreaming about ever since the invention of steam power," replied Dr. Tesla. "That is the perfect rotary engine. It happens that I have also produced an engine which will give at least twenty-five times as much power to a pound of weight as the lightest weight engine of any kind that has yet been produced.

"In doing this I have made use of two properties which have always been known to be possessed by all fluids, but which have not heretofore been utilized. These properties are adhesion and viscosity.

"Put a drop of water on a metal plate. The drop will roll off, but a certain amount of the water will remain on the plate until it evaporates or is removed by some absorptive means. The metal does not absorb any of the water, but the water adheres to it.

"The drop of water may change its shape, but until its particles are separated by some external power it remains intact. This tendency of all fluids to resist molecular separation is viscosity. It is especially noticeable in the heavier oils.

"It is these properties of adhesion and viscosity that cause the "skin friction" that impedes a ship in its progress through the water or an aeroplane in going through the air. All fluids have these qualities--and you must keep in mind that air is a fluid, all gases are fluids, steam is fluid. Every known means of transmitting or developing mechanical power is through a fluid medium.

"Now, suppose we make this metal plate that I have spoken of circular in shape and mount it at its centre on a shaft so that it can be revolved. Apply power to rotate the shaft and what happens? Why, whatever fluid the disk happens to be revolving in is agitated and dragged along in the direction of rotation, because the fluid tends to adhere to the disk and the viscosity causes the motion given to the adhering particles of the fluid to be transmitted to the whole mass.  Here, I can show you better than tell you."

Dr. Tesla led the way into an adjoining room.  On a desk was a small electric motor and mounted on the shaft were half a dozen flat disks, separated by perhaps a sixteenth of an inch from one another, each disk being less than that in thickness. He turned a switch and the motor began to buzz. A wave of cool air was immediately felt.

"There we have a disk, or rather a series of disks, revolving in a fluid--the air,-- said the inventor. "You need no proof to tell you that the air is being agitated and propelled violently. If you will hold your hand over the centre of these disks--you see the centres have been cut away--you will feel the suction as air is drawn in to be expelled from the peripheries of the disks.

"Now, suppose these revolving disks were enclosed in an air tight case, so constructed that the air could enter only at one point and be expelled only at another--what would we have?"

"You'd have an air pump," I suggested.

"Exactly--an air pump or blower," said Dr. Tesla.

"There is one now in operation delivering ten thousand cubic feet of air a minute. "Now, come over here."

He stepped across the hall and into another room, where three or four draughtsmen were at work and various mechanical and electrical contrivances were scattered about. At one side of the room was what appeared to be a zinc or aluminum tank, divided into two sections, one above the other, while a pipe that ran along the wall above the upper division of the tank was connected with a little aluminum case about the size and shape of a small alarm clock. A tiny electric motor was attached to a shaft that protruded from one side of the aluminum case. The lower division of the tank was filled with water.

"Inside of this aluminum case are several disks mounted on a shaft and immersed in a fluid, water," said Dr. Tesla. "From this lower tank the water has free access to the case enclosing the disks. This pipe leads from the periphery of the case. I turn the current on, the motor turns the disks and as I open this valve in the pipe the water flows."

He turned the valve and the water certainly did flow. Instantly a stream that would have filled a barrel in a very few minutes began to run out of the pipe into the upper part of the tank and thence into the lower tank.

"This is only a toy," said Dr. Tesla. "There are only half a dozen disks" --runners,-- I call them--each less than three inches in diameter, inside of that case. They are just like the disks you saw on the first motor--no vanes, blades or attachments of any kind.  Just perfectly smooth, flat disks revolving in their own planes and pumping water because of the viscosity and adhesion of the fluid. One such pump now in operation, with eight disks, eighteen inches in diameter, pumps four thousand gallons a minute to a height of 360 feet."

We went back into the big, well lighted office. I was beginning to grasp the new Tesla principle.

"Suppose now we reversed the operation," continued the inventor. "You have seen the disks acting as a pump. Suppose we had water, or air under pressure, or steam under pressure, or gas under pressure, and let it run into the case in which the disks are contained--what would happen?"

"The disks would revolve and any machinery attached to the shaft would be operated--you would convert the pump into an engine," I suggested.

"That is exactly what would happen--what does happen," replied Dr. Tesla. "It is an engine that does all that engineers have ever dreamed of an engine doing, and more. Down at the Waterside power station of the New York Edison Company, through their courtesy, I have had a number of such engines in operation.  In one of them the disks are only nine inches in diameter and the whole working part is two inches thick.  With steam as the propulsive fluid it develops 110-horse power, and could do twice as much."

"You have got what Professor Langley was trying to evolve for his flying machine--an engine that will give a horse power for a pound of weight," I suggested.

Ten Horse Power to the Pound.

"I have got more than that," replied Dr. Tesla.  "I have an engine that will give ten horse power to the pound of weight. That is twenty-five times as powerful as the lightest weight engine in use today. The lightest gas engine used on aeroplanes weighs two and one-half pounds to the horse power. With two and one-half pounds of weight I can develop twenty-five horse power."

"That means the solution of the problem of flying," I suggested.

"Yes, and many more," was the reply. "The applications of this principle, both for imparting power to fluids, as in pumps, and for deriving power from fluids, as in turbine, are boundless. It costs almost nothing to make, there is nothing about it to get out of order, it is reversible--simply have two ports for the gas or steam, to enter by, one on each side, and let it into one side or other. There are no blades or vanes to get out of order--the steam turbine is a delicate thing."

I remembered the bushels of broken blades that were gathered out of the turbine casings of the first turbine equipped steamship to cross the ocean, and realized the importance of this phase of the new engine.

"Then, too," Dr. Tesla went on, "there are no delicate adjustments to be made. The distance between the disks is not a matter of microscopic accuracy and there is no necessity for minute clearances between the disks and the case. All one needs is some disks mounted on a shaft, spaced a little distance apart and cased so that a fluid can enter at one point and go out at another. If the fluid enters at the centre and goes out at the periphery it is a pump. If it enters at the periphery and goes out at the center it is a motor.

"Coupling these engines in series, one can do away with gearing in machinery. Factories can be equipped without shafting. The motor is especially adapted to automobiles, for it will run on gas explosions as well as on steam. The gas or steam can be let into a dozen ports all around the rim of the case if desired. It is possible to run it as a gas engine with a continuous flow of gas, gasoline and air being mixed and the continuous combustion causing expansion and pressure to operate the motor. The expansive power of steam, as well as its propulsive power, can be utilized as in a turbine or a reciprocating engine. By permitting the propelling fluid to move along the lines of least resistance a considerably larger proportion of the available power is utilized.

"As an air compressor it is highly efficient. There is a large engine of this type now in practical operation as an air compressor and giving remarkable service. Refrigeration on a scale hitherto never attempted will be practical, through the use of this engine in compressing air, and the manufacture of liquid air commercially is now entirely feasible.

"With a thousand horse power engine, weighing only one hundred pounds, imagine the possibilities in automobiles, locomotives and steamships. In the space now occupied by the engines of the Lusitania twenty-five times her 80,000 horse power could be developed, were it possible to provide boiler capacity sufficient to furnish the necessary steam."

"And it makes the aeroplane practical," I suggested.

"Not the aeroplane, the flying machine," responded Dr. Tesla. "Now you have struck the point in which I am most deeply interested--the object toward which I have been devoting my energies for more than twenty years--the dream of my life. It was in seeking the means of making the perfect flying machine that I developed this engine.

"Twenty years ago I believed that I would be the first man to fly; that I was on the track of accomplishing what no one else was anywhere near reaching. I was working entirely in electricity then and did not realize that the gasoline engine was approaching a perfection that was going to make the aeroplane feasible. There is nothing new about the aeroplane but its engine, you know.

"What I was working on twenty years ago was the wireless transmission of electric power. My idea was a flying machine propelled by an electric motor, with power supplied from stations on the earth. I have not accomplished this as yet, but am confident that I will in time.

"When I found that I had been anticipated as to the flying machine, by men working in a different field, I began to study the problem from other angles, to regard it as a mechanical rather than an electrical problem. I felt certain there must be some means of obtaining power that was better than any now in use. And by vigorous use of my gray matter for a number of years, I grasped the possibilities of the principle of the viscosity and adhesion of fluids and conceived the mechanism of my engine. Now that I have it, my next step will be the perfect flying machine."

"An aeroplane driven by your engine?" I asked.

"Not at all," said Dr. Tesla. "The aeroplane is fatally defective. It is merely a toy--a sporting play-thing. It can never become commercially practical. It has fatal defects. One is the fact that when it encounters a downward current of air it is helpless. The "hole in the air" of which aviators speak is simply a downward current, and unless the aeroplane is high enough above the earth to move laterally but can do nothing but fall.

"There is no way of detecting these downward currents, no way of avoiding them, and therefore the aeroplane must always be subject to chance and its operator to the risk of fatal accident. Sportsmen will always take these chances, but as a business proposition the risk is too great.

"The flying machine of the future--my flying machine--will be heavier than air, but it will not be an aeroplane. It will have no wings. It will be substantial, solid, stable. You cannot have a stable airplane. The gyroscope can never be successfully applied to the airplane, for it would give a stability that would result in the machine being torn to pieces by the wind, just as the unprotected aeroplane on the ground is torn to pieces by a high wind.

"My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and oblivious of "holes in the air" or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air, even in a wind, for great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action."

"You will get stability through gyroscopes?" I asked.

"Through gyroscopic action of my engine, assisted by some devices I am not yet prepared to talk about," he replied.

"Powerful air currents that may be deflected at will, if produced by engines and compressors sufficiently light and powerful, might lift a heavy body off the ground and propel it through the air," I ventured, wondering if I had grasped the inventor's secret.

Dr. Tesla smiled an inscrutable smile.

"All I have to say on that point is that my airship will have neither gas bag, wings nor propellers," he said. "It is the child of my dreams, the product of years of intense and painful toil and research. I am not going to talk about it any further. But whatever my airship may be, here at least is an engine that will do things that no other engine ever has done, and that is something tangible."

[just-a-writer-here]

From Above

Part One

Summary: If (my mom) wanted me to play music again, why wouldn’t she just tell me herself? Maybe she can’t! Maybe she has to do it another way. You know, through signs!

Word Count: 2289

Warnings: talk of death

Note: This is legit just what my brain keeps coming up with when thinking about and seeing people talk of why the boys came back, why Julie can see them, and why we keep seeing connections to Julie's mom (Rose) and the boys.

I never use names throughout most of this but that’s a narrative choice. I know it’ll be weird but until I use names, there is literally only one character to reference and most people don’t use their own names when they’re thinking to themselves.

You can also find it on AO3 here.

The page breaks were made by @julieandtheicons​ (or over on Twitter: babsmaitland).

This wasn’t like she’d imagined.

Almost immediately after she had died, she’d found herself standing before a map with two halls on either side of her. The colors of everything around her was washed out compared to what she remembered seeing colors had been like while alive. There were greens and blues and browns scattered about, with the map being the only thing that was a simple black on white scheme.

With an unneeded deep breath, she took the few steps between her and the map to get a better look at it. Like an outlet mall, it showed her where she was with a large arrow and the capslocked words “YOU ARE HERE”, so she traced her eyes first left then right to see what else she could find. In the left hall, terms like “Death” and “Records” were read. And in the other direction, there was only one thing - “Afterlife”. It was straightforward, almost: Go right, and she moves onto the next life. Go left, and... Well, going left seemed like it would give her answers or details that most humans wouldn’t get.

But there was nothing to tell her what death meant, and why it was different than afterlife outside of the general definitions. Because what if they meant something different after you stopped living? So she didn’t know what direction she should walk.

With a soft sigh, she stepped back and looked between her two options.

There was nothing to visually differentiate them from one another. The floor was a consistent, faded brown, and the walls were the same washed-out blue. And the wall trimmings were the same worn green. Had she not taken a look at the map first, she would have thought left had meant going back and right meant continuing forward onto the next adventure - and for all she knows, that’s really what it meant - but when she’d come to, the map had been what she’d been facing. Which made her think this was more of a test than a visualization of moving on.

Eventually, she decided to go for the one thing on the map that hadn’t confused her - the section on the left that held records. There were only two things that could be there, musical record or a history of whatever this hall was for. With her decision made, she nodded to herself and spun on her heels to begin the long walk left.

Hours passed.

Minutes, seconds, like a fractured image. Time folded in on itself, stretching and collapsing in turns.

She came across her first door and stopped walking. There had been no indicator on the map that had shown other doorways; both the places marked “Death” and “Records” had been at the end of the hall and from where she stood, she still had a ways to go before she reached the end. So what was this door here for? It was unmarked and seemed to glow in the faded atmosphere of the hallway.

The door itself was smaller than the average house doorway, probably just a few inches away from brushing her curls. And when she stepped forward to brush a hand over the wood - it was bright like beech or maple wood tended to be - she found the air around it was... dry. Dry and heated like that one time she’d left one of her leather jackets out in her car over a long weekend heatwave and found it cracked and damaged beyond repair. She pulled away and frowned.

That door felt like a memory, but not a particularly good one.

She doesn’t know how long she’d been walking and the first thing she’d come upon after leaving the map behind felt wrong somehow. A temptation, a distraction, from something important.

With a shake of her head, she turned to continue her way down the hall. As curious as she was about what was around her, she felt like this was a test. Like she had been given an opportunity to do something if she just stuck with her decision, and getting distracted by every little thing would drag on just long enough for her to lose the opening offered to her. And she wasn’t going to miss out on anything else - dying when both of her children were still very much children was probably her only lingering regret.

She can’t regret anything else.

So with a breath she didn’t need filling her lungs, she kept moving. But she found herself counting as more doors pop up - quickly she’s at 12... 13... 14... 20... some of them are made of the same glowingly light wood as that first door, the heat drifting from them getting stronger as each one was passed by, but there were others that seemed to be made of metals and stones that seemed to radiate their own lights. The longer she walked, the closer the doors seemed to be getting to one another, and the more the colors of the floor and walls seemed to shift. Gone was the washed-out colors, replaced by mottled greens and greys and purples.

Her chest felt compressed beneath the weight of her curiosity and constricted by the band of alarm bells tickling the back of her neck. Something wasn’t right about any of these doorways. But the further she went, there was a steady tug at the base of her skull, a call for attention that kept her focused on making it to the records room.

Maybe she’ll find answers to the growing questions piling up in the back of her head about these doors. Or maybe she’ll find she made the wrong choice, going left.

The end of the hall is back to normal - no sign of warped colors or oppressive forces trying to drag her closer to doorways she had no interest in. She breathed out in relief. The heat at her back pushed her forward to the last two doors. They sat on either side of the hall - the one of the left read “Death” in curving letters and the one of the right read “Records” in sharp, easy to read ones.

She contemplated the doorway that was titled death before shaking her head. Temptation, curiosity, will have to wait. That’s what the last however long had made her realize, if it had actually been a test. So she determinedly walked towards the right door and opened it with a hitch of breath being the only thing to betray her nerves.

Then the air seemed to rush out of her all at once.

Right in front of her was her studio. It looked like she had last left it, even the items up in the loft that wasn’t hers that she had kept despite the constant urging to sell them by everyone in her life. She could never do it though; they had belonged to some unique young men who had been taken from the world before they could make their mark upon it. And they would have, of that she held no doubt.

When she was done looking over the space around her, reminiscing over every memory made within it with her family, she returned her gaze out the doorway. Why had it led here? There was nothing here that could be called a record of any sort that she hadn’t already heard. But apparently it was important enough to put on a map and placed down an impossibly long hallway.

She sighed and decided that, since she was here, she might as well have a bit of fun. Turning back around with a sharp twist, she carefully settled at the grand piano, a soft smile forming as she remembered the last time she had managed to be here. She and her daughter had been happily writing a song together, unaware of what was coming for either of them. As she remembered the bright way Julie had worked through the lyrics, Rose began to tap out a melody she had carefully written for her daughter. It was full of hope and love, for her daughter and her future without Rose there to see her through any of it.

