#my stories are fairly predictable i consider it to be a merit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fipindustries · 7 months ago

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getting back to this because i had another conversation on the topic with some friends and i was able to clarify my own inner thoughts on the matter a bit better.

i am undoubtedly playing a definitions games here, yes. im playing the game where magic evokes thoughts of wonderful supernatural powers and fireballs and lightning and such but using it to describe current mundane studies of history of myths and superstitions, theology, symbolism, and the practisce of rituals that at best have a purely placebo or psychological effect on the person that does them and not much else. imbuing the second cluster of ideas with the awe and wonder of the first cluster of ideas when that awe and wonder should be saved for things that merit it, like actually shooting lightning out of your hands or whatever.

but why am i doing this, why am i willing to use the word "magic" in this way? well.

when i was a kid i had a childish idea of what "science" was. i grew up watching dexter's lab and jimmy neutron and other sci fi stories that left me with a very skewed view of science. and even after i grew up i had a very "fuck yeah science" attitude towards it, where i glorified in my head this glamorous view of science and physics in particular as this magical discipline that dabbled in faster than light travel, creating worm holes, developing teleportation through quantum entaglement, time machines, building cool laser guns capable of destroying the moon and making anti gravity devices.

eventually i came to learn that first of all, as far as we know, many of those things are basically impossible, and furthermore that a lot of physics work is fairly unglamorous work of mainly taking precise measurements of small lasers, collecting data and parsing giant spreadsheets of numbers, etc.

same happened with a lot of other disciplines where i thought they would work like this

but in reality they were more like this

and this was fine, i came to appreciate these things for what they were. i grew up and matured and can see the beauty and the virtue of the current study of the universe and the development of models to descrive and predict its behavior through the application of mathematical tools and the scientific method of developing hypothesis and empirically testing them. and there is a lot of wonder and amazement to find in the amazing tools that technology has given us.

a part of that is growing up and accepting that this is the universe in which we live and these are the physics that we are going to get out of it and so we should appreciate it for what it is. it would be silly, and even childish of me to say this is not "real physics" just because is not the idea i had of it that i got from cartoons and sci fi stories.

likewise, the study of the esoteric is an actual discipline that actual scholars have studied in actual academic settings and just because i have an idea of what magic is, that i got from reading harry potter, i think it would be silly of me to say that what they study is not "actual magic". just as silly as the people who claim that current LLMs are not "actual Artifical Intelligence" because they are not "intelligent" because something something spark of creativity something something stochastic parrot, something something fancy autocomplete. there is a discipline dedicated to the study of "artificial intelligence" and within that discipline LLMs are considered "artificial intelligence". likewise with magic in my opinion.

i am still a materialist, i dont believe in the supernatural, i dont believe in spirits, im not a spiritual person by any stretch of the imagination, at the end of the day cold hard rationality and empiricism are the only way to attain any fundamental truth about the universe.

but if the study of ancient rites and religions and esoteric alchemical beliefs (with a hefty side of poetic florid language, metaphors, word play and some almost concerning ammounts of self delusion and magical thinking) is the only kind of magic there is in this universe then i dont have a problem in using the M word to descrive it.

words of magic

someone close to me has been talking to me about magic and trying to get me into that whole thing and because i love them and have a lot of respect for them i have kept an open mind and genuenly considered their arguments.

afterwards i had a discussion with another friend about the nature of magic and we realized we had to define what we even thought magic was and the deffinition they arrived at was essentially "magic is when something impossible happens or is done, something that cannot be explained by science"

and something bothered me about that deffinition because it feels a bit tautological, or circular, magic is what cannot exist. sure its convenient to make magic impossible by deffinition. it feels unsatisfying, philosophically speaking, to make "magic" and "impossible" mean the same thing.

my personal thoughts about magic lie on the sufficiently advanced science side of things, on those posts about how "welding rare metals into the shape of arcane runes can make rocks think" style of posts. in all of fiction magic is always shown as something that can be studied and manipulated and understood, even if at the core of it lie ineffable mysteries, well, so is the case with modern science.

any magic that were to exist irl would eventually be subsumed by the scientific method in turn. if we cant call the things we do in advanced physics, elctronics and engineering magic then we cant call most of the magic systems we thought of in fiction magic either, honestly.

am i saying that magic and science are the same? not really, im just charting how confused my thoughts are regarding the deffinition of magic and what does the word really means, what the concept is trying to encapsulate.

i know there are magic practitioners irl, people who claim to do rituals and spells and usually what happens is that when they try to explain what is it that they do (which tends to be a mix of psychology, hypnotism, emotional priming, narrative engineering, and projecting meaning over chance) and people who dont study magic find the answer dissapointing, dismissing it by saying that that "is not really magic, magic is when you throw fireballs out of your hands, etc". im not sure who gets to claim what the word means.

maybe what it really means is "the feeling of wonder over something that feels unexplainable by mundane causal means, when things seemingly happen by no clear underlying mechanism". perhaps that is the more honest deffinition but i also find it unsatisfying because it makes it subjective. it makes it tied to our own inner state of ignorance rather than to the nature of the world.

but then so is the word luck and the word probability. in the real world, outside of human perception and our limited understanding of what is to come, things happen deterministically as they were always going to happen. things that we percieve as "probable" dont exist in a fuzzy undertermined state until they coalesce into what is, when something happened a certain way that is the way it was always going to happen. luck and probablity are also fake things that "exist" only as a phenomena of our ignorance, and yet we are more than comfortable to use them all the time.

words are harlequins indeed

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lantsovsupremacist · 3 years ago

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I was wondering if you could do a Nikolai fic w a Tidemaker reader who works for him on the Volkvony ?

whenever i read nikolai stuff, i imagine his girl to be a tide maker. so, of course it’s my honor to make this happen 🙏🙏 also i got carried away and there will most certainly be a part 2 🤪🤪

mijn dochter: my daughter (i went with dutch because that’s what kerch is supposedly influenced by)!

nikolai lantsov: mirror ball

it all began out of desperation, as most things in your life often did.

born into a family of ten living on the farmlands of kerch, there were always too many mouths to feed. despite the nature of your family’s occupation, whatever could be harvested or slain for food often ended up sent to the markets to try and keep up with the land payments. it was this necessity to help your family (an expectation of yourself as the middle child as much as your younger siblings) that kept you from attending school the day testing occurred. considered the bottom of the lowest class, nobody deemed you important enough to reschedule a test or even find you a spot for the next year’s round.

you believed the position of the testers. it was not because you felt particularly unimportant, just that there was no history of grisha in your family or few you had ever come into contact with. in fact, watching the older kids get tested was your only example of grisha power. a lack of suitable education did not help your case. so, you disregarded the event or lack thereof quickly after it passed.

however, when you pulled the tide in to help the withering crops survive one summer—out of sheer desperation—you could no longer ignore the possibility. the land only needed to close in to the sound by a few feet in order for the water to saturate the fields properly. it could have been a trick of a weary mind. you might not have even realized what had happened if not for your father’s startled gasp.

he muttered a single word, grisha. anything else was unintelligible under his breath—likely a slew of curses. he had even less of an education than you and your siblings. for months, you pleaded for your parents to pretend as if nothing had changed. your oldest brother knew the word for it: tidemaker. one of his best friend’s at school, their older sister had been one. but, she had been taken away. you could not imagine leaving your fields and the sun that hung above them.

you did not want to be a danger to your family, what with the way in which discovered grisha were treated in kerch’s cities. you could only hide for so long. in addition to this worry, you believed by using this resource, you could find better pay to send home. it was not the second army you desired to join but perhaps, some freelance work.

the volkvony was much larger than the scattered fishing boats dotting the coast. even those you saw rarely, the docks being miles outside your town. the pirateer’s vessel and those occupying it radiated power. the reminder of your own ability did little to ease your anxiety.

you mother’s final parting words rang in your head, and you held onto the echo for as long as you could.

“you are a fierce force to be reckoned with, mijn dochter.”

right now with your knees knocking and shoulders shaking, you hardly felt it. your mother often remarked you showed courage in different ways. you might have paled at standing up to the bully that had broken your sister’s arm as a child and allowed your eldest brother to physically retaliate, but your calm nature quieted her cries as you held her gently, waiting for help. you knew that even when he did not verbally express it, your father still appreciated how you took it upon yourself to care for the little ones, handle the crises at home. you made life work for everybody.

your littlest brother, espen, would think you were strong despite the obvious nerves riddling your form. before you left, he hugged you goodbye with all of the strength his two-year-old body could muster, imbuing you with it. his childlike magic satiated any apprehension that came your way on the voyage to the boat’s docking in ketterdam—a city’s whose reputation limited your visits to three occasions in eighteen years. and when it faded, because it always did, you held tight to baby noa’s fairly like giggles, each one of her accompanied smiles locked carefully away in your heart.

even with living a life largely locked on land, the water brought a unique sense of calm to your restless spirit. to any onlooker, your closed eyes and deep breaths by the banks could be attributed to the anticipation of adventure. however, anyone who truly knew your heart would understand the greater impact of the tides. they might even notice the slight curl of your lip or scrunch of your nose, the actions of concentration supporting the delicate ripples of waves on the edge of the sound.

a voice from behind you nearly caused you to jump right off of the dock. one might think that growing up in a household of ten, you would be painfully aware of your surroundings. that could not be father from the case. you did not intend to walk through life stuck in your own head, but it was a habit.

“we’re boarding now,” the same person spoke again, “you’re our new tidemaker, right?”

“that’s right,” you annunciated softly with a nod of your head.

now having stepped forward, you identified the figure to be a girl a few years your elder. with short cropped hair and a glint in her eyes, she intimidated you. however, her tone was kind and seemed welcoming.

