#its an art show the point is to demonstrate skill or make a statement or

[spittingoutthebloodandscreaming]

a massive pet peeve of mine is people commenting on runway/haute couture fashions like 'thats so impractical, who would ever wear that'. assessing haute couture by whether you would wear it is like going to an art gallery and assessing everything by whether you would hang it in your living room

[angrenwen]

"So I’m in professor Roberts’ Japanese Tea Ceremony  class, looking and feeling like death warmed over, but I’m genuinely interested in the subject matter and show up to every class because I have nothing better to do, and ask questions and turn in my homework, even if neither are particularly coherent at times, and rapidly become his favorite student.  The thing I learned in public school was how to show up to events even if I don’t want to, analyze tests and other written materials for patterns and charm educators by holding up my end of a conversation, skills that have served me in the modern world far more than learning actual course content would have.

The Tea Ceremony, historically, takes a good month to prepare and the entire evening to carry out- the guest list is curated to create social bonds and intellectual stimulation alike, a poem is composed for the season, and a seasonal flower arrangement created to decorate the space. When the guests arrive, they must all crawl through a small door to enter the tea garden, regardless of profession or rank.  Hands are ritually washed in spring water, and there is a slow processional walk through the garden, to admire the artistry of the landscaping, and the composition of seasonal elements to create this particular night of beauty.  The entire ceremony is about appreciating both the joy of existing right now, in this time and place, and the unification of the self and the universe and the endless cycles of nature. 

The guests arrive at the tea house and meet the Tea Master, who will be making the Matcha that evening. The guests are seated in particular order, the Most Revered Guest- sometimes a high-ranking official, sometimes a visiting scholar or artist- is seated closest to the Tea Master.  The Poem is read aloud.  The Flowers are admired.  The tools for making the Matcha are taken out, examined as objects of art, and their history told.  The matcha powder itself is taken out- the case examined, the cultivation of the tea discussed, and only then does the Tea Master make the Tea. 

Matcha is not brewed- it’s a fine powder made of crushed green tea leaves, and the powder is whisked together with not-quite-boiling water in a bowl to create a much more substantial and flavorful drink.  This drink is presented to the Most Revered Guest first, who is expected to take a sip and, in a moment of Zen spiritual clarity, comment on its flavor and how all the elements of the tea, art, garden and season all complement each other, and perhaps offer some sort of philosophical statement.

At least,

That’s how it’s supposed to go.

About a month before the spring semester is over, Professor Roberts announces that he has a surprise for his class- a good friend of his, a Professional Tea Master, will be visiting Hawai'i, and has agreed to perform a Tea Ceremony for our class!  I am very excited. The other 10 people in class are varying levels of amiably confused to distressed by having to go to An Event ™ for a grade, but agree. One of my classmates, an astrology hoe named Jessica, pointed out that with the 11 students, Professor Roberts, and the Tea Master, there will be 13 people present, which is basically inviting disaster.

“Jessica.” Sighed Professor Roberts. “It’s a Tea Ceremony. What disaster could happen?”

Despite Jessica’s misgivings, Preparations for the ceremony went on.  We learned about Ikebana while deciding on the Ceremonial Bouquet and tried our hands at it with what Professor Robert could get at the grocery store for $12. We learned about calligraphy and different types of poetic compositions while making the Seasonal Poem, and stain the hell out of the classroom carpet learning the brush strokes.  We learn about different types of Matcha Bowl sculpting and glazing and we are not allowed to touch the demonstration bowls or the kiln because Professor Roberts was beginning to suspect that some of his students (me)  were suffering from coordination issues. I apply myself with zeal, if not necessarily talent.  I was, at the time, an Art Major, but my professors in the art department had been grading me on a secret “this bitch almost died last semester and is re-learning how to hold a pencil” curve, and boy howdy did I stumble and break leaves and splatter ink like it.

Despite my ongoing unmonitored recovery, Professor Roberts viewed my enthusiastic class participation with rose-colored glasses, and about a week before the ceremony we had a class where he brought out the used Kimonos and Obi and other forms of japanese dress he’d borrowed from the theater department so that we would be traditionally dressed(ish) and experience the ceremony authentically(ish).  While people were trying on clothes to see what would fit, he took me aside and told me he wanted me to be in the position of Most Revered Guest, the person who makes the zen statement upon which the entire event hinges.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.

“You’re the only person who doesn’t fall asleep in class and you talked about how the flowers stagger their blooms to not compete for the bees- you’re perfectly engaged and conscious of the seasons!” He said, blindly. “You will need different shoes though."  He indicated my flip-flops.  "I won’t make you learn how to walk in Geta, but nothing with Heels. Ballet flats are fine.”

“…These are the only shoes I own.” I said.

Professor Roberts stared at me.

“-I used to have a pair of sneakers but I think a homeless guy stole them while I was at the beach last month.”

“What?” Roberts blinked.

“He probably needed them more than I do. I’ll see if I can borrow some flats.”

“…I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman with less than 10 pairs of shoes."  Said Roberts.

"I’m not a woman, I’m and undergrad.” I said, still three years away from learning the term ‘Nonbinary’.  “Those are Jordan’s only pair of shorts, you know.” I pointed at my classmate, who had been wearing the one (1) pair of basketball shorts for the entire semester.

“I WASH THEM.” Jordan shouted defensively, wearing the longest Men’s Kinmo the theater department had, which barely came down to the top of his calves.

“Oh God.” Said Roberts, a horrifying new world opening up to him like a tub of Expired sour cream.

*

It was the day of the Ceremony.

The Seasonal Theme we’d worked on was “The Turn Of Summer”, and the weather was complying maliciously. 

Normally, Tea Ceremonies are scheduled for the more temperate evening, but due to the school needing to host something in the adjoining cultural center later, we could only use the Tea Garden in the middle of the afternoon, and the summer sun was a sweltering 98 degrees and a similar level of Humidity.  The Camelias were melting.

Where Jordan had difficulty finding a Kimono that suited his ent-like proportions, I’d had the opposite problem and the only Kimono short enough to not trip my Hobbit-sized self was a Child’s size.  My roommate had helped me get into the Kimono and Obi before the ceremony, and leant me a pair of her Ballet Flats, but we discovered an issue- this Kimono was designed for a flat-chested prepubescent youth, and even though I barely scraped 5'0", I had the robust proportions of an Irish Peasant, and the only way to avoid displaying a frankly offensive amount of cleavage was to use the widest Obi we could find and sort of tuck my boobs into it. 

“Hm” I said. “Kind of hard to breathe.”

“Yeah, but you’re sitting for most of it, right?  It can’t last more than an hour, so just like, shuffle and don’t talk much?"  She suggested.

To her credit, the first forty-five minutes of the ceremony only involved shuffling through the gardens and not talking while the Tea Master lectured us on some of the finer points of the garden’s design. 

But then we got to the Tea House- a small structure only barely able to accommodate the 13 of us, which was in the shade but hotter than the outside because of the roaring fire in the middle of the room, where the water for the Matcha was boiling.  The room was surrounded by a narrow sort of porch, part of which hung over the Koi pond, where several massively overfed carp blurbled expectantly for treats at the arrival of humans. I sat down, legs folded under me like Professor Roberts had insisted, and realized that this pushed the Obi UP, and now my rib cage was being compressed in all directions.

I tried to pay attention to the rest of the ceremony, but two and a half hours is an awfully long time to listen about lecturers you’ve already heard when your body is undergoing a sort of internal horserace to see if the heatstroke, sciatica pain and numbness, allergies or suffocation-by-compression will cause you to pass out first.  My legs had gone numb below the knee by the time we were done with the flower arrangement.  My entire legs were numb before we were done with the Poem.  By the time the Tea Utensils came out, I was seeing spots of colored light in my vision and could only breathe if I focused on it very, very hard.

But! The ceremony was genuinely interesting! and Professor Roberts was counting on me!  So I did my best not to sway or throw up from watching the Tea Master whisk the Matcha, and dutifully took the bowl with a pair of hands that felt like slabs of ham that I was attempting to puppet from another dimension, and took a sip.

They say that Smell and Taste are far more closely connected to the emotional centers of the brain than any other sense, and I believe it because the instant I inhaled both the grassy, powdery smell, and tasted the moderately viscous bubbly liquid, I experienced an intense flashbulb memory back to a previous late May-

The Year was '98, the place was my elementary school art room, and we’d been using the seasonal hot weather to paint on a massive scale as the art dried quickly- each third-grader had been given a roll of butcher paper, a cheap brush, squirts of non-toxic paint and a water cup, and allowed to go hog-wild on our murals, and the rush of creative energy and the imminent sense of freedom as the semester drew to a close truly embodied the summer of youth, carefree but with an almost psychotic fervor, where lack of care was both freeing and dangerous as you lost track of your surroundings in the act of creation-

Which isn’t a bad seasonal-philosophical connection statement to make, but the actual words that came out of my mouth were:



"Wow. This tastes exactly like paint.”



The first sound I heard after the moment of silence was the cartoonishly loud gasp of horror from Professor Roberts, which was almost immediately drowned out by the thunderclap of laughter from the Tea Master, slapping his thighs and wiping tears from his face, unable to stop. I desperately tried to explain the connection between the fact I might be dying of heat stroke right now, and how I ended up drinking my paint water back in Mrs. Krantz’s art class because back then I was also dying of heat stroke, but mostly ended up wheezing half-formed sentences as the rest of the class took sips and offered opinions varying between “Wow, that’s thick. Like a Hot smoothie.” and “Oh yeah, it tastes like summer. Like how a freshly-mowed lawn smells like summer.” Professor Roberts slowly melted into a pile of shame, and the Tea Master slapped him on the back, still howling with laughter.

“They’re honest! Nobody else will be honest!  This is magnificent!"  he wheezed.

Eventually, everyone had their taste, and the ceremony was concluded.  The second the Tea Master had packed up his tools and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, Professor Roberts was in my face.

"HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT?” he hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. “GO APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW!"  he shoved me out onto the porch where the Tea Master was looking at the Koi, who had started bubble-begging aggressively again.

Except that my legs felt like blocks of wood that my pelvis was renting from another planet where legs hadn’t been invented yet, my vision was entirely static between the dehydration and lack of oxygen, and my vestibuar system had fucked off an hour ago, leaving me to stay upright by purely by the virtue of the over-tightened Obi.  So instead of bowing and apologizing profusely like my professor expected, what I actually did was stumble out of the room, say something like "Hsdfkf” and topple head-first into the koi pond.

Fortunately, the impact of the bottom of the pond with the top of my skull activated a sort of last-resort emergency self preservation system and I inhaled with enough force to break the Obi-Jime and probably a couple ribs from the pain that hit both my sides like lightning.  Unfortunately, the thing I was inhaling was fish-shit riddled Pond Water, so my emergency self-preservation system ordered an even harder Exhale. 

The Tea Master, to his immense credit, had immediately jumped in after me, and pulled me upright just in time for me to forcibly exhale half a gallon of rancid pond water directly into his face, then start screaming.  Screaming is an extremely appropriate reaction to have when injured, because it alerts everyone that you require medical attention, but is very unpleasant to experience from four inches away, which is probably why he then immediately dropped me.

Fortunately the pond wasn’t very deep and this time I sat there, scream-gasping as my lungs reinflated, Koi fish burbling and sucking at me with tremendous excitement, until the EMT from the campus clinic arrived, a vanguard before the actual ambulance.

“Okay uh. You’re bleeding.” he said, cautiously wading into the pond.

I opened my eyes to find that I had apparently acquired a large and profusely bleeding head wound, which had activated some long-suppressed Shark Instincts in the Koi, which were eagerly gumming at the streams of blood and trying to suck on my forehead. “Good thing they don’t have teeth.” I said in the distant bliss that only zen masters and people with serious head injuries get to experience.

“Do you want a towel?” he asked, helping me up.

“No, this is rather refreshing, actually.” I said, still absolutely smashed on endorphins, Koi still enthusiastically swarming at my kneecaps.

“I mean like for your-"  the EMT Gestured Vaguely at my torso.

I looked down and realized that not only had I broken the Obi-jime, the entire Obi had come undone and was floating several feet away, and I was only wearing the Kimono, fallen completely off my shoulders and was only being prevented from performing a full Lady Godiva by the valiant efforts of the safety pin my roommate had put in to keep it folded correctly while we figured out the Obi.

"Professor Roberts?” I stood up all the way, soaking wet, bleeding from my forehead with such force as to create actual streams of blood down my face, neck and chest, tits out, and addressed the poor man standing, white-faced on the deck above the pond.  “I don’t think I’m going to be in class on Monday-” I paused to fish a small Koi that had gotten trapped in the remains of the now-ruined Kimono, and tossed it back into the pond. “-Can I schedule a make-up exam for the Final?”

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET IN THE AMBULANCE!” He screamed.

I was x-rayed for a skull fracture, but my lifelong membership to the Lactose Tolerance Club had protected me, and I happily texted my roommate to come pick me up as “They x-rayed my head and found nothing” while the doctor stitched part of my scalp back together.

The following morning, I discovered that Professor Roberts had graded my exam before I took it.  100%. Truly, the best way to get a good grade on your finals is to get a serious head injury.



So, Matcha is not a Tea, in my humble opinion.

Matcha is an Experience.

And sometimes that experience is drinking something almost exactly like paint, ruining an important cultural ceremony, traumatizing your professor,  and introducing a bunch of fish to the taste of human flesh.



***

If this made you laugh, there are more funny stories on My Patreon, or you can help support me by tipping my Ko-Fi. Thank You."

You don't think matcha is tea????

Matcha isn’t a Tea in my humble Opinion.

Matcha is an experience.

The year is 2009, the place is the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, and I am recovering from a still-undiagnosed disease that left me with a 100+ degree for over three weeks, extreme weight loss and permanent Brain Damage.  I have signed up for an introductory Art History class because I need an additional Humanities credit.

It’s called “The History and Philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony”, and for a class I can only sort of remember, it stands out.

Keep reading

[lilimalia]

Wind breaker & Fighting Styles

This has been something on my mind for a while since starting the anime and manga. Although I find it harder to understand or gather information on the techniques and styles they use through the manga. Most of this will be from my own novice deduction from the anime! I’d love to hear feedback on any changes from marital art lovers like myself, and since I haven’t seen anywhere a proper post on this I figured I’d narrow it down myself

Manga spoilers are labelled, barely any though, I tried to keep it anime only

Sakura Haruka

I genuinely think he’s probably self taught. Seeing how he brute forces a lot of his fighting in the anime, I think he learned from picking stuff off the streets or other sources (he’s not good with his phone… so maybe not youtube videos). I definitely a lot of taekwondo 360/750 kicks and just overall basic roundhouse and snap kicks in his style and I think he picked up some sort of fist movement from watching other brawlers, or just his overall fighting experience we know he has.

When the anime depicts his brawls, especially in the beginning one with Kotoha you notice he depends a lot on roundhouse kicks, spinning kicks, and back kicks. He seems to be reliant on his legs but has the spacial awareness of defending himself with his hands. I know its a stretch to say that his combat skills in a group against one fight are superb and probably is what leads to why I think he’s self taught (since well… its anime it could be that he’s built different) but nevertheless its nice to see how spatially aware he is of his surroundings.

Taekwondo and street brawler dude for sure! He’s definitely a guy who depends on his experience and brute force.

Suo Hayato

In the anime he states he’s a mixed martial artist, which I think is amazing, but narrowing the options down I think he’s definitely got a default of aikido and tai-chi. Saying his master is self taught doesn’t point to much but honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it was revealed he’s a monk-in-training or was some sort of disciple with how well behaved and calm he is.

I think the previous styles are especially highlighted in his fight with Kanuma, or sweet baby as the dub ver of Suo calls him.

