#like I know Dart's the main character but the actual overall themes and events of the story mirror Rose's character arc

[loregoddess]

4, 7 and 10 for the comfort character ask: for Rose from Legend of Dragoon

oooh, Rose is a fun character

4. what about their personality i like I loved watching Rose go from this "mysterious, cold, closed-off" warrior to slowly becoming more trusting and open as the story progressed. Like, all the stuff she does in the world's history aside, seeing her regain that sense of "humanity" before the story's ending was nice, and I think works the best for her character arc. But also makes me wish we got a prequel bc it's suggested that Rose was this warm and kindhearted woman, who was deeply in love and full of hope before the Dragon Campaign, and then had to kill off that part of herself to bind herself to her destiny. She's a fairly complex character, and her entire arc is really interesting.

7. the moment of theirs that made me the happiest The scene at the end of Chapter Two, where she's alone in the guest room of Fletz Castle and Rose laughs to herself, and then realizes that she laughed. Like, it's small, but it's the first indication that she's begun to break away from the fate she's been tied to.

10. my favorite moment with them in canon Hmm...probably her conversation with Dart in Ulara, which is also when the flashback cutscene to her duel with Dart occurred, because it's such an interesting and pivotal point in both her and Dart's character arcs, as well as their story. Like, on one hand we have Dart and his recurring theme of choosing not to claim vengeance despite his motivations throughout the story being vengeance (against both the Black Monster and Lloyd), and how he chooses not to kill Rose because "the Black Monster is already dead," instead accepting her as she is, because, unforgivable as her actions are, he also understands why she chose them. And given that the world is very close to ending, Dart knows that now, more than ever, they need to work together as a team. And for Rose, it's this moment where she's able to truly begin to separate herself from her fate as the Black Monster, to move on from being the crux of the world, and return to just being Rose. And while she can't forgive herself really, she's at least able to face and move towards the future instead of remaining stagnate, as she had been. It's just...not the type of story arc I see explored a lot, and it's messy, but at the same time it was nice to see that for all that occurred, Rose was still given the chance to return to moving forward, to return to living.

[sol1056]

if you promise peaches, deliver peaches.

After S7, the asks have been piling up. A few examples:

I was so confused in ep4 when Acxa disappeared, I thought she’d stuck with the team after ep3 and maybe I just missed the scene where she left, but others have brought that up, too.

Funny how the majority of the problems in s7 are because they tried to force BP Keith to the detriment of the story, and ironically, Keith's story, too.

I thought Lance’s family reunion would be much more emotional and be a part of his arc, since he was the most homesick, but then they gave that to Hunk?

Shiro got tossed aside in the most ableist, racist, and homophobic way, and Allura could have had a cool storyline mixing her paladinship and her castle storyline with a new altean mecha, instead of Shiro becoming a bad Allura 2.0 and Keith becoming a bad Shiro 2.0.

Srsly tho, am I the only one who finds it extremely bothering that in writing Allura and Lance they don't bother to show Allura coming to view Lance in a romantic light after her breakup?

Why even bother in S6 to make such a big deal of Shiro/Kuron saying his dream is to be a paladin over and over? Until he was revealed a clone some of us thought he was Shiro, so it's even harder to accept Shiro not being BP anymore.

The EPs seem to be so stuck in their initial idea and salty they couldn’t do it exactly as they want that they just ignore the story itself?

The EPs have spoken of being determined to get the VLD gig out of fear it’d be given to someone who'd wreck the story. That's understandable, but we're talking about a 78-episode, six-season, space opera mecha series. This genre practically demands a sprawling world and a massive cast, and it's far beyond the scope of anything either JDS or LM have ever helmed on their own. 

My guess is that JDS and LM didn’t realize the enormity of what they were taking on, or they (and their bosses) seriously underestimated the degree to which they were wholly unprepared.

Behind the cut: what I meant when I said these EPs are not storytellers.

I’m not surprised the EPs over-estimated their skill, really. People will look at a creative process like art –- where you often start young, practice daily, maybe study it formally, apprentice or intern (especially in animation), and gradually work your way up -- and they see the effort. They know it wasn’t an overnight thing. 

Too often, the very same people won’t accord that respect to the art of storytelling. It’s treated like divine inspiration, something that just happens. We’ve been hearing and reading and watching stories all our lives; how hard can it be to do it ourselves?

It’s goddamn hard, is what it is. I would love to tell you otherwise, but that’s the truth. You can rock your dialogue but you gotta track character goals, too. Complicated backstories only get you so far if you don’t understand how to modulate tension. You can have a great premise but you still gotta resolve the damn thing. A story has a hundred moving parts; scale up to a space opera’s necessary levels of epic and we’re talking exponentially more.

In my experience, the hardest part of storytelling — not the technical aspects of writing, but the art of storytelling — is holding the shape of the story in your head. The entire thing, all at once. You have to, if you’re to see how a choice at this point will echo down the line, or a motif laid here should reflect there, how the theme shifts but stays true from start to end, how these secondary arcs weave together to undergird the main arc.