“i’m tamar and that,” she extended a hand to point, “is my brother toyla. heartrenders.”

you nodded again, rolling your lips into your mouth. following behind her, you strung your bag over your shoulder and avoided the more worn planks on the dock. the wood was speckled with age.

“how long have you been in the harbor?” you questioned, genuine curiosity in your words.

“only a few days,” she replied without turning her head, opting to keep her gaze ahead as she weaved through the crowd, “ketterdam intrigues sturmhond, but he never keeps us here for too long.”

recognizing the captain’s name who had graciously offered you a position onboard the volkvolny only two days prior, you continued after tamar. you remembered his crooked jaw and nose that had obviously been broken before. however, the ease of his smile and light in his eyes gave you the push to accept. he had approached you in the spot which you had stood only this morning and caught you in a similar position. he had been uniquely attentive.

the way he revealed that he had caught onto your ability with the ripples in the shallow water still caught you by surprise and perhaps, amusement. he had asked you to help him skip a rock. you smiled at the memory now, a small but authentic one only for yourself.

“are all of the hands grisha?” you asked another question, careful to lower your voice.

home to various brothels, pleasure houses, and gambling dens, as well as gangs, ketterdam could trap grisha in servitude if they were not vigilant. this and the general boisterous nature of the city were largely your reasons for avoiding it. you preferred the tranquility and predictability of the countryside, where all that stood out among the plains were the occasional rolling hill and far away slopes of mountain.

your older brother coen studied in the most acceptable part of the city on a scholarship, the only one of your siblings (including yourself) that showed enough intellectual promise to merit pursuing an education over farm work. the only other member of your family to dare encounter the barrel was lotte. given she was now estranged and likely involved in gang work, her possible presence did little to soothe you.

“oh, no,” tamar answered, “in fact, most aren’t. we try and keep it quiet.”

humming in response, you used the handrail to board the ship. you took a deep breath to quell any remaining anxiety. once your feet touched the hull, there would be no room for fear or at least, any expression of it. you were used to keeping to yourself, your head down and hands working.

the salt air filled your lungs easily, and you were greedy for more. it left a pleasant enough taste in your mouth. you realized you were content here and wondered if you might even find happiness on the ship.

after showing you to the quarters you would share with two other girls, you straightened your cot and placed your bag underneath it. you made quick work of braiding your hair back, pacing the room as you did so. there was work to be done, and you would be sure to see to it.

grounding yourself to steady the spinning of the room, you faced your things one more time and headed out to the deck above. for once, you were surrounded by people like you. while this did not quite give you confidence, there was a semblance of reassurance flickering in your heart.

you no longer needed to be perfect for everyone else. though your family was still largely your responsibility as they would receive a portion of your wages, you no longer had to pace your interactions with each member. if you wanted to, you could be as loud and lively as the rest of the crew surely was. scrunching your nose at the thought, you stepped by an empty crate and up the stairs. you liked being quiet. it gave you the headspace to observe others.

a long life of making the lives of your younger siblings and parents easier gave you little time to think for yourself or about yourself. maybe this adventure was all a farce to finally please yourself, to learn to believe in yourself, but you had forced it to be about the others. always placing the focus away. that was an easier story to believe rather than accepting that maybe, you were doing something for yourself and maybe, that was okay.

perhaps it should have made you nervous, but you were a shy version of excited at the idea of testing out each variant of yourself to see which one you believed in most. you had shown everyone else what they wanted or needed to see for many years. you needed to live for yourself now.

you had a right to the sea and you were determined to take advantage of it.

#nikolai lantsov imagine #sab netflix #sab fic #six of crows #shadow and bone fic #nikolai lantsov fluff #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai x reader #nikolai lantsov #rule of wolves #tidemaker #the grisha series #grishaverse #grisha netflix #tamar yul bataar #toyla and tamar #ketterdam #nikolai lanstov imagines

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dooptown · 5 years ago

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beastars spoilers

Meron’s entire character is one big cry for help

he himself does not realize he’s doing it, and in fact he makes fun of the notion in chapter 140. Or, perhaps on some level he does realize this, and he’s actually mocking himself. Self-hatred wouldn’t be a far fetched conclusion, considering he grew up in a society where he could literally relate to nobody. And on top of that, no feelings of desires or taste. Pain is the only meaningful feedback he can get, as well as toying and killing people. He attributes this to the weird mixed instincts of having both herbivore and carnivore blood, which could be partially true, but i still think it’s more of a Nurture issue rather than Nature. He grew up in an environment and a body that made it impossible for him to learn empathy, so it makes sense that the only meaningful connections he can make with people involve pain and death, since those are the only feelings that hold any merit for him

anyway, this is what spurred me into thinking that he’s crying for help, subconsciously

first we see him lash out at a random bird for saying the word “tasty”. the “...please...” at the end is very telling, and very obviously put there to hint at his deeper nature (this one is a bit obvious)

next are these two. Now this is where Meron was openly mocking the conclusion Legosi had come to: that Meron is a lonely, hurt, and lost animal looking for what everyone else around him has. But Paru isn’t an untalented artist, and I find it hard to believe that she drew these expressions accidentally showing just a hint of sincerity. A part of him is breaking loose here. It explains his interest in Legosi, and perhaps is the reason he thinks of him as a “comedian” (something he’s brought up twice now, so it must have narrative importance, i think). Legosi could very well be the first animal that’s ever made an effort to understand him, but Meron can only think of that as some sort of joke

Here, this line shows Meron’s jealousy of someone who can actually fit into society, and the absolute inanity that someone like that could ever understand him, which further pushes him away from any progress on that front

I saw some comments on Mangadex (which, i know, it’s a cesspool and i shouldn’t give them merit) saying how Legosi’s conclusion that, yes Meron is evil and should not be given any more chances, is absolutely correct. And yes, it is correct, since he’s only gotten himself hurt and almost killed in trying to understand him. For his own safety, he needs to stop trying to interact with him in a way he does not understand. But the conclusion that this means that Meron is completely and senselessly evil with nothing else going on inside his head is incorrect. Like i said, even though he doesn’t realize it, Meron is crying for help. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be dealt with as the threat he is, just that i believe Paru is going somewhere with his character that’s deeper than “he’s irredeemably evil, end of story”. Do i think he’s going to be redeemed? Not really, but with Beastars one can never predict what will happen. Regardless, i do believe that we’re going to see him having some sort of realization to what he’s really seeking

anyway, that’s my current reading of the character. Could i be wrong? absolutely, but with what evidence we’ve been given i’m fairly certain that most of what i’ve written is correct

#meron discussion #this is a lot longer than i thought it'd be #i didn't articulate this the best i could and there's more nuance to his character that i didn't touch upon

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valianse · 5 years ago

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under co.

rules.

› an indie canon divergent wolf faunus j/aune a/rc from m/onty o/um’s r/wby. › sporadic activity, i’m trying to keep it relatively chill here. › mutuals are prioritised, but i’m open to other interactions regardless. › standard roleplay rules apply, don’t be a dick and we’re gucci. › personal blogs will be soft blocked. › n/sfw has the chance of appearing here in the form of gore, violence, trauma, etc. please follow at your own discretion. › i go by nine, of age, non binary cryptid running on australian eastern daylight time.

dossier.

name: jaune deor arc. age: 18 ( vale arc ), 19 ( mistral arc ), & 20 ( atlas arc. ) birth date: april 19 ( ☀ aries / ☾ libra / ⬆ gemini. ) race: human, wolf faunus, valean & french equivalent. occupation: former first year student of beacon academy, licensed huntsman. identity: cis male, he / him pronouns, demi bi. allusions: jeanne d’arc / link from the l/egend of z/elda / excalibur. faceclaim: lucky blue smith.

weapon: crocea mors, a sword and a sheath that can expand into a shield. it has been passed down from jaune’s great - great grandfather. team: jnpr ( n/ora v/alkyrie / p/yrrha n/ikos / l/ie r/en ), rnjr ( + r/uby r/ose ) abilities: weapon wielding, increased endurance, increased strength, plus a strategic and adaptable fighting style. semblance: aura amplification. allows jaune to amplify his own aura, or that of anothers. ( canon divergent ! ) jaune’s semblance was activated in bandit encounters by near fatal wounds sustained by ren, and in another incident by nora. jaune was too distressed to note that their wounds had closed by the time they had reached safety. his semblance was only acknowledged by weiss’ wound in volume five. in volume six jaune is shown to be able to amplify the effects of someone else’s semblance, noted by extending ren’s cloaking semblance to protect an entire train. fighting style: swordsmanship. attributes include increased strength, durability, critical thinking, and leadership skills. weaknesses include movements that can be slow and predictable, hot - headedness, and an inability to keep his emotions in check which he is slowly overcoming.

illnesses: separation anxiety, insomnia, ptsd, & depression. phobias: claustrophobia, and mild pyrophobia. talents & hobbies: electronics, engineering, comic books, guitar, songwriting, roller blading, skateboarding, and dancing. inabilities: somewhat clumsy.

parents: dion arc & elodie romée ✝ siblings: seven older sisters ( including s/aphron c/otta - arc ) plus a surplus of brother and sister - in - laws ( including t/erra c/otta - arc. ) extended family: unnamed maternal and and paternal grandparents ✝ significant others: no one by default, otherwise / b/lake b/elladonna / l/ie r/en. closest friends: npr, r/wby, & sn. rivals: c/ardin w/inchester. enemies: c/inder f/all, salem & associates.

eye colour: sky blue. skin colour: fair, freckled, neutral complexion. hair colour: platinum blonde. hair style: short and choppy, recently cut, though growing longer with my portrayal. height: 158cm / 6′1″ weight: 82kg / 180lbs. body build: stocky, toned. speech: uneven tone, raspy, pitched, & fast paced. notable physical traits: jaune has: — dimples. — perfect canine teeth. all of his middle school pictures have braces. — pierced ears in the lobes, the only remnants of a teen rebellion stage on his body.

headcanon tag !

positive traits: adaptable, allocentric, clever, decisive, dutiful, earnest, generous, helpful, heroic, kind, leaderly, loyal, non - authoritarian, passionate, perceptive, playful, resourceful, self - critical, sociable, witty, & youthful. neutral traits: aggressive, ambitious, determined, emotional, frugal, impressionable, physical, questioning, sarcastic, self - conscious, skeptical, soft, solemn, stubborn, & subjective. negative traits: angry, anxious, cynical, dependant, discontented, easily discouraged, envious, fearful, foolish, imitative, insecure, moody, morbid, naive, opportunistic, paranoid, presumptuous, regretful, repentant, scornful, selfish, & vulnerable.

alignment: chaotic good. jung: enfp. primary vice & virtue: envy & humility.