I think that with the lack of energy exerted towards the flurries of attacks Kanuma sends he’s definitely been influenced by his master in tai chi. The way he bends the limbs and force that Kanuma pushes forward with demonstrates the “flow of water” that tai chi is known for. As Kanuma gets closer though he starts showing off more Aikido styled movements/throws. Notably the one that makes his opponent look like he’s just fallen on his own (the one Sakura comments on).

I also wouldn’t put it off the list that he hasn’t had experience with wing chun. His knife hand blocks with Kanuma at close distance and the leg sweep that he shows off later in that small scene show a lot of “preserving of the fist” which wing chun is heavily involved in. It’s also notable that if he’s got experience of martial arts taught to monks as I suspect, then he could have the basics of kung fu too.

I also noticed that when protecting the girl from the gang during the restaurant and Kiryu meeting he uses a motion thats similar to a water wheel. I’m not sure the name of the move, but I did register it as a tai chi move thats meant to copy the movement of rippling water on a water wheel!

Overall, I think this silly pirate is influenced by a lot of martial arts taught to monks or women and those of frail bodies, wing chun, tai chi, and aikido (which does not apply to my previous statement).

I think Suo is an awesome character whose style reflects quick thinking and reflexes!

Togame Jo (my personal favorite/bias)

Honestly we haven’t seen much from the anime so I can’t conclude on one style, but I do believe Togame is heavily reliant on grappling and mat techniques. As we watch over him and his fight with Sakura, during his “awakened” part of fighting when he’s piped up and ready, we see him leaning into Sakura’s lower torso area alot. I actually 100% think he’s got wrestling experiences. At the first drone shot (showing their moves from above) when they first started fighting, there’s an animation of Togame sliding his foot across the floor in a circular motion in what I believe is a single leg of some sort? Hard to say. But in any case, we can assume he’s done a lot of mat work since he’s commonly blocking Sakura’s upward attacks to kneeslide into the lower region.

I also think that with his wrestling experience, Brazilian jujitsu comes in hand. Its common that mat based martial artists have a duo experience between the choices of wrestling, bjj, and judo.

Manga spoilers below

Togame Jo during his fight with the Noroshi guy (I’ve honestly forgotten his name), he locks the guy into an arm bar! Reading about this later, I can say confirmed he’s got bjj background too. Also, him having great stamina and strength is expected out of mat wrestlers so its awesome to see that representation!

I think its amazing that he’s a martial artist who prefers a more grounded combat style since typically you’d assume people with long limbs and height to them would stick to things like kickboxing and muay thai. Styles that utilize your long-ness.

Kiryu Mitsuki

I think it’s very obviously identified that Kiryu is supposed to be and is, a very laid back character. Having said this, I am over the moon that the creator of wind breaker decided to match up his fighting style to his laid back unbothered persona! I think Kiryu is 100% a tai chi man. He’s barely made a big move in the anime so as of right now I think he’s just a tai chi artist. I don’t think theres any other influences?…

Some main examples would be the very first two moves we see from him being one, a grabbing of his opponent and then palm strike, and then another being a “pressure blow” where realistically tai chi martial artists take the pressure exerted towards them and use the pinpoint of pressure against the opponents on body. These are both key attributes of tai chi, movement of water.

I think it should be keen to notice how little “oomph” Kiryu is putting into his opponents, but also the key conversation him and Sakura and Taiga Tsugeura have about “sending opponents my way!” Since Tai Chi is supposed to be a passive martial arts that depends on less movement and less power its natural for Kiryu to utilize it as more of a diversion artstyle. In the best way, its him riding with the waves, which would be the energy extended by his opponents, and going with the flow, bending the water and waves else where to divert actual confrontation.

Tai chi is a martial arts but also sort of a yoga. Its a small joke that its considered a grandma/grandpa sport! But it is a teaching that is commonly taught to ladies as well.

Kiryu’s fighting style shows just how laid back he is and shows his calmness in a way that isn’t like Suo’s. One may think their similar but its really the difference between cunningness and mindset. Kiryu seems deadset and comfortable being laidback and taking out opponents with as little power as possible while Suo is someone who is cunning and enjoys the battle. (For more go to bonus bit)

He’s a silly man who likes to reserve his energy in fights and redirect the pressure elsewhere, which is the way of water. Go with the flow!

Bonus:

Whilst I think it could be misdirected that Kiryu and Suo are of same teachings I’ll point out where their fighting styles differ. We both know they use some base of tai chi, but here’s some examples of why I think Suo is more of a hands on man.

It might just of been when he was fighting Kanuma and was semi-pushed into a situation of necessary offense, however, Suo’s also shown to use a lot of handsy moves and throws that are designated for combat and not just light power and reserving energy. A good possible example of contrast between Suo and Kiryu is when their protecting the girl, both Kiryu and Suo use tai chi waterlike movements to exert the onslaught of gang members away from them, almost like dividing the tide in half. However, had the girl not been there, the brawl could have been more like the Suo we see in the opening song’s animation. Where he’s tornado kicking and spinning as he kicks opponents and getting into sort of a pray mantis form (back knee bent and knife hands)

We see him prancing around and diverting to kicks, which is something I don’t think Kiryu would do because well… too much energy and force.

However I do think it would amazing! To see these two properly fight side by side since Kiryu and Suo have such good chemistry. Kiryu could divert enemies whilst Suo calmly knocks them out. A codependency of sorts!

Sako

With Sako although I don’t have enough to give an analysis on his former friend(?) Hiragi I do think I can give insight on how he performs.

Sako seems leg heavy but not in a way like Sakura is. He’s definitely got a lot of decorative kicks, which in real life settings wouldn’t work. But hey! So does Sakura, its what makes its fun. He’s probably someone who hyperfixated on taekwondo kicks but then added some capoeira flair to his style to throw people off. This little flair and creative and flashy moves really shows how much he’s grown since Hiragi. Him being able to find a fight style outside of Hiragi’s brute force, “just do it, angry hulk emoji,” type of style really shows off how he’s grown.

A good example of him adding flair is at the kick that Hiragi stops at and slightly moves his head from. The idea of holding your leg before landing a crescent kick is a good show stopper to throw off an enemy. Its quite cunning to utilize a “pause” in the middle of a fast pace fight. (Which I think also shows off how smart he is, since its what he was bullied for in the anime).

Honorary mentions (characters I don’t think have a set style or don’t have enough information on)

Kaji Ren

Kaji Ren as of in the anime seems like a freegoer whose martial arts is just brute forcing punches. I’d love to come back analyze his style when its adapted but as of now I can’t pinpoint much.

Hiragi Toma

Also another man who I think brute forces it. His fight with Sako is very appliance heavy and during the part before getting knocked out you can notice how reliant he is on his own strength. He does seem like he does kickboxing or muay thai though… Although thats more speculation than anything serious.

Taiga Tsugeura

While I could give proper analysis on Taiga it’s hard to say without seeing more of him fighting. He is adorably macho man and big bear soft hugs coded but from the one move of him basically suplexing his opponent to protect the girl with Kiryu and such, I could see wrestling?? It wouldn’t be surprising if you’ve seen wrestlers. Typically very macho like and buff as their on the mat for 3 minute intervals trying to joint lock, wear down, pick up and throw down, opponents into a pin.

While suplex’s that lead into the head are illegal in the actual sport, it’s nice to see Taiga utilize it in combat form. When we get more footage of him fighting I would expect to see a lot of wrestling moves but also maybe pseudo-throws that could come from judo? I highly doubt it though. Since judo is known to be “the gentle way” taking down opponents quickly and softly for the person doing the throws

Either way he seems like he really just depends on his muscular structure and strength to really center his fights. So he could just also be someone who brute forces it!

Sugishita Kyotaro

There’s the same explanation for this silly guy too. Definitely a brute force. It makes sense though! Get angry, fight angry, and finish angry, all with his two fists!

Choji Tomiyama

I think Choji could be influenced by capoeira dancers… But in a pure sense he could just be an acrobatic. He’ll probably be a character I come back to explain later!

These character profiles on their martial fighting styles are of my own noticings and references. In no way are they meant to be taken as an official guide, but rather just a silly girl’s journal of speculation. I would love to see feed back or add ons as to what you think the characters fighting styles are based off of!

This is also under the assumption that all characters mentioned have a base experience of kicking sports like taekwondo/kickboxing and boxing/arm work of some sort. Overall I think all characters are some form of mma and brawl to their own tastes

[visionlanguageexperts]

PTE Reading & Writing Fill in the Blanks - CONNECTOR Secrets

Welcome to Vision Language Experts, where we provide you with the tools and insights you need to excel in your PTE (Pearson Test of English) exams. Today, we are unveiling some of the best-kept secrets to mastering the PTE Reading & Writing Fill in the Blanks section, specifically focusing on the art of using connectors effectively.

Understanding Connectors in PTE

Connectors are words or phrases that link sentences and ideas together, ensuring the text flows logically and coherently. In the PTE Reading & Writing Fill in the Blanks tasks, understanding how to use connectors can significantly boost your score by demonstrating your ability to comprehend and construct well-structured sentences.

Types of Connectors

Connectors can be broadly categorized into several types based on their function. Here’s a quick overview:

Addition Connectors: These include words like "and," "also," "furthermore," "moreover," and "in addition." They are used to add information or to introduce a point that supports the previous statement.

Contrast Connectors: Words like "but," "however," "on the other hand," "nevertheless," and "although" help in showing differences or contradictions between two ideas.

Cause and Effect Connectors: These include "because," "since," "therefore," "as a result," and "consequently." They link an action or event with its outcome.

Sequence Connectors: Words such as "first," "next," "then," "finally," and "subsequently" help in organizing information chronologically or logically.

Example Connectors: Phrases like "for example," "for instance," "such as," and "namely" are used to introduce examples that clarify or illustrate a point.

Tips for Using Connectors in PTE

1. Understand the Context

Before selecting a connector, read the entire passage carefully to understand the context. Determine the relationship between the sentences or ideas that need to be connected.

2. Practice with Different Types of Texts

Exposure to various types of texts—such as academic articles, essays, and reports—will help you recognize different contexts and how connectors are used within them. The more you practice, the better you’ll become at identifying the appropriate connector to use.

3. Pay Attention to Punctuation

Connectors often require specific punctuation. For instance, "however" is typically followed by a comma when it appears at the beginning of a sentence. Understanding these punctuation rules can help you use connectors more accurately.

4. Learn Common Connector Combinations

Certain connectors are often used together in academic writing. Familiarize yourself with these combinations, as they can provide hints about which connector to use. For example, "not only...but also" and "either...or" are pairs that frequently appear together.

5. Expand Your Vocabulary

A robust vocabulary is crucial for choosing the right connector. Make it a habit to learn new words and phrases regularly. Use flashcards, vocabulary apps, or word lists to enhance your word bank.

6. Practice with Real PTE Materials

Use practice tests and real PTE exam materials to apply your connector knowledge in a test-like environment. This will help you get accustomed to the format and time constraints of the actual exam.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. Overusing Connectors

While connectors are essential, overusing them can make your writing sound mechanical and forced. Use connectors judiciously to maintain a natural flow.

2. Using Incorrect Connectors

Misusing connectors can confuse the reader and disrupt the logical flow of your text. Ensure that the connector you choose accurately reflects the relationship between the ideas you are linking.

3. Ignoring Connector Variety

Relying on the same few connectors repeatedly can make your writing monotonous. Aim to use a variety of connectors to keep your text engaging and dynamic.

Final Thoughts

Mastering connectors is a key skill for excelling in the PTE Reading & Writing Fill in the Blanks section. By understanding the different types of connectors and practicing their use, you can enhance the coherence and clarity of your writing. At Vision Language Experts, we are committed to helping you achieve your highest potential. Keep practicing, and you’ll see significant improvements in your PTE performance.

Stay tuned for more tips and strategies from Vision Language Experts. Happy studying, and good luck with your PTE preparation!

[jackedspicer]

a bio for my xiaolinsona! she’s a work in progress so i’m bound to come back and change it. trivia and more in depth information is under the readmore :)

continued trivia:

she’d show up somewhere near the start of season 4

she’s used a LOT for slapstick. in fact she’s mostly a comic relief character

she’s guided mainly by emotions, is right brain oriented, and is a hands-on learner

there is a running gag where she frequently has bandaids on her fingers, hands, arms, or anywhere really

she’s a massive funk junkie. LOVES disco. she’s also a great dancer

when she comes up with xiaolin showdowns, sometimes she’ll base it off of fun recreational activities or things that seem harmlessly mundane, like mini golf..... tic tac toe.....dance-off...... rock paper scissors..... the showdowns themselves obviously end up being high-stakes and lethal as they always are, except they’re based off of goofy premises

she’s probably musically accented by grunge that’s slightly funky

when it’s funny, she occasionally will use huge words or make jarringly philosophical statements, eg patrick star’s “the inner machinations of my mind are an enigma” cut to footage of milk spilling

shes a lot like charlie kelly. in general. any charlie moment is just. Her. she’s a wild card and screams every line and huffs glue and tries to get the honey out of a hornets nest outside of jacks house because she thinks hornets make honey and she likes ghouls and she genocides the rats in his basement and sleeps ass to ass with him and is illiterate

she likes to do arts and crafts but they almost always come out as abominations. she’ll occasionally borrow some of jack’s tools to construct her latest atrocity, and she’ll refer to them by a wrong/made up name while she’s at it. “the hacksaw duey”, “the electric hole puncher,” ”the automatic pizza cutter”, etc. yes the projects and the bandaids have a direct cause and effect relationship. please refer to this video (and this channel in general)

imagine her sitting at a table and just doing this in jack’s lair... this video alone can be used to sum up so much of her. the technique. the bandaids. the blatantly wrong information that’s said with such conviction. the dark turn towards the end of the video. “superfluous protrusion.” the way it ends

continued trivia pt. 2, taken from my instagram

(i’ll get into this more further down the post)

fighting style because this is xiaolin showdown:

she has a very nimble, disorienting style of combat. using pokemon stats as an analogy, her highest would be speed by far, followed by attack, with her lowest stats being defense and special attack. this combined with her unrelenting nature makes her an excellent distraction and a general nuisance, but she doesn’t fare well in prolonged head to head battle.

favorite shen gong wu: 

monkey staff, mikado arms, fancy feet, neptune helmet, hoduko mouse, woozy shooter (on herself), tongue of saiping, longi kite, indigo pyramid (on jack (cause it’s funny))

*the shen gong wu she’s most skilled with in battle are ones that trip up her opponents and cause status ailments. kinda like a prankster

backstory/analysis:

at her core, she’s a jolly, optimistic, humorous person, but her unruly, isolating childhood put a blow on her psyche. much like jack spicer, she’s been virtually alone her entire life - she was rejected by peers and adult figures alike since earliest childhood, and her home life was turbulent at best.

to ease the pain, at some point, she took on resenting and judging those around her as a means to cope. she has a holden caulfield-esque defense mechanism in play where if everybody sucks for this reason, or that reason, or those reasons, then she has justification for detaching herself from others, and she can derive her only source of self esteem from being better than them. this hurts far less than the devastating truth that she cannot connect with people on account of feeling so worthless and estranged from other human beings that she could never have the chance to be cared about by anyone. deep down, she’s in desperate, thrashing need of support and genuine human connection, and she has a warped perception of how she can achieve that.

she’s taken up evil as a hobby because it nurtures her desire to be destructive and, again, just like jack spicer, she engages in it as a way to feel seen. all press is good press, and the best way to make the headline is to cause some damage. what sets her apart from him in this regard, though, is that she takes all of her pain out on her enemies (in this case, the xiaolin monks) because she can’t stand how well off they are - instead, on the basis of their acceptance of one another, she sees them as goody two-shoes phonies who ought to be knocked down a peg. while evil to jack is both a means of getting much needed attention and a convoluted way of spending time with friends, to sid it’s a way to vent frustrations and a way to, well... still garner attention, but also spend time with a friend, except the friend is jack.

