#it seems like this new cast is getting a lot more nominations but that’s just because this is the second year of these awards

[gezellig]

wtfock is nominated for another award! they’re nominated for a kastaar in the category best fiction series. you can vote for these awards as well!

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Actually this is a bug bear but I find the complaints about the Kal'tsit yapping to be missing the point extremely. When I see those I think about hbomberguy's Dark Souls 2 video and the brief tangent where he talks about the expectation for "efficient storytelling", and how it doesn't really matter if Kal'tsit's style of speech is meant to convey anything, she takes too long and says too many hard words.

But that's the point. Kal'tsit, especially when she is introduced, is a very mysterious figure who is clearly really important at Rhodes Island despite her nominal position as a member of the Medical Department. She plans strategies for Rhodes Island operations, she's been all over the world and has seen events you'd only find in the history books, and for a very long time there was only speculation that Kal'tsit was really old.

Talking to Kal'tsit is supposed to feel weird. She could make the effort to be more direct and approach where the Doctor needs to be at, but she doesn't! She hates us! She's still struggling with the fact that we killed Theresa and she now has to deal with us having no memories of much of anything. She can't kill us off because she knows that Rhodes Island would benefit from the Doctor's knowledge of Originium and tactical ability, and because she grows to learn that the Doctor is moving forward with being a new person.

So she makes it hard on us. She makes it clear as she talks to us that she is looking down on us. She is talking about concepts that are difficult to understand to parse, that maybe wouldn't be if we still had all of our memories back. She talks with the wisdom of someone who has been alive for over two thousand years, but also with the expectation that we need to just immediately get on her level. Giving us the information directly is going to help us and she's still kind of pissed. If you listen to her conversation with W in Chapter 13, she's a lot more direct with her intention and her word choice. She needs W to understand what the fuck she is talking about as quickly as possible. But the Doctor can struggle a little bit.

And, obviously, it's not just for this reason. The point of how Kal'tsit talks is to make her seem very odd compared to the rest of the cast. Dobermann speaks very harshly because the writers wanted her to sound like she came from the military, for a similar example. Kal'tsit talks at length, uses difficult to understand language, and often is quite indirect because its meant to enhance that mystery. People for years were dying to know what exactly was going on with Kal'tsit, and the way she speaks is absolutely part of that. She's an outlier in the cast for many reasons, and how she speaks is one of those.

So I find the criticism to be, frankly, awfully juvenile. It's not a bug, it's not the result of poor impulse control on the part of the writers. It serves a very obvious use.

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

01/17/2024 Crew Recap

Well, today was once again a day of new and exciting things happening, and some fun progress on all fronts. Anything I missed -- as always please add. Links to all the threads are in the pictures so please visit them, I want to make sure people who actually posted them are credited :) I realize this is a lot, so if you don't wanna read it all, please at least hop to the bottom for a special message.

===Today's Impact===

Petition Status: We broke 58,000 Signatures! Great job everyone!

Our Flag Means Death Status on Television Stats -- Numbers went up a bit!

#SaveOFMD Trending #4 in Hungary, way to go friends!

Source

Wondering if your calls are working? THEY ARE! Apparently they are cataloging and categorizing calls.

Warner Bros Discovery Inc is still trending downward!

Our Flag For Palestine - Care for Gaza Fundraiser is up to $7535!

The team on this is pretty great about transparency, feel free to check out the twitter thread here

===Cast / Crew Sightings===

Chaos Dad, David Jenkins posted about the 35th Annual Glaad Media Awards Nominating Our Flag Means Death for Outstanding Comedy Series!

Con O'Neill started posting stories on IG with #SaveOFMD and also he showed up in a Screen Rant Plus interview! Our Flag Means Death Interview: Con O’Neill On Izzy & Blackbeard In Season 2

And our Pirate Queen Ruibo Qian was reposting save ofmd art on IG!

=Latest Twitter / Other Platform Insanity=

So apparently someone updated the Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia page to say one of the Production Companies was Astroglide, you cheeky little fuckers.

Source

Squishables joined the fun with Astroglide.

Astroglide Announced a Live Reaction Video to OFMD they'll be doing on Friday. Thanks to IG: _Irene_Adler for bringing this to my attention! Somehow I missed it looking at this post this morning.

===Articles===

1. Could HBO’s Beloved ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Jump To Another Ship After Cancellation?

2. Our Flag Means Death's "numbers weren't there" for renewal says MAX's boss - but it is welcome to sail to another platform

3. OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH CANCELED AT MAX, BUT IT COULD FIND LIFE ON OTHER PLATFORMS

===Ways to Help===

So I found of a new way to keep engagement up that I hadn't heard of before-- I apologize if you all already know about it and I'm repeating it! Daily Clicks to help with Engagement: Clickable Links below:

Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia Page Google Search for Our Flag Means Death Google UK Search for Our Flag Means Death Our Flag Means Death IMDB

Fundraiser for LimbPower

Looks like another fundraiser going on by our fellow OFMD Crew, right now is by For Our New Unicorn, that benefits LimbPower. This has been going on since December but has had some ramp up since the cancellation announcement. If you're looking for somewhere to donate, seems to be a good cause!

Calls / Emails / Faxes

I don't believe anything has changed in terms of calls and emails but here's the latest info in case you're just joining us, there's a lovely post over at @renewasacrew's post.

Postcards / Outside the US Fans

@renewasacrew has the following awesome post about how to send mail from outside the US: Are you outside the US and looking to send Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav a letter? 🏴‍☠️

Petition

As usual, sharing the petition with posts is super helpful, and @merryfinches has a cool guide on how to get additional email addresses if you want to help send more signatures here

Hashtag Updates from yesterday

#RenewAsACrew #SaveOFMD #TheNumbersWereThere.

================================================

❤️❤️Lastly because even if you are tired of hearing it, I'm going to keep saying it, so suck it up buttercup here comes some love ❤️❤️

================================================

Every single one of you is enough.

If you bust your ass for this campaign, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

If you signed the petition and that was it, YOU ARE ENOUGH

If you lurk and keep an eye on things, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

If you do nothing at all, and just take care of yourself, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

There is NOTHING in this world that you could do to make you not enough.

Remember that.

You are amazing-

and beautiful-

and everything you do every single day is wonderful-

and YOU are worthy of love.

You are doing a great job just being you. Keep doing that.

We are so lucky to have each and every one of you here on this planet with us.

Remember to drink some water, and take care of yourself if you can. Even if it's just a few minutes a day. You got this, and you're loved. 🥰

Love you crew. Have a good night/day, wherever you are on this little blue dot. <3

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (December 3-9, 2023)

I made a frame from this shot Wikizilla's Image of the Week. No regrets. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, I love ya. When I was a teenager, explicit queerness was anathema to most big-name franchises. Those dominoes have been slowly falling, often in lower-profile tie-ins first, and to me this is a huge one: 69 years without a queer live-action Godzilla character are over. And Cate's the main protagonist of the show! I'm not under the delusion that media representation will cure all society's ills, but it sure doesn't hurt. Now, the non-Tumblr parts of the fandom are being completely normal about this, right? Right? Whatever, that's why you'll never get rid of me here. Cate had a couple more sweet moments with May in this episode, and Mariko Tamaki wrote episode 7, so don't expect her to stop kissing girls. Hopefully she's learned a valuable lesson about cheating though.