— jaune begins the story as an outgoing, goofy, and friendly person. he treats people equally, and has no trouble expressing himself to strangers. he bonds with them easily, showing a lot of confidence. when faced with new situations, his false confidence leads to bold behaviour, which can backfire on him from time to time. when jaune tries to hard, it can lead to misunderstandings. — a strong sense of integrity makes him willing to put himself in awkward situations, to uphold his family moto of not going back on one’s word. during conversations, jaune never contradicts himself, and while sometimes harsh is always honest with his answers. — jaune has shown to care for his friends and the people around him, being protective of them and having a sense of responsibility as a team leader. he focuses only on his teammate’s well - being physically, mentally, and emotionally, disregarding his own issues to ensure theirs. he steps forward when others threaten his friends, and he has proven himself unwilling to do something that may hurt those he cares about. — at first, jaune’s family lineage leads to an obsession with becoming a hero. however, his lack of formal training led to a lack of self - esteem and assigned a lot of importance on his image as a fighter. he valued his image so much that he was willing to act dishonestly to achieve it. the obsession makes him brash and headstrong in battle, jumping in without considering the risks and behaving predictably offensively. — however, following the fall of beacon, his personality is somewhat changed. after witnessing the attack on shion, he is somewhat cynical. he becomes angry with qrow for his involvement in pyrrha’s death, openly accusing him of using ruby as bait. this is a completely different reaction from a year earlier when he tried to justify cardin’s bullying. jaune appears to prefer to keep his grief to himself, as he has continued to train on his own as a way to cope with the death of pyrrha, listening to her recordings on his scroll. this indicates a deep - seated sense of regret and guilt at not being able to save her from cinder. — jaune’s good nature renders him almost incapable of comprehending the actions and personalities of people like cinder, unable to fathom how someone can be so cold and cruel. this expression of belief at the sheer sadism of others serves to show how idealistic and noble jaune remains despite his trials and losses, ultimately proving him to be a fundamentally humane and caring individual. — while jaune is a good person, he is not above losing his cool, as seen when he punches a hole in the wall of his sister’s house, and when he takes his anger out on oscar over ozpin keeping so many secrets, including how pyrrha died for nothing. it is only when he finds pyrrha’s memorial statue in argus that he finally came to terms with her death, understanding that she had to try to make a difference, becoming inspired, and following in her example.

jaune deor arc was born into a middle class family with an ancient lineage spanning from before the time of the great war, protectors and cavalry of the last king of vale. despite their family coming from generation of warrior after warrior, the arc children were actually discouraged from becoming huntresses and huntsmen for a reason their father and mother would not disclose ( but it does have something to do with their large pools of aura, a fact that none of them have caught onto yet as most have avoided combat - oriented lives. ) despite this, jaune dreamed of becoming a great hero, although continued living an ordinary life after failing out of combat school.

his family were farmers, a pack of mixed human and canine faunus, wherein jaune was the youngest of his seven sisters. he had a large family, all of them very protective of one another, but despite the love he was surrounded with jaune faced difficulties young for his faunus heritage, his own pride and unwillingness to appear weak in front of loved ones meant he would not disclose how he was tormented in school. this lead to the beginnings of hidden anger issues which would get him into fights in middle school. by the time he was in high school jaune had learned to adapt himself to his surroundings, making himself appear docile and friendly so as to gain approval.

he was fairly liked in high school, but despite having relatively successful grades and offers of scholarships from i.t. universities, he still dreamed of becoming a hero despite his father’s efforts to dissuade him. in the end, he faked his transcripts and managed to hack his way into beacon academy. there, his charming and amiable nature, on top of his desperation to be liked didn’t fly as well as it did in high school, and jaune was forced to face challenges that would test the merit of his honesty. while his fraudulent ways throughout high school earned him companions, it was only once he dropped his facades that he started to make genuine friends.

a link to jaune’s wiki !

verses & au.

vale timeline. a member and leader of team j/npr, jaune has faked his way into beacon academy and struggles to play catch up to the rest of his peers in terms of combat prowess.

mistral timeline. following the fall of beacon, jaune and his team accompany ruby to have academy where the perpetrators of pyrrha’s murder were said to reside. he comes to terms with what it means to be a genuine huntsman.

atlas timeline. jaune and his team accompany ruby’s to solitas to continue aiding them in the fight against salem. their bonds are tested as the strain between their party becomes present.

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freedom-of-fanfic · 6 years ago

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What's your suggestion on what to do about antis who harass/attack because they think your ship fandom "started it"? I'm in a fandom that's fairly small and ship the most popular ship in it; but most shippers are kind and polite. I'm sure there are bad eggs that I haven't seen, but the antis have been getting more and more aggressive while continously shouting how "toxic" my ship fandom is. Do you have any suggestions? Tbh i've never been in this kind of situation so i'm a bit lost :/

Ugh, that’s reallyunfortunate. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this.

I’m not sure which fandomthis is so I don’t know the situation exactly. On that note: it’s worth mentioning(as you do) that it’s possible you’re not getting the whole picture on fellowshippers. Some people are genuinely great and friendly with everyone they likewhile being absolutely horrible to people they either don’t like/look down on;you may not have insight on those spaces because you share a ship &/orearned their good treatment. And if evidencethat one of your fellow shippers was/is being a toxic ass to somebody elsecrops up, please take care to consider it seriously – even if it’s hard tobelieve.

Relatedly: I’ve seen more thanone tight-knit ship fandom become deeply hostile to internal disagreements,even over very trivial things, to the point of toxicity (subtweeting,blacklisting, etc). even without puritypolicing in the picture, transformative fandom spaces have always had [morethan?] their share of intracommunal weird/catty/toxic social behaviors, and thecurrent socmed climate/callout culture has only intensified the sense that ifyou disagree, you’re The Enemy. If there are ppl in your ship’s fandom whohave felt forced out or ostracized by some kind of internal tension among you,that could easily have led to a disgruntled shipper feeding their story to militantfandom policers, who then took it on themselves to call the rest of you out. (Iwouldn’t be able to know if this was likely to happen, much less if it would bewarranted.)

In short: if the people calling your ship fandom ‘toxic’have mentioned any specifics irt toxic behavior, I think you should considerthe merits of the accusation fairly, if you can. There might be a grain oftruth in them. But only you would know – and that depends on theanti-shippers giving specifics, which I know their posts are often thin on.

That disclaimer aside ….

I’m willing to bet that first and foremost,your ship’s crowd of antis think your ship fandom is ‘toxic’ because they findthe ship itself ‘toxic’ in some way.

The basic foundation on whichall anti-shipping arguments rest is ‘fiction affects reality [in a direct, easy-to-predictway]’. This simplistic take on the complicatedrelationship of influence between mainstream media & cultural values leadsmilitant fandom policers to believe and argue that if they can control the fictionalcontent audiences consume, they can control the thoughts and behavior of saidaudiences. Get rid of ‘bad’ fiction that glorifies ‘bad’ things, and theaudience will stop thinking ‘bad’ things are good, which means they will stopdoing ‘bad’ things and letting other people do ‘bad’ things. (who knew a socialutopia was so easy to achieve?)

OTOH, this means they believethe reverse is also true: creating, enjoying, promoting, and/or engaging with ‘bad’fiction that glorifies ‘bad’ things will cause the audience to think ‘bad’things are actually ‘good’, which means they’ll do ‘bad’ things in real life& encourage other people to do ‘bad’ things. This is why they believe badfiction must be snuffed out: it’s toxic to humanity. It’s metaphorically poisoningthe water supply, making the whole world sicker and less safe.*

In your case: if militant fandomanti-shippers have decided that your ship is ‘bad’/glorifies ‘bad’ things (i.e.they can call your ship ‘pedophilia’/��abuse’/’incest’ according to their wildlytwisted definitions of these words), then your ship’s fandom is a ‘toxic’community because you continue to enjoy it/engage with it/talk about it/createfanworks for it. Your ship’s fandom is –in their eyes – the agent of toxicity, through which your ship is poisoningtheir fandom space.

And you may be the nicest,kindest, most gentle group of shippers in the world, treating others withrespect and care, but none of that matters compared to your taste in fictionalships. In fact – no matter how kind/respectfulyou are to fellow fans – your group’s ship is so dangerous and toxic that it is the duty of militant fandom antis to continuously harass, attack,smear, and threaten you until you give up your bad ship and disappear. (It’snot only for the good of the fandom: it’s for your own good, too. Aren’t youlucky that militant fandom antis care so much about your wellbeing? Where wouldyou be without their tough love? /sarcasm)

Unfortunately: if I’m right, theonly action you could possibly take that would (maybe) please your harassers isto stop shipping your ship – and imo: that’s a last-resort solution.**

Here’s a post I’ve written upirt dealing with a fandom environment that’s hostile to your ship. I think it’svery specifically relevant to your situation:

9 suggestions for survivingfandom when antis hate your ships

Tl;dr: you can’t stop people from hating onyour ship fandom no matter what their reason for doing so; you can only lookafter your own space and do your best to ensure it remains as friendly, open-minded,and healthy as possible, and ignore the wankers trying to make your lifedifficult whenever you can.