the other half of the reason she partakes in petty villainy is that it’s just... fun. she only got wrapped up in all this because she’d been restlessly putzing around somewhere remote, found a neat doohicky she planned on keeping, and when one thing led to another she wound up in a xiaolin showdown against jack. experiencing the chaos unfold revealed a golden opportunity she couldn’t pass up, so she asked jack to let her come with, debuting their partnership (i talk about this in further detail at the end of the post). goofing off and doing evil with him is so much fun to her! it makes her feel alive, a sensation and state of mind she never could fully achieve before.

noteworthy relationships:

jack: 

they have a team rocket thing going on. not in terms of their interpersonal dynamic, but rather their role in the story, how much of a threat they pose as, their schemes, and even their overall attitude are reminiscent of the iconic duo; they’re petty, recurring villains with hearts of gold who aren’t above occasionally siding with the good guys.

even though they both are on the same tier of comic relief and general foolishness, the metaphor i like to draw is that jack is the left brain and sid is the right brain.

their personalities have such chemistry and they’re both so goofy that they effortlessly sync up. everyone thinks it’s REALLY annoying

they’re best friends! they actually care very deeply for one another, even if they might have funny ways of showing it. they may be evil, but they’re mutually the only and closest friend the other has ever had, and with that carries a lot of weight. think of it - the first person you meet who hasn’t been nothing but awful to you likes you and wants to be around you. What a concept

while their relationship is platonic, there are several gags implying a romantic element, even though nothing is ever outright stated. kisses on the cheek, bashfulness, other characters making fun of them (“where’s your DUMB little girlfriend?” “..........she’s not DUMB!!!!!”), domestic references (“am i sleeping on the couch”)..... it’s left ambiguous because it’s hetbait plain and simple. somebody asks them what they even are and they say Partners In Crime wym. jack asks sid What Are We and she fist pumps the flat of her own chest twice, throws a peace sign and says We’re Bros

their nicknames for each other include but are not limited to “jackass, jacky-boy, jack-o-lantern, smarty pants, wiggles, spack jicer, spack, mr spack, spackle”, and “shortstack, pipsqueak, sid the kid, champ, funky monkey, foxy (in a funny way, he’ll say it like Whatcha Up To Foxy ? while she’s like making a mess doing an arts & crafts abomination or just vibing bein her weird lil self....  it comes from a place of playful sarcasm and affection) (champ, funky monkey, and foxy are courtesy of @currentlyfallingthroughspace)

to piggyback off of the left brain vs. right brain metaphor, “heart vs. brain is how they think, right brain vs. left brain is how they act, and two halves of a heart represents their natural dispositions” is how my aforementioned friend put it. they both have a lot of heart and are ooey gooey on the inside, but the difference is that sid can grasp the intricacies of emotional/psychological matters while jack can’t (actually knowing how to EXPRESS this is another topic). it’s in the same way that jack can effectively plan ahead, use logical reasoning, and know where to go and how to get there, but sid is shabby in this department. “one is aware but doesn’t address it until it’s too late, and one can’t see it and doesn’t ask until it’s too late.”  

another feature of potential conflict in all incarnations of them is the juxtaposition of sid actually being more down to earth than jack in the grand scheme of things. jack has the potential to go completely overboard, and whether or not he demonstrates the ability to catch himself on the event horizon will ascertain the outcome.

deep down, neither of them are truly evil, and they bring this out in each other as they ultimately contribute to the redemption of one another. how this actually happens is a lot rockier. sid has the intuition and self awareness to become increasingly cognizant of the fact that she engages in schemes as a way to bond with her friend, and, over time, she’s able to recognize that she’s simply been acting out, and she consequently softens up over time - but jack is much denser in this regard. he doesn’t consciously pick up on the same things she does and still believes that she’s drinking the koolaid as much as he is. the crucial dissonance in what matters most that had been incubating under the weight of things left unsaid emerges in a major falling out that challenges the nature of their entire dynamic and respective moral codes. i had a lot of help from the same friend with the following series of events and it’s really something that ought to be gone into detail on its own post, but a whirlwind brief summary is that jack becomes desperate from losing over and over so he comes up with this sinister plan that’s just too far, sid tells him to stop, they get into a nasty fight, sid leaves and makes it clear she’s not coming back, she goes to the xiaolin dragons for help, jack goes on an evil rampage but also loses his grip and has this mental breakdown because he lost the one person who’s ever cared about him (or so he thought), sid has the same brutal separation pangs but it doesn’t change the fact that jack is still doing what he’s doing, sid gets a firsthand view of a fight breaking out between the monks while she’s working with them and has a moment of clarity when she observes how they resolve it in such a healthy way, as they continue to work together and help her through the whole fiasco she realizes they’re not so bad, an entire excruciating series of events that’s genuinely too large to fit on this post unfolds and it ultimately ends with jack actually having to team UP with the good guys to stop what he started, and it ends with them breaking down, apologizing, and beginning their redemption BUT not without the illustration of several lessons that arose out of the complications of the entire thing...... the overarching lesson that’d been entrenched in their entire dynamic from the start, albeit corny, is that caring and being cared for was all they ever needed, and they learn to cultivate that within each other right under their own noses. it would be fun to have them stay as recurring villains forever, but seeing how much good is in their hearts is enough to make you wonder how they were ever evil.

xiaolin monks:

she thinks she hates them, but she doesn’t really. while her opinion of them is marked by resentment and distaste, she also holds them in high regard. a part of her wishes she could be friends with them, but the mental landscape she’s paved for herself doesn’t reveal that as an option. in her mind, she’s already been rejected by them. so why try?

the way she takes her pain out on them - people who had nothing to do with her traumas - can be summed up by the spinel su quote, “why do i want to hurt you so bad? i’m supposed to be a friend. i just want to be a friend.”

she gets chummier with them upon her redemption. out of the group, she gets along best with clay and dojo :) 

bonus origin episode

this would be the imaginary early season 4 episode i mentioned at the beginning of the post. it’s more of a loose string of ideas tied together with reckless abandon but hey. the episode would open with jack feeling lonely and down on his luck to establish the theme that he kinda needs a friend (”wuya’s gone, chase trained his cats to get surly with me if i show up, my evil dream team won’t answer my calls....”). his sulking is interrupted by a shen gong wu alert and he’s like. whatever. i don’t need them. i’m still gonna do this on my own. even if it’s. ˡᵒⁿᵉˡʸ. fastforward to the scene i described where sid is putzing around with her doohicky (which i’m considering might be the neptune helmet) all by her sad miserable lonesome when suddenly some flying bloke in a trenchcoat who looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in years shows up telling her she’s got something he needs. she of course responds with something along the lines of “you know what? why don’t you try to take it from me since you want it so bad, mr big stuff,” triggering a xiaolin showdown. this is around the time the xiaolin dragons show up too late - but they’re grateful for somebody having been there to fight jack in time, even if they have no idea who they are. she has no clue what’s going on, but whatever it is, she LOVES it. she goes buckwild. she has a time. jack, on the other hand.... well, understanding how badly he needs that wu is certainly throwing a wrench in it, but he can’t help but feel like he’s having a bit of fun too. well, up until he loses. post-showdown, the monks kinda count their chickens before they hatch so to speak and they rush over to this new kid with a shower of praise, thinking they have a friend on their side. instead, she cuts them off, shouts to the guy who’s gathering his bearings (or lack thereof) - “hey! jack was it?” - and playfully tosses her shen gong wu in the air, catching it. “you look like you need this thing way more than i do. tell you what! take me with and i’ll let you borrow it,” is what she follows it up with, implying she wasn’t really that invested and only saw the whole thing as a fun game. jack and the monks are flabbergasted. what’s more bizarre is she did in fact ask to join him, something nobody’s ever done out of their own volition before. she talks about how boooooooooooring it is here and how that was soooooo much fun and to pleeeeeeeease take her with. he’s really iffy about it and doesn’t know if it’s such a good idea. he tries to make himself look cool, telling her “as IF, shortstack..........im afraid The Jack Rides Alone................................................. but-” and ultimately buckling because he can’t deny that it would be nice to have someone around.

[theoutcastrogue]

Caravaggio’s “The Cardsharps” and “The Fortune Teller”

[abridged excerpt from Keith Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990)]

Fig. 1. Caravaggio, The Cardsharps (c. 1594). Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas  

Caravaggio (1571—1610) had arrived in Rome from his native Lombardy sometime after May 1592, unknown and without a single major picture to his credit. One rumor had it that he fled Milan following an altercation, but he may simply have been seeking a larger arena for his untried but considerable ambition. His first two years in the city were miserable. For a time he was reduced to painting copies of devotional pictures for a beneficiary of Saint Peter’s (a task for which few artists can have been more ill-suited). His attempts to set up shop with other young artists ended in failure, until the most ambitious of his early pictures—The Cardsharps—was purchased by Cardinal del Monte. The cardinal seems to have been greatly impressed with the work, for there followed an invitation to take up quarters in his residence and the promise of a stipend. The event marked a turning point. The years spent with Del Monte, from roughly 1595 to 1600, were crucial to Caravaggio’s career and his development as an artist.

More than thirty copies of The Cardsharps are known. The critic Bellori, who was not an admirer of Caravaggio—he championed an idealist conception of art at odds with the realistic premise of Caravaggio’s work—describes it thus:

“[Caravaggio] showed a simple boy with cards in his hand, his head copied from life very well, wearing dark clothes, and opposite him a fraudulent youth in profile who with one hand leans on the game table and with the other takes a trick card from his belt, while a third [figure] near the boy observes the markings of the cards and with three fingers signals his companion, who, in leaning over the table displays to the light his yellow jacket with black stripes; nor is the color untrue to life.”

Fig. 2. Caravaggio, The Fortune Teller (c. 1594). Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome.

When Del Monte purchased The Cardsharps and The Fortune Teller, their subjects were as novel as their style. So far from being simple demonstrations of mimesis—paintings as tranches de vie—they employed recognizable types and familiar situations to make a quasi-didactic, moralizing point about deception and the credulity of youth. This intent linked them to a category of painting that Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti had termed pitture ridicole in his 1582 discourse on painting: pictures that instruct by ridiculing foolish behavior. However, the works Paleotti probably had in mind relied, for the most part, on an extensive use of emblems and parody. Caravaggio’s approach, at once disarmingly direct and richly allusive, was a radical departure, brought out in a 1603 madrigal on The Fortune Teller by Gaspare Murtola :

I don’t know which is the greater sorceress: the woman who dissembles, or you, who painted her. She with her sweet spells ravishes our hearts and blood. You have painted her so that she seems alive; so that, living and breathing, others believe her.

The ability to convey meaning by seducing the viewer into accepting a picture as the equivalent of a real experience rather than as an abstracted statement lies at the heart of Caravaggio’s art, and it placed him at odds with the art establishment of his day. Nonetheless, even a later, classically biased critic like Bellori realized that this novel approach required not only technical mastery but also a command of costumes and the ability to describe human character.

Fig. 3. Caravaggio, The Cardsharps (detail).

In The Cardsharps the wily figure to the right (fig. 3) is identified as a soldier of fortune, or bravo, by the clothes he wears. These closely match the illustrated description (fig. 4) in Cesare Vecellio’s manual of costumes (Venice, 1590), where it is stated that “these bravi or sbricchi… wear on their heads high hats of velvet or silk… with a jacket of Flemish cloth and stitched sleeves…. They frequently vary their dress, and are always dueling…. They serve this or that [master] for money, swearing and bullying without provocation, and committing all kind of scandals and murders.” In Caravaggio’s picture the bravo sports a parrying dagger (pugnale), which he wears on his left rather than his right hip, since he carries no sword.

Fig. 4. A soldier of fortune (bravo venetiano), from Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni (Venice, 1590).

Caravaggio, who enjoyed the role of the street brawler himself, must have been familiar with these youths. In his 1565 compendium of gambling practices, Giovanni Cardaro warned against gambling with such types, noting that they always won “because of their greater experience, trickery, and skill.”

Fig. 5. Caravaggio, The Cardsharps (detail).

In contrast to the brash clothes of this streetwise young sharp is the velvet finery of his victim, an empty-headed pretty boy (fig. 5). The cunning accomplice wears torn gloves and mismatched vest and sleeves that define his social status as effectively as does his comical face, with its exaggerated, almost masklike expression (among Caravaggio’s earliest and not altogether successful attempts to depict a fleeting emotion).

Fig. 6. Capitano Spavento, or Il Capitano, a stock character of commedia dell’arte. Here in a 19th century illustration interpreting Poccetti’s c. 1607 fresco showing the Italian actor Francesco Andreini in his costume as Capitano Spavento.

The picture was intended to be read as a staged scene involving clearly differentiated characters enacting an episode from everyday life, and there can be little doubt that for both The Cardsharps and The Fortune Teller Caravaggio drew inspiration from the conventions of popular theater and such stock characters as the bravo Capitano Spavento (fig. 6). He did, however, conspicuously avoid the element of burlesque that was part of the commedia dell'arte tradition and that was frequently taken up by his later imitators in their treatment of the same themes.

Fig. 7. Hans Holbein, “The Gamester: Death and the Devil seize upon the Gambler at his cards.” woodcut from the Dance of Death. (Basel, 1526)

While the theater was one source for Caravaggio, another was northern prints. He would appear to have studied Holbein’s woodcut illustration to the Dance of Death showing three quarreling gamblers beset by Death and the Devil (fig. 7). However, unlike Holbein and other northern artists, Caravaggio was not interested in condemning gambling as a vice but in exploiting it to expose human foibles.

~ Keith Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990); abridged excerpt

[jane-lu24]

Transformers Animated world-building time

I’m the kind of writer who really needs to know the universe of whatever world I’m writing in. This originally was going to be a history of the Decepticons to help me in working on “The Many Incidents of Courtship”, but it kinda turned into a very long thing. Most of the basic information was taken from the AllSpark Almanac. Enjoy!

Early History

In the beginning there was the AllSpark and the planet that it was bound to. All records about its origins have been lost to time. But this mysterious energy source gave life to simple automotons equipped to build and to shape the planet into a habitable space. When invaders from the skies came to disrupt their work, the AllSpark created larger tougher automotons to protect the builders.

This worked to repel those invaders, and the two types of mechanical lifeforms began to work together to make the planet their home. They worshipped the AllSpark and communed with what's contained within. The planet also responded to them, forming pathways and shelter as needed. The AllSpark continued to create those two frame types for many millions of years, civilian frames meant to build and to create, and war frames to defend and fight.

Early Tensions

The falling out between those two groups did not happen overnight. War frames always had the advantage in power and size, and used the AllSpark to commandeer the planet to fend off invaders. Along with fighting, many of them were proficient in the arts, such as music, architecture and writing.

Civilian frames in turn used the AllSpark to shape the planet and populate the cities. They were skilled in scientific developments, building things out of scratch and managing relations between different groups. They also supported the war frames by creating weapons for them.

The civilian frames who became leading figures in scientific and construction work eventually came to call themselves the Guardians. They formed a governing party that held much of planetary leadership. The war frames who served as Cybertron's main defense force were known as the Malignus. It was around this time when the rank of Magnus was first created. The Magnus answered to the Guardians and was given the Magnus Hammer as a symbol of office.

However, this system had its flaws. Eventually, Guardian leadership became progressively uncomfortable with the destructive potential that the Malignus possessed. When the two factions defended the planet against alien invaders during the First Cybertronian War, the Guardians made frequent decisions to exclude the Malignus and were rarely able to take decisive action during the fighting. Despite all this, the Cybertronians were able to drive back the invaders.

Afterwards, Ariex, a Malignus military caste leader, rose up and resolved to overthrow this weak ineffective faction. He believed that the Guardians had no right to hold leadership over them and the war frames had no reason to listen to a bunch of soft-sparked civilian models who would quake at the sight of spilled energon. This coup began the Second Cybertronian War, one that the Malignus lost.