“That was beautifully done.”

Rose jerked in surprise, the piano creating a clash of notes as her hands pressed on them without any of the previous grace, and blinked up at the person standing in the doorway. They were thin but short - much shorter than Rose, at the very least - and was wearing a simple outfit of jeans and a graphic-tee, whose writing was in a language Rose didn’t know. Their hair was short, barely brushing the tips of their ears, and such a deep black it hurt to stare at for too long. Their eyes were wide, much wider than they should have been for a human (but what about this situation said this being was human, a quiet part of herself whispered), the color of them much like the faded blue of the walls outside.

They were also smiling at her, a polite, apologetic sort of expression that lessened the intensity of their presence. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you, but in this sort of situation, I wouldn’t have been able to not scare you, huh?”

Rose pressed her lips together and considered the idly moving stranger as they took in the image of her old studio. They moved slowly, taking their time to complete each shift as if they had nothing to worry about if they took too long. It was… It was interesting for Rose to watch. Like a movie set to a rather slow speed but it managed to somehow work at that reduced speed.

Eventually those blue eyes made their way back to her and the smile was wider. “Not very many who find themselves in the Hall make it to this end. Congratulations on that,” they softly told her, steps slowing to a stop on the other side of the piano to where Rose sat. “Now, you wanted to see this room, yes?”

Rose’s throat had closed at the question, a fear of speaking that had never found itself in her head popped up with an ugly insistence. She nodded her head when it became obvious her mouth wouldn’t work.

The stranger gave her an empty smile as they nodded back, gaze sliding off of her once more to consider the piano between them. “Can you explain why?”

Like a cough, her voice worked, “Curious.”

They hummed, as if amused by the answer. “Ah, yes, curiosity! Such a wonderful part of humanity, wouldn’t you say? Though,” their tone shifted into something thoughtful, but unlike the pleasant warmth from before, it was a dark sound, “it does tend to get you guys into trouble at times, doesn’t it?”

Her hands clasped together tightly as she waited.

“Ah, but this time it’s not the same, is it?” Their kind smile was back; Rose felt the heat of a fireplace and smelled melting chocolate and marshmallows. The strength of her grip on herself eased. “You wanted to get answers.”

“Yes,” slid out of her like a slippery soap between wet hands.

“Alright then!” They clapped and the scene around them shifted, losing the familiar sight of Rose’s studio to become that of an industrial library. Shelves upon shelves, all metal and large enough to reach upwards several stories, filled in the empty space around Rose and the stranger. “Now, what do you wish to know specifically, so I can get the necessary books for you.”

“There are two things,” Rose began once she realized the pressure upon her throat was gone, leaving it free to breathe out words. At the nod of understanding, she listed off, “Why the boys of Sunset Curve had to die and what my daughter’s life is supposed to look like now that I’m gone.”

The smile turned sharp and contemplative, like they had been pleased with her answer but also found it somewhat surprising. Rose kept her gaze upon the watery blue of the stranger’s, not daring to look away. The hallway had been a test, the studio had been another, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think that this impromptu staring contrast was another. And she wasn’t going to fail here. Not after coming so close to what she wanted.

“Both of those are tricky topics,” they began before taking a seat. Rose blinked before looking down at where she was sitting to find herself in a chair matching the one the other had sat in. “Your daughter’s future is… Well, it is meant to be an interesting one but no one can agree on what’s to be done to make it interesting. And those boy’s?”

Rose’s heart clenched at the sight of the stranger’s face taking on a frown. They had been smiling the whole time they’d been actively within Rose’s frame of focus, so to see the change of expression was odd. Terrifying. She folded her hands back together upon her lap and squeezed.

“The three of them have been in the same place they had always been after they all died.”

“What?”

“That was my exact reaction when I found out, but there is nothing I can personally do to help them. They’ve not moved on - and cannot where they are - but as I said, I can’t help them. So they’ve been stuck there. Probably haven’t even been aware of time passing them, poor things.”

Rose considered the answers she’d been given before sucking in a sharp breath. Steeling her nerves, she turned her best Mother Stare on the being, uncaring on what it might cause for her. Ignoring their surprised amusement, she said, “I would like to read the books on them all.”

“Smart.”

[uiux-design]

6+ Best Websites for Free Fonts in 2020

You need your website or application to look amazing, and typography is a key factor in design that can’t be overlooked. So where can you find free fonts online in 2020 that uphold a high standard of quality?

I firmly believe that, in order to strike the optimal balance between minimalism and visual appeal, a user interface should display no more than what’s absolutely necessary while making those necessary elements look visually appealing.

Keep it simple, but make the simple look amazing.

But, what does simple look like exactly?

Well, strip away all of the over-the-top marketing gimmicks, redundant features, and cluttering visuals, and most of what’s left is the UI copy and text content. As boring as this sounds, let’s be honest: this is the most important aspect of any app or website. Information and the ability to navigate it is the entire reason users are using our app or website.

So with the right typeface coupled with the right font styles (see “Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide”), we can create designs that are quite simple and yet visually appealing at the same time. This emphasizes the most important aspects of the design while using fewer resources and also inducing the least amount of unwanted cognitive load.

Typography can be very powerful.

But what are the best free font websites?

Where not to look for free fonts

Dribbble, Behance, Gumroad, and so on are home to a ton of hidden gems, but this involves sieving through a lot of digital resources, some of which are incomplete side ventures and “lite” versions. That being said, make sure that you bookmark awesome resources if you do happen to come across any. Even Instagram might surprise you, and Twitter shouldn’t be overlooked either.

That aside, let’s take a look as the best free font websites.

1. Google Fonts

Number one on this “best free fonts” list is obviously Google Fonts, which goes above and beyond what most free font websites offer. First of all, Google Fonts offers a fast and convenient CDN (content delivery network), making it super easy to embed webfonts into websites without having to actually host them.

Google fonts can be subsetted by script and weight, and we can also control how they’re loaded on the Web by setting the font-display CSS property from the embed code’s query string, which improves website loading times. (The CSS-Tricks article on “Google Fonts and font-display” explains how.)

Mind you, self-hosting fonts is better for privacy (because it’s cookieless) and speed (because it offers developers more control). Either way, Google Fonts has a humungous repertoire.

2. Creative Market

I know what you’re thinking: “Creative Market isn’t free, Daniel!”

Ahhh, but what about the Free Goods section? What’s interesting about Free Goods is that these are actually premium fonts that are temporarily free. While the section isn’t that huge, and isn’t guaranteed to include fonts specifically, each and every week it’s refreshed with six new design assets (plus three more if you sign up and another three if you spend X amount on assets).

I’ve been checking the Free Goods section on Creative Market every week for years, and I’ve built up a large repository of high-quality fonts that cost literally nothing. Font Bundles runs a similar deal.

3. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is like Unsplash but for fonts, although considering how long it’s been around (a really long time!) maybe saying that Unsplash is like Font Squirrel but for stock images is more accurate! It’s one of the veteran free font websites alongside Dafont, 1001 Free Fonts, and Urban Fonts, although “squirrel” is better.

Although many of the veteran free font websites look a little outdated, Font Squirrel has kept its website somewhat modern compared to the rest. It also has a couple of very useful tools:

Webfont Generator (converts TrueType/OpenType fonts into webfonts)

Font Identifier (for finding out the name a font from an uploaded image/screenshot)

4. FontSpace

FontSpace is one of the nicer-looking websites for free fonts, although it only offers fonts that are free for personal use, whereas Font Squirrel confirms that all of their fonts are free for commercial use too. FontSpace might not always be suitable.

5. Befonts

What sets Befonts apart is its focus on display fonts.

Although some of the fonts only offer lite/demo versions and often enough only come in TTF/OTF format (meaning they’re less suitable for the Web), Befonts is one of the very few websites that doesn’t take the “we have everything” approach (which can be overwhelming sometimes). Besides, you can always convert TTF and OTF fonts into webfonts.

6. Font Shop

Font Shop doesn’t focus completely on free fonts like Font Squirrel and FontSpace, but it’s still a rather decent alternative if options one to four didn’t have what you were looking for. I find it to be the least user-friendly of the options, but the fonts are relatively high-quality.

Honorable Mentions

The following free font websites look a little outdated, and truthfully some of the fonts do as well, but they’re arguably some of the largest databases of free fonts out there today:

Dafont

Urban Fonts

1001 Free Fonts

Fontsly

Which font format do I need?

OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) font formats have been the standard for a really long time, and they’re still used heavily in graphic design today. But that being said, WOFF formats have better compression on the Web (especially WOFF2, which is now supported in 94.49% of web browsers according to caniuse.com). In fact, the new Google Fonts embed code only offers the WOFF2 format now.

So, in short:

WOFF2 for web embeds

TTF/OTF for everything else

Which font style do I need?

Nowadays, it doesn’t really matter all that much because the norms have been thrown out the window a little bit. As an example, Serif fonts can have a modern feel now (think Medium).

Instead, we should focus more on clarity:

Legibility (how easy it is to tell characters apart)

Readability (how easy it is to read sentences as a whole)

Some of this comes down to the font itself, so one should be observant when deciding which fonts to use, but other times it comes down to how the font is styling (in terms of size, weight, and so on).

When in doubt, the WCAG 2.0/2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) have everything you need to know about typography and its many attributes, such as line spacing, line width, line height, font sizing, and so on.

Conclusion

Fonts are super useful, and they’re often all that’s needed to achieve the right amount of visual and emotional appeal without laying on more and more visual clutter. Your design needs text anyway, so why not make it the most outstanding aspect of it?

[ournewoverlords]

Rocketman is great, go see it!

I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Oh man, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. I’m apathetic towards biopics and I barely know any Elton John songs outside the Disney ones (yes, I’m a heathen, my excuse is that I didn’t get to America until 1995 and some combination of Britney and N’Sync consumed my formative years) but I had a big doofus grin throughout this movie and discovered a lot more sympathy for a celebrity I had in the back of my head as “the eccentric old dude who seems nice enough but probably doesn’t have all his marbles?”. That’s not because the film glamorizes Elton John by any means - it literally starts out with him declaring he’s done a great many horrible things, and concludes with him sighing that he’s been a cunt since 1975 - but you see the man inside the glittery bird costume, broken but trying, and I think that makes it a success in my book.

It’s a “musical fantasy” - honestly, a straight-up musical - that hits some pretty familiar narrative beats: main character bursts into rehab in the opening, looking like he needs a shower, a shave, and a hug, and now we’ll learn how he got there. No surprises, but it’s a clever way of unspooling his character arc as the movie progresses, because we watch him start his account with flat-out lies - “my dad was great, always there for me” - and then as he keeps going, it starts pouring out of him and he can’t help but begin to confront the truth. One character arc, the literal arc, is about his downfall, but the other one - the one behind it - is about his healing. It’s not an “X happened, then Y happened” kinda biopic, the journey here is as much inward as temporal - this is Elton, coming back to face the words a musician early in his career told him: “You gotta kill the person you were born as in order to become the person you want to be.” But who is the person Elton wants to be? What if the person he wants to be is just... himself?

And who is that, anyways? What I love about the movie is how it’s interested in what’s behind all the glam, the glitter, the outrageous costumes and crazy heels and rock n’roll - but it’s not afraid of those things either. You don’t have to be one or the other, extrovert or introvert, dazzling showman or a shy kid who only ever wanted to play for himself. Because the man IS fucking fabulous, he clearly had big emotions and a big life, and what I love about this movie is how it’s not afraid to throw itself into that, the same way camp is a kind of defiance against both the people who take life too seriously, and the people who don’t take it seriously enough. It punctuates again and again that this whole thing is about the hole in Elton’s heart, the hole that one’s parents are supposed to fill, and how his outrageous talents both lift him out of there and then give him too many things to fill it with — luxury clothes, booze, sex, drugs, eating disorders, pushing away the only people who care for him as if self-hatred were its own addiction. It’s a bottomless pit, and the struggle Elton faces is whether there’s anything worth salvaging at the bottom of it. It doesn’t sound like a very heroic choice, but it is: choosing life.

Some notes I jotted down right after watching, spoilers under the cut:

There were some things I didn’t think worked as well, though it wasn’t that they were bad, just that I wish there was more there.  

For example, I thought that the final sequence where the characters from his past re-appear in this kind of cliched therapy sequence felt a bit too on-the-nose and forced, or at least clunky compared to the deftness of many of the earlier scenes. As a climax, it didn’t really land for me. This is part of my general wish that the story had more “meat” on it — i.e., a bit more prose and less verse — because it feels like it should be building up to this realization that Bernie was the one who truly loved him this whole time (not romantically I mean, but, in the more meaningful sense, properly). Because Bernie essentially becomes a peripheral character after their initial honeymoon — he’s always kinda in the background, but they drift apart over the years to underline Elton’s fall — so their relationship doesn’t have as much weight as it could’ve to me even though it is a thread that runs throughout the movie.

Don’t get me wrong — the scenes they have together are sublime, especially that “Your Song” scene, where the look Elton gives him really makes me wonder if Elton’s aborted kiss really was just a young man confusing his momentary giddiness for a crush. Jamie Bell gives this wonderfully gentle performance that keeps him as this North star in your mind, the one you want Elton to find home by. I just wanted more, especially in the latter half of the film, because I think the core of this film is about a love story, between Elton John and the things that save him: his best friend, and his love for music.

That’s my critique of the film in general, if I had to have one — despite running over two hours long, there’s some parts that feel oddly compressed or skimpy. John Reid, Richard Madden in an incredible performance as Elton’s frighteningly intense yet undeniably attractive business (and pleasure!) partner with the Hugo Boss suit and smoldering black eyes, goes from what girls want the dude in Fifty Shades to be to an abusive, cold-blooded asshole in the span of what feels like two scenes and ten minutes. It’s like one second, Elton’s star is rising and he’s flying high — and then in the next, he’s snorting coke, fighting with John, and drinking too much. It is heavily implied that: 1) getting famous was synonymous with doing drugs at the time, and because of Elton’s personality he couldn’t brake (but I still wish they made this subtext a bit more text) and 2) that behind this lurch downwards is his inability to be honest about his sexuality — John, of course, wants him to marry a beard “for the business” — but it’s strange that that’s not brought up earlier as a theme, when he was secretly getting kissed by the trumpeter and then happily trysting with John.

“Living a double life”, though, is a huge theme in another way: it’s the contrast between Elton’s happy, extravagant show life and Reginald Dwight, a lonely little boy trapped inside a miserable man trapped inside a mansion that provides so much of the pathos in the “adult” years of the film. None of the fame and fortune have brought him love, only adoration. If that’s a familiar thesis in biopics about famous people, it still works for me here because Taron Egerton’s performance is just SO GOOD. He gives it his all in every moment, not just the big singing and dancing ones. Behind all the little drug-induced twitches and grimaces of self-loathing (but also just the tiiiny bit of ego all great performers have), you can see the sweet kid who deserved better, who just wants to “go home”, if only he could find it.

I think the fundamental reason behind my “I wish there were more stuff” is the fact the movie structures itself after a musical, and for musicals the non-singing parts are more about how you get from one big singing part to the other. That’s a hard space for a biopic, especially one that gets into pretty serious territory and has years to cover; song and dance end up competing with time for character work. But the director does something I think is really clever, though, and that’s to use those musical sequences as part of the story — the moments flow into the song, and the song crystallizes the moment/theme/feeling in this natural way. They’re not an excuse to check off Elton John’s biggest hits, but rather fulfill a cinematic purpose in capturing an emotional rather than factual truth.

Not just the songs, but there are a number of these deft little scenes I really liked because they make the “point” in a single shot/cut/image, with very little dialogue. Some examples:

- The first time Elton and Bernie meet, Bernie mentions the country song Elton’s prospective manager had just disparaged and Elton kinda smirks, then in the next beat realizes that maybe that was kinda asshole, and he clumsily hums out the first verse, and Bernie perks up and follows with the next, and soon they’re both banging on the diner table and singing it together with huge grins. What’s especially great about this scene is that you can’t figure out if they’re doing this in “reality” and everyone thinks they’re crazy, or if this is one of those musical fantasy sequences. The point is that the distinction between them doesn’t matter, because that sequence is about the feeling of the moment, and at that moment they feel connected. Love at first sight.

