#i did it with interior book design which is not relevant but it is cool as FUCK to me

[wander-wren]

hey does anyone who knows how cgi works wanna explain tristamp to me. bc i’m intrigued and fascinated and i could just use google but that’s boring.

namely, i may be a little slow, but i didn’t even realize it was cgi until i was thinking about how there’s more…motion? than i’m used to in animation. like it didnt key in my brain that it was 3d. i figured they must be using some crazy framerate and be extremely dedicated. so i looked it up.

which is when i found out that it is a) 100% cgi and b) on a limited framerate?? i think i saw 12fps?? also some people called it choppy which it does not seem like to me but perhaps i just don’t have an eye for it. i’m not an artist.

but i don’t understand? i mean. i understand 2d animation pretty well. i know a lot of stylistic things in animation are done to avoid Too Much Drawing, but i don’t. know how cgi works, conceptually. meryl’s bangs move very slightly in the wind all the time, and ik that wasn’t done by hand.

i mean. it’s computer-generated, right. so are we at the point where the computers just know physics? programming hurts my brain. help.

it’s probably way simpler than i’m making it out to be. i just think it’s cool, especially how close to 2d it looks

[authorkimberlygrey]

The things you need to start the self publishing thing

This is a day late, doesn’t even follow the how to do the thing format, and my dyslexia is running rampant today so ther’s probably six billion typos and mispellings but fuck it let’s goooooooo

Shit you’ll need before you can even get to the shit you need: 

A complete manuscript

I’m talking multiple drafts here people. Beta readers, self edits, tears, blood sacrifice, the works. Unfortunately, this isn’t 1920, we cannot publish our first drafts. 

I mean, you can but its not gonna go well. 

Money

Like. Lots of money. This shit is Expensive. 

A Plan

Don’t be like me. Don’t just suddenly go “alright let’s publish” one day

Actually lay out a timeline for yourself 

Expect delays 

So Many Delays

Plan for publishing at least like six months in advance you will thank yourself later I promise

Ingramspark vs. Createspace or whatever they call it now. They changed the name the other day I think

I went for ingramspark 

Because 

Fuck amazon

Ingramspark is More Professional 

Everyone else also thinks “fuck amazon”

You’ll be able to sell your book more places this way. 

This one is a p personal decison so look this shit up yourself. 

One you’ve got that shit, you can get this other shit

First things first, hire an editor. There are a shit ton of different editors out there, I’m not listing them all, mostly because I don’t remember them all and a lot of them overlap anyway. The majority of places will let you pick an editing ‘package’ that’ll combine several types. Go with that. 

Alright I’ll list a couple kinds of editor. Just the ones I can remember tho, I’m not looking them up again.

Content Editor-looks over the big picture, the story itself. Fuck that grammar bullshit, this is about lookign for plot holes and character inconsistencies and shit. Basically a beta on steroids, I love these dudes. 

Line Editor-this is what everyone thinks of when they say editor. They do the grammar shit. 

Sensitivity reader-make sure you’re not making a dick of yourself, good thing to have. 

Learn how to Format the book

This one you actually can do yourself, its not like...unattainably difficult, especially if you can get ahold of Microsoft Word. 

The basics are: 

Book Size

8.5x5.5 is pretty much the most common

And that’s the interior pages, the cover itself tends to add a lil bit onto that and so if you go measure a bunch of books you’re gonna get 9x6 or something

Font

12 pt. Times New Roman is the standard

Margins.

I think 1 inch is standard? 

Listen, this shit gets complicated and its been like nine months since I did it, I’ll link you some things at the end so you can get a better idea. 

 Header and Footer

Pro tip: Center all of this shit, that way you don’t have to fuck around with aligning it right on the corners of the page. 

Author name on one page, book name on the other

You can do evens or odds, I don’t think there’s a standard

Page number on every page 

EXCEPT: the first page of a new chapter

Just to make things more difficult, nothing goes on those pages. Because fuck you. 

Widows and Orphans 

Yeah I know “what the fuck does that mean???” 

You know how sometimes you’ll have this one sentence that’s just hogging a whole page? Yeah those 

Or those times that a sentence goes onto the next page all on its own

I’m not sure which of those are widows and which ones are orphans tbh. I mean... I could probably guess but nothing is simple you know? 

There’s some places that’ll tell you to do this manually by changing the line spacing and/or text size of each page? 

Don’t fuckign do that

That’s ludicrous. 

There’s literally a button for it on microsoft word

This is one of those things where the easy solution is actually the one you’re supposed to use. 

Oh yeah, indents

No you can’t just press tab

That would be too easy.

And nothing can be easy, remember? 

0.3/0.5 is the standard I think. 

Also make sure everything is left aligned. 

And the line spacing is usually double spaced? I think? 

I want to say there was a certain number of lines per page that was standard and you’re supposed to fiddle around until you get that. So enjoy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IGkyMhsr28

https://firstmanuscript.com/proper-manuscript-format/

A Cover

Unless you’re like A Professional don’t do this yourself its way more complicated than you’d think 

Have a Solid Idea of what you want your cover to look like. Just shrugging and going “idk man” isn’t going to help anyone. 

This isn’t just the fun artsy shit either

Figure out where you’re putting the blurb and your author picture and your author bio, which, btw, you gotta write too. I’ll get there. 

Author Bio 

Jenna Morecci did a whole video on this so def look that up cause that’s pretty much the best info I’ve got for you. 

But: 

3-5 sentences

Written in third person

Yes its weird to write about yourself this way, just go with it. 

Embrace your inner “whatever fictional character talks in third person” and go with it

One sentence on your experience with writing whatever this is

One sentence about yourself/shit you like 

And one on something else, I’m not watching the whole video over for this. Just go watch Jenna, you’ll love her.

I don’t think I’ve ever read an author bio and I don’t know anyone else who does either but I guess somebody must so we all have to suffer. 

A Copyright thing

Like. Register your book with the copy right office so that if someone tries to steal it you can tell them to stop. 

Yes this costs money too. Becasue fuck you I guess. 

This sounds really intimidating but honestly you just fill out paperwork and while that stresses me personally out beyond rationality its not really that bad. 

Don’t forget to add the copyright page in your book too, there’s a thing on the format for it, lemme look 

Here ya go: 

https://blog.reedsy.com/copyright-page/

An ISBN

Most people upon reading this immeditaely went “what the fuck is an ISBN?”

If you didn’t then good job you’re more prepared than I was. Good on you. 

An ISBN is like an identifying number for your book. 

Actually, its an identifying number for specifically this format of your book. If you’re planning on doing a paperback and an ebook or a hardcover or an audiobook or whatever, you need to get an ISBN for Every Format of it

You can buy ISBNs ((in the US at least, I don’t know about other countries sorry)) on Bowker.com 

Why did they name it that? 

I don’t know

You would think that they’d maybe pick a more...I don’t know, relevant name for their site? 

Listen, a fact of publishing a book is that everyone involved has conspired to make is as frustrating as humanly possible. You’re just going to have to accept that. 

Why is their whole site mascot a bird? 

Also don’t know. They’re having a good time with it I guess.

Maybe something to do with Bowker sounding like bough?

Also a barcode! 

Yeah, didn’t think you’d have to buy that did you? 

Neither did I but here we are

Actually you don’t have to buy one if you use ingramspark, they’ll give you one when you use their cover template thing apparently. 

Know what price you want to sell the book for

Even in self publishing, the place you’re going through is gonna want a piece of the pie. Enjoy that. 

Ingramspark has a calculator for that actually, its p cool

You can stick the price in the barcode 

Idk if that relevant but that’s a thing you can do?

uhh…..I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something….

You might want to get an author website set up? 

You should probably have that before now but if youre doing this Chaos Style (™) like I did then you probably want it up before you publish so you can put it on the book somewhere. 

People you need to hire: 

Editor

Cover Designer

Possibly a formatting person if you decide fuck that shit

 Which. Understandable

Shit you need to get a handle on

Formatting

 If you decide fuck yourself

 Which. Understandable

Copyright

Price

ISBN 

OH yeah. 

Marketing Junk 

You honeslty need to have a handle on this shit Waaaaaaayyyy the fuck in the future. If you’re only thinking about it like...now its probably not great. 

The Chaos Method is not generally a good approach

See: Ascendant’s release was essentially a flop and even tho people who read the book love the book I’m still struggling to get people to read the book

Psst read the book its great I promise

Your book release is like. The Biggest Chance for marketing shit 

Get on top of that junk

Giveaways

Posts about it 

Just

Everything all the time everywhere

You definitely need a schedule for this 

Like seriously

Make a plan. 

That’s pretty much it I think. I mean...look in other places too because like I said earlier, its been months since I did this and when I did do it it was the Chaos Method of me just going “I’m gonna publish now” and Doing That. 

Get a plan, believe in yourself. Get a publishing mentor

Someone who’s done this shit before and can give you some encouragement and direction. 

It probably shouldn’t be me but I guess if you need help I’m game to do what I can. 

Also be prepared to like. Crash, mentally, So Hard. Its terrible. See my older post for all the shitty shit about publishing this way.

[thatdamnokie]

so, as everybody knows, our man, the lovely mark strong, turned 57 this past august 5th

since the kingsman films have had a huge influence on several aspects of my day-to-day life (gee, wonder what group of people i could be referring to...), i decided to sit down and do something i’ve been thinking about since getting my medical card earlier this year: getting high as a kite and watching them back-to-back.

to celebrate mark’s birthday, i decided to do another running commentary post like the one i did for rocknrolla ages ago, under the cut. it’s a pretty similar style, which is to say not necessarily super coherent and might be hard to understand if you’ve never seen the movies. D:

there are some mentions of the roanoke society, but not many.

if even just one person finds this mildly entertaining for four seconds, then i’ll have done my job. there is a lot of cursing and this is NOT spoiler-free.

enjoy~

edited 9.1.20 to correct typos and such, please remember that i was Not Sober while i wrote this lmao

how many times have i watched these movies at this point? i don’t even know.  

i always liked the nifty like—retro arcade marv opening animation

and the thing with the tapes! we love book-ending devices!

kingsman: badass motherfuckers worldwide incorporated

like why was merlin even with them? i understand why lee and james would be there, but merlin, was he not acting quartermaster then?

i have SO MANY FEELINGS about lee unwin

i think it haunts harry and merlin more than anyone thinks, but these are fun spy movies so we just don’t talk about trauma and shit, don’tcha know

don’t look at how merlin tears up and tell me he doesn’t drink about it *HEAVILY* later

it’s such a stark contrast to see the 1990s interior vs. what it’s like when eggsy’s grown :(

michelle baby i’m so sorry. you deserved better than this.

and BABY EGGSY

omg. like this scene is both heartbreaking but is also adorable.

colin firth has gd anime legs, that dude had to straight up unfold himself as he stood up lmao

aaannnnd swooping logo, whooooo, goin’ over some mountains~

and mark hamill, ladies and gentlemen!

this whole thing with james deciding to kinda go rogue makes me wish that we knew more about his backstory as well. like, is this james being james, or was this a weird one-off situation and he was just unlucky?

YES unlucky. nobody could plan for the hurricane of sleek destruction that is gazelle

who has one of my favorite aesthetic designs as a villain (although i guess i’d put her more on maybe henchman level? but idk, it seems like valentine looked at her more as a partner, less like an assistant? and they had a very interesting chemistry together too, like i would’ve added more valentine x gazelle scenes)

i would LOVE to be this chill about just—draping blankies over bodies

blankies over bodies sounds like a cool band name

DIBS you guys can’t have it

i am SO GLAD samuel l. jackson gave valentine a lisp!

valentine, to me, does fit a lot of the usual spy movie villain tropes

but since this movie doesn’t take itself super serious, it’s more fun than annoying

and we never hear about any of the other knights?? like

half of this is just gonna be me whining for additional footage that there just wouldn’t have been room for realistically lmao

michael caine, you are lovely

MARK STRONG, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

WITH LEGS THAT DON’T QUIT AND AN ACCENT THAT I’D DIE FOR

i’m an embarrassment

like let’s all stop and thank god that mark didn’t have time to learn the welsh accent

not that i would’ve been disappointed, because all accents are good accents on this blog

but at this point i can’t imagine merlin as—not scottish

“try picking a more suitable candidate this time”

arthur you DICK

like were you this cold-blooded when lee died, you fuckin’ reptilian-ass son of a bitch

no wonder you were charlie’s pledge person thing

and enter the fabulous taron egerton, stage left!

DEAN you are DISGUSTING

god, michelle, you need better friends, if you were my bro this entire relationship would’ve never happened

;-; and eggsy’s so sweet with his sister! i know there probably wasn’t “room” for it but i AM glad that there are scenes showing that family is one of eggsy’s kinda “core values”or whatever you want to call it

dude is a hufflepuff through and through imo

can you imagine eggsy as a villain? we would be so fucked. he’s sly, he’s smart, he could’ve made life v e r y difficult for lots of people if he really wanted to

but look at him with the squad!

eggsy’s just like the british version of a good ol’ boy

this car scene is some dukes of hazzard bullshit (ramp-jumping and fun car horn aside)

if butterflies are harry’s main symbolic critter, would foxes be eggsy’s? or would it be a pug instead? i guess that’s like asking if harry would be either a butterfly or a cairn terrier, like mr. pickle. let’s say both.

this fandom is pretty on top of character associations like that

you get symbolic associations! YOU get symbolic associations! EVERYONE gets symbolic associations whether they’re actually in the canon or not! don’t have any? don’t worry, we’ll assign you at least one!

the guy playing the interviewing officer is ALSO the patriarch in the witch which i didn’t realize until—like, a while after

and it was while @circlesofbone​ was visiting, and we were just “oh, okay, guess we can’t escape this cast at all, this is fine”

“your father saved my life.”

harry you’re such a fucking peacock, waiting all posted up and posing so you’ll look cool

you big doofus

i’d kill to be inside his head during this first conversation with eggsy though

like is eggsy like lee? is harry seeing lee the entire time he’s talking to his son, in his mannerisms, how he carries himself, how he speaks?

or is eggsy the opposite? which—i don’t know if that would somehow be sadder?

there’s just a lot going on in the background of this bit that’s left up to interpretation

“although i’m sure it’s well-founded—“

harry’s just so casual about this entire thing, nobody’s that casual without practice

harry you rabble-rouser, what kind of life have you led

“manners. maketh. man.”

our timeless motto, my flowers

kingsman STILL to this DAY has some of the most well-choreographed fight scenes i’ve ever seen??

like yeah the church scene but even just this initial bar fight

harry could’ve been a dancer

in a way i guess he already is

like he moves so fluidly and gracefully, it is BONKERS

colin you did so good! i’m so proud!

the way eggsy’s just O.O

whether or not you ship hartwin, like, you gotta admit, that was hot

and his BODY LANGUAGE, he’s sitting like RAMROD straight, this poor dude lmao

nobody prepares you for a situation like that in public school is all i’m saying

harry, exiting stage left like a suave, smooth motherfucker

remember when iggy azalea was relevant

ugghhhh i hate this part

“I WASN’T WITH NO ONE”

can you imagine being harry hart listening to your dead friend’s son getting the shit beat out of him

like, surely he heard the cleaver, he knows dean was going to fucking gut eggsy right?

listen to how cold and icy his voice gets, oof

yeah, he’s pissed, and dean is lucky

PARKOUR

ugh, i want to go to london ;-; i want to walk in front of the shop and visit harry’s house and kiss cute english boys

i’d like to think harry’s super excited to show eggsy everything but he’s gotta keep it dialed back because “decorum”

the way eggsy pauses though

“come on.”

and he says it so softly.

if i was eggsy, i’d be nervous, too.

but i didn’t realize how quickly harry tries to give off signals like “hey there’s no reason to be scared.”

“like my fair lady?” “well, you’re full of surprises.” <3 one of my favorite sceneeesss.

harry’s voice is so soothing but eggsy is so freaked out by the elevator that he’s just—there’s no room for anything else beyond processing the elevator lmao

“how deep does this fucking thing go?” asking the real questions

aannnddd KINGSMAN BULLET TRAIN

i’d like to think they have like soft jazz or something playing in there

and then they get to the hangar and there are obviously a buuuuunch of people out on the tarmac that we just—never hear about? i just assume they’re all like technical officers or maybe other agents

“your father had the same look on his face. … as did i.”

harry is already rooting for him.

“late again, sir.”

that. brogue.

fuck, i could listen to him talk for hours, scottish accents are my favorite thing

#squadgoals

not a very diverse cast :/

the body bag speeeeech

and of course nobody was in any actual danger, but merlin doesn’t want them to know that so he becomes mr. hard as steel, i am emotionally stoic at all times, do not test me you bunch of rugrats

“classic army technique.”

ROXY

ROXY I WANT TO JUST HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS TT.TT

aannnnddd charlie, also

who we might’ve found sympathy for if we knew aaannyytthiinnggg else about his backstory

like, could he just be Like That, yeah

but most people i know who are assholes like that are that way because their parents were first /shrug/

can hardly fault the dude for turning out like that when poison was all he was given to drink

anyone else a hundred percent positive they would’ve drowned in the first trial

i would absolutely have panicked and bit it

but then again, i’m not kingsman material, i’m roanoke

and if this is the exact same test that merlin and harry went through, does that mean there might be some weird drowning trauma hidden back in there that’s just ANOTHER thing we’re not gonna talk about?

(yes the correct answer is yes)

god that’s such an american response to the problem though

glass can’t cause problems if it’s in a million pieces!

“yeah you can wipe those smirks off your faces…”

i wonder if there was ever a situation where a trainee actually drowned

and i don’t mean like amelia, i mean some poor kid who just failed the test

merlin knows how to put the fear of god in people though!

and mark strong, very handsome, yes, very scary, also yes

he and colin both look like they’re 80 percent leg in every single scene

harry literally had brain matter smatter ALL OVER HIS FACE and still somehow had the mental facilities to be aware of those dudes, leave a bomb and dive out of a window (and then escape said dudes)

billy badass, y’all

“just get it done.” okay, i took back what i said earlier, maybe he does see her as more of an assistant, less than a partner. their relationship is weird.

the puppy scene!

“it’s a bulldog innit?”

YASSSS the golden trio

because of what happened with our other canon charlie has become a weird character for me to watch, like, yeah, i “watch” charlie be himself in tss but the charlie i “see” is like—”our” charlie.

“bollocks!” and then he just runs with jb in his vest, makes me smile

aannddd we see valentine’s super cool factory

harry your hair gets so long <3

“water!” wow, who wants to bet that the fact he was instantly screaming means that maybe he’s gonna have some stuff to talk about in therapy later

roxy baby i’m sorry they made you hold the balloon and have to trust these dumbasses to not shoot you on accident

i would trust roxy to not shoot me

i love, love love valentine’s house

it’s gorgeous

set design is always such a cool way for filmmakers to include details about a character using pure aesthetics and i’m such a slut for it

tilde!

see also: one of the characters done the WORST by these movies imo!

the fact that she not only says no, she says no with enthusiasm and gets blatantly pissed, is one of the best insights we get into tilde’s character and then it just—gets wasted

like it takes three steps and then gets mowed down in the hallway like her guards

i would never be given the opportunity to be asked if i wanted an implant but i draw the line at having stuff put into my neck

awwww harry’s so proud!

that finger point “yeah, see, be more like your uncle”

merlin is SO TALL

“a bit much innit?”

he’s just—tapping a normal clipboard

… nobody wanna talk about how that’s a normal clipboard

anyway

i also love how they show him in professor sweaters for the beginning acts of the movie

definitely a softer aesthetic than one would guess for a dude who apparently did field missions sometime within the past decade or so, but i also have a theory that lee’s death directly contributed to merlin maybe being the man behind the screen as opposed to afield

because trauma is a thing but this is a FUN movie so we’re NOT gonna talk about it

“you’re gonna be all right. you’re top of the class!” this was the scene that made my mom a reggsy shipper

regardless of how you feel about them as a couple, their friendship is one of the best things about this movie, along with their dynamic with charlie, asjdnaskdjna WHY could we not have had a trio movie instead

eggsy you show-off “lemme just throw my arms up and dip outta this plane like it’s not a big deal”

roxy you can do it!

ugh, there goes my baby, off to have a near-death experience under merlin’s immediate supervision lmao

“good girl, rox, glad you made it!”

guys, they’re just kids.

i love this big group scene because it reminds us that these are just young folks, still

“my, my, you’re all very cheerful...”