I’d say a lot of what we learn in our first few novels is how to see — and hold —the story’s shape in our head. I’m not talking dialogue or voice acting or choreography. I’m talking about the overall shape, the vision and theme it establishes, evolves, and eventually resolves.

If we cannot, we will find our stories promise peaches and deliver pine cones.

Looking back, there are too many clues --- almost all given by the EPs themselves --- that they didn't have the experience to do this story justice. What they did have was a certainty that their vision was the best, an inability to deviate from that one story they'd devised, and a continual low-grade frustration at being held back.

Let's go back to the beginning. S1 starts a little rocky (to be expected as a team finds its groove), but S2 builds on S1 quite deftly. It’s not perfect, but in a storytelling sense, it’s the strongest season, and it's much too self-assured to be a beginner’s. It moves swiftly but steadily to a pivotal midpoint, and from there snowballs gracefully into its finale; it balances nuanced characterization with plot movement, and its opening promises bear fruit by the end.

In those earliest interviews and panels, the EPs are often casually vague about basic details, like character ages or relationships. At least twice their answers change, giving the impression they hadn't known and had needed to confirm with someone else. Generally, though, they're low-key and hopeful, possibly leaning on the borrowed confidence of that other storyteller’s influence.

By S3/S4, their tone shifts to a peculiar kind of non-ownership. They joke about having no idea what's going on, tossing out guesses as though they'd be the last to know. They offer head canons, rather than insight. They wear their frustration openly, alluding to the story they'd wanted, chafing at what had been decided for them.

As the story moved into the split-seasons, it's clear that whomever lent that guiding hand in S1/S2 was no longer present. Someone else’s fingerprints are on S3, and my guess is it’s mostly Hedrick, at least on the script-level. The word choices change, the cadences change, the beats change. From S3 on, VLD has all the hallmarks of a muddy vision. 

You can see that in the story’s shape. It holds together, but barely. It darts forward, then sideways, then treads water for a bit. It’s erratically paced, dropping plot points and introducing new ones, only to drop those as well. It can’t settle on a driving antagonist, and when it finally does, it can't keep the antagonist’s goal consistent. It sacrifices nuance for one-note characterization, and shoves most substantiative character growth off-screen.

This continues to S6, which generally continues the focus on plot coupons over character goals, exposition at the cost of emotional beats, and neglecting established characters to introduce left-field swerves in the guise of plot twists. On the plus side, it does manage to rally enough to end its multi-season prevarication, and put to bed questions hanging around since late S3.

It's worth noting that both EPs have only a single writing credit each, for the pilot three-parter. That makes it doubly striking that JDS chose to write the Black Paladins episode. After the season aired, JDS complained in passing about rewrites on his episode. If that seems odd, remember that an EP has final approval on every script. If it bothered him to have his ideas rejected in favor of keeping Shiro, it must've burned to have his writing choices countermanded.

From the timing and the episode credits, this must've been around when Tim Hedrick left the team --- and the EPs took full ownership. 

It shows in their post-S6 interviews. Gone are the ambiguous expressions or vague promises of doing their best. Their wording is declarative: what Kuron had been, what Shiro would be, the resolution of Shiro’s illness, the nature of Shiro’s past relationship. None is equivocated, nor couched as head canons. They’ve taken control of the narrative, and their interpretation is now the deciding one.

This change was important enough to them that they had to make sure we’re aware. There’s simply no other reason to tell us S7 had been written in its entirety, let alone tell us the original outcome. Nor is there any other reason to tell us they petitioned for — and got — permission to rewrite.

When I look at S7 with my writer’s hat on, everything tells me this is where the brakes came off. With Hedrick’s departure, there was no one left but the EPs themselves to steer the story. By whatever means, for whatever reason, VLD went from a crafted vision, to a conflicted one, to none at all.

Set aside the larger controversies for a moment, and just think about the shape of S7. It’s almost three seasons in one: the first part skips from event to event, then abruptly timeskips to reset the entire playing field. That second part in turn is divided from the last half by a two-parter that halts momentum for an overlong flashback with an entirely new cast, followed by a finale that mostly backseats its protagonists in favor of letting that new cast dominate.

There’s a common pattern in the way beginner writers react to critique, and I see that all over the EPs’s responses, from the beginning. It’s only grown worse since S6. They can’t quite juggle the story they think they’re telling versus the story they’re actually telling.

I’ve had these conversations too many times to count. I ask, how did this character get from here to there? The newbie storyteller is quick to explain, usually in great detail. I ask, but then why did this happen? The more I dig, the greater the chance the newbie will get angry that I don’t seem to be reading the story they’re so obviously telling. If I keep pushing, they’ll get defensive.