"The Way Out" is also another gift to those of us who have always wanted to see more of the ramifications of a world where Godzilla exists, from underground towns for the super-rich to ruined cities where federal troops shoot looters and harass people experiencing homelessness. And the show continues to find ways to use kaiju to talk about COVID, from Cate and Kentaro's exchange about San Francisco truthers ("It's easier than waking up every day and thinking, at any moment, the same could happen to you") to the blink-of-an-eye speed at which the threat went from on the news to her front door in the flashbacks.

As I foretold, we got a Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire trailer, an amusing contrast to the weighty Toho flick and Apple show already fore of mind. It's Adam Wingard unbound, that's for sure. The human cast seems pared back, a longstanding Monsterverse problem, and the kaiju fights were far and away the best part of Godzilla vs. Kong, so hopefully this approach will play to his strengths. But that movie also had excellent VFX, and some of the shots in here are rough. There's time to fix them, at least... which probably can't be said of Godzilla's design. I like that he's pink (did some Warner Bros. executive take the wrong message away from Barbie?) and sporting a thagomizer on his tail, but his proportions are uncanny. And I see Kong found the Infinity Gauntlet; good for him.

I am, of course, not done talking about Godzilla Minus One. It added over 200 screens and made $8.3 million in its second weekend in the U.S., a minuscule drop considering that its $11.4 million opening "weekend" spanned five days. Almost a third of all tickets sold this weekend were for Godzilla or Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, remarkable in a market so allergic to foreign imports. That brings its total to $25.3 million (more by the time you read this). With an avalanche of Christmas blockbusters on the way, its grip on premium-format screens is about to slip. Still, I see it hanging around theaters for a while. I have never seen the fandom so united in praise for a film before, and it's making plenty of new fans.

Some of those fans are in high places. Variety leaked that it's on the 20-film shortlist for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars (to be narrowed to five nominees), something I, again, never expected to read about a Toho Godzilla film. Alas, it's locked out of this year's Best International Film category due to the quirky nomination period.

Much has been made of how great the film looks on a $15 million budget. I have two caveats, one in each direction. No one is quite sure where the $15 million figure came from; Yamazaki said at a recent con appearance that he only wished he had that much to play with. (He has yet to divulge the actual budget, just that it was above ¥1 billion.) Now, unions in the Japanese film industry are much weaker than in Hollywood, so a given production budget goes a lot further in Japan. All the same, I doubt that alone explains Minus One looking better than most superhero movies made for twenty times the cost. I'll offer a couple more reasons: Yamazaki has extensive visual effects experience (he's been the VFX supervisor of all but one of the live-action films he's directed), and the film's big effects scenes aren't as busy or lengthy as many of the Hollywood counterparts. I don't know if Disney will ask Yamazaki to direct the next Star Wars movie (that would require there to be a next Star Wars movie), but the studios here should be taking notes.

the sphinx, a blog with a ton of American Godzilla rarities to share, has outdone itself—behold a continuity and dialogue script for the U.S. version of King Kong vs. Godzilla! Included in the download is a detailed comparison with the film. No huge differences, apart from the script giving the secretary added to the U.S. version a name, but a fascinating piece of history all the same.

The Minus One incarnation of Godzilla (MaiGoji?) has joined Godzilla Battle Line, accompanied by [SPOILER]. To be honest, my enthusiasm for this game has been flagging, and I'm not caught up on the strategies developing around these two, so I'll just refer you to Sir Melee's channel as usual. This Godzilla's also doing a collaboration with the Japanese mobile game Fleet of Blue Flame.

Tiffany Grant, Asuka's original voice actress, will narrate the audiobooks for the Neon Genesis Evangelion: ANIMA light novels which explore an Instrumentality-free path for the show. Seven Seas Entertainment published them in English from 2019 to 2021, which, to be honest, was also news to me.

This one's for my fellow library workers: the obscenely popular Who HQ nonfiction series for children is publishing a book about Godzilla next June. I don't know if this will have quite the same impact on today's young Godzilla fans as the Ian Thorne tome had on Gen Xers and Millennials, what with the Internet and all, but it's certain to be more factual. Expect illustrations instead of licensed photos, and not just because of Toho.

I can finally talk more about the Godzilla x Kong: Titan Chasers mobile game without fearing a DMCA. Not that there's much to talk about; it's freemium through and through and I'm not sure I know a single person who's excited for it. Interesting to see some critters from the comics break into another medium, at least. Here's the trailer.

[nancydrewwouldnever]

I just don't get this at all. There are a thousand other actors to be Doctor Doom. //

It is so stupid. Doesn't Doctor Doom have Romani heritage and isn't that a big part of his origin story? Marvel missed an opportunity to tell a really compelling and representational story, imo.

And of course money talks at the end of the day. After winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer and getting an Emmy nomination for The Sympathizer, I thought RDJ was going in a different direction. But they probably made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I can see Chris and Scarlett returning in some capacity too. It's inevitable, atp.

I also have Marvel burnout. After Spiderman NWH (which I adored), it hasn't been the same to me. With the new characters introduced and all the Disney+ shows, it's really tough to follow all the story threads. It seems more like a chore now and not enjoyable at all.

I only care about Thunderbolts currently because I like the cast. I don't have any interest in other upcoming Marvel projects.

I think one of the biggest mistakes Marvel made was trying to tie together series and movies. It alienated a lot of people who didn't want to sign up for Disney+. Even having read what happened in Wandavision, because I don't have Disney+, I was still slightly confused by Dr. Strange 2. The switch over of Wanda to a villain in that movie was clunky and very hamfisted, because they were assuming everyone watched the series before seeing the movie.

But, with RDJ, I assume he also made this decision to come back because he will now get to play a villain. I think that was probably very tempting, after playing a hero for so long. And Doom can get very dark, given what storyline they choose.

(And I guess the Doom storyline is how they're getting rid of Kang now. Why didn't they just recast?)

[iheartgod175]

So, that Star Fox x KonoSuba idea…

It’s had an insane grip on my brain. To the point where my good buddy @blazing-shadows had to spam me with fifty messages, haha XD

Basically, this is what happens when you get your yearly itch for one of your favorite franchises and add in the game that you’ve been playing religiously for a few weeks ^^

I’ve decided to title this silly story “God’s Favor on This Not-Yet-Retired Veteran!” It may be subject to change, though!

This particular crossover idea takes place during the Assault/Command timeline. Why? Because I absolutely ADORE Star Fox Assault, especially Peppy’s portrayal in that game, and while Command is a whole mess, a few ideas/characters were pretty neat (*cough* Lucy *cough*). That, and I wondered what would happen in an alternate scenario where Peppy dies for real during the tail end of the game (a question that has been answered by several authors, actually!).

So the basic gist is that Peppy dies for real after sacrificing the Great Fox, but receives a second chance at life when he meets Aqua, who revives him and sends him to Axel. That second chance at life involves a world where cabbages fly, ranking works like a video game, and the people there are somehow are even bigger a-holes than in the Lylat System. Oh, and he ends up being in a party with one of those a-holes. Not Kazuma—although he’ll definitely meet him later. That would be Dust, the resident town punk, and his long-suffering party consisting of Rin, Keith and Taylor. With his chances at retirement permanently shot, Peppy now has to navigate his new life of being one of the oldest adventurers in Axel, and try not to either rage quit or kill Dust in the process. Meanwhile, in the “real world”, Lylat is reeling from the Aparoid Invasion when the Anglars make their debut, and the fractured Star Fox team must face this amidst team struggles and without their beloved mentor.