- The scene where many years later Elton, now successful and dare-we-say perhaps even hopeful that his father might accept him now, finds the man with his new house and family — and after the expected awkward intro it seems to be going ok, his father’s invited him to come sit and chat inside. So there’s his father sitting on the couch… and then this pair of boys, his new sons, comes over and he just wraps his arm around them so easily, and your gut sinks instantly, before it even cuts to Elton, whose face has shattered all at once

- Nice studio girl, lifting her voice with his in his darkest moment -> cut to wedding -> cut to morning at the house, each opening their own door and greeting each other with an excruciating level of politeness. Says it all in three scenes.

- The levitation during his performance at The Troubadour. PERFECT. You can say “this and this happened”, “and then he gave an amazing performance”, but that’s not as powerful as showing the feeling Elton John must’ve felt during that performance: a lonely little boy turned struggling young man who felt, for just a moment, that he could fly.

- Another musical sequence - Elton’s suicide attempt, where they carry him onto the ambulance and he keeps batting away the oxygen mask to keep singing. It works on so many levels because he’s just a kid who wants to sing, he’s the star who was born to sing, but he’s also a man who doesn’t want to live.

[eastasianfeelings]

falling into the sky: chapter five — move

← chapter four: share  //  chapter six: fanfiction →

Summary: Your dance crew is backing up 5Vixx’s comeback. You happen to have a big crush on Ken. It’s kind of not an ideal situation for you, but your dance crew and the rest of Vixx make up for it.

Words: 3.1k

Warnings: none

*

The next day finds you, Hyeomi, Ahwon and Daesuk in the studio room where the auditions are being held, huddling around the table to compare notes.

“So do we know why Changyeon-hyung’s not hosting the auditions?” Daesuk asks.

“I asked Jaeeun-ssaem,” Hyeomi says. “She said it’s to remove subjectivity from the process, so they can make a decision faster because of the compressed timeline.”

“By ‘make a decision faster’,” you speculate, “she basically just means he’s too picky, right?”

“That makes sense,” Ahwon agrees. “Do we know why Ken and Hyuk were fighting over Y/N-eonni?”

You snap your head around. “Eh?”

Daesuk cocks his head. “Were they fighting?”

“Oh, yeah. They both wanted to be her dance partner, or something like that,” Hyeomi shares readily.

“Really?” Daesuk looks round at you with raised eyebrows. “What kind of situation is this, Y/N-ah?”

“Look, I don’t really know,” you say, scrunching up your nose. “Hyuk just asked if he could keep learning the back-up choreography with me and Changyeon and Jaeeun, and that got Ken’s attention for some reason.”

“Hyuk wants to learn the back-up choreography?” Ahwon’s eyebrows rise too. “Why?”

“Does he actually want to be your partner?” Hyeomi speculates.

“No, no.” You blow out a breath. “He’s just interested in the dance, I’m pretty sure.”

“I guess,” Ahwon says, a bit more skeptically.

“At the very least, I don’t think he was trying to stir up trouble with Ken on purpose.” You shrug.

“I don’t know, eonni, this kind of sounds like the start of a fanfiction,” Hyeomi says with a grin.

You snort in some water; Daesuk pats your back as you cough. “Fanfiction? Seriously, Hyeomi-yah?”

“Look who’s talking,” Ahwon says shrewdly, narrowing her eyes at Hyeomi. “You rode in with Jaeeun-ssaem again yesterday, didn’t you?”

You whip around. Looks like it’s true, based on Hyeomi’s expression. “Yah, Byeon Hyeomi.” Slowly a smile takes over your face. “What is this, exactly?”

“Nothing,” she says, in a tremendously unconvincing tone.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” you retort. “It sounds kind of like…”

“Forbidden love!” Daesuk says.

“Age difference!” Ahwon says.

“Student-teacher relationship!” you say.

Hyeomi jumps to her feet and shushes you all with flailing arms. “Yah, you guys! What if she walked in right now?”

You’re laughing at this point. “Hyeomi-yah, I’m happy for you.”

“You need to tell us all the details, you know,” Ahwon says.

“I will! After! Just—don’t say anything to Jaeeun-ssaem for now, okay?” Hyeomi beseeches.

Daesuk zips his lips as you and Ahwon nod. Just in time, too: the back door to the studio opens and Jaeeun walks in.

You all quickly seat yourselves along the table, leaving the middle chair open for Jaeeun. She’s looking at some papers in her hands as she walks over, which gives you time to compose yourselves.

“Hey kids.” She looks up with a smile and starts distributing the papers among the four of you. “Here are the eleven candidates’ resumes, give them a read.”

“What are they auditioning with, ssaem?” Ahwon asks.

“We gave them five boy groups to pick songs from, plus one partner dance. Speaking of—” Jaeeun turns to you. “Y/N-ah, you know the choreography to Taemin’s ‘Move’, right?”

“…Yes,” you say slowly. “Are you about to ask me to—”

“Dance with the candidates?” She flashes a smile and sits down neatly in the middle chair.

“Ssaaeem,” you whine. Hyeomi, Ahwon and Daesuk are snickering. “Why couldn’t you have told me earlier?”

“Then you don’t want to?” Jaeeun asks innocently.

“No, but now I’m worried I’ll forget something.” You let out a groan and slump on the tabletop. Being put on the spot is not your favourite thing in the world.

“Hey, we did like five million repeats of ‘Move’ when it first came out,” Ahwon reminds you.

“Yeah,” Daesuk agrees, “it’s got to be burned into our muscle proteins by now.”

“It’s chemistry that I’m looking for,” Jaeeun tells you. “So just take it easy, okay?”

“Don’t worry, eonni, if you make a mistake and the other dancer gets mad, he’s out of contention right away,” Hyeomi assures you.

“Thanks, Hyeomi-yah,” you sigh.

Jaeeun’s phone rings. “Hello? Oh, okay, send the first one in.” She hangs up and looks around at you. “All right, we’re starting.”

You sit up and watch the room’s front door open to admit the first candidate.

He introduces himself, then chooses GOT7’s “Calling My Name” as his solo. A good choice, in your opinion; the dance focuses more on elegance and precision compared to the aggressive and powerful boy group choreographies popular these days. And Vixx has never been aggressive, exactly.

Unfortunately, it’s the most soulless dance you’ve seen in a while. Jaeeun doesn’t ask him to do the partner dance; she just thanks him after two minutes and points him out the door.

As soon as he’s gone, she shuffles his resume to the back of her pile. “That was an easy no,” she says drily.

“Was he even looking at us?” Daesuk wonders aloud.

“More like staring right through us.” Ahwon shakes her head.

Jaeeun nods. “No sense of emotion. Accurate technically, but no storytelling.”

“See, eonni, you’re only going to dance with the actual good ones,” Hyeomi says to you brightly.

“Hmph.”

The next one dances to Infinite’s “The Eye”, a choreography you know Jaeeun likes, and isn’t soulless about it. You’re not really surprised when she looks down the table to you after two minutes and nods her head.

Looking back to the dancer, she says, “Next we’ll ask you to perform Taemin’s ‘Move’ as a duet, with Y/N-ssi.”

You walk over to stand next to him, give him a polite “Hello” and face the table.

“We’ll start at the first chorus,” Jaeeun says, and promptly plays the music.

As the last few beats of the prechorus lead into the refrain, you let yourself sink into the calmly slithering vibe of the song. The lack of mirror in front of you is a different sensation; it’s been a long while since you haven’t critically observed your every move while dancing. There’s some kind of satisfaction in knowing your partner’s being watched, not you.

You’re just moving into the second pre-chorus when the back door opens with an emphatic thud.

Your partner jumps, which in turn nearly breaks your concentration. But years of practice keep you going into the next step as you suppress the urge to check who’s just entered the room. As a back-up dancer, your job is to dance, no matter what happens during a performance.

Haltingly, the guy manages to swing back into the choreo just as the second chorus hits. You have to adjust your spacing to make sure his hand doesn’t smack you as the two of you travel. Right after that, the music stops.

Both of you straighten to look toward Jaeeun. “Thank you,” she says to the guy, a clear dismissal.

As he makes his exit, you whisk back your flyaway hairs, glance around at the newcomers, and nearly have a heart attack.

Hyuk and Ken are now standing behind your seat.

“What’d you think?” Jaeeun draws your attention back to her.

“Well,” you say slowly, “he wasn’t bad.”

“That means on to the next!” Hyeomi says.

“I agree,” Ken inserts confidently. “That guy fell way out of sync with Y/N-noona at one point.” He leans forward, places his hands on the back of your vacant chair and directs a smile at you. “We can do better than that, right, noona?”

“They were out of sync because you decided to run into the room during the middle of the song, hyung,” Hyuk snorts. Ken ignores him and just keeps smiling at you.

Banmal and handkerchiefs. You can do this, you tell yourself as you cautiously approach the table again.

“Come sit.” Ken pulls your chair back a little and then waits.

…Is he planning on pushing you in?? Gingerly, you turn your back to him and perch yourself on the edge of the seat. Then you’re muffling a surprised noise as he slides the chair forward with surprising strength, tucking you right into the table.

Beside you, Daesuk looks like he might be giggling to himself. Thank goodness Jaeeun’s paying more attention to the resumes than Ken’s antics or your nervous reactions. “Okay, next,” she calls out.

The front door opens for the third candidate. You’re surprised when he chooses Vixx’s “Fantasy”; you’re not sure you’d have the gumption to perform an idol’s own song right in front of them. But it turns out that he’s not bad at all.

At the two-minute mark Jaeeun calls a stop and nods at you. “Y/N-ssi.”

You move to stand. But suddenly Ken speaks, from right behind you—with shock, you realize that he’s had his hands on the back of your chair this whole time.

“Jaeeun-ssaem,” he says lightly, “was Vixx’s ‘Fantasy’ one of the audition choices?”

Jaeeun raises an eyebrow. “Yes, Vixx was one of the options.”

The candidate looks toward Ken, and you can see the moment when he realizes that he’s talking to an actual Vixx member. “Er—I wanted to show my respect and admiration for Vixx-seonbaenim,” he blurts, and sinks into a deep bow. “To express how much I would like to work with you.”

“Hm.” That’s not exactly an approving noise from Ken.

You look to Jaeeun. She’s frowning at Ken, but nods to you again. “Y/N-ssi, if you would.”

When you push back at the table, though, your chair doesn’t move.

Automatically, you push harder. The table actually inches forward.

Confused, you twist in place to find Ken’s forearms tensed and locked, his grip keeping your chair in place as he stares at the dancer.

“Er.” You look up, up, into his face. “Excuse me.”

“Hyung,” Hyuk speaks up.

Ken blinks and looks down. “Ah.” But instead of letting go, he glances first down the table.

You follow his gaze to see Jaeeun’s frown dialed up a notch. “Ken-ssi.”

“…Yes.” He unlocks his death grip around the back of the chair and steps away enough to let you stand.

The candidate seems very nervous by the time you get to him, and you can’t blame him; Jaeeun’s face is completely blank, your teammates seem to be whispering among themselves, Hyuk’s leaning against the wall looking bored and Ken’s expression is… well, foreboding, almost. You do your best to give the guy a reassuring nod before facing the table.

“You’ll be dancing the choreography to ‘Move’ by Taemin as a duet with Y/N-ssi here,” Jaeeun says. She barely waits for the dancer’s responding nod before snapping her fingers to cue the music.

To his credit, the guy doesn’t dance like he’s nervous; he slides right into the choreography with you as the first chorus starts to play. He also doesn’t shy away from looking at you when the choreo allows for or calls for it, which means the spacing between the two of you is solid and you’re in no danger of being whacked by an errant limb.

Jaeeun lets you finish the second chorus before stopping the music. “Thank you,” she says to the dancer, more politely than before, and nods him out.

As soon as the door closes behind the candidate, Hyeomi says, “He wasn’t bad!”

“He wasn’t really looking at us, though,” Daesuk says.

“But he looked good with Y/N-eonni,” Ahwon says, “he picked up her vibe and made it feel more like a duet.”

“Her vibe?” Ken echoes. He’s now leaning against the wall next to Hyuk with his arms crossed.

Your whole crew looks at him.

A little defensively, he shrugs. “I mean, being able to dance in the same style as someone else is kind of basic, isn’t it?”

“Dancing in the same style is different from having chemistry,” Jaeeun says briskly as her pen moves over the guy’s resume.

“Are you saying that he had chemistry with Y/N-noona?” Ken lifts his arm to point accusingly at the door.

“Ken-hyung, calm down.” Hyuk swats Ken’s arm down. “Ssaem’s going to make us leave if you keep being annoying.”

“I’m not being annoying,” Ken says, but lowers his arm.

At that, Jaeeun lifts her head and levels him with a stare. “You are, Jaehwan-ah, so tone it down.”

“…Sorry, ssaem.” There’s a sullen pout on his face that makes you want to stare too long at his lips.

“Y/N-ah?” Jaeeun pulls your attention to her. “What did you think?”

“I thought he was going to be nervous, but he didn’t dance like he was,” you say. “How much experience is there on his resume?”

“A lot of short-term contracts,” Daesuk says as he skims it. “Oh, he’s done a few music show festivals.”

“That’s good,” Ahwon notes.

“Put him on the shortlist?” Hyeomi says.

Jaeeun nods. “Yeah, I think so.” She sets aside his resume and waves you back to your seat. “At least that’s one.”

You hurriedly seat yourself before Ken can think to try pushing you in again. Then you nearly jump a foot in the air when he decides to lean over your shoulder and ask quietly:

“You liked him?”

That’s not his breath you’re feeling on your cheek, is it? “Um, well. He was pretty good.”

“But we can raise our standards, right? We want the best.”

“I don’t think you should talk, hyung,” comes Hyuk’s dry voice.

The faint breath disappears as Ken straightens with a sniff. “How rude.”

“Stop bothering Y/N-ah or I’ll kick you out,” Jaeeun threatens. “Next!”

The fourth dancer dances SHINee’s “I Want You”, which is a song your crew has practiced as well, so you’re a bit biased in liking it. Jaeeun looks more skeptical, but allows the guy a minute to dance “Move” with you.

After he leaves, she turns and asks for opinions again. “What did you think?”

“I think if someone dances ‘Noona, You’re So Pretty’, we should hire them on the spot,” Daesuk says.

You return to your seat and give him a high-five. “Seconded.”

“Thirded!” Hyeomi and Ahwon say at the same time.

Jaeeun huffs out a laugh. “That means we’re not hiring this guy, right?”

“Why?” Ken asks with interest, peering around Hyuk at you all. “Why ‘Noona, You’re So Pretty’?”

“It’s our song,” Daesuk says simply.

“Oh?” Ken looks to you to elaborate.

“It’s one song we all love,” you explain to him. “Both the music and the choreography.”

“Ah.” He nods.

“Ken-hyung can’t relate,” Hyuk says playfully, “he doesn’t know any of SHINee-sepnbaenim’s choreography. They’re all too hard for him.”

“Yah!” Ken rounds on him. “Why are you being so rude today?!”

“Is it rude to tell the truth?” Hyuk just grins.

“Ssaem,” Ken whines, “can’t you throw Hyuk out?”

Jaeeun doesn’t even bother answering. “Next!”

The fifth candidate introduces himself, hits a stance in front of the table with eyes closed in concentration… and then TVXQ’s “Mirotic” starts playing.

With strained patience, Jaeeun waits for a lull in the song to cut him off. “Excuse me. Excuse me.”

“Oh—yes?”

“You do realize that TVXQ was not one of the options for this audition?”

“Oh. There were options??”

Needless to say, he leaves very shortly after that.

“How’d he get on the shortlist?” Ahwon asks delicately.