But the Guardians were toppled as well when Zeemon Magnus' private guard, known as the Protectons, used the opportunity of war to stage a successful coup. This group rose to power in place of the Guardians, and renamed themselves the Protectobot faction.

The Third Cybertronian War

However, the relationship between war frames and civilian frames remained tense and continued to deteriorate. Nova Magnus sought to erase all history of war frames and civilians collaborating as equals, and reshape Cybertronian history to forever label war frames as ruthless bloodthirsty warriors that the Protectobots had subjugated to their will.

By this point the Protectobots had become a force to reckon with. They were regularly kidnapping war frames to reprogram and cracked down harshly on any mech who spoke out against them. When the war frames protested and plotted to make a statement by attacking Nova Magnus' residence, the Protectobots were able to slaughter many war frames by luring them into a trap, and hung their multilated frames out in public as a warning.

Devron, a young charismatic member of the old Malignus faction, rose up and gathered war frames around him to resist Nova Magnus. The newly-formed Destrons fought to end the brutal reign of the Protectobots. They were successful, but the conflict killed many war frames. Nova Magnus was an excellent tactician who was never above using low-handed tactics. He even had many Protectobots who opposed him offlined discreetly.

Unfortunately, many documents had been lost because of the Nova Magnus' purge, including all accounts of Cybertron's early history. The AllSpark, Vector Sigma and the Magnus Hammer became objects wreathed in mystery.

Golden Age of Expansion

Powered Convoy, an officer of Nova Magnus who managed to lay low during the war while trying to undermine Nova Magnus whenever he could, began to broker peace between the defeated Protectobots and the Destrons. The Protectobots remained leaderless for quite a while during this time. But Convoy worked tirelessly with Devron, leader of the Destrons, to restore the relationship between the two frame types. There were rumors that these two became lovers.

Convoy was eventually chosen as the new Magnus and renamed P. C. Magnus. The Autobots rose from the remaining Protectobots, advocating for Cybertronian expansion efforts that both civilian and war frames should participate in to leave their bloody history behind. Wanting to erase the Protectobot legacy, Convoy joined the Autobots and removed all Protectobot presence in his new faction.

For a very long time, all was well. Civilians and war frames usually got along and collaborated with great effect to colonize planets nearby. However, the Quintessons attacked when they tried to colonize planets in their territory. The Autobots and the Destrons were unable to drive them back, and Devron perished in the conflict. The expansion officially halted. The Autobots were reluctant to run into any more large scale conflicts, while the Destrons chafed restlessly at the sight of uncolonized worlds they could not touch without the help of the Autobots.

Decepticon Uprising

After the Quintesson conflict, a Destron named Megazarak rose to prominence. He incited the Destrons to see that the Autobots had been treating them unfairly during the expansion and led a couple of violent demonstrations. Megazarak was smart enough to use the idea of a return to colonizing other worlds to whip his supporters into a frenzy. He named the new group the Decepticons. He was also uncommonly obsessed with the AllSpark, and sought to wrest it from Autobot control for his own ends.

P. C. Magnus was reluctant to crack down on the Decepticons. He knew that because of history, this would likely lead to another war. Despite the protests of his officers and other high-ranking Autobots, he refused to take action.

Megazarak continued to ramp up tensions between the two factions. Because of P. C. Magnus' inaction, many Autobots begin to see war frames as nuisances and threats. Violence was commonplace at every city-state on Cybertron, usually between Autobots and Decepticons. Ultra Prime, just an officer at the time, was particularly determined to "get the Decepticons under control".

Beginning of the Great War

Convoy was stripped of his rank as Magnus after Megazarak successfully bombed an important Autobot supply port. Autobot leadership was finally fed up with his inability to do something. Ultra Prime was named the new Magnus, and immediately went to work in quelling the Decepticon uprisings.

He closed off civilian city states to war frames, disbanded Cybertronian armed forces, disarmed all war frames who served, and enacted a series of laws barring war frames from all academic institutes and professions. He planned to cut off the Decepticons from any resource that would contribute to them becoming a force to be reckoned with. He also broke up many riots and group protests using force.

Instead of backing down, war frames joined the Decepticons in growing droves by the solar cycle, frustrated by the new restrictions and angry that this was how the Autobots repaid them for their efforts during the Golden Age of Expansion.

It was also around this time when Megatron worked to win over the Decepticons to his side and bested Megazarak in single combat. Megazarak was exiled, but the damage was already done. Ultra Magnus showed no sign of reversing the restrictions, and instead issued the Decepticon Registration Act. It required all Decepticons to submit themselves under Autobot jurisdiction, hand over all property and lay down arms for perpetuity, in exchange for lowered restrictions and cessation of force against them.

Megatron took the Decepticons to war in response. The rest is history.

I might develop some stuff further, but for now this is all!

[basi69]

Everyone Deserve to be Financially Healthy!!

There are many people today making money on the internet but cannot convert it to wealth simply because they lack financial literacy. Financial literacy or the lack of it affects us on both personal and business side of things. So, those who choose to ignore the importance of acquiring financial literacy are doing so at their own peril. For better or worse, money touches all areas of life. Financial literacy can help.

What is Financial Literacy?

Financial literacy is the foundation upon which wealth creation can be build. Everyone can make money but very few can create wealth even when they have the opportunity to do so. A lot of people are able to make money either through salaries and talent through sports, arts and entertainment, etc. Many of those people are not able to manage the huge sums of money they receive because of their lack of basic financial literacy. I am sure you know of many people in sports and entertainment industries who amassed huge amounts of money and only to lose it all afterwards. Those are typical examples of why financial literacy is so important.

At a very lower level, Financial Literacy is the ability to understand the importance of saving for the future, the importance of maintaining a good credit record and manage personal finances which include:

Budget: The purpose of a budget is to enable you to realize you most cherished desires by defending them from your casual wishes. It helps to reinforce discipline as it forces you to live within your means. Budgeting helps to avoid impulsive spending.

Debt management: Proper debt management is the basis for healthy budgeting that stems from good discipline. Do not commit to debt simply because you can afford it. If need be and provided you can afford it, use it reasonably to acquire income generating assets. This way you will be leveraging your way to wealth creation. Be wise with your spending on credit. Deal with over-indebtedness harshly as soon as possible.  

At a higher level, Financial Literacy involves the ability to read, understand and interpret financial statements and economic trends. This ability allows one to identify strengths and weaknesses of any business entity and spot opportunities for investment. It also guides one’s quest for building and expanding their portfolio of income generating assets. Financial Literacy assists in the control and evaluation of financial decision-making activities.

Why financial literacy is so important?

We do not all have to be financial gurus but must all have the basic understanding of what the concept of financial literacy entail because the financially illiterate are vulnerable to the financial abuse by others. Financial enlightenment is a beam of light that exposes financial pitfalls and scams, highlights opportunities and empowers you to make sound financial decisions. This is one of the reasons why financial literacy is so important and has become more relevant in this day and age. Financially literate people are not easily bluffed as they can spot a fluke a mile away.

The good news is that financial literacy is a skill that anyone can acquire. We may differ at the levels of understanding but must all have some level of understanding. Financial literacy has a mixed of understanding for the basics of finance, accounting and economics. Marshall, MacManus and Viele interestingly define accounting as “the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating economic information about an organization for the purpose of making decisions and informed judgments”

At a higher level of financial literacy we understand that financial statements give an indication of how financially healthy your business or the business you intend investing in may be at a given point in time. The secret to determining whether a company is financially healthy is in analyzing its financial performance over several periods to determine trends. Trends paint the true picture behind every entity. Businesses that are facing financial problems will have a downward sloping trend line that shows a performance that is less than the current economic conditions would indicate. Financially healthy companies will have an upward sloping trend.

We all want to attain a healthy financial status – not necessarily becoming wealthy even though we can be but to be financially sound. Financial health is a result of acquisition, retention and growth of financial assets. This is status is almost impossible without financial literacy. Financial literacy at a higher level is what every aspiring investor, entrepreneur or small business owner must acquire, keep, and protect with everything they’ve got. Their personal and business success depends on it.

We may not all be business owners and we don’t have to be but can all be investors and in investing we need financial literacy at a higher level. Your acquired financial skills will help you navigate the maize field of investment options and propel you to reach your financial goals quickly. Be careful to make informed investment decisions.

 About the Author

Basi Malatji (JB)

I am an experienced Head of Business Development with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry at different management levels. My experience in working with entrepreneurial, management and leadership development has equipped me with skills to interact, analyze, and coach. My passion for people development, financial background, entrepreneurial and business development backgrounds have enabled me to write on these disciplines and online business development.

[olderthannetfic]

Vidding absolutely counts as a fandom, and Escapade is key to the history of vidding.

Notice how the terminology shifts over the course of Escapade: The first year, it’s ‘songtapes’ being shown, then ‘songvid’ or ‘song video’ predominates for much of the 90s, and then we move on to ‘vidding’ and ‘vids’.

The vidshow moves from being more of a curated presentation of old favorites to having a lot of premieres. It goes from just one night to two, then back to one. Vidshow panels where you just watch vids for a whole panel slot come and go. In 1998, vid review starts up: This is a Sunday morning panel for in-depth critique of the vids shown the previous night and is a famously contentious part of the con. And then there was this:

2002, Friday, 6pm - VividCon Discussion (Come discuss the proposed VividCon, tentative time/location, August/Chicago.)

Yep. Escapade was where Vividcon was born!

By 2008, people were talking about how vidding had moved on from Escapade. In 2011 a vidshow retrospective was added to try to counter the lack of vidding-centric programming. There was a big resurgence for a few years, including such hard-hitting topics as:

2016 - Vidding Aesthetics (”Why is there so much show audio in this vid?", "Why didn't that cut hit on the beat?", "What do you mean 'Cheesy?' She's Celine Dion!" and other immortal questions of vidding aesthetics. If you've ever watched a vid, we want your opinions.)

Why yes, it was my panel. Why do you ask?

There were rounds of warnings wank, caused by Oz vids and by that time Absolute Destiny sent a vid of a violent coming of age film.

Check out this 1994 panel description from Fanlore:

"[The technology in fandom panel] included several things that people can now do in-home that they couldn't do five years ago: cutting and splicing songs on Macintosh computers (to remove inappropriate choruses, verses, or the word "girl"); the soon-to-be-easier ability to select different people from different clips and combine them onto a new background (also for songtapes); printing vhs video frames directly to computer screens, printers and/or color copiers (for fun); and zines and/or libraries on disk. Most of the new technology possibilities were followed by comments that the actual work we can do is illegal [...]. Which comments were followed by the statements that seventeen years ago, writing and publishing a slash fanzine was illegal.... [...] a few people [...], talked to me at different times throughout the con about getting accounts or modems [...]”

This is interesting not just technologically but aesthetically. Is the word ‘girl’ bad in a slashvid? Different communities have disagreed.

Conversations about digital vidding and digital vs. VCR really heated up around 2001, much later than you might expect if you’re coming out of an AMV background. While most of Youtube vids on Sony Vegas--a Windows-only program--at Escapade, Mac has been the norm.

The topics that have remained big are vidding aesthetics, including things like how to make an effective pimp vid, discussions of hosting options and where the community is hanging out now, and how-tos for people who want to get into vidding.

(And before anyone asks, the answer is that you should download DaVinci Resolve because it’s free and cross-platform. And you should encode with h.264 because it’s widely compatible.)

The 2020 vidding panels are:

Vidding 101: The Vid Bunny Farm So you’ve had an idea, and it’s gnawing on your leg? Or maybe you have too many vid ideas and can’t choose? Or you want to make a vid but don’t know where to even start? Aspiring fan vidders, unsure-vidders-to-be, and experienced vidders welcome alike to share vid bunnies, brainstorm together, and talk about the processes of conceptualizing a vid.

Vidding Genres Then & Now We’ve come a long way from “living room vids” vs ‚”con vids‚” or have we? Let’s talk about evolving fanvid genres, from ship vids to AU vids to multivids, from character vids to fake trailers, from genre-bending vids to long form vids to cosplay music videos, and more. Let’s talk about all the genres of fan videos floating around YouTube, Billibilli, AO3 and beyond, and also consider if the old school genre terms still apply.

Escapade has had many, many vidding panels. So many that even I feel the need for a readmore. I’ve pulled out the meta ones and left off some single-fandom vidshows and whatnot. Sorry for the wonky formatting, but Tumblr, in its infinite wisdom, seems to have removed the horizontal rule feature.

1991  - "Classic" songtapes were shown at 9:00 on Friday.

1994 - Song Video Roundtable (Bring works in progress or finished works you're having difficulty with for a quick jump-start. Open to anyone who enjoys videos as well as the people who make them.)

1994 - Songvid Editing (Authors get edited and usually have to do at least one rewrite of a story. Artists have erasers. What stops songvid makers from doing drafts and re-edits of their work? Let's talk about editing style (what cuts to use for best emphasis) and technique (how to physically do the inserts.)) [Notice how much of an issue editing is. These are VCR vids, edited in order, so insert edits are a gigantic pain.]

1995 - Techno Vids—Media Cannibals, (What's available with the new computer hardware and software? Can have Bodie & Doyle screwing on screen if we apply the right touches. Should we? How and when?) [Yes. Sweatily. Always.]

1995 - Video Workshop (video makers & watchers discuss the art.)

1996 - Music Video Critique and Workshop (Roundtable critique of videos, how to tell/recognize story, POV, rhythm. Also, tricks of the trade.)

1997 - Music Choice for Song Vidding (Finding the right song for the fandom is almost as great a challenge as finding the right clips for the song. Discussing what to look for in music choice.)

1997 - Songvid Critique (An exploration of different elements of media vids, with an emphasis on aesthetics. We'll look at segments of different songs to see how the images were used in conjunction with the varied rhythms of the music, and to enhance the mood.)

1998 - Media Cannibals Self-Indulgence Hour (Stunned to look back on vidding effort, MC plans to show -- and talk about -- some of their best and worst vids, pointing out some happy accidents and some annoying f*ckups. This is a great panel for people who want to learn about vid-making, the work that goes into them, and what to look for when watching them.)

1998 - Con Vids vs Living Room Vids (What are the elements that make a music vid accessible to a large crown, or more appropriate to an intimate setting?)

1998 - Music Video Show Review (Selected vids from Saturday's show will be replayed and discussed for their aesthetic, technical and musical choices. Open to all, for feedback and fun.) [Perhaps the start of the Sunday vidshow critique, which was also such a feature of Vividcon?]

1999 - Songvid Aesthetics (An exploration of theme, color, mood, and rhythm. Choosing clips to relate to the music and convey your message to the viewer.)

1999 - Sunday Morning Vid Review (Selected vids from Saturday's show will be replayed and discussed for the aesthetic, technical and musical choices. Open to all, for feedback and fun.)

2000 - Vidding Basics (Or "you want to learn how to make a music vid, huh?"—Carol and Stacy will take a group of novice vidders from the basics of what you need on your VCR, to all your hardware set ups, thru the selection of music, to actually doing some hands-on putting a dip (or two) into a music vid. So if you're interested in music videos and you want to try your hand at making one... you know what panel you need to go to.)

2000 - Songvid Appreciation 101 (Remember Art Appreciation? "Why is this painting good?" Well, we're doing the same for vids, using examples from the ESCAPADE Video Show. Let's take advantage of the fact that we've all just seen these vids, and use them to illustrate how to do cool things in a vid. We'll look at clever POV changes, appropriate choice of music to theme, skillful uses of musical changes within a vid, storytelling techniques, changes of mood, cutting on the beat vs. cutting on the lyric line, the different approaches to serious and humorous vids, or single fandom vs. multiple fandom vids, and more.)

2001 - Vidding Workshop (2 hours) (This workshop will cover: a comparison between digital and analog vidding; a how-to for analog vidding; a how-to for digital vidding; and a discussion of the artistic side of vidding, including song and clip choices, and techniques to avoid.)