“rufus, come on!” dude eggsy—and not even just eggsy, charlie and rox too--at least made an attempt at teamwork. you get points for that bro

but man, for all they know, they’re about to beef it in a very permanent way, i’d be freaking out too

merlin getting caught up in the drama

because again, he’s supposed to know that eggsy has a parachute

i think he wasn’t prepared for these two to get that close to not making it and that’s why we see him break face and drop his mug

*WHAM*

i HATE the sound of them landing

it’s not like you can hear bones breaking but it hurts me, guys

and then there were three

plus one daddy long legs quartermaster

“if you have a complaint you come here and you whisper it in my ear.”

yes SIR

“you need to take that chip off your shoulder.”

merlin coming’ in with the tough love portion of the kingsman core squad

there’s no reason for me to think harry’s persona was inspired by cruella de ville somehow but i do anyway

she reveals the mcdonald’s and valentine is just :D

idk if he was expecting a specific reaction or was just excited to see a reaction period

valentine is definitely a fun villain, which, given the tone of the movie, makes sense, it’s all supposed to be fun

one of the reasons i love kingsman is that it’s like, this golden ray of goofy cinematic fuckery in a world of grim!dark remakes and other superhero/spy films who are presented as more serious stories

“and thank you for such a—happy, meal.”

harry got a puppy smile

but see, then, here at his house he’s a lot more relaxed with gazelle! like, patting her butt, etc.

maybe what we see of their relationship is dependent on setting, because valentine himself has it compartmentalized?

perrrrrrhaps

“and i am never, EVER GOING TO AGREE!”

tilde, you deserved better, and i think all the weird hate you get from our ohana is unfair

you don’t twist a runner’s ankle before the race starts and then get mad when they don’t win

your story was mishandled from the beginning

asmr: hanging out with the golden trio watching worrying news in the kingsman trainee bunker room

the way he says “biblical sense” lmao

i have never been able to figure out if the way he says that line is supposed to infer spiritual respect, or lack of it, but i might be looking too into it

“it’s an acquired taste, mate.”

what—what would you even do if you were at a club and three people as hot as taron, ed and sophie all came up and start talking to you at the same time

like i know the target got up and left pretty quick because of the training exercise

but i’d be doing it because i’m ugly and if three hot people are all talking me up at a bar something is Bad and Wrong

which—the CAHONES on both eggsy and roxy

they both literally said “yeah i’m willing to die for this organization that hasn’t even given me a permanent place yet, what of it”

look at harry’s dimples in this scene, he is fighting a huge grin, he’s SO PROUD

i know that charlie’s response is supposed to be just more fodder into the “charlie hesketh is a tool” fire

but given that i’m not unconvinced that his home life wasn’t super shitty, like—

idk, this makes this scene a lot less fun to me. it makes it sad.

like, maybe charlie didn’t even want to be there deep down, maybe this was all for like, arthur, or his dad, or some other person he looked up to

and the way merlin looks when he tells charlie to go home, the way that he’s kinda grimacing? i’m wondering if he’s along the same kind of feeling. he’d know more about charlie’s history

have i also mentioned how much i love harry’s war room?

“YES harry!”

an evil plan is being born!

“true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

eggsy is still in his club clothes, so like—has he slept? y’all let those kids sleep after fucking drugging them, right? … guys?

“—when one is popping ones cherry.”

and eggsy is just CHEESING he is SO EXCITED

am i the only one who wants to learn more about the store clerk guy though?

he’s like the one person around who’s legit just there to run the shop

has no idea about any of the spy stuff happening

his name is donald, he’s married with three children and has two spaniels he loves

“THAT is sick.”

i would KILL for this room.

i don’t need anything in here for any reason but still

foreshadowing, foreshadowing, foreshadowing, more foreshadowing—

harry is such a NERD

“put it back, eggsy.”

the amount of self-control it would take to not have a sudden change in expression in that moment, omg

i wonder how THAT gets trained up in kingsman

“i guarantee it.” ha, get it, it’s a reference to that one commercial

“y’all—talk so funny.”

and this all means that they had a contact at that hat shop and got all that info to them before valentine got there, and somehow made sure he did end up buying a hat that they could also successfully put a bug on, how deep does this goooooo

“jack bauer?”

it says a lot about eggsy that out of all the jb’s it could’ve been, it was jack

uggghhhhhh of course they HAD to do this scene with eggsy with arthur

obviously harry couldn’t do it

i just think most of us would NOT be fans of arthur at this point in the movie, we’re all rooting for eggsy, like, he needs this moment with this other character because we gotta drive home that he’s an asshole

also—would have absolutely failed that test

and i’m not sorry at all

“welcome to kingsman--lancelot.”

i was really happy that it was a female agent who ended up getting the handle

aannddd more echoes of past scenes, man, nobody can say that this crew wasn’t intentional with their cinematography

when eggsy rolls the window down you can see his chest moving up and down, like, he is MAD

dean you asshole

so no wonder he gets so pissed that the car suddenly decides “nope, no, we’re not doing this, c’mon”

this entire conversation at harry’s house is—tense

and you don’t pick up on it the first time, i don’t think, but uh

i’m seeing it now

harry’s not just mad, he’s hurt, and eggsy’s furious but he’s also maybe regretting his actions.

it’s these two men who are rapidly trying to figure out their headspaces and trying to figure out how to navigate this situation with each other

and the way eggsy tries to apologize ;-;

kentucky is a beautiful state, actually

ohhhhhh y’alllll

we’re at the churrrccchhhh

we’re gettin’ closer to the coolest part of the movieeeee

it’s telling that gazelle was trying to make sure that they’d be safe

“… so hail satan, and have a lovely afternoon madame.”

the most metal lines colin firth has ever uttered on camera

the siren noise after it’s switched on bothers me in a way i can’t quite articulate

it might be because i have silent hill-colored trauma, who knows

FREEEEEE

BIIIRRRDDDDDDD

THE GREATEST ACTION TRACKING SHOT IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA

but then eggsy and merlin are reacting aaaanndddd it’s—a lot less fun

because you realize that they’re watching their bro mercilessly slaughter innocent people and not stopping

and still not stopping

and still not stopping

but plot twist, i’m really glad they kept the track going, because if they’d suddenly picked *this* part of the scene to get serious, that would’ve brought the mood down so low that i don’t think there would’ve been any bouncing back

i just

how do people exist who aren’t attracted to harry hart

that man is a machine

and colin worked so hard to be able to do the scene himself, and that work SHOWS, that man cuts a FIGURE

i don’t know how they managed to somber it up just the right amount, either? maybe because they waited for the “fun action sequence” to be over so there wouldn’t need to be noise that had to be masked by a fun rock track?

“… what did you do to me.”

i cannot imagine what harry was feeling in that moment.

the way he spoke it was like he didn’t even have time to be afraid to die

“that tends to happen when you shoot somebody in the head. feels good, right?”

“no, it does not feel good!”

i love that exchange because we normally hear the opposite.

also—whiplash.

mark has this way of expressing grief without showing any—blatant signs.

like merlin’s not especially tearful, or crying, but his eyes look MASSIVE. and SAD. and he has just the tiiiiiniest tremor in his voice.

and eggsy, dude, like, we’ve all had it come on us really quick and suddenly it’s like your chest is pumping like a piston and when did it get so hard to breathe?

ARTHUR you REPULSE me

like look at how egssy’s shoulders sag when he realizes that arthur isn’t on his team

and in a way, this is eggsy’s final test as a kingsman trainee, imo

do you realize how quickly he had to assess what was happening and figure out what to do, all without arthur noticing?

“you are all alone. it is all up to you. remember all you have learned. good luck.”

it’s a very—almost horror-esque situation from that pov

and he passed with flying colors to go on his first true mission, because after he puts on the suit, that’s his visual cue of graduating, if that makes sense

that’s the knight putting on his armor.

“i’d rather be with harry. thanks.”

“so be it.”

*click*

me: *laughing at arthur’s big dumb stupid head*

… man i’d love a replica of that decanter and glasses set though

not to mention that eggsy recognized the flaws in arthur’s character and weaponized them, which is a whole other level of shit that isn’t necessarily easy; he knew that arthur carried the kind of pride that would leave him open

god, he looks so exhausted though when rox has him at gunpoint.

i think he was being pretty serious, about harry

sick helipaaaaaaad

that thing looks vaguely like a rock-‘em sock-‘em robot but in pieces though

more grandpa sweaters <3

man. you can see roxy swallow, you know she’s scared, but then she just sets her jaw and—

roxy baby you are the best i love you

i like the vintage vibe of the mountain lair

i think that’s another visual poke at the aesthetic themes of some of the older, og spy flicks out there

merlin looks SO LANKY walking back to the plane for some reason??

he stays until the last second for roxy. that’s love right there.

“a bespoke suit always fits.”

which can be good spiritual life advice too but that’s a separate conversation

“what the fuck is WRONG with you people?”

and his fuckin’ disco ball

uuggggghhhhh his speech reminds me of so many… “public figures” that i dislike

even though it’s obviously a bad thing that the chips are everywhere, i appreciate that phones and such are being shown in a positive manner (like, michelle talking to someone in the park, people at a ball game taking selfies, people at the beach, etc.) because i get so sick of that anti-tech boomer humor tbh

and the big reveal of eggsy in his suitttt

A KNIGHT IS BORN

“how’s the view?”

“hideous.”

you’re allowed to be crabby baby, you just let it out.

“lookin’ good, eggsy.”

“feelin’ good, merlin.”

merlin is so calm heading into the fortress and i don’t know if it’s because he’s very, very good at compartmentalizing and that’s genuinely how he is at the moment or if he’s that way through extreme self-control and effort

he can rock a pilot’s uniform though

just like eggsy can rock a suit

they’re both so handsome, help

i also wonder how eggsy’s feeling right then

like, i’d imagine that the pressure of having to perform a role to literally save the world would be enough to distract him from the bite of grief

that’s—probably enough to distract everyone, tbh

i a hundred percent believe there are breakdowns we don’t see

i wonder if eggsy told tilde he’d spoken to lindstrum(sp?) after everything was said and done

like, that’d be some kind of weird foreshadowing in hindsight

this scene is anxiety-inducing in a big way so to distract myself i imagine roxy as a mech pilot

dude i’d totally watch sophie in a role like that, like, let her be in a movie like pacific rim, she’d kick ass

and now we have The Chaos

otherwise known as that point when Everything Is Happening All At Once All The Time

also a thing that doesn’t exist in spy movies: hearing damage

because like his voice is right in eggsy’s ear and without it he’d have a LOT harder time surviving

imagine being an agent, merlin trying to talk to you, but something either hits your ear or goes off right next to it and suddenly it’s just silent

SYSTEM FAILURE

YAAASSSSS

WE WIN

GGOOOAAAAALLLLLL

THE AUDIENCE IS DOING THE WAVE

except JUST KIDDING

The Chaos 2 Electric Boogaloo!

merlin with a huge gun: hot, also, very scary

eggsy is just 10000% done

“this is mine. i’ll show you yours.”

i wonder who e man was supposed to be that valentine called.

like is that a reference to a real person that i just did’t catch?

… elon musk? maybe? idk

eggsy slides like a gd anime character

when he uses the rainmaker, it’s just like harry’s protecting him from somewhere else

(oh—wait, technically kentucky, i guess)

“merlin, i’m fucked.” you can hear the anger there. not only did he fail, but he—and everyone else—is about to die

but this? this is the pinnacle of eggsy showing himself as a kingman agent

he was staring death straight in the mouth and STILL

SOMEHOW

REMEMBERED THE IMPLANTS

so i guess if i say that the moment when he puts on the suit is when he becomes a true agent, then maybe this is the moment when he becomes galahad.

*bobs head to pomp & circumstance*

i remember getting a huge kick out of how colorful they made this

because in real life you know a bunch of people literally blowing up would be like—DISGUSTING

viscera everywhere

no fun rainbow mushroom clouds

“i’ve always wanted to kiss a princess.”

ANOTHER knight reference, very clever matthew

mmmmm Do Not Like that noise

aaaannndddd *that* line

which—maybe that’s mr. vaughn’s sense of humor, or what he thinks the sense of humor his core demographic has, idk

but it always kinda rubbed me the wrong way

the mass brawl scenes are edited so like--jarringly compared to the other fight scenes in the movie

that’s probably for a reason

also, a showdown to the tune of something disco: kind of another trope homage

this shot of gazelle is so sick, i love everything about it, she is so cool

this entire fight with eggsy is awesome tbh

we got a little bit of what gazelle can look like in combat earlier with tilde’s guards, but now we get this epic showdown seeing her at her full potential against someone who’s actually a challenge

and the way valentine is shouting for her to kick his ass from upstairs and yelling encouragement lmao that’s how real friends act when there’s a fight

daisy ;-; ugh, that’s the visual gutpunch that makes it juuuuuust serious enough by reminding us of the stakes

which is why it’s fitting that then we see the Slo-Mo K.O.

and that smile with the fun little chimes in the back, lmao

and eggsy, quick on his feet again byyyy being quick on gazelle’s feet—foot—whatever

man, impalement deaths are always fun.

coulda done without the vomiting but that’s also one of valentine’s quirks that makes him different from a cookie cutter villain

aaannddd have a heavy sigh from merlin

that dude needs a full-body massage and a drink

“is this where you say some really bad pun?”

reminder: i love that this movie is self-aware! i could not picture a super serious kingsman movie! i just picture something depressing!

there had to have been a better option besides—this, for this eggsy/tilde ending scene

i’m not saying i’m mad it ended with them fucking, i’m mad that the extent of the joke was anal and that was it.

also the idea of my boss possibly seeing me having sex would have me a little more concerned about the hardware on my face, but okay??

aannddd the tapes.

gah, we love visual throwbacks!

we love being able to see that despite all this growth and change, family remains very important to eggsy—he hasn’t changed into a different person, he has grown more into himself than ever before! THIS! THIS is eggsy unwin!

… GET READY FOR IT

time for tgc! (and to get into my roanoke feels, maybe, this is the nexus where our canons connect)

the BAGPIPES

okay

i did not stop to consider how unpleasant this was going to be to watch stoned but we’re gonna power through it and get through it together

if i cry i cry

the way the music swells into the main theme <3

and the perfect reveal for our boy eggsy!

reflected in gold, looking sharper than broken glass

and SUDDENLY CHARLIE

the pacing in tgc leads me to believe that matthew had huge plans for this movie, and a lot of cool stuff probably ended up on the cutting room floor for time

i also love that they brought charlie back

i love his voice box and his cool robot arm

and i’m not just saying that because it made it super easy to blend him into our canon, either, this is like—charlie’s evil twin in terms of his new aesthetic, the contrast is really cool

YYAASSSS THIS SCENE

WITH PRINCE PLAYING??

*CHEF’S KISS*

like we are IMMEDIATELY thrown back into the gold parts of it all, like how physics is a little broken so we can do cool shit like have a knockdown drag-out fight all within the space of a small cab

i wonder what would’ve hurt charlie worse—being thrown onto his organic side, or having all his weight land on his metal arm if it hadn’t disattached

but then he’s up and standing so i guess we’re fine?

MERLIN! <3

otherwise known as the character entrance that literally changed my life

i try not to think about it too much or i get weirded out

ANYWAY

(and to think i almost never even saw the movie)

Sick Car Chase, Bro

and as an american, like, everything’s on the opposite side to me, it’s stressful to watch a little bit

“i seem to remember in your training you were rather good at holding your breath.”

man, that’s uh—kind of a macabre thing to say, merlin

just a little bit

i’m not even gonna attempt to hold my breath to see if i’d survive this scene just assume i’m dead in that universe

we all live in a kingsman subarmine, a kingsman submarine, a kingsman submarine~~

“not boasting, but i trained him well enough that even he wouldn't mess that up.”

merlin are you okay??

gah, i love that chest-deep laugh though.

is it real love if they won’t crawl through the sewer to get to your house in time

i love that harry’s house looks basically the same

i know they talk about eggsy not wanting to change anything in the novelization but i haven’t read it yet so I’m not a hundred percent sure what all is in there

and we still get to see him hanging with his friends, and his girlfriend, like, this dude is still all about the family

“wwwwOOOOO!”

i love this group so much omg

for as much as he’s galahad, he’s still eggsy

the transition in the weed bag looks super cool

… oh, i guess watching this while high makes the main storyline hit a bit different

welp

i love that poppy is an aesthetic slut and really doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s opinion about how she makes her space

like, “i want a big 50s-style diner with a gourmet kitchen that i can cook people in, soooooo i’m getting one”

it’s also refreshing to see julianne moore in a bad guy role!

not that i’m super familiar with her filmography but i feel like i’ve mostly seen her cast as like a good guy?

i could be wrong

awwwww jet and bennie!

there’s so much to love about this set

cannibalism and the fact that she bulldozed jungle to build all this aside (suspend that belief!)

the breakfast sceeeeeene

it’s so bittersweet, for obvious reasons

and it’s more evidence that he’s not super ready to move on into new territory yet, like making new memories with tilde that ring close to home

“i wish i could have met him.”

and the way he has to turn away, ugh.

eggsy. i’m sorry.

tilde, i’m sorry, too. you had good intentions, but they lost against his pain.

michael gambdon! the new arthur we didn’t know we wanted until we got him.

charlie had a moral glo-down, it’s fine, happens to everybody

FFFFFF his imitation of merlin lmfao

man, poor charlie, like

you wake up, you can’t make a sound, your arm has been blown off and your family’s dead

like his reaction to that entire scenario isn’t entirely unrealistic, i’m just saying

also LOOK AT ROX

omg everyone in this movie can wear the FUCK out of suit, y’all

man, i’ve gotten a few tattoos that were exquisitely painful—i can’t imagine how much it would suck to do it with literal molten metal

dude this means clara laid on her stomach and probably screamed at the floor as she got hers D:

this kinda—riffs off of hannibal, a teeny-tiny bit

like we’re so overloaded with the aesthetics and behavior of a certain character so it’s like, we forget about the much darker parts untillllll there’s a mood change and we’re looking at that dude’s legs, to the burger this other dude puts in his mouth, and thinking “oh, oh dear, ew”

i love eggsy in the orange jacket <3 snaps for the wardrobe crew across this series.

tilde’s face, omg, she was heart-eyeing so bad. and like, that little proud nod at her dad (who was of course being Like That on purpose)

and roxy, coming in in the clutch, you are tonight’s MVP

uggghhhhh i hate this part

because again, it’s just--a bunch of bad shit colliding outside of anyone’s control

(it was also really jarring seeing the war room with blank walls the first time i watched this)

like—granted, you should maybe not touch stuff that’s not yours, but…

like we *just* saw eggsy and brandon in a very casual, intimate scene with each other, how can anyone get angry with brandon?

this is all stress-inducing

i remember being in the theater watching this and feeling like i was watching some awful slow motion car wreck and i couldn’t look away

idk what other story i would’ve wanted to see but i was NOT a fan of Sudden Death For Christmas, especially concerning roxy!

and poppy is such a *bright* villain, not just because of taste but because of her personality, which is another weird thing to have next to the cannibalism

gaaahhhh charlieeee your arm is so cooooool

this shot is gorgeous and incredibly depressing.

what do you do?

gah, and the way merlin comes out of the dark, like

i probably would’ve drawn a gun on him too

“you think *i* would?”

this scene shows 1. how much he trusts eggsy to not shoot him, and/or 2. how good merlin is at compartmentalizing, because this is an even bigger blow than harry’s death, and he’s following the protocol like it’s an art form

i hope that we see some reference to this safe in the next movie, that’d be a cool way to tie the narratives all together

“i suppose that must be upper class humor. … i don’t get it.”

reminder, merlin is working class.

if you’re a ho for this fandom and went and bought this whiskey specifically because of this movie clap your hands *clap clap*

and they proceed to just get HAMMERED

“country rooaaddsss… take me hoooooome…”

another reminder: kentucky is a beautiful state!

i would love to tour a whiskey distillery, that’d be super cool

“shame it’s not scotch”

again, with his weird night vale clipboard.

who would win: two highly-trained kingsman agents vs. one (1) cowboy

channing tatum, ladies and gentlemen!

“y’all look damn sharp!”

i am forever gonna be mad we didn’t get more of tequila in this movie, and not just because of roanoke either, but like, “that dog don’t hunt,” whatever he has in his mouth sealed a leak in a barrel, and it took him all of two minutes to incapacitate both eggsy AND merlin? hello??

i’m glad we’ll get to see more of him in the another movie.