Jaeeun grunts. “A referral.”

“From who? Changyeon-hyung?” Daesuk grins.

The sixth candidate dances to Winner’s “Really Really”. The group isn’t one of your favourites, so maybe you’re biased in not liking it this time. Daesuk, Ahwon and Hyeomi also have varying degrees of distaste evident on their faces. You’re happy when Jaeeun dismisses the guy without asking you to dance with him.

“Ssaem, you chose Winner as one of the options?” you ask her after the door closes.

“Yeah,” Jaeeun says. “‘Really Really’ is a weak pick, though.” She stretches and looks at the clock. “Shall we take a break? We’re ahead of schedule.”

Hyeomi jumps up. “Ssaem, is it okay if I plug my phone into the player to charge?”

“Sure, Hyeomi-yah.”

But as soon as Hyeomi’s phone is connected to the sound system, the familiar strains of SHINee’s debut fill the room.

“Yeah!” Daesuk whoops and hops out of his chair. “Y/N-ah, Ahwon-ah, let’s go!”

Jaeeun lets out an exasperated laugh as the four of you bounce around the dance floor. “Why?”

“C’mon, doesn’t watching Y/N-eonni dance make you want to dance too?” Hyeomi says brightly as she does a Taemin spin.

“Noonan neomu yeppeoseo,” Daesuk sings along at the top of his lungs.

“Namjadeuli gaman andwo,” Hyeomi continues, pointing your way.

Ahwon joins the other two dancing around you. “Heundeullineun geunyeoui mam sashil algo isseo~!”

Laughing, you swat at them. You know your voice would crack if you tried to sing that loudly while dancing.

Suddenly, Ken’s clear honey voice continues the song:

“Geunyeoege sarangeun hansunganoe neukkimil ppun…”

You look round to see him watching you all, lips curved as he sings:

“Mwola haedo naegen salmui everything~”

Before you can melt on the spot, you’re distracted by Hyuk jumping in and joining the choreo in the pre-chorus. It’s quite a sight to see someone his height and build perform the very athletic choreography, and the sweet grin on his face is just the cherry on top.

“All right, all right,” Jaeeun says, waving both her arms. “Hyuk-ah, if you pull a muscle during these auditions, your manager’s going to kill me.”

“No way, he won’t,” Hyuk protests even as Hyeomi turns off the music.

Jaeeun looks to you. “You want to grab water, Y/N-ah? You’ll probably be dancing some more.”

“Yeah, I will,” you agree. You grab your empty water bottle from the table and head for the back door of the studio.

When you step outside, a glance down the hallway shows a few people still waiting their turn to audition by the front door. You’re about to turn away and head for the water fountain when something—someone—catches your eye.

A hint of familiarity.

The person lifts their head at that moment, and you get a good eyeful of their face.

What—

Are you, maybe, actually in a fanfiction? Because that’s the boy you crushed on throughout the entirety of high school, standing in line to audition for a spot on your dance crew.

You’re frozen to the spot, trying to figure out what to do and how big of a deal this is, when the back door opens right next to you and your current crush walks out.

“Noona?” Ken tilts his head at you, eyes wide.

You look at him. You think: I am totally, unquestionably, undoubtedly, 100% definitely in a fanfiction.

*

← chapter four: share  //  chapter six: fanfiction →

[doshmanziari]

Economy and Thematic Structure: Symphony of the Night's Level Design

[N.B.: This piece was originally featured on Gamasutra. I was inspired to post it here too after watching the Boss Keys YouTube video on Symphony of the Night’s world design and finding the analysis shallow and unoriginal.]

"Why is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night good?" is a question that's been asked countless times over the years since the game's release on the PlayStation in 1997. People seem almost desperate to know the answer to this in the wake of similarly modeled but less acclaimed titles such as Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. It seems that no matter how many explicative lists are written, Symphony of the Night (hereafter shortened to SotN or Symphony) is representative of an unplaceable magic; thus, its staying power. That's the typical narrative, anyway. As someone who does think that Symphony is indeed good, I have my own answers -- answers that I think stand out from the usual enumerations -- to that question. I'll attempt to lay some of them out here.

The most common thing you're bound to hear in support of SotN's quality is its maximalism: that the game is so stuffed and gilded with "pointless" details that one comes to adoringly approach it as a curious, jewel-like creature. It's a trait that's perhaps more valued now than ever before, as mainstream game development has become a monstrous, multi-million-dollar endeavor that discourages strangeness and obtuse secrecy partly for fear of lacking recuperative sales. As worn out as it is, this is a good point. Symphony expresses a sort of creative freedom that's all the more reinforced by Koji Igarashi's comments in this video from 2015 -- a freedom that came from the purgatorial point in time in which the game was made, when Konami's direction for the series was vague. What we got was a game made by a small group of people who had little resistance to including every trifle, even if that trifle's inclusion meant several more hours of work.

I'll come right out and say that Symphony's castle is my object of interest as a player and a critic. I've always been entranced by how a wide range of elements -- the backgrounds' incredible rendering, the variety of colorful monsters, Michiru Yamane's indispensable score, and more -- came together to make the castle have a life force that felt like it existed beyond the constraints of a television screen. So what's sort of interesting, in the context of this discussion, is that SotN's castle isn't really maximalist in look or layout. It's certainly eclectic, if you're comparing one of its sectors to another, but it's not defined by excess, and to call it "sprawling" is only half-accurate. In fact, as the series progressed with the return of Igarashi as producer on 2002's Harmony of Dissonance, there came to be a sort of inverse maximalism, relative to SotN, at play in the overall scheme of things. All of the rococo stuff that intertwined with the mechanics (e.g., a familiar spirit being able to tell you where hidden rooms were) got whittled down; meanwhile, the game worlds grew in quantitative size, culminating in 2006's Portrait of Ruin that boasted a 1000% (hey: that's bigger than 200.6%!) completion rate.

"Economy" and "focus" are words you'll pretty much never hear spoken in reference to SotN, but they're nonetheless, and perhaps surprisingly, good words to use when trying to explain what makes its castle stand out from the other so-called Igavanias. I'm going to be speaking in somewhat broad terms here just to avoid getting too entrenched in specifics, but I'm also going to try to avoid cherry-picking comparative material. After all, it's not as if Symphony's qualities were entirely unrecognizable in its progeny. The point I want to make here isn't that SotN is perfect, or that everything went to hell after 1997. I'd rather like to say that Symphony's level design, in general, has a clarity and consistency that never resurfaced with the same potency in the series since its release.

Let's first take a look at the Royal Chapel. This is one of my favorite places in Symphony, and a great example of the qualities I mentioned. Now look at Harmony of Dissonance's equivalent: the coupled Corridor in the Air and Chapel of a Heretic. The difference here is striking. Although there are parallels between the two (for example, the Chapel of a Heretic has several halls that are modeled on those jutting out from the Royal Chapel's towers; note the windows' shape), the Royal Chapel has a cleanliness, even a linearity, to its organization. It's easy to follow with the eye, and there's no mistaking that the navigational theme, starting from the bottom, is ascent. And this sense isn't just something selectively derived from the perspective of seeing the whole map at once. For one, you've got the longest continuous staircase in the game; for another, there's a central tower that's allowed to rise as tall as it wants without any horizontal redirections, and a couple of also unbroken shorter towers thereafter. This ascensional theme is also bolstered by the progression of environmental details you can see beyond the Royal Chapel's borders. A hilly coniferous forest gradually gives way to an indigo sky and a stream of clouds, with the forest now a distant sight.

So, we've got an environment here that directs our movement along a specific main route, and it's complemented by the theme of escalating verticality. When we come to Harmony's Corridor in the Air, though, it's difficult to figure out what the layout is trying to communicate. The spaces are visually unified but structurally disorganized. It's as if the level design is trying to pull off a bunch of stuff at once at the expense of letting any of it develop. Although disorganization can be interesting (and there are arguably other ways, outside of this essay's range, to interpret Harmony's castle), in this case the environment is missing the narrative of progression that's part of what makes the Royal Chapel such a pleasure to go through. A bit of focus is brought in with the Chapel of Heretic, if only because there are no branching paths, but its appearance seems to ask more than ever for a comparison to the Royal Chapel, and it can't favorably compare. You're undeniably ascending, but the majority of the rooms you're traversing are horizontal, and this dulls the actual feeling of ascending.

The top of the Chapel of a Heretic -- that large room with the long staircase -- brings to mind another subject, due to its parallel to the Royal Chapel's staircase, and this is the use of a room as a dramatic device with fulfilled, or unfulfilled, implications. The Royal Chapel's staircase is interesting because it's a dramatic structure (extensive, singular, complemented by richly ornamented recesses, and the way in which you're properly introduced to the Royal Chapel) involved with the navigational theme of descent that produces a sense of anticipation (e.g., "This staircase is so long; I wonder what it's leading to"); and this is fulfilled in the form of the gorgeous chapel sidelined by stained-glass windows and terminating in an altar. In elementary terms, the Royal Chapel's staircase displays a set-up/payoff dynamic.

Rather than compare this to the Chapel of a Heretic's staircase, though, I'd like to pit it against Portrait of Ruin's Great Stairway, whose namesake is a pair of chambers containing long staircases. Comparisons to the Royal Chapel here are perhaps most apt because the Great Stairway's stairs are similarly staffed by Corner/Hill Guards and also have overhanging ledges with collectible items. The problem the Great Stairway runs into is that neither staircase offers anything aside from sheer size and those aforementioned call-backs. The chambers' opposing extremities lead to nondescript transitional rooms with no major or minor drama beyond, and each is side by side, which only calls attention to how similarly structured both chambers are. This is especially bad because these chambers are the largest rooms in the castle (as demonstrated by the game's map), on top of locationally representing its "heart", and yet the take-away is that the designers were more concerned with filling space via copy-pasting than with having the architecture be engaged in any sort of dialogue with itself.

Something else I'd like to talk about is how generous Symphony is with giving its places breathing room. Breathing room is important because it allows environments to better develop on their own terms, helps to thematically distinguish areas, and assists in our ability to mentally organize them individually and in relation to the entire game world (something that is its own form of entertainment). This is a trait that ties back into the visual lucidness of the Royal Chapel's layout. It's illuminating to compare Symphony's map with that of Dawn of Sorrow. It becomes clear here what I'm talking about with breathing room: Dawn's map appears to be on a mission to cover as much space as possible (so much so that the bit of negative space on the top left feels like an oversight), but when we look at Symphony's, it's not too much of a leap to estimate that nearly half of the map is negative space.

This isn't a detail that's only appreciated in the abstraction of a map, either. If we review Dawn of Sorrow's Dark Chapel, we can pick out points of visual continuity and hierarchical structure. For instance, the second boss' room (Malphas) is stacked directly atop the first boss' room (Dmitrii) with the shared visual element of the organ, and Malphas' room is headlined by a corridor that follows the three rooms' progression from the "underworld" to the "heavens." We might also note that the belfry rightly sits at the Chapel's highest point and is situated above a visually unified and equally wide pair of rooms. But the Chapel's upper body is so compressed that architectural decisions such as these fall flat; the literal compression becomes an expressive compression that isn't particularly relevant to the environment. The fact that I, as the player, am in that top corridor, suspended above the distant mountains, is something that's really only communicated by the background. In action, entering the corridor feels abrupt -- I've only ascended two "rooms"' worth (represented by a single square on the map), relative to Dmitrii's room -- and this abruptness is reinforced by looking at the map and seeing how awkwardly squished the corridor's supporting columns are against the roof of Malphas' room.

Does Symphony have no compressed environments? Absolutely not! Let's be attentive here, though. Its castle's two most compressed places, by far, are the Colosseum and the Catacombs. If there is any criticism to be made of this pair in terms of how their parts interlock, it is perhaps the immediate transitions between the bed of lava in the Catacombs' natural halls and its built rooms' foundations. But beyond this slip-up, these are successful instances of compression because that trait feels thematically relevant. It works for the Colosseum both because it renders the macro-structure's hard symmetry as even more explicit, and its smushed quality recalls the cramped quarters of an actual colosseum's hypogeum. Similarly, the Catacombs' compression works because it reinforces the area's claustrophobic associations, and the overall thrust of the environment -- strongly horizontal, and never higher than two "rooms" -- really drives home the sense that this truly is the castle's bedrock.

"Compression", in this context, can also refer to how sectioned an environment is. To this day, in my opinion, Symphony feels like the 2D explorative Castlevania with the largest scope, and I'm more or less convinced that feeling is partly, yet intimately, supported by its castle having relatively more rooms that are allowed to expand to larger extents without transitional splits, as indicated on the map by a lighter or broken line within a room's border. This perhaps sounds counterintuitive; we might rather suppose that more rooms equates to a larger scope. But this isn't necessarily true. The dimensional quality of a space's entirety is not solely communicated by the quantity of its partitions; it's also how willing it is to give us the time and room to dwell on that specific space before it switches to something else. Look at Symphony's map again and notice how the Outer Wall is mostly one vertical block; how the Clock Tower and the Long Library are two large chunks bookending a minority of smaller bits; how the Castle Keep is a big L-shape with a rectangular cluster to its right; or how the Underground Caverns largely are three horizontal rooms and three vertical rooms. In fact, the trend of building subsidiary spaces around dramatically primary spaces is Symphony's rule -- not the exception!

By the time of Harmony of Dissonance, this trend had already become a scarcity; and although things did improve irregularly (Aria of Sorrow is perhaps the closest a title produced by Igarashi ever came to matching Symphony's spatial dynamism), it's a trend that could not be more alien to 2008's Order of Ecclesia. It's curious that the only follow-up to Symphony which did not aggressively slenderize, straighten, and divide its castle's parts was 2001's Circle of the Moon, handled by the Kobe branch of Konami, and I don't think it's a coincidence that, of the GBA and DS Castlevania titles, its castle's scope is the most substantial. One part of me wants to say that things developed as they did because of a vastness of variables: evolving teams, tighter deadlines, an absent concern for the emphases of this article, and so on. Another part of me wants to say that the obsessive-compulsive leanings of these games became guiding principles; which is to say, the toning down of big rooms and the emphatic sectioning came about because it made grinding easier. It's hard to not side with this interpretation when there are moments such as a hall in Ecclesia that's split down the middle for seemingly no other reason than because the hall is long and each section has a different set of enemies.

I want to elaborate on the comment above about "straightening", because it probably isn't clear what I mean (and even if it is, it's worth picking at). When I refer to a castle's parts, or rooms, as "straight", it's a way of saying that their border-lines unite to make a shape that's either a square or rectangle. This is the standard, no matter which Castlevania, starting at Symphony and ending at Ecclesia, we're talking about; yet, like other things we've examined in this article, it's a standard with degrees of prevalence. Scan this map of Symphony's castle I've edited so that all of its irregular rooms -- fourteen total -- are marked by a green star (note how nine are of the primary/large variety, increasing their significance). Now scan this similarly edited map of Harmony's castle. Upon KCET's return as the series' developers, the number of irregular rooms shrank to four, and two were based upon a couple of rooms from Symphony: the Royal Chapel's stairway, and the Marble Gallery's basement chamber. After Harmony, the only map allowing irregular rooms was Aria of Sorrow, with a whopping single room at the castle's pinnacle.

It is again curious that KCEK's Circle of the Moon stands so decisively apart from these other titles: its castle has nearly forty irregular rooms. There's no way to know how Circle's developers approached designing the castle, but the presence of such a dramatically quantifiable characteristic suggests some kind of approach that differed from KCET's developers. How else do we account for that contrast? All things considered, it's my opinion that Symphony's castle is the most dynamic, thanks in large part to how thematically distinguished its areas are; but if we're talking about the varied usage of pure geometric space, Circle comes out on top. You might be wondering where I'm going with any of this, and in response I'd like to quote from a write-up I did of Circle back in 2012: ". . . it’s easy to overlook how a game’s boundaries affect our experience of its places, perhaps because a boundary is treated as the line where the level design ends. But a boundary is really a continuation of the level design. Though it may not be interactive with one’s avatar, it does interact with the enclosed content. It organizes the extent of our movement, and its geometry feeds into all those ineffably subtle reactions we have to the spirit of a place."