2001 - Impact of Computer Tools on Vidding (Vidding used to be push-and-pause between 2 vers, and a LOT of patience. Now with I-movie and Final Cut and Macintosh G4's, the technological leap is here and it isn't going anywhere. Are vids better for the technology available to them?)

2001 - Songvid Appreciation (2 hours) (Comments and feedback on vids you saw last night, Escapade style.)

2002 - Art Manipulation Using Photoshop (A how-to overview, with demonstrations in Photoshop, and more detailed techniques for creating photo manipulations, web graphics, and zine graphics. Depending on interest, creation of vid titles and overlay vid graphics may be included.)

2002 - Digital Vidding (An overview of the digital vidding process, including some advice on the hardware and software you need to get started. Learn the basics of editing with Premiere and similar programs, and get an overview of some of the fun options you have when using a computer to vid.)

2002 - Vidding Workshop: Art After Craft (What is the Art of Vidding?)

2002 - Vid Revision (The art and craft of revising vids—how you get from a song in your heart and a bunch of clips on your hard drive to the final product. We'll show multiple versions of a few vids, critique them, and talk about what improves a vid. No technical knowledge needed; come whether you make vids or just like watching them.)

2002 - Vids: Pro vs Fan Editing (A long time fan vidder and a professional editor discuss techniques.)

2002 - Sunday Morning Vid Review

2002 - VividCon Discussion (Come discuss the proposed VividCon, tentative time/location, August/Chicago.) [VVC started 6 months later, in August 2002, and ran until 2018]

2003 - How to Vid on the Computer (A brief intra vidding on computers. It will touch on hardware requirements, software options, and basic concepts of non-linear editing and what makes for a good vid, and, time and tech permitting, it may also include a demonstration of some of the editing basics. There will be handouts.)

2003 - Vid Show Review (A discussion (and literal re-viewing in some cases) of some of the vids from the Saturday night show.)

2003 - Also Premiering Vid Show (The "Also Premiering..." vid show is for vids premiered in the last year that aren't going to be shown in the Friday or Saturday shows. This will be an informal setting and we'll go by participant preference — if folks want to see a vid a second time, or want some time to chat about it, or if a vidder wants some feedback on it, we can decide to do that on-the-fly. If you'd like to show any vids in this show, just bring them to the show itself. There are no hard-and-fast limits on number of vids; we'll just go with what shows up and take turns until we run out of time. Afterwards, consider going out to lunch with other participants to talk about the vids!)

2004 - I want to vid! (But I don't know how) (Introduction to vidding hardware, software and maybe some concepts if we have the time.)

2004 - Made On a Mac: The MacFen Symposium (So you're a slasher and a Mac user. Come and share your tips and tricks for HTML coding, photo editing, website management and vidding on a Mac, Share the programs that have and haven't worked for you and hear some helpful tips from the front lines.)

2004 - Vidding: Creating Mood (Why do rapid cuts of short clips create tension? What does a wipe *feel* iike? A vidder's toolbox Includes more and more options, but how do we know what emotional effect each technical effect will produce? Leave the music at the door; this one's about the visuals.)

2004 - Editing Techniques and Vidding (How can you edit together clips from widely different episodes and movies into a seamless whole? A familiarity with concepts in filmmaking can help you achieve the results you're aiming for. A look at some of the common rules of continuity editing and how they relate to vids.)

2004 - The changing face of vids (How has increasingly cheap technology, wider highspeed access and the new flood of vidders changed vidding? What should we rejoice about and what should we worry about? How do we help make it a winning situation for all?)

2004 - Vid Review (A retrospective on the Saturday night show.)

2005 - Vidding: Let the Lyrics Help You (How to look at lyrics to add depth and structure to your vid. or why top 40 songs usually make you do all the work.)

2005 - Vid Review (A Sunday morning tradition at Escapade, and a chance to discuss those great vids.) [See how it’s a “tradition” by this time.]

2006 - The Changing Vid Audience (The move to digital vidding, the availability of vid source and software, and the expectation of online distribution have all radically affected audience desires and expectations. What do audiences want from vids now? Vidders, share your historical perspectives. Vid fans, this is your chance to tell vidders what you want.)

2006 - Defining the Character Study Vid (We love character study vids, so how do you go about making a good one? What's the difference between a vid about a character, a vid about a universe, and a vid about seeing the universe through the eyes of a character?)

2006 - Marketing Your Vid (How can you stand out among the swelling ranks of vidders? What's the best way to present yourself, and to draw attention to your work? We'll focus on knowing your audience, timing your release, pimp communities, etc.)

2006 - Vid Review  (Like Ebert and Roper, but much better looking.)

2007 - Ulead Media Studio Pro 8 and Why It's Better Than the Rest (A compare and contrast of the semi-professional video editing software programs with a strong emphasis on Ulead Media Studio Pro 8. If you are new to vidding, or interested in upgrading your video editing software, this panel should help you make an informed choice.)

2007 - Mac Workshop (The ins and outs of vidding on a Mac.)

2007 - Vid Show Review (Take apart what worked and what was missing from selected vids in the Saturday show. Audience participation at its finest.)

2008 - Ulead Video Editing Introduction (Intro to Ulead Video Studio/Media Studio Pro for those who are interested in vidding but don't have a clue as to where to start. or wouldn't mind a refresher course.)

2008 - Vid Review (Last night was for watching, today is for analyzing. What worked, what didn't, and why?)

2009 - Fannish Aesthetics: Extrapolation v. Subversion (How do we as writers (and especially as vidders) interact with the source material? Is that relationship evolving? What can we say about where we've been and where we're headed?)

2009 - Vid Review (Last night was for watching, today is for analyzing. What worked, what didn't, and why?)

2010 - 2010: A Vidding Odyssey (Current trends in vidding, including what's changed and what's remaind the same when it comes to slash, vidding in particular. We will show some examples of "classic" slash as well as some of the newer develpoments in constructed reality.)

2010 - Vid Review

2011 - Escapade Songvid Retrospective (A trip back to the days of yesteryear, when vids were made on VCRs and Escapade was the place for vids and vid programming. Compiled by Kandy Fong, this show will survey vids from a variety of vidders and shows, covering Escapade 1992-2001 in a fun, informal environment.)

2011 - Decoding Vid Meaning (How do you read a vid? Clip choice, lyrics, structure, symbols or the tone of the music— vids offer plenty of clues, and we decipher them as we see fit. Come watch a vid (or two!) and discuss how we get meaning from what we see and hear to develop a deeper understand of what's going on in the vid. Multiple viewings are required!)

2011 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2011 - The Vidding Explosion (1985-1990) (Who taught whom. The growth of storytelling, technique, and sophistication. Includes vid show and presentation.)

2012 - Vidwatching 101 (Vids have their own language and their own framework for discussion. It can be tough to translate vids into words, but if we have the same language, vid discussion can be wonderfully rewarding for both vidder and viewer. This panel is a primer to get us all on the same page.)

2012 - The State of Vidding Fandom (Ten years of VividCon and roughly the same years vids have been distributed online, let's talk about the state of vidding and the community of vidders. Is there one? Where is it? How do vidders fit in with fandom at large? What are the different options for watching/releasing vids, and how do they stack up for vidders and viewers? If you love vids, join us—whether you vid or not.)

2012 - Festivids Review (Festivids is a fannish vid exchange inspired by the Yuletide fic exchange. This will be a vid review-style panel where we show clips from some of this year's highlight vids and talk about the challenge.)

2012 - MVD Vid Retrospective Show (Sometimes the oldies really are the goodies. Mary Van Duesen has made songvids since the 1980s, working in a range of fandoms. She has also remastered many old vids, and they look better now than they ever did. Come see some old favorites, or find some new ones.)

2012 - Vid Show Review

2012 - Nearly New Vids (So many wonderful vids were submitted for the Escapade show that we couldn’t fit them all in the early show. Here’s your chance to see the rest in the daylight hours (replay of the late-show vids).

2013 - Mac Vidders Roundtable (What’s the best way to vid on a Mac? Our vidding options have changed a lot in the last few years, and it’s been a while since we had a roundtable to discuss and compare our tips, tricks, and processes. This panel is for all of the above.)

2013 - The Art of the Pimp Vid (What makes a pimp vid so addictive one hit will get you hooked? Let’s talk vids for people outside of your fandom. Plot arc vids, character vids, pairing vids: How do you grab a new audience hard and never let them go? Hey there, little fangirl, the first taste is free!)

2013 - The Bestivids of Festivids (This year’s Festivids featured everything from incest testtube babies to care bear Avengers to a surprisingly large amount of kickass femslash. Let’s watch and discuss some favorites from Festivids 2012.)

2013 - So You Want To Be A Vidder (Nobody vidding your OTP anymore? Sad that vidders haven’t discovered your new favorite show? Why not vid it yourself? Come learn the very basics, from choosing programs in your price range to dos and don’ts if you’re planning to submit to cons.)

2013 - How Do Vids Work? (Let's talk about the techniques (not just the feelings!) that make a slash vid work. What makes for a vid that we watch over and over and that sticks with us long- term? We'll talk about these things with reference to a couple of specific vids, see what strategies, commonalities, and differences we can identify, and then open up discussion to additional favorites from the audience.)

2013 - Vidding Aesthetics (Vidders and vid watchers: let’s talk vidding aesthetics. How have styles changed over time? What makes a good vid and what’s just a matter of personal taste? What do you want to BURN WITH FIRE? Let’s get this cage match... err... discussion going.)

2013 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite vids (or not) vids from the show.)

2014 - Vidding 101 (Never edited before? Haven't made a vid since the VCR went the way of the dodo? Come learn how to turn those vidbunnies into reality!)

2014 - Vids for the Viewer (We often discuss writing from the perspective of a reader, but vidding from the perspective of vid-watchers not so much. Let's talk about how to read a vid, different vidding aesthetics and how accessible or popular they are with viewers vs. vidders, and impostor syndrome in vid review.)

2014 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2015 - Best of Festivids. From the slashy to the merely sublime, what tickled our fancy in this year’s Festivids?

2015 - The Perfect Slash Vid. What makes the perfect slash vid? Is it the song choice? The point of view? The abs? (Okay, you got me: it’s the abs.)

2015 - So You Wanna Be A Vidder. Bring your laptop or at least a pen and paper and find out how to get started in vidding.

2015 - Vid Review: Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.

2016 - The State of *Vidding Fandom. Sunday, Noon, San Diego 2. What's going on in vidding fandom today? Where are people hosting and posting? What's next?

2016 - Vid Review. Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.

2016 - Vidding Aesthetics (”Why is there so much show audio in this vid?", "Why didn't that cut hit on the beat?", "What do you mean 'Cheesy?' She's Celine Dion!" and other immortal questions of vidding aesthetics. If you've ever watched a vid, we want your opinions.)

2017 - Vidding 101 - Have you dreamed of making a vid but just aren’t sure where to start? We’ll go step by step, talk finding your source(s), choosing music, finding your way with non overwhelming tech-tools, brainstorming ideas, finding collaborators, and learning by doing. Already a vidder? Come and help new vidders find their way, find new collaborators, and make new ideas happen.

2017 - Let’s Collab! New Forms of Collective Fan Creativity , Newport Changing technologies mean that we collaborate with each other in ever-evolving ways when we create fic and vids. What are the possibilities for collaborating beyond geographic boundaries with digital technologies? How are you collaborating with fellow writers and vidders these days? Are you interested in finding new collaborators and new ways to connect? And are these new forms of collaboration creating new forms of creative fan work?

2017 - Vid Review, Marina del Rey On Saturday night, we watched the vid show. On Sunday morning, we talk about it. Join Rache to discuss the good, the better, and the great of the show, including techniques and all of the reasons Charlotte doesn’t vid anymore and never will again.

2018 - Noon (Vids from the Vault, Part One Kandy Fong Newport A curated retrospective of vids from early Escapades.

2018 - Fanvid Feels (What vids do you return to again and again because they just make you *feel* things, thrill you, or fill you with joy, or even sadness? Maybe a vid introduced you to a pairing, or a fandom, or perhaps you love it even though you’re not really that into the source? Let’s look at some of our/your favorite vids and think about what makes them tick. Come with vids you want to talk about in mind, or just come to watch and talk about vids that make us feel stuff.)

2018 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2019 - 3-Minute Pimp Vid (Forget telling: Show us your canon with a vid or clip! (3-5 minutes each.))

2019 - Lend Me Your Ears: Vids and Music (Have you ever discovered a song or musician because of a fanvid? Do you have thoughts on what music works and doesn't with fan vids? Let's talk about all the ways in which different types of music can work in vids, and look at some vids that work with music in awesome or surprising ways. Plus maybe there will be a little singing along...)

2019 - AO3 But For Fanart and Fanvids (AO3 has been great for fic, we need safe harbors for art and vids too. Let's talk about it!)

2019 - Pitch a Vid Bunny, Find a Vid Beta (Have an idea for a fanvid you'd love to see happen? Come with concept, song, source ideas, characters--share your bunnies, find some cheerleaders, brainstorm together. For newbie & experienced vidders alike, all welcome!)

2019 - Vid Review (Rehash the Saturday night vid show with a room full of fans.)

[basicsofislam]

ISLAM 101: The Basic Concepts of Islam: Part 3

The Concept of Life

Life is a brilliant demonstration of Gods wisdom and knowledge, a vivid reflection of His art and power. He is the Giver and Creator of life. Nothing comes to existence by chance, and nobody creates himself or anybody else. Life is a dear and cherishable asset, and no sensible or normal person would like to lose it by choice. Even those who feel so desperate and take their lives by committing slow suicide, try in the last minute to regain their existence and wish to capture a second chance to live. Life is given to man by God, and He is the only Rightful One to take it back; no one else has the right to destroy a life. This is why Islam forbids all kinds of suicide and self-destruction and recommends patience and good Faith when a dear soul passes away. When a murderer is executed in punishment, his life is taken away by the right of God and in accordance with His Law.

When God gives life to man, it is not in vain that He endows him with unique qualities and great abilities. Nor is it in vain that He charges him with certain obligations. God means to help man to fulfill the purpose of life and realize the goal of existence. He means to help him to learn the creative art of living and enjoy the good taste of life according to the Divine guidance. Life is a trust from God, and man is a trustee who should handle his trust with honesty and skill, with mindfulness of God and with the consciousness of responsibility to Him.

Life may be likened to a journey starting from a certain point and ending at a certain destination. It is a transitory stage, an introduction to the Eternal life in the Hereafter. In this journey, man is a traveler and should be concerned with only what is of use to him in the Future Life. In other words, he should do all the good he can and make himself fully prepared to move any minute to Eternity. He should consider his life on this earth as a chance provided for him to make the best of it while he can because when his time to leave comes he can never delay it for one second. If his term expires, it will be too late to do anything about it or extend it. The best use of life, therefore, is to live it according to the teachings of God and to make it safe passage to the Future Life of Eternity. Because life is so important as a means to an ultimate end, Islam has laid down a complete system of regulations and principles to show man how to live it, what to take and what to leave, what to do and what to shun, and so on. All men come from God, and there is no doubt that they shall return to Him. In one of His comprehensive statements Prophet Muhammad wisely advised man to consider himself a stranger in this life or a traveler passing by the world.

The Concept of Religion

Throughout history, religion has been abused and misunderstood. Some people use it as a means of exploitation and suppression, as a pretext for prejudice and persecution. Some other people use it as a source of power and domination over the elite and the masses alike. In the name of religion, unjustifiable wars have been launched, freedom of thought and conscience has been oppressed, science has been persecuted, the right of the individual to maturity has been denied, and man’s dignity and honor have been flagrantly debased. And in the name of religion, an injustice has been inflicted upon humanity with the result that religion itself has suffered many losses. These are historical facts which no one can deny. But is this the proper function of religion or the right approach to religion? Could this be the purpose of religion? The indisputable answer is an emphatic no. There are many religions in the world, and each one claims to be the one and only true religion. Each religion is supposed to have come from God for the right guidance of man. But these claims contradict each other and have caused dissensions among people and vehement reactions to religion – instead of welding mankind into one universal brotherhood under the One Universal Benevolent God. This situation makes any neutral observer confused and perhaps averse to all kinds of religion.