“you know why the measurement of alcohol is called proof?”

just dumping it on their laps, so disrespectful

“—and you can go fuck yourself.”

eggsy fucking just giggling.

these two doofuses

also it’s hot to see merlin be sassy ngl

“HARRY!”

these guys have been fast thinkers in stressful situations but as it turns out, people being unexpectedly not dead can kinda fuck with your day

aaannddd halle berry, everybody! i love ginger ale omg

(and so does merlin, he is instantly enchanted)

;-; this reunion scene

i don’t know how colin manages to be two completely different people at once

like there’s a huge difference between former agent galahad and harry hart the lepidopterist and i can’t explain it

i really, really hope we see at least one little hint at kinsman’s relationship with statesman in the new movie, i just think it’d be really cool

in roanoke canon, there’s an office rumor that the nanobot tech used by statesman was influenced directly by the same technology developed by dr. wernicke in the outlast games. i still think it’s one of my better crossover ideas.

also

god bless whoever decided to get elton john involved with all this?? because i was DELIGHTED

i love poppy’s wardrobe as much as i love her weird 50s-land in the jungle

i also really love the main statesman theme? it reminds me of all those fun epic westerns

jeff bridges! :D

champ vaguely reminds me of my dad

“can you imagine us in the tailor business?”

and he’s super quick with the questions. my headcanons for champ are all over the place but one that i really like is that he was maybe a sheriff or in law enforcement before being recruited by statesman.

aaanndddd pedro pascal, everybody!

otherwise known as *another* character that this movie did dirty, that’ll probably come up in this later

imagine being harry hart, not remember all of yourself, and suddenly your entire room just—fills with water

that had to have been so terrifying, and it was just as hard for merlin to watch (and possibly remember something unpleasant)

and like

that sounds like SUCH bullshit, too, like “yeah we thought if you came close to drowning it would help”

which, is that what merlin meant, no, but is that what harry heard, probably

enter jb the second ;-; <3 sweet baby

tilde’s trying so hard. i see you!

aha, penis jokes.

and all of the unnecessary weird festival stuff, uuggghh

there are so many different things they could have done, like, all of this is just weird from the get-go

first of all, whiskey striking out? hello?? saying no to a man like mr. pascal???

not realistic

the way whiskey takes a shot as he walks away lmao, relatable

and poor clara, like, it’s not like she was asking for any of this D:

hmmmmmmm don’t know how i feel being a stoner watching other stoners get this blue rash thing when i know it kills some of themmmmmmm

i love charlie in his newsboys cap!

poppy has a little bit of a point. like, booze is way more dangerous than pot, as is tobacco. like i would never advocate anyone try meth or heroin, but i think weed and some hallucinogenics get bad wraps.

seeing a dude get torn in half in the reflection of elton john’s sunglasses is the surprising bit of gore we need to remember that oh, yeah, the villain isn’t fun, she’s a murderer

uuggghhhh the TENT SCENE

and, look, i’ll defend tilde forever, but i did NOT like the weird marriage ultimatum. i still think it’s a dick move, like, in that situation either decide to trust your boyfriend or break up with him

the tent interior is super cool-looking

and like, man, he tried, he tried to bounce D:

/sigh/ work hazards, i guess

mmmmmm we don’t need any of what’s happening on screen right now so i’ll just sit patiently and wait for it to be over

and like, there’s nothing funny about merlin and ginger being able to hear everything that’s going on, it’s so grosssss, poor ginger has to have heard some shit before to be so nonchalant about it

everything about this sucks

and then he tries going to the one person who he needs the most and having to deal with him still existing in some state between alive and dead

his body is here

but harry is not

“maggots turn into flies, perhaps you mean larvae!” :D he is SO CUTE

but this entire conversation, with harry still not remembering and eggsy trying so hard to reach him through the fog, is so depressing

like, i’d need a drink too

*and* a joint

i’m seeing my coping mechanisms on screen here folks

the way he comes up with the idea is kinda ingenious though

like, he’s looking at stuff to make himself bummed on purpose, but therein he finds the thing he needs to fix the issue

harry’s smile when eggsy hands him the puppy TT.TT

and then eggsy just becomes a stone cold motherfucker with no emotions

“no one’s sick enough to shoot a puppy!”

hi, flashback!harry

and as SOON as he remembers himself, it’s like his eyes are different, something about him looks like it did before kentucky

“… eggsy.”

one of my favorite movie hugs

and eggsy has to stand on his tiptoes because harry’s so tall

like yeah merlin and harry’s reunion isn’t as overtly emotional, but there’s definitely a sense of joy and relief there.

harry my baby ;-; much better with the sunglasses (and merlin was so close to telling him he looked spectacular)

“now is that any way to welcome a visit from outta town, moonshine?”

he! tried! to! defend! harry!

i hate that jack got a villain story line!

we could’ve had something so much better and infinitely more compelling!

“hurrrr durrrr morgan you just like redemption arcs because you don’t want anybody being a villain permanently” i also like them because sometimes that’s better writing, y’all sit down

“that is NOT what i call a kentucky welcome.”

i love so many things happening in this scene, like

we get to see whiskey kick ass, like yassss gimme those sweet action sequences and give us some character development by showcasing his fighting style

and also NOBODY shits on harry for not being able to handle the situation. both eggsy and merlin were like “dude we’re still celebrating the fact that you’re alive tbh it’s fine if you’re not back up to speed right this second”

you can really tell that this was penned by british people writing american slang because having grown up in the southern half of the u.s. i have never ONCE heard ANYONE say shit like “i feel like a tornado in a trailer park” lmao

and poppy’s fun little death threat infomercial, so great

“what have you done to me you FUCKING BITCH” oof, that’s a mood

!!!!! gonna be honest i kinda forgot that bruce greenwood plays the president

okay but save lives, legalize isn’t an entirely bad idea tbh

hnnnnnnng the scenes about people not being able to get into the hospital hits different in the year of our lord 2020 huh

… y’all i’m being weirded out by all this hospital scenes, this is unpleasant

i, too, wish i could pull a tequila and just be slipped into a chilly coma until shit wasn’t so fucked up

“the fact is, this presidency has won the war on drugs!”

THIS SCENE!

look, y’all can come into my inbox and call me a pothead, or a lazy stoner, or some third insult, but this dude’s VP is bringing up some very, VERY important points when it comes to any kind of discussion about drug use in the u.s.

am i drug-friendly, sure, but i’m more friendly to the notion that we stop demonizing addicts/users

harry looks fucking SCANDALIZED when he sees champ spit into his spittoon thing

i don’t think whiskey even brought up harry not being ready to return to the field in an insulting manner, he literally just saw him get his ass beat in a bar, but eggsy’s faith and loyalty are up there in the category of unstoppable force/immovable object, so here we are

am i the only one curious about the whole charlie x clara thing? because he’s definitely grown up a bit by tgc, and i wanna know how much of that might be because of clara

and he MISSES, e for effort harry

“so sorry about this—“ WHAM

and now that guy can say colin firth busted his face with a fire extinguisher, which is very cool

“*you’re* wu ting feng?” “… yes?”

“you motherFUCKER” ohhhhhh charlie maaaaaad

ginger and merlin though, #couplegoals

the only person more pissed off about the hallucinations than everyone else is harry

imagine remembering that you’re one of the top people in your field and you just keep seeing imaginary butterflies everywhere

like, yeah, i’d be pissed at not being able to do what i knew i was capable of, too

if it wasn’t careening towards a random retirement center, getting stuck in a wildly rotating gondola thing could be fun

nice tuesday afternoon activity

i would loved to have seen more galahad/whiskey field stuff

“you’ve got to be fucking kidding me—“

meanwhile, in the continuing adventures of eggsy and jack: shit goes from bad to worse like a formal spiral only going downward

their expressions as their both just SCREAMING always make me laugh

”that’s the first decent shit i’ve had in three weeks.” <- as does that line, that old dude’s just telling it like it is

eggsy’s comment about the antidote just reminds me of when boromir looks a the ring and says something like “all this for such a tiny thing”

dun dun DUN what are THOSE? hints that whiskey may not be who we think he is??

great. so excited about that. i say, rolling my eyes into the sun

“i’ll fix their wagons.” no one says that matthew!

i. love. this. scene. because now we get cool gun tricks AND the second most metal thing that happens with a lasso in this movie (we’re coming up on the most metal thing)

like please please PLEASE show us more lasso tricks in the statesman movie

“well thank fuckin’ christ i didn’t need any backup.” i wonder if whiskey’s acting angrier than he actually is to throw off the fact that he might’ve caught harry’s glance at him betraying suspicion

RIP jack

imagine the timeline where whiskey was never a bad guy and harry hart just blew a dude away for NO REASON

now THAT would be an interesting movie

because harry and eggsy, for all they went through in the first film, never had a conflict where it was harry in the position of mangling the ropes up

but of course eggsy would never, never tell merlin what happened because he’s still ultimately on harry’s team

damn, charlie, literally blowing up your girlfriend seems kinda extreme

“THIS is vital!”

and here we get to see the biggest difference between merlin and ginger

now, i know there’s extra stuff in the novelization about their relationship and i can’t talk about it because i have no idea what’s in the book

but!

i DO still headcanon as merlin quitting fieldwork after lee’s death

his comment is either what he genuinely believes, or maybe what he fashioned his beliefs into after stepping down from his field role, and ginger is just as sincere in her desire to break into that aspect of working for statesman

it’s like seeing the same character but in two points in time, and it’s really cool

that balance would’ve also been a fun aspect of their romantic relationship to explore but alas! ’twas not to be

colin and mark could both play slenderman

look at those limbs.

gracious.

also this facetime scene with eggsy and tilde T.T

that has to be so terrifying to watch when you know the steps of death and what they look like as they get closer

but it also puts a fire under eggsy though

“i’m leaving with, or without you.”

and of course they’re both gonna go because that’s NOT characteristic eggsy behavior based off of how we know he views family/squad

that’s how they know he’s being for cereal

uugggggGGHHHH and THAT FORESHADOING

stacey pruitt, attorney at lawwwww

hmmmmmmmmm

what does this conversation between poppy and the president remind me of

gonna just sigh into the void

and now we have harry and eggsy on the jet along with the BIGGEST LIE harry hart has ever told in his LIFE

kingsman and statesman aesthetics at least tend to be the same color schemes. lotta golds, yellows. browns.

eggsy, yeah, it’s a bummer your gf dumped you, but this relationship wasn’t very well-developed or written so i’m not as bummed as i could be

“… and in that moment, all i felt was loneliness and regret.”

harry shut the FUCK UP

you felt NOTHING??

you weren’t thinking of, gee, i dunno, EGGSY? or MERLIN?? your MOM???

like these lines from him just seem to come out of left field and i can’t even halfway suspend my belief long enough to come close to believing him

like mr. hart you just gonna be like that in front of jesus and everybody????

so, yeah, of course he’s on board with saving tilde! because he recognizes (apparently just right that second) that “having something to lose is what makes life worth living”

and i don’t know if they felt like there need to be some weird, deeply contrasting reason for harry to swing around to being in support? or something?

like

i’m forever pissed about this characterization and i don’t even know if i’m expressing my anger in a way that makes it easy to understand lmao this is fine, i’m fine, literally not a single person in this fandom ever believed those lines anyway, it’s fine

moving on

... and even if they WERE true then honestly that just makes me more excited about butterfly knife, because that means that harry acknowledged both the bad side of the coin, and also the side with rae on it (which would mean seeing her for who she was and also recognizing his feelings for what THEY were) and drew the ultimately correct conclucision that love! is! always! worth! it! let that shit in like a welcome guest in the home of your heart, and they will stay as long as you let them!

as SOON as he wakes up ginger looks a thousand percent done lmao

and the “process” that they use to wake people up or whatever is—interesting

because all it is, is trauma turned into a tool which is kind of a weird concept to see in a “fun spy movie” imo

and this is one of what i feel were like only what, two? glimpses we get into whiskey’s Tragic Backstory

and the other scene isn’t a glimpse it’s just straight up exposition in his dialogue :/

jack, i’m sorry, you deserved better than this as a character

i’m sure the name “silver pony” is a reference to something but i don’t know what

“lookin’ GOOD merlin!” “feelin’ good, eggsy.”

ladies and gentlemen when i tell you that i lost my pool-noodle mind seeing him put on that suit watching this in a theater, i--

ANYWAY

because now that i have the horrible burden of having seen these movies a million times

i know it’s more symbolic

he stays in sweaters so long, as an agent of the background, because he walked a man to his death

so it figures when he puts the armor back on for the first time in ages

he walks to his own

uuuggghhhh the minesweeper

i hate this

i hate it

i hate everything about the feelings i’m having while this is happening

*beep-beep*

“you move, we die.”

i HATE IT

but like, i don’t know, how preferable is this to the end scene we almost got, which was merlin dragging his newly-legless corpse through a doggy door?

because it’s been literally multiple years and i still have no fucking idea

they’re both horrible in their own terrible, awful ways

damn, matthew, it’s not often someone manages to come up with multiple versions of a thing and have every version be so gut-wrenchingly horrific, i’m truly impressed and completely disgusted

“do as your told!”

god

everyone just going through twenty shades of Bad Feelings in the space of fifteen seconds here in the jungle

and colin and taron do this thing where it’s like—their eyes go dead? like, there was a light here, it’s gone now

it SUCKS

oh

oh no

ALMOST HEAVEN

WEST VIRGINIA

… fuck

LIFE IS OLD THERE

OLDER THAN THE TREES

“… singing?”

this sucks.

this sucks this sucks this sucks

MOUNTAIN MAMAAAAA

TAKE ME HOOOOME

COUNTRY ROOOADDSSSSS

*THUNK*

and he even took off his glasses before he hit him, he had his end coming towards him and he was still a gentleman

TAKE ME HOOOME

COUNTRY RROOOOAAAADDDSSSSS

his EYES AT THE END

FUCK

… okay i had to get up and go for a lil’ walk

anyway

(and again, roanoke canon, fucking fixing’ shit left and right, because we’re the goat)

harry and eggsy look MURDEREROUS

MERLIN SAID KNOCK YOU OUT

it DID make the grand ending fun action scene a lot more satisfying

because like, without merlin there, that means harry and eggsy get to go full feral

poppy you big idiot you just robbed them of all their motivation to show any kind of restraint and now everybody’s gonna get blown up

except for those dudes who get kicked by elton john

which would be an HONOR first of all

(the part where eggsy’s using his gun and shield vaguely reminds me of the specialist, @bloodofthepen​)

and harry and eggsy just—they’re drift compatible! that’s it! the teamwork! the grace! the flow! my god!

eggsy vs. charlie: round like 4 if you count the first movie

it was also satisfying to see charlie’s new arm in action

we love fun robotics and gadgetry in this house

colin firth is really just not afraid to throw himself full force down a bowling lane huh

ugh, seeing charlie slam eggsy over and over again makes my chest hurt

the sound mixing on all these films is top notch which isn’t always a good thing T.T

ROCKETMAN~~~

that shit will never NOT be funny

a wild elton john appeared!

eggsy is indestructible, he can walk off anything

but charlie, charlie i feel really sorry for, imagine being attacked by a superior version of your own limb, i.e. something that you can’t exactly quickly remove from yourself, that would be TERRIFYING

harry + elton = dream teaaaammmm

“darling if you save the world, you can have a backstage pass.”

i love you elton john :(

i would have been the most OBNOXIOUS hype man in the background of the entire kingsman vs. poppy land face-off

“let’s make this fair.” eggsy you’re fuckin’ cheeky

and poor harry, all that lank just getting tossed like noodles

i thought the robot puppers were very cool

“for the record charlie i’m more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be.”

mmmmmm do NOT like this death for charlie

SUPER glad we fixed it

and another scene where i can’t stand the sound mixing T.T it makes me cringe every time

“i don’t consider genocide especially lady-like.”

and are we gonna talk about how merlin knew how to make heroin?

… no?

nobody wanna talk about that?

ugh that houndstooth dress is so PRETTY though

high!poppy is weirdly comedic for all of two seconds and then it stops being funny real fast

whiskey D:<

this is so dumb

this is all so, so dumb

“our agencies were founded to uphold peace, to protect the innocent—“

there’s that nobility again

is what happened to whiskey fucked up, yes

i’m not saying we have to completely remove that from his story

i just

literally anything but this would have been preferable

and then HOT DOG it’s one of my favorite shots in the movie with the whip where harry’s just chucking it away from his face like a bamf, YES

how great is this cover, let’s be honest

like, i’d be lying if i said i didn’t enjoy this scene visually

plus

HARRY GETTING PEGGED RIGHT IN THE FACE WITH A FRYING PAN

gracious

it’s one fluid tracking shot, so kinda in alignmentment with what we’re used to

some people get annoyed with repeated junk but when you can do it THIS WELL you can get away with anything

D:

but then jack

you did NOT desert that

yes, you were in dire need of an attitude adjustment but jesus

“this is for you, merlin.”

/ugly sobbing/

and tilde is all betterrrrrr ;-;

you guys did itttttt

COUNTRY ROOOAAADDSS

TAKE ME HOOOOOOMMEEEE

TO THE PLAAAAAACCCEEEEE

I BELOOOOONNGGGG

and the scene with jamal and liam T.T #wholesomecontent

poor tequila, after i knew that you would have a bigger role in another movie, i was less annoyed by the fact that they iced you so quick into the story

#FOX2020

“… now we’re brothers, working side by side.”

spoiler alert i actually love champ’s toast

“y’all shittin’ in high cotton now” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???

and ginger becomes the new whiskey like she always wanted T.T

merlin is proud from heaven (or london, depending on which canon)

iiiiiii have mixed feelings about the whole wedding scene, which is probably because i take HUGE issue with the weird proposal ultimatum thing that happened earlier

but the way eggsy says “not a doubt in my mind,” he says it so seriously and i remember that tilde almost died

there was such good intention packed into this couple that was so badly written that i just

augh

“but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

there’s ***merlin! lmao i see you dude, they did you dirty

look

i was pissed off about a lot of things that happened in this thing but i was honestly hype seeing tequila at the very end walking into the tailor shop

like, yeah, i’ll stick around to see what happens in this universe but i’m gonna complain the whole time

GO JACK RABBIT

RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS

and again, i almost didn’t see this movie.

… i think about that morgan sometimes.

hope she’s doin’ okay.

…

she’s probably not. D:

[badlesmisimaginesofficial]

Imagine....

It is a cool, breezy afternoon in early June and you are at home, awaiting your beloved. Though we acknowledge that it is not perhaps of direct relevance, it is necessary here to make some comment on the nature of the abode in which you are residing.

Houses have changed since the nineteenth century. They are, in short, no longer objects of beautiful mastery, but have become dull, boxy and charmless. In order to extract maximum profit, they are designed to fit as many tenants as the law permits the landlord to request. Apartment blocks are still more common - land is expensive, but sky is free. The bird laments the intrusion on his territory, but has not the means to file a formal complaint.

Human nature also undergoes a shift when living in such close quarters. Despite being a social being, man has his limits. It is one thing to live in a community. It is entirely something else to hear your neighbour's marriage decline through the kitchen wall, to escape to the bedroom and hear those in the flat above you engaged in vigorous and passionate lovemaking. It is unsurprising, therefore, that one becomes quite attuned to one's surroundings. Like a herd animal, the apartment-dweller develops daily rhythms - knowing which times of day the most irritating neighbours are likely to be walking their noisy dog, and so how best to avoid them.

Your apartment - or 'flat' as you refer to it, being a good English girl with a healthy distaste for affectations of America and Continental Europe - is one such box, consisting of several rooms. Immediately upon entering you find yourself in a short hallway, in your coats and shoes are messily arranged. A door to the left leads into a small kitchen, the saving grace of which is a long window running the length of the countertop. There have been many periods in modern architectural history when windows have fallen out of fashion, always to the detriment of the tenant. A man without a window is little better than a dog in a cage. It is a terrible thing not to be able to see the sky.

The interior of the kitchen has never been to your taste, but you have not the money to redecorate it. The original designer, possessed by some unknown force, had the walls painted an aubergine purple and paired them with wall cabinets in a zesty yellow. Done with care, it is possible that the colour combination might be palatable, if not tasteful. As it is, you do your best to avoid looking at it.

The rest of the flat has a similarly unfortunate design. If one does not turn left into the kitchen but continues along the hallway, you will find yourself in a small, open plan living and dining area. There are two doors on the far wall: one leads to a miniscule bathroom; the other to a bedroom.

It is this bedroom that you spend the majority of your time in. It, too, has long windows, though they are fortunately placed so as not to be immodest. There are no other large blocks in immediate proximity, but you would rather not chance being seen in your underthings.

You have done your best to make this bedroom your own. It is filled with that inane clutter humans call 'stuff', that which was useful once, or might be useful one day, or realistically has no use at all but you cannot bring yourself to throw away. Indeed, one might say it fulfils its purpose well, for it gives the apartment a character it would otherwise lack. Modern buildings have no personality to call their own; what they have they owe entirely to their occupants.

Now that illustration is in place, it is clear to our reader how you might be placed while waiting for your beloved to arrive. Having been happily occupied reading Wordsworth (on several attempts you have tried vainly to attack French poetry, but every time have lost heart two stanzas in) you hear a knock.

Delighted, you spring up. Placing the book on your bedside table, you slide your feet into grubby slippers and hurry out into the hallway, your heart pounding. Unable to prevent the smile from reaching your face, you open the door.

It is at this moment that we remind you of the previous note regarding the daily habits and rhythms of the other people living in the apartment block. Had you stopped to think for a moment, you would have recalled that this is precisely the moment that Mrs Simplice arrives back from her evening walk with her dogs. It is often said that animals reflect their owner, and this case could not be more true. Three lean, ill-tempered hounds, they have chewed every piece of ugly furniture in Mrs Simplice's flat and have made it a personal mission to find more things to destroy.

Mrs Simplice, as most dog-owners do, did not set out for her dogs to be so irritating. Indeed, it is possible she has never noticed what everyone else does - the mean glint in the eye, the ruthless territorial growling - for they are merely a mirror of her behaviour. You have had mercifully few run-ins with your oldest neighbour, but have few positive feelings towards her. A grouchier soul you have never known.

As Providence would have it, Mrs Simplice and her hell hounds are passing at the precise moment that you open the door. Catching a glimpse of you, she simply glares in your direction - communicating via look alone that she considers you a harlot of the worst kind. Entertaining male visitors? With no chaperone? You may as well be a woman of the night.

The dogs, however, do not content themselves with looks. The nearest breaks away from his owner's grasp, lunging for your boyfriend. You do your best to pull your lover through the door, but too late - the dog has already sunk his teeth into Champmathieu's ankle.