Best of luck to you, anon.

(*there’s certainly some truth to the idea that fiction affects people & can be used to affect populations. however, the relationship of fiction & reality is too complex to easily determine what affect a work of fiction will have on any one person.

**If you find the pressure& hate wreaks so much havoc on your wellbeing that shipping the ship isn’tworth it anymore, you’re not ‘losing’ or ‘failing’ by leaving the fandom. You’retaking care of yourself (and I think that’s the right thing to do). but notmany ppl feel good about leaving a space b/c the people hating on it are just that awful to deal with.)

#unasked for advise #fandom toxicity #anti shipping #in defense of shipping #anti culture #weep woop its the fandom police #unasked for advice #reality affects fiction affects reality #fiction vs reality #fiction is reality #fandom meta #fandom self care #Anonymous

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

Link

via FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 Democratic primary is really an electoral story. Nothing the candidates say about policy on the campaign trail will become law during the campaign.1 But the language of presidential primaries is not electoral — candidates tend not to say, “people of The Left, vote for me, I’m very liberal” or, “Democrats, pick me; sure, I’m progressive, but I’m not so progressive that it ruins my appeal with Republican-leaning independents in the Midwest.”

Instead, the language of presidential primaries is largely one of policy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes a tax on wealth over $50 million and defends that policy on its merits. She doesn’t say out loud the real, immediate goal of the proposal for her — wooing liberal Democratic primary voters concerned about growing income inequality.

The 2020 candidates are likely to talk a lot about policy over the next year — it’s basically how you run for president. And you should pay attention to what they say, but not for the reasons you might think. Here’s a guide to the “policy primary,” with some thoughts from academics and one-time advisers to presidential candidates.2

1. Most importantly, policy proposals matter because the winning candidate will try to implement them as president.

There is a common view that candidates just promise whatever it takes to win and then abandon all those pledges once in office. But political science research has shown over and over again that politicians, including presidents, try to implement their campaign promises, even the more outlandish ones. We just had a record-long partial government shutdown over a campaign pledge that President Trump has unsuccessfully tried to implement — the border wall.3

So, all else being equal, you can expect follow-through from whoever is elected president on many of the policies he or she put forth during the campaign.

2. Even so, pay more attention to broad goals than fine print.

During the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both came up with proposals to vastly increase the number of Americans with health insurance. They disagreed on the how: Clinton said a comprehensive new health insurance law should require everyone to have insurance or pay a fine; Obama had no such mandate. You know how this turned out — the law now known as Obamacare included an individual mandate.4 Somewhat similarly, during the 2016 race, Trump’s campaign named 21 people that he would consider appointing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventual Trump nominee and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh was not among the 21.

That said, one of the 21 was Neil Gorsuch. And the overall group was full of white, male and fairly conservative legal figures — the exact kind of people Trump has appointed to the Supreme Court and lower courts as president.

“One big takeaway from my research is that the ‘policy primary’ gives us less information about the specifics of the plans that might be on the agenda than it does about what issues are likely to be at the top of the agenda,” said Philip Rocco, a political scientist professor at Marquette University who specializes in research on the policymaking process, in an e-mail message.

Looking forward, therefore, I think it’s safe to assume the Democratic candidates running on Medicare-for-all, if elected, will at the very least push for some kind of program in which uninsured Americans can enroll in a public plan along the lines of Medicare. It’s likely Warren will try to implement some kind of new tax on the very wealthy if she is elected.

3. Rank-and-file voters probably aren’t choosing candidates based on their policy plans.

Generally, “the differences on issues [among candidates] in primaries are not huge,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a top policy adviser to Al Gore during his 2000 presidential run. So most voters probably will not be able to assess subtle differences on policy issues among the 2020 Democratic contenders. After all, political scientists have found American voters broadly know little about politics and policy.

However, Kamarck argued that voters are often well-informed and passionate about issues that particularly affect their regions or states. So a Democratic primary candidate might do poorly in the primaries in Kentucky or West Virginia if he or she has a plan that voters in those states think will severely harm the coal industry.

4. But the policy plans tell voters about a candidate’s priorities and values — and that probably does matter electorally.

“People are not voting for a package of policy preferences, they’re voting for an individual, and the policies or issues help mark out the kind of person they are,” Mark Schmitt, who was a policy adviser on Bill Bradley’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, said in an e-mail message.

So a candidate like Warren or Bernie Sanders with proposals to vastly increase taxes on the wealthy is communicating to voters a persona — “fighting for the little guy,” “taking on the establishment” — that might resonate with voters who are liberal or anti-establishment, even if these voters don’t really know much about, say, marginal tax rates.

Lee Drutman, a scholar at the think tank New America, concluded based on polling data that 2016 Democratic primary voters who preferred Sanders were not significantly more liberal on policy issues than those who backed Hillary Clinton. (Sanders himself certainly was to the left of Clinton.) Instead, voters’ views of the American political system and whether they thought it was fundamentally “rigged” was a strong predictor of which candidate they supported. More anti-establishment Democrats strongly preferred Sanders. That is probably, in part, because his policy proposals, like a single-payer health care system, communicated a break from the more establishment politics of Clinton.

5. Policy details matter to important groups that can offer endorsements — and those endorsements can matter electorally.

In 2016, the National Nurses Association backed Sanders over Clinton, and this wasn’t much of a surprise. The NNA has long pushed for single-payer health care, and Sanders favored that idea and Clinton did not. In making its endorsement, NAA’s leadership specifically noted Sanders’s support of single-payer and his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama-era trade agreement that Clinton did not oppose as forcefully as Sanders.

So specific issue stands do really matter to key activist groups making endorsements. And that can make an impact electorally. Unions, for example, can organize their members to back candidates. When a Democratic candidate comes out with an education policy plan, that may be an appeal to parents, but it is also likely signaling to teacher unions, a powerful, organized liberal constituency in some states.

“Activists do pay attention” to specific policy ideas and stances, said Andrew Dowdle, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas who has written extensively about the presidential nomination process.

6. Pay more attention to the “flop” than the “flip.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been criticized for supporting overly punitive approaches to criminal justice in the past, Cory Booker for promoting charter schools, Kirsten Gillibrand for backing conservative immigration legislation, Sanders for opposing some gun control measures earlier in his career. I could go on. The Democratic Party has moved decidedly to the left in recent years, so many of the 2020 presidential candidates have, in their past, violated some of the party’s new tenets.

Scrutinizing candidate’s past records is a big part of any nomination contest. But it may not be a particularly useful exercise in predicting what these candidates would do on policy if elected president. (Note the emphasis on policy — Bill Clinton’s philandering and Trump’s lying before entering office were fairly useful predictors of what came later.)

These candidates are politicians, after all. They probably were taking stands in the past that reflected a mix of conviction and political expediency. Biden likely believed that the “crime bill” he sponsored in 1994 (and is now slammed as helping lead to the over-incarceration of African-Americans) was good policy (it was endorsed by a lot of black political leaders too). I suspect he also thought the legislation was in the political mainstream, helping him to rise up the ranks of the Democratic Party.

David Karol, an expert on the presidential nomination process who teaches at the University of Maryland, told me these “flip-flops” by candidates are often explained by their changing constituencies. He referred specifically to Gillibrand, who was first elected in 2006 in a relatively moderate district in upstate New York before becoming the senator for the entire state, which is fairly liberal-leaning.

“It’s hard to know whether the politician ‘really’ believed in their position at Time 1 or Time 2,” Karol said.

Either way, Democratic elected officials have moved away from a tough-on-crime approach and the party’s voters are now very pro-immigration . I have no doubt a President Biden would govern on criminal justice policy more like how he sounds in 2019 than he did in 1994, and that a President Gillibrand would be more pro-immigration than Candidate Gillibrand in 2006.

The obvious example here is Trump, who took some fairly liberal stands in earlier phases of his life but has generally followed GOP orthodoxy as president, as he promised to do on many issues during his 2016 campaign.

President Ronald “Reagan’s promises on abortion were far better predictors of his policies than his more pro-choice past as California’s governor were. Al Gore was pro-gun and anti-abortion at one point in his career when it made sense for a white southern Democrat to be so. But his campaign promises were better predictors,” Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist who is currently writing a book about presidential primaries, said in an e-mail message.

So the bottom line: Take what the presidential candidates are saying on the campaign trail seriously and literally. But more seriously than literally.

#IFTTT #FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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THE GREAT CRUNCHYROLL NARUTO REWATCH Goes Full-On Scooby-Doo with Episodes 162-168!

Welcome to the Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! I'm Joseph Luster and I'll be your host this week as we continue ninja-running through all 220 episodes of the original Naruto anime adaptation. After last week's spicy blend of the conclusion to the Curry of Life arc and a handful of one-offs in episodes 155 - 161, it's time to get downright spooky with the Land of Birds arc in episodes 162-168.

This time around we have a storyline that's almost beefy enough to take up the entire seven episode bundle. It's also one of the few times a filler story has focused on a baddie who isn't really connected to Orochimaru in anyway, but it still gives Naruto and his team the opportunity to evoke some of the emotions that run through the core of the show, reminding us that Sasuke is still out there somewhere.

Before Naruto can get to him, he's gonna have to solve a straight-up Scooby Doo mystery. Thus, without further ado… Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this Naruto filler arc… The Tale of the Phantom Samurai.

