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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years ago

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Do you have an issue with Noda's way of depicting Wilk's moral as gray like the fandom? Espacially with the reveal of the land deed that may ensure a future for Asirpa and the Ainu but wasn't part of his original plan

Hum...

I don't really know what the fandom is thinking in regard to Wilk so I can't really comment on it.

It's also worth to remember that Wilk discovered about the existance of the land deed only a short time before Tsurumi caused an argument between him and the other Ainu rebels that ended up with them killing each other.

Prior to that moment Wilk had no idea the land deed existed and therefore he couldn't include it in his original plan.

It's also worth to ponder if that land deed could be included in Wilk's plan after Wilk learnt of its existance. I mean, at first the land deed is presented as a cool thing.

That land deed exists by 50 years. The Russian warship Kalevala incident whcih signed the end of the tractatives with the Russians is dated 1867.

Hijikata says the deed was signed while he was in the battle of Futamataguchi which took place on the fourth week of May 1869. The Republic of Ezo is disestablished on the 27th of June, 1869 and Enomoto has then the Meiji government accepted the contract.

We know the Ainu gave them half of the gold and retrieved the contract but now we should ask ourselves an important question: why no Ainu used the land deed to claim the land?

When Kimuspu shows it to Wilk we're in 1902, it means that the land deed remained hidden for 33 years despite Kimuspu being still alive and knowing of his existance.

If the problem was the gold, they could have said they spended it all on the land deed and use it. Yet they hid it along with the gold.

Kimuspu says everyone was killed by the Wen Kamuy.

Notice Kimuspu's expression when Wilk and the others see the land deed. It's creepy. We tend to consider the gold as the Wen Kamuy but the land deed was bought with the Wen Kamuy so it can be that it too is a Wen Kamuy.

The land deed is inconvenient for the Meiji government. In order not to honour it, they might have secretly killed Kimuspu's companions and forced him to live in hiding. So Kimuspu didn't try to use it or to have other Ainu use it and that's also why Wilk and the other Ainu didn't grab it and immediately tried to put it to use.

It's possible Ogata himself was sent there to retrieve the land deed as discreetly as possible or make sure no one were to find it, which is why he was fine with killing Wilk.

Of course things might change if Asirpa manages to put together a force that can oppose to the Meiji government. I mean, if Hijikata conqueers Hokkaido, the land deed can be negotiated with him and not with the Meiji government... or Hijikata can use it to give his claims of Hokkaido some legal ground.

in short the land deed couldn't figure in Wilk's previous plans because he had no idea it existed... but he could have ended up figuring in his final scheme as he might have hoped Asirpa, joining forces with Hijikata, would manage to put the land deed to good use.

But land deed put aside, I've no problems with Wilk having a gray morality, this makes him the same as everyone else in the cast, as well as human.

Humans tend to have a grey morality, pure white knights or pure black knights are more a thing of fairy tales.

It's narratively good that Wilk is a character with grey morality, it makes him real.

Of course the downside is that Wilk is no more a perfect idealistic hero.... or a cruel terrorist... but I think most of the fandom knew this already.

Wilk is mostly a man of his time and culture, with a vein of idealism mixed with a machiavellian and utilitaristic approach.

His idea that wolf culture is beautiful because he believes the wolves had killed a wolf because he had no place in their pack as he was sick, and that being a logical creature who cut away any excess kindness and has a functional efficency clearly tell us Wilk is not someone who's defending minorities because he believes everyone has a right to live and be protected.

Wilk's mindsetting is no better than the one of Japan and Russia who would decide minorities have no place in their country and sacrifice them.

He sets on protecting minorities not for some noble feeling but because he BELONGS to a minority and doesn't want to be judged the dischargeable spare.

In fact, when he decides to switch to Hokkaido he easily discharges the minorities on Karafuto even if he knew demanding from them to transfer in Hokkaido might be harmful for them.

In his group of three Wilk is the lest idealistic and the more prone to sacrifice others for his own goal.

Even Tsurumi realized with is the more cold blooded of the group, comparing him to Okubo.

HTo Wilk's credit there's to say Wilk is also willing to sacrifice himself for his goal, we saw it when he took a personal risk to deliver the bomb when attempting the emperor's murder or when he skinned himself to hide.

Wilk is not the sort of man who solely sacrifices others for his goal, he also has no problems sacrificing himself.

But Wilk lacked Kiro's flexibility (Kiro originally was all for prioritizing the Karafuto minorities and, after trying to make a family in Hokkaido he decided to raise all the minorities to equal level) or Sofia's compassion (she has nothing on Hokkaido except the families and the dreams of Wilk and Kiro and to honour them she's willing to fight for Hokkaido as well).

I think a good part of Wilk's mistakes/problems steems exactly from his lack of flexibility from his determination in carrying on his idea, believing his idea is the best.

He's intelligent and probably this caused others to rely on him a lot and helped him to accomplish many things, giving him the feeling he isn't prone to be wrong, but this ended up on coming back to bite him.

He makes an enemy out of Kiroranke, when he could have tried to face him, reason things with him and smooth them over.

He thinks he can keep the Hokkaido Ainu partisans unite and working under him while not being fully honest with them (he doesn't tell them he's a Russian partisan who originally came there to get the Hokkaido Ainu gold for the Russian minorities) only because now he has wholeheartedly embraced their cause, with the result only a couple of words from Tsurumi cause the whole group to explode and people to start killing each other.

He assumes Asirpa will just blindly embrace his goals and methods and become the Ainu leader... and the Ainu will accept her, without realizing Asirpa is her own person and might not be interested in all this (though this was a mistake typical of his time period) and that for Hokkaido Ainu it was really difficult to accept a woman as a leader, never mention one so young.

And so on.

Wilk makes mistakes in good faith, he means well for the people he loves but ends up hurting them, he's human like each of us.

He lives in a world where his rights are stepped over and people often has no other way to be heard than taking up in arms because he doesn't have the options we have nowadays and can't vote for a new president or pacifically protest to have his right acknowledged so most of his choices wouldn't be right for our time period so of course we aren't meant to take his same choices but we should still look at him as a man of his world and time.

A man who wasn't perfect, but a man like us anyway, and that's this what makes Noda a great storyteller, that all his grey characters are ultimately like us, humans.

At least those are my two cents about this.

Thank you for your ask!

#Wilk #Asirpa #Kiroranke #Sofia #Ask #Mesira #Sukuta #Irenka #Ratci #Oskeporo #Enomoto Takeaki #Okubo Toshimichi #Kido Takayoshi #Saigou Takamori

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leximus98 · 4 years ago

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Airborne All The Way - Dick Winters x OC

Summary: Memories are fleeting. Charlie knows if she doesn’t get them all down, and soon, they’ll be gone. War, love, loss... she wanted to write it all down for future generations to come.

Charlie Finnegan had been a nurse before the war. After Pearl Harbor, she felt the same call to arms that many men felt. When Elanor Roosevelt started a program where women could join the Army on a trial basis, Charlie jumped on it. She became an officer and volunteered for the Airborne. Along the way she met Harry Welsh and the ever calm and collected Richard Winters. Through trial and error, Charlie gains the respect of her men, but can she gain the eye of a certain red haired officer?

A/N: So, I haven’t posted anything original in a long time. But I’ve had a really good idea for a story and I wanted to share it. I hope everyone likes it. It’s gonna be multi-chapter, this is just chapter one. Lemme know what you think!

Warnings: None

Tag List: If you’d like to be tagged, lemme know!

Word Count: 1824

Chapter One

“Why would you want to join the Airborne?”

It was a question I was asked frequently. In the early days, I would answer by saying, “It’s new!” or “It’s exciting!”

The answer changed over time though. When I was in the 82nd, I told people that it was to prove that girls could do it too. When they shipped me over to the 101st, I found a new answer. One I didn’t expect I’d find. But I found it in Easy Company.

“Because they’re my family. I would do anything for them.”

Of course that answer came more easily after D-Day. I hadn’t truly earned the respect of the men until that day, even though I grew to love them before then.

It all started one warm, wet afternoon.

Lieutenant Harry Welsh and myself had just been sent over from the 82nd. We were going to fill the positions of platoon leaders. Harry would be taking over first platoon and I would be taking over second.

As we walked by all of the soldiers, they were sitting around in their dress uniforms, waiting for the train. Their initial training and airborne training had been completed. Now they were going to be shipped off to either Europe or Asia to fight in the war. Battalion Intelligence hadn’t told anybody where we were going or which war we would be fighting. It was all a surprise, but for good reason. If word slipped out to the wrong people, it would be devastating.

Harry and I were told to find First Lieutenant Richard Winters. He was the Executive Officer of Easy Company. I’d heard of Dick Winters from friends of mine, he was good at his job and cared for his soldiers. I would be glad to be working under somebody like him. But I had also heard rumblings about the company’s Commanding Officer, Captain Herbert Sobel. He was sadistic towards his company and from what Harry and I heard, he was jumpy in the field. Too eager, not patient, and got people notionally killed in training exercises.

After walking down the line of barracks, and catching more than one lingering glance from the soldiers, Harry and I found the officers barracks. We walked inside and were met with two lieutenants.

Richard Winters was tall, lyth, pale, and had the brightest shock of red hair I had ever seen. His eyes were a soft blue and he held himself properly. Like he was important, but not stuck up. He looked over at us and I gave him a soft smile from behind Harry.

Lewis Nixon was behind him. His hair was thick, black, and styled perfectly. There wasn’t a single thread out of place on his uniform and he gave us a sly smile.

“Are we interrupting?” Harry asked.

“No, not at all. Lieutenant Lewis Nixon, Lieutenant Harry Welsh and Charlie Finnegan, just in from the 82nd,” Winters introduced.

Harry went to shake Nixon’s hand and I followed suit behind him.

“A WAC?” Nixon asked.

“Not a day in my life,” I smiled cheekily.

“Alright then. Well you’ll learn him pretty quickly,” Nixon said, smiling at Winters. “No flaws, no vices, no sense of humor.”

I smiled and looked at Winters who gave me a quick side look and smirked, “Just like your chums up at Battalion Staff?”

“So what’s up?” Winters asked.

I sighed heavily and scratched the back of my neck, “We’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings…”

“Sobel?” Nixon asked.

Harry nodded.

“We were just talking about that,” Nixon said.

The four of us moved closer together so as not to be overheard.

“He gets a little jumpy in the field?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, he gets jumpy and you get killed,” Nixon said.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I chuckled.

“I think if we talk about it, it should just be amongst ourselves,” Winters interjected.

“Alright, absolutely,” Harry said.

From behind us, I heard a heavy foot slam on the wooden step of the barracks. As if in slow motion, I watched Winters turn and snap to attention. Harry and I turned around fast and snapped to attention too. Standing in the doorway was Captain Sobel.

He stood there for an agonizing moment, just staring at all of us, like he knew we were talking about him. His eyes continued to linger on me when he started talking.

“Second Platoon ready?” he asked.

“Ready, Sir,” Winters said.

“Then get them ready, we’re moving out,” Sobel ordered.

“Yes, Sir,” Winters said.

Harry moved first, walking quickly past Sobel who didn’t move from the doorway, Winters followed, and I moved after Winters. Sobel shifted towards the open space so I had to turn more sideways to get out of the door. I felt his eyes burning into me and cleared my throat when I was outside. I glanced back while following Winters and caught Nixon’s eye. He winked at me and gave me a soft smile but quickly lost it when Sobel turned back to him.

“Finnegan, make sure your men are good to go,” Winters said.

“Yes, Sir!”

“Sergeant Lipton!” I called out as I saw the man walking by the cattle trucks.

“Yes, Ma’am?” he asked as I jogged up to him.

“Everyone is good? We’re about to roll out,” I told him.

Staff Sergeant Carwood Lipton was a nice guy. He had been kind to me since I first addressed their platoon and I assume he made the men keep their comments about a female platoon leader at bay. I wasn’t particularly popular at the moment, due to the fact that I had boobs. I didn’t blame them, I had to prove myself to them as a leader. That I could do everything they could do as a female.

“Yes, Ma’am. We’re supposed to be loading the train by platoon but, well, you know how it goes,” I smiled.

“Of course. Just try to keep them in line as much as you can. Captain Sobel is walking around,” I smiled back.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I watched him walk off and I started in my own direction, but slowed down next to a group of men who were sitting in a small circle.

“Who? Sobel?” I heard Joe Liebgott ask. “He screwed up one manuever.”

“Yeah,” Cobb said.

“Well, you know I’m always fumbling with grenades. It would be easy if one went off by accident you know,” Liebgott said, smirking darkly.

“Well, now they must have put him in charge for a reason,” Shifty Powers said.

I smiled at his innocence.

“Yeah, cause the army wouldn’t make a mistake like that, right Shift?” Liebgott asked.

The group chuckled and I cleared my throat, standing behind Joe Toye with my hands in my pockets. Their heads snapped up to look at me.

“Now gentlemen, I do believe if you’re gonna say things like that? Maybe you shouldn’t do it out in the open. The Good Captain is out and about,” I said the last part sarcastically and smirked.

They all looked back at each other. I could tell that they were embarrassed to have been caught. I gave them a quick, “Just be careful” and walked off.

The train was uncomfortable. I sat next to Winters at an angle that had my head against the window and my feet on the other side of Harry who had his feet half on my lap and half on the seat between me and the wall.

“How’s your time in Easy going?” Winters asked me quietly so as not to wake up Harry.

“Well, it’s certainly not Easy,” I giggled. “It’s just gonna take the men some time to get used to taking orders from a girl. It was an issue for a short amount of time at the old unit too. I’m not too worried about it.”

“How did you get them to respect you?” Winters asked, putting his letter down and giving me his full attention.

“It was a training jump that went bad. I had dropped close to the injured soldier. He was screaming and screaming and screaming. It’s a sound that doesn’t quiet leave you. Anyway, he had landed wrong and broken both of his legs. I did my best to splint both of them with what I had and carried him to the rendezvous point.”

“You carried a broken soldier, both of you in full pack, four miles?” Winters asked, a look of amazement on his face.

“Ah, don’t give me that much credit. I dropped our parachutes and most of the gear we were carrying. Just our packs and weapons went with.”

It looked like he was about to say something else, but Nixon came up behind us.

“Goin my way?” he asked Winters.

“Wherever the train takes me,” Winters answered.

“Yeah, c’mon, take a guess! Atlantic? Pacific? Atlantic?”

“I think Nixon is saying without saying we’re going to the Atlantic,” I smirked.

“Well, we aren’t intelligence officers,” Winters said.

“Mmm, as such, I know, of course,” Nixon said, smiling.

He moved from his seat behind Winters to the seat next to Harry. I crossed my arms and watched him. He looked like the cat who caught the canary. A wide, mischievous grin on his face, and a spark in his eyes.

“If I told ya, I’d have to kill ya,” he said quietly.

“Then don’t tell us,” Winters said.

Nixon leaned in close and smiled again, “New York, troop ship, England. We’re invading Europe my friends.” Nixon pulled a flask from his back pocket and raised it in a toast style. “Fortress Europa!”

Nixon offered the flask to Winters who raised an eyebrow at him, “Since when do I drink?” he asked.

“If I knew you’d take it, I wouldn’t have offered,” Nixon smirked. “You?”

He offered me the flask and I shook my head no.

“Two non-alcoholic officers? That’s not good karma,” Nixon said.

“Hah, it’s not that I don’t drink, I just prefer mine mixed in soda, or in the fermented fruit variety,” I laughed.

“Uh-huh,” Nixon said, taking a pull from the flask.

“Nix?” Winters asked. “What are you gonna do when you get into combat?”

“Oh, I have every confidence in my scrounging abilities,” Nixon said, looking out the window. “And I have a case of Vat 69 in your footlocker.”

Nixon leaned back and laughed. Winters smiled for a minute and then it fell from his face when Nixon didn’t say anything to counter what he had said.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah.”

Before Winters could say anything, Harry popped his head up from the seat and looked at the three of us. He had one eye closed and the other squinted, barely coming to.

“Morning!” Nixon said, handing Harry the flask.

“Mm, ya’know, this could turn into a real nice trip,” Harry said, drinking from the metal container.

I scoffed a little bit and shook my head. It was going to be interesting to say the least.

#band of brothers #hbo war #richard winters #dick winters #dick winters x reader #winters x reader #richard winters x reader #richard winters imagine #winters fic #richard winters fic #band of brothers fic #hbo war fic #airborne all the way #101st airborne #army #world war II

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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THEY STILL LOVE LUCY

May 23, 1977

[The article below is reprinted verbatim. Photos and Footnotes have been added for editorial enhancement.]

There has already been some moaning at the bar that when Dinah Shore's blithe talk show moves to Channel 5 in July, it will be on 3:30 in the afternoon instead of 6:30 p.m. I have letters from viewers who lament "Now we'll never see it." I'm with them. It was nicely placed in the wake oi Cronkite, some easy chatter and gossip after the somber events of the day, like turning from the front page to the feature section of a newspaper. Moreover, Dinah does her interviewing very well, much less obtrusively than the assorted Mikes and Mervs of TV. She actually makes you believe she's more interested in the answer than the question.

Sometimes the answers are hard to come by. The other evening Lucille Ball was much more interested in clowning than answering serious questions about her comedy. Flanked by Jim Coburn and James Garner, Lucy was much more intent on giving a performance and it was great fun. Anyway, Lucy saves her serious answers about comedy these days for the seminar she's conducting at a professional school in Hollywood.