With a howl of pain, Champmathieu stumbles into your flat. The dog has released him almost instantly, but the damage is still done. Suddenly furious, you stare at Mrs Simplice, wondering if she will at least offer some apology.

'He's never done that before,' she says mildly, tugging at his lead. 'Come on, Javert.'

At the sound of his name, the dog returns to his previous state of obedience. Without so much as an explanation, the woman and her dogs sweep off down the communal corridor.

'I'm so sorry,' you exclaim, hurrying to inspect Champmathieu's ankle. 'Are you all right?'

'I'll be fine, Y/N,' he says, manfully. 'Don't worry about it.'

'Shouldn't I get something? We should bandage it.'

'It'll be fine,' he repeats. 'You can do something for me, though.'

'Oh?' You're ready to dash for the first-aid kit when you notice his gaze is lingering on your ample chest.

'Yeah,' he says, his voice suddenly laden with desire. 'You'll have to...take my mind off it.'

'Of course,' you say, catching his drift immediately. 'Allow me to assist.'

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 3 (Pt. 1)

Or: Mage Chat at The Club Diabolique

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Volume 1

This chapter features a scene most V:TM fans will be familiar with: important vampires meeting in a seedy nightclub to talk about vampire shit.

Thanks to some reckless driving, Dire McCann arrives at Club Diabolique’s front door at exactly midnight. We also learn that he has a late-model Chrysler, but since I’m not a car guy I don’t know if that means anything about him as a character.

Originally an abandoned warehouse, the building had been converted into a disco by several ambitious young capitalists ten years earlier.

There were still discos in 1984? Wait, when did Xanadu come out?

When that craze had died, so had the club. It passed through several hands and incarnations before being bought by the present owner, Oliver Pearson. After several months of extensive interior designing, the nightspot had reopened with a new name, The Club Diabolique, and a new attitude. Converted into a Gothic-Punk haven, with live music, a huge dance floor, and an exclusive “Members Only” upper level, the bar had quickly developed into the hottest place to be in town.

It wouldn’t be a Vampire: The Masquerade story without a shady nightclub in there somewhere. This one, despite its Gothic-Punk theme, has a mixed crowd of patrons. Most importantly are the vampires, as Alexander Vargoss holds court in that members only area, but obviously none of the mortals in the club know about them.

There were rich, middle-aged businessmen wearing expensive suits, accompanied by much younger women dressed to kill in skin-tight designer dresses and five-inch heels. Club Diabolique catered to mistresses and expensive ladies of the evening, not wives. Morals and inhibitions were checked at the door.

I have a hard time believing this club could remain the hottest nightspot in town for very long if they cater to creepy old stiffs cheating on their wives. It’d hurt the club’s image with the rebellious young goth generation the club’s theme is supposedly catering to. Speaking of, we of course have some goth kids. Most of page thirty-one is spent describing them.

They were punks with an attitude.

You can tell this was written in the 90′s because the word “attitude” here doesn’t really mean anything.

Generation X-ers without much money and without much hope, they felt cheated by a world spoiled by their elders.

The kind of subculture that doesn’t mind hanging out in the same club with creepy middle-aged businessmen and their mistresses, right?

This line could also be a good way to describe how many neonates, newly-Embraced vampires, might feel towards their sires and the older vampires. You can easily make a comparison between these fledgling vampires and the disaffected mortal youth they once were, and the connection could both say something about them and help them maintain their humanity when everything else about vampire life, nature, and society is pressuring them to be monsters. But Blood War is one of those V:TM stories that doesn’t focus on neonates.

Their quest for identity had led them down some strange paths.  Searching for meaning in a meaningless world, they turned to the 19th-century Gothic traditions for inspiration. Their look was a mix of black leather and Victorian finery.

A look that probably clashes with the “without much money” description. One disadvantage goths have when it comes to image, compared to punk and grunge, is that being able to afford their fancy outfits out them as suburban middle-class. There’s a whole paragraph describing their look, but I’m assuming you all know what goths look like.

McCann sympathized with the Goths. Most of them were bright, sensitive young men and women trying desperately to cope with a world of diminishing returns. Lonely and bored, they had created a whole new subculture based on a romanticized view of decadence and death.

After that “goths are punks with Attitude® “ line I was expecting the descriptions for goths to be Weinberg talking about how weird the youth of today is mixed with misconceptions like that they worship the devil or something. But this was pretty good. Their disaffection and feelings of hopelessness might be exaggerated, but that’s justified given the World of Darkness’s generally bleak setting. And there’s no mention of the music scene the subcuture came up around, but I don’t think McCann’s much of a modern music person, so it makes in-character sense. And if it’s not perfect, who are we to judge? How many of you on this hellhole of an internet know the goth subculture as anything other than a meme and a fetish?

The most relevant thing about the narration’s description of goths is their view on (the pop culture version of) vampires, and how that clashes with reality. It’s what you’d expect.

Many of them, not realizing the bitter truth behind the legends, fantasized about becoming vampires. Sometimes it happened, turning their dreams into nightmares.

[...]

Their view of the undead came from erotic novels and movies, not the Kindred. As he strolled past them, he uttered a silent prayer that they forever remain ignorant of the truth.

Aw, that’s sweet of McCann. Maybe under that master schemer detective persona beats the heart of a big old softie. Well, no, not at all, but despite being secretly really old he isn’t a dick about young people.

Club Diabolique has a doorman who’s described as “a giant of a man,” even compared to Dire McCann, who is merely big.

Dressed in undertaker’s garb, he exuded an air of restrained menace. This was Brutus, nicknamed the Arbitrator of Souls. In more mundane terms, the ex-wrestler worked as the doorman.

I wonder, does he have that nickname because goths are over-dramatic, or because vampires are over-dramatic?

Brutus is one of those unbribable club doormen who picked who can get in based on a certain criteria beyond “is the person old enough to be here” and “is this guy gonna start shit if he gets inside?” Thing is, no one knew how Brutus decided who gets in and why, and since he’s a huge scary motherfucker no one asks. Given some of the patrons, and the fact that Brutus is one of Vargoss’s ghouls, I’m guessing he judges based on who looks like they have the tastiest blood.

McCann doesn’t have to worry about Brutus, though, since they both know he has an appointment inside. There’s two paragraphs describing the club, but since the plot doesn’t spend any time here, just know that the music’s too loud to talk over and everyone’s there to dance, drink, and sin. And the band playing is called the Children of the Apocalypse, which McCann finds darkly amusing given the news he received last chapter.

Instead we’ll skip to upstairs, at the door to the member’s only area, guarded by a young “looks-eighteen-but-is-actually-a-hundred” vampire named “Fast Eddie” Sanchez, named so due to his skills with a knife. McCann asks him what’s up, and we learn that Vargoss’s guest is “some big shot Tremere sorcerer” and that “word on the street is that bad times are coming.” McCann says that it sound like a good reason for Eddie to keep his knives sharpened.

“I always keep my knives ready, McCann,” said Eddie, seriously, as the detective walked past him and into the next room.

You notice how that quote’s in italics? There’s several different instances in this chapter where lines are randomly written in italics and I have no idea why. The first thing I assumed is that it’s a subtle way of showing that a vampire is using a speech enhancing discipline, like maybe Eddie’s using a Presence power here to sound more intimidating? That’d explain lines of dialogue, but there are lines by the narration that’re randomly in italics too. You can see that here, since the description of McCann walking into the next room is also italicized along with the dialogue. I have no idea what the writer was doing here, and this is the only chapter where this happens.

McCann describes the members only vampire part of the club:

There were a dozen round cocktail tables scattered about the private chamber, with perhaps fifteen Kindred and twice that number of ghouls present. A small bar served whiskey for the ghouls and blood, both human and animal, for the Undead. Neonates, recently embraced vampires, worked as the waiters.

One criticism I’ve heard about the earlier versions of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop game is that players, despite being big tough vampires with cool powers, are usually railroaded into being neonates doing low-level schmuck work for the actually powerful Count Dracula level vampires, rarely in a position to do much politicking or even hunting. Superpowered errand boys instead of, you know, vampires. These poor waiters here reminded me of that, though in the tabletop’s defense I doubt you’re expected to work a minimum wage job instead of something more exciting and action packed. In the end, it depends on the storyteller. Also, as the book goes on, I think it unintentionally makes an argument for why campaigns about elders and methuselahs might not be the best idea.

To the rear of the room, on a small raised stage, an undead trio of jazz legends were playing some of their greatest hits for a small but appreciative crowd gathered nearby.

I hope those poor bastards aren’t Toreador, but given that they’re just playing their greatest hits about sixty years after their embrace...

Alexander Vargoss hated rock music and refused to have it in his domain.

Unlike McCann, Vargoss is not down with the youth of (about forty years ago up to) today and hates their “rock” “music.” I was also going to ask why Vargoss holds court in a room over a place he can’t stand, but I figure since he’s a Ventrue he’s compelled to follow the money regardless of where it leads. The member’s only area’s soundproofed, anyway.

They kept the noise outside, and, sometimes, held the screams inside. Humans other than McCann had entered the private chamber. But he was the only one who had ever left alive.

Kindred can drink from humans without killing them, so either the humans killed here are Masquerade threats being dealt with discreetly, Vargoss is a low Humanity bastard, or everyone in the club has bad luck with frenzy-stopping dice rolls.

A stunning redhead was singing with the band tonight. Wearing a green sequined dress that sharply delineated a near-perfect figure, she possessed a deep, syrupy voice that blended in perfect harmony with the three musicians.

Of course she’s hot.

McCann’s never seen the singer before, but she looks “vaguely familiar”, so he asks one of those vampire waiters who she is. Turns out she’s a ghoul belonging to a Toreador named Iverson, whose been visiting St. Louis on business for the last month and is sitting nearby watching her. We’re also reminded by the narration that Toreador are known for their “obsession with the arts.”

“He watches her real, real careful. Doesn’t like anyone else taking an interest in the lady. Can’t say I blame him. She’s good.”

“She’s terrific,” said McCann. “I’m surprised he’s left her mortal. Having her as his childe would really boost his prestige in the clan.”

“I think he’s worried she might lose her sultriness if Embraced,” replied the waiter.

See? Even the Toreador know their art sucks.

The waiter advises McCann to stop gawking and get over to Vargoss’s table. Vargoss is getting impatient and that flashy Around the World in Eighty Days style “arriving at your destination at the exact time” entrance only counts if you arrive in the exact room you’re supposed to meet in. So, somewhat unceremoniously given that this is the Prince of St. Louis, McCann walks over to Vargoss’s table, apologizes for being late, and that’s that. The Prince is there, sitting with his back against a brick wall because he’s paranoid about attacks from behind, along with his bodyguards, ~*~The Dark Angels~*~ Fawn and Flavia, at either side of him, and their guest, a little rat-faced Tremere wizard. We get more random italics.

“You delayed our conversation until this kine arrived?” the wizard snarled at Vargoss, making it quite clear he considered McCann a step below a monkey. The Tremere Clan were not noted for their social graces.

The Tremere guy’s an asshole. No surprise there.

Vargoss seems to ignore him and asks McCann what he thinks of the singer, who we learn is named Rachel Young, but his “icy tone” implies that the wizard’s bad manners have offended him as a host, and the wizard realizes this and shuts up. We also learn that a “closely trusted Tremere councilor” had tried to betray Vargoss a few months ago, but McCann uncovered the plot and stopped him, so Vargoss is especially pissed at he Tremere’s sudden dickishness and general presence.

After some banter about Rachel Young, during which she meets McCann’s gaze from the stage and smiles enigmatically at him, Vargoss chews the Tremere out, warning him to watch his manners or else. He also says that McCann is no ordinary human.

The Prince showing off his pet human, thought McCann sarcastically.

And now the random italics are showing up halfway through sentences. What’s with this? Was there no editor?

What makes McCann “no ordinary human” to Vargoss has nothing to do with his detective skills. Instead, McCann traces “a certain proscribed cabalistic phrase” on the table, presumably with his finger but I’m not ruling out a nearby spoon. The letters he made glow red for an instant before disappearing. It’s not very impressive given the vampire powers we’ll see elsewhere in the story, but it’s enough to prove that McCann is magic. And one of the biggest conversation derailers in the franchise.

“You’re a mage?” he whispered. “Of what tradition?”

“Euthanatos.” replied McCann, naming the infamous Death cult. Several of their number cooperated with the Kindred, lending credence to the detective’s lie.

Hoo boy, mages.

Mage: The Ascension is another game that’s part of the World of Darkness franchise. I can’t tell you much about it since I’d only ever been interested in V:TM. But from what I’d been able to understand from online chat, there’s one important thing to keep in mind when it comes to mages in relation to Vampire: The Masquerade.

You should NOT. TALK. ABOUT MAGES IN RELATION TO VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE.

Mages tend to be way, way more powerful than vampires thanks to having fantastic cosmic reality warping powers or some shit. They’ve also got technology. The Technocracy, which I’ve seen get brought up a lot, have orbital mirrors that can create sun-powered space lasers, and goddamn space travel. On top of the obvious power level arguments this’d cause, the nature of mages tend to lead to more “high-minded” concepts like the nature of reality and finding a way for all of humanity to “Ascend.” Compare that to the Kindred’s pettier goals like hiding their existence from the average mortal, manipulating each other, and seeking individual power. When there’re all these factions of magic mortals reshaping reality and burning things with sun lasers in space, it makes the Kindred and their petty earthly squabbles seem pretty damn stupid and unimportant.

So when you’re chatting about Vampire: The Masquerade, bring up mages at your own risk, unless you want to cause long derails about what the mages would do, how they could solve any big problem for vampires without even trying, why they wouldn’t get involved, how something contradicts the lore of one of the two franchises, why are the Antediluvians a threat in the first place when the Technolocracy can sun laser them from space (and they actually do this to one, read up on The Week of Nightmares), and of course, why someone’s pet vampire can totally beat a mage in a fight. And lore dumps. Pages of ‘em.

Hell, I’m derailing right now, and this post is long enough. Back to the story.

The rat-faced Tremere, shocked and more than little scared to have insulted a mage, apologizes, introduces himself as Tyrus Benedict, and assures that he meant no disrespect to McCann or his “order.” We also get this little bit.

Like most Kindred, he was extremely wary of mages. Those beings foolish enough to cross magicians usually ended up perishing in peculiar fashion. Including the Undead.

Also remember that the Tremere used to be mages, so that’s a another group of even more dangerous people who’d like to stick a foot up the Tremere’s asses.

McCann’s trying not to laugh at the easily fooled vampire. See, he’s lying about being Euthanatos. He isn’t even a mage. He just knows a few simple “parlor tricks” like creating glowing red runes with his finger/spoon to fool vamps like Vargoss and Benedict here into thinking he’s a mage.

The Kindred were masters of deceit and deception. Yet they much too easily accepted the unbelievable when confronted with the obvious. They saw complications where none existed. It was a basic character flaw that Dire McCann understood and exploited quite effectively. And had done so, in various guises, over the milennia.

So. He’s at least a thousand years old, but he’s mortal, not a Kindred. He knows some minor magic, but he’s not a mage...

Also, I’m not seeing how “I’m a Mage, I can do magic” is any more complicated than the truth here.

Vargoss and Benedict have some “blood cocktails” (the whiskey here’s too smooth for a big tough guy like Dire McCann, and the twins, edgelords that they are, prefer drinking from the source) and they finally get down to business. The Camarilla elders sent Tyrus to St. Louis to inform Vargoss of current events in the former Soviet Union. Why Vargoss is important enough to bother informing I don’t know, but McCann has to find out somehow, so here we are.

It all started about three years ago, a year before the prologue.

“...at the height of Boris Yeltsin’s unexpected rise to supreme authority in Moscow, all communications with the Kindred inside the former Soviet Union ceased. In the period of a few days, an Iron Curtain of silence descended across Russia. It was as if the Earth itself swallowed up our brethren.”

According to the wiki, this was called the Shadow Curtain.

The European Ventrue and Toreador clans sent some spies into Russia to find out what’s going on, but none returned. Vargoss doesn’t find this very mysterious.

Vargoss shrugged. “Obviously it was a Sabbat takeover. The Brujah elders in Moscow underestimated the discontent among their kine. Their puppet rulers spent too much money on weapons and not enough on food. Without a strong leader like Stalin to keep the commoners in line, discontent and anarchy flourished. The fall of the government, and the Brujah with it, was inevitable. No mystery there. We saw it take place on television.”

How topical for the early 90′s... I have some opinions about Vampire: The Masquerade’s use of historical and current events, and how vampires were involved with them, but that’ll wait until I get to a more offending example toward the end of the book.

Vargoss thinks that the Sabbat, experts at staging revolutions, caught the Brujah unaware and took over. Benedict says the Camarilla elders thought so too, but their spies within the Sabbat revealed that they lost a half dozen of their own people when the curtain fell. They sacrificed dozens of “packs” to break the “barrier of silence,” but they got nothing. Whatever’s causing the Shadow Curtain is stronger than both the Camarilla and the Sabbot. Vargoss asks what could be stronger than the Camarilla, and Benedict answers. Still in italics, of course.

“The Army of Night,’ said Tyrus Benedict, his voice rising in intensity. An unholy band of demonic Kindred belonging to no clan, they are allied with the forces of hell. The fiends belong to the brood of the most feared sorceress of all time—the Hag, Baba Yaga.”

No, not him.

“She awoke from torpor several years ago and has now reclaimed Russia as her own. Armageddon approaches. The Nictuku are rising!”

The legendary Baba Yaga’s a vampire in this setting, the one responsible for the Shadow Curtain, and yet another one of the Nictuku. When Benedict mentions Armageddon here, he doesn’t just mean because some old and cannabalistic methuselahs are waking up just to annoy them. The rising is said to be a sign that Gehenna, the end of the world for vampires and mankind, is starting.

Again, the Nictuku are 4th generation Nosferatu, completely loyal to their sire, the Antediluvian Absimiliard. And Absimiliard apparently hates his descendants, since he was a vain handsome bastard before Caine cursed him and the ugly little rat people living in the sewers remind him of his curse. It’s said that when the Nictuku rise, they’ll wipe out the later generations of Nosferatu, just as their sire wants. Except, funny enough, for Baba Yaga here. She’s apparently a rebel among the Nictuku, and is said to even be the direct vampiric ancestor of all modern Nosferatu, done just to piss Absimiliard off. Seems she just wants to gain power for herself, which is what she’s doing in Russia.

In short: If the Nictuku are rising, they’re probably going to do Absimiliard���s bidding. And if they’re rising, maybe Absimiliard is stirring too. And if he’s beginning to rise, so are the other Antediluvians. And if that’s happening, boom. Gehenna. Everyone’s fucked.

Going according to Camarilla policy, Vargoss angrily denies that the Nictuku (and what they represent, though that’s left unsaid) exist, that they’re just myths “invented by the Nosferatu elders to frighten their rebellious childer.” But turns out Benedict has photographic evidence. He hands over some photos, informing Vargoss that many bothans Tremere wizards met the Final Death getting them. The Sabbat and the rest of the Camarilla couldn’t figure out what was going on in Russia, but somehow the sneaky fuck blood magic clan managed to get pictures of the cause.

McCann doesn’t get to see them, and thus neither do we. But Vargoss tells us all we need to know.

Vargoss’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the photos. Raising up one particular picture, he showed it to Fawn and Flavia. “She has teeth of iron and six-inch claws,” he stated in hushed tones. “Just as the legends claim.”

It’s enough to shut down any more “Nictuku aren’t real” talk.

McCann, meanwhile, notices that Benedict hadn’t said anything since he revealed the photos, which, come on McCann, it’s not even been a minute. But this is supposed to hint that something’s off, because Benedict is staring at the stage with Young and the jazz trio. Who’ve stopped playing.

Suddenly, they hear Young scream.

McCann and the vamps at the table (except Benedict, the wimp) jump up and face the stage, forming a neat little group action pose that’d make for good promotion material if this were a visual media and not a book.

In one hand, he gripped his machine gun pistol, ready for action. At his side were the Dark Angels. Each of them held a pair of short swords they were capable of wielding with deadly efficiency. Right behind them stood Alexander Vargoss. The Prince of St. Louis was no coward.

Says the book after specifically describing him as standing behind the other three. But, alright, I know what Weinberg’s going for.

“Who in hell’s name is that?” whispered McCann ... “What in hell’s name is that?”

Time to meet the bad guy.

Tall and gaunt, a lone figure dominated the center of the chamber, a few feet in front of the stage. It had not been there a moment ago. Somehow, it had materialized out of thin air. That was what the Tremere wizard had seen. It was a magical feat that challenged even the most powerful of Kindred.

You sure he didn’t just reveal himself after deactivating Obfuscate? Or turn into an animal, sneak in, and change back at a dramatically appropriate time? Or-

The newcomer wore a single garment consisting of a ripped and tattered shroud held tightly in place about his body with moldering white bandages. His chalk-white face was that of a long dead corpse. Ancient, decaying skin stretched tightly across a hairless skull. Paper-thin lips, a beak-like nose, and hollow, gaunt cheeks combined in a look of utter malevolence. Huge unblinking eyes, like the black pits of hell, took in all those in the chamber.