*sprinkles magical dust all over the post*

* *

The Cursed Warrior opener felt like a more natural and interesting introduction to a mission, with Naruto getting the opportunity to feel a personal connection to it and pushing to take it on. Let's start off with a State of the Filler report: How are you feeling about the structure of the series at this point?

Paul: The overall structure would be better without entire seasons' worth of filler, but to abuse the phrase that gives pro translators headaches, “it can't be helped.” The filler itself varies wildly in quality. Most of us found Raiga and Ranmaru and the Curry of Life insufferable, but I really enjoyed the Land of Birds, with its combination of low stakes, simple motives, a Scooby-Doo style mystery, and ninja actually acting like ninja.

Jared: It is what it is. We are stuck in the filler mines, but one day we will free ourselves from them. I think overall it’d be better if the longer filler arcs didn’t feel so formulaic at this point, but I doubt that’s going to change anytime soon.

Kara: With a couple of minimal gripes that don’t even really count as gripes, I really enjoyed this. It had ties back to our standard story and characterization but was content to be its own thing.

Noelle: It’s still not good; I’d rather not have any filler overall. Still, they are trying, and it is worth noting some more effort. In terms of filler, it’s pretty okay.

David: I think the structure of the series can be most cleanly explained by the whiplash between how the current opening sequence shows a highlight reel of all the coolest moments from the show so far, and the sinking feeling I get when the episode actually starts.

Carolyn: Yeah, I can’t necessarily get behind entire seasons of filler, either. That being said, I do like that we’re getting away from the Sasuke drama just a little bit and seeing a little bit more humor again.

Danni: I’m still very much dreading more seasons of pure filler, but this arc was actually... pretty good??? The Land of Birds arc stands pretty well on its own on account of not tying itself into the Sasuke plotline at all. It’s able to end on a satisfying conclusion without the caveat of “Well we didn’t come any closer to finding Sasuke.” On top of that it was a pretty interesting little side story in its own right, even if it did tip its hand a little too much with the twist. We also got a fun little absurd precursor to Food Wars which was justified entirely by seeing Naruto use Rasengan to make ramen.

Kevin: I like that they’re at least trying out new stuff. It adds a bit more to the world (even if that information later becomes contradictory) and allows for new stories. Hoki became more of a standard ninja enemy eventually, but when he was first revealed, he was using trickery to mimic more famous jutsu, which I don’t think we’ve seen as a main villain’s gimmick thus far.

We've encountered a few characters like Lady Toki in the past. The story of she and her brother Sagi—her unwavering need for revenge—adds another layer to the Sasuke parallels that drove Naruto to become invested in this mission in the first place. Did these characters work for you, and was the villain at the story’s core a suitable antagonist for a whopping six-episode arc?

Paul: I wasn't deeply emotionally invested in Ladi Toki's storyline, but her motives were clear, and so were the motives of Hoki, the opposing protagonist and the leader of the Wandering Ninja. I think Hoki works for me because he doesn't have a super-villain's goals: he just wants to take over a small, defenseless country and seize power so his clan can stop being homeless. Hoki and company also behave like actual ninja, complete with deception, thievery, dirty tricks, and subterfuge, and that's some of my favorite stuff in Naruto.

Jared: I think the character arc of Toki would have been better if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious what the twist was going to be. The villains could have been interesting with the idea of "here’s some folks that are just this mix of random jutsu." They’re unfortunately undercut from the start when they mention that while they steal their jutsu, it’s basically bad Genjutsu. So all the villains end up looking like jobbers. I mean, Kakashi literally tells one of the bigger ones that using the sharingan on him would have been a waste because of how much of a scrub this dude was.

Kara: Any villain without an upline to Orochimaru is already several points ahead in my book. I get that he’s the show’s Big Bad, but it’s easier to suspend disbelief for a world where sometimes bad things just happen and not all of it feeds back into The Ultimate Evil. As others have mentioned, the Twelfth Nightery of the whole thing is pretty heavily broadcast from the get-go, which meant I was largely distracted by wondering when the other characters were going to catch up. Even so, the story of Toki’s need for revenge and Naruto’s ability to speak to that intelligently from another POV was still good. That doesn’t change.

Noelle: Personally, I didn’t care too much for Toki, and the surprise was relatively predictable. It’s not up to the threat level of say, the Akatsuki or Orochimaru, but that’s fine—not everyone can be world-shattering cataclysmic villains. While not entirely engaging, it set out to do something and in that sense, I’ll say that it worked.

David: It absolutely didn’t have to be six whole episodes long, as evidenced by how much the plot drug its feet to get to the conclusion we all knew was coming in the first place. However, I did appreciate how Naruto himself actually seemed to be connected, at least thematically, to the story, which is the best part of the show proper and something most of the filler arcs forget to include.

Carolyn: I do agree with the previous points that I wasn’t really invested in the characters and the twist was not at all surprising. That being said, I do actually like the idea of stealing jutsu. We watch Naruto and Rock Lee and friends work so hard. Even if it’s just some lame, not very good jutsu, I like seeing the other side.

Danni: I found myself surprisingly satisfied by this arc’s cast of characters. None of them were really deeply characterized, but they were written well enough to justify the time devoted to them. It was like ninja Scooby-Doo with more political intrigue. And while I did see some of the twists coming, Moso being the real villain actually caught me pleasantly by surprise.

Kevin: In short: not really, but he could’ve been. There are several things that could’ve gotten me to like this arc more. A better twist would’ve been if Toki’s voice was always at least a bit feminine, rather than outright changing from a male voice to a female one when she is revealed. We also haven’t seen much in the way of political villains before, so Hoki being a corrupt advisor trying to gain power was actually more interesting than when his full intentions were revealed later. It wasn’t bad, it just had more interesting aspects that were ignored in favor of what ended up being a fairly standard “good guys fight single bad guy” fight.

The Land of Birds arc hinted at horror in the beginning, but it basically ended up being a beat-for-beat Scooby-Doo saga. How did your expectations of this arc pan out, and is there a particular type of direction you wish they had taken instead?

Paul: While the mystery wasn't extremely intricate—I knew as soon as they mentioned that Sagi had a twin sister that she had already disguised herself and taken her elder brother's place—the presentation sold me on this story arc. I liked how it kept creating scenarios that seemed spooky and supernatural, only to reveal them to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. I prefer that to everyone having X-Men level mutant powers.

Jared: If they didn’t keep beating home the point of Sagi and Toki being twins, it probably would’ve been better for the twist. I liked the idea of Naruto being grounded in the sense that ghosts are the one thing he just wants to nope out on. Maybe the arc as a whole would’ve been better if it leaned more into the supernatural element and have that be the big baddie.

Kara: I actually think there’s a lot of merit to playing out Scooby-Doo stories in settings that already accept at least some degree of the supernatural. Like, we’ve got people who go to school to learn to turn into snakes and possess other people. It’s entertaining to see not only a subversion of that, but also where the “spooky” line is for characters whose entire lives are pretty darn weird already.

Noelle: I live off horror, I want fully horror! But in all seriousness, having the ghosts not necessarily be truth is fine. That being said… I wouldn’t mind more horror, considering that we know spirits and souls do exist.

David: I honestly didn’t even consider that it wouldn’t technically be out of place in-universe for there to be a ghost. Now I wish that had actually happened.

Carolyn: First off, I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who saw a Scooby-Doo parallel here. I even wrote a meddling kids joke in my notes. This arc was ridiculous and I loved it. I’m a big horror nerd, too. But when I was little, Scooby-Doo was as close as I could get to ghosts and demons, so I’m here for it.

Danni: Literally as soon as I saw it was about unmasking a ghost, I made a Scooby-Doo joke in our Slack channel, so that was exactly what I expected and honestly hoped for. We even got a talking dog at one point!

Kevin: I direct you to my previous answer. For those that don’t want to scroll back up, the basic version is that the arc had a lot of promise in the beginning, with a character reveal that could’ve been foreshadowed more interestingly and a type of villain we haven’t really seen in the show before… and then decided to not develop any of the interesting aspects and instead go for filler that isn’t outright bad, but just didn’t live up to what it could’ve been.

Naruto's afraid of spirits, but what about you? Are ghosts real? Regale us with your own spiritual encounters if you've had any!

Paul: When I was younger, I dabbled in occultism: seances, automatic writing, Tarot cards, transcendental meditation, etc. I used to believe in ghosts and was at one point convinced that I had actually seen and interacted with a few, but that was just the prelude to a full-on psychotic episode brought on by a combination of not eating, not sleeping, and intense grieving over the death of a close friend. Not a fun time. TL;DR version: sometimes my mind plays tricks on me, and ghosts aren't real.

Jared: I can’t say I’ve ever really had any experiences with ghosts, spirits, or what have you. So, I’m not going to sit here and say they aren’t real, but I just don’t know. Plus, I try not to mess around with things that are spooky in general, so ghosts, if you’re out there, we don’t have to cross paths if necessary.

Kara: Oh, fine, I’ll pop the seal, I guess. I went to a very old college. Declared majors could use their student IDs to get into the main building for their major 24 hours a day, so I’d abuse the privilege to take my gaming group into the English building for game night. The college has about 75 ghost stories, with the English department’s concerning a student who threw herself out the window of the third-floor study lounge (now classrooms and offices) after an especially bad year. You know the kind of story—she’d allegedly haunt happy students with good grades because she resented them. One night we’re in a second floor classroom playing whatever it was we were playing at the time. Something cracked us up enough that all of us started laughing, and a few seconds later every door on the floor above us slammed one after the other in rapid succession. I’m sure there’s some sort of explanation for it (wind, other students playing a prank), but we started gaming elsewhere regardless.