It’d be easy to have either Fox or Falco in this scenario, since their personalities would mesh with the craziness perfectly (I personally would nominate Falco for this position since in-universe he’s super competitive), but even before I got into KonoSuba, the idea of Peppy ending up in an isekai situation—especially in this world—was too hilarious to leave alone. Also Peppy’s my favorite character, so that’s a no brainer, lol XD

Also, the main reason I had Peppy team up with Dust is for two reasons: 1. As much as I like Kazuma’s character, I wanted to challenge myself with writing an ensemble cast outside of the main one. Kazuma and his party will definitely get their chance to shine, but I wanted to focus on a different set of adventurers for this story, and the team that’s the opposite of Kazuma’s seemed to be a fun choice. 2. Dust is one of my favorite characters in KonoSuba, which happened completely on accident, lol (more on that in the KonoFan post I’ll make soon). And just imagining the headaches he’d cause Peppy was hilarious.

This being KonoSuba, hilarious shenanigans ensue, but there’s also a little bit of seriousness due to, well, Star Fox. You can’t expect a battle-hardened veteran like Peppy to just be dumped into a crazy world like KonoSuba and pretend none of the canon in his universe didn’t happen, lol. I told my buddy that this little story is gonna be full of humor, drama, tragedy, a smudge of romance, and lots of wholesomeness, because although I put him through the ringer a bit here, Peppy needs a bit of a break after the stuff that happened in canon ;_;

If y’all like this idea enough—or if I can’t shake the brain rot off, haha—this might be something I’ll post on AO3! Let me know what you think in the replies!

[hedorahtheblogmonster]

My thoughts on Godzilla x Kong the New Empire. Spoilers!!

Overall I had a good time with the movie. As usual, here’s my first thoughts as GxK pros and cons

Pros:

-all the giant monster scenes are awesome. I was afraid setting entire scenes only with kaiju would lose some of the excellent scale (which is nominally true) but each monster is brought to life excellently through their animation. Godzilla and Kong have excellent characterization consistent with their MonsterVerse interpretations.

-Skar King and Shimo are just incredible. They have an interesting dynamic together, and as foils to Kong and Godzilla as well. They are easily my favorites of all the original titans of the MonsterVerse.

-otherwise, there’s plenty of background titans that all feel unique enough to stand out from Skull Island-esque ferocious giant animals to a few favorites from Godzilla’s MV rogues gallery

-I enjoyed most of the main human characters. Bernie returns and is generally more likable than Godzilla vs Kong (somewhat less infowars-y, which helps). Jia is a delight, and I like seeing the Iwi tribe back in the monsterverse after being macguffined away after Kong: Skull Island. Kaiju veterinarian Trapper is my favorite addition to the cast.

-there are lots of little references and details that Godzilla fans will love. Normally I roll my eye at such fan pandering, but because it’s about giant monsters this makes it good.

Cons:

-Junkie XL slogs his way through another generic kaiju flick soundalike for the entire movie. It comes on as very forceful and predictable which cheapens the experience. It feels unfair to compare his work to to Bear McCreary’s on KotM, though I don’t think it stands on its own merit either. I’m also not too fond of using licensed music in a film, which gets grating the few times it’s used here.

-all the human scenes feel incredibly rushed, which comes at the detriment to the performances. I wish they would’ve taken their time with some of their small scale scenes, but it’s deciding not compete with the big fancy kaiju-only sequences.

-maybe it was just the theater I was seeing the film in, but it seemed like all the human scenes in hollow earth had a vignette effect around the borders, making things blurry. It felt like they attempted a sort of dreamlike feeling for these scenes, but was totally distracting to me

-I wish there was a reference to the Monarch series or some sort of stinger for another movie but that’s just a nitpick

Overall, I don’t think I enjoyed it quite as much as Godzilla vs. Kong but it’s still a blast to watch. Godzilla x Kong the New Empire leans into the MonsterVerse’s best strengths, though it suffers in it’s pacing, performances and soundtrack. I’d give it a solid 7.5 / 10, though I should give it some time and a rewatch before I fully make up my mind. At the very least they’ve sold me on a Skar King/Shimo SH MonsterArts, which means they’ve won

[abronzeagegod]

ETS WIP Chapter 9: Don't Forget to Like and Swwarm

First | More

The next few days for Aeth were a lot. People continued to be annoying and testy all day, even the clients they were supposed to be helping out, which made the days even longer. It's one thing if their coworkers were the problem, but the clients being annoying, pushy, and terrible was a different beast all together.

At least this new Swwarm thing had plenty of cool pets to watch.

Aeth was always very nervous about having a pet of their own, as they were extremely concerned about their healthy and safety to a degree that wasn't healthy, but they could appreciate other people's animals.

The only problem was that there was seemingly no real way to follow people, they just had to hope that the algorithm was going to show them more void-cats, and moon-shadow creatures playfully hunting their parents.

However, the algorithm of Swwarm was starting to show Aeth more and more things that made them concerned, and angry.

The last video they watched seemed like it was a very nice video about a house cat and a tentacled horror from beneath the deep being kept in a large fish tank. Unlikely animal friends, everyone loves those, but the video rapidly devolved into a screed about how those two animals were incompatible and how the owner was irresponsible in the treatment of both.

It left a bad taste in Aeth's mouth, making them feel both bad and angry because there was nothing they could do about it. Even worse, the illusion was shattered and there would always be that thought in the back of their mind about how the makers of videos were doing something for entertainment, about how this was a show, something artificial to put on the internet.

Aeth was in a bad mood for the entire morning, which they could tell was coloring their interactions with their coworkers. They did their best to stamp on the feelings, to crush them down, but it had left a pall over the entire day and they couldn't find a way out of the feeling.

They knew they should probably just delete that damn app and be done with it, but the amount of message they'd get over the course of the day from friends with links to Swwarm was enough that they kept it on their phone.

The one bright spot in their day was that they had finally gotten the call to go to the House of Ollowollu. Their computer had arrived and they had just gotten a call from the Bureau. Sir Lance Corporal was to be returned.

Aeth quickly changed into the outfit they wore last time, but they hadn't been able to go without their rings on since they fell into the space between the Hells and the Abyss. They never knew when they would need to quickly cast magic, and their rings helped them focus.

Three rings on each hand. Thumb, pointer, middle finger. Their casting fingers. Gold and emerald and fractal patterns on the right hand. Silver and amethyst and eldritch geometry on the left hand. Perfect for Aeth's precise magic that was made of symbols and borderline math.

They knocked on the door and was immediately greeted by the enthusiastic child who was practically bouncing with excitement. So much excitement that she handed Aeth a three headed dinosaur in a tutu to hold on to.

Aeth entered the house with reverence and a bit of apprehension. The gum helped with the anxiety a little.

The whole family was there. Aeth introduced themself to the other member of the family they didn't meet before.

There was enough time for a quick tutorial on the new computer, a rundown of it's capabilities and the small changes that Aeth and Tech Support made to fashion the computer for the family's needs.

Eventually there was a single loud, forceful knock on the front door.

"Sir!" the child yelled as she bolted towards the front door, followed by her fathers.

Aeth stayed put at the computer, tools and everything ready to go.

The two Catalog and Archive Bureau agents walked into the room. They were nominally smartly dressed. At first glance they had the sunglasses and suit jackets and perfectly creased pants that suggested professionals. But there were subtle little signs that they were more than just government agents.