They’ll confidently assure me this is exactly the story they’d intended to tell, and if I don’t like it, that’s my problem. (They may not be able to hold the shape in their head, but they’ve probably already taken to heart the adage that one must stay true to one’s ‘artistic’ vision. The part about listening to critique even when it’s uncomfortable… that takes a bit longer to learn.)

My reaction almost always boils down to: you’re telling me this amazing story, but that’s not the story you’ve actually written.

Sometimes the best description of the shape of a newbie’s story is that of a house after a tornado’s swept through: the front door is on the chimney, the roof is half-off, and the windows are shattered in the front yard. Most of the pieces are there, but it’s all so jumbled the newbie storyteller can’t see what’s missing. They can’t hold the shape of the story in their head, so even when they know here’s where something goes, they’re too overwhelmed to remember the door they need is still on the chimney.

An epic story is no cakewalk, and boy do I give credit for that effort, but it’s one thing to learn by noodling in a fandom on AO3. It’s quite another to do it at the scale of a television series, let alone one with the expected scope of a space opera spanning galaxies. This is not the place to learn as you go.

Here’s why the shape of the story — and holding that in your head — is so important. 

Think of a story’s resolution like a fresh peach. You want the reader to bite into the peach as the culmination of everything the story has been, from start to end. But you don’t get a peach by planting pine trees. You must start with the proper seeds, and make sure what grows is a peach tree, such that your final act bears the right fruit.

I touched on this before with the promise of the premise. Themes, backstories, world-building, and motifs are facets of the seeds planted in the first act. Everything you need to resolve the story must be present when the story begins; that’s where your premise lies, and your promises are made. 

Through the entire second act, the tree must grow. The storyteller’s task is to trim as needed, bind this to that, shore up the roots, add water and nurture: this is where the theme expands, the foreshadowing laid, the questions reveal answers that lead to further questions, narrowing the outcome, each outlining the tree’s shape in sharper detail.

By the time the story turns the corner into the third act, the readers should be reasonably certain they’re going to get a peach tree. This is not a bad thing! You want them looking forward to plucking the peach and enjoying it. You want everything planted at story-beginning to come to fruition, at story-end.

That is why you must hold the shape — the vision — in your head, always checking against where you began and where you plan to end. You cannot throw out the entire tree at the end of the second act and start over; if you ignore the fruit your story is producing and insist on serving up pine cones, you’re going to have confused and possibly angry readers.

You promised them peaches, damn it.

The story is now midway through the third act. Everything planted in the previous seasons must now be coming to fruition… but it won’t. The EPs are openly (even proudly) reversing course on everything that’s come before. That means directly violating every motif, every thematic element, every bit of foreshadowing in word, image, or sound.

And at the same time, the story’s scope is simply too vast, and they haven’t the experience to juggle all the thousands of moving parts. The result is the most slapdash season, yet. Characters simply drop out of sight, only to reappear again with no warning. Themes and motifs built up over so many episodes are tossed aside as if they mean nothing.

The hand-to-hand fights are visually striking — the EPs’ strengths are in storyboarding, after all — but emotionally hollow, bereft of dialogue that could finally give us closure. Characters that would’ve once spoken openly with each other barely exchange a word; character-distinct dialogue is uttered by someone else, as though the VAs mixed up the scripts in the recording booth.

To achieve the emotional heft required for a meaningful resolution, there must be echoes of the story’s beginning. But when the beginning is negated—underscored by a timeskip that resets the entire playing field—there’s nothing to refer back to. The events now are happening in a void, divorced from the themes and motifs that created the emotional context in the first place.

This is by design; the EPs’ vision has never matched with the story as it was told to this point. They can’t go back, so they’ve rebooted. Once with the timeskip, and again with a two-parter episode that introduces new characters that can be entirely their own. Compared to the protagonists, these secondary characters have been lavished with attention to the point of overload: full names, backstories, designs. All of of that, and the time required to introduce them is to the detriment of the actual protagonists.

Whatever story VLD ostensibly set out to tell, that story is gone, now.

This is no longer a matter of losing track of the story, such that the promised peaches have transmuted into pine trees. We passed that point somewhere in S6. The EPs have burnt down the orchard to plant new seeds, while doing their best to ignore the charred stump of the story we'd been promised.

I would've preferred peaches, myself. That was the story I was promised, and that was the fruit I expected from everything I saw onscreen. But now? 

I hope you like carrots.

[liskantope]

Musing on nostalgia

[Content note: long, and rather soppy and emotional by my usual standards. I’m basically fine but have been having these thoughts for quite a while and was waiting for an evening when I was feeling soppily emotional enough to do them justice in writing. Not that I know how to write soppy emotions that well in the first place.]

Increasingly throughout the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of nostalgia, mainly because I feel like it’s at the crux of a lot of the vague feelings of longing I’ve been experiencing during the current chapter of my life. I suspect it’s played a major role in some world events lately as well. A major theme of the whole most recent season of South Park was nostalgia (symbolized by the ‘member berries) and how it influenced the 2016 election. I’m not sure that nostalgia deserves a position in first place among the major causes of the surprising election outcome, but the desire to “make America great again” (in spite of the fact that the America being harked back to probably wasn’t so “great” compared to the current one) definitely played a part. At the same time, in my own personal life, when looking back on the whole year 2016 I can’t help but characterize the emotion of Nostalgia as its overarching theme.