Noelle: I’m a little conflicted, because I haven’t had any supernatural experiences myself, but considering that I’ve been raised on a mix of Shinto-Buddhist and Christian beliefs, I do somewhat believe that supernatural phenomena is out there. It’s just normal to me to think that maybe there is something beyond science, that something spiritual could actually exist (also denying it and denying that many people take comfort in the existence of the supernatural feels kind of like overstepping my boundaries). Even if I’ve never seen a ghost, it would be pretty cool to see one.

David: My grandfather has had a life-sized harlequin doll for as long as I can remember, and it has always creeped me out. It’s placed in his room in such a way that when I go up the stairs to my room, I am forced to see it every single time, even at night because he leaves the TV on when he sleeps. Last week it was about 3 in the morning and I was coming upstairs with a late night snack, and as soon as I got to the top of the stairs and looked at the doll the TV flashed a bright white and I couldn’t see the doll anymore, but the sound on the TV was still going. I’m sure there’s a real explanation for this but some part of me believes the doll turned off the TV so I couldn’t see it moving.

Carolyn: Yes. They are real. Really-real real. I had one friend who was part of a Rocky Horror cast that just about everyone had a story about some weird encounter connected to him in some way. I didn’t believe it for a second, but one day I was showering and a wind-up baby doll I had as a kid started playing music. It had stringy yarn hair, which was the part that made me rethink my skepticism of everyone else’s stories. A yarn wig had spawned a kind of inside joke between him and I. That being said, I have a lot of reasons I personally believe that witchcraft/spiritualism/religion are a psychological means of coping with stress and trauma. But ghosts are totally real.

Danni: Nah.

Kevin: I’ve never encountered a ghost, and if pressed into picking a side, would probably say that they don’t exist. If definitive scientific evidence comes out though, I’ll switch sides in a heartbeat.

Enough about the supernatural, because this set of episodes ended with a mission starring Naruto and Choji, AKA The Hungry Boiz™ (feat. Sakura). Did this need the tired “Are you a bad enough dude to rescue my daughter?” setup, or would you have been perfectly happy with The Hungry Boiz™ Ramen Roundup Noodle Spectacular®?

Paul: Ayame being kidnapped felt like a superfluous detail, and the concluding fat-phobic joke (complete with piggy squealing sound effects) dampened my enjoyment of the episode. Naruto and Choji don't need a reason to get worked up over ramen, and a Ninja Chef cooking competition is compelling enough without adding an abduction subplot. Naruto and company using their combat techniques to knead noodles is more than enough for me.

Jared: It absolutely didn’t need the setup of having to save Ayame. If you take that out and the weird fat shaming near the end and instead make this into basically a cooking reality show episode, it would’ve been great. Ninja Chef is a fun and dumb concept and you don’t need to make it so there’s a conflict in order to introduce them or give Naruto and company a reason to go after them. Just have the ramen place sponsor a cooking competition with the Ninja Chefs and split everyone into teams and have at it.

Kara: I don’t need a reason for Naruto to suddenly become a food reaction anime, and “ninja ramen making” came at least 150 episodes later than I was expecting. Also you know this entire episode came about solely because someone was proud of the “ryo-nin” pun. I was all in until the very end so basically that didn’t exist and Team Nart won, the end.

Noelle: Just stick to one plotline at a time, Naruto filler. I’d gladly watch a food cooking competition instead of oh no my random daughter is now the crux of an issue.

David: I had all but forgotten what the point of the whole competition was until the terrible ‘twist’ at the end, so overall it was entertaining and definitely didn’t need that bit of motivation.

Carolyn: Ha! You keep hitting my notes on the head with a ginormous hammer. I was very happy to see ramen front and center again.

Danni: This episode made me want to get ramen, and I can actually go get ramen for lunch as soon as I’m done here, so the episode has justified itself already in my opinion.

Kevin: This is the kind of insane setup that I honestly always forget I love about this show. Sure, the dramatic moments can be great and the combat can be downright spectacular, but seeing a team of ninjas use legendary and superhuman techniques to make ramen noodles is just fun. As for the setup itself, I can go either way. Just an in-shop “Naruto tries to help ramen guy make a new recipe” would’ve worked just as much as what the show actually ended up doing.

(SIDE NOTE: As evidenced below, Danni did indeed go get ramen after this)

And now it's highs and lows time! What was your favorite aspect of this set of episodes, and what was just the absolute paranormal pits?

Paul: My favorite element was how Hoki and the Wandering Ninja claimed to be stealing techniques from other clans, but really they were just using a combination of Genjutsu and sleight of hand to trick people into thinking they had replicated powerful Ninjutsu techniques. I really dug that every visually impressive move turned out to be a dime-store imitation. Honorable mention goes to Naruto hitting noodle dough with a Rasengan. My least favorite bit was “too fat / too skinny” gags at the end of Episode 168, and I wish there were a more elegant way to localize the “aku no recipe” joke as well.

Jared: Naruto coming up with the idea to just use everyone’s jutsu to make noodles was pretty good. I found it very funny that they titled an episode “The Death of Naruto” in the midst of this filler and expected people to buy that. Low points would be just how easy it was to deduce the twist in Land of Birds and how they kind of ruined the last episode we watched with bad jokes at the end, which they’ve done quite a bit on these one-off episodes.

Kara: High point was the ramen-making sequence itself, especially Naruto deliberately cheesing Sakura off to get her “cha” on for the dough-pounding. Low point was what came right after. Special honorable mention goes to the ED going from “smol ninja being happy” to “everyone’s a dog now.”

Noelle: The ramen-making scenes! It’s just fun to see how ninjutsu can work in doing relatively mundane things. Bad side, some of this humor is very deliberately dated. Come on.

David: My high point was actually Tenten and Neji getting some much needed screentime, even if it’s in filler. They’re good characters and it reminded me of the Rock Lee spinoff show that I highly recommend if you’re fond of the side characters in Naruto. As seems common, my low point was the very end of the otherwise pretty amusing food episode.

Carolyn: High point was definitely the Scooby Gang arc. Low point, I’m not sure anything necessarily stands out this time other than generally not being interested in many of the new characters. Also, I was very confused by the dog ED and some of those poses were … interesting. Actually, I take that back, the pig noises were my low point.

Danni: My high point was most of the Land of Birds arc. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was surprisingly compelling as far as Naruto filler goes. The low point was the sudden cacophony of fat jokes and “women love to diet” jokes shoved into the ramen episode at the end. Ramen’s good, yo. Eat as much as you want. If you’ll excuse me I’m about to go have some now.

Kevin:

High - Naruto fighting in a straightjacket. One of the best ways to make fight scenes more interesting is to throw in some new variable for either side to deal with, be it terrain, a handicap or a new powerup or some kind. Seeing Naruto need to fight while essentially being unable to fight back or use jutsu was probably the most engaged I was throughout the majority of the arc.

Low - Chishima in the last act of the arc. He gets hit once or twice by shuriken (thrown by the ninja equivalent of Storm Troopers, given how many they threw at him), and he is so egregiously injured that he’s on a medical bed with IVs giving him blood. Why is he so hurt?! Give him a bandage and maybe some pain killers and he shouldn't be having any problems at all! And if he’s more seriously injured, show it as more than a shoulder cut!

COUNTERS: Bowls of Ramen: 121 bowls “I'm Gonna be Hokage!”: 0 Shadow Clones Created: 26 + 2 uncountable scenes Total so far: Bowls of Ramen: 171 bowls, 9 cups “I'm Gonna be Hokage!”: 55 Shadow Clones Created: 661

And that’s it for this week! Remember that you’re always welcome to watch along with the Rewatch, especially if you’ve never seen the original Naruto! Watch Naruto today!

Here’s our upcoming schedule: - Next week, DANNI WILMOTH gets nautical in the Land of the Seas! - July 12th, JARED CLEMONS leads us to the Hidden Village of Star! - July 18th, JOSEPH LUSTER is back to continue the Star Guard mission!

CATCH UP ON THE REWATCH!

Episodes 155 - 161: Quickfire Curry

Epsiodes 148 - 154: The Forest is Abuzz With Ninjas

Episodes 141-147: Mizuki Strikes Back!

Episodes 134-140: The Climactic Clash

Episodes 127-133: Naruto vs Sasuke

Episodes 120-126: The Sand Siblings Return

Episodes 113-119: Operation Rescue Sasuke

Episodes 106-112: Sasuke Goes Rogue

Episodes 99-105: Trouble in the Land of Tea

Episodes 92-98: Clash of the Sannin

Episodes 85-91: A Life-Changing Decision

Episodes 78-84: The Fall of a Legend

Episodes 71-77: Sands of Sorrow

Episodes 64-70: Crashing the Chunin Exam

Episodes 57-63: Family Feud

Episodes 50-56: Rock Lee Rally

Episodes 43-49: The Gate

Episodes 36-42: Through the Woods

Episodes 29-35: Sakura Unleashed

Episodes 22-28: Chunin Exams Kickoff

Episodes 15-21: Leaving the Land of Waves

Episodes 8-14: Beginners' Battle

Episodes 1-7: I'm Gonna Be the Hokage!

Thank you for joining us for the Great Crunchyroll Naruto Rewatch! Have a great weekend, and we'll see you all next time!

Have anything to say about our thoughts on Episodes 162-168? Let us know in the comments! Don't forget, we're also accepting questions and comments for next week, so don't be shy and feel free to ask away!

-------

Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his webcomic, BIG DUMB FIGHTING IDIOTS at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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kbrown78 · 6 years ago

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My Thoughts: Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch

Continuing immediately after the events in Snow Like Ashes, this sequel totally ups the stakes and improves almost every aspect of the previous book. Looking back, I really loved this book. It's not perfect, the villains are weak and it's a bit predictable, but the characters are amazing, the world doesn't feel like a typical YA fantasy, and the themes are well addressed in this book.