What else can be said? A lot, actually! We could discuss how frequently room-types are reused; how precisely and visually segregated an environment's districts are and its link to thematic articulation; or the rough interactive textures that Symphony's inverted castle affords, in spite of how "lazy" the procedure was to create the inverted castle. But I'm satisfied with breaking things off here and saving those ideas for future analyses or -- something that interests me more -- the input of readers. What do you think? Does any of this help you to understand Symphony of the Night in a new light? Have you been thinking these thoughts all along? Do some of the interpretations seem conceptually strained?

Thanks to Revned, Edsword, mephea, TerraEsperZ, Wileee, and Zeric for their hard work on screenshot-mapping Symphony of the Night's castle.

You can support my work on Patreon.

[lindoig4]

Glaciers and Ice

Glaciers have become an unexpected focus for me!  Hundreds of them!  Everywhere you look, there are several.  We saw one that has an 11km calving front and most are probably 30 to 50 metres high at the face, but possibly hundreds of metres thick in the circ or neve (further inland, the ice is several kilometres thick!).

They are eye-wateringly glaring white, although they contain quite a bit of rock and other debris collected during the inexorable march to the sea.  We were told that most move up to about a metre a day, but some can move more than 20 metres a day.  We have been Zodiac-ing around in front of some, always a few hundred metres away, and seen many examples of calving.  Usually it is just a boulder or two or a few tons of ice falling into the water, making a noisy splash and a small series of waves, but we have also seen many thousands of tons come crashing down, sending deadly shards of ice flying hundreds of metres in the air and creating a surging wave more than 2 metres high right across the bay in all directions.  We can often hear the ice grinding away from the front, rumbling, grumbling and growling exactly like rolling thunder, interspersed with rifle cracks like lightning as the ice slips and splits into crevasses, chasms and serac towers, often portending a huge calving a minute or two later.  Some blocks of ice at crazy angles seem ready to fall in an instant, yet remain poised while neighbouring chunks collapse into the sea with a thunderous roar and surge of water that has had our Zodiac drivers fleeing flat out to put extra space between us and the onrushing tsunami.

On one occasion, I was looking at a crack in the ice where I thought a bird had flown when the crack opened and lengthened and a few hundred tons of ice fell into the sea – but most times, we hear the crash after the event and only see the later stages of the calving.

Once the ice is in the water, it often breaks into a number of icebergs of various sizes, that turn and twist and tumble until an equilibrium is reached and they drift off away from the face of the glacier to float around until they finally melt and disappear, months or often even several years later.  We have cruised around in our Zodiacs, in and out of areas of ice – with icebergs as small as tiny slivers and as big as a small fleet of B-Doubles.  We haven’t seen any giant ones like we see in photos from Antarctica, but we have been very aware of it being the Arctic as we are surrounded by some of Nature’s most exquisite sculptures.  Individual bergs come in every conceivable shape – and many that are really not conceivable at all.  It is hard to understand how particular delicate shapes could evolve.  Some are like pancakes, often undercut for metres at sea level so there is just a crust surrounding a great bulk of ice in the middle. Some are just big lumps of ice. Others are a junkpile of boulders, blocks, rectangular solids, weird shapes, all set at crazy angles to each other so it is impossible to imagine how they could form like that.  There are large areas of slush that the Zodiacs simply glide over or through, and even quite large ice-rocks simply slide aside to make way for the progress of our little exploratory craft.  It truly is a Wonderland, usually still and quiet except for the background whisper of trillions of popping air-bubbles, trapped under immense pressure inside the ice, bursting free as their millennia-long prison melts slowly in the weak sunshine.  It is magic to just sit still and silent waiting for the next majestic calving to occur.  And often there is an accompaniment of tinkling, sometimes a mini-roar as waterfalls of meltwater drip or pour off the larger bergs.

We have also spent time on board grinding through pack-ice.  In some areas, the sea is an endless white pancake, somewhat uneven from the pressure raising some plates over others or breaking them up to stand erect and refrozen in the distance.  This is where we have found some clues as to how the amazing shapes might form.  Looking down over the bow, we see the ship cracking through the floes, buckling and breaking the pancake, sliding plates over and under other parts of the floe, redistributing the weight, buoyancy and pressures to create something of a chain reaction for quite a few metres around.  We hear the ice rumbling and grinding against the hull, harsh and angry. Sometimes the thickness or density is such that when the ship encounters a berg, there is a sudden deceleration or a swerve to port or starboard that reverberates throughout the ship and we are reminded that there are forces far greater than just liquid water outside.

The ice also exhibits a surprising array of colours.  Freshly calved glaciers tend to be quite blue due to the compressed air under immense pressure inside, but this fades to dazzling white over time.  It means that watching the bluest areas of the glacier-front gives us the greatest chance of seeing an event as it happens.  Most times, we hear the initial crash of ice hitting the water and we just see the end of the calving – but for all that, what we have seen has been quite awesome with sometimes thousands of tons of ice tumbling into the sea.  Algae also grows on the surface of the ice so we have seen many areas of red, green, orange, grey and black ice – as well as many areas of just plain dirty ice where dust and debris has blown onto the ice and become embedded – or ground into the sides of the glacier as it scratches and scrapes it way across unyielding mountains on its rendezvous with the sea.  Looking into icebergs, we are often able to see quite large rocks or areas of dust laid down perhaps thousands of years ago, ready to drop as sediment or scree as the ice melts.  The sea near glacier fronts appears quite murky compared with crystal clear pristine water further out to sea.  And walking across a moraine is very difficult where the ice has retreated and left trillions of little round stones or a cacophony of slightly larger ones set at every angle to their neighbours.  Finding a safe foothold or trudging through a sea of pebbles up to our ankles takes its toll on one’s energy.  The icebergs themselves are quite beautiful, usually as sharp and white as can be imagined, but a wonderful delicate turquoise glow under the water, not so easily defined as the depths blur the edges.  Some are opaque white ice, some are crystal clear, many more are a mix of both, streaked with vivid blue or just plain dirty from the embedded detritus.

We have seen lots of movement among the bergs with quite large ones turning turtle and breaking up or large chunks of ice emerging from under nearby bergs and surprising us as they leap up next to our Zodiac.  This is as a result of disparate melting, causing the centre of gravity of the iceberg to shift and the internal pressures created over centuries suddenly creating new points of equilibrium that result in dramatic movements of great volumes of ice within a second or two.  And remember that all we see is the tip of the iceberg – 90% or more of it is hidden in the depths and we frequently drive over the most exquisite blue or turquoise sea beneath our Zodiac.

Local critters

The entire focus of the expedition for most people is Polar Bears.  We have seen several, but always at a fair distance.  They appear as dots in most photographs and people watch from the bridge for hours hoping to see one swimming between ice floes or snoozing on the ice.  For me, watching a fur rug sleeping on the ice a kilometre or so in the distance is interesting for a time, but hardly enthralling.  The ship has spent a lot of time hunting bears with some success, and I would like to see one a little closer (not too close) to satisfy my curiosity, but other beasties are just as interesting for me.

We saw a few Arctic Foxes, not up close, but certainly close enough to see them clearly and watch as they hunted around the tundra for a bird to eat or some eggs to scavenge. We have seen both the blue fox (bluish brown-black) and the more common morph (yellow-white and brown) and they move very smoothly across the rocks and snow in their search for food.

We have seen quite a few seals of various species, some on ice floes, but mostly just popping their heads up out of the water near the Zodiacs to see what these strange humans look like.  More exciting are the walruses.  We saw one haul-out of about 70 to 100 at quite a distance one evening, but we went ashore this morning and approached another herd of about the same number to the closest legal proximity of 30 metres (with the Governor’s Police auditing our activities at a distance).  They were very courteous when we chatted with them on our return to the Zodiacs – the Politi that is – the walruses ignored us.  They were very bad-mannered in fact, constantly burping and grunting, waving their flippers and displaying their bums to us – quite rude really.  But it was amazing to get so close to these wonderful huge animals and see them in their natural habitat.

There are not that many species of birds here.  A book in the bridge indicates that, including rare vagrants, Svalbard’s complete bird list stands at 81, but perhaps less than half those are regularly sighted. My list currently stands at 21, including perhaps my favourite for the trip so far, the Ivory Gull.  There are some other special birds though – another is the Arctic Tern.  I need to do some more research once we get Internet access in Reykjavik or Canada, but I think I have seen 6, possibly up to 8, species that are new to us – ‘lifers’ in the twitching world.

On Board Activities

Mainly eating – with visits to the bar, the bridge and the rigamarole of preparing to go ashore and ‘un-preparing’ when we return to the ship.  It is liberating to free one’s poor feet from their gumboot prison.

But there have been a couple of briefings, a cocktail party (buy-your-own-cocktails) to meet the Captain and some crew, and a few very interesting lectures.

The lectures have been by specialist staff.  One was on Ice and Rocks by Ulliana, a glaciologist, one on Mammals and Birds of the Arctic by Roger (odd bod researcher of various things that make him think he is an expert on everything), and one on Polar Bears by Chris, a naturalist and probably the most impressive mine of knowledge on board. All have been fascinating, almost too information-rich, but very entertaining and provocative even if not much of the detail lodged on my memory-bank.

Then there was the Polar Plunge, a traditional event in which demented passengers and equally insane crew are invited to leap into the ocean without breaking any bones on the ice. Nine intrepid jumpers took the plunge this trip, several had done it on previous expeditions, but I think they must all be crazy.  (Mind you, Heather decided against it, but wants to do it on the Greenland leg.)  It is simply a few seconds in the 1 degree ocean then back into the 2 degree air with a wind-chill factor that probably makes the ocean feel decidedly bath-like.  Not for me, especially not with a gallery of about 60 people making sure I didn’t chicken out – as I am sure I would.

More about Ice

An iceberg that is 250 metres square and a mere 20 metres high (and we have seen quite a few up to 90 metres high), containing a few tonnes or hundreds/thousands of tonnes of accumulated moraine has about another 10 times as much underwater as is visible.  A few rough calculations puts this little ice-block at a over 7 hectares in area or 12.5 million cubic metres in volume.  Given that each cubic metre of ice weighs a tonne, the Titanic really didn’t stand much chance taking on a piece of ice that possibly bulked out at 20-100 million tonnes or more.

When we were all out on deck last night enjoying our ‘funny hat’ barbecue dinner, the ship was cruising along with icebergs drifting past at maybe 11 or 12 knots, we were very glad of the skills of our Russian crew in avoiding a collision with any of them. It was a truly amazing sight to be enjoying a meal and drinks with a parade of giant ice-towers marching past 25 metres or so to either side of the ship.

One thing that surprised me was the manoeuvrability of the ship.  In the Zodiacs, we just zap along, skidding over most small icebergs or turning on a sixpence around bigger ice blocks with only the larger ones offering any real resistance.  But I assumed that the ship would be unable to change course fast enough to avoid anything.  It has amazed me to see the skill of the helmsman weaving between most of the larger floes, sliding past with just an inch or so to spare, occasionally bumping one gently aside with only the solid pack ice challenging the ice-strengthened hull.  The skill of our Russian crew is truly outstanding.

And just a definitional point...... I have referred to icebergs quite often, but technically we have seen very few.  To be officially designated an iceberg, it must be 5 metres high and 15 metres long (or 200 square metres).  This means the part of the ice that is visibly above the waterline.  Somewhat smaller chunks of ice are called Bergy Bits (yep, true scientific name) and anything under a metre high are called Growlers - and hundreds of them have growled along the sides of our ship.

I thought that true icebergs are more common at even higher latitudes and in the southern Antarctic where calving is even more dramatic, but we saw some awesome icebergs around Greenland.  Maybe more later – with pics!

[monkey-network]

WarioWare: The Series Season 2 Episodes

52 Episodes, Season 3 Coming 20XX. Season 1*

Business is Booming: Wario’s house blows up and nobody wants to take him in except Penny... without Crygor Sr’s permission. So Penny does her best to hide the 200+ lb man from her grandfather while bots are sent out to fix the house.

WarioiraW: One of Orbulon’s pets, a gelatinous blob that can take the form of any being, escapes and takes the form of Wario. This fools everybody in the fact that the fake is friendlier than the actual one. Even Wario, who plots to take advantage of his impostor’s kindness.

Spare the Rod, Don’t Spoil the Child: 9-Volt must wait to see a movie, one 18-Volt saw at an early screening. Known to be a blabbermouth, 9V does his best to shut out 18-Volt and spoilers of any kind before the event, which puts a strain on their friendship.

Jimmy Two Shoes: Jimmy T. wants to watch a game, but his tendency to not say no gets the better of him when everyone suddenly needs him.

Cricket and the Octopus of Fortitude: Young Cricket has to take care of Master Mantis’s pet while he goes to the doctor. The octopus doesn’t take kindly to Cricket’s overprotective nature, so it tries to outwit the apprentice with some outside help.

You’re Not Funny: An anonymous joke is emailed all across DC and everyone is laughing themselves stiff... except for Ashley and Mike, the latter believing the joke wasn’t sent just for the heck of it. The two go to uncover the truth, and it may be up to the not funny Ashley to snap people back to reality.

Fronkenstein: Feeling inferior due to his size, Snag, 9V’s Fronk, goes to build a new body for itself.... using body parts from the WarioWare gang.

Taxidermy: A customer hops into Dribble and Spitz’s cab and must compress his urge to make stuffed animals out of them, while the driving duo are completely unaware of his serial reputation.

The Nunja: Kat & Ana meets Artie, a wolf ninja who’s confidence is more than her actual skill. They see that’s she’s talented in a different field, but are conflicted to tell her the truth when she truly wants to be a ninja like her family.

One Perfection: A new student arrives at Mona’s school, and is seemingly flawless in everything they do. Mona feels inadequate compared to them, until she finds out a secret insecurity about them that she wants to help them with.

Monday Night Manor Madness: It’s a rainy day and the WarioWare gang coup up at a reluctant Ashley’s house. All goes well until a haunting spirit starts to spook everyone, with even Ashley unexpectedly shuddering at the thought of encountering it. What’s the spirit’s true intentions, and how is Jimmy not afraid of ghosts?

Meet The Sellouts: One of Wario’s schemes causes massive damage and the animation budget crashes due to the medical bills. So Crygor comes up with a way to work around this while Wario spams a bunch of ads subliminal messages to hopefully make money back.

Animal House: Mona’s pets and Kat & Ana’s pets join forces to commit a supermarket heist.

Ode to the Stone: 9-Volt makes a new pal out of a rock, glue, a sharpie, and googly eyes at school. Immediately losing interest, he tosses it and it not only reaches the rest of the gang somehow, but their hearts as the lifeless friend helps them see a new perspective about themselves.

The “Hero” Gains: Lulu* feels like she lacks a special hero attack, so she goes around Diamond City to see if she can have one of her very own. But like Wario always implies, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Drone Alone: Doris 1, the robot Crygor rescued from Agate forest, is left to take care of the lab while the doctor and Mike go to Penny’s talent show. Time unfortunately puts Doris on an emotional journey when an hour feels like an eternity.

Sea of Green: After a successful treasure hunt, Wario is stranded in the middle of the ocean with little to eat besides a bag of edible cacti. The cacti might leave an effect on him, but it might be the big guy’s only chance of making it home.

Late Night Cruise Control: When not on the clock, Spitz hosts a talk show that gives the latest news and brought in tons of celebrities. But when ratings start to drop, will our mechanic resort to low hanging fruit to garner back an audience, or can Dribble the music pitbull pick the show up from this funk?

Full Metal Jacket: Manager Joe, Mona’s employer and friend, creates a clothing line based on the WarioWare gang and everyone is loving it. But business becomes an empire and Joe starts losing that generous side he had, leaving Mona to bring him back down to earth.