There were the pristine leather gloves they both wore that went up their forearms and completely covered the hands. Their shoes were not dress shoes but extremely practical and from the looks of it, non-slip. Also one of them had a shirt that had some text on it designed to look like a warning sign. It read "If I don't know what it is... Run".

Aeth couldn't help but shake their head. Bureau agents were a strange breed, but they were serious professionals. And they couldn't fault them for the shirt, they had one just like it that said "i'm here because YOU broke something" (it was a birthday gift from Lyta).

"Good, Tech Support is already here," said one of the Agents.

"We are here to brief you on the return of entity 191956-G," the other Agent said.

They were all very serious which was to be expected, even if their outfits were just a touch silly.

"Entity 191956-G," continued the second one, the one with the t-shirt warning, "is a small god, with a potential to become something bigger and Something More."

The emphasis on the capitals of Something More, made Aeth shiver a little. They've heard a speech like this before.

"For this moment," the first one, more serious only because they had on a plain tan shirt under their jacket, "1919 is classified as a god of electronic education. But after many tests and categorization we feel as this is not a perfect fit. There are chances that this entity may change to become the god of something else."

"Luckily for you, we don't think of 1919 as a threat," the second added.

"Are you talking about Sir Lance Corporal?" the kid asked.

She was quickly hushed by one of her dads as the fun agent nodded.

"Yeah we are talking about Sir Lance Corporal, but we have to refer to him as 191956-G. It's a dumb job thing," he said with a wink.

"That's dumb," the kid muttered.

The first agent continued. "Part of the reason we are not very concerned over 1919, is that they appear to want to be some kind of assistant god, or helper. Something akin to education, but we can't figure out what exactly. Hopefully a more familiar environment will help us catalog what 1919 is. We are returning custody of 1919 to you, but we will be requiring constant monitoring. Until we find a proper categorization for 191956-G, we will require daily check-ins electronically, and monthly visits."

Aeth gave a small nod to Jer, as this sounded exactly right to you.

The first agent spoke with the family a little bit more, and the second talked to Aeth about getting Sir Lance Corporal back in the computer.

Eventually, when everything was settled, Aeth instructed the agents on how to place Sir Lance Corporal into a small compartment especially installed in the computer by Tech Support according to the exacting specifications of the Bureau.

The first agent held up a large briefcase, and the second agent pulled off his gloves.

Aeth could see the blood red runes carved into the flesh of his hands as he reached into the briefcase and produced a totally clear cube about three inches per side. It appeared empty inside, until, like a prism, the angles were just right and Aeth could spot the wings of stained glass.

The agents carefully put Sir Lance Corporal into the new computer, and Aeth started their work of testing all the things that were required to make the computer run and be a suitable house for a small god.

The agents sat back and watched for a little while.

Eventually the computer seemed to be ready to go, so Aeth let the kid turn it on.

Such a symbolic act should be reserved for the god's most loyal and first priest.

The computer turned on, the small prism that once held Sir Lance Corporal (Entity 191956-G) was now totally empty as the god had moved into their new home.

Aeth could feel the agents tensing behind them. This was the most dangerous part of a reintroduction.

Everything went smoothly however.

The computer loaded, the desktop appeared.

Flying through the background image of a mountain range, was Sir Lance Corporal.

Very quickly things started to move and flash across the screen.

The second agent was suddenly next to Aeth, his hands still bleeding slightly from the application of the runes, and the first agent had ripped off both their jacket and their gloves revealing the same bloody runes across their fingers, arms, and shoulders.

Aeth held up a hand. "He's just getting used to the space, making it a bit more homey."

The agents took a single step back but they didn't relax.

Things settled down after a moment, when the desktop was arranged in a more orderly fashion.

However, it was Aeth's turn to tense when the little representation of Sir Lance Corporal came across the black circle icon of Swwarm.

It was an app that had, somehow, come preloaded on the computer, despite it being a very new program.

There appeared to be several tendrils that suddenly snapped out of the Swwarm app and latched on to Sir Lance Corporal, trying to pull the small god into the black icon that suddenly looked more like a circle than an empty space, a hole in the computer to a place beyond.

There came something halfway between a screech and a battle-cry from Sir Lance Corporal as the god fought against whatever was trying to pull him through the app.

The agents moved towards the computer, but Aeth was faster.

They stood up and in a series of fast hand movements, cast the first and most powerful spell any Tech Support technician learns.

The Installation Wizard spell compelled the Swwarm program to delete itself off the computer and scrub all traces off the harddrive.

Aeth's magic was fast, powerful, and caught whatever computer virus had infected the computer by surprise.

The Swwarm was removed from the computer in a flash, and Sir Lance Corporal was saved.

"What was that?" asked the first agent as they put their jacket back on with some reluctance.

"Looked like some kind of virus," Aeth guessed. "I'll look into it."

"Do so," the second agent said firmly, all easy-going attitude was gone.

It took Aeth an hour of digging to find out what happened, and even then they weren't very clear. It appeared that, somehow, some kind of trojan virus had gotten into the computer via the Swwarm app. There was going to have to be some kind of investigation as to how such a thing could have happened.

"We're going to put this in our report," the first agent said. "You're going to have to sign off on it."

Aeth nodded.

The paperwork, on both the Catalog and Archive Bureau and Tech Support sides, took forever. Aeth never managed to make it to the rest of their appointments after the incident with the small god and the virus.

Finally, the agents took their leave.

"Can you show me how to do that?" the kid asked Aeth. "You can fix Sir Lance Corporal with magic and I want to do that! I wanna help him and be able to fix him!"

The lights on the computer lit up in a way that told Aeth that Sir Lance Corporal was delighted by that idea.

"I'll let you borrow my magic book, if it's ok with your dads."

If the kid wanted to get into Tech Support, Aeth wasn't going to say no, and the earlier she started learning everything the easier it would be. But magic was it's own set of rules, regulations, and nonsense.

Aeth's magic was more akin to computer code than anything else. There were runes like the agents had, things inscribed into skin with blood and ink, that let them do dangerous things. There were emotions and virtue magics based off of things you feel and things you do, which Aeth knew very little about but Lyta did. There were also all the various religions on the holy or infernal magic that came from faith and belief in higher powers. Then there were the magics that were governed and given to the various creatures and species out in the world.

The world was vast and strange and full of things to learn, and Aeth wanted to encourage the kid to learn, but didn't want to cut her off from something she'd enjoy more.

Jer thanked Aeth for everything and said, "I guess I'm going to have to learn about magic now if she's all gungho about learning it. She looks up to you, so I think she wants to learn your magic."

"Mine is like learning computer codes. It's very precise and very specific."

Jer smiled and shrugged. "She might not like it, since she's a chaotic little gremlin a lot of the time, but she's also just a kid. Maybe she'll grow into a precise and specific adult."

"I can give you some recommendations on books to look into," Aeth said, "but I got into magic in a unique way that I wouldn't want to put on anyone else. So I don't really know how to start."

Jer didn't say anything at first. Eventually he said, "Thanks. For everything."

<run-script-timejump></run-script>

Aeth finally returned home late.

Later than usual.

They were very tired after a work day that was longer than it should have been.

Everything went weird after dealing with Sir Lance Corporal. And they had a sneaking suspicion of what happened, but they couldn't confirm it until they had a moment to rest.

They took their time making themself a late night, lazy dinner, but once that was done, they started their research.

Swwarm was an app that was extremely new. It was made and published by A00 Industries, a brand new company.