World building: In the previous book I liked what I saw of the world, but there wasn't much to go off of. This book vastly builds on what was previously shown and creates new material too. In this book Meira travels to seven of the eight kingdoms, and what I loved about them was the each one felt distinct and unique, and I could tell each one apart. Ventralli people wear masks and focuses on the arts. Yakim focuses on knowledge, and has something like a meritocracy. Summer is a brazen desert and it's cities are in a constant party. Honestly it's more like an orgy, considering Meira first the Summer King Simon in a brothel. That's another thing I liked about this world, was that it shows the darker aspects like slavery and brothels, but it doesn't focus on them and deter from the main story. I also liked that there wasn't just male rulers, there are also female ones, like Meira, and they're never shamed for being a female ruler. Part of this is due to in some kingdoms female rulers are the ones able to wield their conduit, but that's good that it wasn't all male in the first place. There's also a secret group called the Order of the Lustrate, from the kingdom of Paisly (which is the only one that Meira didn't go to), that knows everything about magic and their world's history. This group started out as small piece of the plot but becomes pretty important in the last chapter of the book.

Characters: Like the previous book, Meira was one of the best things in this book. Meira is a complex character who is now in the position of queen, which she never expected to be in. Since her country is still recovering from Spring's invasion, she has to balance out what is best for her country, but is still stubborn and wants to do things her way sometimes. On her quest to end magic, she starts to become afraid of herself and her magic, and starts isolating herself from friends to protect them. She get's called out one this and pretty quickly realizes the error of her ways and changes. So she is someone has a strong sense of morality, cares deeply about her people, is a strong character but isn't ashamed to get help from those around her, and is a well rounded character. We don't see as much of her fighting in this one, which I liked because it showed that she is still capable of being interesting and getting things done without fighting. I really loved her! In this book, Mather gets his own perspective and while I certainly enjoyed reading from his POV, I don't think it contributed anything new to his character. He, like Meira, is struggling with his new reality but he has a strong sense of duty and honor, so he always tries to do what is right in whatever position he is in. Next are the two most prevalent side characters, Ceridwen and Theron. In the previous book, Theron is a kind hearted prince who also tries to work for the greater good and is also depicted as fairly intelligent. In the start of this book, he still suffers from the trauma Angra caused him, and believes the solution to end all the corruption is to let everyone have magic, even though Meira makes it clear she thinks this is a bad idea. This is what causes him to be corrupt because him and Angra have similar back stories in that their mother's died because of their fathers, and both felt that magic was the only solution. In the end it's kind of revealed that Theron's good intentions were what allowed him to be corrupted by the Decay, and because he still believes he is doing the right thing he can't be healed. So I found that an interesting take on his character because he isn't exactly regressing, the readers are just being shown the flaws in his characteristics and philosophy. Now Ceridwen is the princess of Summer, and is unable to wield their conduit. She's honestly like a more extreme version of Meira. She is a fighter, doesn't care what people think of her as long as she achieves her goals, and has a very strong sense of morality (almost black and white). She works to help free slaves, doesn't like to indulge in brothers parties but knows she has to only to avoid suspension, and her best friend is her male servant (who is also gay). I like the Children of the Thaw, a young group of rebels who aren't willing to lay down as Cordell takes over Winter, I liked Nessa's family (can't remember their names), and I liked Alysson because it's revealed almost too late that there is more to her than meets the eye, and she a back ground mother. Giselle, the Queen of Yakim, is an intersting character, because she believes in a system of merits but is rather strict and unapologetic about the choices she makes, like selling slaves. She's also fairly intelligent and I hope that there is more of her in the third book because I could see her being a valuable ally. The last one the side character I liked was King Jesse, Ventralli king. He's usually described as weak, and doesn't want to use his conduit for any reason. This allows his snake of wife Raelyn, to usurp him. But for those he cares about, like Ceridwen and his children, Jesse is willing to be strong and take control. The characters that I didn't like include Sir (for reason's I've already talked about), Noam (just a greedy bastard who needed to die), and Raelyn (so evil and it's unclear as to how exactly she was able to gain power).

Relationships: So in the previous book, there wasn't much romance, and in this one romance still wasn't the focus, but it came in the form of a love triangle that I actually enjoyed. In this one there is still that love triangle going on, but it becomes pretty obvious that Mather and Meira are going to be end game. I was okay with this because Theron was doing some shitty things and started acting pretty possessive of Meira and kissing her when she was mad at all the backstabbing he's been doing, but I didn't enjoy the love trangle aspect because of how obvious it was that Mather and Meira are going to end up together. Don't get me wrong, I like them together but I just don't have a strong emotional pull for them. There's also the forbidden romance between Ceridwen and King Jesse, and it's clear the Ceridwen and his children is the only thing Jesse really cares about, but again I wasn't pulling for them. The familial bonds became more relevant in this book, and I'm not sure how I feel about them. Starting with Meira and Hannah, Hannah also didn't want to treat Meira like a person, let alone her own child, and went from wanting Meira to die with her in the past to using her to fix her mistakes in the present. Also all communication between the two is through some kind of weird magic bond, so this is an odd relationship that borders on toxic. Next is Mather, who is actually the son of Sir and Alysson. Sir is a terrible father, no surprise there, but Alysson actually cares for Mather and supports him where ever she can. Unfortunately that relationship isn't really developed because Alysson gets killed off right as Mather is starting to really see what an amazing mother she could be. There also a point in the story where Mather has to pick between the Children of the Thaw and obeying his father, and he chooses the Children of the Thaw, so that speaks volume about their relationships. Lastly there's Theron's relationship with his father Noam. Noam is obviously a greedy piece of shit, but Theron still defends him but in the climax, when Theron is fully possessed, he kills his own father, so that's just a little messed up. Overall I think the familial aspects in this book were weak. Onto my favorite relationships in the entire series, the friendships. I loved the friendship between Meira and Nessa because while Nessa is an innocent side character, who also has a great relationship with her brothers, and Meira clearly cares about her and wants her to have a life in peace, Nessa is the one to call Meira out on how she is “protecting” everyone by cutting them off and that that's wrong because it's their life to choose what they do with it and sometimes you need support to get through your struggles. Meira and Ceridwen's friendship was another one I liked because they are quite similar and want what is best for their people, but at first they aren't sure if they can trust each other because they have to approach their goals peace and freedom in different ways, so this also felt like a well fleshed out relationship where it wasn't just about serving one person. They also struggle with being Season rulers in love with Conduit rulers, and the difficulties that come with romance. For Mather, he also develops a quick friendship with Phil, who introduces him to the rest of the Children of the Thaw, and I love bands of underdog rebels. While the members aren't all as well developed as Meira's group of friends, they at least have their own identity and the ones that are unlikable, like Kiefer, have good reasons to be unlikable and I don't hate them.

Writing: In this book the themes were much more prevalent then in the previous book. The biggest one is power and how magic and choices equate to power. There are clearly rulers who use their position and magic for their own selfish gains, and if common people had magic than those corrupt rulers could be kept in check, but Meira knows that letting everyone have magic isn't the answer either because small evil acts build up into something toxic. But there's also the other extreme end with Jesse, who is able to wield his conduit but refuses to, so his evil wife is then able to take control because she is willing to give orders and their citizens listen to her despite the fact that she doesn't have any magic. So where does the power lie? Well the solution that the book offers to this question is that a person's individual choice is true power, and doesn't require. Another important theme was the recovering process from atrocities. Many of the older Winterians, like Sir, think that ignoring what happened and not starting any fights is the way things need to be, but the younger generation want to fight off Cordell to keep the kingdom that they just won back. Like the previous issue, both sides have pros and cons, so it's about trying to find that balance. The Thaw ultimately conclude that in order to heal and break out of their frozen state, they need to let go of the past and fight for the future. I don't like how this issue was handled as well as the previous one because Cordell was obviously corrupt from the beginning, so letting them take more and more power in Winter was just Sir being in denial that Cordell wasn't going to be another Spring. I think there is also an underlying theme of balance, which might be explored more in the last book. I think that the topics presented in this book are deep and relevant issues and I thought they were discussed in a good way as the book progressed. This book is in dual perspective, Meira and Mather's, and this was also done well because each voice felt unique and contributed important points to the plot. There was also improved diversity in this book, with more POCs and a relevant homosexual character, which was also an improvement from the previous book.

Dislikes: There wasn't a lot that I disliked about the previous book, and I think there was even less that I disliked about this book. Most of the things I did have issues with were continuing from the previous book but I wasn't as bugged by that as I could be because I both think it was well handled but also because I was more willing to forgive it. The first issues was how predictable the story was, especially with the villains, but Angra still actually being alive was a twist I didn't entirely see coming, but Theron being corrupted was pretty obvious. The other thing that frustrated me to no end was Sir. I just cannot stand this guy. He essential made it so that Cordell could take control of Winter, is still condescending to everyone around him (particularly Meira and Mather), and shows no remorse over this. Like I kind of wished he had stayed dead in the previous book.

Final Thoughts: I really loved this book. It wasn't quite a 5 star read, but it was so good that I went out and bought the final book so I could just marathon read the entire series. Also having now completed the series, this one is definitely my favorite book in the series.

#my thoughts #book review #ice like fire #sara raasch

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venuaur · 6 years ago

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Black Mirror rankings (spoilers)

Finally caught up with the show as of today. All the Black Mirror rankings I’ve seen appear to be very subjective and different, and mine is no exception. Ultimately I would say I enjoyed every episode apart from the bottom two, but #13 is around where it starts to really get good for me. I’m probably not going to get across all my thoughts with a sentence or two per episode, so bear with me.