The Islamic concept of religion is unique in the broadest sense of the word. It is true that genuine religion must come from God for the right guidance of man. And it is equally true that human nature and major human needs are basically the same at all times. This conception leads to one conclusion, and that is: There is only one true religion coming from the One and the Same God, to deal with the outstanding human problems of all times. This religion is ISLAM. But it should be borne in mind that Islam was taught by Prophet Muhammad alone. On the contrary, Islam had been taught by all the prophets before Muhammad, and the true followers of Abraham and Moses, as well as those of Jesus and the rest, were all called MUSLIMS. So Islam has been and will continue to be, the true universal religion of God, because God is One and Changeless, and because human nature and major human needs are fundamentally the same, irrespective of time and place, of race and age, and of any other considerations.

Bearing this in mind, the Islamic concept maintains that religion is not only a spiritual and intellectual necessity but also a social and universal need. It is not to bewilder man but to guide him. It is not to debate him but to elevate his moral nature. It is not to deprive him of anything useful, or to burden him, or to oppress his qualities but to open for him inexhaustible treasures of sound thinking and right action. It is not confined him to narrow limits but to launch him into wide horizons of truth and goodness. In short, true religion is to acquaint man with God as well as with himself and the rest of the universe. This is by no means an oversimplification of the function of religion. Here is what it means.

When the purpose of true religion is carefully examined, it will be found that religion satisfies the spiritual and moderate material needs of man. It unties his psychological knots and complexes, sublimates his instincts and aspirations, and disciplines his desires and the whole course of life. It improves his knowledge of God – the Highest Truth in the universe, and of his own self. It teaches him about the secrets of life and the nature of man and how to treat them, about good and evil, about right and wrong. It purifies the soul from evil, clears the mind from doubts, strengthens the character and corrects the thinking and convictions of man. All this can be achieved only when man faithfully observes the spiritual duties and physical regulations introduced by religion.

On the other hand, true religion educates a man and trains him in hope and patience, in truthfulness and honesty, in love for the right and good, in courage and endurance, all of which are required for the mastery of the great art of living. Moreover, true religion ensures man against fears and spiritual losses and assures him of Gods aid and unbreakable alliance. It provides man with peace and security and makes his life meaningful.

That is what true religion can do for humanity, and that is the concept of religion in Islam. Any religion which fails to bear these fruits is not Islam or rather, is not a religion at all, and any man who fails to draw these benefits from religion is not religious or God-minded. God is absolutely true when He says in the Holy Quran: Verily the religion with God is Islam. Nor did the People of the Book dissent therefrom except through envy of each other, after knowledge had come to them. But if any deny the Signs of God, God is swift in calling to account (Quran, 3:19). And if anyone desires a religion other than Islam, never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter, he will be in the ranks of those who have lost (all spiritual good) (Quran, 3:85).

The Concept of Sin

One of the major troublesome areas of human existence is the problem of sin or evil in the world. It is commonly believed that sin started with Adam and Eve during their life in the Garden of Eden. That event led to the Fall and has ever since branded the human race with guilt, stigma, and bewilderment. Islam has taken a unique position on the whole issue, a position which is not shared by any other religion we know. The Quran states that Adam and Eve were directed by God to reside in the Garden of Eden and enjoy its produce as they pleased, assured of bountiful supplies and comfort. But they were warned not to approach a particular tree so that they would not run into harm and injustice. Then Satan intrigued them to temptation and caused them to lose their joyful state. They were expelled from the Garden and brought down to earth to live, die, and taken out again at last for the Final Judgment. Having realized what they had done, they felt shame, guilt, and remorse. They prayed for Gods mercy and were forgiven (Quran, 2:35-38; 7:19-25; 20:117- 123).

This symbolic event is significantly revealing. It tells that the human being is imperfect and ever wanting even if he were to live in paradise. But committing a sin or making a mistake, as Adam and Eve did, does not necessarily deaden the human heart, prevent spiritual reform or stop moral growth. On the contrary, the human being has enough sensibility to recognize his sins and shortcomings. More importantly, he is capable of knowing where to turn and to whom he should turn for guidance. Much more important is the fact that God is ever prepared to respond to the sincere calls of those who seek His aid. He is so Gracious and Compassionate that His Forgiveness is Encompassing and His Mercy all – Inclusive (Quran, 7:156). One last revealing reading of the event is that discrimination on the basis of sex and hereditary guilt or sin is alien to the spirit of Islam. The idea of Original Sin or hereditary criminality has no room in the teachings of Islam. Man, according to the Quran (30:30) and to the Prophet, is born in the natural state of purity or fitrah, that is, Islam or submission to the will and law of God. Whatever becomes of man after birth is the result of external influence and intruding factors. To put the matter in terms of modern thought, human nature is malleable; it is the socialization process, particularly the home environment that is crucial. It plays a decisive role in the formation of human personality and the development of moral character. This does not deny the individual the freedom of choice or exempt him from responsibility. Rather, it is a relief from that heavy burden of hereditary criminality or instinctual sin. God, by definition, is Just, Wise, Merciful, Compassionate, and Perfect. He has created man by breathing into him of His own Spirit (Quran, 15:29; 32:9; 66:12). 

Since God is the absolute infinite good and His Spirit the absolute perfect one; since man, through creation, received of the Spirit of God, then man was bound to retain at least some portion of this good Spirit of the Creator. This may account for the good dispositions of man and his spiritual longings. But, on the other hand, God created man to worship Him, not to be His equal, rival, the perfect incarnation or absolute embodiment of His goodness. This means that no matter how much good and perfect man may be, by the grace of creation, he is still far short of the goodness and perfection of the Creator. Man is not without such qualities, to be sure. But they are limited and proportionate to man’s finite nature, capacity, and responsibility. This may explain the imperfection and fallibility of man. However, imperfection and fallibility are not the equivalents of sin or synonymous with criminality – at least not in Islam. If a man is imperfect he is not left helpless or deserted by God to fall victim to his shortcomings. He is empowered by revelations, supported by reason, fortified by the freedom of choice, and guided by various social and psychological dispositions to seek and achieve relative perfection. The constant gravitation between the forces of good and evil is the struggle of life. It gives the man something to look forward to, ideals to seek, work to do, and roles to play. It makes his life interesting and meaningful, not monotonous and stagnant. On the other hand, it pleases God to see His servants in a state of spiritual and moral victory.

According to the moral scale of Islam, it is not a sin that man is imperfect or fallible. This is part of his nature as a finite limited creature. But it is a sin if he has the ways and means of relative perfection and chooses not to seek it. A sin is any act, thought, or will that is deliberate, defies the unequivocal law of God, violates the right of God or the right of man, is harmful to the soul or body, is committed repeatedly, and is normally avoidable. These are the components of sin which are not innate or hereditary. It is true, however, that man has the potential capacity of sin latent in him; but this is not greater than his capacity of piety and goodness. If he chooses to actualize the potential of sin instead of the potential of goodness, he will be adding a new external element to his pure nature. For this added external element man alone is responsible. In Islam, there are major and minor sins as there are sins against God and sins against both God and man. All sins against God, except one, are forgivable if the sinner sincerely seeks forgiveness.

The Quran has stated that truly God does not forgive the sin of shirk (polytheism, pantheism, trinity, etc.). But He forgives sins other than this and pardons whom He wills. Yet if the polytheist or atheist comes back to God, his sin will be forgiven. Sins against men are forgivable only if the offended pardon the offender or if the proper compensations and/or punishments are applied. In conclusion, sin is acquired not inborn, emergent not built-in, avoidable not inevitable. It is a deliberate conscious violation of the unequivocal law of God. If man does something that is truly caused by natural instincts or absolutely irresistible drives and uncontrollable urges, then such an act is not a sin in Islam. Otherwise, Gods purpose will be pointless and mans responsibility will be in vain. God demands of man what lies within the human possibilities and reaches.

[bffhreprise]

Entry 268

 After leaving the boarding bridge from the plane, I pulled out my phone to double-check the instructions.  This all felt so weird to me.  If I didn’t trust Jarod, I’d have never accepted the invitation for his bachelor party.  The free, first class flight for a vacation covered by James seemed too good to be true, given that he was such a public figure to gamers, but I was part of his guild and didn’t believe Jarod would endanger me.

 Still, who provides a phone app with such detail directions, including course-plotted maps, for a weekend vacation?  Just how organized were these people?  Well, Jarod was a bit ridiculous in his schemes.  In any other game, our guild’s coordination would be impossible, but I really doubted many people had mastered Ancient Tribes of Earth’s system as Jarod had.

 The map’s directions matched the signs for baggage claim, so I followed them.  Supposedly, there would be a car waiting for me right outside.  Whoever prepared the maps had even placed a car symbol there, changing colors for the car route.  Finally spotting my bag, I grabbed it and headed out.  I frowned, only seeing a limo near the door.  What was I supposed to be looking for?

 “Lake, come on!  Don’t make us wait all day.” called Jarod.

 I recognized his smiling face from convention pictures.  “We’ve got a limo?’ I questioned, realizing as I said the words that it made sense.  These people were rich.  Okay, so renting a limo for a bachelor party wasn’t exactly uncommon either, but I still hadn’t expected it.

 “I’ll take care of your bags.” stated a girl from behind me.

 I blinked, staring at the tiny, beautiful girl dressed as a maid.

 “Mila’s with us.  Hand over the bags and get inside already.  We’ve got a schedule!” insisted Jarod, still grinning.

 I heard other people laughing from inside.  Was everyone else here?  I passed off the bags, feeling a little guilty, but the maid girl acted like they were weightless, easily lifting my large, check-in bag and walking around me.

 The door for the limo opened as I approached, and I saw James sitting on the other side of Jarod with Aaliyah on his lap.  I reminded myself to breathe as I was trying not to freak out.  That adorable half-pint with her messy, blonde hair and large, blue eyes had created the most incredible game on the planet, and she was here with us.

 The vehicle was in motion before I snapped out of my daze.  “Would you mind if I get an autograph later?” I asked, ignoring the laughter.

 “Check the app, Lake.  She scheduled an autograph time between paintballing and dancing.” asserted Jesse.

 Finally seeing faces to match all of the voices was different.  I never knew how beautiful Jesse was when she smiled.  James, Jarod, and Brandon didn’t even need to speak to be recognizable, despite Brandon having a stand-in at the convention.  His red hair was obvious.  I knew Shaurya instantly, as the only Indian male in the car.  That left Alec and Damien, but I was confident that the older-looking, blond-haired guy was Damien.

 As we chatted on our way, I became even more confident in my assessment and started to relax more.  This was just like we chatted in game, save that Brandon, James, and Aaliyah were talking directly with me at times.  Brandon was the most over-bearing of the guild Generals, but he obviously deferred to James, even in real life.  I could understand why.

 James was a large man with the face of a model.  He came across as even more charming in real life than he had in interviews and on the game, which was really saying something.  The other girls were obviously into him, but I had known they were straight.

 We ate a light lunch at a local diner, not wanting to be too stuffed during paintballing.  I wondered if any of these people had tried it before?  My bet was on James, Jarod, and Damien.  They’d quickly find out that I knew a bit about it as well.

 On the way to the paintball center, Aaliyah gave a short lecture over what was about to happen.  Special uniforms were already waiting for us there, so we’d be able to change clothes.  We were entered into several team-vs-team fights.  To my surprise, Aaliyah was planning on competing too.  Did they even allow people her size to play?  Wasn’t she really young?  Her website claimed she was twelve, but she didn’t look it.  Even twelve seemed young for this.

 When the first match started, I quickly felt like a novice.  The teams we were competing against were amazing compared with the ones I had fought before.  Who were these people?  I was stunned to find out we had won.  Jarod, James, and even Aaliyah were still alive.  Between matches, we talked about what had gone wrong, and Jarod gave us a new battle strategy.

 Seeing the Generals move in real life was a bit awe-inspiring.  They were like video game characters who stepped out into the world to mercilessly destroy our enemies.  I had seen people shoot while flipping through the air in movies, but seeing Jarod do that in real life was distracting enough that I forgot to get down.  By the fourth match, I was really determined not to get out, even knowing that I couldn’t keep up with these people.  Little Aaliyah was surprisingly hard for enemies to hit, and she never seemed to miss.  Her skills were probably the freakiest.

 Only on the way to the clubs did I find out that we had been up against actual military teams… and won.  James had expected us to win, and explained this his company did martial arts training daily.  I still didn’t understand how they were so good with paintball guns!

 The only big surprise to hit me while we were out clubbing was that Aaliyah was the one with a VIP pass into all the ones we hit.  I found some cute girls while we were out, and certainly had a good time being treated like some sort of celebrity.  Finding out that we were sleeping on an enormous yacht didn’t even faze me by that point.  Of course, I was too tired to really care where I slept.

 I had some pretty crazy dreams and felt a bit disoriented when I woke up, but I had no complaints when I smelled breakfast.  During the night, the yacht made its way clear to the Bahamas!

 A bit of video gaming started right after breakfast, using some super high-spec laptops.  I was amazed at how fast our connection was, but again… rich people.

 “When you told me the girls had nabbed Marco, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed.” claimed Jarod just before biting into another macaroni and cheese hors d’oeuvres at lunch.  “Poor guy doesn’t know what he’s missing.  Aaliyah and Mila really have things covered.”

 Mila certainly knew how to move.  I danced with her a little last night, but she was another one whose focus was mostly on James.  He had quickly stolen the show at the clubs.

 “Surprisingly, I actually did have some input as well.” replied James defensively.

 Jarod laughed and said, “I’m sure, but this is still crazy!”

 “Who’s Marco?” questioned Shaurya.

 “Marco’s one of our friends and James’ chef.  The guy’s cooking is off the hook!” exclaimed Brandon, grinning widely.

 “He’s my friend too.” insisted James.

 “Oh, Master, no one would question that you consider Marco a friend.” stated Mila, smiling at him.  She always referred to him as “Master”, which was a bit unnerving.

 “Does she always call you, ‘Master’?” questioned Jesse, looking as confused by it as I felt.

 “Of course!  He is my master.” replied Mila, still smiling.  “I was made to serve him after all.”

 “Huh?” asked Jesse.

 “My mind was created by mother.” explained Mila, nodding toward Aaliyah.  “And my body was then constructed as a joint effort between mother, Jarod, and me.”

 “Wow.  Thumbs up to you, sir.” teased Damien, winking at Jarod.

 “I’m still confused.  Are you saying that you’re a machine?” I questioned, feeling like I missed some joke.

 “She’s my baby girl!” exclaimed Aaliyah as she grinned at me and patted Mila’s arm.

 “She’s really not joking.” insisted Jarod.  “Mila, mind giving them a little demonstration?  Maybe comment to them on the laptops?”

 A message appeared on my laptop as an overlay above Ancient Tribes of Earth, saying, “Hello, Lake.  I hope you’ll believe the truth after a few small demonstrations.”  My eyes shot to Mila and back to my screen.

 Several of the others were laughing and grinning, but this was…

 “I also can control this vessel.” claimed Mila.  The yacht’s motor suddenly turned on with no one at the controls.  Mila simply smiled.

 “This is completely insane, but cool!” exclaimed Marlin, her long, black hair flowing in the wind as she grinned.

 “Mila’s an incredible friend and exceptionally talented, so don’t underestimate her.” warned Jarod.

 “I won’t, but where did you get the idea for the design?  She’s hot!” insisted Damien.

 Smiling and nodding at him, Mila said, “My master answered a series of questions to determine preferences, which led to the form you see here.  I will admit to slightly resembling his girlfriend, whom you know as Eseld.”