A creature of blacks and whites, streaks of brilliant crimson marked his face, his hands, and his arms. Hands and fingers glowed ghostly red. The bright scarlet of fresh blood. There was no question in McCann’s mind that here stood the Red Death.

And his body seems to be generating great heat, and not in the fun wrestling terminology kind of way.

The floor surrounding the walking corpse sizzled. The vinyl bubbled like lava beneath the creature’s feet. Waves of superheated air rose around the figure, giving it an eerie, unearthly vagueness. The Red Death blazed, but did not burn.

Fire’s a fatal weakness for vampires, and that presumably goes for heat so intense it should make things burst into flame too. If you’re playing the tabletop game, you gotta roll to see if your character will freak out and run from fire or not. So this corpse-looking guy generating heat that can melt the floor with no harm to himself is a big deal. Benedict and McCann hype him up a bit more for good measure.

“In three hundred years I have never seen its like,’ muttered Benedict, still seated. ‘How can such a monster exist?”

McCann wondered the same thing. And he based his observation on a much greater span of time.

Vargoss speaks up, trying to live up to that “no coward” description from earlier.

“Who are you?” The Prince’s voice rang like a bell through the silent chamber. “And how dare you violate the traditions and enter my domain without permission?”

“This is how you face the devil straight up, McCann, you wuss.”

The figure raised its head until its eyes glared directly at Vargoss. “I am the Red Death,” the monster declared in slow, deliberate tones. “I go where I want. Your petty territorial claims mean nothing to me. My will is the only law.”

We’ll stop here for now, with McCann and the vampires about to take on the titular Red Death. He acts tough and yeah, he made quite an entrance, but in the end, who knows? Maybe McCann and the vamps’ll do alright.

[kbrown78]

Monthly Wrap Up: September

Looking back, September wasn't a great month. Granted I did read 9 books and 3 of those books were over 500 pages, but most of these books I didn't enjoy. There were a couple highlights and two of the books that I did read were non fiction, both I thought were fairly good. I will also say real quick that I tried to start the last book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy, but I gave up on it because it was the exact same story I had to endure in the second book and I wasn't going to deal with 800 pages of that.

The Defiant Heir by Melisa Caruso: This is the second book in the Swords an Fire trilogy, and I thought it was even better than the first, and I gave the first one 5 stars. First it does build off of what was established in the previous book, with the worlds and the characters. The main conflict is Amalia trying to prevent an internal war while also trying to solve what happened to the missing Falcons. This series is exactly what I want to read, with an amazing intellectual character who knows how to use her smarts to achieve her goals and is someone who tries to do right thing. The relationships are all astounding, female friendships in particular, and I like that Amalia's mother is an active presence who cares about her daughter but lets her do her own thing. The romance is great too, despite the fact that there is a love triangle. The villain is despicably evil, but he's not mustache twirling and while he did have a sad past, that fact isn't even remotely treated as an excuse for his horrible actions. The plot keeps me invested and keeps adding new twists that add to the story. The world is fantastic, with each location feeling well developed and distinct from each other. Seriously the only complaint I have about this series is that it isn't longer. The Defiant Heir received 5 out 5 stars.

Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore: This book was such a disappointment. When I first read the Graceling trilogy, I hated the other two books, and I think that clouded my judgement and made me rate Bitterblue much higher. I do ultimately think Bitterblue is the best book in the series, but after rereading it I realize that it's not nearly as good as I originally thought it was. It's going to be hard to do this review without giving away spoilers, but I'll try. A brief synopsis is that Queen Bitterblue is working to help her kingdom recover and there are those that are trying to stop her. So Bitterblue makes an effort to be a good ruler and do the right thing in difficult situations. She's also book smart, which I usually like that type of character, but she did some really stupid things and was also quite bratty at times. There are two potential love interests, and I didn't really like either of them. One was just brooding, which I never like in a love interest, the other one was a bit boring. The weakest aspect of this book is definitely the plot. There's a sub plot about rebellion in the other kingdoms, but it was pretty irrelevant to the overall plot, and I just wasn't interested in any of the characters involved. This is the part where it's impossible to talk about the book with out spoilers, but I will say this. The struggle's that the kingdom is facing were well written and did a good job of exploring various themes of ruling and recovery. However, the big plot twist at the end that helps resolve their issues is so unrealistic that it causes the entire story to just collapse. The best aspects of this book were some of the themes explored and the art work because there are some beautiful interior designs. I would still say this book is the best out of the three, but looking back it isn't nearly as good as I remember it (although I do in part blame the reading slump I was in after finishing Defiant Heir, but only partly). Bitterblue received 2 out 5 stars and was my pick for the PopSugar promt “book with your favorite color in the title”.

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence: I went into this book with high expectations, and while it did live up to a few, it also disappointed me. The basic summary is this girl gets taken in by a convent of assassin nuns, where she spends her years training. Sounds like a pretty cool synopsis, but every time I hope a book is going to be similar to Harry Potter, with the schooling, it never lives up to that expectation. First I liked the protagonist, Nona. It was nice to have a female character who was a badass fighter, but she wasn't cold. She cares deeply about her friends and friendship and protecting those she cares about are important to her. That's not a type of character I see often. With that established, I do think some of the friendships were well done, like Hessa's, Arabella's and Clera's, because of how much they differ but at the same time feeling like it wasn't forced. Some of the nuns were interesting, but they didn't quite feel fully fleshed out, and one nun I hated because of how mean she was and I'm sick of seeing that kind of adult in fiction. The world building was so weird, and I honestly didn't like it because it felt very underdeveloped and made little sense. The story is Nona's story, but there times when I felt like it didn't focus on her and those were usually my least favorite parts because I was just invested in Nona, not in anything that was happening in the outside world or with any other character. Because of that there were some parts I honestly just skimmed through. I mentioned the Harry Potter thing, and what I meant by that is Nona has classes that she needs to take, and while they are mentioned, I didn't get much of sense of her learning. It was more like she suddenly had these skills, which I blame on both the lack of detail on what she did learn, and the poor pacing of this story, with those parts just being rushed through at a rate I couldn't even discern. So while I liked parts of the story, I definitely didn't love it was much as I thought I would and I'm not sure if I'm going to continue with rest of the series. Red Sister received 3 out 5 stars from me.  

The Silk Roads: A New  History of World by Peter Frankopan: I was originally going to be reading this book over the entire year, but I decided to just finish it up as some as possible. I didn't tag this book and I won't be doing a full review of it because it is historical nonfiction. Now the premise of the book intrigued me, exploring world history through the Silk Road, and I also though the cover was pretty. The first half of the book really intrigued because I like learning about ancient history, and it was very detailed and I was fascinated by what I was learning. My impression, however, had been that this book would primarily focus on ancient times, but this was not the case. I could have done with history that was all pre-1700s, but the last third of the book focused on history from the 1800s to modern times, and while I tried to pay attention because there was a lot that was relevant to today's world, I just couldn't focus as much as I had in the previous sections. That's not to say it wasn't as well written or well researched as the previous parts, I just wasn't interested anymore. So this book received 3.5 out 5 stars,  but that's only because it's a case of “it's not you, it's me,” and I would highly recommend this book to anyone that loves history.  

You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero: This was the other nonfiction I read this month, and this was just a real quick self help book. I do think overall it did a good job at identifying ways to improve but I do admit I started skimming through the extra text just to get to the bullet points. So helpful but maybe not presented in the most efficient way. You Are A Badass received 3 out 5 stars.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins: Oh man, I was looking forward to this book, but it epicly failed. I read a sample of it and was really intrigued. It felt very mysterious, I didn't know exactly what was going on and I got the distinct impression that these characters weren't entirely human. Then I read the rest of the book and I didn't connect with any of the characters, I found the writing style to be increasing irritating, the story made no sense to me because I didn't understand what was happening and I didn't understand the sense of urgency, and I got increasingly sexist vibes from the story. All I can make sense of is that “Father” was gone missing from the Library and there's a lot of death and resurrection. I can't do a full review of this story because I DNFed it 50% through, I just couldn't take it anymore. I initially chose this one as my pick for the PopSugar promt “book set in a library”  and needless to say this book received 1 out 5 stars because I couldn't even force myself to finish it.  

Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book by Tamora Pierce: I hoped that I would enjoy this one. I've been looking forward to reading it for awhile. But lately I've really been struggling with YA, and even for a YA book I found this one to be bad. First, there's no plot. Literaly two major events happen in the book and that's it everything else was filler. What I remember of almost all my favorite reads as a child (with the exception being East) is that they got into the action and the plot fast, so I can definitely say that even as child I wouldn't have liked this book. I thought all the characters were pretty flat. I wasn't expecting to get everyone's perspective, I thought there would just be Sandry's perspective, since the book is literally called “Sandy's Book,” and I don't think adding in the extra perspectives helped the story in any way. I also got the impression that the children were acting overly immature but also the audience was expected to be immature. There was one scene where three of the character don't know what the word “kid” means, and it really irritated me. I won't be doing a full review for this one too, because I did tag it, but I didn't take any notes because of how overly simple this story was. I have the next 3 books and maybe they'll get better, but I'm in no rush. Sandry's Book received 1.5 out 5 stars.  

The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi: So I mentioned in the previous entry that I have been struggling with YA, particularly YA fantasy. This book, thank goodness, is a very pleasant exception to that. I really liked reading this book the first time through, and second read through, while there were a few things I disliked, I actually enjoyed the story even more. It's always pitched as Hades/ Persphone with Indian folklore, and both parts are so well done. I loved the romance, I loved the story, I loved the characters (most of them). The writing style is gorgeous, it's so flowery and atmospheric. I could see the vivid colors, I could taste the jewel fruit. I love Chokshi's books, and I cannot wait to get to her short stories that are set in the same world. Star Touched Queen received 5 out 5 stars.  

Sabriel by Garth Nix: And so we return to the YA slump. I shouldn't be too hard on this book though. There were some very interesting aspects of it, and the first half of the book was good. Sabriel was competent character who was trained to deal with death, and Mogget was this eerie figure that I kind of liked but was also kid of afraid of. I loved the focus on death, and how death is it's own world. The magic system was really cool to, with different marks and the bells. I thought the pacing of the first half was decent too, fast but not rushed. Things took a turn, however, when the love interest was introduced. It was so obvious this guy was the love interest, and the relationship felt so forced and there was insta-love, which I hate. After Touchstone was introduced, the pacing was so much more rushed, there was a lot of telling instead of showing, and there was also quite a bit Deus Ex Machina. Things really fell apart in the second half, and it turns out this was because the first book was going to be treated more as a prequel instead of a first book. Sabriel received 3 out 5 stars.

[yourmotivationguru]

I’ve always been proud of myself about my home interiors. However, I soon realized that the best doesn’t always remain exciting and I got bored looking at the same interiors day in and out.

I thought I had to bring some change in my life without any expensive renovations.

I did these simple but effective five home improvement alterations that made my home so much more exciting and attractive!

1. Living room

If you are bored with your living room, these great ideas help revamp it in just a few minutes. Try changing the layout. I wasn’t keen on moving the sofa, because watching TV was so much enjoyable from it! So I just rearranged the armchairs and added a recliner to create a reading corner.

Switching cushions is also a quick way to brighten up the living room. They are available in so many colors, shapes, and textures that you will definitely find something unique for your living room!

Like always, adding a gallery wall with photos, record covers, prints, or even wallpaper bits or framed fabric cut-offs goes a long way in updating your living room. It both fills a blank wall and adds personality to it.

You can also throw in some houseplants for a natural look and have more fresh air. If you aren’t in a hurry, I suggest you give the floor and walls a fresh coat of paint.

2. Bedroom

Yes, the bedroom is perfect for relaxing at the end of a long day. However, I learned that time too can turn it blah, but these ideas did bring its oomph back!

I made the walls attractive by hanging up my favorite painting, family photos, posters or quilt. I also turned one wall into an accent wall by painting it with dark and intense colors and adding some stenciled designs.

If you want some excitement, try adding something shining to your bedroom. It can be something glass or metallic surface like the sequins on some throw pillows I found. However, I must say, don’t overwhelm the effects with too much metal!

I found that throwing in some bright and colorful throw pillows helped too. I stuck to the general rule of thumb by using three pillows, coordinated by color, style, or design.

I then thought I’d update my lighting to create some panache. I didn’t do much. I just swapped my existing dull fixtures with a spectacular bold ceiling fixture. And I must say, all it takes is a high-impact and attractive bedside lamp for something unique.

I lastly added some houseplants and updated my bedding and rug to spruce up my otherwise dull bedroom.

3. Playroom

With children spending hours in playrooms, I always thought it should be a center for learning, playing, and fun. So I decided to let my imagination free to create a functional playroom that my kids will also love.

Kids are naturally hyperactive and are quickly distracted, making it all the more difficult to keep them entertained. However, I learned that a correctly set up baby gym can keep them entertained for hours.

I also created a reading, and arts and crafts nook with a table and chair, and relevant supplies. Or if your kids love watching videos, you could use a TV to create a media center. I just suggest you keep everything within arms’ reach. This not only keeps things organized, and but makes kids more focused on what they do.

My kids, like others, also have lots of stuff lying around. So I thought I’d fit the room with a combination of the right storage pieces for their books, video games, and toys. I chose something that’s both multi-functional and neutral colored, and which I know will grow with your children.

I wanted to add some color, and I did it by adding colorful accessories like throw rugs, blankets, covers, and wall art. I then thought I’d complete the look with a theme. I used a combination of decals and paint to create a playroom my kids now don’t want to leave.

4. Kitchen

A drab kitchen can look vibrant through these minor, but effective home improvement alterations.

Start by painting the kitchen cabinets with a bright hue like orange, yellow, and green. It makes your kitchen stand out and look bright. You could match your wall colors, by painting the cabinets a shade darker or more vivid than the walls.

Highlighting and creating a particular focal accent wall in a bright shade gives your kitchen a sophisticated look. Adding some bricks and tiles adds texture.

You can alternatively use a wall and open wooden shelves to display your exotic crockery sets, and create a crockery gallery. Hooks and racks also prove helpful at showing off your coffee mug collection.

Updating your backsplash with vibrant patterns and colors injects life into the kitchen. All it takes are a few striking patterns and geometric shapes to spruce up a dull kitchen!

Next, try adding something unusual for surprise and excitement. Adding rugs, mirrors, or lounge chairs surprise your senses to make your kitchen look not just attractive, but even unique.

5. Garage

The garage is most neglected because we feel it doesn’t need to look good. However, my garage no longer looked boring after these alterations! Besides, I made a fascinating spot for my husband so he could rest and have fun.

I used some shelves and hooks to create vertical space to store all those things I seldom used, but needed out of the way. I also installed a few cabinets to create additional storage space, and thus declutter the garage.

I then painted my usually dingy concrete floor to make it more attractive. It’s amazing what a little paint can do to a drab garage! 

After all the decluttering and painting, the garage looked so beautiful; I thought I could use it as an extra room. I anyway didn’t use the garage for parking and needed a place to hang out with guests.

So I just installed a new door and a mini-heating and cooling system. It not only keeps us comfortable through the year, but its dehumidifier prevents possible dampness.

I was thrilled with the result, and surprised at how a little decluttering and painting goes at creating a more comfortable living space!

Final Thoughts

There you go. I’d tried these minor but useful home improvement alterations on these five rooms, and it’s done wonders. So why not you try them out too if you are bored of your interior?

http://www.yourmotivationguru.com/home-improvement-alterations/

[brujahinaskirt]

Stylized Fandoms - or, when It’s All The Same, but also It Isn’t.

NECESSARY STUFF: The OP above gave full permission to use their post as a launchpad for this commentary, so please don’t mistake this as either endorsement or criticism, and please do not mistake it as a group invitation to attack. I’ve written about this phenomenon in the Rowling fandom before and this gives me another excuse. Plus, as someone who tried to join a fandom via this writing strategy and failed, I think I can contribute some thought fodder on the issue of content sameness.

I’m bout to drop an essay, hobbits. This essay isn’t, however, a critique. This is a non-evaluative observation and a writing theory. And, finally, an open question to fellow fic writers.

BASE OBSERVATION: The dominant writing styles in book-based fandoms mirror and pay homage to the style of the original author.

In Summary: The Hobbit fandom (and the Harry Potter fandom, which I originally theorized about) experiences a high degree of stylistic sameness as a whole because a lot of stories attempt to recreate Bilbo’s voice as it appeared in Tolkien’s first-person-via-third-person POV technique. They achieve this, naturally, by following the original text. This trend may be especially pronounced for The Hobbit as opposed to the Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion works because Tolkien’s narratorial voice is more exaggerated – if not better-written – in The Hobbit.

Now, to break that down a little more.

Tolkien’s Hobbit style contains a few highly recognizable elements that stick out to a contemporary prose reader: sentence structure that mimics speech, brisk dialogue, use of mundane exchanges to instill realism, avoidance of emotional description, exclamation use, childlike diction, minimalistic characterization, parentheticals, verse, sweeping summarization as an alternative to scene, laboriously expanded setting descriptions that prioritize listing physical details over atmospheric metaphor, reliance on simple/well-known similes, frank delivery of fantastical elements and world mythology, limited access to character feelings, and huge time skips. When an author chooses to maintain most of these at once without selective deletion or without constantly highlighting their own personal stylistic flourishes, we get something that sounds  �� ‘course – super Tolkienesque.

There’s a really dominant style in Snicket’s fandom, too. And Butler, Bradbury, Rowling, Gaiman, etc. Which is important to note, because…

Generally speaking, stylized writing tends to be more popular, more memorable, and more marketable than contemporary “high literary” minimalism. And it’s more likely to have intensely stylized fandoms. Which makes sense; book-readers generally come to fanfic because they want more of published content that is already familiar to them in some way. It follows that one of the reasons those style-adherent/style-preserving Hobbit fics are so successful is because they gain a lot of traction with people who are specifically looking for recreations of Tolkien’s writing style. (Since stylized writing isn’t really prominent on those abovementioned literary main markets anymore, I think this is a large part of his lasting appeal.)

Let’s take a quick look at the opening chapters of a few of the most popular, widely-read fics in this fandom to pinpoint what I’m getting at. I’ve only sampled first chapters here – mainly because I don’t want to spoil ‘em for anyone.

First, from the illustrious Sansûkh:

"You have come to a place of rest, Thorin son of Thráin," said the voice, and Thorin blinked furiously, trying to make out the voice's owner in the gloom. His excellent Dwarven dark- vision did not seem to be working, and he began to push himself up onto his elbows. He was unclad, and his skin shivered and prickled in the icy darkness.

"Explain," he snarled. "And show yourself!"

"Patience," the voice chided. It did not sound angry at Thorin's disrespect. Rather, it sounded fond, even fatherly. "Do calm yourself. Your sight will return."

In my opinion, this style is the pinnacle of faithfulness to Tolkien’s Hobbit voice. Taking a minute to identify Tolkien elements, we observe a skilled and almost intimidatingly close use of: Tolkien dialogue, Tolkien exclamation patterns, Tolkien diction, Tolkien avoidance of emotional description, Tolkien character access, Tolkien rhythm and tempo, and much more as we continue to later chapters.

From A Shot in the Dark:

Shaking, he scrambled out beneath the mountain of blankets and quilts and stumbled over to the mirror. Grasping the edge of it, he stared at the face of the young Hobbit before him with freckled skin and thick brown curls, and felt something in him crack.

"I'm young again," he said aloud, watching the face in front of him repeat his words. "I'm young again, and in my old house in Bag End before I went to Erebor—"

Understanding dawned on him and brought him to his knees. He recalled now, a story from long ago, of a Hobbit lass that had watched her beloved die in an accident. When she awoke the day after his funeral, she found herself reliving the days before the accident over and over again, and was able to save her beloved from his cruel fate.

Obviously, this fic – and every fic – displays subtle voice differences from Tolkien (and, by extention, other fic writers). And thank goodness for that, or how would an author develop a fanbase at all? That said, we can see a lot of Tolkienesque, highly attentive and skillful patterning in the prose itself, the vantage point, the syntax, and the overall voice.

Just a few more clear examples of this homage-style at its best and brightest:

An Expected Journey:

An ancient hobbit lay in a soft bed below them. His eyes were closed. There was a breeze coming in through the open window that made his thin white curls stir slightly. The sheets lifted with each shallow breath and Bilbo realized that he was looking down at himself and that he was dying. There was a pale cast to his features that showed that he was not much longer for this world. Outside, Frodo sat in the garden the elves had gifted them, a book in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other.  A smile made his face light up as he turned the page and there was an inner peace about him that helped to settle Bilbo’s fretful heart a little. His nephew would be happy here and maybe with time the pain of his wounds, the ones on his heart especially, would diminish. No doubt he would miss his uncle, but that was such a small thing that it hardly seemed to matter now.

“Change is a fickle thing. Remember this in your journey, Bilbo Baggins, and perhaps you will be able to alter history after all.”

The hobbit in the bed took its last breath and was still. Frodo closed his book.

Comes Around Again:

“Come on, slug-a-bed,” his mother called. “Time to rise.”

Gimli blinked at the ceiling. Was he in the Halls of Mahal? He didn’t expect them to look quite so much like his room in Ered Luin. He pushed himself up to look.