These facts were not, of themselves, out of the ordinary or concerning since tech companies rise and fall like the stars. But what was concerning was that there is no evidence of either thing before a few weeks ago.

Aeth felt like they were on the edge of something. Standing right on the razor's edge of a cliff, about to fall off into something very big, but they couldn't see what it led to yet.

What was surprising about Swwarm was that it became so popular so fast. Despite the fact that a lot of the videos that Aeth was being given by the algorithm making them feel bad or angry or listless, the thing had rapidly become a part of their daily rituals. They found themselves using new muscle memory to automatically open the app and scroll on their phone the second they found themselves distracted or bored.

There was one way to learn about Swwarm and A00 for certain, and that was for Aeth to actually read the Terms of Service.

They opened the app and steeled themself to not get distracted and do what they came for and nothing else.

Once they found the ToS, and started reading Aeth became increasingly concerned. There were so many things that the users agreed to and none of them were good. The app was a privacy nightmare, and some of the things were borderline illegal if not outright so.

The Terms of Service document was long and full of jargon in a deliberate attempt to keep people like Aeth from reading it.

They had to put down their phone and walk away after only a few moments.

After Aeth made themself a cup of tea laced with just a little bit of Minan rum, they returned to finish their work.

But that damn muscle memory got them into trouble. Instead of opening the app to return to the ToS, they opened it up to view the message Lyta just sent them.

The video was of a hell hound playing fetch and returning with an entire sapling.

It was adorable.

And the autoplay moved on to a different video.

Aeth couldn't remember how it started. They were distracted by the blank, empty face of the person presenting the video.

When they snapped back to awareness, the video's audio came to them.

"How do you know you are you?" it asked.

"How do you know you're the real one?"

"You feel like an impostor and the original is coming for you, and they want to take their spot back from you one way or the other."

Aeth felt like they knew each of these words before they were spoken. They knew them in their bones. They felt them before the video even started and now they felt them acutely.

"Don't worry, with these tips, we can keep you safe, we can center you and make you whole."

<run-script>time-jump</script>

Subject 3812-B had been locked in a containment cell for almost twenty years.

Twenty years of constant surveillance, of magical lock and key, of not being able to do what it was made for. Twenty years being unable to consume it's creator.

For the most part Subject 3812-B had not done a single thing, merely stood in it's cell and biding its time.

There were a few escape attempts, however. Usually when Aeth was having a very hard time, when they were at their lowest.

This time, however, Subject 3812-B knew that their chance to consume all of Aeth was almost gone. Something else was coming for them, taking them over.

Subject 3812-B was possibly going to miss the entire reason for it's existence.

It was just going to have to escape.

i've got a kofi where you can read these early

[scarlet--wiccan]

At the risk of sounding cynical, I kind of get why the darkhold kid is probably slipping through the cracks. They’re obviously not 1:1, but the academy cast already has some redundancies, if that makes sense. I was thinking this when pia got introduced, since she and Zoe are in similar boats with their “secretly undead” things. Doyle and darkhold kid feel like they occupy similar niches as kids more or less made out of dark magic, connected to these big bads of the magical world. Doyle seems inclined to win out bc he has the more iconic design and he’s one of the casts central characters from the very beginning. But the human looking kid surrounded by lightning on the lower part of cover seems vague enough that he could be new, or Germán, one of enchantresses kids, or the darkhold kid without it being too much of a stretch

Well, I think the main issue here is that Contest of Chaos was a poorly-structured event. It introduced something that should have had major impact, without a solid plan for what would happen next. They just kinda threw this character out there, and nobody seems to know what should happen to him next. Unless there's something coming in one of the issues that hasn't been previewed yet, Agatha's storyline in Scarlet Witch seems going in a completely different direction. The child's inclusion in Strange Academy was cool, and as I said, I liked his character treatment, but it seems like the resolution there was just to let him join the ensemble, like any new mutant character melding into the student body at Xavier's. That could go in an interesting direction, but it feels like the choice was made without considering the ramifications.

I unironically enjoy Strange Academy, but, as I've said many times, it is not a serious book, and it does not take a lot of its own worldbuilding or storytelling as seriously as it could. To me, vampires, zombies, Faltine and elder gods all feel like very unique, distinct subjects, but I can see how, given SA's typically juvenile tone, the nominal overlap between some of them would feel like redundancy. I would like the cast to be a little more streamlined, or maybe for the book to focus on a slightly different lineup for each entry.

[marybeatriceofmodena]

You seem to know so much about phantom and its history in general and this is probably such a stupid question I’m sorry but why the fuck have they closed it on Broadway and the west end? No matter how much I think about it it makes no sense to me that it’s not bringing in enough money bc if people aren’t seeing what are they seeing????? Just close all of NY and London down at this point like ? And now I’m feeling like I should have seen it at least one more time since the news came out but the first time was so perfect I didn’t want to ruin it. But I’ve just been feeling like it’s a publicity ploy? They’re gonna say they’re taking it off then bring it back in 5 years shinier… but no one else seems to think so. Now I’m feeling like an idiot for not seeing it 5 times in a row even though it’s in my back yard.

Anyway. I’m sorry just had to get that out somewhere I’m sorry it was to you

Okay, so, right off the bat - the West End production is technically still running. It's not exactly like the original, but it's still there (and it has a VERY solid cast as of now so I would still absolutely recommend to go and see it if you ever have the opportunity. If you're scared of getting the restaged tour, it's really not that). There are a few differences with staging, the wigs are different from what they used to be, the orchestra has been reduced, some of the choreography is a bit different - but it's largely the same show.

What *did* happen in the West End was that like all productions, it closed during COVID, the cast and crew waited to be able to go back, and Cameron Mackintosh (aka the producer, aka Satan) invited all of them to a Zoom call, where they learned that they were all fired and that they'd be replaced by a new cast and crew. That included people who worked in the orchestra for nearly 30 years, Philip Griffiths who played Reyer since, like... forever, and I'm skipping a bunch. The reason why CamMack did that was to reopen with a smaller orchestra, a few reductions here and there, and obviously, with a younger cast and crew working around, salaries will be lesser on the basis of experience. And understandably, a lot of people didn't want to come back and go through the whole hiring/auditioning process all over again. Philip Griffiths for instance basically went: "Fuck it, I played the role for 30 years and I shouldn't have to audition for it" (and he's correct).

Obviously, COVID has been tough on the arts industry in general, and there are several shows on Broadway who closed as a result of it (the whole deal with The Music Man revival with Hugh Jackman was to make as much money as possible to recoup for losts, because anything that has Hugh Jackman in it or The Music Man itself has always sold very well on Broadway). Phantom was not one of those shows that was struggling, because it's kind of like Wicked, Chicago, Hamilton, or any Disney show in the sense that it will reliably make money no matter what. It's expensive to set up and stage as opposed to, say, Six, but it still very much made a profit.

Cameron Mackintosh didn't really give a reason as to why he was closing it (at least none that I'm aware of, or if there is, it's probably PR fluff), but if I had to make a guess, it's probably going to reopen in a few years, just like the West End production did, but with the reductions I've mentioned above, with a cheaper orcheatra, cheaper crew, etc. and you get a nice little opportunity to have it get nominated at the Tony Awards for Best Revival.