I asked the great redhead the other day what she told her students "Whatever they ask me," she said. "I just answer questions. If they're not interested enough to ask questions, the hell with 'em." That's basic to Lucille Ball. In her philosophy, you push forward, you ask, you try things. She used to tell her daughter Lucie: "Don't turn things down. No matter how lowly it seems at the time, you'll find you learn from everything you do it's worth it."

Years ago, Eddie Cantor told me that during the filming of Roman Scandals with the Goldwyn Girls, director Busby Berkeley worked out a sight gag wherein someone threw a glob of mud at Eddie who bent over at that moment and the mud sailed over him and caught some beautiful girl square in her pretty face. He asked for volunteers among the girls. All of them shrank back except one a redhead who stepped forward. "I knew," said Eddie, "that she was the one who would make it. Lucy Ball."

Too Much Lucy?

In case you are one of those who will miss Dinah! because you don't watch daytime TV, you may be unaware that Lucille Ball's fourth and last Lucy series. Here's Lucy, is now rerunning on CBS every morning at 9 on Channel 2. This is the six-year series in which her children grew up Lucie and Desi Arnaz Jr. with Gale Gordon as Uncle Harry.

There are six years of those shows and even spun off daily they should be around quite awhile. Not surprisingly, they're on opposite I Love Lucy which Channel 11 shows in the mornings at 9. Lucy shrugs at the schedule. At one time, there were Lucy shows on various channels seven times during a day "That bothered me," she said. "Every time you turned on the tap. you got me. There can be too much of anything."

To an historian of this windblown diversion, it's interesting two versions of the same basic Lucy character 20 years or so apart, still equally delighting audiences. Lucy, the character, must be the most durable creation of the television age, unsinkable, unstoppable, largely changeless. I have had the feeling at times that Lucille Ball feels Lucy rides her instead of vice versa. When she was doing Wildcat on Broadway, she said: "I thought they wanted something different, but they don't So in the show, I'm doing Lucy."

The other day the comedienne said: "I'm having a recurrence of that In the last couple of years, I've been doing specials that were different kinds of comedy dramas than the Lucy shows. I did a couple with Carney, I did that show with Gleason trying to play my age, trying to do something they would believe and buy. Well, they didn't buy it not really. What the people seemed to want was Lucy again. Now I'm faced with doing two more specials for next season, and I thought: 'Oh. God, not that again.' Then I decided the hell with anything different I'll do a Lucy show."

Old Friends on Hand

She'll be back in her own arena the three-camera TV technique created for her by Desi Arnaz; Madelyn Davis and Bob Carroll Jr., who wrote most of the Lucy shows over a quarter century, are doing the script; Gale Gordon will be on hand and perhaps Mary Wickes and Mary Jane Croft but not the kids: Desi is making a Robert Altman movie in Chicago; Lucie is on the summer musical circuit. The topper the show will be directed by Marc Daniels, who directed the first season ever of I Love Lucy. They'll film it in August for a probable November showing. (1)

There are other roles Lucille Ball itches to play a legless legend of a woman who has been a patron saint of the ghetto kids of Baltimore, for one. (2) She turns down constant requests to direct. (3) She likes teaching, working with kids. There's very little comedy on television she can watch. "I keep seeing rip-offs of my writers. They're doing our old scripts. Laverne & Shirley they're doing the shows Vivian Vance and I did years ago." (4)

# # #

Cecil Smith (author) began his Times career as a reporter and feature writer in 1947 and became an entertainment writer in 1953. He was the entertainment editor and a drama critic in the 1960s, and in 1969 he became the paper's television critic and a columnist for The Times' syndicate. Smith served as a captain in the Army Air Forces during World War II and as a pilot flew a B-24 Liberator in the South Pacific. After the war, he wrote radio plays and television scripts before getting involved in journalism. He was related to Lucille Ball by marriage. Cecil's wife Cleo was Lucille's first cousin. He had a cameo (with other journalists) in “Lucy Meets the Burtons” (HL S3;E1) in 1970. He died in 2009.

FOOTNOTES from the Future

(1) “Lucy Calls the President” aired November 21, 1977 featuring Gale Gordon, Mary WIckes, Mary Jane Croft, and although she is not mentioned in the article due to her health issues, Vivian Vance. Desi Jr. was filming A Wedding, and Lucie was appearing as the lead in Annie Get Your Gun.

(2) This refers to ‘Aunt’ Mary Dobkin, a little league baseball coach and children’s welfare advocate. The role eventually went to Jean Stapleton and the film was aired on “The Hallmark Hall of Fame” in 1979.

(3) In 1980, Lucille Ball signed with NBC, and finally gave in. She directed a pilot for a half-hour sitcom called “Bungle Abbey,” starring Gale Gordon. The pilot was not picked up and that was her only solo directing credit, although she had co-directed a few episodes of her series. Many directors would say that despite who got the credit, Lucy was also directing! In fact, that was nothing new.

Exactly 40 years earlier, to the day, the above item appeared in Erskine Johnson’s “Behind The Make-Up” syndicated column!

(4) It was not secret that “Laverne and Shirley” was heavily influenced by the antics of Lucy and Ethel. The show’s creator Garry Marshall was one of Lucille Ball’s writers at one time, and readily admitted how much he admired her.

#Lucille Ball #1978 #Cecil Smith #LA Times #Television #TV #I Love Lucy #Lucy Calls The President #Lavern & Shirley #Bungle Abbey #Aunt Mary #Mary Dobkin #Jean Stapleton #Eddie Cantor #Here's Lucy

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whenfictionandworldlitcollide · 3 years ago

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ABNKKBSNPLAKo?! through a student's eyes (ABNKKBSNPLAko?! by Bob Ong)

ABNKKBSNPLAKo could be treated as one of classic Filipino book staple because of its humorous narration of what school life is for an ordinary Filipino student. It follows the story of the author’s journey from elementary, high school and college, recounting all of his pranks and childhood memories, up to the confused teenage phase, while not leaving out the times where he was in the lowest of the lows. It included the famous FLAMES game, crushes, and the let downs of university life told in the funniest and most witty way possible. It also didn’t leave out his adult stage wherein he faced what reality really is.

In his anecdote, Bob Ong was on the path of discovering himself in his early years as an elementary student in a public school. In here he experienced everything a typical kid goes through—buying from the infamous “tray” loaded with snacks from the school canteen, games that included SOS, and many more. One scene that strike me the most is when he had his recognition, and his mother came late. It was the first time he noticed what it felt like to be on top, but no one’s there for you. Later, he also discussed his Cathay Pacific backpack and compared it to the big trolleys that children use nowadays, saying that he doesn’t know if the new generation only have much more subjects to learn, or we’re just becoming dumber as time goes by.

Then high school came. It was the point of pimples, first crushes, first fallouts—everything firsts, you’ll have it in high school. Here, he discovered that high school was way different from elementary. There are certain rules to follow—like having your hair cut in 2 by 3, many things are prohibited, these rules should be followed, etc. He ended the passage with a note from Grant Gilmore, “The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law… in hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.” Following this quote was a line of, “Hell ang high school. Cool.” He then proceeded to one of the most remarkable scenes for me where he proved he is on his path of realizing and developing his principles. They are rushing their school project when suddenly, a teacher announced that they have to do rosary since it’s rosary month. Then one of his classmates asked, “Sir, paano yung non-Catholics?” Bob Ong was tempted to say he’s a non-Catholic even if he’s not, but he ended up still going to the rosary session, upholding his principles and understanding the reality that he needs to choose between two things. He also discussed how students are heavily graded based on their academics, rather than their character—which we may see in many politicians. Intellectual people, yes, but lacks empathy.

Come college, and this is where the theory of phenomenology will be heavily discussed as college was the 360-degree turner of his life. He thought that college was going to be easy. He applied for various universities and was accepted in all of them, but what happened was he was not really decided with his course. He even joked with him saying, “Basta may “computer”, ayos na ‘yan!”. This started his downfall.

He was constantly late for his classes. He never had any interests in the subjects, and the commute was making him tired even before he arrives at his school. One time he arrived late, and the instructor prohibited him to take the prelim exam, stating that he should go to the dean to get a permit. The dean did not see a valid reason to allow him to take the exam, and this is when he realized something. That he allowed himself to be dumbed down by his instructor. If he was truly concerned of him, he should just let him take the exam since he still arrived within the period.

After that incident, he started slacking off from school. He dropped off, was depressed. It came to a time wherein he goes to school even though he’s not enrolled, just to pretend that he’s still okay and was not letting down his family. He didn’t know where he would be disappointed—with himself or with the education system which was seemingly bringing down students like him with unnecessary subjects or tasks to do, painting a world wherein if you receive a bad grade, you are a failure. But then it dawned to him what he really needs to do, and got back to school through a vocational course. He discovered that people in vocational courses aren’t stupid like others say, but are normal students like the majority of the population. Surprisingly, he became a teacher—being in the opposite perspective of the world he lived in for so long: school.

ABNKKBSANPLAKo shows Bob Ong’s development in finding out who he really is and why he exists through his journey in school, which many can relate. How he addressed his life as a teacher heavily supports the idea, as he realized that we exist for the academic standards, aiming for high scores in tests, quizzes and projects without totally giving credit for one’s character and expertise. If you are a wiz in one subject but failed the other and you do have good conduct, it doesn’t matter. He realized the reason of existence for most students like him: getting a card with grades that are capable of flying colors, and a diploma which is like a ticket to this world to be respected and looked upon to.

It also came to him that we often exist to brag our achievements even though we’re nowhere near what we wanted to be, so we veil ourselves in this make-believe world of successfulness, for people often quick judge those who are below them. He demonstrated this example in a setting of a high school reunion. In such event, you’ll usually hear others peak performances after graduation, and those who had nothing to flaunt are left in the dark. After reading that part of the book, you might ask yourself, am I existing for my success or of other people’s expectations?

Lastly, the author realized that his life wasn’t always what you were told when you were little—always birds and bees and colorful bed of flowers. That not every child had their own childhood. That it is okay to fall down, as long as you’ll able to get yourself up. And that exam scores don’t define you as a student, but your take on life will. The world is made up of various “free” lectures that you can use at your expense. And eventually, we will all graduate somehow—just in our own different ways.

He ended the book in a line that says, “Nakabalik ako sa lugar, pero di ko na naibalik ang panahon.” On this part, he came back to his old school to claim his records from the registrar, and it was like he took the trip don the memory lane. Here, he truly shows that it finally dawned to him what his true reason for existence was, and that was to live according to his time phase and not out of others expectations.

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eclecticanalyst · 4 years ago

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We’re Expecting You...To Boldly Go [part 2]

In my last post, I expounded on the similarities in the general premise and structure of The Love Boat and Star Trek: The Next Generation, two shows that on the surface seem not to have much in common but on closer examination have some unexpected similarities. In my follow-up post on this theme, I will be drawing parallels between the main/regular characters of both shows. The crew lineup on each ship can be broken down into six character functions/profiles: The Captain, The Captain’s Confidant, The Big Brother, The Two Buds, The Chick, and The Kid.

The Captain

Star Trek TNG: Captain Jean-Luc Picard

The Love Boat: Captain Merrill Stubing

“The Captain” is...the captain! Beyond his role as the primary authority figure, he can be characterized in the following ways. Being the one to whom the rest of the crew reports, he is a bit socially removed from the rest of the main characters. While they can pal around with each other, they still treat him with a bit more deference even as he comes to be just as integral a part of their found family as the rest of them. The Captain can be rather intimidating at times—especially in the early days, when he had a tendency to be overly gruff with his crew. Part of that gruffness is the fact that he has very high standards for the people who serve under him. At the same time, however, he cares deeply for those people and is willing to put himself on the line for them, even bending the rules a bit in order to help them out of a difficult spot. He’s full of thoughtful advice should one of his crew ask for it, and is the most likely of the crew to give speeches about moral responsibility. He also has a playful streak, which he keeps under wraps but uses to mess with his crew from time to time. In terms of appearance, he’s older than the rest of the cast and he is bald(ing). He’s played by the best actor of the cast—Patrick Stewart is, of course, Patrick Stewart, I don’t think I really need to say more there, and Gavin MacLeod was a veteran actor (probably best known at that point for his role as Murray on The Mary Tyler Moore Show), able to handle both the comic and the dramatic whenever needed.

The Captain’s Confidant

Star Trek TNG: Dr. Beverly Crusher

The Love Boat: Dr. Adam “Doc” Bricker

I could have called this character profile “The Doctor,” following the same pattern as “The Captain,” but there was another aspect to Beverly and Doc that I wanted to draw attention to, beyond their being the respective healers of their crews. Both Beverly and Doc have a slightly different relationship with the Captain than the other members of the crew. They are a bit closer to the Captain, able to address him easily as a friend instead of as a superior officer if the situation calls for it. Notice that when working, Beverly will address Picard as “Captain” and “sir,” but when it’s just the two of them chatting in a more intimate setting she calls him “Jean-Luc.” Beverly is also one of the few people on board that Picard is comfortable with opening up to regarding his own insecurities or worries, while he takes more care to maintain his “self-assured captain” persona with everyone else. The same dynamic plays out between Stubing and Doc: there are several instances of Doc addressing his friend as “Merrill”—which none of the other members of the crew would even consider doing—and the power difference between the two is not as pronounced as it is between the captain and the other crew members. Whenever Captain Stubing has a personal problem, he goes to Doc for advice, and vice versa. Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard have a history, having been friends long before he took command of the Enterprise. In the same vein, Doc seems to know Captain Stubing’s past more intimately than the rest of the crew, as there are a few episodes in which the two of them discuss Captain Stubing’s alcohol addiction and current status as a teetotaler as if this is something Doc has always known about Merrill.

The Big Brother

Star Trek TNG: William Riker

The Love Boat: Adam “Doc” Bricker

So this is cheating a bit because I already have Doc listed under a character profile above, but TNG’s main cast has more people than that of TLB, so a one-to-one mapping wasn’t going to happen anyway. Doc’s “Captain’s Confidant” role deals with his relationship with the captain, and his “Big Brother” role deals with his relationship with the rest of the regulars. The fact that Doc is a bit older than Julie, Isaac, and Gopher means that even though he, like the rest of them, is under the supervision of the captain, he has a slight position of seniority over the other three. He balances the by-turns mischievous and responsible aspects of an older brother figure—he’ll tease Julie about her latest infatuation, and set up elaborate pranks to mess with Gopher, yet whenever Gopher and Isaac get swept up in some not-well-thought-out scheme, he’s the level-headed one who tries to point out that they’ve gotten carried away—or sometimes refuses to get involved altogether. William Riker is, of course, first officer of the Enterprise, and therefore has the same seniority-among-underlings position (in a more official chain of command capacity than Doc does). His big-brother-ness manifests as the poker-playing, jazz-loving guy who will do things like give Worf’s son music recordings that he knows Worf will hate one day but get actively upset and almost personally offended at the idea of Data getting hurt the next.

Not necessarily related to the “Big Brother” role, but another little parallel between Doc and Riker that I would like to point out—they are each the designated ladies’ man of their ships, yet both are able to completely switch to focusing solely on their job responsibilities the moment it is called for. (Honestly, Doc always struck me as going beyond “ladies’ man” and skirting dangerously close to “creep” territory at times, but I did appreciate how he would always drop everything the instant there was any sort of medical issue on the Princess.)

The Two Buds

Star Trek TNG: Geordi La Forge and Data

The Love Boat: Isaac Washington and Burl “Gopher” Smith

Although both the TNG and TLB crews form a group of close friends, The Two Buds are best friends. They are the two most likely people to hang out together in their down time, the two who understand each other the best, the two most sympathetic to each other’s problems and most likely to indulge the other long after everyone else would have put their foot down. When Gopher gets some conspiracy theory into his head about a passenger, Isaac will hear him out and sometimes even help him investigate. When Data wants to do some questionable experimentation on his positronic net, Geordi is there with a tricorder making sure the whole thing doesn’t go completely haywire. Data once said that he didn’t know what a friend was until he met Geordi, and Isaac once told Gopher that he (Gopher) is the only one Isaac would resign in solidarity for. All four men/androids have a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in their obsession of the week—see Isaac’s novel-writing attempts, Geordi’s holographic Leah Brahms, Gopher’s conspiracy theories, and about half of anything Data does.

Each pair also consists of one white guy and one Black guy. (Obviously, Data is an android and therefore is not technically any human race or ethnicity, but he’s played by a white guy and his artificial skin is paler than anyone else’s skin on the senior staff.) The white guy representatives, Gopher and Data, are almost polar opposites—Data is calm and logical, and Captain Picard trusts him implicitly, while Gopher is a goof who freaks out easily and who is often upset with the way Captain Stubing dismisses him (those dismissals are especially prominent in the first few seasons—Gopher does mellow out later on). But they do have some similarities, one of the most striking being that they both struggle with appropriate social behavior as well as their own emotions. This is more readily apparent with Data, of course, who is literally not human and is trying his best to understand the nuances of things like humor and love, constantly asking his friends to explain behaviors they take for granted. Gopher’s struggles are more understated—he has a tendency to make comments and observations that the rest of the crew find slightly tasteless, he goes into several anxious tailspins over the course of the show, and he at one point believes his emotional attachments to his friends compromise his ability to fulfill his job duties. Both Data and Gopher use their respective best friends—each of whom are the more level-headed of the pair—as a steadying force.