 “Sorry, Mila, but I’d say more than slightly.” argued Brandon with a laugh.

 Frowning, Mila told him “As mother would say…”  Then she stuck her tongue out at him.

 He laughed even harder, but she was smiling again.

 “These laptops are pretty amazing.” commented Alec, who seemed to take Mila being an android in stride.  “Have you guys logged in yet?”

 I had to admit that Aaliyah had created numerous highly sophisticated AIs for her game, so creating one to function in real life wasn’t that much of a stretch, but I never guessed that she wasn’t human.

 “Make sure the name at the bottom is right before you get too far into it.” stated Jarod.  “They’re yours to keep.”

 I wasn’t the only one completely floored by that statement, quickly checking the bottom of my machine.  In the center, there was a plate with a hologram of my character, Agnimitra, saying,

“To Lake

 May this serve you for a couple good years of gaming.  Thanks for attending my party.

-Jarod”

 “I designed the operating system, though mother personally created the port for Ancient Tribes of Earth.  The hardware was a joint project between Jarod and me.” claimed Mila.

 “James, did you hear that?” asked Marlin.

 “Sure did.” he replied, seeming amused.

 “Oh, he doesn’t get to keep his.  Don’t want Mila jealous.” teased Jarod.

 Mila’s smile widened as she said, “I wouldn’t mind.  Think of Master’s gentle caress as he touches the keys.  Imagine his deft strokes across the touchpad.  Even if he activated the motion controls, I would follow his every hand movement as if I were the air through which he moved.”

 “Yes, Mila can be a flirt.  Please don’t read into things.” stated James as he watched her.

 “Sure, James.  Not sayin’ a thing.” teased Jesse.

 “Whatever floats your boat!” added Damien, also smiling.

 Brandon was obviously amused as he said, “He’s actually being serious.  His girlfriend’s got a bit of a temper.”

“Let’s get started, shall we?” suggested James to change the subject.

 We had met up in the game to explore a dungeon after breakfast.  Hopefully, we’d finish before dinner.  This was one unique vacation.

[sethnakht]

I just saw the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the first time in well over a decade and. just. am going to rant a little

the shots are nicely framed and composed, I grant you. the moving camera and complimentary meta fascination with rotating objects, with doublings and reflective surfaces and sources of light, with opening and closing shutters/doors and fluttering ribbons were statements about cinema, at least; the fabricated sculpture sequence at pemberley most of all, taking the two-dimensional portrait gallery of the novel and making it a three-dimensional showroom as though to programmatically demonstrate that film brings still figures into motion. though seeming to misunderstand elizabeth’s response to most of darcy’s art in the novel, which was to think it not very "intelligible", these shots at least had focus - unlike much of the rest of the film, which seems to have only the most confused understanding of the novel and the lowest opinion of its audience. (the fact that the characters have been reduced to stammering fabricated nonsense or heavily simplified versions of their lines for most of the film would suggest the filmmakers thought most viewers would not understand nuance.) but i digress.

that the film treats the novel with indifference is one thing; it’s another matter altogether how the film warps the conditions under which elizabeth accepts darcy's renewed proposal. the changes are slight but added up to give me a very different picture of the whole.

it starts with little things. longbourn and pemberley seem to exist on separate spheres of the earth, the one surrounded by weeds and mud, with not a shrubbery in sight, the other opulent as a palace. elizabeth’s line about being darcy’s equal as a gentleman’s daughter has no bearing here; it’s not even used. then there’s the weirdly strong take on her musicality - from being a pianist with good fingering and expression who gives her listeners pleasure but should practice more in the novel, elizabeth goes to being pretty terrible in the film, to the point that darcy has a new line qualifying his praise of her in front of georgiana. (her wit and eloquence are similarly reduced.) for her part, georgiana - feisty, opinionated, only in name and musical skill related to the exceedingly shy original - insists that her brother should "force" elizabeth into playing duets. this is playful enough, but also … a little alarming, given how the pemberley sequence of the film primarily consists in lingering shots of statues depicting naked men and veiled women, given how concerned the sequence is with evoking duets of a different kind.

also, the bennets and gardiners are about to become hugely indebted to darcy for saving lydia.

when film!darcy and elizabeth prove their true love for one another with their psychic ability to find each other at sunrise, in deshabille, in a meadow, where if anyone were to see them alone and in such dress her reputation would be at stake, and elizabeth thanks him for what he has done, darcy is not "exceedingly sorry" she has learned of what he did, as in the novel. he blinks away the concerns novel!darcy expressed about the "uneasiness" she might feel and moves on to the bit about doing it for her, etc. where he then tells her in the novel his feelings and wishes have not changed but leaves elizabeth the choice to "silence him forever", film!darcy doesn't wait for her response. instead, he actually undermines the words "silence him forever" by tacking on some stammered lines about how "bewitched" he is. instead of leaving things to her, he makes the moment again about him.

i’m not trying to say that the film has darcy pressure elizabeth into marrying him. rather, it’s the structure of the film itself that makes it so she must. like, the option for her to say no - which she has in the novel, she could insist that kitty stay with her and darcy on the walk where he ends up proposing the second time, or that they accompany kitty, etc - that option is not even represented. maybe I’m taking this too far, but the fact they nearly kiss after she rejects his first proposal seemed one of piece with this structure. so too is how she’s framed as gazing with new perspective on her derbyshire trip - while this in and of itself is a statement that makes sense, as she does have a new perspective during that trip, there’s something about the stark contrast between the mud of her origins and this elevated new position as the condition for seeing into distance that favors the latter - and by extension, the gaze of someone like darcy - as a more encompassing one.

(this might just be me misremembering, but I also came away from the film thinking it associates elizabeth with reflective surfaces - the moon and mirrors - while darcy appears with the sun, like a new source of her light.)

like, I understand that the film is so anachronistic at places (caroline bingley showing up to balls in her chemise ...) that it might as well just be considered deliberately so, a modern romance filmed in costume that shouldn't be read with an eye for historical detail. possibly I would have found it all less insidious without the closing scenes, where elizabeth claims darcy has no pride whatsoever (the qualifier "improper" is missing), where elizabeth tells her father that he shouldn't even mention to darcy the idea of paying back their debts to him, where mr. bennet's concern she will end up in an unequal marriage is glossed over, and where darcy’s really important commentary on what he has learned from elizabeth is totally absent. add to this the american ending where elizabeth tells darcy he should call her mrs. darcy when he is happiest and treat her only as a separate self when not, and ... darcy comes out of this story on top, as the shy, retiring, wholly misunderstood guy who was never proud or dismissive in his life, while elizabeth just looks dumb. no wonder she has to plunge into becoming an extension of darcy, who calls her mrs. darcy ... what was it, ten or fifteen times? enough times to make me want to tear off my ears, for sure

which isn’t to say there isn’t room for that! it’s a very beautifully shot film, and if I’d never read the novel, I might have had a different experience of it altogether. the showing I attended was at a cinema, where it was plain that many people cherish it. I respect that, though it’s not an opinion I can share. forgive me this long rant, if you read this far, I hope you shall banish it from memory.

[darknessvisibie-blog]

Mentalists are individuals with a remarkable skill for brain reading. It is very remarkable, in fact, they normally use it on point, making money as "Mental Magicians" who entertain audiences with shows which include amazing psychic demonstrations. Check http://www.mentalismminds.com/how-to-become-a-mentalist/ for details.

When many people get in trouble with the spouses of theirs, a lot of them fall back on the very same justification: "I am sorry, honey; I am not really a mind reader." When you are a Mentalist, nonetheless, you, unfortunately, cannot make use of that justification, because a head reader is just what you're.

Very well, kind of. Although being a Mentalist, you cannot actually read minds - all things considered, it is impossible for one brain to talk privately and directly with another - you are able to read through folks, which usually gives the feeling and impression of brain reading.

During your mind reading demonstrations, you seem to perform such mental secret tricks as precognition, mediumship, psychokinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and brain control. Obviously, you are definitely not telepathic, psychic, or perhaps clairvoyant. Rather, you are a well-practiced performer who is been taught in mentalism. Mentalism shows you exactly how to read through facial expressions and body language, do hypnosis, do "cold/hot" readings, utilize mnemonics, plus do tricks like the so-called "swami gimmick," in which using a little portion of lead lodged in your fingernail to produce a word on a sheet of paper while it is behind the back of yours, providing the impression that you'd really written that word down prior to the demonstration as an act of precognition.

Although you do not have actual psychic capabilities, you do have a keen power to read between the collections, giving you all of the advantages of brain-reading - without the concern of knowing why your significant some other is in a terrible mood today!

Frequently you've observed unusual magic and tricks on TV. They appear to be genuine and have a great deal of impact on the individuals.

I'm generally a huge fan of individuals who are performing this particular art.

The most popular techniques you've typically seen are actively playing with cards, bending a scoop, cut female into the 50 %, and a lot more.

Magic will have distinct branches, though I do feel that Mentalism is probably the most effective among them.

When I've seen very first time in front of the eyes of mine, I securely think that this individual has some remarkable powers.

What are the thoughts of yours, when you've noticed a female cut into half before your eyes?

I was constantly really curious about this specific, but at some point, I started to be clearer it's an art which may be created after doing a great deal of training.

There are lots of kinds of mentalism, but many popular shows incorporate mind reading, remote vision, fortune telling, mind control, hypnosis, memory feats, mathematics tricks, and much more.

How mentalist accomplish this? A number of folks believe it's really secret, but in truth, the mentalist has acquired diverse skills by doing practice over and over.

I understand the abilities could be acquired but just being dependent on those abilities can't provide very much confidence as skilled mentalist has.

What's Mentalism? History of Mentalism: Mentalism has been working in hundreds of years, and nearly all individuals think it may be discovered in old Greeks as well as the Old Testament of the Bible.

Probably the most visible brand which may be traced back again in past is Girolamo Scotto that was a popular magician, and his overall performance was among the earliest recorded shows of a mentalism actin 1572.

Though this particular area will become very visible at the beginning of 19th century, and today it's a huge people and industry are stepping into numbers that are great.

What's Difference Between Magic as well as Mentalism? Effectively, majority of the individuals think that both are typical names for a similar job. But when I explored more and more about these conditions, I discovered a slim line which segregates the 2.

Mentalists make complete use of the potential of the psychological body and skills language to do various tasks. It indicates that their "tricks" are in fact based on truth.

In order to place it in a different way, skill is used by a magician, trickery, and misdirection, In order to have the audience of his along with a mentalist, entertains using a showing of emotional prowess and also statements of abnormal abilities.

Most Prominent Mentalists within the World: As I stated earlier, this particular area is going bigger and larger as people that are new are enrolling in this particular market. Each individual contains the own list of its, though I'm not here looking at the very best styles. And so, let us take a look at the couple of visible names;

Derren Brown Richard Osterlind Marc Savard Alexander Paul Brook Max Maven Bob Cassidy Ava Do Amila The Amazing Kreskin Uri Geller

[illfated-khakis]

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken reflects the process of making an anime, and how crucial the animators are to the final project. This message portrayed by the series contrasts the corporate view of animation as a mechanical skill, and shows that the “hand” is just as important as the “brain” in the creative process. Asakusa and Mizusaki prove that animators deserve a role in crafting the storyline that acts as a base for the art. They are shown bringing the animation to life through a deep connection to the characters and setting, something that is only possible through involvement in the planning of the plot. Asakusa especially demonstrates this point when she animates her concept art through her own eyes and gives the audience a first-person view into the world that she has created. The animation that the group presents to the budget meeting once again brings the audience into the fictional scene, making the students question if they have just sat through a 3D or 4D screening. Allowing the artists to take charge in exploring and improving the projects they work on is the only way to create an impactful and realistic animation. The scenes of the group collaborating furthers this idea as the concept artist, character animator, and supervisor needed to all talk the movement of the fan through in order to truly understand how it looks and moves. Although the characters clearly show how animation is more than just analyzing a plot, the teacher in episode two depicts that the general public does not see the value in the animation itself. The teacher fails to understand the difference between a club that watches anime, and a club that creates and animates its own stories. The characters even go on to discuss how analyzing anime without paying attention to the art and animation is harmful towards the entire industry.

The series also pointed towards different animation styles, which made me think a lot about the “subcontracting” of animation that was touched on in the article. Since there were multiple different styles of drawing, including the main storyline, the creative universe scenes, the anime that the characters watch, and many more, it is easy to see how an anime such as this could have been put together by many different studios using a multitude of different artists. I relate a lot to Asakusa’s statement in the first episode on how she realizes for the first time that there is a whole team of people behind the cartoons that I watch. This anime made me think a lot about the creativity and collaboration that has to go into a series, and how animation seen as more of a business than an art form. 

[millydesignresearch]

Critical Commentary

Critical Commentary: Millicent Thomas-Close

What is vector illustration? And what makes a good illustrator? That’s an excellent question, it’s one of my favourite design practises, it appeals to me because it allows you to create neat, crisp, modified, digital illustrations through the software Adobe Illustrator, using clean lines and shapes which can then be scaled to any size. Allowing creatives to build high-quality artworks. This report will discuss what it takes to be a successful illustrator, featuring my creative heroes Tom Whalen and Jonny Wan. Throughout this report it will explain to you the methods of the way a vector illustration is made and the effect of the chosen process on the look of the design. It will also explain the context behind work practises, all good illustrations must have a reason for existing.

What makes a good vector illustrator? A good vector illustration, like a good story, must have a reason or purpose for existing. People should be able to recognise a good illustration as a work created by another human for a specific reason. A vector illustrator who uses similar context to my design practise in illustrating is Tom Whalen, Whalen typically generates movie poster commissions from companies such as Marvel, DC Comics and Disney. This means Whalen has to research the chosen topic in order to gain insight into the meaning behind the illustration, so he can convey the full emotions through the use of the image. I will be explaining the context behind a popular poster Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, created by Whalen. In order to create a successful illustration it needs to have a story or a reason for existing, the meaning behind this image, Spiderman: Into the Spider verse is an animated film. This film in particular helps us learn the importance of relying on others and fighting through life's difficulties to help save ourselves and the world. Resilience is a powerful theme which is characterized throughout, for example, the scale tips to positive outcomes even when there is a large portion of difficulties, it regularly encourages the main character to get back up and keep fighting. Throughout the notion of bouncing back and continuing the fight is consistent, this is important because it has strong morals behind the image giving it deeper meaning and becoming inspirational towards the viewers. Another vector illustrator who uses similar context to my design practise in illustrating is Jonny Wan. Jonny Wan created a poster print series using masks as the main source of inspiration; this specific project was done for charity. The context behind this piece of work is personal and cultural which is why it interested me, so this is my reasoning for writing about it. Wan is heavily influenced by the visual aesthetics of ancient cultures, and this project gave the ideal platform for him to creatively convey this towards an audience. Wan has always been fascinated by the concept of masks; people from all cultures and times have used masks in various forms throughout history. Masks have been used to provide secrecy for the wearer and convey an “alter ego” to the spectator, whether that’s to scare opponents in war or entice audiences into a theatre. A relevant quote regarding Wan’s context behind his work is, “A mask plays two roles. First, it shares its story with you, the viewer. Secondly, it conceals the wearer often to the point where you forget they even exist. Masks are full of meaning that fall into two main outlets: the symbolism they convey, and the messages you interpret” (Wan, 2017). I like this quote because it explains why Wan is using masks as illustrations in order to make a poster series and in this case it is to tell a story, representing multiple cultures whilst also having a personal interest within the topic. These contexts shown by Whalen and Wan are relevant to my own work as they show overarching connections such as using the three main contexts to tell a story which are personal, cultural and formal. Similar to me they utilize a vector illustration to further interpret an example or story which is manipulated in the correct format to make something easier to understand. Another detail that stands out to me is using evidence and research to demonstrate a topic clearly, you must be able to recognise and appreciate how illustrators use a variety of inspirations and levels of meaning in their work. This a quote I found in an article whilst researching the context, “All stories and fairy tales contain symbols and archetypes. These are what make stories universal and relatable to everyone. Such symbols and archetypes can represent human conflicts, struggles or experiences we have or may encounter — such as trauma and loss” (Martyn, 2019). This resonates with me because I myself would like to make my own work more relatable to the wider public, connecting people to my work by having a strong sense of context and meaning which they can relate to.