So yeah anyway eat the rich

[destinyc1020]

Just Saw "The Color Purple" Last Night!! 😁😁 (My Movie Review)

WOW! Where do I even begin?? First of all, let me just start off by saying that I LOVED this movie! I really enjoyed it. 😃 You just knew that you were in for a wonderful ride when you heard the opening number to this film. I love musicals just in general, but there's just something extra special about seeing black talent, black voices, and black actors dancing, singing, and acting onscreen. 🥰 The whole entire film was a magical moment for me, and a sense of great pride. Sort of like the feeling I got when I saw "Black Panther" in theaters for the first time. 😊

I will say too that this film was very well shot. I kept being in awe of the cinematography, the camera angles, the vibrant colors, the use of lighting, the gorgeous shots of Georgia, etc. It was so very well done. You can tell that they spent a lot of time, hard work, and energy on this film to make it very special and of high quality. 👌🏾

I also loved how this film kind of had a stage/theater feel to it. You can tell that it was a musical theater play before it hit the big screen.

The Music The MUSIC!!! Oh the music!!! 🎵🥰 I've never seen the stage play musical, so a lot of the songs were new to me, but I liked a lot of the songs that were in the film. I also loved how they kept some of the original songs that were in the original 1985 film, like "Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)", and "Maybe God is Tryin' to Tell You Somethin'". 😊

The Acting The acting was very well done. I felt like everyone pulled their weight and there weren't any "weak links" in the cast at all. Halle did amazing....I think she has a great career ahead of her in acting if she keeps it up. Danielle Brooks...Omg she was AWESOME. I almost feel like she stole the show in some scenes lol....

Colman Domingo did a great job. I think Danny Glover was a bit more unlikable in the original film, but Colman is a very good actor, and I felt like he did a great job in this role.

I love my girl Taraji! She is SO very talented! Her voice is really great too. While I was watching the film, i couldn't help but remember everything she was saying on the press tour regarding unequal pay in Hollywood, and anytime I saw her onscreen I just couldn't believe that someone with her great talent still feels like she has to fight and scrap to just get a smidgen of what other actresses get in HW, and how she's always having to start right back at the BOTTOM. Smh...it's really sad. 🤦🏾‍♀️ Fantasia Barrino....OMG.... Like, I remember this woman on American Idol!!!! I am so proud of her and how far she's come. 😊 She did an AMAZING job in this! She thoroughly deserved her Golden Globe nomination. 👏🏾 She probably won't win, but she definitely deserved her nomination. I always feel like when someone has to not only act but also sing, dance, (or even play a musical instrument) onscreen, they usually are doing WAY more "work" than others who are just having to simply "act" onscreen lol. I will go to my grave saying that. But! I know this year is a pretty tight race for the "Best Actress" category, so, if she doesn't win, then it is what it is. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Just being nominated is an honor.

The Pros:

This is more like a pro AND a con (I'll explain)... But the fact that they cut out a lot of stuff from the original movie kind of made the story move a lot quicker, and I appreciated that!

I liked that the film didn't feel AS heavy as the original 1985 film. The film still had a lot of heavy elements in it (don't get me wrong), but you don't get to experience just HOW heavy the film is because there's a lot of singing and dancing, and they kind of gloss over certain things in the story (imo). This is actually probably a good thing, especially for a film coming out during the Holiday season lol.

The acting was superb.

It seems that they added a few more things to this film that was in the original book by Alice Walker, so that was a nice touch.

The Cons:

I liked how they cut stuff from the film, but at the same time I didn't lol. I'm so glad that I saw the 1985 version FIRST before seeing this version, because I think there would have been some elements that I wouldn't have fully appreciated because I didn't have the context. The 1985 version is pretty long and more slow-moving, but I felt like it added way more depth to everything that was taking place in the story. The 2023 version almost banked on the fact that you've probably already seen the 1985 version, and they didn't spell everything out for you...which, again...imo was a good thing and a bad thing at the same time lol. I can't explain it.

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10

Overall, very well-done movie! Loved the acting, loved the music, loved basically everything! 😊

[liskantope]

Three not-so-great takes I've heard since the bombshell of Biden dropping the nomination that I want to grumble about here and may as well roll into a single post.

The first one was in the wake of the breaking news on Sunday, within literally the first minute of Cenk Uygur's immediate comments:

I will say this: as the self-appointed leader within the rebel forces of the Democratic party to oust Joe Biden, I declare victory.

Okay, Cenk, I get it: you ran for president in the Democratic primaries (sort of, and you would have had to win some court cases even to be deemed eligible due to your national status) explicitly to get Joe Biden off the ticket. But this isn't about you or your tendency to talk as though your role in the national discourse and political battleground is more central than it is. This is a product mainly of prominent Democrats pressuring Biden to quit and donors pulling out, not your crusade that ended a good while back and barely seemed to garner attention anyway.

(Sorry, but this is the guy who -- to take just one example I recall from 4+ years ago back when I used to watch The Young Turks all the time -- reacted to Bernie Sanders making the old "Republicans believe in small government only until it's something intimate like your own body" point that I'd been hearing since high school with "Oh my God, he must have been listening to our channel, because that's the exact point that I was the one making recently!")

I'm probably being uncharitable toward Uygur, as he may have been speaking a bit tongue-in-cheek. But still, can you think of a far more prominent figure in current politics who loves making himself sound like the center of every new movement or idea, but might be speaking trollishly or tongue-in-cheek?

The second take, which I'm much more bothered by, is one I heard in person a few hours later, by a mother to her 13-year-old son, in a confident tone: "We're still going to lose with Kamala Harris, because there are a lot of racists in this country and a lot of people in this country who think a woman shouldn't be president."

I don't think she was entirely wrong about racism and sexism giving Harris certain disadvantages (although that's ignoring that her race and gender will directly work to her advantage as well among a different set of potential voters, and I'm not sure it won't cancel out). But, casting aside racism for a moment, this whole "America still isn't ready for a woman president" thing I hear from time to time from feminists is really frustrating, and in my opinion it's not the greatest thing to children (especially not to girls, arguably, but not to any children). I find it both defeatist and reductive in a way that doesn't reflect evidence coming from reality. Hillary Clinton basically did win the presidency eight years ago, in that she got several million more votes than her opponent and would have probably won the electoral college if something James Comey announcement something something. In fact, I bet that if Hillary had won the Democratic primary eight years before that, in 2008, she could have beaten John McCain given the circumstances and current unpopularity of neoconservatism, even if she couldn't have won as handily as Obama did. And while I personally suspect that a lot of the anti-Hillary hatred that seeped through too many of the voters has to do with misogynistic biases that warp people's perceptions, there's a difference between acknowledging that and making out like some major portion of the country doesn't believe that women should be presidents (I would explain sexism the latter way to a 6-year-old maybe, but not to a bright 13-year-old).

(Of course, the "America isn't ready for a woman president" thing is an uprightly feminist thing to say until it's said by Bernie Sanders, and then it's obviously sexist.)

As far as I'm concerned, Harris has at least a substantial, if less than 50%, chance of winning, and a lot will be up to chance circumstances that tip things one way or the other over the next three months.

And the final take I want to gripe about this evening is this fairly popular Tumblr post. Note particularly:

If you continue to argue for anyone other than Kamala, you want Trump to win.

My tentative position on the spectrum of ways of dealing with picking our nominee is that I think there should be some sort of actual contest (at least on the level of open debate) but that I think Democrats should have the nominee picked out (who in turn will have a VP pick) by the time of the convention. I definitely not down for decreeing within a couple of days of Biden's dropping out that, okay, there's only one viable candidate, there is because I say so, we must all fall in line with total unity immediately, anyone who disagrees with me is not only declared wrong by my own authority but declared to be in league with the enemy. Why do so many people struggle so much with theory of mind to not understand (or performatively appear not to understand?) that "those people are in favor of X, which is a thing that I believe will lead to undesirable outcome Y" does not imply "those people are in favor of Y"? I'm pretty sure I've ranted about this before, when it came to rhetoric surrounding a much more contentious cluster of issues, but it applies to a very wide variety of struggles.