Now for the characteristics shared by those respective best friends. The Black guy’s job responsibilities root him in a specific place and often set him slightly apart from the main action. While Geordi can and does go up to the bridge on several occasions, as Chief of Engineering he spends most of his time hanging around the warp core, communicating with the bridge over the com system. Meanwhile, Isaac can be seen wandering hallways and so forth, but he spends most of his time behind the bar, whether that’s in the Acapulco Lounge, on the Lido Deck, or in Pirate’s Cove. The rest of the crew, despite having nominal work stations like the Enterprise bridge or the Pacific Princess purser’s lobby, are seen to roam more extensively. (I’m pretty sure we never see Julie’s office.) Isaac is busy serving drinks in pretty much every episode while Doc and Gopher are chatting and dancing with passengers on the dance floor of the Acapulco Lounge. The Black guy also gets the short end of the stick in the romance department. When you see a Black guest actor on the opening credits of The Love Boat, it’s a good bet that Isaac will be involved in their storyline. If it’s just one Black woman, there’s a 99% chance that Isaac will be involved in her story, and his involvement will be as her love interest. I remember one particularly glaring example of the show going to extreme lengths to avoid even hinting that Isaac could potentially do something vaguely romantic or sexual with a white woman—Julie’s hosting her high school reunion on the ship, and there are a few scenes where everyone is discoing in the Acapulco Lounge. Isaac gets out on the dance floor, and conveniently some random Black woman appears out of nowhere as his dance partner. This woman is not named or acknowledged at any other point in the episode. Over on the Enterprise, Geordi isn’t restricted along race lines like Isaac, but I find it highly suspicious that the one Black guy is the least successful in romance out of everyone on the senior staff. Geordi struggles to even start up a conversation with women he’s attracted to, let alone flirt with them. Data has a better romance track record than Geordi does, and Data usually ends up in a romantic entanglement by accident! It’s as if the show was afraid to let Geordi enjoy those kinds of relationships to the same degree as the rest of the crew, which is a different kind of restriction than Isaac’s, but still a restriction nonetheless.

The Chick

Star Trek TNG: Deanna Troi

The Love Boat: Julie McCoy

The standard lineup for both TNG and The Love Boat consisted two female main characters, thus allowing the ladies to gossip about “girly” things in keeping with gender stereotypes, but Vicki was a preteen/teenager and Beverly had a sort of matron vibe going on, which left Julie and Troi to be the respective sex appeal characters out of the main cast. The Chick has non-standard dress that sets her apart from the others and their status as officers. While Doc, Gopher, and Captain Stubing wore nautical stripes and white uniforms (and Isaac usually had a variation on this outfit, wearing a red or blue jacket), with very little in the way of costume changes whether they were greeting boarding passengers, chatting on the Lido deck, or dancing in the Acapulco Lounge, Julie had no stripes to speak of. She would wear a (feminine) uniform at boarding, switch to a casual outfit during the rest of the day, and was always wearing a gown of some sort in the evenings. Deanna Troi for her part cycled through purple jumpsuits and asymmetrical dresses, her Starfleet badge precariously pinned to her neckline. We didn’t even get to see the pips indicating her rank until she was finally given (in story, ordered into) a normal uniform in season six.

The Chick gets saddled with way too many romance plots, some creepier than others. Giving Troi something substantial to do in an episode usually consisted of making her the love interest of whoever happened to be boarding the Enterprise that week, like the ambassador with the telepathic interpreters or the quarter-Betazoid interplanetary negotiator. Deanna also got her mind invaded by a man who was interested in her, prematurely aged by a man who took advantage of her, and kidnapped by Ferengi (who have a disturbing species-wide infatuation with non-Ferengi women). I’m not as upset about Julie having several romance-related plots, as romance was the name of the game on The Love Boat and the men on the crew had their own share of romantic entanglements—but I do find issue with the fact that when Julie was in love she always seemed on the verge of getting married and leaving the ship, which was a vibe we didn’t really get from, say, Doc or Gopher when their love lives turned particularly intense. In terms of creepiness, Julie had to deal with fending off the extremely aggressive advances of Captain Stubing’s uncle, a computer programmer who rigged his dating algorithm to ensure he matched with her, and a college acquaintance of Gopher who actually came to her door to badger her as she was getting dressed.

The Kid

Star Trek TNG: Wesley Crusher

The Love Boat: Vicki Stubing

For some reason, both of these shows thought it necessary to have a preteen/teenager in the cast whose character has way more responsibility than is realistic for either a cruise ship or a pseudomilitary starship. Instead of Vicki wearing a uniform and checking in guests on the Pacific Princess, we really should have seen Julie’s or Gopher’s staff fulfilling check-in duty (Doc and Isaac were also too often seen checking in passengers, which I will say again is a duty that on a real cruise ship would definitely not fall to either the ship’s doctor or chief bartender, but we’re talking about Vicki at the moment). Wesley, meanwhile, was made Acting Ensign on the Enterprise, saving the ship way more than he should have and probably earning the ire of all the official ensigns who actually went to Starfleet Academy and were losing precious time at the conn due to Picard’s favoritism.

Speaking of Picard, The Captain has a paternal relationship with The Kid—literally in Vicki Stubing’s case, emotionally in Wesley Crusher’s. He is very concerned with imbuing The Kid with strong morals, and has a vested interest in The Kid’s upbringing and making sure The Kid has a bright future. Meanwhile, the rest of the main crew are like an assortment of aunts and uncles, being the cool, approachable sources of advice when The Captain’s not around. In fact, The Kid hardly seems to have any friends their own age. Instead, they hang out with the adult crew members and get involved in their social drama, which may or may not have always been appropriate.

Isn’t there someone you forgot?

The TNG fans among you may now be thinking to yourselves, “What about Worf?” Alas, there seems to be no satisfactory Worf counterpart on The Love Boat. After all, there isn’t really any need for a tactical officer on a cruise ship, so a warrior-type personality is not represented on the Pacific Princess crew. Other Worf characteristics would be that of an outsider, or one who is occasionally not sure if they truly belong on the ship, but everyone on the Princess seems pretty happy to be there. I guess in a pinch I could say Ace, the late-addition ship’s photographer, might serve as Worf’s counterpart, but other than the fact that Ace’s family is rich and it is established that he doesn’t really need a job on the ship to get by, I’m not sure there’s much of an “outsider” status brought to the table here. I also haven’t watched enough Ace episodes to have a really good read on his character.

Thus ends my Love Boat/TNG comparison! It was nice to finally get this analysis out of my head and onto the page.

#the love boat #star trek #tng #comparison

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clexa--warrior · 4 years ago

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There’s a new group of villains on Fear The Walking Dead.

Well not entirely new. These are the same people who’ve been scrawling “The end is the beginning” everywhere. The same people with the submarine who are looking for Morgan who took the Magical Key from the bounty hunter way back at the beginning of Season 6.

I admit, I’m just kind of tired at this point. Tired of all the bullshit and bad writing and the tedious characters and the predictable stories. Tired of the parade of mediocre villains. Bone weary. And yet here I am, still reviewing this damn show.

Let’s take a little walk down memory lane, shall we?

TV’s Greatest Villains

At the beginning of Season 5, after the Most Horrible Villain Of Any Walking Dead Show was taken care of at long last, we got a new group of bad guys who . . . just wanted their warehouse back? And directions to an oil refinery?

Truly, these were now The Most Horrible Villains Of Any Walking Dead Show Ever.

Logan (played by a woefully underutilized Matt Frewer) was the head honcho of these bad apples and he fooled Morgan’s group into flying a plane they didn’t know how to fly far, far away to help some strangers in another part of the vast continent of Texas. Then he . . . moved back into his warehouse! The bastard.

After half a season of trying to fix the plane so they could fly back across the Pacific Ocean (which we all know separates the two halves of Texas) Logan tries to pretend like he’s a decent guy and fools the Morganites into showing him where the oil refinery is. Dastardly Logan! Then, just when Morgan and Logan decide that their names are similar enough that they might as well be friends, the Rangers show up!

They show up on horses with rifles and expertly kill Logan and every single member of his crew but for reasons (reasons!) they spare Morgan and the Morganites. It turns out that Logan was working for the evil witch queen of Lawton, Virginia—Truly The Most Horrible Villain Of Any Walking Dead Show Ever (Seriously). She is so evil that she kills the people working for her, who helped lead her to the oil refinery, and spared some people she didn’t know who weren’t loyal to her at all for reasons.

Yes, you heard me. Reasons! You don’t get to know the reasons. That’s not how scripts work. Scripts are supposed to be confusing, opaque and riddled with plot holes and inexplicable character choices.

Anyways, Virginia and the Rangers with their horses and their cowboy hats and their idyllic Texas aesthetic become the new Big Bads sometime in the second half of Season 5. Morgan and Friends make a PSA documentary to make sure anyone wandering from gas station to gas station is able to know who to call (GHOSTBUSTERS!) if they’re in trouble (which, like, yeah it’s a zombie apocalypse) because Morgan really wants to make up for all the bad things he’s done and so do all his friends.

Virginia is very mean, though, and so she makes a PSA, too, and that pisses Morgan off so bad that he takes his people far, far away to an abandoned Western-themed park-town filled with zombies and they make another PSA on the way that’s even more amazing and magical but a dude dies making it, marking the Best Walking Dead Death of All Time in the process. Seriously a dude decides it’s so important to film a selfie shot for the PSA that he dies when a bridge that’s collapsing surprisingly collapses! And then everyone is very sad!

Then, uh, after a spell at the new town that has no resources or water because it’s a theme park town instead of a real town, Wes and Alicia paint some stuff and June and John Dorie get married and Daniel plays some guitar and sings and Frank Dillane is like “Holy shit I’m so glad I bailed on this show” and then Virginia comes because Morgan calls her because instead of walking somewhere else they decide they should call the Evil Witch Queen Of Lawton so she can rescue them by splitting them all up (even Skidmark the cat!) and then the season ends with Morgan getting swarmed by zombies but don’t worry he’s still alive and they’ll tell us as much in a trailer that comes out before Season 6 because AMC is criminally addicted to spoiling their own shows for no reason on social media and . . . and . . .

Somewhere between Season 5’s finale and Season 6’s premiere AMC and showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss must have put their heads together with Scott Gimple and decided that the Rangers and Virginia were actually super dull villains, just like the last few villains (I skipped the whole Vultures plot because they were actually so stupid they put the stadium under siege but still let Madison and co. go out scavenging because somehow they never read the Siege 101 manual or something).

Anyways, for reasons that must be obvious by now, somebody must have pointed out that Virginia is not a very good villain after all, partly because she’s just not that convincing but mostly because she made a goddamn copycat PSA and someone thought that was actually a cool story because there is no God and life’s not fair and this is also why we can’t have nice things, son.

And they must have realized that the Rangers are a like a cartoon version of what might happen in Texas after a zombie outbreak (just compare this clown show to the far more realistic Vatos gang from Season 1 of The Walking Dead). All these realizations must have felt strangely repetitive after what I can only imagine were similar revelations about Martha, the Vultures and Logan. So many revelations, so little useful insight or meaningful changes!

The Believers

In any case, they had June kill Virginia after a weird series of events that also saw one of the only good characters left on this godforsaken show get killed by yet another brat, and came up with The Believers, a group almost entirely inspired by The Monkees. These totally realistic folk live underground where they grow crops and embalm zombies and talk about how you need to be able to “see” when you look at this one creepy zombie they have entwined in vines in their basement. They’re led by a guy named Teddy played by John Glover who must really be down on his luck to take a role on this ridiculous show, though he’s actually creepy as a villain so that’s something. But no, I’m not going to feel any hope or optimism because fool me once shame on me, fool me again and George W. Bush, man. He has something to say about this.

Wes and Alicia and Al and Luciana all find their way to these people. I honestly can’t remember how they found them, but they show up to scout things out. They get interviewed like we’re back in Alexandria. Things go bad when Wes runs into his long-lost brother and ends up killing him after a scuffle over a gun. Wes’s brother has had a little too much of that Kool-Aid if you know what I mean. Wes isn’t too shook up about it. Remember when the entire brothers Dixon conflict between Merle and Daryl played out over the course of one single episode of The Walking Dead? Yeah, me neither.

Luciana says stuff because she’s still on this show for some reason. She says stuff a few times and people say stuff back to her. Al checks an embalmed zombie with a helmet on thinking it might be her lover girl from Season 5, because you totally embalm zombies with their helmets still on, but it’s not. Boy I was really worried there for a second!

Alicia sets the embalmed zombies on fire so they can get away and the others escape but Alicia doesn’t and then she has to have a whole entire conversation with Teddy and it’s pretty damn awkward when she tells him “You wanna kill me? That’s not gonna happen.”

Teddy’s like “whoa damn I was going to kill you but now that’s not going to happen crap” and Alicia’s like “So there, Teddy. You jerk face with your crazy-man beard.”

He knows something about Madison somehow. And he wants to “save you, Alicia” but “I don’t need saving” she tells him and then he talks in more cryptic circles. Teddy’s been looking for someone like Alicia for a long, long time and she’s like “listen old man at least I got some lines this episode!” which, to be fair, is true.

THE END. CREDITS ROLL.

Verdict

Yes, I am clearly mocking just about everything about this show. But I didn’t come up with this crap. I didn’t come up with Martha and the ethanol, or the plane and the beer-balloon, or Totally Pointless Logan, or Ginny and her boring ass cowboys. Maybe Teddy will be a better villain than all these. To be fair, he is a better villain already in a lot of ways. Then again, the bar set by the Vultures, Martha, Logan and Virginia is not very high. It’s so low, it’s less a bar and more of a speed bump.

So while Teddy is far more intriguing than the rest, and it’s even possible that Glover’s brief appearance here in this episode was better than the sum of all the other villains in this show since Season 4, I imagine they’ll find a way to screw him up also and then, as soon as he’s worn out his welcome, replace him with some other group of bad guys. The Shouters, a group of post-apocalyptic crazy people who wear zombie faces and shout at each other really loud, led by a bald woman named Alphapha.

Here’s the thing.

We need more than just Good Guys vs Bad Guys. There are other struggles to work with in fiction. Friction between the group that causes realistic, compelling internal strife. Survival against the elements and just the struggle of surviving in a world laid low by a pandemic, maybe without creature comforts like walkie-goddamn-talkies. Or perhaps a compelling story about a survivalist group at odds with a Native American tribe over water rights, whose intertwined family histories are marred by murder and revenge, where our heroes find themselves torn between both sides of a bloody fight they know very little about.

Yeah, what a notion.

Like I said at the very top of this review, I’m tired. I’m tired of Fear The Walking Dead. I’m tired of the same crap happening over and over again, another absurd bad guys who ultimately make the same fatal choice: They mess with Morgan Jones. NOBODY messes with Morgan Jones.

Maybe Morgan can make a PSA about how mean and delusional Teddy is and then Teddy can make a PSA about how The End Is The Beginning, Actually, Morgan You Twit. It’s just all nonsense at this point and it has been since the end of Season 3. We aren’t dealing with actual stories about real people. We’re watching a cartoon with two-dimensional cartoon villains and a bunch of uninteresting flat characters. Except a cartoon would be more fun.

What is the point of this show now? It’s like a goofier version of The Walking Dead, which also suffers from too many villain groups at this point and too many characters but not this level of crappy writing (usually).

Let me predict the plot for the remainder of Season 6 and likely part of Season 7 if AMC is actually going to let the current showrunners continue driving this show into the ground:

Teddy wants the key from Morgan so he can use it to activate the nuclear bombs on the nuclear sub that’s in the middle of Texas (because Texas, you recall, is separated by the Pacific Ocean which has dried up because ZOMBIES and the sub is there now). He wants to nuke the planet because he wants to save everyone because they’re weak probably. From this nuclear wasteland, new life will spring eternal and his cult—well protected in their underground parking garage with their cute little gardens—will be the new rulers of the world. Or at least of Texas which—we know because of geography class—accounts for approximately 57% of Earth’s land mass.

Look, I’m sorry. I’m really truly sorry but if this show continues to be a joke I don’t know why we should take it seriously. A mocking review if only fitting for a show that continues to make a mockery of itself. AMC has the resources and the wherewithal to produce a better zombie show and quite frankly audiences deserve one. There was nothing fundamentally awful about “The Holding” so I’m honestly not fully sure why I’m in such a snarky mind frame, but there was nothing very good about, either, and it’s just plain as day to me that they’re already falling into the same traps they keep falling into over and over and over again. Meet the new bad guy, same as the old bad guy. It’s all so predictable.

Because they don’t really learn from their mistakes, or because even if they do they just don’t know how to course correct. That’s the problem when you just don’t have much talent but nobody steps in and says “enough is enough!”

Because seriously, my droogies, enough is enough already.

#ftwd #erik kain #i just read the reviews #i may watch this one because reasons and adc

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kathleen-meyer-lyme-survivor · 4 years ago

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DISCLAIMER: I have signed a waiver and become a contributor to an upcoming book by a fellow, healed Lyme patient. Some or all of this story may be published in the coming months. I have added and updated some of this information 9.12.2020, so hopefully I will not violate any copyright laws.