What is vector illustration? Vector illustrations are made up of graphics using mathematical based formulas, these being points, lines, curves and shapes, to create images and illustrations using Adobe Illustrator. An influential vector illustrator who uses similar methods to my design practise is Tom Whalen, Whalen typically generates character pieces using an animated style; this is accomplished through the use of posters. Whalen's illustrating work is inspired by elements such as comic books, cartoons, marvel movies, pop art and poster art. Whalen's methods of creating an illustrative piece include specific techniques, firstly Whalen starts off by researching the topic to gather inspiration and ideas, an example of his research methods would include examining images, photographs, movies and tv shows. Whalen then carries out a basic paper sketch, sketching different components of the illustration on separate pieces of paper allowing him to focus on one character at a time. Next, Whalen scans the analogue image into Adobe Illustrator, which he then creates a rough outline using the pen tool, proceeding onto the final rendering once the rough copy is approved to Whalen’s level of satisfaction. Whalen then works on the image and composition adding in the necessary details, tweaking and modifying the image. Another influential vector illustrator who uses similar methods to my design practice is Jonny Wan, the work Wan produces is characterised by mixing bold graphic shapes, pattern, texture, colour and detail. Wan typically generates character pieces using an animated cartoon style; Wan’s work covers everything from advertising, to posters, to product packaging and beyond. Wan's work is inspired by art deco and ancient Egypt, as he quotes “Ancient art in general fascinates me, I have always been interested in different cultures and the way people live in other parts of the world, it’s only natural that I started looking into the visual heritage of these various cultures” (Wan, 2011). Wan’s methods of creating an illustrative piece include specific techniques, firstly Wan starts off by doing a rough hand drawn sketch which is consistent with most illustrators' methods. Although Wan has a slightly different approach when it comes to personal experimentation, if it is personal experimentation Wan will get right into illustrator and start making forms for personal exploration, looking for inspiration in images of people, places or items, and then attempting to recreate what he sees using a combination of shape experimentation until it’s ideal. Wan’s style is based on the appreciation of symmetry and shapes. Wan’s affinity for facial expressions fuels a combination of these elements which allows him to establish his own design style while also experimenting with diverse parts of design such as patterns, colours, and so on. This connects to my personal design practise led methods of being a vector illustrator because my methods are very similar to Whalen and Wan some overarching themes I noticed were gathering information and inspiration on the chosen topic, sketching out the characters before bringing it into Adobe Illustrator then digitally rendering them to my satisfaction, using geometry and symmetry in order to produce a piece of work which I find crucial for creating an illustration. Although, I have learnt some crucial skills to improve my illustrating methods for example, I need to find my main source of inspiration which will help me find my niche within the illustrating world and further define my design style instead of it being so broad. I think it would benefit me by practising sketching frequently, observing my sketches and their characteristics, later bringing them to life in Adobe Illustrator testing out new techniques until I am satisfied with my progress and find my calling. Whalen quotes “The less you work, the rustier you get and the longer it takes to get the creative engine back up to speed when that great opportunity comes along” (Whalen, 2016). I really like this quote because it resonates with me and encourages me to make illustrations of my own outside of university. In order to reach my goals, I need to do more personal projects to strengthen my illustrating skills and not only just focus on the assignments that I am given.

In conclusion I have learnt what it takes in order to be a successful vector illustrator by thoroughly researching my creative heroes methods and contexts behind their work, displaying how the effect of a chosen process implements the look of the final design and exploring how all good illustrations must have a reason for existing. These two statements are important to me as this is how I would like to portray my illustrator skills in the near future. This lead to my first breakthrough I had when writing my critical commentary this being, understanding that my vector illustrations often didn’t have any context behind the images I created which meant overall they had no actual reason for existing, I would like to work on this particular skill more and think deeper when creating my illustrations which will give them a sense of meaning. This also lead to a connecting breakthrough with my illustrating methods this being, understanding how to find my main source of inspiration when it comes to creating an illustrative piece such as cartoons or picture books this will help me find my niche within the illustrating industry and help narrow down my design style instead of it being so vast. Something I would like to accomplish throughout my illustrating journey within the next year is creating an illustrated cartoon picture book for kids, or something similar to a comic book theme using posters which is suitable for all ages, this could also be done through the use of an awareness campaign of some sort. Using the same techniques that my creative heroes use to approach their design work, this is something that I could see myself doing in year 3 of my communication design course.

References:

Gomez-Palacio, B. (2013, July 13). FPO: Faces from places self-promo. UnderConsideration LLC. https://www.underconsideration.com/fpo/archives/2013/07/faces-from-places-self-promo.php

Martyn, N. (2019, February 6). Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/what-into-the-spider-verse-can-teach-us-about-resilience-110752

Jones, M. (2012, October). Jonny wan: Digital illustration done justice. Now Then Sheffield. https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/jonny-wan-digital-illustration-done-justice

Cosgrove, J. (2016, June 28). Tom Whalen - An Art Superhero on a Creative Planet. Awesome Merchandise. https://blog.awesomemerchandise.com/tom-whalen-an-art-superhero-on-a-creative-planet/

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industry feedback

Sabrina Cotugno responded, but as our correspondence occurred over a period of a week and several days, I didn't post all the feedback I received immediately. I believe we're done for now though, so here's what they've said:

March 23: "—Okay here’s some notes!! I’m feeling pretty tired right now so hopefully this makes sense!! —I’m interested to see where this story goes! The characters all have nice clear personalities, Agatha in particular is super charming. The glitch is an intriguing concept as well. —You introduce the setting twice—first in the initial establishing shots, and then through the main character’s eyes after she wakes up. I’d cut the first establishing shots and, instead, open nice and close on our main character. Only when she looks out at her surroundings do you cut wide to reveal the location. This way the audience is more in the character’s head, since we’re discovering the wider world at the same time she is. —On pacing: I’m working on the assumption that this is the beginning of the story. Disregard this is we’ve had previous time to get to know the characters and rules of the world…. But IF this is the beginning: You’re introducing a lot of unusual and interesting ideas that need a bit more visual explanation. I.E.: —What are the flowers growing out of the main character’s eye? What’s going on there? Is this a new thing for her? I admit at first I just thought some flowers had fallen onto her face, and it took me a while to realize they were a consistent part of her design. We see her interacting with them and trying to pull them out a few shots later, but that interaction is interrupted by: her reaction to the world around her and her reaction to the person with the bucket. Because it’s interrupted by that stuff, it’s difficult to clearly establish this important part of her design. I’d step it out like: —She notices the flowers. What the fuck?! She sits up, tugs at the flowers. They won’t budge. She gives up. THEN…. —She looks out and notices her surroundings. Big wide shot! Reveal the world! —Then, we get a nice close-up on her to see her clear reaction to her surroundings. —And then, in theory, she notices the bucket person? Honestly, I’m not sure if we need this character here? We meet them later anyway, and I’m not sure what they’re doing out in the wilderness. It took me a while to realize that the bucket character and Agatha were two separate characters. —Agatha throwing her skull as protection is really fun—is there a way to introduce the fact that she can detach her skull earlier? Maybe have her play around with her skull head in her introductory scene? —Here’s the most common storyboard note I give, it’s: switch up your medium shots. You’ve got several minutes near the end of JUST medium shots, which can feel repetitive and jump-cutty if used too frequently. Look for shots that are more about broad physical motion and turn them into wide shots. Look for shots that are more focused on facial acting and turn them into close-ups. —For your over-the-shoulder shots: as a general rule you don’t want the focus of the shot to be the over-the-shoulder character—because they’re turned away from camera, we can’t really see them properly. For instance, when the main character (Exa?) introduces herself, she states her name while facing away from us in an over-the-shoulder—which feels odd because she should be the focus of that shot. I’d swap that shot out for an over-the-shoulder from over Agatha’s shoulder or a single shot on Exa. oops, I meant "Disregard this IF we’ve had previous time to get to know the characters and rules of the world…."

I think I'm a little confused as to the purpose of this animatic? You mention that it's going to be a pilot eventually, but I think we might have a different definition of 'pilot'.....

Questions on that are: 1) Is this the entire animatic or part of a larger animatic that I'm not seeing? 2) What is the purpose of this project? I understand that it's for your school program, but what is the goal here? Is this basically going to be a thesis film? Is it a portfolio piece to apply to future jobs? Is it something you're planning on pitching to a studio? (If the latter, people don't often pitch shows to studios using animatics--they're way too labor intensive! and usually you'd want to go through several rounds of studio notes before committing to a pilot script/board) 3) What kind of program are you in? Is it an animation program or another kind of graduate program? I ask because you seem not entirely confident in your professors' notes, and that may be a good instinct--animation is a really niche industry and there aren't many teachers who are really qualified to teach in this area er, or rather.... I don't want to say 'they're not qualified' but they may not have the specific expertise to really guide you to to get the specific skills/portfolio you need

April 6: --So, I would definitely encourage you to do a bit more research on animated pilots! Pilots are generally one full episode length--either the first episode or an early episode (say episode 4). --The job of a pilot is to convince the studio that they should greenlight your show. That's what sets it apart from a "teaser"--generally speaking, you want to clearly establish all the major elements of a show in that first episode. the Steven Universe pilot is a great example ("this is a show about a human boy with three superpowered moms. Here are their powers. Here's how they work. There's going to be music. There's going to be action scenes.") The pilot of Hannibal is also a great pilot (it takes time to clearly establish all the main characters, their dynamics, and the major setpieces of the show--the big, artsy murders, Will's "This is my design" schtick, Will and Hannibal's manipulative therapy sessions) --Ah hah, actually shoot, reading through your previous answer, it looks like you already understood that a pilot=selling tool. But to expand on that: you want to avoid teasing. Instead, you should be revealing and dramatizing. A lot of pilots will END on a teaser that hints at the overall season arc, but ONLY after spending the majority of its runtime answering the basic questions of "What is this story? Who are these characters? How am I going to tell this story? What sets it apart from other stories in this genre?" (Again, to use Hannibal as an example, taking full scenes to demonstrate how Will's "superpower" works, how the murders are more like art pieces than your typical grisly CSI murder, how Hannibal is depicted as more of an ally and friend to Will than an adversary..... these are all things that clearly explain, "This is what an average episode of this show will look like. These are the things that set it apart from other crime procedurals.") Right now in your pilot you're teasing a LOT about the basic premise of the story but have not revealing a lot of answers. Again, you can have one or two things teased at the end, but not at the expense of basic clarity--and you have to reveal enough of the story/world/characters that the audience could feasibly start guessing what the answers to those teasers could be. --I may have mentioned this before, but generally speaking individual creators don't make pilots on their own--they're much too expensive. Generally, you make a 'story bible' with art and writing that explains the basic premise of the show, the characters, and world, and then pitch it to studios. If the studio likes it, they will option the project and then give you the budget and resources to make the pilot at the studio --An exception would be something like Hazbin Hotel, but that basically required the creator to create her own studio, funded by a very successful Patreon, with her own full crew of animators working under her. Honestly I would only recommend this route if you are very business savvy and would also be OK producing the ENTIRE show independent of a studio (therefore rendering a pilot pointless) --So overall, I would recommend using this project as A) a personal project B) a portfolio to sell YOUR SKILLS as an artist for future industry jobs--storyboarding skills, 2D animation skills, design skills. However, I would say that if you want to use this piece as part of a storyboarding portfolio, I would recommend going back in and cleaning it up to industry standards--referencing currently working industry board artists for that level of clean (i.e. Steven Universe, Amphibia, Rise of the TMNT, etc.). The goal you want to reach is for the person reviewing your board to understand the story clearly without having to read the dialogue or ask follow-up questions. Hope that helps!!

I then had some questions to wrap up,

"1) Do you think that, as it is, it holds up better as a mock series teaser then? Basically stop trying to call it a pilot and own the vagueness/mystery of it. In other words, if it's not trying to be a pilot, do you think it works/is engaging?

2) I have a written 'project proposal' that I have to arrange with my professors, instead of trying to sell this as an "animatic for a pilot", would you recommend I change it to "story bible with animatic"? That seems like the right path to me at this point but I thought I'd ask

3) And finally... Would it be okay if I sent you a sort of update in a few months (june-july ish) to get your feedback again? By that point I'm hoping to have redrawn the characters (so they actually look like their references) and implemented the advice you've given me for the animatic. It should be the last time as my school year finishes in September, but I I completely understand if you'd rather not. like I said earlier I know you're very busy"

To which she responded,

1) Hmm, this is a tricky question for me.... I would say my primary issue goes back to the fact that it doesn't feel like a complete statement. I feel the text of the animatic would need to answer a few more questions before it could properly "tease" an audience into wanting to see more. I'd say your meat-and-potatoes questions are: What does your main character want/need? How is she going to achieve it? What kind of obstacles is she likely to face? What are her flaws as a character? How do they hold her back? How will the world of the story force her to confront and grow from those flaws?

And for this story in particular, I'd want to reveal enough of the world that I could begin to guess at things like: What is the glitch? What kind of world is this? Um, this is a little trickier to explain, but since this story exists in a fantasy world and there are SO many mysteries--what is the glitch? who is the main character? Is she from this world or another world? Is this world real or does the glitch indicate that it's a video game or something? Incidentally, these are the kinds of questions I commonly ask students who are working on their own original stories. I find those students often have pretty clear answers when I ask them, at which point I say, "Cool. Now put the answers in the board." I think there's a culture online of "don't be obvious" or "don't spoil the audience"--I would say, when trying to sell a new story to an audience, don't worry about that kind of thing. Be obvious. Keep in mind that many animated shows are only 11 minutes long, and in the age of streaming, most showrunners only have one episode to convince an audience to watch THEIR show and not the dozens of other shows that aired the same month, or thousands of other shows they could access via streaming. Don't worry about giving too much away! Be stupid and obvious!

However, I am aware that as a student you only have so much time until your deadline--if you're in a phase where you should be finished with pre-production and starting production, I would not recommend making major changes to your story--that will only cause you to rush through your work later. If you need to finish the animatic soon and start on animation, I would recommend ignoring my advice above and focus on producing the animatic you have currently at the highest quality you can. Even if it doesn't necessarily work as a selling tool for the story--which is perfectly fine, I would strongly recommend pitching to studios right after graduating anyway (studios are complicated and predatory to young artists, and I recommend taking several years to work within the studio system to understand how it works from the inside before trying to be a showrunner)--it can still work as a portfolio presentation piece if you take your time on your animation and go back and polish this board 2) Story bible with animatic should work! 3) Yeah, feel free to send an updated version! Though again I am wary of deadlines and am a little skeptical that giving feedback so close to your deadline would be SUPER helpful--I may only be able to give 'polish' notes at that point that you would still be able to implement By “text of the animatic” I just mean that when I flip through the storyboard, I can understand the answers clearly without having to ask questions or read about it in the action notes. Personally I don’t recommend using board notes/action notes/descriptions at all. The only time I’ve used those are when working with an overseas outsourced contract animation studio. The function of action notes are essentially insurance—the board should read clearly on its own, but if an overseas studio misinterprets the board, you can point to the action notes and say, “you should have done what was in the action notes. Because this was a mistake on your end, you have to fix it on your own time (rather than requesting additional money to pay for a mistake on our end)”. In any other case, action notes are redundant and should be taken out of any portfolio or presentation

It was overall incredibly helpful and enlightening, especially with what pilots are and how they work. Sabrina's really helped me figure out what I thought I wanted to do, and what I actually want to do. I'll elaborate on this a bit more in my essay and how I applied it to my animatic directly.