[anthonybialy]

No Confusion Over Who Runs Biden White House

Divided sects are split under Joe Biden.  Making fractions even smaller is his specialty.  You already knew such if you’ve checked your bank account and grocery receipt.

It’s not just the country as a whole that’s feuding.  Fighting within a party is particularly amusing for the allegedly peace-loving one in question.  The inability to find consensus is one way to flaunt diversity.

Democrats argue amongst themselves about whether Joe Biden is too addled to pass their agenda.  Who wins?  The nation.  The only time the incumbent embarrassed himself more than during his present bout with clarity was when he was thinking at his fullest.

The Jill Biden/Barack Obama presidency seeks its first full faux term after their semi-victory.  If this seems shady, you’re familiar with their work.  Two all-time manipulators head a shady cast of bumbling interdictors who see the befuddled patriarch’s sad condition as an opportunity.  Remember: they’re the selfless ones.

The same signature-forgers who cornered Joe in the Oval Office early after his election want to selflessly serve as head of state while their addled potato holds the titled.  Their marionette skills have grown more blatant.  The strings become more visible as they get more practice.  Choosing between fibbing to conceal their intentions and being forced to admit their putzing schemes makes them perfect Democrats.

Trying to remove Biden because he wouldn’t be able to pass their agenda shows how much Democrats care.  It’s not about a person.  Telling everyone else what to do even though they’re demonstrably awful at it is their guiding passion.  Elder abuse isn’t a qualm nagging at designers of a new country and humanity who simply need office access.  Class warfare bullies figure heartless tycoons are just as amorally calculating.  The lack of empathy is thorough.

This presidency growing even faker would at least keeping them from inflicting more claptrap.  The political power his faction craves disappears alongside memories of what his name is.

What fortunes could escape squandering thanks to an executive who can’t muster authority on account of still wearing his bathrobe?  Without a quasi-coherent Biden, college enrollees might have to pay for what they use, which is the most important lesson they can learn.  Discovering billing for services is way more useful than whatever’s presented in sociology classes.

An uncivil civil war features lots of hair-pulling.  The cause is as funny as the action.  Conflict originated in debating if their leader is too torpid to screw up the economy more.  Intramural anger at least keeps them from focusing on their ultimate daft goal.

Facing a propped-up established failure seems like the easiest election to win.  But you underestimate the ability of Republicans to embarrass clowns with comparisons that go too far against relatively dignified circuses.  A foe that’s forgotten what conservatism is advocates for equality by not nominating someone who’d embarrass the incumbent with a certain win.  You must want a competitive election unless you loathe democracy.

Longterm benefits come accidentally when the two options fight to lose.  Republicans would end up in better shape than after another Trump presidency.  We just have to endure another term dedicated to a slightly different kind of suffering.  Anyone realistic enough to know that’s what life’s about is already braced for woe unlike liberals who inflict it unnecessarily and excessively by striving to eliminate it.

An unfathomable re-election would be like hurricane preparation for the nation.  Stormy conditions have been so constant that homeowners can put up plywood via muscle memory.  Wiser Supreme Court justices holding on through the gusts would prove their resilience on top of constitutional fidelity.  Liberty fans hate to make the same calculation about valuing people based on how useful they are politically.  But Democrats surely respect others playing their game.

Ditching Biden is a bipartisan dream.  Entrenched fossilization keeps everyone in the current era from happiness.  Saddling themselves with an extinct dodo is the closest Democrats come to restraining government.  Dodging implementation is based in their ineptness, so everything works out.

Anyone looking at the current president who says they want him serving into 2029 can’t credibly claim anything they believe works.  Biden’s minions are trying to commit insurance fraud regarding a policy they took out on America.  The grasshopper grifters of the sensei grow increasingly less convincing that they’re out to help.

Grandpa refusing to switch the locks shows the benefits of limiting how much of an influence people like him have in our lives.  His sole worthwhile contribution takes the form of a bad example, which doesn’t surprise anyone who heard him speak decades ago.

It took a tremendous amount of agony to learn why getting rich without working makes everyone poor.  Everyone promise to remember this time.  We’ve endured obvious scams for a couple centuries.  The present White House is limited by more than painful actuality.  

The promise of fecklessness from idiots is ironically their best chance of winning besides running against a Trump.  A Silver Alert for Biden while he’s standing right there shows the joy of absence.  I’d feel guilty if his friends and family cared.  Not having government invade your life to make it even worse is the upside of a president who no longer possesses the vigor to annoy.

Biden is a bad idea because of his bad ideas.  The crafty elder is limited by his inability to read sentences a sentient human wrote for him, much less form them on his own.  The presidential office is without the president, who is busy with his slot car tournament.  He’s the only entrant.  The best hope for everyone not competing is that he’s too feeble to ruin other races.  Refusing to let him sit on a porch and try to chase birds could save the republic.

[thessalian]

Thess vs That Gameplay Trailer

So ... given how my Tumblr dash is blowing up, I don't feel like I have to be particularly careful about spoilers. You've seen it or you haven't. So ... here comes my opinion about the Dragon Age: Veilguard trailer:

It looks fun. I think. It also looks like I might not be able to play it. Like, at all.

And it's not because I'm hating on it, by the way. It looks ... interesting, for sure. My problem is actually accessibility, because there is a lot that gameplay trailers don't show you in games like this.

They're using a controller for input. I cannot use a controller, so I have no idea what the keybinds are going to look like. I don't know if you can lock on to your desired target, I don't know if you have to keep hitting the Attack button just to keep hitting something until it actually dies.

They used the flashiest-looking class, I imagine, so there was Rogue. A lot of dodge-rolling. That plus the "HEY LOOK AT THE WEAK SPOT" targeting spot on larger creatures (and probably the whole "darkness and demons" look to what we saw, honestly, but more on that later) basically put me in mind of Baby's First Dark Souls. Like, Souls-Ultra-Lite. I know that's The Hotness right now, and I'm not hating on that. Honestly, I'm not hating on any of it in and of itself. They went in a direction. Was it a good one? Depends on where you're standing.

Again, my issue is accessibility. Because I came away from that gameplay demonstration with the following:

A collosal migraine

A horrible feeling that the controls are going to be a nightmare for me personally

The migraine was a combination of the heavy contrast between the dark setting and the Big Glowing Demons, with the added fun of the flashy things indicating which direction magic blasts are going to come at you and all of the other artefacts, aaaaaaaaand the way combat moved. Because that much dodge-roll just had the camera going fucking everywhere. I struggle with that a lot. Not as much when I play it as when I'm watching it, because I'm at least nominally controlling it, but ... see, that's the problem. I can choose to not move the camera so much in most of my games. This one ... just the way basic mooks that you hit at level 1 involves so much bouncing around the area that ... yeah, migraine. And that wouldn't be much better if it was me causing all the bouncing around; not with those lighting effects, anyway.

(Also wondering how that's going to work for a mage. The last game I saw that did this kind of thing that I could actually play was Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and I couldn't play a mage in that because spellcasting took forever and I kept getting interrupted either by being hit or by having to dodge before I could finish casting. But anyway.)