NOTE: Do not assume everything I write here or on my Facebook Lyme page will help. Everyone heals differently. Working with a knowledgeable, sincere doctor and finding the right combination of medication, herbs, personal lifestyle and diet changes will help. One size doesn’t fit all for Lyme disease treatments. Don’t be afraid to research and consult with your doctor. Get a notebook and write down EVERYTHING; diet, exercise, symptoms, dates, times, and ANY physical or emotional stress-causing events. Stress seems to be the biggest culprit of all diseases. Hypocrites stated, “All disease begins in the gut”. HE WAS RIGHT!!

NAME: Kathleen Meyer

I live in Northern VA. I am a retired, 60+ year old Grandmother. I am widowed, and I was living alone when Lyme hit. Symptoms began between September 12-14, 2012.

BACKSTORY: September 12, 2012. I felt something prick my lower back. When I reached around to check, the area was very hot to touch. This was in my car in Reston, Virginia, on a 90+ degree day. I had left the car windows open slightly during the work day.

The previous two weeks, I had been on vacation to the Pacific Northwest, to visit my Sister. While there, I visited a national park, which is highly populated by deer and other furry animals; large and small. There was hiking and a few photo ops while sitting on a rock wall. Deer roam around freely in the town where my Sister lives.

After going to my family doctor almost daily between 9/14-10/12 to complain of strange symptoms, I was finally tested for Lyme, West Nile virus and Rocky Mountain Spotted fever. My doctor was skeptical at first, but I kept insisting the symptoms weren’t normal for any flu I had ever had. When I mentioned living by woods and recently spending time in a national park, I was taken more seriously.

I was diagnosed with Lyme on October 12,2012, (clinically by relating symptoms) and blood work. Side note: Because I had Mono at age 18, I was also diagnosed with Mono “exposed”. I was instructed to go home, stay on bedrest and get clearance from an infectious disease doctor, before returning to work. I was on sick leave and coworker’s leave donations between 10/15-11/13/2012. I was also instructed NOT to work or look at work email while out sick; which I now understand completely. The philosophy seems to be, “Being out on sick leave means you’re too sick to be at work, so don’t try to do any work at home”. Never mind that after two weeks of bedrest, going stir crazy and wanting to do something, is very normal.

TREATMENTS: I was immediately placed on Doxycycline 200 mg, by the family doctor, for 20 days. That didn’t work. Then Doxycycline 200 mg for 10 days. When that didn’t work, there was 30 days additional. When I ran out, I waited between prescriptions about a week or two, to see if symptoms would come back. Symptoms kept coming back. I was on/off Doxycycline for a total of 60 days. My insurance company wouldn’t authorize more than 60 days, so I was given Cefuroxime 500 mg for 30 days.

NOTE: At the beginning of the Cefuroxime prescription I doubled the dose for the first 4 days, just to see what would happen. I realize that wasn’t a very smart thing to do, but I wanted to kill what was making me so sick. After the 4 days, I used the prescription correctly. At the end of the 30 days, no symptoms returned.

NOTE: I always eat yogurt in between any oral antibiotic dose. The reason is because all antibiotics kill all bacteria, including the beneficial bacteria we need in our gut, where the main part of the immune system is located. The other part of the immune system is our brain. The brain and gut communicate with each other UNLESS we have an illness like Lyme. The brain is affected and doesn't communicate correctly with the gut during Lyme, and probably during other autoimmune illnesses.

MYSTERIOUS SYMPTOMS BEFORE TREATMENT: High blood pressure, cardiomegaly, chronic bronchitis, prolapsed mitre heart valve, GERD, Barretts esophagus, large hiatal hernia. Other symptoms; short term memory issues, difficulty with vision, floaters, reading, sensitive to bright light and sunshine. Difficulty walking, bumping into walls, problems with grip and dropping things. Insomnia, sometimes several nights in a row. Constant buzzing, tingling, pain throughout my entire body. Chest pain, head and neck pain, difficulty with bowels, difficulty swallowing and anxiety from feeling so ill for no known reason, except Lyme. I was able to swallow correctly again, after an endoscopy and scraping of webbed growth (non-cancerous).

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW: ALL doctors, nurses including E.R. personnel need to be made aware of how many hundreds of symptoms Lyme can have. It is known to mimic at least 400 other illnesses and syndromes. Millions of people worldwide are being mis-diagnosed or given catch-all diagnosis out of frustration. Doctors have about 15 minutes per patient and don’t have time to research and address everyone’s symptoms. More research is needed and the patient’s symptoms need to be taken more seriously. The phrase “The customer is always right”, needs to apply to patients as well. Haphazard treatment of symptoms and covering up symptoms DOESN’T WORK FOR LYME!!

NOTE: Most medical schools are funded by big pharma. They do not provide enough education to upcoming doctors about Lyme and similar illnesses. They don’t stress enough on nutrition or healthy eating as a benefit to patients. I have asked my doctors and chiropractor about this, and they said the same thing.

Do NOT listen to any doctor who tells you your child has “Growing Pains”. Find a doctor who is knowledgeable about Lyme, preferably a young doctor with a growing family of his/her own. My family doctor diagnosed and treated me correctly, was THAT doctor, not a specialist, a general practitioner.

HOW HAS LYME CHANGED MY LIFE; GOOD AND BAD: Lyme caused me to be bedridden for over 3 weeks, afraid to drive for fear of getting lost, and feeling like I had early onset Alzheimer’s. I now feel that it was an eye-opening experience, which awakened me to how poorly I had been managing my diet and exercise on a daily basis. I also believe the 2012 influenza shot might have been flawed, because I never felt healthy after that, and it possibly weakened my immune system so Lyme and Mono could sneak in.

I went from quick and easy meals and very little exercise to self-improvement. I learned from the Lyme pages on Facebook from reading other people’s stories. It was almost like putting a really large jigsaw puzzle together, very slowly and not having all the pieces in front of me.

SOMETHING I DO NOW THAT I NEVER DID BEFORE LYME: I now pay closer attention to my physical and emotional health, what foods I eat and the amount of daily exercise I get. I also developed pre-diabetes type 2 during the Lyme period. I am now eating real food and watching my weight in order to keep the pre-diabetes under control, without medication.

NOTE: Doctor’s won’t tell you unless you press them, that medication for everything is NOT the best way to control anything, because you’re stuck on the medication for the rest of your life. Our bodies are capable of healing, with help by US.

THE MOST FRUSTRATING PART OF LYME DISEASE: I would have to say, lack of compassion for what patients are going through on the part of medical professionals, insurance companies, news media, and the general public. “Take these pills and you’ll feel better”. This doesn’t work with Lyme disease; trust me. However, I know many people who believe everything their doctor says and I hear, “My doctor says it’s__________. More research is needed and the actual CAUSE should be researched and treated instead of pills to cover up underlying symptoms.

MY BIGGEST SUPPORTER(S): I have a private Facebook page called “Where is Lyme Disease”, which has 249 members. I consider all of them to be my supporters; we support each other. I have been posting there since March, 2015, before any of us realized Lyme is EVERYWHERE!! I HAVE POSTED HOW I TREATED, HEALED AND WHAT I AM DOING NOW TO STAY HEALTHY. Those answers were not readily found using an internet search in 2012. Everything I post on the page is from what I went through. I am trying to help others with Lyme get through it and not give up.

I give all credit to healing to authors of books about Lyme struggles. There are too many to mention, but “Cure Unknown” by Pamela Weintraub was the best one. I read it several times, because the first time I tried to read, the words ran together and blurred because of Lyme. I am now able to read again, and have re-read several books I couldn’t comprehend before. If there’s a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, suspect Lyme!!

BIGGEST DAILY STRUGGLE: Praying it never comes back and thanking God for every day which I am granted. Experimenting with different diet plans and keeping healthy. Getting away from white sugar, white flour and other overly processed, easy to fix foods and getting real food into my body is a daily challenge.

Continuing to learn about and helping others deal with Lyme. I have helped quite a few people NOT give up. I wish I could help everyone or was a millionaire so I could donate money for a cure.

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kurtty-drabbles · 5 years ago

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Lara Croft au (part 2)

N/A: Do I know what am I doing here? not really, I´m just trying to do a worldbuilding exercise here.

@dannybagpipesarecalling @djinmer4 @bamfoftheundead @everykurt @muninandhugin

Doug is tapping on his shoulder on a rhythmic pattern mimicking an old song as his eyes are vibrated on the screen and his other hand is holding his seat strong enough to make his knuckles white. Logan is next to him and only rolls his eyes at this. "Still afraid of flight?" and Doug Ramsey is really good in those scenarios. "Of course not" Doug lied. "I just like to hold my chair really tight and look at the screen of my flight as my life depends on it...and you?"

Logan is not impressed. "I have meds to sleep...It will take 8 hours to arrive at the capital of Zenore, Saphyr...and it will take more 2 hours to reach our real goal...so no reason for you to look as if you´re about to explode...is making me nervous" and Logan offers the meds to Doug.

The mark has the Genosha´s royal brand and Doug asks. "I thought you dislike Genosha..." Doug states and Logan shurgs off. "I may dislike the country, but, I´ll give credit when is due...their meds work like a charm...which is funny cause half of their populace is linked to the magic of some sort" Logan concludes and Doug nods.

"Logan...do you really believe in that myth of the tiaras? A nation that got so advanced just because they made pretty tiaras for Gods isn´t a bit...racists?" Doug asked still dumbfounded by this myth. People still think the Egyptians in the ancient era had their pyramids craft by aliens even though it was more than prove that no alien civilization help in making those pyramids.

Logan groans for a moment. "Look, if you had me ask this 50 years ago I would say yes...but the thing is, Zenore has a bit of mysticism and I´m not too ignorant to say Pheonix and Zaorva can´t exist...maybe this myth is a bit simplest? yes, but...I can´t say it hasn´t some trace of truth either...Zaorva´s stories are..." he clear his throat for a moment. "something else entirely and I saw enough to at least give the benefit of the doubt in regards of those tiaras"

Doug wanted to ask more but when the flight attendant tells they´ll be flying higher for technical reasons- reasons that Doug has no mind to understand- those questions vanish from his mind. "Ok, wake me up when we land safely"

Logan nods but he asks. "Your friend isn´t very nice if she made you pick a flight knowing you´re that scared" Logan censure, Kitty, with his tone and Doug shakes his head.

"No, she was the one who wanted me to prevent to come...but, I´m her right hand and I´ll not let her be alone in this adventure...I just forget I have this problem with flights" Doug almost chuckles but he took the med and his eyes begin to relax a little until Logan´s voice is no more.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Kurt and Kitty watch the scene for a moment. Kitty can feel his golden eyes on her form-she told Doug to not come, there´s no reason to strain himself on her behalf, but, the dumb boy never listen- and she decides to interject. "He wanted to come...and no, what I should do? Lock him in his room and say wait for me? Plus, I hate to travel on ships...and I know we´ll have to travel on one" she shivers a little and shakes her head looking at Doug´s sleeping form direction. "guess he still wants to protect me" and Kurt sees a fond smile play on her lips and frowns as his head snap to the other direction.

"I´ve no fear on ships or flights..." his tone is low and Kitty looks at him confused. "just saying..." and Kurt is save of saying or receive any response when the flight attendant telling that they´re traveling the pacific ocean and soon will arrive in Zenore, of course, soon means 8 hours.

"Are you two want anything to eat?" the flight attendant offers a sultry smile to Kurt, and Kurt only, ignoring Kitty´s request for a glass of water, and Kurt frowns at this.

"Mein frau, we would like a glass of water. One for me and one for my companion, bitte?" he flashes a charming smile and the flight attendant humpf loud and leaves without paying any attention to Kitty, who is again, as she looks at Kurt, confused.

"You know her?" she asked distrusted.

"I´ve no idea...and does it matter when we´ll see DC´s movie for 8 hours?" Kurt changes the subject and Kitty´s eye widens as the movie is about Wonder Woman. Kurt´s eyes glace at Kitty who is in awe at the introduction of Wonder woman.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Amanda Szardos is on the back doors where all the flight attendants take their breaks from their duties and Amanda is right now making a call- Terry Simms rudely points his watch at her to say she has only 5 minutes on the phone and is off to distribute snacks to the passengers- once she´s truly alone for the time being.

"Hello, is me...they´re going to your way. Should I ..." she stops talking and only nods her head and sighs one last time. "I understand. It will be as you say." and she hangs up the phone with her face twisted into something unpleasant.

"Amanda...is your turn now" one of the flight attendants states and Amanda is not bothering with good mood or politeness now.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

"Kurt..." Kitty speaks and once not getting an answer she tries again. "Miss Germany!" she whispered a bit louder and that jolt him on his seat and his golden eyes are focused on Kitty. It is no longer creepy to see his golden eyes in the dark, but, it does make her think of crypts.

"You call me Miss Germany?!"

"Do you think...Magneto wants those Tiaras to gift to his daughters or he wants to do something stupid?" Kitty asked and Kurt chuckles at such a question.

"You wake me up for that? Also, only you can call him stupid and not be punished severely...I´m envious of that" his good mood continues. "Now for the tiaras...I think Magneto is selfish enough to want to have the tiaras all for himself"

"And you´ll be ok with that?"

"You think he would share the tiaras with me? Oh, I´m flatter, Katzchen"

"Don´t call me Katzchen"

"Ok, Katzchen"

#Lara croft au #doug Ramsey #Kitty/Doug Brotp #Kurt is a bit jelly here #Kurt wagner #Logan Howlett #Kitty pryde #kurtty yet #always anti amanda #worldbuilding?#I don´t know

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thuskindlyshescatters · 5 years ago

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Team RWBY and the Very Long Day

Or maybe... not as long as you’d expect?

When the team reaches Atlas Academy and are brought on a tour, they’re dead tired. Now, as someone who’s gone on a number of college tours myself, I totally can relate. And plus, the team has had a really long day -- Volume 6 Chapter 10 through Volume 7 Chapter 2 have all been the same day.

However, it feels a lot longer for us than it should, since we saw it over a nine-month period, and they only experienced it in a day. But how long was that day specifically?

There’s a couple factors we need to consider: time zones, hour of sunset, flight hours, and actual in-show events. By evaluating this, we will determine: How long of a day were the past 6 chapters of RWBY? Is their exhaustion justified by canon events?

Spoilers, math, and lots of pointless reading below.

I) Time Zone

According to this map (the fifth image) from the second “World of Remnant” short, we get a pretty good approximation of the location of Atlas. Argus is on the U-shaped peninsula a third of the way from Mistral to Atlas. Ideally, time zones would work in 24 hour-wide increments, so assuming there is NOT a huge Pacific-like ocean around Remnant’s back half, there is approximately a two-hour time difference between Argus and Atlas. This means the sun sets on Argus earlier than Atlas -- however, Atlas is further North, so sunset may be earlier for them relative to someone at a lower latitude in their timezone. Additionally, it also means the team may experience around two hours of jet lag upon arrival.

II) Sunset

When the gang arrives in Atlas, it is night time. In Volume 6 Chapter 7, they arrive at Argus in mid-afternoon. Because the next episode’s scenes with Cordovin at the base and Maria in the garden do not have the same warm lighting, we can infer that those took place the next day, sometime during the middle of the day. They receive news that Oscar is missing and begin their search -- however, unless they were searching for him like in Volume 1 Chapter 16 (if you recall, that was 12 hours), it’s likely they were out of the house for no more than 4 hours. From the end of Volume 6 Chapter 8 to the end of Volume 6 Chapter 9 might have been from, call it, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM -- meaning sunset was sometime within those hours. It is wintertime in the Northern hemisphere of Remnant (quick summary, it’s been about a year since the end of Volume 3 Chapter 12), so assuming they don’t have daylight savings time, this is a pretty reasonable estimate for when the sun would set in a city whose latitude is comparable to that of Paris. If we take a quick look back at Atlas, it is MUCH farther North than Argus, and is pretty much in the Arctic. If we compare map distances, Atlas might as well be in Iceland, as Paris and Reykjavik are 1,396 air miles away from each other. In December in Iceland, the sun sets at around 3:00 to 4:00 PM. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that people would still be up and about when it appears to be night time in Atlas.

III) Flight Hours

What this means is that the team, in order to leave Argus during daytime (earlier than 5:30 PM) and to arrive in Atlas during nighttime (later than 4:00 PM) when there is a two-hour time difference between them, it works out to assume that the minimum time a flight on an Atlesian dropship would take from Argus to Atlas would be 4 hours. Even more generous would be to allow them 5 hours, considering the pace of the vehicle.

IV) Events

I’d like to start with the evidence we see in Atlas and work backwards to make a fair assumption about when they arrive in Atlas. The amount of people on the streets and the fact that Dr. Polendina’s pharmacy is open makes me want to believe it’s before 6:00 PM. The Faunus miners we see on the passing vehicle makes me wonder if this is accurate, however, because I would assume the miners would work more unreasonable hours than that. I will chalk this up to be a case of world details being more important to show punctually than consistently. Anyways, if we say it’s 5:30 PM in Atlas when they arrive, then it’s likely 3:30 PM in Argus when they depart (accounting for a 4 hour flight and 2 hour time zone difference.)

Now, for the real numbers:

Ruby’s role in the heist takes place more or less in real time, while Blake and Yang’s excursion with Adam is punctuated by breaks of which we cannot know the duration. Therefore, knowing that Blake and Yang rejoin the group in Volume 6 Chapter 13, I will only recount the “cliff-side” events, as it were, to calculate the duration of the heist itself.