The main part of my nostalgia has been for my grad student days, which is coupled with a deep fear that those days formed the best time of my life and I will never be able to return to that level of happiness. Not that everything went ideally: at times my research was stressful or going badly; one of my closest personal relationships was toxic on a significant level; and I was unable to get into any romantic relationship whatsoever. But many aspects of my life as a grad student turned out to be pretty adequate and some to be really wonderful. I had an idyllically active day-to-day social life for a large part of it (for the only time ever, apart from one summer program I did in college), and for the most part I loved my friends. I did manage to put together a pretty decent dissertation in the end and learned a lot of cool math on the way. My work environment was lively and social. My stress levels and overall health were okay most of the time. I loved the area where I lived and got to know it and the people in it really well, and I got into fun things like community theater and doing small gigs with local musicians. Above all, I still felt young and fairly free and was able to constantly enjoy the company of other young, fairly free people, something I struggle to do now. So naturally, I find myself yearning for those times again, not only for the natural and obvious reason that I missed certain people and places I cared about after moving away, but because most of those positive things have been strikingly absent since. This was especially true throughout last year (especially the thriving social life, lively work environment, and actual success at research were concerned). I’m glad to say that a lot of things have been looking up since the start of 2017, but they still have a ways to go and I’m not too optimistic that I’ll ever be able to regain the sort of lifestyle I had.

In short, I worry that grad school was the best period of my life, although really a better attitude would be just to be grateful for having had overall good experiences and enjoy the happy memories. (I’m reminded of a joke I once heard -- from my dissertation advisor, in fact -- that went something like this: “The optimist believes that this is the best possible world. The pessimist fears that this is indeed the case.”) It’s funny because there’s an old cliche of “Enjoy high school; those are the best years of your life.” Apart from being a misguided or even cruel thing to tell a teenager, for most people I know it seems to have been utterly untrue -- most of us, myself included, feel that our high school years really weren’t great. College is probably a better time for a lot of people, and it was certainly fresher and more exciting and liberating for me, but it also came with a great deal of personal stress and angst and much difficulty with the transition into adulthood. I was very optimistic about grad school being better, and for the most part my hopes turned out to be fulfilled. But as I neared the end of that chapter, a feeling gradually crept over me that circumstances had peaked, and so far my postdoctoral life has confirmed that suspicion. I’m afraid I will always look back and say to my past grad-student self in a sage older-man voice, “Enjoy this period while you can -- these are the best years of your life.”

(Yes, I know that just above, I’m sounding an awful lot like someone whose attitude acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not sure what to say about that, except that the truth is obviously a lot more complicated.)

But what has made the heavy presence of Nostalgia worse is that it hasn’t only been longing for my grad student days, but longing for the earlier two periods of my life: teenagerhood and college. And I know perfectly well that those definitely weren’t the best of times (to be fair, not particularly miserable compared to how they are for a lot of people). In fact, a lot of things were much worse for me back then than they are today or probably ever will be again, particularly when it comes to lack of freedom and independence and my struggle at basic competence at making friends. A few things were better back then, I guess, but even the flashes of memories that dart into my mind of being a high schooler or my transition into adulthood don’t always exemplify them all that well. And yet they come with a similar deep longing to the emotion that comes with memories of more recent and happier times, and I have to wonder why.

I think at least part of the answer comes in examining the nature of nostalgia itself as it’s often experienced. I’ve wound up coming to the conclusion that when people feel nostalgic, either for earlier times in their lives or for earlier times in history that they may not even have experienced, there is a sort of selective bias in favor of the positive aspects of past situations, however few or murky they may be. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but it probably has something to do with our subconscious defense mechanisms against reliving negative things. I remember Scott writing about this in an SSC post that I don’t feel like looking up right now, where he came to a similar conclusion (in fact, he even used the example of having sentimental memories of high school as an adult despite having hated it at the time).

I’m not sure that explains the full depths of the feelings I get when revisiting pre-grad-school times because, as I said, the memories that spontaneously come to me often don’t really involve concrete circumstances that I miss today -- or at least, not at first glance. But eventually I think I’ve put my finger on something less concrete but no less tangible that I do miss from those times. I miss the constant presence, no matter how satisfied or frustrated I was with my circumstances in those times, of the potential for everything to get better, for the best times of my life to be ahead of me. In high school, I knew better than to actually believe that cliche of those years being the best, and even in college I had the sense to realize that despite a lot of conventional wisdom I still hadn’t passed or even reached my prime. Nowadays I can’t shake off a very palpable feeling -- supported not only by most conventional wisdom but the full force of my common sense and just the overall way I feel internally -- that I’ve grown older inside in a natural way that can’t really be reversed and that my peers have grown older as well but are on average much more “settled down” than I am, and that at least a lot of things are going downhill from here. I now actually have the most freedom I (or anyone) can ever really expect to have, and in regard to whatever I find unsatisfactory I can’t just tell myself that it’ll magically get better once I get older and gain more autonomy. Instead of being able to expect more doors to open for me, I only see plain evidence that a lot of doors have closed. To put it briefly and of course way too simplistically, I’ve gone “over the hill”.