Krumpet Scouts: 18-Volt is trying to earn money for a limited edition video game cover, but is too young for a job. He tries joining a cookie selling gang, but it’s for girls only. So he asks 13-Amp to join in his place.... while dressing up as a girl to make double the money.

Pyoro Over: The creators of Pyoro are retiring and the WarioWare gang set out to give them an explosive send off celebration since it was the company’s inspiration.

Your Greatest Feeture: Cricket’s shoes wear out and the young ward is struggling to find the right pair. But is the loss of his slippers an opportunity to learn a new technique?

Two Fros on a Sofa: Jimmy T and Jimmy P encounter each other at a bus stop and luckily finds a comfortable sofa to wait. The sofa, however, is actually a prototype rocket Orbulon left behind and the two have to work together to land the couch safely.

Flavorful Fallacy: Orbulon, realizing he left his couch in the middle of the city, goes to see where it might have gone. He meets an old man, who has a prejudice against aliens, and the two start to fight over which flavor of ice cream is better.

The People v. WarioWare Inc. (Part 1): A chipper and well meaning cult leader creates a lawsuit against the WarioWare gang for their unintentionally ludicrous crimes in the city. Wario doesn’t believe there’s a case against them, but testimony and evidence suggests otherwise and even with Mona knowing the law by hand, the gang can’t find a loophole to their reckless nature.

The People v. WarioWare Inc. (Part 2): The gang is about to serve jail time for their pretty criminal deeds of the past, but Wario’s encouragement and a special hint from the audience helps them realize that while they’re guilty, scapegoating the right person can lead to a means of escape.

Bored Games: Since the trial put everyone on edge (and house arrest), Jimmy invites the gang over for game night. Wario can’t join them, and this creates a vacuum as to who is the 2nd most conniving opportunist in the group.

Scientifically Supernatural: Ashley and Penny team up to create a being of both magic and nature and get along pretty well. The project, however, starts to rampage the town and the two fight over who’s responsible, with Red as the mediator.

Double Dribble: Dribble and Spitz enter their cab into a Rocket League type derby that puts their driving and piloting skills to the test.

He’s Back, An Unfortunate Revenge Story: Wario escapes from prison and plots to get his revenge on the one who put him there. Or ones...

The “Hero” Movie: Lulu enters a home movie into a film contest and wins thanks to Wario’s meddling. So after getting persuaded into competing for state, Lulu turns to Wario and he agrees to help if she constantly pays him, resulting in the two making “Ryno Optimus II, A Sequel to the Chosen One: The Unreckoning”

Mona’s Stop: Mona finds out that her checks have been sent to the wrong address for a while and she becomes a multi-millionaire. Knowing she’s been working pretty hard already, she retires early to become the queen of Diamond City. This would be around the time Wario tries to swindle her out of her fortune, but he’s surprisingly happy for her.

Head Boppin’: Jimmy, Jamie, James, Papa, and Mama T. have switched brains somehow. Getting back to normal seems easy... if the family didn’t act and sound nearly the same.

The Lazy Day Saints: Another couch related episode? Yeah, except this time 9-Volt rebels against his mother and chore day by turning the sofa into a pirate ship with Snag, 18V, Penny, Kat, and Ana as his crew. Knowing 9-Volt won’t back down without a fight, 5-Volt and the neighborhood moms fight fire with fire, using lazyboys as their vessels.

The Ultimate Foe: Cricket faces the most horrifying challenge of his life: a slab of silly putty.

Awww... Crap, Love: Ashley falls for a demon she spawned from the Necronomicon. And while Red tries to stop the demon from unleashing hell unto town, 5-Volt and Mona try to teach the stone faced witch about love, romance, the birds an- wait she learned that already, so just the first two.

Your Opinion?: Wario posts a negative review on a movie he watched, and the city turns against him. He easily ignores them at first, until everyone becomes nastier than him and the internet comes to life to kill him.

Join us for T-Posing: Dr. Crygor accidentally sets off a gas that forces everyone to silently stand in tree position... except Wario because it’s too hard for him. So I GUESS it’s up to him to reverse this before they’re all stuck like that? Ouch.

Magic Mike ACT: 13-Amp works well with music on the mind, but a challenge has arisen in the form of a standardized test... in a soundless classroom. Desperate for a beat to work with, she looks to Mike to join her in staying cool while dealing with the work and the no nonsense teach.

Spacecataz: Does anyone know how fictional characters are able to breath in space without helmets or oxygen? Eh, doesn’t matter... cocky alien hunter Spiff Gibbous* is back to destroy Orbulon, this time the WarioWare gang is in tow. It’s Star Wargames, ya’ll!

Knitwit: Dr. Crygor takes a major interest in knitting and this makes him a laughing stock among other mad scientists. Discouraged at first, Crygor soon schools his hecklers about the ingenuity of threading and needling.

Wario Und Pantser: In a 60s style episode, Wario-Man and Dynogirl (Mona) are on the case to find the criminal who’s been pulling people’s pants down.  

Flipping the L: Waluigi gets to be in this episode... and doesn’t know what to with his screen time. So what’s a reject to do besides immediately erase the show’s universe all together and come up with his own?

The Shuriken Heart of the Cards: 9-Volt wants to join Kat & Ana on their special delivery, Ana more accepting while Kat worries about him being a potential burden. However, when they get ambushed by skilled ninja.... card players, it’s 9V’s time to shine.

Stereo Street Fighter: An old foe of Master Mantis returns with a new style of fighting that towers Mantis’s more ancient techniques. Cricket, with the help of Jimmy T, try to master a new style of martial arts with the power of funk. The perfect time for Cricket to sport a rocking afro of his own.

You Have to Go: Death has come for Wario, but continuously gets sidetracked by the gang when they’ve yet to find the special treasure he buried somewhere.

Cadillacs & Yoshisaurs: I forget this is also Mario’s universe sometimes. So anyway Yoshi eggs start appearing in Diamond City and everyone’s loving them. But they’re then caught between raising pretty rowdy animals and letting a Magikoopa poach them away.

The LIVE WAHundredth Episode (Yikes, this many?): Wario is eager to celebrate the show’s special episode on stage, but somebody kidnaps the gang and leaves them in the middle of a forest, forcing everyone to work together to head back to the studio. In the meantime, Lulu and Joe are forced to entertain the audience and start to have fun with it.

Quid Pro Wario: Young puppies look to Wario for lessons on becoming con artists, with Jimmy P not taking this well.

How to Stop Worrying and Love the Cruise: 9 and 5-Volt are on a ocean liner they won in a sweepstakes and aren’t taking it well, with 5V struggling to have fun and 9V getting seasickness.

Get Nasty: Mona makes a painting everyone has mixed feelings towards it for being too obscene, so she tries to go wild with her art to get better publicity by being more shocking.

Wario’s World (Hour Long Season Finale): A fart fueled nuke sends Diamond City into a post apocalyptic setting, where a grown up Lulu leads a resistance against the Immortan Wario’s greed fueled wrath, Empresses Kat & Ana are at war with Cricket, Dribble, Spitz, and Orbulon fighting off a colossal meteor, and the only one who could possibly bring everyone together is Mike, 18 Volt (now 21 Volt), Red, and Ashley, who is dying from the putrid radiation.

[mettywiththenotes]

Thoughts on Bones and the bad decision making

The thing is about how MVA is being handled is that, generally, other animes that cut stuff out or have not as good animation as other seasons (which idk its literally only been one episode so we’ll see what else comes out of it, but I’m just stating the animation thing as one of the problems too) seems to be due to the time limit of an episode + how many episodes you have to fit in the season and evenly space it out + animation budget

Thats what I reason anyway. When I watch an anime and then read the manga, I notice stuff that didn’t get put into the anime, but I usually reason that “oh maybe it was the time limit of an episode and how many episodes they have left to put it in. If they couldn’t add that in but put this in instead, it’s probably due to what they think is more necessary to fit into the season before it ends. I can kinda understand that, and if its the case, I’m not really gonna hold it against them”

Same with animation, because adaptations usually try and space out the animation quality between Oh My God This Looks Ugly during a minor scene to Oh My God This Looks Incredible during an important scene. Again, I can understand that with budgets and the limit of available staff to animate. If you’re gonna hold back on some pieces of animation, I can definitely see the reason for sparing the Good Animation for the really important and impactful parts

But that doesn’t seem to be the case here

Bones cut out stuff that was actually quite important to understand the character. The League finding that racist cult and killing them was part of showing that they are decent enough to not be totally evil, and plus it tied in with Spinner’s arc of discrimination and that “empty feeling inside” which was actually caused by the people who lived in his town. Getting rid of his narrating too totally gets rid of that introduction to his arc, because when you first read that part in the manga, you think “why spinner? why spinner of all people? what distinguishes him from the rest?” and that question you ask yourself gets answered by his following development with Shiggy

Sure, Bones added in his narration in the forest, but the point of the initial narration is to make it feel personal. Spinner narrating in the forest is more like observational narration, rather than something personal. With 220, it felt like “Oh are we getting to Spinner’s arc? Are we getting his development or smthg? That sounds interesting, since he’s a background character. I wonder what will happen” but with the narration in the forest, it kind of gives off the feeling of “Why is Spinner narrating? Why did it switch to him? He’s just watching them, but is this important? I don’t understand”

There’s a difference between personal narration and observational narration. For example, lets compare a vlog and a documentary. A vlog is something personal, and when you watch it, you’re getting a glimpse into the persons life. That’s what I’d say Manga Spinner’s narration is equivalent to, because it literally starts off like “Whats up guys, I’m Spinner from the League Of Villains! We’re not in the best of conditions, as you can see, and we’re trying to work our way back to the top! Stay tuned!”

Anime Spinner’s narration is probably equal to a documentary, stating what has happened and whats going on now. And describing what Tomura’s face looks like. In fact, the description of the face is probably the only personal thing the anime put in from Spinners POV so far. I guess they were trying to keep that bit in to add that “personal” feeling we didn’t get from the initial narration, and since its such a small moment, it would quite easily fit into a few seconds of the episode without running over the episode limit but. there’s a big difference between “Whats up guys, I’m Spinner from the League Of Villains and we’re homeless, but we’re trying to get better!” and “His face looked like an eager child”

With the League in the shed scene, there was an awful lot there to be concerned about being cut. First we have Toga and Twice’s interactions, wholesome and sweet, which was supposed to cement their friendship which would make it all the more heartbreaking when Twice breaks down over Toga being in danger. For anime onlys, they could go off the past scenes from past seasons but idk that bit with them in the shed was supposed to be a recent reminder, to refresh your memory and such

Then we have Compress and Shiggy, because that mention of the sushi was supposed to be something Shiggy would remember and look back on, showing how connected he is with the League. With Spinner and Shiggy, that was meant to show the unrest and tension in Spinner and his ideals, and when he grabs Shiggy to yell at him, thats supposed to show you how much this matters to Spinner and how that moment tells the reader “Oh this arc is about Spinner and Shiggy”. The arc is about the League as a whole, but it’s meant to tell you as the reader that “This main villain and one of his background lackeys are going to have conflict”, and thats interesting!

Dabi’s entrance and what he said about recruitment was meant to be a build up to his conflict with Hawks. It was also meant to show how Dabi, despite seeming pretty aloof, still chooses to come back to the League and be a part of things. That despite Dabi trying to separate himself from them, he still finds a place to belong. Him bantering with the other members also showed how familiar he is with them, again, to show that this is a place he belongs

The Big Thing with Horikoshi is build up. The man slow burns to hell and back, and while it’s frustrating, it’s good. The Dabi Reveal’s burst of excitement in the fandom was because of that build up. It shows that Hori is willing to show little bits of development to really make the pay-off of waiting and reading worth it when something impactful happens.

Now, I can see why that would be a bit of an issue for the anime, because again, time limit of an episode and how many episodes/seasons you have to fit the storyline in and evenly space it out. Fitting it all in while still creating that feeling of tension must be hard, and I can see why it would be too.

But this isn’t about fitting in. This isn’t down to time limit or episode space. The simple fact is that Bones already screwed too much with it before MVA even started. They messed around with storyline, with the cuts, with dragging out scenes that really don’t even mean much - except for that scene with Enji thinking about his family, cuz that had meaning, but it was just way too dragged out. With dragging out scenes, both with and without meaning, I can see that as the studio trying to make fit the length of the episode but it just doesn’t work

And then there’s the Beach Episode for the girls, which wasn’t necessary at all. And I could also see that as them dragging out the season in order to potentially make S6 the League’s arc. But that didn’t happen

Instead, they rushed it, tried to fit it all in, while trying to keep in that Popular Characters Are Here So Please Watch element. Which AGAIN doesn’t work as good story telling because if you’re going to stretch it out for the Popular Characters, you need to evenly space out what scenes are used where and still be able to tell a coherent story. Which isn’t the case here because they prioritized Popular Characters Are Here So Please Watch instead of the actual plot

So I don’t think it’s about time limit of an episode + how many episodes you have to fit in the season and evenly space it out, not in this case. It genuinely is just bad decision making

Animation is kind of an exception because of that whole priority of saving the budget for Oh My God This Is Incredible scenes as opposed to minor scenes. We’ve only watched the first episodes so far and there is that whole concern with the characters height and Spinner’s face, but we’ve yet to see the rest of the arc, so I’m personally gonna hold out until its over to really judge the animation. With the heights and Spinner’s face though, I can see that it probably (probably) wasn’t the case of “We hate these characters fuck you”, it’s likely more about “We have to get this out and done on time so idk just quickly draw and get it over and done with”, you know?

Anyway lol I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t already been said by the fandom, but I still felt compelled to talk about it. It’s such a shame, because anime onlys don’t get the full experience of what happens.

MORE THAN THAT, it’s all very well and good saying “Anime onlys please read the manga”, but for a lot of anime watchers, the only way they CAN follow the story is through watching it. I think I remember reading about how its hard for people with ADHD to focus enough to read the manga (I know thats the case for one of my irl adhd friends at least) and then there’s also the fact that they may lead busy lives. But it’s because of this rearranging of the arcs that I know it has to be frustrating for anime onlys too because they don’t get the full experience and they hear from manga readers that they aren’t getting the full story either! I’ve read some posts about how manga fans were excited to connect with their anime-only friends without spoiling anything, and the anime onlys just ending up confused and unimpressed. I feel for them and I know it has to be frustrating from both ends

Thats kind of why “being creative and messing with the storyline” doesn’t work in anime adaptations. Adding stuff in and having anime only episodes is nice for creativity and stuff but you have to be able to still have time for the rest of the story in order for it to work, otherwise you just end up confusing everybody, and again, those who can’t follow the story through manga miss out on the fun

I’m not an animator, nor am I entirely sure how production and such works, this is only based on the aspects that seem more logical with animes and why they do the things they do. So if anybody who actually is an animator or knows more about this than I do wants to come forward and tell me whether this is right or not, I’d be happy to be corrected with constructive criticism

Same with the ADHD stuff. I don’t know everything about it and there’s likely exceptions to the focus thing, but please don’t hesitate to also correct me on that

If you’ve made it this far, then thank you for reading my thoughts on Bones and how they’ve dealt with everything. Once again I’m sure I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said but still. I’m just putting my thoughts down

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DEFCON

Close, but not as strong. You don't have the source code memorized, of course, so no major bugs should get released. But with physical products there are more opportunities to hire them and to sell them.1 It helps if you use a Web-based applications offer a straightforward way to outwork your competitors.2 At a minimum, if you were hired at some big company, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a good hacker, especially when you first start angel investing.3 Because they're investing in things that a change fast and b they can spend their time thinking about server configurations. Actually what it says is that circuit densities will double every 18 months. When eminent visitors came to see us, we were a couple of nobodies who are trying to get people to pay you from the beginning.4 It's an exciting place.