Volume 6 Chapter 10

We have no idea when the heist begins. Cordovin, being a military officer, would probably want Weiss to arrive at a sharp hour, so let’s call that hour “X:00″ o’clock. Based off of our previous calculations, the end of the heist must occur at around 3:30, so depending on their length, this hour could be 3:00 PM. (Spoiler: it totally will be.)

The episode begins on the Rooster Teeth website at 2:08 minutes, and from there it pretty much goes in real time until 4:50, which is the moment when Weiss loses scroll signal with Ruby. Ruby loses signal with Weiss at 6:02, so we can deduce that those next 1:12 minutes of Ruby’s timeline are occurring simultaneously with what we see of Weiss. From the beginning of the heist to when Ruby loses signal is 2:42 minutes in real time (how efficient of Weiss!). From 6:02 to 11:02 is the next realtime sequence, at which point we cut to Blake and Adam, but again, we’ll be ignoring them for now. Now, the heist has been in progress for 7:42 minutes; it is X:07.

Volume 6 Chapter 11

The episode officially begins at 2:08 again. The first scene of them talking lasts until 4:01, when it cuts away from them planning to attack. Let’s be generous and give them 30 unspoken seconds where some offscreen planning occurs, making that first sequence about 2:37 minutes. Then, the sequence continues from 4:01 to 9:44 (no, I’m not counting slow motion because that’s dumb). Then, we cut away again. This episode’s total real-time stacks up to 8:20 minutes. Therefore, the heist has now been occurring for 16:02 minutes, so it’s about X:16 o’clock.

Volume 6 Chapter 12

This episode actually starts at 1:57 -- wow, wild. It runs continuously to 7:25 (no, cutting back and forth between dialogue doesn’t fucking count), making this section 5:28 minutes. We cut away to Bees, but we return to Cordovin at 11:42, pretty much exactly where it left off, and that carries on to the end of the episode at 12:54. The total of the episode comes out to be 6:40 minutes, since the Bees got a lot of murder screentime. We are also now 22:42 minutes into the heist, and it is X:22 o’clock.

Volume 6 Chapter 13

Cinder and Neo take up the first few minutes of screentime, so the episode starts for our main heroes at 3:33. It kind of carries over from the previous episode, but there’s enough fighters in the air that I’ll give them 90 seconds of cushion time to compensate for realism. I will also add 30 seconds between when Weiss says they destroyed the mech to when they’re all in the airship taking flight at 4:21. Since they like skipping time so much for dramatic effect, I’ll add ANOTHER 30 seconds between when Ruby realizes she has to face it alone and they hatch their second plan at 8:39. I’m going to stop the clock at 9:55 because Ruby yells for Jinn and stops time in-universe until her Silver Eyes moment at 11:16, which, while awesome, is the first event that occurs once time speeds back up to normal. So that whole first section, including padding, was 8:52 minutes. Then, from Silver Eyes to the end of this time section when they time skip to their arrival at 13:14 is 1:58. Finally, the episode cuts to credits at 16:51, the last line being “welcome home,” making the total for the episode 14:27.

I’d like to note that the episode was 10:50 minutes before they timeskipped to their arrival, so it was 33:32 minutes into the heist and X:33 when they left for Atlas. We said earlier it would be best if they left at around 3:30 PM, and what do you know: the number works out! We can therefore pretty confidently say the heist began at 3:00 PM, which will be important later.

Volume 7 Chapter 1

That’s right folks, we’re not done! Now in Atlas, it is 5:33 PM, just like we predicted it would be. The line “welcome home” is said at 0:38, where I’ll be starting the clock for this episode, but I’ll add the 3:37 of dialogue that occurred the previous episode. They cut away to some pretty Atlas shots while they descend into the city, so I’ll provide 60 seconds of offscreen time. From there, we stay in real time until they put the ship down, which I’ll again provide another 60 seconds for. After their encounter with the MAGA (Make Atlas Great Again, obvs) hecklers, let’s say they walk for another 60 seconds before reaching Piedro’s pharmacy. Continuing to the end of the episode, it’s pretty continuous, except for the extra 90 seconds I’ll provide for them being loaded into the airship. The realtime total for this episode is 18:24 minutes, so it’s been 4 hours and 51:56 minutes since they began the heist, and it’s now 5:51 PM in Atlas.

Volume 7 Chapter 2

The episode starts at 1:46. Let’s be generous and say they’ve been in the air for 2 minutes so far. The episode plays out pretty much in real time until 15:18 where we enter Penny’s montage, so I’ll add about 3 more minutes of travel time to and from Ironwood’s office within Atlas Academy and account the Ironqrow moment for the time it took offscreen for the rest of the group to start Penny’s tour. Then, because I’ve been on many a college tour myself, I expect they’ll be walking for about 10 minutes before they start to feel like they need to collapse. So, in total, this episode takes 29:02 minutes of real time, bringing the amount of time since the start of the heist to 5 hours and 20:58 minutes, making it now approximately 6:21 PM.

In that time, various members of the team have singlehandedly overwhelmed two Argus soldiers, taken control of an airship, fought brutally with their archnemesis, battled a giant mech, flown into the barrel of a cannon, murdered a man, entered a maelstrom of Grimm, obliterated a behemoth of a Final Boss, taken a 4 hour flight, fought an onslaught of new Grimm, reunited with former besties, sisters, and colleagues alike, been arrested, and worst of all gone on a college campus tour.

V) Conclusions

I don’t think the team is suffering from that much jetlag, but I’d definitely be exhausted with that much happening even if it was only 8:21 PM in “my time.” (International travel takes a lot out of you, man.) Additionally, they probably got up earlier in the day (maybe around 9:00 AM, Argus time, if it was a lazy morning), so at this point, they’ve been awake for 11 hours, assuming no one took a nap on the airship.

However, I was surprised to find that even though all 6 of these episodes happened in one day, the actual heist part took only 33 minutes, and their first day in Atlas was about 47 minutes, maybe actually longer. That means that a LOT of the bullshit I listed above was packed into 33 minutes, and the remaining time stretched out over a leisurely hour or so. This post also was made on 11/09, so it might even happen that the next episode CONTINUES this exhausting day, in which case, expect an update.

TLDR: In conclusion, the team deserves to be tired AF because of all the crazy stuff that’s happened to them today. However, they were not awake for an exceptionally long time, nor did the events in Argus actually take up much of their day, much to my surprise.

What was the point of this again?

#rwby #rwby7 #rwby spoilers #this was fun :D #why did I do it tho :DDDD #I could have been posting about something people actually cared about :DDDDDDD #8DDDDDDDDD

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dogsgunsrichmond · 5 years ago

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ember, 2005

"Comrades, I'm very excited today, because the large-scale online survey sina.com that was done for us showed that our next generation is quite promising and our Party's cause will be carried on. In answering the question, "Will you shoot at women, children and prisoners of war," more than 80 per cent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, exceeding by far our expectations. Today I'd like to focus on why we asked sina.com to conduct this online survey among our people. My speech today is a sequel to my speech last time, during which I started with a discussion of the issue of the three islands [Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands and the Spratley Islands --- Ott] and mentioned that 20 years of the idyllic theme of 'peace and development' had come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the saber is the only option for China's next phase. I also mentioned we have a vital stake overseas. The central issue of this survey appears to be whether one should shoot at women, children and prisoners of war, but its real significance goes far beyond that. Ostensibly, our intention is mainly to figure out what the Chinese people's attitude towards war is: If these future soldiers do not hesitate to kill even noncombatants, they'll naturally be doubly ready and ruthless in killing combatants. Therefore, the responses to the survey questions may reflect the general attitude people have towards war..We wanted to know: If China's global development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries; will our people endorse that scenario? Will they be for or against it?

The fact is, our 'development' refers to the great revitalization of the Chinese nation, which, of course, is not limited to the land we have now but also includes the whole world. As everybody knows, according to the views propagated by the Western scholars, humanity as a whole originated from one single mother in Africa. Therefore no race can claim racial superiority. However, according to the research conducted by most Chinese scholars, the Chinese are different from other races on earth. We did not originate in Africa. Instead, we originated independently in the land of China. Therefore, we can rightfully assert that we are the product of cultural roots of more than a million years, civilization and progress of more than ten thousand years, an ancient nation of five thousand years, and a single Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the Chinese nation that calls itself 'descendants of Yan and Huang.'

During our long history, our people have disseminated throughout the Americas and the regions along the Pacific Rim, and they became Indians in the Americas and the East Asian ethnic groups in the South Pacific. We all know that on account of our national superiority, during the thriving and prosperous Tang Dynasty our civilization was at the peak of the world. We were the centre of the world civilization, and no other civilization in the world was comparable to ours. Later on, because of our complacency, narrow-mindedness, and the self-enclosure of our own country, we were surpassed by Western civilization, and the centre of the world shifted to the West.

In reviewing history, one may ask: Will the centre of the world civilization shift back to China? Actually, Comrade Liu Huaqing made similar points in early 1980's Based on an historical analysis, he pointed out that the centre of world civilization is shifting. It shifted from the East to Western Europe and later to the United States; now it is shifting back to the East. Therefore, if we refer to the 19th Century as the British Century and the 20th century as the American Century, then the 21st Century will be the Chinese Century! (Wild applause fills the auditorium.)

Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs. As a result, we have a longer history, more people, and larger land area. On this basis, our ancestors left us with the two most essential heritages, which are atheism and great unity. It was Confucius, the founder of our Chinese culture, who gave us these heritages. These two heritages determined that we have a stronger ability to survive than the West. That is why the Chinese race has been able to prosper for so long. We are destined 'not to be buried by either heaven or earth' no matter how severe the natural, man-made, and national disasters. This is our advantage. Take response to war as an example. The reason that the United States remains today is that it has never seen war on its mainland. Once its enemies aim at the mainland, the enemies would have already reached Washington before its congress finishes debating and authorizes the president to declare war. But for us, we don't waste time on these trivial things. Maybe you have now come to understand why we recently decided to further promulgate atheism. If we let theology from the West into China and empty us from the inside, if we let all Chinese people listen to God and follow God, who will obediently listen to us and follow us? If the common people don't believe Comrade Hu Jintao is a qualified leader, begin to question his authority, and want to monitor him, if the religious followers in our society question why we are leading God in churches, can our Party continue to rule China??

The first pressing issue facing us is living space. This is the biggest focus of the revitalization of the Chinese race. In my last speech, I said that the fight over basic living resources (including land and ocean) is the source of the vast majority of wars in history. This may change in the information age, but not fundamentally. Our per capita resources are much less than those of Germany's back then. In addition, economic development in the last twenty-plus years had a negative impact, and climates are rapidly changing for the worse. Our resources are in very short supply. The environment is severely polluted, especially that of soil, water, and air. Not only our ability to sustain and develop our race, but even its survival is gravely threatened, to a degree much greater than faced Germany back then Anybody who has been to Western countries knows that their living space is much better than ours. They have forests alongside the highways, while we hardly have any trees by our streets. Their sky is often blue with white clouds, while our sky is covered with a layer of dark haze. Their tap water is clean enough for drinking, while even our ground water is so polluted that it can't be drunk without filtering. They have few people in the streets, and two or three people can occupy a small residential building; in contrast our streets are always crawling with people, and several people have to share one room.

Many years ago, there was a book titled Yellow Catastrophes. It said that, due to our following the American style of consumption, our limited resources would no longer support the population and society would collapse once our population reaches 1.3 billion. Now our population has already exceeded this limit, and we are now relying on imports to sustain our nation. It's not that we haven't paid attention to this issue. The Ministry of Land Resources is specialized in this issue. But we must understand that the term 'living space' (lebenstraum) is too closely related to Nazi Germany.

The reason we don't want to discuss this too openly is to avoid the West's association of us with Nazi Germany, which could in turn reinforce the view that China is a threat. Therefore, in our emphasis on He Xin's new theory, 'Human Rights are just living rights' we only talk about 'living' but not 'space' so as to avoid using the term 'living space.' From the perspective of history, the reason that China is faced with the issue of living space is because Western countries have developed ahead of Eastern countries. Western countries established colonies all around the world, therefore giving themselves an advantage on the issue of living space. To solve this problem, we must lead the Chinese people outside of China, so that they can develop outside of China.

Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan and some other countries! Second, even if we could snatch some land from Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.

Therefore, solving the 'issue of America' is the key to solving all other issues. First, this makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and even establish another Chinaunder the same leadership of the CCP. America was originally discovered by the ancestors of the yellow race, but Columbus gave credit to the White race. We the descendants of the Chinese nation are ENTITLED to the possession of the land! It is historical destiny that China and United States will come into unavoidable confrontation on a narrow path and fight. In the long run, the relationship of China and the United States is one of a life-and-death struggle. Of course, right now it is not the time to openly break up with them yet. Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology. We still need America. Therefore, we must do everything we can to promote our relationship with America, learn from America in all aspects and use America as an example to reconstruct our country. Only by using special means to 'clean up' America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.

There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of 'cleaning up' America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focused instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people are strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. According to the computations of the author of Yellow Peril, more than half of the Chinese will die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people! Just after the liberation, our yellow land supported nearly 500 million people, while today the official figure of the population is more than 1.3 billion. This yellow land has reached the limit of its capacity. One day, who know how soon it will come, the great collapse will occur any time and more than half of the population will have to go.

It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths, But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we'd have to pick the latter, as, for us, it is more important to safeguard the lives of the Chinese people and the life of our Party. The last problem I want to talk about is of firmly seizing the preparations for military battle. The central committee believes, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan, but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites. Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of the new society. Therefore war is the midwife for the birth of China's century.

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kimyoonmiauthor · 5 years ago

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Types of Cultural Dissemination for Laymen

If you won’t bother reading the profile, and the previous posts, I’m going to introduce myself again. I’m an anthropology major, and short of Calc I for my degree. (which I’m miserably failing and I don’t need). For my BA I focused mainly on systems (racism, sexism, etc), but my true interest is in media exchange with systems. i.e. trade of things like movies, books, and seeing how they are interpreted in the country of origin v. internationally and how they might be reinterpreted, etc with a focus on say... gay people. So say, how Sailor Moon views gay couples and how they are represented versus how say, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus were made cousins for the sub and why that might have changed for the DVDs. No one was interested in something like this though, since we’re still stuck with Eurocentricism, even though I did a paper for my high school’s senior thesis back in 1999. (It’s been a long road) As such, I know the internet loves, loves to confuse cultural dissemination terms up, and make it super simple, but it isn’t. And last round of me doing this essay had it stolen, so, in respect to that, I’m going to be giving my profs credit for their ideas, so if it does get stolen (again), at least SOMEONE will get credit. (maybe, hopefully). So I tip my hat off to:

Wendy Fonarow for the basic analogy of the house for imperialism.

Also Eric Johnston for the physical Anthropology parts of the article.

Lilith Mahmud for having an awesome class on systems and power struggles.

Jerry Won Lee for being really good at talking about Korean history and its relations with the US.

Eleana Kim for doing studies on Korean adoptees and economics of that.

And James Egan for teaching about Economics and various types of reciprocity and exchanges. (He’d also credit Marcel Mauss’s work on reciprocity.)

I ask, if you don’t credit me for this, you at least keep in their credits. Though it’s pretty much a terrible move to appropriate an essay on the subject of appropriation in the first place. Also, any mistakes made aren’t their fault since I compiled this myself. I apologize to them ahead of time if this is the case. But please please keep the credits. If this essay is so good, to be stolen, at least have respect for them.

Basic terms:

Cultural Dissemination is the spreading of culture to one place to another either by mutual, imposed or invited consent.

There is an essay (which I know my professors would chase me after to cite... but I disagree) about how Nationhood is more recent, so ideas of “imperialism” and “appropriation” are more problematic for time periods roughly before the 1400′s (probably a mistake on the dates). But I’m still a bit skeptical about it being so widely accepted since there’s historical evidence for the idea of sacrificing yourself to the state going way back in human history (They would point to the rise of agriculture, mainly) and the essay is widely Eurocentric with no one questioning this fact. So while we don’t have specific dates for the following things, I’m going to probably simplify it in ways my professors are going to hate me for and mark me down for. But then this isn’t a paper for them. Types of Cultural Dissemination

Cultural Exchange- basically, this is your trade. Someone comes up with a cultural good, you share it with them, and you think it’s a great idea, so take it back and keep it as it is and then give them something in return. Trade, BTW, goes back to Homo Erectus, so humans didn’t invent it. There is evidence in a Chinese cave of rocks from Africa (yes, I know that Africa isn’t a country, but it also got sliced and diced to smithereens, so in respect to that, that’s why I say Africa, the continent) that must have followed a trade route. Granted there is debate whether it was someone traveling from Africa specifically to that location or if it traveled more slowly by local trade. (Credit to Johnston for this). The idea that Homo sapiens sapiens invented trade, and specifically Europeans is pretty ridiculous. We’ve always traded from the beginning.