I don’t remember when in the past few months this finally completely occurred to me, but I do think it hit me particularly hard at some point in January when I went through a jag of binge-watching a season of That 70′s Show on Netflix. I hadn’t been at all interested in that show before and haven’t been since, but there was a particular weekend when I was feeling physically and mentally unwell and wanted something light and not energy-demanding to leave on all the time. (Potential viewers should be warned that this show is as campy as heck, largely devoid of substance, and even kind of unintentionally racist. In its defense, it doesn’t take itself very seriously.) I was really shocked at how hard the sheer force of Nostalgia would hit me while I was watching (ironic, because the main premise is of course nostalgia for the 1970′s, before I was born). It seemed very strange, because my high school experience was absolutely nothing remotely like that of the characters. I had far less independence (couldn’t drive, for instance), lacked the kind of everyday social life involving a group that would regularly meet in someone’s basement, and was mostly wrapped up in schoolwork, practicing musical instruments, and personal hobbies as opposed to the singular goals of these characters towards beer, sex, and generally engaging in reckless shenanigans. It’s not like I had much reason to relate to these people. And yet I did strongly relate to something there, which was the completely palpable youthful optimism and carefreeness exhibited by them (and conveyed well by the actors). I know that I had that at one time, including during high school itself. For the most part I didn’t actually get to enjoy the experiences they had (and I had far more motivation for school and none for alcohol and shenanigans). But I got to enjoy the feeling that a more youthful, carefree actuality was on its way, and in fact I believe this is a big part of what kept me from ever becoming truly depressed. Back then, I just knew that it was all still ahead of me. Nowadays, although the more rational part of my mind knows that there are still some reasons to be optimistic about certain things improving, I just don’t have that same emotional resource to draw from, and I really wish I could get it back.

[emeraldspiral]

Initial thoughts coming out of Jurassic World II

It definitely belongs squarely in the 50/60% rating category.

I read a couple of review snippets on Wikipedia citing cartoonish villains and big philosophical questions that are asked and then just not discussed at all and boy howdy are they spot on. It’s literally like this old xkcd strip about String Theory.

I actually threw my hands up at one point where they apparently couldn’t come up with any other way to get the Indo Raptor out of the cage so they just had a guy open it for something as petty as a trophy necklace. The prize for second worst moment in the film probably goes to MCU-douchebag-in-a-suit villain revealing that the little girl is a clone out of nowhere. Like, why would Owen and Claire care? They worked at a dinosaur theme park. Why would they think the little girl is like, an abomination? It’s not like she was spliced with raptor DNA.

There’s a bunch of other little things that don’t make sense throughout the film as well. Like, they kidnap that one girl to treat Blue because they really want her to live. But then Owen and Claire have to sneak around to get the T-rex’s blood for a transfusion. Like, why didn’t she just tell the guys who were holding her what she needed?

Then the villains openly acknowledge that they have no reason to keep Owen and Claire alive in a cell. No excuse about them having some kind of possible future use or needing to make sure the bodies aren’t found or anything. They don’t even do the Bond-villain cliche and leave them locked up with the T-rex or something. They just point out that as far as anybody knows they got blown up on the island, then just walk away.

Aside from that, the movie’s pretty underwhelming overall. Nothing happens that tops the pterosaur break-out or the raptor/T-rex/Mosasaurus vs I-rex fight. There was a lot of hype about the last hour of the movie being “like a horror movie” but it’s really just the climax of the first film again. There’s a little girl struggling with a sliding door and pulling it down just in time for the raptor to bash its head. There's a raptor operating a door latch. There’s someone banging on something to draw the raptor’s attention away from someone else. There’s getting chased up the stairs, through an exhibit, falling onto skeletons and another dinosaur coming in at the last moment to save the day. I mean, TFA may have re-used the Death Star trench-run, but that was just a background event. It’s not like they did the entire trench run, and only the trench run, just with different actors and a slightly different set as their big finish. The main focus of the climax was on new, exciting, and engaging stuff like Han and Kylo’s confrontation and Rey and Kylo’s duel in the snow.