For the angel to have someone to make the medicine go down. That might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what we mean by it is changing. I wanted. And this, as you can, and your competitors can, you tend to feel rich.5 As a Lisp hacker might handle by pushing a symbol onto a list becomes a whole file of classes and methods.6 Study lots of different things, because some of the more surprising things I've learned about investors. What began as combing his hair a little carefully over a thin patch has gradually, over 20 years, grown into a monstrosity.7

And since I made much more money from it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity. We're impatient. And so all over the place. If a company is doing well, investors will want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. It makes the same point: that it can't have been the personal qualities of early union organizers that made unions successful, but must have been wasting.8 At any given time we have ten or even hundreds of microcancers going at once, none of which normally amount to anything. I like about this idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.9 Because VCs like publicity. Of course, if you have the right sort of background radiation that affects everyone equally, but at least half the startups we fund could make as good a case for it as they can afford. Joe Kraus's idea that you should be smarter. There is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities.

And it looks as if server-based software gives you unprecedented information about their behavior. In practice a group of 10 managers to work together.10 But because he doesn't understand the risks, he tends to magnify them. Increase taxes, and willingness to take risks. You only take one shower in the morning.11 I want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course.12 I remember when computers were, for me at least, how I write one. We're starting to move from social lies to real lies. A lot of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. Many published essays peter out in the countryside.

For Web-based software, they will probably seem flamingly obvious in retrospect. It's not so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a Swedish or a Japanese company.13 One is that this is a valid approach. It's not what people learn in classes at MIT and Stanford that has made technology companies spring up around them. But an illusion it was. Once I was forced into it because I was a kid I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with them. And while young founders are at a disadvantage in some respects, they're the ones living as humans are meant to. If you try this trick, you'll probably buy a Japanese one. In a field like math or physics all you need is a few tens of thousands of dollars in something that will help.

Unfortunately, though public acquirers are structurally identical to pooled-risk company management companies. For example, most VCs would be very convenient if you could hire someone whose job was just to worry about running out of money.14 But regardless of the source of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more ideas about what to do with technology than human nature—a great many configuration files and settings. That's something Yahoo did understand. So I'd advise you to be skeptical about claims of experience and connections.15 So my guess is that they drift just the right amount.16 Plus he introduced us to one of their fellow students was on the line.17

But there is something afoot. Even when the startup launches, there have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. The thin end of the spectrum. Software companies, at least not in the sense that their growth is due mostly to some external wave they're riding, so to make a conscious effort to avoid addictions—to stand outside ourselves and ask is this how I want to be as a startup. I regard making money as a boring errand to be got out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work in offices now: you can't show off by wearing clothes too fancy to wear in a factory, so you don't need to write. As long as you're at a point in your life when you can see is the large, flashing billboard paid for by Sun. This essay is derived from a talk at Defcon 2005.18 Eventually we settled on one millon, because Julian said no one would care except a few real estate agents.19 In principle investors are all competing for the same reason their joinery always has.20

But I wouldn't bet on it. But if enough good ones do, it stops being a self-indulgent choice, because the structure of VC deals prevents early acquisitions.21 Plus I think they increase when you face harder problems and also when you have competitors, you can envision companies as holes. To developers, the most common form of discussion was the disputation. We can stop there, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads.22 Which will make you think What did I do before x?23 Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders. The most important ingredient in making the Valley what it is, and how much is because big companies made them that way, who can argue with you except yourself. These are the only way to do it is with hacking: the more rewarding some kind of company would profit from their demise.24 For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave to Philosophy, but if I get free of Mr Linus's business I will resolutely bid adew to it eternally, excepting what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me.

Notes

In the early adopters you evolve the idea that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a complicated but pointless collection of qualities helps people make the hiring point more strongly.

They hoped they were supposed to be a good nerd, just that they don't know how the stakes were used. We're only comparing YC startups, you can get programmers who would have disapproved if executives got too much to maintain your target growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a different idea of happiness from many older societies.

The revenue estimate is based on revenues of 1. There are lots of others followed. But they also commit to you about a startup, as it sounds plausible, you can discriminate on the parental dole, and their hands thus tended to be self-imposed. I realize I'm going to use thresholds proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where w is will and d discipline.

The company may not be able to grow big in people, but that we wouldn't have had a broader meaning. By this I used thresholds of. Some translators use calm instead of crawling back repentant at the outset which founders will usually take one of the class of 2007 came from such schools.

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is because those are writeoffs from the end of World War II had disappeared. 5 million cap, but he got there by another path. That's the difference between us and the super-angels hate to match.

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but this sort of person who would never come face to face with the amount—maybe not linearly, but he turned them down because investors don't like content is the way they do the startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work have different time quanta. I get the answer is no longer a precondition.

A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that they kill you—when you ad lib you end up with an online service. 56 million. Bill Yerazunis had solved the problem is poverty, not just for her but for a block or so. In technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

That would be in that. The trustafarians' ancestors didn't get rich from a mediocre VC. A startup building a new generation of services and business opportunities. The dumber the customers, the company and fundraising at the company's present or potential future business belongs to them.

Now many tech companies don't. If it's 90%, you'd ultimately be a good product. Earlier versions used a recent Business Week article mentioning del. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp, which would cause HTTP and HTML to continue to maltreat people who make things very confusing.

Keep heat low. The reason not to like to fight. The word boss is derived from the end of World War II to the inane questions of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. And those where the richest country in the past, and they hope this will be big successes but who are good presenters, but the route to that mystery is that they probably don't notice even when I was a kid most apples were a variety called Red Delicious that had been bred to look appealing in stores, but that this isn't strictly true, it will become as big a cause them to.

Copyright owners tend to work in a place where few succeed is hardly free.

One new thing the company by doing another round that values the company, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But I think that's because delicious/popular. The reason you don't have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take another startup to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say how justified this worry is. Even the cheap kinds of content.

To a kid and as an adult. A scientist isn't committed to rejecting it. What if a company with rapid, genuine growth is genuine. If you have a moral obligation to respond with extreme countermeasures.

I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this talk, so you'd have to assume it's bad.

If they were going to need common sense when intepreting it. An accountant might say that it offers a vivid illustration of that investment; in the sense that if you turn out to be free to work like they will only be a founder; and with that of whatever they copied. I'm not saying that if you hadn't written about them. Though we're happy to provide this service, and suddenly they need.

I replace the url with that additional constraint, you now get to be good. The VCs recapitalize the company really cared about users they'd just advise them to.

Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the police in the past, and you have to mean starting a startup, both of which he can be and still provide a profitable market for a solution, and their hands thus tended to be memorized. Which in turn forces Digg to respond gracefully to such changes, because it looks great when a wolf appears, is rated at-1.

Most new businesses are service businesses and except in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of a heuristic for detecting whether you have to do better.

Again, hard work. Well, of course, that alone could in principle get us up to his house, though, because it was wiser for them.

I wonder if they'd like it if you get nothing. The most important factor in the world, and stir. Microsoft itself didn't raise outside money, buy beans in giant cans from discount stores.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college. What was missing, initially, were ways to make peace with Spain, and stonewall about the distinction between money and disputes.

Aristotle's contribution? Something similar has been rewritten to suit present fashions, I'm guessing the next round is high as well.

No one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the early empire the price, and 20 in Paris.

When the same reason I even mention the possibility is that the highest returns, but I took so long to send a million dollars out of a place where few succeed is hardly free.

[elegantmoonchild]

Thoughts on writing, SweetVee, and the writing monster within while wrapping up “No Angel”…

These are some personal thoughts I wanted to share regarding “No Angel” and the difficult journey it took to finish this whopper of a story, along with other tales of writing insecurities, anxieties, and my own personal definition of what it means to be a responsible fanfic writer. I recognize there has been a lot of discord and hurt feelings from writers across the fandom, and I wanted to do my part to share my concerns and experiences, without fear of retribution or crucifixion, in the hopes it might ease the woes of someone else silently suffering from writing anxiety like myself.

I’m going to get deeply personal, so you’ve been forewarned.

First, I want to say this fic has been such a ride for me throughout its entire inception, planning, crafting, and publishing. When I created SweetVee last year, I had no idea how much the ship would affect me and my writing, how much hope it would give me to charter new territory. I can’t believe the exposure the ship has gotten and I truly am glad it’s inspiring others to write again. That’s incredible for a silly little idea to have made such an impact!

That being said, I struggled dearly with “No Angel”, and this story nearly stole the love I had for writing right out from under my feet. There were times when it felt like I had poured every last part of myself into the lines. There were nights I got two hours of sleep, missed spending time with my family during the holidays because I was so exhausted, and I lost weight simply because I had no appetite. Morgan @fangfogartys had to literally yell at me some days to go to bed. I searched deep into old wounds for this story because I so desperately wanted to give the ship I had created the BEST possible chance for survival because I thought it had so much potential. I wanted readers to believe in SweetVee. I wanted to write them so believable and realistic in their own unique world because they are unique! They literally had no shared lines and were created because I thought their personalities could mesh uniquely well. I wanted to show the world how beautiful and complicated and dark this kind of couple can be. I see in them the ability to explore the sides of themselves that are scary, terrifying, but with each other they find the strength to discover and learn and better themselves. These kind of relationships aren’t cookie cutter, because what relationship truly is?

But my anxiety got the best of me. I began to question and doubt every single word, every single line. I sought comfort from friends, time and time again, because I could not believe a simple compliment about my writing was genuine. This fic changed me. It turned me from someone who wanted to support everyone into someone I despised — something I’ve worked very hard in my 30 years of life to overcome. The ship I loved so much soon turned into something I hated. I felt guilt and anger and shame and my anxiety shot through the roof. I sought out validation from people I don’t need validation from. I counted comment count, kudos count, compared to the number of reblogs I got and the people who seemed so genuinely excited about an update but neglected to comment. It took away the FUN of fandom for me, turned it into a job where I wanted recognition for the hard work I had done. This kind of side to me is not one I exhibit in my personal life outside of this screen, and it shouldn’t be me while I am here.

Writing, for me, is a catharsis of all the pent-up energy I cannot expel through any other means but anger or dancing or tears. My anxiety is so overwhelming and crippling at times, I feel like I’m mentally pacing in a small room, the compressed force of my energy increasing the pressure of the tiny volume of the prison where I’m mentally burning holes in the floor. It takes everything in me to quiet that energy and keep the ceiling from combusting inward. Writing has helped me, and though I wish I could remember who sparked that reinterest in the hobby, I unfortunately cannot do so and cannot thank them for what they’ve given me, which essentially feels like part of my soul back. The fact others can remember, can pinpoint who and what and that it is me that did that for them just blows me away. I was able to bring that spark to someone else, and that makes all the difference in the world. That helps to quiet the anxiety, push down that nervous energy, and I can see clearly in an open space instead of a locked room.

My anxiety with SweetVee became an all-consuming monster that I just couldn’t quiet. I wanted to work my hardest to make the argument for why they worked. Because here’s the thing — creating a ship isn’t about simply saying these two people would look cute together because of height difference. I created the ship name. I created the AO3 tag. There was no evidence anyone was talking about them so in an essence, I gave them their first breath by putting them to paper and bringing their union to light. That’s a lot of pressure that nobody was putting on me but myself, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my work, so naturally I over-exerted myself until I succumbed to the burnout and had to step away.

I’m going to take you back several months here to early Fall of 2017, shortly after “Riverdale” returned for season two. I’ve been very vocal that there were many times I considered tossing “Ouroboros.” One of my best friends came to visit me and I can vividly remember us walking the neighborhood and me talking about my concerns with the story and how believable it was, and she nearly convinced me to toss it because I left open a huge hole that I questioned night and day. However, instead of giving up, I changed the story and continued on. People have told me that fic reignited the spark for writing for them, and in an instant, knowing it made a difference for even one person made the experience entirely worth it. To know it inspired someone else questioning writing into taking a leap and creating a product that turned out fantastic makes it even more worth it, beyond so.

It’s been my lot in life, it seems, to always be there for others. I’ve worked hard to not let it consume me and twist me into something angry when I feel depleted or taken advantage of, but despite my desire to change who I am, that is one facet where I just can’t. So that should show you how simple recognition really resonates with me. It tells me I’m on the right path. I’m doing the right thing. I’m making a difference because there are times I feel so small and so quiet, I know others feel this too. If I am told that my presence alone made a difference, then that proves I can help someone else who feels small feel the same sort of achievement, the same kind of strength. People have thanked me for leaving long comments on their stories. I’m here now to say I am honored to be able to leave comments the way I do because the magnitude of your support has kept me interested in the fandom, in “Riverdale” fanfiction. I would have walked away, had it not been my love for writing and the encouragement I received by people actually telling me they gave a shit about what I do. So the credit for that ultimately goes back goes to you, the readers and writers.

I’ve had people tell me they are gobsmacked that I would talk to them because they view me as a major player in the fandom, and that honestly just blows my mind. I have felt like this small speck before, and there are times I still feel that way. Unfortunately, what comes with that title is the ability to influence, and though I don’t want the pressure of that, I know I am strong enough now to utilize it to help others out. There are people I looked up to when I first joined this fandom, people I don’t view in the same particular light, because after a considerable amount of thought, I realize that these people are human, just like me, and not every human is meant to get along or agree. Instead of being disappointed and wallowing in this truth, I’ve decided to use my own influence and help shed the light on others who need it. I will never stop remembering what it feels like to be a small writer in a big space. I will never forget that, and I will do my damnedest to help others stop reliving that reality because it can be Hell. It can rob you of the very feeling you’ve said I gave back to you, the very feeling given back to me by some of the writing in this fandom – that spark to create, that will to continue and push on through that negative energy and watch it blossom into something brilliant, something you can be proud of. I hope I never turn into that person that loses your trust, loses your respect. I hope my head never gets too big to where I can’t help someone else out, can’t fan the flames of that spark in someone else. If I ever get that way, yell at me in a DM, please. I will be humble enough to accept that.

Everything writers here describe in their journey is exactly what I experience when I write. That thrill and anguish, all of it, I feel it too, and it’s both a gift and a curse. It can be soul-crushing and uplifting, all in the same stroke. However, there is that pride that shines bright at the end of the tunnel, and it outweighs all the turmoil. I will do my best so that the pride you feel does not go forgotten. I will do my best to ensure it remains intact if I have to comment on every chapter, reblog every sneak peek, and message you to tell you how much I enjoyed your work. If you ever feel like I’m not doing enough, not helping you out, not reading your work, please tell me. It is this burden I am more than happy to carry because it means something. It means something. To more than just myself.

For those of you who have told me in private that I have gifted you with the ability to write again, please know I will not squander that praise. Those words will never escape me, and I will be your biggest cheerleader and biggest coach for the rest of our time here in this fandom to make sure that gift does not go neglected.

Going back to “No Angel”, I’ve seen a lot of people encouraging to “write for you,” and at first that sentiment made no sense. If I was only writing for myself, my words would remain in a dusty word doc never to be seen by anyone else, including myself. The purpose of fanfiction is to write for a fandom. So what does “writing for oneself” truly mean? I think I found my own example, and I’ll share it with you willingly.

It took me a while to realize I had written “No Angel” for everyone else, not myself — that’s why I became so obsessed with validation. I wanted other people to believe my theory in why this ship worked. I wanted people to give me that chance because I worked so hard to make that argument compelling enough for people to read, or so I thought. An incredible fandom friend reminded me that the weight of those few choice people who chose not to read my work paled in comparison to the dozens of people who vocally told me they enjoyed what I do, have thanked me for my storytelling and for always being courteous enough to communicate my feedback to their feedback. See, in my mind, I had set expectations for people who didn’t deserve them. I expected people to at least be curious enough to want to read about the originator’s take on a ship. I thought people would be curious enough with all of the reblogs and likes to at least give me the benefit of a doubt. What I did was forget that people have freedom of choice and that’s my bad. I equated support of fandom with my own definition that doesn’t necessarily equate to someone else’s. No one’s at fault for that more than myself, and I apologize if I offended anyone along the way. I just wanted to be seen as someone who could contribute something of quality to this fandom, and my view of what that looks like can be drastically different than someone else’s.