So there's the migraine issue ... and then there's the fibro issue. I can't say for sure without seeing how the UI works when using keyboard and mouse, but this looks like it's going to be torture on bad pain days. I imagine it's going to limit the hell out of what classes I can play, at minimum. (Hell, Inquisition already did that; having to follow enemies around and keep pressing R to stab them repeatedly wasn't something I could do, so I had to leave melee-rogue and warrior alone, sticking entirely with ranged-rogue and mage). I'm reliably informed that you can change playstyle as well as difficulty on this one, but I don't exactly know what that means or how that might be helpful.

All I can really comment on is what I've seen. And what I have seen indicates to me that aside from anything else, Bioware seems to have put the New Hotness of the current style of action RPG ahead of accessibility. That makes me sad and disinclined to discuss the thing, or to get too attached to any of the characters, because it's entirely possible that I may be entirely unable to play it for health reasons anyway, so why bother getting hyped?

Also I am grumpy because, again, migraine. I'm hoping that it's just that one was building anyway and that just tipped me over the edge. Not that that's much better, since sometimes migraines sneak up and I sometimes don't see the edge until it's agony and aphasia, but at least if it was that, I could pretend that there might be some days I could play that game without crippling myself.

[thelonesomequeen]

The man has a net worth of $110 million. He doesn’t need to play PR games for a check. And this type of thing isn’t going finance a movie either when a script doesn’t even exist yet 🦎/// Yes but he is less and less relevant in Hollywood. His roles are meh he doesn't have Cap to cover for that anymore. He have to stay relevant in the business that is changing to streaming instead of theatrical release. This business always was trashy and now Chris is playing this game hard too. He just get catch cause apparently he can even fake a romans for pics. I don't believe they together. Maybe was are friends but that's doesn't matter. Likes matters lol. Not only for him but others too. That's how agency's gets those less known actors on top lol. It gain traffic and fallows for them. People gets interested in them and that's the pandemic effect. When we all stacked at home that was the only way for them and also people started to pay attention to likes and fallows more (maybe out of boredom). They signed contracts with them so it's in their interest to get them jobs, recognition and higher status in Hollywood. Chris is doing dirty things, stupid Hollywood games. It's just time to accept it and stop baby him. Just watch him burn himself maybe he learn something.

ALL celebrities play PR games to some extent to stay relevant with the public and sometimes studios. But I still don’t think his career is WHY he would be involved with Alba for PR if that’s what’s going on. I just don’t. I’m sorry. 1. It had the potential to backfire BIG TIME by making him another Hollywood cliche. And to a degree, that DID happen. 2. They aren’t in the media together enough for me to be solely convinced this is ONLY PR. The general public isn’t sorting through likes and follows the way fans do to try and connect the two of them together. That’s stan behavior, not public behavior. And they haven’t done a whole lot to gain PUBLIC attention. Gaining fan attention isn’t enough for relevance when we’re a much smaller group of people than a lot of us here on tumblr or LSA would like to believe we are. 3. If he was desperate for public attention, there’s so many better ways PR could have been done. They could have ran with the Sexiest Man Alive title so much further than they did, they could spin ASP to look so much better than it does, the public loves him with Dodger and they could have pushed for more Jinx ads and articles considering he’s a brand ambassador. PR doesn’t have to just be relationship related, and for him, highlighting other parts of his life has always seemed to gain him more favorable public attention. But that’s just my opinion and you’re free to disagree.

Here’s the other piece of the puzzle and I’m just going to say it. If he wants to remain relevant in Hollywood, he just needs to be picking better projects and concentrate on doing better with acting. That’s all there is to it. He’s a mediocre white guy in Hollywood. There’s dozens of those everywhere. He’s very easily replaceable. His acting isn’t strong enough to set him apart from his peers. He’s at an age where the younger, muscly men in Hollywood are going to start taking those “action” type roles (and if they’re new to the industry, they can be paid less) but he’s not growing at the performance rate of his peers or actors that are slightly older than him for more serious roles. If we look outside of Marvel, he hasn’t had very many box offices successes. Knives Out did GREAT, but he was part of an ensemble cast. A cast full of respected actors or those with enough public draw. He didn’t carry that movie on his own. Lightyear didn’t do well with the box office. It was ok, but it wasn’t great. Red One and Ghosted are both streamers that appear questionable in quality. I’m not saying they’ll be bad, but I highly doubt they’ll be scoring Oscar nominations. Pain Hustlers (again, another streamer) I think could go either way depending on how they play out the story line. Studios aren’t going to just look at a celebrity’s PR or who they’re dating. They’re also going to look at what it costs to hire that actor, if their acting chops are up to par on what they need in the movie, and if they can sell tickets based on previous box office numbers. 🦎

[byneddiedingo]

Leonardo DiCaprio, Gary McCormack, and Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) 

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Lewis, Stephen Graham, Eddie Marsan, Alec McCowen, David Hemmings. Screenplay: Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan. Cinematography: Michael Ballhaus. Production design: Dante Ferretti. Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker. Music: Howard Shore. 

Gangs of New York is such a sprawling, unfocused movie that I can almost imagine the filmmakers throwing up their hands and sighing, "Well, at least we've got Daniel." Because Daniel Day-Lewis's performance as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting holds the film together whenever it tends to sink into the banality of its revenge plot or to wander off into the eddies of New York City history. A historical drama like Gangs of New York needs two things: a compelling central story and an audience that knows something about the history on which it's based. But for all their violence and their anticipation of problems that continue to manifest themselves in the United States, the Draft Riots of 1863 and the almost two decades of gang wars that led up to them are mostly textbook footnotes to most Americans. Director Martin Scorsese's determination to depict them led to the hiring of a formidable team of screenwriters -- Jay Cocks, who wrote the story, and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, who collaborated with Cocks on the screenplay. Unfortunately, the narrative thread that they came up with is tired. As a boy, Amsterdam Vallon saw his father, an Irish Catholic nicknamed "Priest" (Liam Neeson), cut down by Bill the Butcher in a huge battle between the Irish immigrant gang, the Dead Rabbits, and Bill's Protestant gang, the Natives. Sixteen years later Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns to the Five Points neighborhood determined to get revenge on Bill, who has managed to make peace with many of the old members of Vallon's father's gang and to become a power-player aligned with Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Vallon is introduced to Bill's criminal enterprise by an old boyhood friend, Johnny (Henry Thomas), and he begins to fall under Bill's spell -- along with that of a pretty pickpocket, Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz). But the relationship between Vallon and Jenny stirs the jealousy of Johnny, who is smitten with her, and he reveals to Bill that Vallon is the son of his old enemy, leading to a climactic showdown -- one that just happens to occur simultaneously with the Draft Riots. There's a lot of good stuff in Gangs of New York, including Michael Ballhaus's cinematography and Dante Ferretti's production design -- the sets were constructed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. But the awkward attempt to merge the romantic revenge plot with the historical background shifts the focus away from what the film is supposedly about: racism, anti-immigrant nativism, political corruption, and exploitation of the poor. "You can always hire one half of the poor to kill the other half," Tweed says. Oddly (and sadly), Gangs of New York seems more relevant today than it did in 2002, when the country was recovering from the 9/11 attacks. Then, the Oscar-nominated anthem by U2,  "The Hands That Built America," which concludes the film seemed to promise a spirit of unity, an affirmation that the country had overcome the antagonisms depicted in the movie. Today it has a far more ironic effect.