The characters were also really flat. Nobody had an arc. Claire starts off caring about the dinosaurs and actually regresses by the end when she relents on setting them loose to save them, only for the little girl to do it anyway. Chris Pratt doesn’t want to help for his first five minutes of screen time and then the rest of the movie he’s ride or die with the rest of them. It’s so transparently just a thing that they put in the script because it’s a cliche they felt they had to follow. It doesn’t even make sense. Chris Pratt should’ve pulled a Flash and said “I’m in” before Claire could even finish. If anything, it should’ve been him who had to convince Claire to come. They made it seem like there was going to be more of Christ Pratt and Blue, but Blue was barely in the film. She gets incapacitated at the beginning and stays down until the climax. There’s no progression with her either. 1st film asked the question of whether she and the other raptors could be loyal to humans and the proved that to be true. 2nd movie acts like that was a thing they knew all along since she was a baby. You’d think that maybe after she got darted there’d be a thing like her maybe feeling betrayed by Owen and not helping him at first. Or when they brought up the new raptor needing Blue to be its mommy that would turn into a thing. But like every other interesting idea that gets brought up, the movie proceeds to just do nothing with it at all.

I also couldn’t help wondering about the logistics of the dino auction. Were all those holding pens and train tracks there before, or did the douche in the suit build those somehow behind the old guy’s back?

There’s also the implication that shit’s about to get real as they’ve “unleashed” dinosaurs into the wild now but like... Yeah, they did show us some evil old dudes and geneticists out there ready to clone more. But of the dinos on the loose now, there’s only 11 species, at least two of which have only one member (Blue and the T-rex). If they could be captured and removed from the island, surely they could assemble a dinosaur animal-control team to round up the escapees and put them in a sanctuary.

The best stuff was all in the 1st third of the movie. The opening scene was way more like a horror movie than the climax as were the scene with Claire and the scaredy-cat guy escaping a room with a dinosaur and raining lava and the escape from the flooding gyroscope. I feel like this movie should’ve been two movies. One that was just focused on the island stuff with a downer ending where Claire and Owen realized everything they did was just to help some rich dudes exploit dinosaurs, then the next film would pick up where that left off with the dino auction in the 1st act then the dinosaurs escaping their clueless irresponsible owners and running wild in the city.

But maybe instead the story will finally go full-blown batshit crazy and give us human-dino hybrids.

[sixthousandninehundredmiles]