Cultural Adaptation (as a sub category of Exchange)- If something exchanged is adapted to the country in its own unique way because of exchange over a long period of time, that’s Cultural adaptation of the object. And no, I’m not saying cultures get “better” with this term. There is no such thing, they change, but the needs from that object when embedded into a culture might need to change. So chopsticks and how they are used is slightly different from China, Korea, Mongolia and Japan, so since they became a part of how to eat food, their design is different. (There are youtube videos on why, etc) Cultural Sharing or Cultural Invitation- is one way. (Cultural sharing is used more than cultural invitation, but I think Cultural invitation is more precise). I invite you to learn about how I do things and participate. Like learning how to make kimchi or soy sauce. But I also expect that once you have this knowledge, you won’t backstab me later after all of that emotional labor put in. Cultural Appreciation- Look, don’t touch. Basically the museum model. You don’t try to steal the painting off the wall and then take it home and claim you painted it. You look at how its curated and appreciate it for where it is (Yes, I know about museums appropriating objects... we’ll get there.)

Fetishization of a culture- Basically having a crush on a culture without understanding and accepting the downsides of the culture. Accepting means you can’t change what’s wrong, but can enable people within that culture to change it if they want to. (How to do charity is another essay, though). For example, K-drama fans who weren’t Korean were not appreciative of Greatest Marriage, the drama, because it showed the underbelly of Single Motherhood in Korean society and they rallied against it and judged Korea directly for it, rather than taking a balanced approach to it.

Cultural Appropriation

- Stealing. If people made the word stealing, I think they’d understand it better. There are three basic conditions for this and exacerbation points. It’s not clear cut in some cases. (I’ll get to those) BTW, some would also argue can’t exist before the nationstate... as I said I’m iffy on that considering the history of China which predates most of Europe.... but later.

The three main points are:

History of Imperialization (exacerbation of making it worse)

Mockery of cultural items (or history thereof)

Taking of Sacred objects without invitation of participation or any understanding.

Imperialism -

Basically forcing “help” along the way by imposing one’s culture on another with total disregard for what’s there. (for the context of this essay, though my professors would chase me for simplifying it this way.) Not sorry. Also argued, you need the nation state for this, but I have a whole other essay for why Europe tried to colonize and imperialize the world. Imperializing, though, initially profitable ran out of steam once they came to the Pacific, though no doubt they did a ton of destruction, including the US causing a nuclear disaster in the area. (The irony that the US dropped more nuclear bombs than anyone and has one of the largest programs, yet regulates others is an example of nationalism and imperialism all in one neat package). This one goes to Egan, BTW. People have meltdowns over these things and mix them up, but I put it in a simple way for you. All of these have basic forms of human rules worldwide of emotional intelligence, consent, boundaries, love and respect. What you are willing to share or not share and how, on an individual level should be understandable to everyone. Those rules might change per culture or individual, but it’s basic human intelligence to respect boundaries. And this type of intelligence is taught in kindergarten worldwide (and believe me I’ve watched a lot of those videos--most kindergartens teach emotional intelligence). Got it?

The idea that sharing, appreciation, appropriation, and adaptation are the exact same thing is ridiculous. So let’s get into why this is different since some people forgot their lessons from kindergarten. But let’s get to the next section. An Analogy to break it all down. The initial analogy handed to me was that often White Europeans would go to a different tribe and then try to get them to sell a different tribe’s lands. (Africa and North America and Australia and New Zealand apply here) which is like someone going to your neighbor’s house and offering a bunch of cash for your house, writing up a deed of sale, and then claiming that your house is there’s. This is Wendy Fonarow’s analogy.

What I did, since I got annoyed with how people couldn’t personalize it and thought that say killing 80,000 people isn’t as bad as someone they know dying, was when I was in a doctor’s office, think about how to break it down, since my analogy of the museums and paintings wasn’t working for a group I was talking to about appropriation, and how to extend that to a larger sample. I wrote that essay, posted it, it got stolen (the irony isn’t lost on me), but I’ve improve it since because I’m a fan of extended analogies. In the positive reciprocity model, as James Egan would put it, you give hoping for something close to an equal exchange. But often money is the cut off point for this. This is called “Balanced reciprocity”. (There is also generalized reciprocity and negative reciprocity).

So I’ll go over the set up for the balanced reciprocity models with two families for the terms except fetishization, appropriation and imperialism.

Say, Person X is invited to Person Y’s house. This would be sharing. They have dinner, there, they really like the food. If they look at the art and like it, then that’s appreciation. They looked, but didn’t touch it. Now, say, Person X invites Person Y to their house. They also serve them dinner, then that becomes an exchange. Person Y comes to admire a painting of theirs

Say Person X goes to build a family and Person Y does too. They become the best of friends, and over time, Person X is like, “You know what, I want to give you the painting you so like.” And then Person Y said, “And I’d like to give you the painting you so like.” So they trade the paintings and talk about their history and meaning to them. So for generations both families keep the paintings and keep in contact, but the paintings, as they do, get damaged beyond repair, and being sad, one of the family members tries to recreate the paintings, not as an exact replica, but more like a tribute to it with their own interpretations of what has happened so far. This becomes adaptation. So let’s go over the negative models in analogy. You have Person A, and they really, really think that Person B does not deserve the house they are living in. I mean, look at all that gold. And they’ve heard there is a fountain of youth inside. And they look dirty all the time. Plus they have a beautiful garden they want. Person A, then goes to Person C, Person B’s neighbor and says, “You know what, I’ll give you a bunch of goods and money to sell Person B out.”

Person C has always hated Person B, and Person A knows it, so Person C writes up a house sale slip, even though it’s fake. Person A, living in a different county currently is able to file the house sale. They break into the house, steal the food, wreck the garden, and say the upper floors are all for them. Person B finds out and is devastated, but can’t get the house sale overturned because they have no jurisdiction there. They work from home, but now Person A says they own their transportation too.

Person A starts telling them how terrible they really are. “You’re dirty, you’re angry, and you’re violent.” when Person A was the one that broke into person B’s house. What’s more, Person A moves their family in, who also trash the house and starts claiming that the alter that Person B set up was invented by them and they built it. Then claim all of the clothes are also theirs because they bought it with the house. Person B can’t get the law to kick these people out. How are they less than A? How are they violent? They try to resist, but get taunted and jeered at, but Person A’s family tells them, they can live in the basement--if they want.

Person B’s family has no recourse and no money to recover the house or move--besides, this house was in their family for generations--it means a ton to them. They remember when their great grandfather planted that apple tree which he brought to the property by a tiny sapling. They live in the basement, hoping things will change.

Things don’t change. Person A starts telling Person B’s family, they own the house, and another generation rolls by. Person B’s family is fighting for the house, but law enforcement is ignoring them.

Person A starts saying that the clothes that Person B owned were their invention. That they can do as they like, but Person B needs to adapt to Person A’s way of life, otherwise, they’ll cut off their food supply, and water to the basement, though Person B barely gets either of those. Person A’s family starts selling the unique designs of Person B’s home business and Person B finds out once again, they can’t sue, but they are upset about it. What’s more, they find out that the items from the alter are being sold. So far, it’s imperialism. So, say Person A’s family after generations goes, “You know what? Our bad. You’ll still have to live in the basement, but now we think we kinda like you enough to let you guys have jobs, even though you’re lazy all this time and we can’t understand why you couldn’t make any money.”

Someone from Person A’s family, let’s say Becky, thinks of the poor people living in the basement and starts calling them a great culture that people should appreciate. But when Person B’s family complains about the generational hate they received from Person A’s family and how much that hurt their present conditions because they don’t get heat in the basement, food or water, and they have to fight each other, Becky won’t hear about it. Becky cares more about what clothes are Person B’s family creating now that they can sell to her. She cares about more what types of entertainment they watch. She doesn’t want to hear about how they have barely any food or water and have to live by her family’s terms. Because her family is good and righteous and besides, it was her great grandfather that stole the house and where is Person A’s family supposed to live anyway? Back at Person A’s original house? Unthinkable. The old house didn’t have the garden, the clothes, or Person B’s established business. This is fetishization. If you have no interest in understanding why or who the people are in full breath and their joys and sorrows, it is a total misunderstanding of the culture. Basic rules of consent, boundaries, love and respect apply to large groups of people as it does to individuals. Also, punching people while telling them how great they are, is generally a terrible idea. The fancy jargon doesn’t change that. You don’t go and wreck people’s temples and think you’re a great person. You don’t steal their stuff. And you don’t buy their goods only and think you know everything about them. Anthropology teaches you to ask respectful questions and listen and dive deep. That’s respect. Something if you forgot, Mr. Rogers taught on his TV show. Where appropriation gets tricky

The easiest one is dread locks. The history of dread locks is that they started in Africa, traveled and were shared/traded with West Asians (Jews, for example,) then traveled to India. Some say they started in India. You can read the history here: http://ragingrootsstudio.com/the-history-of-dreadlocks/

So then it strongly got associated with black people, but really, it’s a giant circle. The problem lies in the face that white people (despite white people also wearing them in history) often call dreadlocks “dirty” and “unkempt��. (This is why I instill the rule of if you’re going to judge others, look at yourself first). So this is where it gets tricky... There is also sideways appropriation. Say when Koreans take reggae music, and then say they like it because they relate to the struggles of Jamaicans. (This one makes me squirm personally) Koreans have no understanding of the music dynamics of reggae music, how it relates to the culture, and are appropriating a struggle of slavery that isn’t theirs. At the same time as absorbing Hollywood movies which contain anti-blackness (like the N-word, gangs, etc). But technically, Korea has never imperialized Africa. (There is some history in Joseon and the earlier kingdoms where they cooperated, but you really have to dig to find it). For me, it makes me uneasy... but it’s this wobbly line since there are equally black people into K-pop music that have no intention of learning anything about the culture. (Two wrongs don’t make a right... but still iffy around the corners.)

Then there are the politics with diaspora with some countries too, where say, a Native Japanese says they are “real” Japanese and have NO problem with say a tea ceremony, (even if the details are done wrong), because the country is pushing towards tourism to generate profits, and then the diaspora saying “You’re backstabbing us because you don’t go through a third of the prejudice that we went through” (In this case the internment camps). Because people don’t all think the same. And if native Japanese saw the rise and fall of diaspora businesses, they probably wouldn’t be backstabbing about fetishization. (BTW, this also goes for Korea, which I’m pretty much railing against them trying to push tourism so much because I’ve seen the cost of cultural fads. Chinatowns are looking pretty nasty these days for a reason. And fetishization can easily turn to hate in the next breath and devastate economies.) And then someone say, writing a black person as a white person, which could go several ways. It could be brilliant because they did the research, figured out the boundaries and consent rules, or it could be say... Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the modern era. It’s OK for it to be iffy. Just sort it out. And most of the time it’s better to get an invitation and research and learn than it is to take and say you appreciate it. People want it to be black and white, especially with the European ideals of binary. But also examine and be uncomfortable with the grey’s too. Because everyone is on some kind of spectrum there aren’t clear cut answers the majority of the time. Celebrate that. (Except that the Earth is egg-shaped-ish and is rounder than a ping pong ball and you should always give credit where it is due, because the idea of copyright goes back to the time we were all foragers.)

#culture #cultural appreciation #cultural appropriation #cultural anthropology

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loretranscripts · 5 years ago

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Lore Episode 130: In Plain Sight (Transcript) - 25th November 2019

tw: none

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

In early winter of 1822, Captain Samuel Barrett Edes became a hero. He was sailing in the south-east Pacific when he and his crew encountered a Dutch ship that was in trouble. Edes managed to save every single one of the Dutch soldiers, and then headed for the city of Batavia, known today as Jakarta, to drop them off and see if a reward could be collected. While he waited, he did some shopping. Now, Edes wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he owned a small portion of the ship he sailed and of course, he was expecting a handsome reward for his heroic efforts. With this in mind, he kept an eye open for something unusual and conversation-worthy to take home, and that’s when he saw it. It was a mummified mermaid. It was over two feet long, had the curved tail one might find on a fish, but the upper body of something much more human in shape. It was brown from the preservation process, wrinkled with age and entirely addictive to look at, and Captain Edes knew instantly that he had to own it. In late January of 1822, he did something bold. He sold the ship he did not fully own and used the proceeds to buy the mermaid. Then he found transportation back to London and put the odd creature on display, because just about everyone who saw it believed that it was real.

Of course, there were those who could see through the hoax. Captain Edes had been fooled by a clever craftsman who had sewn the torso of an orangutan onto the lower half of a large salmon. Elements were added to the face and hands to give it a more humanlike appearance, but those with training in natural science and anatomy could spot the hidden clues that gave it all away. That didn’t matter to most people, though. The idea that mermaids could be real had been around for centuries, so when something as powerful as a mummified specimen floated into their world, they were blind to its flaws and impossibility. They wanted to believe, deep down inside, that the hybrids of folklore actually existed. Today, we know a lot more about our world than we used to, but if we were to go back in time and live through a less learned age, we would be amazed at the stories that await us, tales of creatures that sit at the very edge of our imagination, living things that defy logic, and monsters that inspire wonder. Our hearts want to believe while our minds are ready to move on. Instead, what we tend to feel is a mixture of deep curiosity and primal fear, and if the tales from the past are any indication, there’s a good reason why. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

When we talk about the natural world, the very first thing we need to do is gain some perspective. Today, we live in a technologically rich society. We carry supercomputers in our pockets that are more powerful than the ones that sent the first humans to the moon. We can walk past an intriguing part of our neighbourhood, pull out our phones and look at a satellite map or do a search for more information. We’re still hungry people, curious and drawn to unanswered questions, but rather than starving in a house with little food, we feast each day on a never-ending buffet of answers and information. Today, if you want to know something, chances are good you can learn about it in an instant, but hundreds of years ago, that was an impossibility. Not that people didn’t try, though. 2000 years ago, a Roman named Gaius Plinius Secundus attempted to gather everything knowable into one place, and he did an admirable job considering the world he lived in. Gaius was born into a wealthy Roman family in the year 24AD and followed a path of privilege all the way to the top. He was well educated, well connected, and when he entered the Roman military, he quickly rose to the second highest level possible – the equestrian order. Once out of the military, he served as a lawyer, before being assigned various governorships around the empire, and towards the end of his life, he had the privilege to serve as advisor to two different emperors. Today, we know him as Pliny the Elder, but in his day, Gaius was a success story.

Looking back, his biggest legacy was his 37 volume collection of knowledge called Natural History. It was possibly the world’s first encyclopaedia, gathering everything known about a whole array of subjects, from farming and botany to geography and anthropology, but the most influential contribution, filling up volumes seven through 11, were his writings on zoology, the study of all living creatures. But here’s the thing – Pliny the Elder, like everyone else in his society, lacked the proper tools to dig deep and apply hard science to every creature he wrote about. He also lacked the ability to travel and see each animal he described, so he relied heavily on others, like Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and the writings of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, and that meant his collection was less than perfect. How so? Well, his work on zoology included such amazing animals as dragons, mermen, and even something called a blemmyae, a race of hairy, human-like beings who literally had no head on their shoulders, with eyes and a mouth right in the middle of their chest. Pliny was thorough, for sure, but not very discerning with his source material.

But what his work did do was give birth to something a lot of people have heard of, a type of book known as a bestiary. It took a while for their availability to spread, but by the early middle ages, bestiaries were a common enough resource. They were, at the basic level, books about known animals, typically with colourful drawings to help the reader visualise the specific details of each entry, and over the centuries, some editions became more popular than others. One of the most famous is the Aberdeen Bestiary, an illuminated manuscript that dates back to the 12th century. Aside from being a beautiful example of medieval artwork – and I mean that, you should seriously do an internet search for sample pages – the Aberdeen Bestiary is also a powerful example of just how popular these books really were. It’s filled with images of all sorts of animals, along with rocks, fish, trees and even worms, and a lot of the entries in the manuscript include notes about the nature of the thing in question, making it a valuable reference tool for any budding naturalist. But these bestiaries did more than that – they inspired the popular culture of their day.

England’s King John, who reigned from 1177 to 1216 was said to have a copy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History in his personal collection, and John’s son and successor, King Henry III, even used images from it to decorate one of the chambers at Westminster. As their popularity spread, more and more writers got in on the tradition. The Norman poet Philip de Thaun wrote a bestiary about a generation after William the Conqueror invaded England, and it became a gift for King Henry II’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even Leonardo da Vinci made one. It seems if you were an intelligent person in the middle ages or the Renaissance, making your own bestiary was practically a rite of passage – and let’s be honest, colourful manuscripts filled with unbelievable creatures and animals that defied logic couldn’t not be popular. Humans have this innate desire to look at curious things. We’ve always been rubberneckers, straining to take a long, hard look at things that sit outside our normal experience, and the spread of bestiaries is proof of that. But those ancient books and manuscripts also teach us something else about ourselves. Human beings are creative creatures. When faced with a mysterious gap in our knowledge, we’re more likely to invent something to plug the hole than to leave the question unanswered – and what we’ve come up with is equal parts entertaining and downright terrifying.

I mentioned earlier how the internet and the accessibility of powerful devices has given us an edge over our predecessors, and in a lot of ways that’s true. Yes, we have access to a huge majority of our collective knowledge, but not all of it. In fact, there are still things we don’t know. For example, scientists today believe that there are roughly 8.7 million animal species on this planet, and yet 86% of the ones that would live on land still haven’t been discovered or studied, and it’s even worse inside our oceans, where over 90% of life is still a mystery to us. We know a lot, yes, but our world is massive and diverse, and that makes the learning process slow and tedious. Some animals are also a bit harder to track down, they’re less abundant or more shy, and so it’s made studying them more of a challenge. A good example is the platypus. For a very long time, scientists thought the descriptions of it were nothing more than a hoax. I mean, it was rumoured in 1799 to be a hybrid of a duck and a water rat, part mammal and part bird, with venomous spurs that could kill a dog, and while we’ve learnt more about them over the years, the platypus is still an allusive creature. A recent documentarian was able to get what he considered to be a goldmine of actual footage of the animal, amounting to about 30 seconds, and when only half a minute of film is something to celebrate, you know the animal is hard to study.