The room was exactly as he remembered: dark, lit by lamps shining blue-green with the glowing plants that lived in the deep, dark places, and with grime caked in corners that he could never scrub clean. There was the crack in his wall, more an eyesore than a danger. The tapestry he had hung to hide it, his first and last attempt at loom-work, had fallen again. The stone face was too brittle. His chest of drawers, also a product of his hands, stood straight and even, if modestly decorated. His mirror, tinted green with age and spotted black, had been a relic found when they had come to these mountains when he was a lad. Between his drawers and his trunk lay his things: his training axe, his ‘prentice tools, a pile of clothing that would quickly become far too small for his growing frame.

[Purely an aside: You may notice a striking similarity of introductory schemas, too! Most of these fics begin with the classic “protagonist wakes up” scene popularly found in all storytelling mediums – but given the tragic nature of the source material, it’s become a “wake up from death” scene. This, though, is not a precedent set by Tolkien; it’s a marker the Hobbit fandom gravitated to all on its own. How? I dunno, exactly; seems like it just kind of happened that way. Cool question, if you’re a writer/literary critic/English major type.]

Please note here that I am completely uninterested in debating how good these fics are (or any fics, for that matter). Frankly, my dear, I do not give a damn whether or not you love Sansûkh, A Shot in the Dark, An Expected Journey, or Comes Around Again. What’s indisputable and relevant is that all of these fics are extremely successful. For the sake of this piece, we’re going to put artistic innovation on the back-burner and define successful by two measures: 1. sustained popularity, and 2. accurate replication of their source text. Do they achieve the dominant fandom (original author) style, and does this style reap the harvest of massive audience feedback? It’s hard to argue no, regardless of how these fics measure up to your personal tastes.

To put it another way: If you misread this essay as a rallying cry, then go and yell at individual authors for making successful creative choices, I DON’T KNOW YOU, and what’s your fuckin’ problem? That’s like yelling at one person for painting their room green because you feel there’s too much green in the world. These writers are fandom tone-setters. They know their room is green; they picked it because they like green, not because they aren’t skilled interior designers. Targeting a writer for a style trend is not helpful; it’s bratty, it’s misguided, and it’s futile.

So why would anyone worry about this? If overwhelming majorities are deliberately seeking works that recreate the experience of reading Tolkien’s prose, and writers are having great success with that style, are there any drawbacks?

IMO, there’s one big one. In fandoms like this one, I think authors can come to feel beholden to Tolkien’s style – like if they don’t recreate it, their fic will flounder  – and that danger zone, not homage, is where creativity and variety come to die.

This can put a fic writer in the uncomfortable position of making a choice between three imperfect options:

Faithfully reconstruct and largely adhere to Tolkien’s style. (This is the choice most Big Fic writers in any book-based fandom make. On the downside, this limitation can feel creatively constricting. It should, however, be mentioned that some writers find this strategy ultimately increases their creativity – the stylistic constraints demand they make more daring creative choices in other realms, such as plot or characterization.)

Ignore the original materials. (The downside here is obvious: In a book-based fandom, this choice is likely to significantly decrease traffic on Page One and therefore decrease responses to your fic. As the overwhelming majority of fic writers will attest to, nothing kills a fic faster than a writer who feels like no one is interested.)

Take the middle-road. Borrow a few secondary elements from Tolkien; consistently prioritize core elements of your natural style while deliberately limiting his. (Runs the same risks as the above example. This can also be incredibly difficult, especially for newer writers who haven’t quite settled on their natural style yet, or for authors whose natural styles conflict with Tolkien’s. It’s more complex than saying “get gud scrub.” Many new writers use fandom to begin the process of creative self-discovery. This process takes years of constant writing and is arguably never finished. Long story short: We can’t simply foist this strategy upon everyone and sustain a thriving book fandom.)

To more fully illustrate the pitfalls of Option Three, let me turn the criticism on myself and my own floundered fic – one of the nameless masses out there that never got airborne.

I tried out the middle-road mentality: taking a few major elements of Tolkien’s style and weaving it with personal storytelling priorities. But since some of my priorities are in direct contrast with Tolkien’s style – the style I tried to lean on! – and since his style is so dominant, I think I ultimately left readers feeling duped. 

For the sake of this theory, maybe we can take my common experience and apply it to why stylized fandom functions as it does. My primary failure was that those Tolkien elements I wrote in effectively set up a story contract I had no intention of fulfilling. To explain: You’d not be out-of-the-norm in this fandom to spot those telltale Tolkien signs and expect to get the whole Tolkien suite, and you’d not be out-of-the-norm to feel disappointed when you end up somewhere you specifically didn’t want to go… namely, stuff that isn’t like Tolkien.

In my story’s case, the Tolkien seduction might be his parentheticals, and the disappointment might be winding up at action scene, lots of emotional description, and snotty diction – all antitheses to Tolkien. People don’t usually come to Tolkien for those elements, so it stands to reason they don’t often come to Tolkien fanfic for them. And it stands to reason they’d feel confused or even cheated when the contract they expected carefully set itself up only to run off to the Keys with some nobody from accounting.

Option Three can feel, to those readers, like a carefully constructed scam.

In fact, I wonder if contract-thinking is one of the major reasons why the readers who feel dissatisfied with the dominant Hobbit style find themselves flummoxed by all this. Tolkien’s Hobbit voice is obviously married to and designed for Bilbo. If you’re not paying pedantic attention to the writerly mechanics (maybe even if you are), hearing Tolkien’s Bilbo-voice transposed over another character’s POV can be a disorienting experience – if you’re in this particular reader’s shoes, something sounds off, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.

SUPPORTING NOTE: I see this sameness happening at some level with characterizations, too. For The Hobbit, this strikes me as especially true with characterizations of the dwarven people as a whole – their culture in fandom tends to appear as traditionally male-prioritizing, Western nuclear family-based, and (strangely, given the Jewish inspiration roots of the dwarves) Christian-toned. They are also often considered by fandom to be among the more progressive Tolkien civilizations, but that by itself isn’t saying too much. (I expect this is because patriarchal habits are so prevalent in Tolkien’s canonical civilizations, even in the ones that aren’t supposed to be.)

OPPOSING NOTE: The biggest characterization element I can’t reconcile with this theory, annoyingly enough, is my personal pet peeve: the romantic feminization of Bilbo. It’s often found in fandom and often grounded in sexist stereotypes, but is not a feature of Tolkien’s original works. That’s another essay, though, and I’ve already rambled long enough.

On to the open question!

It’s probably too late to dismantle a dominant style in a fandom as longstanding as this one – and anyway, the cost-benefits of dismantling any style trend are sketchy at best. In general, though, I wonder what can be done to neutralize the more damaging byproducts. Specifically, how can we stop that “contract” dead in its tracks, and prevent fic writers from feeling obligated to an original author’s style?

Any ideas, folks? I’m scratching my head.

(Also, if you read all this, I love you.)

Special thanks to determamfidd, MarieJacquelyn, scarletjedi, and Silver_pup -- whose works were cited in this analysis without solicitation -- for writing, and for providing hours upon hours of joy to your thankful, hungry fans.

EDIT: Edited to clearly explain how fic “success” is defined here, as well as to further prune any impressions of my personal fic preferences. Success, in this essay, is quantified partly by number of kudos/comments a piece receives and partly by the closeness of its style mechanics to Tolkien’s. These quantifiers are used here solely to explore the relationship between popularity and stylization. In the broader world, popularity on its own is a poor measure of quality or artistic merit. (And it would kind of break my heart if you left this essay feeling down about your own work. Writers out there, please know that’s not at all the implication.)

In simpler terms: Just because it ain’t famous, honey, doesn’t mean you ain’t damn good at what you do.

[comicbookrearview]

Uncanny X-Men vol.1 issue 294

X-CUTIONER’S SONG PART 1

It was February 1993 by the time this issue came out at newsagents in Australia, it was already four issues into collecting uncanny x-men. The cartoon had aired in America, i guess it was around this time it started on Australian TV in the morning before school. 

This issue was poly-bagged (and this is where i learned the term, to this day only comic book kids will know what that is) with a Skybox X-Cutioner’s song trading card. Sure! What the hell, i’m a kid.. i like stuff.. i have no money so it helps if that stuff is free too!

Aw man.. it’s Xavier... 11 year old me: *Yawn.

THE COVER

The cover price is $2.25 Australian, pricey for ‘93, poly-bags must cost more to make because the last issue was only 1.80.. hey everyone, lets all hug and reminisce about when we could afford things! 

The corner box lists the Australian price so the kid who learned about the whole speculators market a few years later will tell you this is already worth less than a “legit american copy”. The corner box was your standard head shots of the team members of this book, i wish they still did these today, not for any other good reason besides nostalgia, but it’s just an inconsequential thing that kids thought were cool, it complimented the logo i guess (shrug). Also what i miss is what i think is Marvel’s greatest ever company logo, before they changed it to hide that they were about comics and it was the M with the word comics scrawled through it.. c’mon, some graphic designer was really tuned into the demographic with this, i hope that paid for a wing on their house.

The image is by interior artist Brandon Peterson. We’ll talk about his art later on some but i do want to note that it displays the two most used depictions of eyes being drawn at the time. Grim and gritty shadowed over, serious, moody, dark. Or you have completely devoid of anything, “what i’m reacting to is so intense in some way that my eyeball has lost all pigmentation, my pupils are no longer there.. je suis mort”.

The image is an already cool AF Cable holding a big ass gun, standing over the smoldering body of a pupil less Professor X with a corresponding big ass hole in his chest, possibly made by the big ass gun, i can’t say for sure. What i can say for sure is that this was drawn by somebody with a better grasp on anatomy than the infamous creator of Cable, Rob Liefeld, because everything is in proportion, has been researched or well thought out, Cables gun is big, but not scientifically so big that he shouldn’t be able to hold it in the air even with the aid of a 90′s AF cybernetic arm. His pouches, which i’m guessing Peterson may have been loath to draw and are possibly an editorial edict, look as practical and functional as they can, they look full and in use. I know it’s cool to rag on Liefeld, I've nothing against the man, he’s genuinely earned his place in comic book history, but all i’m saying is if we had to endure accessories like this as staples of the genre at the time, effort like Peterson’s was the most correct way to go about things. Anyway, white background, cool, our focus should be solely on the jarring image the cover confronts us with.. the cover should make you want to read the book and tell me you didn’t suck in a room full of air and snatch this of the stands when it came out.

THE STORY

We start off with a splash page (we’ll talk about them on the whole in the art section) Warren Worthington III is taking his girl on a date. Where? Where would a guy in a tux with a bouquet of flowers and access to a limousine take somebody dressed in leathers and a white tee? To a concert in the park.

A peace rally in central park. Hey! I know central park, i know places geographically because i read comics and watch TV ... thanks world, screw you school I owe you nothing. We cut across to different pairings of x-men characters discussing either there feelings about Xavier's speech that is about to transpire or events in their personal lives that are happening or have happened in surrounding issues. Little asterisks direct us to the relevant issue if we’d like to catch up these ourselves. Thanks comics, it was actually very helpful back then to have a point of reference to call back to or to further our reading.. another thing comics seemingly have abandoned today (can anybody reading this tell me why?). These conversations give the characters their voice and straddle a good balance between the picture/word ratio an 11 year old wants to see in a comic book. Scott Lobdell only got better at this as time went on but read through this issue and you’ll find he did so well to cram in foreshadowing, back story, character and truth into those speech bubbles, the man, i feel, has been forgotten in a way since the 90′s, his talents seem under appreciated. 

Another thing he does well is to control pace and actually build towards events, we’re four pages in before the title card/opening credits/ splash page hits us and it happens after a third page so you have to turn the page for a reveal, it’s not given away by accidentally glancing over to page 3, no, page 4 is the perfect place for these pages. What is the reveal? Two anti-mutant terrorists are planting explosives to violently disrupt the peace rally, making bigoted slurs and all until BRRZT... BRRZT ..Cable shoots them both in their mother effing backs, stops to reveal himself and pose for the camera and ...what... HE’s got dibs on Xavier? Uh-oh.

We’re left hanging as we’re then shown Cyclops daydreaming as he waits for Jean Grey. His telepathic girlfriend walks in on him fantasizing about teammate Psylocke.. yes Scott.. that’s why Jim Lee re-designed her as such, we all did that. This sequence takes on different meaning at each age that i’d read this issue. 11 year old me sort of got it, teenage me got it but didn't completely get it and adult me wold get conflicting emotions about getting it. See, Scott Lobdell could write soap opera with merit. Same goes for the next scene where Iceman and Colossus in their civilian identities are doing the x-mansions grocery shopping. Because the x-men weren't the Avengers and were always more relate-able because they did things actual people did when they weren't superheroing. Everyone can relate to a supermarket run. I probably coerced my mum to buy me this very issue while she was on said supermarket run. My man at the time Gambit is interacting with storm, this is what i thought was cool at the time kids. A roguish (no pun intended) charm, a trench-coat over a singlet top and shorts... the undercover exercise look, was all the rage in the early 90′s.. look it up..go.

Then we cross to a sidebar of other x-team, X-Factor, preparing to watch the concert. Lobdell writes them with all the spirit, voice and character that Peter David, who was writing the hell out of X-Factor at the time, did.

So lets re-assess, so far Lobdell has shown us Archangel on date, Professor X and Lila Cheney, Bishop and Rogue, Storm and Gambit, Cyclops, Jean, Iceman and Colossus and name dropped Beast, Forge,and Psylocke AND shown us X-Factor. And i’m still on the edge of my seat already because of the ominous way Cable has been introduced. This is how you write a team book that’s going to have it’s reach into a 12 part cross over. We aren’t even at the catalyst event yet. Scott Lobdell, again ladies and gents, Scott Lobdell.

Suddenly...

Cyclops and Jean are ambushed by ex-X-factor teammate Caliban. We’re given a page of Cable in the crowd as the tension builds, we cross BACK to the action away from the concert we’re colossus and iceman are attempting to join the Caliban/Cyclops/Jean fracas until they’re ambushed by War and Famine... um.. the characters, they aren’t suddenly having an existential crisis with the actual concepts, and then we’re back to Xavier. Who’s giving an inspiring speech about race relations that is extremely relevant 25 years on. This again is a great example of Scott Lobdell’s talent to shift from fever pitch to still and thought provoking in a manner of pages. Even the layout of pages 18 and 19 are in contrast to each other while being at the same time relevant to what the written words are saying.

And then...?

BRAM... “CHARLES!!!!!”

Cable takes his shot, shooting Xavier from the crowd, and even though you knew it was coming (It’s on the cover remember), it’s still a shock, it still jars the reader. Lobdell slaps you in the face and shakes you, but doesn't let you catch your breath as we’re back immediately to battle with Caliban and the side battle with War and Famine (the people not the concepts).. the action has reached it’s fever pitch. Both battles end abruptly and as a reader you’re thrown into total confusion with this three pronged attack of events in succession so by the time you’re back to the chaos of the concert you’re in the same emotional state as the characters should be.. reacting to these overwhelming events that have just unfolded.

In a nice nod to the theme of the issue on race, something Lobdell also writes well and treats with detail and respect, it’s revealed that Archangel is wearing an image inducer to blend in with the crowd, speaking in a subtle and layered way on identity. He springs into action, or reaction, going straight for Cable as some of the other characters we’ve seen in this issue race to the Xavier’s side. The situation is dire. Cable eludes Archangel by teleporting out. (”Celebration bound” you absolute asshole, Cable). And then we’re taken to the current whereabouts of another team, X-Force, who are Cables charges and are just now witnessing the news footage of events and we’re left on a cliffhanger with them.

The executioners song has begun.

THE ART

Brandon Peterson, i’m assuming, was given the art duties on this title because his style was similar enough to Jim Lee’s. I don’t mean that as an insult, it stands enough on it’s own so that the two can be distinctive of each other but at least the influence or some of the stylistic tropes are there.He does extremely well at adapting to the pace of the writing in the book and he moves the story sequentially very well. I hadn't realized he more or less has 6 splash pages in this issue, but they’re used well and effectively at the right times to visually tell the story and give the right moments weight and impact. A hallmark of the early 90′s culturally and in artistic meaning, was the mullet, and Peterson’s mullets are right up there with the Bagleys, Romita Jr’s and Lims of their day. Another 90′s thing to do for some reason, and it would only get more pronounced through out the 90′s, was the tendency to use a characters trademarked logo when their name is being shouted out, see the point where Archangel soars towards Cable. How would that sound i wonder? Bucking the trend at the time, Peterson’s expressions aren’t just blank or gritted teeth. Faces in a panel are reacting to what is happening in that panel logically. Also characters aren't just dressed in some stock depiction of clothing. Only Jamie McKelvie, i feel, has a knack for capturing the clothing and trends of the exact minute, but Peterson’s characters dress to reflect their personalities, even Gambit (discussed above) and with only the exception of Rogue, who’s civilian outfit is a rejected costume idea with a military green X-jacket that she’s torn the logo’s off (I’m on to you Rogue). Bishop is dressed like the militant tightwad that he is, Cyclops is fathers day catalog K-mart. Jean is Danielle Steele non-descriptive female actress. Archangel is rich guy wears suits. Iceman is swinging single guy, Colossus is drab, loose fitting artist. I used to wonder why nobody wore brands in comics or dressed like people i knew but they wouldn’t. You wouldn't get the visual idea of their character in one glance if they all wore street brand hoodies and designer jeans.  Peterson is also really good at slightly playing with convention and perspective. Larger than life moments like Caliban bursting through a ceiling or Colossus and Iceman changing form and charging into action are embellished by exceeding the borders  and constraints of the panel. 

So that’s it for this issue. 

Thanks for reading if you’ve read it through. I’d love to talk about it more with any of you, these posts are also on the twitter link if I've done it correctly. The Instagram account is where i share photos of the tattered issues I've just danced down memory lane with and i’m hoping to get up a curated playlist of things relevant to this review on the YouTube channel in time. (Just give it time).

[karawolter03-blog]

The reading from this week made me more interested in art. It really amazes me that there are so many different types of art work out there in this world. Every piece of art so far has its own unique features even if it is as simple as Barnett Newman’s painting called Voice of Fire. I am finding myself mostly interested in the architectural pieces of work. I was fascinated by some of the buildings that were created by artists. A few that stood out to me were Taj Mahal, Moshe Safdie’s Library Square, and the Frank Gehry Guggenheim Musuem. The Moshe Safdie’s Library Square would be interesting to see in person and it would be cool to have that library to study in. The story behind the Taj Mahal was not what I expected. Shah Jahan created this beautiful building in remembrance of his wife who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. This story makes this building even more special. I always knew that there were many sexual pieces of art work, but I did not know that it caused so much controversy in the past. I think that these pieces of artwork go with your own opinion. It is like saying if you think the art work is good or bad. People might think the art work is bad because of the sexual images associated with the art work.

                (Shah Jahan, Taj Mahal, source: tajmahal.org.uk)

My reaction from watching the video about Sarah Sze was that I could not believe how creative of a mind she had. I thought it was an awesome idea that she was trying to keep the birds near the city. I liked her idea of using the one point perspective. I think this is what makes this piece of work stand out the most. It catches your eye right away. Her use of materials was simple and I think that is what makes her work so good. Her artwork makes you think about it and that is what I enjoy about it.

               Sarah Sze’s work differs from the pieces of art in the book. I noticed that in chapter one there was no piece of art work like Sarah’s. Every piece was a painting, a sculpture, or a building of some sort. Sarah studied architecture, but the piece of artwork she created in the video was nothing like a building. Sarah expands her creative mind in many different ways and comes up with very interesting pieces of work.

               The relevant artist I chose to write about is Donald Judd. He was an important artist known in the post war period. Many people knew Judd for his outdoor installations and interiors he designed in Texas. His sculptures and installations were made out of Plexiglas, concrete and steel which were arranged in specific geometric shapes. These art pieces were meant to emphasize purity of the objects rather than them having a meaning. He had a high interest in architecture which led him to create more sculptures. Donald Judd’s artwork is similar to how Sarah Sze creates her art work. They both use simple objects and there work is not too complicated. Donald Judd’s work dealt with more interior work. They both focus on arrangements in their artwork.

(Donald Judd, The Multicolored Works, source: http://pulitzerarts.org/)

Sources:

http://www.art21.org/videos/segment-sarah-sze-in-balance

https://www.artsy.net/artist/donald-judd

The Art of Seeing By: Paul Zelanski & Mary Pat Fisher 

[endesireel]

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[samanthasundayjuma]

15 Best Waterproof Backpacks

New Post has been published on https://travelluggageandbackpacks.com/best-waterproof-backpacks/

15 Best Waterproof Backpacks

Waterproof Backpacks

Hikers, campers, and avid outdoors-men recognize the need to have the best waterproof backpacks and other high quality gear that can withstand natural elements such as rain in order to protect not just themselves but the things that they bring with them.

This is why the need for the best waterproof backpacks is essential since it is able to keep items that should not get damp or wet as dry as possible.

15 Top Waterproof Backpack

Here is the list for popular waterproof backpack that the end-users give very high rating. You can check it out and read what they comment. Especially relevant to mention is that you can always get discount on backpacks all year round.