September 16, 2017 AH so today is essentially my last day in Singapore cause I’ll be at the airport at 3am the next day. And wow it was amazing. Throughout the entire day though, I was just thinking about you and how amazing it would be if you were there. Travelling with people who aren’t that close to your heart is just really different. But nonetheless, its an experience that I will be thinking about for quite some time. Singapore really captured my heart today, cause I actually got to explore more and see what it has to offer. The sights from practically anywhere is beautiful, and the whole city is just so well run. Our day started off with a tour of Chinatown! It was a 2.5 hour tour starting at 9:30, and it was really cool. I felt like I learned a lot about the history, and our tour guide was amazing! She spoke fluent English, and always stopped to give witty and funny comments. She also went extremely in depth when describing each event that had happened. However, the one Canadian girl, shes white, thought the tour was boring l o l. typical. I was kinda annoyed because shes just kind of culturally insensitive, so this tour was just not a good overall choice I guess for her. Oh yeah, jonghong also didn’t come on the tour with us because he was too tired, so we ended up meeting him after the tour was over at Maxwell Food Center again for lunch! I got the Hainanese chicken rice again hehe, and omg the line was so long this time. It wrapped around the building… yeah but it was worth it as expected! I also got myself a mango juice, and that was really good!! I think mangos are a huge thing here.. everywhere I go their specialties will always include mangos haha. After lunch, we decided to go to Gardens by the bay. Gardens by the bay has two main components, the cloud forest and the flower garden. Both were incredible. My favorite one was probably the cloud forest, because it was really green and misty and basically you would take an elevator up and then walk in a spiral back down. That waterfall picture is at the cloud forest! It was just overall really pretty to be in. everything felt really surreal. I was kind of annoyed, because celine always asked me to take pictures, and I don’t mind casue I know how it feels to want cute pictures? But omg I would always take the best pictures for her, and then her pictures for me would be crooked, blurry, and etc. and im just literally like girl. If you take another shitty picture, I will do the same.. like bruhhhh UGH it was just really annoying for me. LOL I need my expert photographer boyfriend basically. It was also kind of frustrating because everyone just had such low energy, so everyone was just super tired, and Idk maybe I just had too much energy? I just wanted to have conversations and talk and laugh WHILE exploring Singapore, but it was more like just walking from place to place in silence. The flower garden was also beautiful, it was much more colorful and its where I took the cinderella picture! Im still waiting on my carriage!! But yeah it was also quite cool, ike they had mini gardens with themes for each one. Like there was a small patch of different kinds of aloe, so they called it “aloe in wonderland” and decorated with characters from the story. That was quite cool. Afterwards, we headed off to Sentosa Bay, because celine wanted a picture of the merlion, it’s the giant lion statue that has the body of a mermaid. According to the stories, the merlion is supposed to protect Singapore from floods and typhoons. Its really big, like we took the picture from a block away so that we could get the whole thing in LOL it was really annoying tho because celine was like super adamant about finding this statue, and when we got here she was like omg this isn’t the one. Turns out the one that she actually wanted a picture with was the one back in Marina Bay…. Like omg did you not do your research???? Confused af. But we still took a good amount of pictures, and then we went to walk around the mini park the lion was in. we stopped by hard rock café for a snack because we were all hungry and I was still craving some good fries. LOL everyone got nachos which looked good but I just wasn’t feeling it so I got some garlic fries. Meh…. Ive had much better but I guess I just have to make do. After going to hard rock, jonghong wanted to show us this one beach that’s manmade I honestly forgot the name..im gonna have to look it up lol but it was pretty ugly. I think its funny cause everything is manmade, even the beaches. Like normal beaches are sloping ya know, so like if you walk out in the sand you’ll be slowly getting deeper, for this beach, it slopes for like 2 feet then drops straight down LOOOL so like if you ever go walking in the beach, if you take like an extra step youd just fall all the way in. LMAO smh smh we also saw a peacock getting chased by a little girl…. Smh Asians control your kids. And celine was annoying me again cause she just refused to go anywhere and sat on the ground, so all of us were like ok lets go back. So we decided to head back to the hostel. At this point it was probably around 6:30-7? So we got back to our hostel around 7:30, and we decided to meet up again at 9 to go out. We were supposed to shower but we were all so tired we just laid down and talked. Thank god celine was in a different room and it was just the three of us or I might have just been so done with her. Shes so high maintenance ugh. We met up again at 9, and decided to go try the really famous satay place in Singapore, its at the Telok Ayer Center, and its outside in stalls 7-8. Its actually quite cool, its like an outdoor satay restaurant, but if you look around theres like these TOWERING skyscrapers. I just thought it was cool to have someone as low scale as outdoor bbq, and then have these massive modern skyscrapers surrounding us. The satay was AMAZING. I don’t think ive ever had such good grilled prawns. That was probably one of my favorite things ive had. It was sooo good, and it was like 41 for 4 people, so I mean 10 per person is pretty worth!! I just loved it. I wanted to order more shrimp but I don’t think they enjoyed it as much as me. They liked the beef/lamb skewers more LOL Then after that we walked along Marina Bay, where we saw more amazing night views. I think I might have to post two different posts with more pictures because I cant show you everything… I think Singapore just looks so beautiful at night. Everything is lit up. We also found the actual merlion statue that celine was looking for, the one that shoots water and we took some photos there too. Whats really annoying is that there was a grand prix car race this weekend, so most of the walkways were closed so we had to take a lot of roundabouts and trying to get a taxi was also a bitch too l o l After the pictures, we headed to Clarke quay, at this point it was like 11pm at night? And we just found a nice bar to sit down in and drink a bit before going clubbing. I really wanted a gin lemon, which was a drink that my friend ordered for me? It might have been called something else, cause hes Spanish so what he told me could’ve been wrong. But the drink I got this time def was not it andit tasted like shit lol so didn’t drink it. And then we went to the club, and while we were walking across the bridge, this one drunk white guy pushes past Vivian and walks towards me and says “wait, hold up” and im like …? And then he tries to reach for my waist so I just back away and I kind of froze up when he came up again. Thankfully Jonghong was there, and kinda shielded me while I darted around him. Bleh drunk people. Entrance to the club is typically 30, but our waiter was nice and just told us to order a drink and they’ll let us in. so our drinks were like 22 dollars? So a little bit cheaper. I got something called the Queen of Hearts, and it was raspberry flavored? And it was actually pretty good. Lmao im so lame, I drank like half of it, and then my cheeks instantly flushed my head began pounding. But we went dancing for a bit, and it was really nicee!! The music was bomb and we were all in a good mood to dance. Everyone was pretty nice overall, no bs guys, and they had a lot of rave lights LOL we danced until 2:30 before jonghong started to feel sick again so we had to go back. We got home around 3, and we decided to lay down for 30 min before leaving for the airport. And that basically summed up my last day in Singapore!! oof what a long post. ^___^

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Buffalo Bills: Things we know this week

I am writing this ogling over a spectacular view out of our hotel window over Herbert Park in Dublin, Ireland. Giddy I am because I have wanted to visit here my entire adult life, in addition to not having any conversations with “Negative Stanley” in several weeks. Those two milestones would be plenty on an ordinary day. This is no ordinary day.

This would complete my “win, win, win” due to the delicious cold pint of Guinness slightly off to the right of my laptop being the third win to complete the trifecta. Realistically a trifecta is not needed here. The three wins could come in any order and I would still be quite content. Quite content indeed mate.

I could go on for hours about the castles we visited, the mountain region we explored,  Temple Bar, Trinity College, The Guinness Tour, the pubs, Dart Train to fishing towns, hop on hop off bus, the tour bus, pint after pint, bangers and mash, corn beef and cabbage, Guinness stew, but I shall focus on the Bills. Did I mention pint after pint?