Of course, while we’re searching for new species, the ones we do know about are slowly dying off, which doesn’t help. Some estimates place the number of species on the edge of extinction at around 20,000, and more get added to that list all the time. For the medieval writers of bestiaries, this would be their worst nightmare. All those creatures belong in their books, and yet they keep slipping away. But at the same time, not being able to see an animal never really stopped those ancient writers from including it in their catalogue of life on earth. In fact, there are a lot of entries that would cause most people to scratch their heads, because while, yes, we’ve grown in our understanding of the world around us, these bestiaries serve as a time capsule of our gullibility. As far back as Pliny the Elder’s collection on natural history, we can see those less believable creatures pop up. He once wrote that thousands of sea-nymphs known as neriads had washed up on the shores of what is modern day France, and that they looked just like the nymphs of the land, except that they were covered in fish scales. He also wrote about that fiery bird of legend known as the phoenix, which was known to burst into flames before re-emerging from its own ashes. And of course, I’ve already mentioned his fascination with mermen and blemmyae. It seems that Pliny the Elder had an obsession with gathering all known creatures, whether or not he had witnessed them with his own eyes.

Other historians added their own contributions to those mystical lists as well, and if I ran through it for you now, it would sound like a recap of the Harry Potter series. Hippos and elephants shared the same space as hippogriffs and mandrakes. There were dragons and tritons, giants and sea monsters. Honestly, it sometimes seemed that if a young child could draw a picture of it, that was good enough to get it included. Of course, some creatures were more popular than others, and that popularity varied from culture to culture. In Europe, one of the most talked about creatures of all was also one of the smallest, but don’t let its size fool you, because there was nothing safe about the basilisk. Our old friend, Pliny the Elder, wrote about it 2000 years ago, describing it as a serpent with legs that was no larger than a foot in length. But what it lacked in size, it more than made up for with attitude and special features. A basilisk was said to stand tall on its back legs and had a crown-like plume on top of its head. And they were dangerous, too – according to the stories, basilisks were so poisonous that even looking at them could get you killed. Other creatures avoided the like the plague, and wherever they chose to make their nests, the plant life would die and wither away. One description I read said that if a man on horseback stabbed the basilisk with a spear, the poison was so powerful that it could climb up the spear, kill the man, and then kill the horse as well.

Of course, when something is that powerful and deadly, it eventually becomes the centrepiece of tales of valour. It’s said that Alexander the Great once killed a basilisk, and like many of the other legends about him, he did it in a way that proved not just his might but also his intelligence. It’s said that he polished his shield until it was like a mirror, and then approached the creature holding it outward. When the basilisk saw its own reflection, it fell victim to its poisonous gaze and instantly dropped dead. We can find images of the basilisk in just about every bestiary in existence, most of which look like a cross between a snake and a rooster. There’s a statue of one in Vienna, commemorating an 11th century hunt, and there’s even a church in Sweden with a carved relief showing St. Michael stabbing one with a spear. So popular was this creature that people sold powders that they claimed to be ground-up basilisk, something that most people purchased for use in alchemy, but more than a few used as an antidote to poison. Everywhere you look through the middle ages and earlier, the basilisk is waiting to rear its poisonous little head. You can see society’s attraction to it in their folklore and superstition, a mixture of fear and fascination, of wonder and disgust. For centuries, it popped up in stories whispered all around Europe, like a well-loved character in a popular book series. But if one account is any indication, it might not be a work of fiction after all.

The people of Warsaw had a problem on their hands. They were two decades into a new political structure known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and while it gave a lot of freedom to the wealthy and elite, it left the lower class in a constant state of fear and oppression. Life in the city was challenging for many people, but that was the new normal. In 1587, though, something happened to put the people of Warsaw on edge. Livestock in the area around an old, ruined building had begun to turn up dead. Even a few of the neighbouring residents had been found poisoned in their beds, washing over the community with a wave of grief and loss. And in the midst of all that confusion and pain, two of the neighbourhood children disappeared. Well, disappeared might not be the right word for it. Folks had seen the two young girls playing near the ruins, they had watched them laugh and skip and revel in the freedom and joy that came with childhood, most likely muttering quiet prayers that it would last as long as possible. The neighbours knew what sort of hard life awaited those girls once they were old enough to work and carry their own weight. Their joy must have been bittersweet.

And then someone watched them step inside the ruins. That was the first reason to worry. Folks avoided the ruins for a good reason – it was dark and dangerous, and the cellar beneath it had been a den for all sorts of animals. So, whoever it was that watched them disappear into the shadows most likely headed over to warn the girls’ parents. When everyone arrived at the ruins to call them out, though, they were no longer visible. While there was a good chance they had simply moved on to a new playground, someone decided to peer inside the dark cellar, and there, laying on the broken stone floor, were the sleeping forms of both girls. So, one of the older women stepped inside to wake them. A moment later, though, she collapsed into a heap beside the girls, sending the growing crowd into a panic. They didn’t know what was causing the people inside the cellar to lose consciousness, but they knew there was something dangerous about the dark space, so they sent for a fire hook – a long pole with a metal hook on the end – and then reached in and pulled each body out into the light. All three of them were dead, and not just dead – they were bloated and dark, as if they’d been dead for days. Most frightening of all, though, was that their eyes seemed to be protruding from their sockets. No one could be sure, but it almost looked as if they’d been frightened to death.

Wanting answers, they sent for Benedictus, the king’s very own physician. If anyone would have the skill to identify the danger, it would be him. And, sure enough, after taking a long look at the trio of bodies, he brought them a definitive answer. All of them had been killed by a basilisk. In an instant, the atmosphere around the old ruins changed. Newcomers came to watch, while leaders gathered to form a plan. Something had to be done, and just like the stories all of them had grown up with, it seemed that a basilisk hunt was in order, but the trouble was no one wanted to risk their lives by entering the cellar to kill it – not even Benedictus, who seemed to know the most about the creature. But they had an idea. A group of leaders from the community quickly headed to the local jail, where two men awaited execution for various capital crimes. Each man was given the same offer: come kill the basilisk, and you will receive a full pardon and your freedom as a reward. It seemed like an easy choice, too – inside jail, there was no chance of survival. Outside, though, there was at least the possibility they might survive. It made sense to everyone.

The first criminal declined the offer, but the other one, a man named Johann Faurer, agreed to help. He was escorted from the jail to the old ruins, where Benedictus awaited him with tools and instructions. The townsfolk had quickly gathered dozens of small mirrors and sewn them onto a pair of leather pants and a coat. I imagine Johann gave the old physician a sideways glance at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but at the same time, he would have known the folklore just as well as everyone else. Alexander the Great had defeated a basilisk using a mirror-like shield, so why would it not work for him? With a crowd of over 2000 witnesses watching, Johann began to carefully walk into the ruins, where he entered the cellar. He had a long rake in one hand and a torch in the other, to light his way, and as soon as he stepped into the darkness below, he cried out that he could see it – a long, serpent-like tail, with a head that resembled that of a rooster, right down to the crown-like plumage. Benedictus called out instructions to the man. “Grab it with the rake,” he told him, “and then carry it out here into the light.” Johann shouted back that he understood, and the entire crowd began to shift and rumble. If a basilisk was going to be dragged out of the ruins, no one wanted to be around to see it, so they all ran for cover and hid their eyes. When Johann emerged, he held the writhing creature by the neck in one of his gloved hands. They daylight somehow made it weaker, and that gave Benedictus the courage to step closer and examine it. It looked exactly like the bestiaries of old had taught him – the body of a snake, four long legs and a head that looks very much like a rooster.

But sadly, this is where the account of the basilisk hunt ends. Whoever had been recording the events had most likely been in the crowd, and when Johann had begun to emerge from the cellar, they had followed the crowd into hiding, which leaves the ending a bit of a mystery. Who killed the creature, when all was said and done, and how did they do it, knowing the risks the old legends spoke of? What we do know is this: the Warsaw basilisk hunt of 1587 was the last time the creature was reported anywhere in Europe. Maybe it had been the last of its kind, and its death marked its extinction, or perhaps the few that survived had a knack for staying out of sight – like the platypus of Australia. Either way, all that was left from that moment on were legends and stories. Like so many creatures that have once walked the earth, the basilisk – if it was ever real to begin with – has slipped into the shadows of the past, and it’s never been seen again.

There really is something delightful about the bestiaries of old. Their colourful pages and evocative descriptions were beyond sensational. In a world without television, radio or easily accessible works of fiction, those catalogues of natural history were the closest most people could get to travelling the world. Of course, the things most authors chose to include in their bestiaries would probably never make the cut in our modern times. After all, headless tribesmen with eyes on their chests, unicorns and sea nymphs all feel more like characters in a fantasy novel than entries in a study on the world’s flora and fauna. And yet some of those expectations have been broken over the years. For centuries, sailors told stories about the kraken, enormous sea creatures that could reach out and drag an entire ship underwater with its long tentacles. King Sverre of Norway recorded its description way back in 1180, and for hundreds of years people claimed to spot them in the waters of the ocean. Then, in 1853, the carcass of a giant squid washed up on a Danish beach, giving the legend new life. Over the century and a half since then, scientists have determined that there is indeed a giant sea creature that fits the ancient descriptions – give or take a few sinking ships, of course – and while they’ve been challenging to catch on film, we now know they exist. And those mermaids of old might have roots in actual animals as well. Many scientists and scholars now believe that old reports of mermaids could very well be mistaken sightings of an aquatic mammal known as the manatee. As is so often the case, our misunderstandings had given birth to frightening legends, only to have science bring a bit of clarity to the tale. Sometimes the monsters of the ancient world turn out to be real, and sometimes legends inspire new discoveries.

In the part of the world that stretches from Mexico to South America, scientists have been familiar for over a century with a lizard from the iguana family. It’s not the largest reptile around, but it can grow to around 2ft in length, and it can run at amazing speeds. Some scientists refer to it as the Jesus Christ Lizard because of its strange ability to run across the surface of water. But its most common name is based on other features, like its tendency to run on two legs and its serpent-like body – a body that’s topped with a head and plumes reminiscent of a crown or a rooster, which is why its name is both logical and a bit of a throwback. They call it the basilisk.

There’s something enticing about the mysteries that fill the gaps in our knowledge of the world around us. Looking back at the bestiaries of the middle ages, its clear humans have had a lot of fun filling those holes, and the creativity of the past has continued to inspire stories today. But there’s one more creature I want to tell you about. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to learn all about it.

[Sponsor break from Bombas, Casper and Fracture]

They had fallen in love, and it was something that would change their destiny forever. At least, that’s how the legend tells it. Long ago, a young man lived on a small island surrounded by deep blue seas, and in the process of hunting one day, he encountered a beautiful young woman. But the hunter quickly learned that there was more to her than he could see with his eyes. The woman, it turns out, was a fairy. In fact, she was well known to the locals there, who referred to her as the Dragon Princess. Despite their differences – him, a normal human being, and her, a magical fairy – the two of them fell in love and were soon married, and that helps this tale become on of those happily ever after stories that we all love so much. The couple went on to have twins, a boy and a girl, and just like their parents, they were an odd pair. The boy was just like his father, a human with no magical powers of his own, while the girl took after her mother, and because of that, both parents decided that the children should be raised in separate places to help them fully become who they were meant to be.

According to the legend, it was many years later when the son was out hunting, just as his father had taught him. He was creeping through the forest, his spear balanced in one hand, when he spotted a deer. He quickly threw the weapon, which found its target, and a heartbeat later the young man was carefully making his way over to collect his prize, and that’s when the dragon stepped out of the trees. It was enormous and frightening, and it clearly wanted to take the deer that he had just killed. The young hunter spoke to it, begging it to leave his future meal alone, but the creature ignored him and proceeded to move toward the deer, so he lifted another spear and got ready to take aim at the dragon. Suddenly, a figure stepped out of the shadows of the forest and stopped him. It was his mother, the fairy princess, who he had not seen since his childhood, and as she approached him, she spoke a word of warning. “Do not throw that spear”, she told him, “for that is no ordinary dragon. That is your sister.” Instead, she taught him to live in harmony with his sister, and according to the legend, that fateful meeting set the destiny of their entire community on a new path. Even today, if you were to visit the place where they lived, the people there would tell you that they are descended from dragons, illustrating how that harmony has continued.

And of course, this story is just one of many tales about dragons that fill the pages of folklore. In fact, most of us would be hard pressed to find a creature mentioned more often than those magical beasts, from the 11th century legend of King George and the Dragon to the fantasy novels and television shows of our modern world. They really do seem to be the king of monsters. Dragons are also one of those nearly universal creatures. It seems just about every culture around the world has had some version of them in their folklore. The ancient Egyptian god of chaos was Apophis, represented as a giant serpent. The Babylonians had their own god of chaos called Tiemat, and in Arcadian mythology there were not one but three dragons on display. Norse mythology features a giant serpent who gnaws at the roots of the world tree. In Ukrainian folklore, there is a dragon with three heads, while images of dragons can be found all over medieval heraldry. And of course, few cultures on earth hold as tightly to their dragon mythology as the Chinese, who have been decorating objects with images of the creature at least as far back as the Neolithic period, and we could speculate why, I’m sure. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how the accidental discovery of dinosaur bones might spark fear and wonder in the minds of humans thousands of years ago. The places where stories of dragons are most common are also places where such fossils have been uncovered, so it does make sense.

So, when Europeans arrived on an island in the Flores Sea, just south of Indonesia, they probably didn’t think twice about the local stories about dragons. In fact, those tales were probably a bit old hat, as they say. Dragons lived in caves, breathed fire, were vicious killers and could fly when necessary – nothing about all of that was new. What was new, though, were the things they saw there. On an island surrounded by deep, blue sea, an island full of people who believed they were descended from dragons, mind you, they discovered a creature that brought all of their legends to life. It lived in the caves along the shore, it was an enormous killer, and it sometimes even followed its prey up into the trees. It ticked all the boxes. These were 300lb serpent-like monsters that could bring down a half-tonne water buffalo. When they licked the air with their bright red tongue, it looked as if they were spitting fire, and they even dug into the graves of the dead looking for treasure. Of course, that treasure was always food, not gold. And they’re still there, crawling across the sandy beaches of the island, living in harmony, more or less, with the people who still call the place their home. They might not have wings or piles of golden treasure to curl up on, but they are the largest lizard on earth, measuring in at over 10ft in length, and they’re deadly. Sometimes the tales of the past stay shrouded in mystery, and other times we manage to crack the riddle and shed new light on the shadows that once frightened us. This living, flesh and blood dragon seems to offer a fresh answer to an ancient question, however incomplete it might be, but at least we now know that there really is one place in the world where that old cartographer warning is actually true: Here, on Komodo Island at least, there be dragons.

[Closing Statements]

#lore podcast #podcast transcripts #aaron mahnke #basilisks #dragons #bestiaries #cryptozoology #europe #poland #130 #transcripts

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dweemeister · 5 years ago

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2019 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (final)

*breathes deeply*

TAGGING: @cokwong; @dansmonarbre; @emilylime5; @fredsbarandgrill; @halfwaythruthedark; @ideallaedi; @introspectivemeltdown; @loveless422 (of @classicladiesofcolor administering); @maximiliani; @memetoilet; @mindo80; @monkeysmadeofcheese; @myluckyerror; @nazur; @phendranaedge; @plus-low-overthrow; @shadesofhappy; @stephdgray; @themusicmoviesportsguy; @theybecomestories; @umgeschrieben; @underblackwings; @yellanimal.

And also tagging a few first-timers or those who haven’t done this in a while: @astorytellertothestars; @bitch-genius; @dog-of-ulthar; @ineedanumbrella; @jayb3; @kataka-taka; @nudehearth; @shootingstarvenator; @thethirdman8; @thewolfofelectricavenue; @voicetalentbrendan; and @wehadfacesthen.

This is not the latest we've ever started the final round, but here we go!

For those who participated in the preliminary, I thank you for your time, but we're not done quite yet. The madness has only begun. After a chaotic end to the preliminary round in which contenders crashed out and unheralded underdogs rose in the final hours, who knows who takes this final? For the uninitiated, I have an Oscar-like ceremony on my blog celebrating all the movies of that year’s Movie Odyssey (all the movies I saw for the first time in their entirety) at the year’s end. For the last five years, I have asked family and friends to help out with the Best Original Song category - because in all other categories, you'd be forced to watch entire movies to decide it. This is a musical thank-you to those, who have contributed, in their own ways, to support the Movie Odyssey and me over the last calendar year.

I normally would have known if I would have asked folks to help participate in MOABOS around the end of summer. But due to work commitments, I had no idea whether or not we would be doing this as late as mid-October. I consider it very fortunate we were able to get this off the ground this year - some of you, interestingly enough, look forward to this every year for some strange reason.

As a result of this year's limitations, this is the one of the most monolingual fields we've ever had in a final. But that's not to besmirch the quality of music seen here. In one notable piece of MOABOS trivia, a Vietnamese-language song has reached the final for the first time. A record two songs in the final are from a documentary film (albeit they are from the same documentary).