1. Waterproof Backpack 25 L

2. Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack

3. Seattle Sports Omni Dri Backpacker Dry Bag

4. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Stylin’ 30L Charcoal Grey Model

5. Okuma Tackle Backpack 4 Tray Waterproof Bag

6. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Biker’ 25L Women’s / Unisex Model

7. Overboard Waterproof Duffel Bag 60 Liters – 26.5 Inch – in your choice of colors

8. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Sport Basic’ 30L Charcoal Model

9. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Mariner’ 10L Model

10. Watershed Big Creek Day Pack

11. Olive Drab Genuine GI USED Alice Pack With Frame (Large, With Frame)

12. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Mariner’ 20L Model

13. Velo Transit Men’s Edge Pro 30 Waterproof Laptop Cycling Backpack

14. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag – ‘Mariner’ 30L Model

15. Overboard Waterproof Heavy Duty Duffel Bag 90 Liters – 27.5 Inches – in your choice of colors

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1. Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag (Best Waterproof Backpack for Hikers)

I love hiking. Everything about it. Well, almost everything about it. The one thing I hate about hiking is all the packing and unpacking. Add to that the fact that you need to have just the right kind of bag to put all your stuff in.

Hiking is a physical activity so an ordinary backpack will simply not do, especially if you plan to tread through waters. Luckily, I found exactly the right kind of backpack for my hiking expeditions, and all with just a click of the mouse.

One of my favorite online shops featured the Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag. I decided to check it out and what I found out impressed me, so I bought one. So far I consider this one of the best waterproof drybags in the market.

Actually, there are several Aqua Quest Drybags. All Aqua Quest Drybags are guaranteed to provide watertight protection required by backpackers, hikers, swimmers, triathletes and cyclists, among others. They are considered the best in the recreational gear and in the drypack industry.

I did a little more research and found out that there are models intended for women bikers. There are mariner models, backpacks intended for campers, and so on and so forth. I decided to go with the Biker Women’s 25L Model since it was just the right size for me. It also has a simple design, with some really useful pockets.

Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag Review

The Aqua-Quest 100% Waterproof Backpack Drybag, aside from being completely waterproof, is also made of durable material, especially the part that others call the outer shell.

Each Aqua-Quest backpack is designed with the consumer in mind. For example, the model that I chose has several pockets; four compartments, actually.

Aside from the 25L main compartment, the Biker Women’s 25L Model also has a Vertical Pull Strap Pocket in the front side and two water bottle pockets, one for each side. Most of the models also have reflective and easy adjustable straps. The shoulder straps are padded, so it is extremely comfortable to carry even with all the hiking I do.

My Verdict

What I like most about my Aqua-Quest backpack is that it may look quite small, but it can carry a lot.  Its interior provides good support as it is completely rubberized.

And, of course, it keeps all my things dry all throughout my hiking expedition! It is the most practical and functional waterproof backpack I have ever come across in my entire life!

Buying the Aqua-Quest backpack was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. It has helped make my hiking trips more fun and convenient. I actually introduced the product to my fellow hikers and friends, and they now have their own Aqua-Quest backpacks!

Check the Latest Price on Amazon

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2. Swiss Gear Ibex 17-Inch Notebook Backpack (Best Waterproof Backpack for Laptops)

Practically everyone has a laptop these days. However, not everyone has 17-Inch laptops. This is quite understandable, since lugging around a laptop that big could only mean you have to carry some amount of weight around.

Many laptop owners, particularly women, opt to have much smaller laptops or even netbooks just so they would be spared from the weight.

Most guys, however, would not be caught dead carrying a tiny laptop around, and I happen to know some of them.

Call it shallow, but there is something emasculating about big guys carrying a cute laptop around. They would rather carry the weight of their 17-inch laptop the entire day than be seen with a netbook.

Of course, they will need to have a good bag for their big-sized laptop. I usually recommended the Swiss Gear Ibex 17-Inch Notebook Backpack.  Most guys take my advice (some don’t have a choice). Consequently they are ever glad they took it. It is the perfect waterproof laptop backpack for a 17-inch laptop and more.

Main Features;

Also, all of your belongings can easily fit in the Swiss Gear Ibex 17-Inch Notebook Backpack. It has three main compartments that provide all the space you need. Aside from the Comp-u-Flex computer pocket that protects your 17-inch laptop snugly, this bag also boasts of a Quik Pocket that gives you easy access to your gadgets.

It also has a mesh pocket that can hold something like battery-powered shaver. If you look at the front pocket, you will see the Essentials Organizer that will hold all your other accessories.

The Swiss Gear Ibex 17-Inch Notebook Backpack has many other features, like the Air-Flow Back Padding: Air-Flow Back padding that makes sure your back remains cool even when you’re fully packed. However, its best feature is the fact that it is waterproof both on top, which is a feature of most waterproof backpacks, and the bottom, which not common among its kind.

My Verdict

Unlike most waterproof backpacks, the Swiss Gear Ibex 17-Inch Notebook Backpack has no zipper flaps to keep light rain out. Instead, it has flaps directly beneath the zipper on each side.

The flaps are of waterproof material. The bag also has a plastic waterproof base, which means you can place it—accidentally or not—on a damp or even wet surface without worrying about your laptop getting wet.

The good thing is it does not even look like plastic, but fake leather. So if you want a good bag that can help your carry your big laptop without problem, get this bag for yourself.

Check the Latest Price on Amazon

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3. Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack (Good for Hiking)

A buddy of mine who is also an outdoor junkie recommended a branded waterproof backpack called the Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack. The bag is made with PVC and 600D Nylon Seamless Construction, along with a padded back area and padded shoulder straps.

This waterproof backpack has a Roll-Top design with a Touch Fastener. It also has adjustable chest and weight belts, so you can be sure that the bag is not too tight or too lose when you go on a hike. If you are not afraid to get wet, the Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack is your perfect partner.

The Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack also comes with an external bungee cord, two external mesh pockets and an internal zipped pocket, a touch fastener closure, and snap buckles on top. The Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack is a Class 3 Rated Waterproof Backpack.

This waterproof backpack comes in a bright yellow colour, which makes it easier to spot if you drop it in the water. The backpack is designed to prevent water from coming in, so even if it is submerged 3 ft. into the water, none of the items inside will get wet.

The backpack is also packed tightly, so it can float and it can also handle quick submersions. Take note though that water may be able to permeate this waterproof backpack if it is submerged for too long, or goes down deeper than 3ft. or in high water pressures.

The backpack is also durable enough to withstand extreme weather conditions, so whether you are hiking in a nature path or you are getting drenched by strong rain, the bag will still hold strong. All in all, the Overboard Waterproof 25L Backpack is the perfect partner for anybody who is not afraid to get wet.

Check the Latest Price on Amazon

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4. Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Laptop Messenger Bag

Timbuk2 is a well-known brand in the laptop bag industry, known for its Commute line of bags. As the name Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Laptop Messenger Bag implies, it is an updated version of the Commute. It is just perfect for students like me for three major reasons.

First, it is a highly functional waterproof laptop messenger bag, marked by a computer compartment that is lined by corduroy. When unzipped, this compartment lies flat so everyone, particularly airport security, can see what’s inside your bag, therefore eliminating the need to physically remove your laptop from your bag.

Second, it is essentially a briefcase. Books, documents, papers and notebooks will fit snugly into the bag, and will not be crumpled the way they do in backpacks. Third, it is a classic shoulder bag, complete with all the pockets and compartments that allow you to bring along mp3 players and other types of electronic gadgets.

The best thing about the Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Laptop Messenger Bag is it is it good for use even in stormy weather. It has a TPU front flap that protects the contents of the bags from water from a drizzle or even heavy rain. It also has a waterproof Hypalon rubberized bottom that keeps your stuff dry even when you accidentally put it on a wet spot.

This bag is just perfect for college students like me, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Check the Latest Price on Amazon

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5. Outdoor Research Drycomp ridge Sack

The Outdoor Research Drycomp Ridge Sack is a multi-purpose backpack, which is what makes it the best for me.

It does not have any frills or extra special features; in fact, it is quite basic in design. But I still like. Don’t get me wrong, though, my Outdoor Research backpack is a special one. It is highly functional. And according to a little research I did before buying the backpack, it is made of durable material that is woven from 70-denier nylon yarns.

I also read somewhere that a 70-denier nylon fabric is comparable to the durability of certain types of parachutes. Can you imagine how durable that is?

Aside from its multiple functionality, another thing that attracted me to the Outdoor Research Drycomp Ridge Sack is its waterproof characteristic. And when I say waterproof, I mean it in every sense of the word. I’ve tried using this waterproof backpack a couple of times when it was raining, and it worked like magic. My stuff was completely dry!

Since it is an outdoor backpack, I also use it when I want to push myself a little to the limit every now and then. When I go hiking with friends, I use this extremely waterproof backpack because I am sure that no matter how many stuff I put inside, carrying it will not weigh me down.

This waterproof backpack comes with mesh straps, waterproof roll-top that can be secured with a buckle and finely welded seams. It looks tidy, too, so it does not appear too stuffed even when you try to put everything inside. And I like that. I like my backpacks to look and feel good all the time.

The Outdoor Research Drycomp Ridge Sack has been so good to me that I plan to buy one for my brother pretty soon. He has just started getting interested in camping and hiking, and I just know that he will love the Outdoor Research waterproof backpack.

Check the Latest Price on Amazon

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Differentiating Water Resistant Backpacks From Waterproof Backpacks

If we talk about bags fit for outdoor use, the first thing that will come to mind is the backpack. Outdoor backpacks are rugged and made of extra sturdy material. They can be the traditional kind, or they can be waterproof, or water resistant.

A waterproof backpack, contrary to what many people believe, is not the same as a water resistant backpack. Their many differences are discussed below.

First off, in terms of material and construction, the two types of backpacks differ a lot. Water resistant backpacks are made of ordinary materials that protect it from the rain. Waterproof backpacks, on the other hand, are made of a variety of super sturdy materials like nylon, PVC, or polyurethane; or a combination of all three. These backpacks use a special kind of zipper that has watertight characteristics. In addition, the seams are all taped and welded. As a result, water will not be able to get into the bag easily and the backpack will not be soaked wet even if used for long periods under the rain.

Waterproof backpacks are used basically in activities or outings like diving, boating, fishing, kayaking and other similar types of adventures. All these activities involve the use of or being surrounded by water. A water resistant backpack cannot be used for water-based activities as prolonged exposure to the rain will get it soaked. The traditional water resistant backpack is best if you only need a bag that will keep your stuff dry in cases where rain suddenly falls.

What this means is that a waterproof backpack provides 100% protection from water. Water will not be able to enter the backpack; it will not damage the backpack or the stuff that you put inside it.

A water resistant backpack simply resists water, but it cannot completely stop water from seeping through the backpack. It can only stop water up to a certain level, whereas the waterproof one stays dry and clean all throughout.

Finally, there is also a big difference in the prizes. Obviously, since it offers more protection from the rain, the waterproof backpack costs more than the water resistant one. There are, however, a lot of manufacturers and sellers who offer the waterproof bags for a cheaper discounted price.

It does not really matter, though.

You are sure to get your money’s worth in the long run if the protection it offers is extra solid and the quality is like no other. In that case, spending some extra dollars should not be a problem. 

Pack your clothes or food without having to worry about getting caught in a sudden downpour while traveling to your campsite or trying to find appropriate shelter while in the great outdoors with the best waterproof backpacks.

The best waterproof backpacks can also be used by people who like to go biking since it is able to keep everything dry while one may be commuting via their bicycle or simply happen to enjoy the sport or hobby.

For those who may not use a bicycle often but do commute or live in an area or state that gets a lot of rain, having a bag that is waterproof helps to lessen the stress that whatever they are carrying with them may become soggy or even damaged in the rain, making it an essential item to bring around.

There are also individuals who enjoy in engaging in water sports or activities that have them lugging their bags with them in the water and the need for a waterproof backpack makes it possible for them to bring their bags with them rather than leave them on dry land.

Even for those who like heading to the beach regularly, this waterproof bag is perfect for them to carry a change of clothing as well as any electronics such as a music player or their cell phone and protect them from both the sand and surf while out in the sun.

What’s Special About Waterproof Backpacks

Waterproof Backpacks

Most often the materials used in the best waterproof backpacks are known to repel water. Also, they are even considered sturdier than the ones found in conventional backpacks because they use lighter materials in order to not add on to the weight being carried.

However, weight becomes less of a consideration over having a waterproof baggage. This will make sure that nothing housed inside it will be unduly soaked.or damaged while the person is using the bag. It comes in handy especially in conditions that are less than ideal.

These backpacks are also known to be more expensive.because of their being essentially waterproof.

When shopping for a waterproof backpack,.it is important to make sure that one specifically asks for this kind of backpack.

A lot of people make the assumption that all backpacks are the same but they are not. There are some that may be able to keep the contents dry during a light rain shower.but not be able to do the same once a storm or heavier rain comes along.

For those willing to make the investment, a waterproof backpack is something to be seriously .considered by those who will use them often and regularly.

Also on Travelluggageandbackpacks.com

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[omgtonysong-blog]

MA Proposal

When i join to MA,I would like put emphasis on investigate ‘BaXiang people’. “BaXiang”,which means play for fun. It actually belongs to the ShangHai dialect of China. As the name illustrates the meaning, BaXiang is a definition of a crowd in society. The vast majority of them come from the social population. let`s change another words, the negative rhetoric for ‘BaXiang’ is ShangHai gentleman rogue. Because some of them are gangs, some are idle people, some are craftsmen.  ‘BaXiang’ culture starts at bourgeoisie of ShangHai before 1949. It`s an old saying of ShangHai slang, but now it becomes to “PlayBoy” for some reasons.To some extent, it interpretations people on the same truck. All in all, no matter where are they come from, what are their`s job, they have a common feature,which is as playing as an attitude of life. Due to the education of population`s level is keep increased in recent years, meanwhile, the quality of living standards also increased gradually. ‘BaXiang’ people is not Social marginalized anymore nowadays. It becomes to an attitude of living and people gradually changed their prejudices with them. It began to spreads to social family as a conceptual trend. As the trend of fashion goes more and more faster, while the scope also becoming more widely. It is no longer the privilege of the bourgeoisie and the scope of ‘BaXiang’ is not only belongs to gangs or gentry any more. The citizens of each country are using a kind of action combined with their country's culture to create a new way of ‘BaXiang’ to illustrates their attitude, or their lifestyle.

Aiming:   (Could be a question, you should not yet know the answer (I.E.must be theory/theme, not functional outcome ) The aim of my film will be to create empathy with what we would traditionally see as the “bad” character. The life of “BaXiang” People seems has a huge contrast with the busy society. But in some way, they lifestyle happens to be a catalyst for the development of street culture. This kind of lifestyle seems lazy but actually bring a strong ability of re-creation. For me, the most important thing is there is a strong attitude hidden behind in their lifestyle which might already have another appearance in people`s mind. Which can build a formidably personality. So that how can i dig them out and bring them into audience`s mind, also let them empathy to each other is my main aiming proposal in MA study life. Lets say If adults` lifestyle is transforming in this group, it not only means that their attitudes will change,  but also their children`s perception to world will change, which means street culture can be regarded as the mainstream of subculture, which means it could bring a brand new strong fashion of lifestyle. It sounds can really bring a lot of new fun, but at the same time, with the increasing of personal attitude,it also bring a lot of complex social problems. And all these social problems which supervened by these lifestyle happens around of us nowadays. I will pick the city like east of London, Birmingham, or Liverpool as my main discovery direction to find the street culture and ‘baxiang’ people in real life, then i will do my primary research with these people’s life style and make all these information become as dairy. Then i will paraphrasing the real things become to my work. This is the main purpose of my MA study life.

How can i break a rule:

Generally speaking, the way of how to use lighting could determines the visual effect on screen. No matter it is the angle or intensity of light, they both can put story into a special atmosphere in a certain extent. For most of time, lighting in film can re-creative another role of the character. For example, Like the French film “Leon, the professional”, the protagonist leon is an eccentric person, he was isolated to his life with only one friend, his plant. In fact, this is also an interesting place in whole movie. Before meeting the Mathilda played by Natalie Portman, leon was seemingly just like a normal killer for us, and this cold-blood job did not give us anything for the practical significance. Even if as a witnesses, he saw the whole maltreat process of Mathilda but still have no reaction.  He is always like his only friend which is that plant, living hard but also as insignificant. Doing every daily exercise on time and complies with every agreement, never drink beer, but milk, being rigorous to every single detail. His life is just like his personality, dull and dry. On the other hand, this guy becoming the only man who got the true trust and deep love from the little lady Mathilda. The whole story of the film is full of surprisingly romantic and warm, but the director has never gave any special lighting to build the atmosphere, the basic tone of whole story are dark yellow light until Leon said the last sentence before the death”The Ring trick from Mathilda”. It suddenly raise all the emotional climax of whole film to the end. Although the film never deliberately trying to use a special lighting effect to deal with the mood of the entire film, but this seemingly dark and ordinary light which made Leon looks like a peanut happens shows his legendary in the work. Is such a trivial people,such a seemingly dull life but bring a strong feeling of moved to us. This is another side of “bad” guy, it also could be another side of peanuts. Meanwhile,  it indeed has creates a unique part of all heroism type film but base on a cipher person. The existence of this film shows that heroism type film does not need to use special beauty lighting effect to creates the visual impact. To some extent, this sort of lighting way can really build the quality of the character like Leon. Which is ordinary but not mediocrity.

A popular technique in film lighting is to use a soft (diffuse) light source from the front and a stronger, more directional light from the back, so that your subject has a hot edge. The vast majority of works in the past usually use it to make a beauty, cool or heroism scene such as large backlit, cold and warm color contrast. Of course i will use all these techniques in my work. However, this is not the main effect of my concept. I would like to combine my style with the black part of life to represent my work. Because personally, life is not looks like the films in recent 20 years which always have a good ending. So i will put more emphasis on how to band the ugly side of life together with true life.  In order to make the story have more authenticity to let audiences receives a more stronger visual sense of substitution. I would like to chose the way which have more sensibility of daily activities to illustrate my screen effects. Even though this kind of lighting might looks dull and dry, but if with a solid storyline as far as I'm concerned, it will re-creative a very mentally strong film work which have another visual effect feeling. Due to limit of time and conditions, I make the concept of “BaXiang” more simply  and clearly in this semester of learning. Most of my works are trying to find a lifestyle to interprets the meaning of it. Skateboard is a very classic sport of these. It is really a trendy movement for young people, while skateboarding is the originator of the history of extreme sport. It already have been extended out of the skills, speed, athletic or other types of games which base on different function. But whatever which type they are, slipping, is the attitude they got. As far as I'm concern that the world of “BaXiang” people is not only skateboarding. Since it becomes to an attitude, it is suitable for all mankind, and skateboard is just one choice of them. In my opinion, the street culture is always a practice of contemporary art, whether it is street basketball, street football, hip-hop, rap etc. They all reflected in different levels of "BaXiang" attitude. It is worth to mention that there must be a lot of elite or folk master in these street culture of “BaXiang”. In other words, this attitude determines the life of this group of people must have had some funny witty story, and these stories will be the main aiming of my future MA study life. Meanwhile, street culture and new Cultural craftsman will be the biggest part of developing in my MA life.

How can i challenge existing assumptions? New culture craftsman is a good developing direction of mine. As a result of the demand of the consumer markets, the meaning of craftsmen has exceeds far away beyond the scope of our understanding. Craftsmanship is no longer a pronoun of tailor, watchmaker, sculptor. It can be a doctor of plastic surgery, interior designer, pastry division and so on. With the increasing pursuit of consumer, new cultural craftsmen are slowly becoming a professional trend. I will integrate the street culture and cultural differences between the East and the West to represent the significance of existed attitudes of “BaXiang” in my MA study life.

Key theory in my field (books and articles ) “what is cinema” is main book i had look during my course time. In order to build my work more close to cinema film, i found a very interesting point from Kracauer`s view: “Film has the power, at its best, to summon us back to reality, to remind us of what other media conspire to render invisible. Film, in Kracauer's words, has the power to effect a "redemption of physical reality." The Italian neo-realist tradition of films, for example, told stories informed by everyday life, about everyday people, and using non-actors on location -- they serve thereby to document their time and place, and to connect the dots between aspects of experience that are often not thought together. ” In this exciting classic, Kracauer not only developed a rich and detailed analysis of the nature of film and its relation to photography and other art forms, but he also develops an original and still relevant view of film's potential and relevance to our age. Kracauer is often recognized as one of the most articulate and influential (along with Andre Bazin) of realist film theorists. Realism in film theory argues that what is special and distinctive to film as an art medium is its capacity for capturing and presenting reality, even realities that can never be directly experienced in other ways. To the extent that realism is presented as a thesis about the sole feature of film that gives it artistic merit, it is a problematic view -- since one of the other distinctive capacities of film is to frame and interpret and shape the reality it depicts. What is most original and still worthwhile, though, in Kracauer's thought is his recognition that realism is a tendency of film and a latent possibility -- not all films are realistic and strict realism (e.g. a camera that follows someone around 24 hours a day) would be neither interesting nor artistic. Kracauer recognizes that the very best films are those that use all of the devices at the disposal of the cinematic art, but, he insists, when they do so in the service of the presentation of reality. Siegfried Kracauer's classic study, originally published in 1960, explores the distinctive qualities of the cinematic medium. The book takes its place alongside works in classical film theory by such figures as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin, among others, and has met with much critical dispute. In this new edition, Miriam Bratu Hansen, examining the book in the context of Kracauer's extensive film criticism from the 1920s, provides a framework for appreciating the significance of Theory of Film for contemporary film theory. I am interested in the idea of “realism” in film, but whose realism should we look at? I want to show the real situation of the “bad boy”, not the view of the audience who judges them.