It was something special seeing Enya’s castle, Bono’s mansion, Sinead O’Connor’s dream house and the residence of one Mr. “THE EDGE”. Our tour guide informed us that Bono is still exploring the globe, not being home often, because he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. I digress with my news boy cap on my dome.

We saw where parts of movies such as Brave heart, Leap Year and P.S I Love You were filmed. Amazing wilderness surrounding Dublin. I now see why Hollywood sets were not the main source of filming for these motion pictures.

BILLS NEWS: Buffalo should pursue free agent center Mangold

It is refreshing that I wear a blue Buffalo Bills’ T-shirt in Dublin with the quotes, ”I survived, Wide Right, Four In A Row, Toronto, Home Run throwback, 17 year playoff drought”, and not one person in Dublin says anything or gets the meaning behind the listed events. I knew American football was not what filled the huge stadiums in Ireland like U2, Gaelic Football, soccer or Rugby, but I guess I overestimated that the more intense sports fan here would get the humor behind the NFL themed shirt.

That could not have been any further from truth. Being from New York to them was being from the City and no other. The teams named Sabres and Bills were not even on most of their vocabulary radar joining the Queen City’s name itself. Buffalo, where the heck is that bloody Buffalo place?

Famous duet couples date back as far as recorded entertainment transpired and as recent as future press conferences held by the Buffalo Bills. They have made their general manager hire in the form of Brandon Beane, reuniting him with Bills head coach Sean McDermott.

As much as McDermott and Pegula preached that the organization was going to be a one voice business where everything comes through McDermott to keep professionalism and consistency to an all time high. Well that was when they had Doug Whaley chained up in his new office downstairs at Initech Corporation with his red stapler.

It appears the new and desired one voice approach will become a duet with both the general manager and head coach being voices of the franchise down at One Bills Drive. Whaley is gone and the all important one voice is no more? The irony.

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Things We Know About The Buffalo Bills This Week

Malik Boyd was Bean’s first choice unconditionally and once Arizona cleared the Bills to talk to him, we quickly found him named as the Director of Pro Personnel as Bean started assembling his staff. This is regarded as a very good hire around the league.

Marvin Allen and Brian Adams have signed up for national scout honors, totaling around 54 years of experience. Adams not to BE mistaken for the Canadian rock star, the Bills do not employee the Canadian rocks star Adams as they also do not have any controlling rights over Celine Dion, Corey Hart, Loverboy, Triumph or Kim Mitchell. This was all started because the Bills have a new scout named Brian Adams which I believe spells his name differently.  Guinness, Jameson and Sheppard’s pie does not help me stay focused on one topic in case you have not noticed. That would not be my strong area to begin with. I will need an Irish coffee to stay on point. Who am I kidding? Punt.

The Bills have been very aggressive in assembling an experienced, well prepared all start staff (on paper) as I prepared for this trip and continued as I actually wear my LL Bean rain coat that can fold up into its own pocket for easy storage and roam around in my Chuck Taylor Converse All Star Hiking boots which are nothing short of simply spectacular.

Bean hired Houston Texans Director of Player Personnel, Brian Gaine, as their Vice President of Player Personnel. This comes one business day after the solid hire of Dolphins Director of Player Personnel Joe Schoen, as assistant general manager. Gaine and Schoen worked together in Miami, before Gaine headed to Houston.

It seems to me while writing this article from across the pond, and not as a beat reporter, that very qualified candidates were interviewed for the GM job and those who did not land that position were placed in other vital roles happily joining this entire restructuring Buffalo Bills identity.

The Bills certainly were not done quite yet. They hired Lake Dawson as the team’s Assistant Director of College Scouting. Once again this is a professional who has interviewed for several GM positions. Bean appears to be hiring executives who aspire to be GM’s which mean they will be hungry to prove themselves and not complacent like the old school boys at One Bills Drive.

He seems to pride himself on having a career path for each hire which it how successful corporations groom its bench strength, as opposed to the old way of promoting the only one next in line as opposed to the deserving person. Promote based on performance. What have you done for me lately applies in business. Just ask anyone who watched Dave Wannstedt coach defense in Buffalo years after his successful days.

Dawson spent last season with the Cleveland Browns as a National Scout, but spent nine years with the Tennessee Titans beforehand in their front office. With the Titans, Dawson moved up through the ranks, going from Director of Pro Personnel to Vice President of Football Operations to Vice President of Player Personnel. Not too shabby.

This is all great building the staff as a business would searching out qualified character hires who are at the point in their careers to prove themselves and not strictly collect a paycheck. It really will only be significant if the Bills play postseason football and improve as an overall organization as they have been somewhat of a joke for almost two decades. Win and this all continues to look brilliant. Continue losing and we will be cleaning house in a couple of years again with a totally different approach quite possibly.

From Dublin with Love and Irish Blessings for our Buffalo Bills.

Cheers.

READ MORE: All eyes firmly on Bills star receiver Watkins

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