INSTRUCTIONS Please rank (#1-15) your choices in order. The top ten songs will receive nominations. The tabulation method used in the preliminary round is being used for the final only as the second tiebreaker (the tabulation method that will be used principally for the final - aka "single transferable vote" - is described in the "PS"). There is no minimum or maximum amount of songs you can rank, but because of the nature of single transferable vote, it is highly recommended to rank as many songs as possible, rather than only one or two. Those who rank fewer songs run a greater risk of their ballots being discarded as I am counting the ballots. Again, this is all described in the "PS". Why not implement at a minimum number of songs to rank? Well, I believe in giving you folks as much freedom as possible.

Please consider to the best of your ability: how musically interesting the song is (including and not limited to musical phrasing and orchestration); its lyrics; context within the film (contextual blurbs provided for every entry for those who haven't seen the films); choreography/dance direction (if applicable); and the song's cultural impact/life outside the film (if applicable, and by far the least important factor). Imperfections in audio and video quality may not be used against any song. I encourage you to send in comments and reactions with your rankings - it’s always fun to read reactions to individual songs, and it usually makes the process (for everyone) more enjoyable!

The deadline for submission is Tuesday, December 31 at 7 PM Pacific Time / 5 PM Hawai'i / 6 PM Alaska / 9 PM Central / 10 PM Eastern. If you're across the Atlantic, that's New Year's Day at 3 AM GMT / 4 AM CET / 5 AM EET. There will be no deadline extensions.

The fifteen finalists (to access the below via YouTube playlist, click here... please keep in mind many of these finalists are meant to be watched and listened to):

“Are We Dancing?”, music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

Performed by John Davidson and Leslie Ann Warren

After convincing her father to let her attend boarding school, Cordy Biddle (Warren) meets Angier “Angie” Buchanan Duke (Davidson in his film debut) at a social dance. Cordy, stressing herself too much in believing that she must go out of her way to attract a boy, is pleasantly surprised by Angie’s taking to her. Just before the song, she initially dismisses waltzes as a dance, “for old people” - repeating a line her father said once. The song’s melody is quoted occasionally in the film’s score.

“Crazy World”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

Performed by Julie Andrews

Victoria Grant (Andrews) is a woman playing a man named “Victor” who is impersonating a woman. Victoria, as Victor, has become the hit vaudeville act of Paris. This is Victoria’s first performance as “Victor” not pretending to be a woman. Is your head spinning yet?

“Detroit”, music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, The Happiest Millionaire

Performed by John Davidson and Lesley Ann Warren

(partial use in film)

Lovebirds Cordy Biddle (Warren) and Angier “Angie” Buchanan Duke (Davidson in his film debut) have been discussing their future together. Angie does not want to inherit his father’s tobacco business - instead wishing to head to Detroit to be a part of the automotive industry (the film is set in 1916, as the city was booming because of the auto industry).

“East Bound and Down”, music and lyrics by Jerry Reed and Dick Feller, Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Performed by Jerry Reed

This is the theme song for this comedy, which also describes the plot somewhat. Smokey and the Bandit is about two truckers - “Bandit” (Burt Reynolds) and “Snowman” (Reed) - who have been offered $80,000 by a rich Texan to pick up 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas and return to Atlanta within twenty-eight hours. In 1977, Coors was only found in the Western U.S. and transporting it across Southern state lines was illegal (giving Coors a mystique in the Eastern U.S.).

“I Dug a Ditch”, music by Burton Lane, lyrics by Lew Brown and Ralph Freed, Thousands Cheer (1943)

Performed by the Kay Kyser Band, Kathryn Grayson, Georgia Carroll, Harry Babbitt, Sully Mason, M.A. Bogue, and chorus

NOTE: An entirely separate song, “Should I”, is integrated from 3:04-3:36.

Apologies for the text overlaying the video. The second half of Thousands Cheer is essentially an elaborate revue musical performance for American World War II troops in which the film’s initial pretense of attempting a story is entirely dropped. “I Dug a Ditch” is one of the songs appearing in the film’s second half.

“I Wish I Didn’t Love You So”, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, The Perils of Pauline (1947)

Performed by Betty Hutton

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

Based on the life of silent film actress Pearl White (played by Hutton), The Perils of Pauline sees Pearl become a star in silent serial films, garnering worldwide popularity. Complications with Pearl’s engagement and impending wedding/honeymoon with her partner force her to break the engagement and leave the film industry. Much later - far from Hollywood, feeling down - she auditions for a Paris nightclub with this song.

“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again”, music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin, Rocketman (2019)

Performed by Elton John and Taron Egerton

This is the first song played over the end credits of this biopic of Elton John. This is John and Taupin’s (John’s songwriting partner through the 1960s-1990s) first collaboration outside the Sherlock Gnomes series for this decade.

“The Joint Is Really Jumpin’ in Carnegie Hall”, music and lyrics by Roger Edens, Ralph Blane, and Hugh Martin, Thousands Cheer (1943)

Performed by Judy Garland and Jose Iturbi

The second half of Thousands Cheer - where this song is found - is essentially an elaborate revue musical performance for American World War II troops in which the film’s initial pretense of attempting a story is entirely dropped.

“Le Jazz Hot!”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

Performed by Julie Andrews

Victoria Grant (Andrews) is making her Parisian debut playing a man named “Victor” who is impersonating a woman. The scheme was hatched by her friend, Carroll “Toddy” Todd (Robert Preston) - both of them desperate for money, and Toddy is the only one who knows that “Victor” is Victoria. Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, James Garner, and John Rhys-Davies, and Alex Karras are present in this scene.

“The Next Right Thing”, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Frozen II (2019)

Performed by Kristen Bell

Anna (Bell) has seemingly lost her friends and her sister at what is the lowest point in the film. Uncertain what to do, she recalls a small piece of advice that leads her forward.

“The Place Where Lost Things Go”, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns

(Initial performance) / (reprise)

Performed by Emily Blunt; reprise by Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, and Joel Dawson

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

This is a lullaby sung by Mary Poppins (Blunt) to the Banks children, who have lost their mother before the events of the film. The song was inspired by an idea from P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins novels, in which Poppins takes Jane and Michael Banks (the aunt and father of the Banks children for this film, respectively) to the moon. There, they learn that the dark side of the moon is where things get lost. The song is referenced occasionally in the film’s score.

“The Shady Dame from Seville”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

(Initial performance) / (reprise to be watched at your own spoiler-y risk)*

Performed by Julie Andrews; reprise by Robert Preston

*watch at your own spoiler-y risk because it gives away the film’s comical musical ending

Victoria Grant (Andrews), after making her Parisian debut playing a man named “Victor” who is impersonating a woman, has become the hit vaudeville act of Paris. This is one of her signature performances. Preston’s reprise - which appears near the film’s conclusion - was done in one take, hence his sweaty and fatigued appearance at the end.

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, music and lyrics by Stephen Stills, Woodstock (1970)

(an excerpt of how this song is framed in the film)

Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Brief Spanish lyrics sung in counterpoint

Directed by Michael Wadleigh, Woodstock was the official documentary film for the eponymous August 1969 music festival. The festival organizers retained film distribution and music recording rights. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” refers to Stills’ thoughts towards his imminent breakup with folk singer Judy Collins. This song is composed in the form of a classical music suite (in layman’s terms, it sounds like an ordered collection of separate songs in one).

“Trường Tương Tư”, music and lyrics by Leon Le, Song Lang

Performed by Isaac and Liên Bỉnh Phát

Lyrics in Vietnamese

English translation and context are in the link.

“Woodstock”, music and lyrics by Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

This song appears in the end credits to Woodstock - the official documentary film for the eponymous August 1969 musical festival.

The winner is somewhere above. They will join a list that includes the following past winners:

2018: "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing", Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

2017: “Remember Me (Recuérdame)”, Coco (2017)

2016: "Stayin' Alive", Saturday Night Fever (1977)

2015: "Amhrán Na Farraige”, Song of the Sea (2014)

2014: "Rainbow Connection", The Muppet Movie (1979)

2013: “The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re In the Money)”,Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Go forth and listen! You may submit your responses in any way, as long as they come in before the deadline. I am free to answer any questions about anything you have about the process.

Happy listening, and have a happy holiday season as we conclude this decade (already?)!

TABULATION Like the preliminary... a respondent’s first choice receives 10 points, the second choice receives 9, the third choice receives 8, etc. HOWEVER, this points system is used only for tiebreaker purposes.

The winner is determined by a process called single transferable vote (the Academy Awards uses this method to choose a Best Picture winner, visually represented here - you should really watch this video if the below doesn't make sense... which it probably won't):

All #1 picks from all voters are tabulated. A song needs more than half of all aggregate votes to win (50% of all votes plus one... i.e. if there are thirty respondents, sixteen #1 votes are needed to win on the first count).

If there is no winner after the first count (as is most likely), the song(s) with the fewest #1 votes or points is/are eliminated. Placement will be determined by the tiebreakers described below. Then, we look at the ballots of those who voted for the last-placed song(s). Their votes then go to the highest-remaining and non-eliminated song on their ballot.

This process (in step #2) repeats until one song has secured 50% plus one of all votes. We keep eliminating nominees and transfer votes to the highest-ranked, non-eliminated song on each ballot. NOTE: It is possible after several rounds of counting that respondents who did not entirely fill in their ballots will have wasted their votes at the end of the process. For example, if a person voted the second-to-last place song as their #1, ranked no other songs, and the count has exceeded two rounds, their ballot is discarded (lowering the vote threshold needed to win), and they have no say in which song ultimately is the winner.

A song wins when it reaches more than fifty percent of all #1 and re-distributed votes.

Tiebreakers: 1) first song to receive 50% plus one of all #1 and transferred votes; 2) total points earned; 3) total #1 votes; 4) placement on my ballot; 5) placement on my sister’s ballot; 6) tie declared

#2019 Movie Odyssey Awards

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hobby-board-gaming-101 · 5 years ago

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Introduction to Board Games

alIf you’ve just learned that a friend is into “board games” and you’re trying to figure out if that means they play Monopoly every day, this is the post to start at.

There’s really no better introduction that this video, by Shut Up and Sit Down, a group that reviews board games. The auto-generated captions are all right, but I’ve also transcribed the video below the cut.

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Now that you’ve watched that video, you should understand why some people play board games. Do you want to maybe be one of them? If so, keep reading this post.

Here’s another way to explain what hobby board gaming is like (credit to Reddit user Russell_Ruffino): an analogy to beer. The board games everyone’s heard of, like Monopoly, Clue (a.k.a. Cluedo), Sorry!, and Uno, are like those mass-produced lagers you can buy in the supermarket. But “if someone … had only ever tried mass produced lagers bought from supermarkets,” they’d be “missing out on a whole world … [of] craft beers that you sometimes have to buy straight from the brewery.” Like craft beer fanatics, board gamers have lots of games we love that you’ve probably never heard of.

I love this analogy even though I know nothing about beer because it can be extended to lots of subtleties. Those supermarket lager games are called “mass-market games,” because they’re advertised to a wide audience and lots of people know about them. The craft beer games, meanwhile, are called “hobby,” “designer” (because the designer is listed on the box, like a book author or movie director), or “modern” (because most though not all were designed after The Settlers of Catan in 1996) board games. These designer games “can be an acquired taste, [and] there’s nothing wrong with someone just drinking the supermarket lagers, but once you've started getting into the limited run stuff it’s hard to go back to only drinking the lager.” (Here’s an article that goes in-depth on the differences between these two categories of games.)

Now, I don’t know if you’re interested in maybe becoming a real serious hobby board gamer, or if you just want to play good games more casually. If you think the latter is the case, check out Casual Game Revolution. This article gives a very good overview of what they think casual gaming is, or if you want a shorter read, try their about page. Their website will be a wonderful resource for you if you want to be a casual gamer, and my blog might be a bit unnecessarily esoteric. But if you don’t want all your games to be “relatively quick games that are easy to learn and teach” and want more than “light strategy,” Casual Game Revolution might be a little limiting for you. You are my target audience for this blog.

(I tried to write that a couple different ways and I feel like it still might sound a little condescending towards casual gamers. I promise that was not my intention, and casual gaming is amazing.)

I think that’s just about all I need by way of introduction to this blog. I would strongly suggest using the table of contents linked at the top of the site (next to my About page) to get around. Welcome!

Transcript of Shut Up and Sit Down’s video below the cut:

Oh, hi there. So, you’re here because a friend or significant other or colleague, a member of your family, church, or dogging community has told you they’re into board games: they’re a board gamer. And that’s got to make you nervous because surely anybody will be done with Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders after being a kid.

What if I were to tell you a secret: that these days, board games and card games are actually amazing. And you're going to find that hard to believe because you’ve got three preconceptions starting with this one: aren’t there like, six board games? There’s Risk, there’s Monopoly, there’s KerPlunk, Connect Four, and the one where the mustard man kills people with a fire poker. No! Actually, new board games come out every single week from countries as far-flung as Germany Japan, and yeah, America and the UK, and some of these board games are for families, some are rubbish, but lots aren’t. In fact, lots are absolutely fantastic!

Let’s look a preconception number two which is the board games are BORING! And actually, they’re just not. Let’s look at a game that came out just a few months ago, alright, this is Ladies and Gentlemen: a French game; a team game where half the players play baffled Victorian gentleman trying to make money at a pretend kiddie stock market, in real time, and the other half of the table play their wives, trying to use that money to assemble the best outfit. It even has additional rules for “maid’s gossip,” and a player who is a single lady! Now, see, this this game might sound mad to you. It might sound like a cross between bridge and OK Magazine, but it probably doesn’t sound boring. And that’s the truth of it, alright, the fact is that the table, as a medium, can be used for anything. You just pick the board games out there that entertain you! Let’s not forget that poker is a board/card/table game type thing, and no one would say that’s boring!

Which brings us on to point number three: board games are for kids. And they’re just not! Labyrinth: The War on Terror is a simulation where one person runs the American War on Terror as of 2001, and another plays militant Islamic fundamentalist movements. Probably not for kids… unless you’re actually Dick Cheney. K2 is a very simple, incredibly competitive game about racing to the top of K2, a.k.a. Savage Mountain, a.k.a. the mountain with the highest fatality to summit rate in the world. A game where, when I lost a mountaineer who froze to death in his tent in a blizzard, I felt like crying. And I'm 26! Probably not for kids (unless your kids are tougher than me, which wouldn’t be hard, to be honest). Archipelago is a game where players are European colonists trying to scratch out a profit from a South Pacific island chain; simultaneously working alone to develop the island, and working together to make sure they’re not killed in a violent uprising. Probably not for kids… unless you’re actually Queen Victoria (which I really hope you’re not… ‘cause that would be… weird).

Very quickly, board games start to look like a much more reasonable thing to do with your time. Whether you’re invested in heavy, chess-like strategy that’ll let you best your friends; whether you want to have fun without drinking; or whether you want to have much more fun while drinking, there is a game out there for everybody, and that includes you. Here are a couple of pretty much perfect games that you could probably have an incredible time with no matter who you are:

The Resistance is a game that pitches you and your friends as an underground resistance cell, with no taking turns, no dice, not even a board. You and your friends just have to decide which of you will go on missions, with the twist that secretly around the table is a team of spies. The spies know who one another are, but the good guys don’t know who anybody is. And as teams start coming back with the news that someone anonymously sabotaged the plan, you’ll start distrusting your closest friends. It’s just 45 minutes of your friends accusing, lying, theorizing, I trust him I don’t trust her, sometimes getting little powers like one player must show one other player what side they’re on, until the end one team wins or loses, and all hell breaks loose as you find out your girlfriend was lying to your face the whole time. Or did I get you wrong? Maybe your idea of a good time isn’t lying to your friends faces; maybe you're not the confrontational type. In which case, say hello to Tales of the Arabian Nights. [Middle Eastern musical chord.] Tales of the Arabian Nights is a storytelling game, where you and your… this is probably racist, isn’t it? Where you and your friends will just be telling stories together. Do remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books you had as a kid? This is like the mother of all of those. Using an incredibly clever system of cards, and this ludicrous book, and matrixes, you will have… [Reference Pear falls off table and thuds]. You will have stories which are different every single time, from rescuing princess, to being lost and befuddled by genies in the European seas, to fighting to- getting your way out of problems with luck and guile. You have no idea what’s going to happen when you start Arabian Nights, but you and your friends will have an unbelievable time, just, telling stories together. And yeah, while it’s possible to win… that doesn’t matter, like so many board games these days.

[Quinns] Ahhhh… [to wife] I don’t think it’s coming out! [Wife] A little dab of olive oil on a cotton ball will help. [Quinns] Ol- Olive oil? What is wrong with women! [this is actually funny and not just weird in the video, trust me]

As a kicker, in an age where books, movies, video games — where ownership is becoming digital — board games give us something real to play with: something you can just hold, and collect. Because to be honest, holding a hand of cards feels, just, really good.

This is the scene your friend is part of. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’s growing! Sales have been going up for the last ten years. Now, because board gamers are generally a pretty awesome lot, if you’re at all interested in this stuff, you should definitely talk to your friend about getting involved in a game. Alternatively you could visit our site, Shut Up and Sit Down, for news, videos, reviews, and plenty of footage of grown men dressed as wizards… for some reason. What’s wrong with us? Uh… BYEEEEE!!! [outro music]

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