Context:

In British film, subculture is a common theme, but not showing the “bad boy” as good. Not empathising with the bad boy. Maybe the “bad” boy is not really bad, maybe the audience who judges them is too positive or subjective about their own situation,so that that`s why they “Bad”.  Maybe here is the gap between them and us but not “bad”.  According to i used to have studied graphic design and photography, so that i think i can complete the shooting process effectively. Although i do not have too much experience with film in my previous two undergraduate studies, but my photography course is enough to let me complete the basic shooting. At the same time, this two different arts course already give me some basic knowledge. But if I have to analyze myself from a theoretical point of view, i think i need to enhance  on other film technology except lighting such as con-structure and color. But from the most important fundamental technical considerations, I think the biggest gap for me is how to transfer my 2D shooting skill to 3D area. In other words, how can i turn a static shot into a dynamic lens and how to make a movement have a better view to illustrates my concept is the two big challenge for me.

[tonihuebner]

Designing the perfect urban escape: the story of Nordic Bakery

On the launch of a new book about the design, style (and food!) at the Nordic Bakery,  The Idealist meets with Miisa Mink about designing the urban Nordic escape, the Scandi aesthetic of calm, welcoming warmth and of course their beautiful food. 

Font and flavour is the Nordic Bakery’s first lifestyle book and will be out in May. We’ve seen an advance copy and can report it really conveys the Nordic Bakery aesthetic and captures the quintessential elements of coffee culture, design and food. It’s filled with beautiful minimalist photography and the story of those behind the Nordic Bakery and some of their customers.

The face behind Nordic Bakery

The ‘face’ behind the business is Miisa Mink who wants to share her belief of the joy that comes from simple moments of calm and how the harmony of attention to detail fusing with freshly baked cakes and the smell of cinnamon buns coming from the oven can only ever be a good thing. Miisa, comes from a career in branding and design but is also a passionate baker. In 2008 she left the corporate life and became a partner in Nordic Bakery.

IDEALIST: Can you describe the Nordic Bakery experience for someone who hasn’t yet visited the cafe?

Miisa: Nordic Bakery is a beautiful Scandinavian style café coffee chain famous for cinnamon buns, dark rye and honest coffee.

    A place of calm

When you step inside one of our four London coffee shops, your enter a place of calm with the welcoming aroma of coffee and cinnamon buns.   We’ve used each space in a minimalist way to create a space that is uncluttered in contrast to the frantic lives lead by Londoners.   There is no noisy background music and the experience is still and silent so that customers can enjoy a place where they can have a meeting or rest their mind.

beautiful design and honest food, thoughtfully served

IDEALIST: Was there a sudden moment that led you to quit your corporate life for the Nordic Bakery?

Miisa: No, but I had stepped away from the corporate world of international advertising and was living my life in a more balanced way.  I already knew the first Nordic Bakery café in Soho – I loved it for its silence and beauty and decided to get involved. I have loved helping it grow into the brand and community that it is today.

Baking is love

IDEALIST: What is it about baking that you love so much?

Miisa: My love of baking developed from an early age. I grew up in a foodie family. There was always fresh bread at home too, baked by my father who ground his own flour from whole grains bought locally.  Baking was and still is a social activity in my family and when I bake, a crowd gathers in my kitchen, drawn by the smell of fresh bread or cakes.

    The Scandi aesthetic

IDEALIST: You have a very distinctive aesthetic at Nordic Bakery. How did that come about?

Miisa: The cool, northern aesthetic of Scandinavia speaks minimalist in every way and this is reflected in the very essence of Nordic Bakery. When the business was established, the goal was to create something of lasting quality based on a philosophy of no gimmicks, beautiful design and honest food, thoughtfully served.  No one else was doing it. Ten years on, people are buying into the Nordic way of life – crime dramas, literature, fashion, food and design.  

Nordic Bakery is more than a café or a brand.  It reflects a whole way of life where joy is allowed to come from simplicity not complexity and its ethos has never been more relevant than now.

IDEALIST: How do you want people to feel when they visit Nordic Bakery?

Miisa: I want people to feel that Nordic Bakery is their refuge and to feel welcome and relaxed when they visit us – like coming home.

The book

IDEALIST: Why have you chosen to do a book?

Miisa: This is our tenth anniversary and the opening of our new flagship store in Covent Garden marks a step-change for Nordic Bakery.  It puts us on the global stage.  So it seemed very timely to publish Font and Flavour as a celebration of the principles on which Nordic Bakery is based.  

IDEALIST: What’s in the book?

Miisa: The essence of the book enables you to lose yourself and be transported to a place where silence and beauty is evident.  The beautiful photography shot by Milla Koivisto captures the essence of the Norse people and the narrative of Nordic Bakery.  The book gives a glimpse into how our ideas are conceived and where we source our products with stories from my own life and those of our community of customers.    

IDEALIST: Who are your heroes both in the kitchen and in design?

Miisa: I admire Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for his back-to-basics food philosophy and appreciation of pure ingredients, forest-to-plate recipes and his campaigning for the environment and the oceans.

My design hero is Kit Kemp for the unique interiors she has brought to Firmdale Hotels.  Even though her visual aesthetic is very different to Nordic Bakery, the underlying values of quality and harmony remain.

IDEALIST: What are your ambitions for the next 12-18 months?

Miisa: We are working to establish our flagship store on Neal Street, in Covent Garden’s Seven Dials district as the go-to place to take a refuge and enjoy a perfect cup of coffee and some hearty Nordic baking for people who work and live in the area and for those visiting. Further expansion may also be in the cards.

IDEALIST: What’s your favourite recipe?

Miisa: My favourite recipe is Nordic Bakery Date cake – a wonderful moist and sticky cake that is great with a cup of coffee for fika or for dessert.

IDEALIST: Is there anything you would do differently if you had your time over?

Miisa: I’m not one for regrets!

    To find out more

To see more from Font and flavour, Scandinavian moments with Nordic Bakery, visit the publisher’s page here.

Thank you to @MILLAKOIVISTO for NHP Publishing for all photos.

The post Designing the perfect urban escape: the story of Nordic Bakery appeared first on The Idealist.

from The Idealist https://www.theidealist.com/nordic-bakery/

from The Idealist Magazine https://theidealistmagazineblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/designing-the-perfect-urban-escape-the-story-of-nordic-bakery/

from WordPress https://tonihuebner.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/designing-the-perfect-urban-escape-the-story-of-nordic-bakery/

[spencerthorpe]

Designing the perfect urban escape: the story of Nordic Bakery

On the launch of a new book about the design, style (and food!) at the Nordic Bakery,  The Idealist meets with Miisa Mink about designing the urban Nordic escape, the Scandi aesthetic of calm, welcoming warmth and of course their beautiful food. 

Font and flavour is the Nordic Bakery’s first lifestyle book and will be out in May. We’ve seen an advance copy and can report it really conveys the Nordic Bakery aesthetic and captures the quintessential elements of coffee culture, design and food. It’s filled with beautiful minimalist photography and the story of those behind the Nordic Bakery and some of their customers.

The face behind Nordic Bakery

The ‘face’ behind the business is Miisa Mink who wants to share her belief of the joy that comes from simple moments of calm and how the harmony of attention to detail fusing with freshly baked cakes and the smell of cinnamon buns coming from the oven can only ever be a good thing. Miisa, comes from a career in branding and design but is also a passionate baker. In 2008 she left the corporate life and became a partner in Nordic Bakery.

IDEALIST: Can you describe the Nordic Bakery experience for someone who hasn’t yet visited the cafe?

Miisa: Nordic Bakery is a beautiful Scandinavian style café coffee chain famous for cinnamon buns, dark rye and honest coffee.

  A place of calm

When you step inside one of our four London coffee shops, your enter a place of calm with the welcoming aroma of coffee and cinnamon buns.   We’ve used each space in a minimalist way to create a space that is uncluttered in contrast to the frantic lives lead by Londoners.   There is no noisy background music and the experience is still and silent so that customers can enjoy a place where they can have a meeting or rest their mind.

beautiful design and honest food, thoughtfully served

IDEALIST: Was there a sudden moment that led you to quit your corporate life for the Nordic Bakery?

Miisa: No, but I had stepped away from the corporate world of international advertising and was living my life in a more balanced way.  I already knew the first Nordic Bakery café in Soho – I loved it for its silence and beauty and decided to get involved. I have loved helping it grow into the brand and community that it is today.

Baking is love

IDEALIST: What is it about baking that you love so much?

Miisa: My love of baking developed from an early age. I grew up in a foodie family. There was always fresh bread at home too, baked by my father who ground his own flour from whole grains bought locally.  Baking was and still is a social activity in my family and when I bake, a crowd gathers in my kitchen, drawn by the smell of fresh bread or cakes.

  The Scandi aesthetic

IDEALIST: You have a very distinctive aesthetic at Nordic Bakery. How did that come about?

Miisa: The cool, northern aesthetic of Scandinavia speaks minimalist in every way and this is reflected in the very essence of Nordic Bakery. When the business was established, the goal was to create something of lasting quality based on a philosophy of no gimmicks, beautiful design and honest food, thoughtfully served.  No one else was doing it. Ten years on, people are buying into the Nordic way of life – crime dramas, literature, fashion, food and design.  

Nordic Bakery is more than a café or a brand.  It reflects a whole way of life where joy is allowed to come from simplicity not complexity and its ethos has never been more relevant than now.

IDEALIST: How do you want people to feel when they visit Nordic Bakery?

Miisa: I want people to feel that Nordic Bakery is their refuge and to feel welcome and relaxed when they visit us – like coming home.

The book

IDEALIST: Why have you chosen to do a book?

Miisa: This is our tenth anniversary and the opening of our new flagship store in Covent Garden marks a step-change for Nordic Bakery.  It puts us on the global stage.  So it seemed very timely to publish Font and Flavour as a celebration of the principles on which Nordic Bakery is based.  

IDEALIST: What’s in the book?

Miisa: The essence of the book enables you to lose yourself and be transported to a place where silence and beauty is evident.  The beautiful photography shot by Milla Koivisto captures the essence of the Norse people and the narrative of Nordic Bakery.  The book gives a glimpse into how our ideas are conceived and where we source our products with stories from my own life and those of our community of customers.    

IDEALIST: Who are your heroes both in the kitchen and in design?

Miisa: I admire Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for his back-to-basics food philosophy and appreciation of pure ingredients, forest-to-plate recipes and his campaigning for the environment and the oceans.

My design hero is Kit Kemp for the unique interiors she has brought to Firmdale Hotels.  Even though her visual aesthetic is very different to Nordic Bakery, the underlying values of quality and harmony remain.

IDEALIST: What are your ambitions for the next 12-18 months?

Miisa: We are working to establish our flagship store on Neal Street, in Covent Garden’s Seven Dials district as the go-to place to take a refuge and enjoy a perfect cup of coffee and some hearty Nordic baking for people who work and live in the area and for those visiting. Further expansion may also be in the cards.

IDEALIST: What’s your favourite recipe?

Miisa: My favourite recipe is Nordic Bakery Date cake – a wonderful moist and sticky cake that is great with a cup of coffee for fika or for dessert.

IDEALIST: Is there anything you would do differently if you had your time over?

Miisa: I’m not one for regrets!

  To find out more

To see more from Font and flavour, Scandinavian moments with Nordic Bakery, visit the publisher’s page here.

Thank you to @MILLAKOIVISTO for NHP Publishing for all photos.

The post Designing the perfect urban escape: the story of Nordic Bakery appeared first on The Idealist.

from The Idealist https://www.theidealist.com/nordic-bakery/ from The Idealist Magazine https://theidealistmagazine.tumblr.com/post/159223058613

[sinchileysincebolla-blog]

Exploring tracks and overcoming stereotypes

I’ve always been fascinated by Scandinavian countries. It could probably be traced to the fact that I come from a place where 30° degrees is the regular temperature for the most part of the year. But it could also be because two personalities ago, when I was a hipster, I began listening to Swedish and Danish bands. I was too attracted to the vibe and lyrics. And their languages! What’s with all the ¨ and ° above their letters and consonants in words?

Of course the stereotypes also reinforced my attraction to those cold places. I like Scandinavian aesthetic in housing interior; I like the fact that they pay attention to their look; and apparently they have been doing a good job with their society organization because Scandinavian countries are on top of ranks such as happiness and well-being. And let’s not forget the good-looking people stereotype. But I am not that superficial as this whole paragraph made me sound.

For this spring break, my study association organized a study trip to Stockholm in Sweden. I immediately got excited about it. It would be my first time visiting one of the countries that I’ve been so interested. We would visit the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and work on study cases for the pretty interesting companies tellus.news and Plantagon.  From 18th to 26th of February memories, experiences, and inside jokes were made. I will briefly describe my days getting to know Stockholm in accompanied with wonderful people. I would probably write a series of short stories that this trip inspired. 

                                                You are here

Stockholm trip log:

Day 1: Departure. I was in the dutchies van. Seven Dutchies and a Mexican. I would definitely sharp my dutch during this trip (spoiler alert: among other words I learnt gezonheid which is the “bless you” for when someone sneezes). We had hamburgers in Hamburg. We crossed the Danish border. The first thing I noticed was the illumination. A lot of lights. It even seemed like going into a night club, but nope, Danes just like lights that much. On the road, I noticed again the logos of business and how well illuminated they were. Then the trees and lakes. They reminded me of crime scenes settings on mystery books or crime series. 

                                   Reaching the Danish border

Day 2: We reached Stockholm in the morning. After checking in the hostel we went exploring the city. We visited the nearest church: Sta. Klara kyrka. The architecture reminded me of the dutch churches I’ve been to, and lately I read that it was indeed a dutch architect behind the planning. Then we went to Old Town. First superficial stereotype was broken: <superficial view>“where are the good looking people?! is it because is Sunday?”</superficial view> I expected a runway of tall blonde people, but again, #stereotypes. Who creates and spreads these views? And how do we buy them? This was a silly superficial stereotype, but what else is there assumed and not explored? 

We had dinner at an amazing place named “Chutney”. It was a vegan restaurant where I had the best burguer and potatoes of my life. Usually I don’t remember burguers but this one was memorable. Probably I just miss eating burguers. But it was really good. I also had my first encounter with the pitchers of natural water with fruits that I would keep drinking during the week at different places and restaurants. Water is free and delicious. We went back to the hostel and my first impression of Stockholm was thinking of it as a big city with a lot of stores but with buildings like the Postal Palace of Mexico city everywhere.

                                           Water and architecture

Day 3: During the morning we visited the National History Museum. My favourite sections were the dinousaurs, the local flora and fauna, the evolution section and the human body section. In these last sections I felt as if I was looking in a mirror. I liked that there were a lot of kids at the museum. Second steorytipe was broken: wasn’t this a country of elderly? (Spoiler: later a local friend would clarify that they indeed have this problem in cities more to the north, and the reason that I noticed many kids and pregnant women was because I was in a big city, where most of the jobs are and therefore people live. Here some statistics.) 

At noon the tellus.news team presented their case. They did a really cool and professional presentation. People from tellus were genuinely interested in the worked presented and it was a good feeling to experience how philosophical perspectives can help to the development of meaningful experiences. For lunch we had tacos with the tellus team at “La neta”. I certify that they were really good and are close to an experience in a mexican taquería. Salsas and totopos included.

Later in the night we went for a beer at a local bar. The most expensive beer of my life. 65 kroner = around 6.5 euro = around 150 mexican pesos (though the average beer would be 80 kroner in most places). It was good though and the company was the best. I got to know more of my pals and they got to know me and it was a good feeling. 

I stole a flyer from a street. Thanks to my partner in crime. Now I have a memento from Stockholm in my room and a story to tell.

                                             Tacos in La Neta

Day 4: We experienced a snow storm. We had to take the metro to reach the KTH university. We were received and introduced to Profr. Babbi Frödig. Then we met Profr. Sven Ove Hansson and discussed the relevance of philosophy and its relation to other disciplines. Philosophy seems to be a discipline we cannot explain. When people ask me, “so what do you do as a philosopher of science and technology?” Depending on the context, I usually go with the “I do technology assessment” card or “Have you seen Black Mirror? I basically write those episodes or prevent them to happen”. On a more academic response I would refer to this publication of Profr. Sven. We later discussed information privacy moderated by Björn Lundgren, who shared his PhD research. The take home message: the battle is lost but still, data is not necessarily reliable data. It may lead to false positives due to the nature of its complexity. But at least we could be aware of what is at stake and consider the information we share.

We had dinner at “Meny”, a fancy restaurant near the KTH metro station. I had rissoto, a small portion because apparently the cheese and rice came directly from Italy. If I had known this I would prefer to order the meatballs, which was a more generous dish. So now you know in case you go there. Luckily they served us a lot of bread and crackers. And the delicious water. 

After dinner we went to the Opera house. We had tickets for a ballet but we didn’t know what kind of play it would be. It turned out to be a contemporary one. My dualistic mind was challenged to appreciate this form of art. I didn’t enjoy the music because it was just noise. But I did enjoy the movements. The strength of the dancers and their discipline to come up with such assembly. It was like watching a scene from the Pina Bausch movie. I confess my lack of knowledge in relation to contemporary works, but I enjoyed the experience as a naive participant.

               Baroque room at the Opera house (photo by Patty)

Day 5: At the KTH we were introduced to the Live-in Lab project. One of their aims is to conduct research that would help to upgrade regulations in terms of dictating design to consume energy in a sustainable way. 

After the workshop we visited the architecture department and had a talk with architects. At first we were like “sooo.. philosophy of science...” “This building is nice”... “did you know that values are inscribed in technologies, and buildings?”, and from there we engaged in discussing design, ethics, sustainability, power, structures, experiences, how the tools we use influence the outcomes, etc. We learned from each other. We agreed to go for a drink afterward. We didn’t go for that drink. 

We had dinner at an oriental restaurant. My dish had different types of tofu that I haven’t taste before. I had to struggle with chopsticks.

                          KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Day 6: We visited the faculty of History at KTH. We met Profr. Sabine Höler and Johan Gardebo. They presented their research on remote sensing technologies and how we interpret the earth. PUM. Just the topic we are writing for our Technolab project. We discussed issues when translating measurements into images and compose representations. Because again, having data doesn’t mean having the information. Data needs to be processed and implications about this abound.

After lunch we visited the Visualization lab where they work with different VR technologies. We explored our home (planet Earth), the dark side of the moon, Saturn, and the universe; we reached the Big Bang and came back home. Incredible journey. 

For dinner we bought a calzone at a 7 eleven and went wandering in the city at night.

                                            Visualization Lab

Day 7: In the morning we head to Plantagon. Before we presented our case we were given a tour in their office and get to know their projects. We ate traditional swedish pastries (Semla and kanelbullar) and had coffee and tea. Not every day you are given the opportunity to present to decision makers of an important company your insights from a philosophical perspective about their developments. We all were delighted with the relevance of the information presented and got the opportunity to continue working together. 

We had the rest of the day as free time to explore the city. I wandered in the center. Visited record stores and bookshops. I ended at the dansemuseet. There was a workshop and I danced to some drums rhythms. 

Then I hung out with a local friend. We went for a cup of tea. I had a tea with framboise and lime in the biggest mug I ever hold in my hands. Later we went for dinner. Apparently there are no “swedish” restaurants in which to have “traditional” food. But they do have lots of different types of pastries. We ended in an italian restaurant. Swedish pizza is good. It was funny trying to explain to her where was the place where I had the best hamburguer of my life: “It was a sloping street. We crossed a bridge. There was water. There were posters in the street. We passed by the central station”. With that given description it could basically be anywhere in Stockholm. I felt like Marshall of HIMYM. Then we came back to the hostel and continue with our non-stop conversation. Eventually she had to leave. May we meet again.

                                                  Record store

Day 8: Checking out of the hostel. Last wandering in the city. I went to a comic store. I got some second hand books: a vikings book for kids, the tao te ching in swedish, and a small book with images from Florence, Italy. I also got a nice small notebook and postcards with cool designs. I ate leftovers of pizza in a bench. 

We went to the History museum. The vikings exhibition was my playground. And they also had this section about historiography with lots of philosophical questions and how history is interpretation. I visited three museums in Stockholm and this one was one of my favourites. I hope I can come back for the summer, to get to know other places and all of the trees in its splendor.

We had dinner at “Prime burguer”. We started with burguers and ended with burguers. Life cycles.

                                             Historika Museum

Exploring different tracks in philosophy, self-knowledge, and overcoming stereotypes were the overarching themes for this trip. I am just grateful for being able to be part of this experience. Thanks to all who made it possible.

* Doing the dance of the contemporary play * (Inside joke)