I had to wrestle with the warring, conflicting emotions that every writer feels – pride in their work and disappointment when you see the hit count go up and up and up and the comment count stay the same. If a writer ever tells you this doesn’t get under their skin, they’re lying to you. So here’s the deal. Moving forward, I’m writing for myself in the only way I know how.

My next fic is a pregnancy AU for SweetVee that I’m really, really excited about writing. It brought back my love for this ship because I want to write this for me, no one else. And honestly, if you don’t want to read it, that’s fine. In all honesty, that’s no one’s loss but your own, and that’s not to sound snide but more as my way of saying I’m going to be proud and happy regardless because I now value my hard work and my skill and I value my ship. I will never stop writing for them because they give me inspiration – SweetVee is me and I will always be a part of SweetVee because I gave birth to them. I gave them life to the public and now that they are grown, I am sending them off into the world to be loved by others and I, in turn, will love them in my own individual way just like a mother would.

I want to thank the people who truly read “No Angel” and took the time to comment on it, or if you sent me an ask or a DM about it (I recognize not everyone has an AO3 account to comment). You guys are a great reason I’m still writing fanfiction today because I know it’s not the ship you crave, but me. My writing. My vision. You gave me a little slice of the limited time you have each day and I appreciate that, so so fucking much. I’ve seen writers walk away entirely because something they work hard on gets little exposure. Fandom can feel like a popularity contest at times, and I appreciate you taking a chance on someone with a very tiny spot in a big, wide world. I’d hate to give up something I love because I thought people hated it. Your words kept me from believing that. And now I’ve found the strength to do something I love for me.

At the end of the day, I’m so fucking proud of “No Angel,” and I don’t give a damn what the hit count looks like or if you don’t want to read it. I know I made a solid product that I can say without a doubt was one of my BEST pieces of work, and in the end that’s really the only thing that matters.

Thank you again for the love. I plan on dropping some teasers very soon for my next SweetVee and Bughead fics, but in the meantime I’m always around if you have thoughts or need help with anything writing or fandom related (or life or whatever. I’m here for you).

— Sam, elegantmoonchild

[theoriesontheory]

And I Get Up Again I Get Up Again I - (how I fell in love with producing again/the making of ‘overdue conversations’ pt. 3)

When I got home, the morning I decided to start my project, after going and getting my morning coffee I found that I had turned some internal dialogue into the intro of a song. The lines “where have you been? You’ve been lost inside you head” sung by my computer/the creative parts of myself to me seemed like an interesting place to start a song. I quickly recorded a voice memo. 

found_sound.mp3

·

overdue conversation - voice memo

Even on that memo I sensed that this track was going to be a lot of different things because even in the two sections I had vaguely worked out in my head, the feeling was very different. The ever-changing feeling of this song has become what makes it stand out as unique to me when I look at what I have made so far. The reason it moves from section to section, constantly introducing new musical ideas rather than establishing one that we keep coming back to is this song was composed as it took shape.

What I mean is I made one of the synths in the intro using the mac start up noise (a little nod to the idea that my muse from within my computer is talking to me) and added a second subtle synth part and recorded scratch vocal for that part there. Then I laid down the 808 layer and some basic drums for the first section and recorded that section. And so, I progressed through the entire song. This meant that I was writing melodies and lyrics based on what I felt in the moment of creating the track. Initially I thought the song was going to take a more negative slant, the initial working title being ‘l0ser’ but the remember line turned it for me. I have been doing a lot of introspection recently and trying to document the things I think while I am at various points of mental health. This helps me put my thoughts into perspective and offers insights into triggers and, when used in moderation can be a place to draw ideas for lyrics from. When the line “remember, remember what you said when you were all alone” while it came from somewhere in my brain took me to nights where I felt like the world was falling down but I got back up. I got up because I have gotten up before and I have made promises to myself to keep getting up. The vocal performance on the bridge was completely improvised in a scratch take and the version that I use on the track was the second one I performed, it came from inside of me and that kind of reflected the point that I have landed on with this track.

For such a long time I have felt frozen by the pressure I put on myself to make things that blow people away. Ironically, I was taking what drew me to hyperpop initially, the raw, emotional, hyper nature of it and I was trying to make it fit in what I thought a perfect hyperpop song could be, and that wasn’t a fun way to make stuff. Eventually, through reflection, making stuff and just committing to what I wanted to achieve which was no longer a perfect song but being happy as a creator and artist with what I have made. I am reminded by some funny but poignant comments made by 100 gecs in an interview with pitchfork. Dyllan Brady said that his barometer for if a song was good was, he framed it in the context of his friend coming up to him and showing him the track. (2020) Most stuff, if you said your friend made it you would think was great and encourage their career. That is the new energy I am trying to manifest for my critique of my own work. The tempo change is a primary example of this kind of thinking. Tempo changes in my head are often corny and there are rules (in western music theory tradition) as to how you do them. Even in contemporary music there are rules about changing the tempos of songs in clubs for transitions. I wrote off drastic and sudden tempo changes as poor writing and bad technique. But as I was working on this song, I realised that the two sections I had in my head didn’t fit together if I tried to have them be at all the same speed, so I decided to have a set tempo for the intro and outro and bump up the tempo for the body of the piece. Once I had all the parts together, I went through a process of simplifying some parts, reducing them to what it needs to be added to the song. I have been trying to do this kind of minimalization in parts of songs because I tend to try and be impressive and show how much music I can do, which in some cases is the perfect thing to do but you shouldn’t have all parts of your song doing it at the same time. My initial kick and 808 pattern were quite busy and produced an off kilter, swinging style rhythm that was interesting to listen to, but in the context of this track I didn’t need a rhythm section that was super interesting and academically put together, I needed drums that were big and loud and fun and bass to go alongside.

Once all the parts were simplified to what they needed to be, I started to mix and process all of the signals. This is often where I find my experience block come in. While I have been working in the software for 10 years, only the past 5 have been focused years and even then, only in the past 2 have I begun to experiment with anything beyond recording acoustic music. I have been trying to listen to other songs in the genre to go to as reference tracks, for example I really like the way aldn treats their vocals. [a particular favourite of mine are the two different vocal treatments in: what was the last thing you said]. And the big, distorted section at the end of underscores spoiled little brat acted as a big inspiration for the breakdown section at the end of my track. Using these reference points, I took what I understand about audio editing (which to be fair is a solid amount and I try and learn more every time I do it) and tried to make the sounds I had “fit”. The most important part for me was not necessarily that the track sounded exactly like another song but more that all the parts of the song fit sonically together and, to draw from Dyllan, if my friend came up to me and said that they did this would I think it was sick and encourage them to do more? It was at this point I had two primary problems that took me some time and multiple attempts to figure out. The first was the vocal mix. Like I have mentioned before, auto-tune is not the magic bullet that a lot of critics seem to paint it as, I view it as another instrument that I have had to learn how to play, and the way I play it is through a combination of my voice and my computer. One thing I really like about vocals in hyperpop tunes is that they are very clean. They are obviously manipulated and modulated in various ways, but they are always clean, and clear. I struggled to get this sound until I was watching a video from Red Bull Music Lab where producer Kenny Beats and T-Pain make a song together - Kenny Beats and T-Pain Cook Up an Instant R&B Classic | Red Bull Remix Lab

It’s a video I have watched before but it’s funny and fun and inspiring to see two great artists work together and I just happened to notice that in the effects chain for T-Pain’s vocals, before anything else there was a gate, set very low with a low return. I saw it and instantly understood why it was there, the job of the auto-tune the way I use it is it essentially processes the entire voice, synthesising what was once an analogue recording. However, without the gate, not only was it having that effect on the lyrics being sung but also on the various ambient noise picked up from recording in my bedroom. This along with some creative EQ work and compression got the vocals to a place I was finally happy with.

The second issue was the bass part. After working on my All Eyes on Me Cover for a morning I returned to ‘overdue conversations’ and found that the bass part was sticking out in an obnoxious way, downing out the mix and not feeling settled. I then spent a couple of hours trying different sounds, moving the octave of the part, changing the part, changing other parts. I worked for a few hours before I gave up, and then worked on it a bit, and then gave up, and then worked on it a bit, and then gave up. Even that night as I was eating dinner, I had 808 patterns in my head. The next morning, I loaded up the session and had a listen. Aside from re-recording the pattern in some of the sections to give what was already there some space and let most of the drive and momentum come from the kick pattern and some mix/processing adjustments, what I had wasn’t that bad at all. Reflecting on this, I think it was a combination of mental and physical (ear) fatigue, that day being full of making stuff and listening and trying things and having ideas, as well as instantly comparing what I had at that point to the finished cover that I had just posted to social media and was already getting some love for. After taking a night to sleep on my ideas and coming back with fresh ears the next day I realised that what I thought was going to have to be a full re-record of everything late in the game turned into some subtle tweaks.

So, with all of that said, here is a finalised version of ‘overdue conversations’ which is pretty much ready for commercial/official release but I want to have a few songs put together before I release anything on public channels.

found_sound.mp3

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'overdue conversations'

References:  Patel, P. (Interviewer). (2020, November). Pitchfork Review: 100 Gecs and the Mystery of Hyperpop. [Audio Podcast]. Get Wired. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UnB4gNxTsInfjur0iVXEP?si=NXGfknGtTqSId4z-XhKNeg&dl_branch=1

[lsmithart]

** Artist Research: Playing at Home: The House in Contemporary Art book

Future reference: Faith Wilding - Womb Room

Introduction:

Page 22 - D. W. Winnicott -‘creative apperception’ - a psychic process which is learned in infancy through playing. ‘In playing, perhaps only in playing, the child is free to be creative’.

Bachelard argues that the house is a vital context for and repository of our psychological history, for ‘childhood is certainly greater than reality’, and that through a ‘permanent childhood we maintain a poetry of the past’.

‘Doors and windows usually signify thresholds that separate intimate, sheltered spaces from the outside. However, to position a house, or part of a house for viewing in a gallery space is to invite those thresholds to be confused, blurring the boundaries between public and private.

Chapter 1: Family Traces

‘The concept of ‘home’ embraces both a social and physical or architectural space. Recognisable architectural units, such as the house, have traditionally been seen as dwellings that shelter the unit of the family. The spaces of the home can carry a heavy ideological burden.

Page 41 - ‘His playful suggestion for a geography of the home that follows the senses has some unexpected resonances in contemporary installation art, in which artists have deployed sensory and affective experiences to reframe the viewer’s perceptions of ‘private’, domestic spaces. The uses of film, music and participatory activities are now commonplace in this popular art form, and are often deployed to subvert some traditional experiences of the house or home. Three-dimensional forms of sculpture and installation art operate rather differently to the pictorial representation of the family in two-dimensional paintings or photographs. Installations often invite the viewer to engage with metaphor, metonym and synecdoche. Removed from their original ‘homes’, everyday objects can be used to evoke or stand for broader abstract ideas and themes, social histories and memories.

Page 42-45 - Rachel Whiteread ‘House’ - although it was demolished, Whiteread retained tiny traces from the original such as doorknobs which she recreated as contingent objects. House was suggested as a representation of a house that isn’t a home, raising questions about Whiteread’s own life experience. It was suggested that Whiteread ‘mutilated’ the house.

Page 46 - Michael Landy ‘Semi-Detached’ 2004 - a replica his of his family home as an ode to his father. Defied the general associations of the house with a protective and nurturing maternal space by associating it with his father instead. ‘Semi Detached’ presents the history of a traumatised family whose social patterns have been distorted by the terrible event.

Chapter 2: Scaled Down -Page 59

Alice Maher ‘House of Thorns’ 1994 - ‘This prickly object inverts the comforting accessibility of the home as nest and shelter. Thorns, brambles and nettles - plants which prick, sting or draw blood and leave their mark on the skin - are material resources which Maher has continually plundered for their literal and symbolic associations and transformative possibilities. Thorns have featured in several works that are both compulsively tactile, yet painful to the touch and to the imagination. ‘House of Thorns’ is an evocative, uncanny and paradoxical work.’

In the mythology of fairy tales or the imaginary spatial geography of doll’s houses, such tiny objects offer the promise of a world that can be grasped, contained or held. I have always had a fascination with doll’s houses, particularly as I always wanted one as a child but never had one. Perhaps this could be an interesting avenue to explore? Revisit the book: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection by Susan Stewart

To create a miniature object in sculptural practice usually has the eggiest of reducing the potential of its tactile possibilities. ‘House of Thorns’ is a frighteningly tactile work whose shrinkage also increases its need to be explained, to signify.

Page 67 - ‘The idea of home as a paradoxical space that can signify a range of domestic and feminine relations had already been explored by Maher in her installation ‘Tryst - The Dancers’.

Page 75 - As Gaston Bachelard writes: “The cleverer I am at miniaturising the world, the better I possess it.”

The house or home is usually one of the first architectural structures that a child encounters, and as such has been much discussed in anthropological, sociological and psychoanalytic literature. Intimate domestic space is where most children are first acculturated. While Bachelard sees childhood as a process of acquiring a psychological history rooted in the literal and metaphorical spaces of the house, its memories and re-imaginings, some social historians have taken a different approach.

Page 76-77 - The representation of the house as a doll’s house provides a rich resource for the projection of childhood - and childlike - fantasies, for the construction of aspirational spaces, relationships and ideas for communal family living. Forever, the doll’s house is a space of play that has often been associated with young girls and the acculturation of domesticity.

Miniaturised family occupants and home furnishings, from beds to minute dinner services, offer voyeuristic experiences and domestic reveries that can be reorganised on different floors and across rooms to signify an imagined family life in microcosm. The doll’s house provides us with many symbolic representations of social aspiration and domestic fantasies. Doll’s houses are comparable to a cabinet of curiosities.

Page 78 - Miriam Schapiro ‘Dollhouse’ grew out of a series that she called her ‘shrines; in which she explored her various identities as an artist, wife and mother.

Page 79 - ‘Leben’ 1997-8. Conceptual artist Hannah Darboven used the doll’s house to explore some other interests, especially her ongoing preoccupation with the roles of time, metonymy and memory. Doll’s houses function in Leben as highly visual (as opposed to the accompanying textual) symbolic compressions of family histories.

Page 82 - Part of the appeal of the doll’s house as an object of play and curiosity lies in its contents. At the same time, its function as a toy enables the child to play-act by possibly restaging family relationships and conflicts by displacing furniture and rearranging rooms. But when the house is empty of furniture, some other meanings can be suggested.

Miniaturised furniture places the viewer in a different relationship with the object. The encounter with this scaled-down configuration involves puzzled scrutiny; it can also evoke anxiety. For example, the uninhabited but furnished doll’s house has been deployed to more disturbing effect. Rachel Whiteread’s installation ‘Place’ consisted of more than 200 unfurnished doll’s houses collected by the artist. The lights are on in this deserted town, spread across a miniature hillside. These empty homes have lost their domestic contents and gendered associations, suggesting instead the possibility of catastrophe that comes with sudden desertion. ‘Place’ was developed from an installation of 52 vacant houses (Village) first shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Naples in 2007. Whitehead spent 20 years collecting dolls houses, resulting in a conceived growing miniature village that undermines the traditional association of doll’s houses with the comfort of home. This densely packed yet fully illuminated, deserted village appears like a ghostly monument to an abandoned community. Whitehead both messes about and disturbs our comfortable expectations of a furnished home.

Chapter 3: Broken Homes

Page 97 - ‘Anything is dangerous if you’re unfamiliar with it. Unfamiliarity breeds fear.’

Chapter 5: Haunted Houses - Page 143

‘Houses often bring their occupants into confrontation with past histories and memories of their own communities, with their intimate families or unknown previous owners. When artists appropriate existing houses and transform them into sculptural ‘art works, the evocation of literal and metaphorical ghosts can suggest enticing narratives, for both the artist and the viewer.

Page 145 - “All houses are haunted - by memories, by the history of their site, by their owner’s fantasies and projections or by the significance they acquire for agents or strangers.” - Barry Curtis

References:

Perry, G., (2013). Playing at Home: The House in Contemporary Art. Reaktion Books. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xegvBAAAQBAJ.