Hated in the Nation: Like I said, subjective list. I could never not love the story of a world that gets wrecked by careless online hate and a self-serving irresponsible government, with a touch of sci-fi to boot. But it’s legitimately well made too - the leads are fantastic and keep the whole thing grounded, and the imagery of the killer bee swarms is one of the most aggressively horrifying things the show has produced.

San Junipero: This aesthetic, the music cues, every meeting between our lovers, every piece of the puzzle we get adds layer upon layer of emotion that made me legitimately shed a tear towards the end, which basically never happens. I initially didn’t care for the ending, and I still don’t quite consider it a happy ending, but I appreciate how other people do. It’s not quite my favourite, but I’m happy to recognise this as one of, if not the breakout episode of the show.

Be Right Back: Against stiff competition, this episode gives us the two most steller performances in Black Mirror’s history and is perhaps the best example of one of the show’s central themes - that granting all your wishes is a bad thing.

USS Callister: Nanette Cole is a superstar and her crusade against the bully more than makes this episode. The degrees of moral grayness are appropriately subtle and I love the juxtaposition between Captain Daly and the toothless jerk at the end.

The National Anthem: Love it or hate it, this episode is iconic. The looming presence of the kidnapper’s demand lends so much weight to every action and leads to one unforgettable... um... climax.

Hang the DJ: For how uncomfortable it can make you feel at times, this is easily the most hopeful episode of the show and a very welcome one at that. If something as cynical as Black Mirror can’t give up on romance, then how can you or I?

Nosedive: This is one where it feels appropriate for them to really zero in on the premise like they do. It’s a fun, accessible episode with a cool aesthetic and a satisfying climax, even if it’s a touch predictable.

Fifteen Million Merits: Archetypal, essential Black Mirror. The grueling journey and the ambiguous fate of Bing give us plenty to think about, as most of the best episodes would go on to do. Come to think of it, it feels so right that the main piece of recurring continuity in the show comes from this episode.

White Christmas: Again, don’t care for the casual cruelty from the people who are supposed to know better, but that’s really a nitpick this time around as it only comes up at the very end. Act one is darkly hilarious and act three puts a devastating spin on a tool that we all use liberally right now.

Shut Up and Dance: I seem to be in the minority in thinking that this did White Bear’s schtick better and not vice versa. The protagonist seeming so innocent leads to a bigger rug pull later on, the journey is much more interesting, and the idea that some Anonymous-esque hacker group would pull this is so plausible it’s chilling.

The Entire History of You: Probably the most average episode of the show for me. The lack of heroes in this tale makes it easy to observe, the story builds well, the tech is basal enough that it can be reused later and still feel fresh. Solid, but not exceptional.

Black Museum: I may have to watch this back without the fatigue of a day’s worth of binging. I liked the supervillian origin story feel to the first act, and I felt the emotional punch of the ending even if it lost me logistically. I’m sure people who are more into the show than I am were more into this episode too.

Arkangel: This one has such a rich premise that even the worthy exploration they offer us feels somewhat lacking. I’m not sure how I feel about it holding the tension in for as long as it does, but the ending certainly feels appropriate.

Crocodile: It’s okay. Like Metalhead, it’s an indication that the show might just be running out of ideas in the fourth season. It’s fairly well done though, the slow-building collision course between Shazia and Mia is a highlight for me.

White Bear: It’s a shame you can’t truly recapture how tense you are the first time you watch this. All that comes to mind now is the final act and how hammy and overblown it is. Not a bad piece of television by any means, but I just find this degree of institutional cruelty too tough a sell.

The Waldo Moment: I follow British politics enough to be kind of predisposed to like this one (I am British after all), and while I can appreciate some of the obvious flaws, the main character sells it for me. My heart broke for Jamie basically from start to finish.

Men Against Fire: Surprisingly potent messaging at the end that warns about the present as much as the future, but it’s a little heavy handed and kind of a chore to get there.

Playtest: Horror isn’t my genre to begin with, but Playtest also gives us the least interesting of all of Black Mirror’s simulated platforms. The theming and ending might be called clever in isolation, but not by the standards of the show.

Metalhead: Just couldn’t get into this one. The complete lack of details might not faze everyone, but it was certainly a turn-off for me. I don’t think the ending works either. If you wanna be human in the apocalypse you could just, like, sing songs around a campfire or something?

#black mirror #black mirror rank #black mirror ranked #black mirror ranking #misc

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theworstbob · 7 years ago

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the thing journal, 7.2.2017 - 7.8.2017

capsule review-like entries about the things i saw or heard last week. in this post: lord steppington, the golden hour, the last man on earth, souled out, splasher, le jour se leve, creed, a 14 ans, 4:44, singles, heart beats

1) Lord Steppington, by The Step Brothers: I wrote a brief paean to Rhymesayers last week, and I do stand by it, I'm just not thinking about this album specifically when thinking about the label. It's a decent album, it's very Midwest in spirit what with the soul samples and whatnot, but it's also thoroughly whelming Midwest rap. And that's not a bad thing, not every album is destined to be the best album ever! And "this album is OK" isn't that great a criticism, like oh no, how dare something not instill a fire within me, and we didn't make it five sentences into this album before I wrote about writing. Tomorrow will come.

2) The Golden Hour, by Kimbra: So real talk, I sort of thought this album was gonna be the biggest waste of time of all the 2014 joints I added to the library. I only knew her from the Gotye song, she was described as "dream pop" which doesn't sound like anything which could capitavate me, I'm not 110% into the Gotye song if I'm being perfectly honest, it seemed like a bad time from the second I hit "add." But wouldn't you know it, while there was a lot of indie bullshit (man "90s music" is such a predictable bummer), there were actually two (2) disco-y tracks that went hard as hell and made me pay attention. I sort of expected this entire album to move at 3 MPH for 50 minutes, and while I recognize it's not fair to weigh an album against one's expectations (0/2! nailing it this week!), the dance tracks themselves were actually great, and knowing Kimbra was capable of doing more than whisper plaintively made me pay attention to the rest of the album, and there was some really cool stuff in there. Not my cup of tea, but not something I'd refuse if it was what a host had on offer.

3) The Last Man on Earth s3, cr. Will Forte: Definitely the best season so far. The episode where Tandy takes Kenneth Choi to his home in Seattle while Carol tries to get Gail to adopt her is so good, it feels like something the series had to do at some point, acknowledge that these characters had lives before the virus that they are thinking about all the time, and the Kirsten Wiig episode was gold, like, half that episode is just Kristen Wiig yelling at a dog, and that's the better half of the episode. I also really love the version of Tandy who expresses his self-centeredness by trying to be the nicest most helpful boy alive. The show is just so nice and so great and I'm so excited to see where they take s4 in however many months.

4) Souled Out, by Jhene Aiko: One day I'm going to admit to myself that I don't like this kind of music as much as I want to. Like, greatness transcends, I can hear Blood Orange or Solange or SZA and know what I'm listening to is a miracle, but stuff like this or Syd or Smino, like, I want to be where these albums are, but I just can't get to that place. And part of this is just the way I treat music, I know, I'm trying to get the full experience with just one listen on a bus ride home and that's not doing it right, but with albums like this, which are so very subtle and so very understated, what I would get out of the full experience isn't worth the effort it would take to sink into it. I'm sure it's very good, but I'm just never going to be this into mid-tier alt-R&B, and I'm okay with admitting that. Like, I'm about to rave about a colorful platformer video game where you play as a spiky-haired child who bounces off special paint, I'm not quiet R&B introspective jam person.

5) Splasher, dev. Romain Claude: I'm actually writing this like six levels deep into this game because I am absolutely in love. If there's one genre of game I love, it's indie platformer (I like VVVVVV and Runbow, I'm not an afficionado or anything), and this hits a thousand of my buttons. Like, I plunked money on an actual controller for this game, because I tried it for like ten minutes with my keyboard and was like "Nope, nope, this will never work" and set it down (did I write about my first ten minutes in here? Not sure I did. Ah, well!) and now I have a controller and my gosh the movement. This is a game that wants you to move through it quickly, but it never feels like you're out of control at any point, the little orange dude whose name probably doesn't matter is always responding to what you're telling him to do. Like, the air controls! He floats just enough that moving him around is still a skill to be mastered, but not so much so to make it tedious, they struck a really fine balance there. So the game hasn't felt unfair as of yet, all the (many) deaths I have suffered (many, many deaths) have been 100% my fault and have not felt frustrating in any way. And every level with the golden bouncy paint has been absolutely delightful. I'm not sure what later levels have in store for me, I'm sure I'm gonna hit a difficulty curve, but my gosh, what a wonderful little treat!

6) Le Jour Se Leve, dir. Marcel Carne: yes hello hi welcome to post i am reviewing a colorful video game about a bouncing parkour child an 80-year-old french film So I mean I don't have anything to say about this film, but it's just so nuts to consider that films used to look like this and feel like this. Like, the idea of this film wouldn't have been out of place in the dark anti-hero TV drama boom of the 21st century, but cinema had only progressed so far in the '30s, so it's a dark anti-hero drama being told with the cinematic language that had been developed to that point. You can see the first steps being taken to Breaking Bad, but it's several decades away from actually getting there. But the film is also telling its own story, it's not just a marker on the chart of evolutionary progression, it's absolutely worth watching on its own merit, but the entire time, I was just thinking, oh hey I've seen that executed more completely in recent years, that's cool to see the idea before it was fully developed.

7) Creed, dir. Ryan Coogler: The most impressive thing this film did was be a film that worked for someone that had never seen a Rocky movie. It does assume you know some moments from the Rocky series, but only the iconic ones you've seen parodied in other pop culture events. You hear the Rocky theme, you see the steps Rocky walked up, the main character is the son of the most famous adversary, it doesn't traffic in advanced Rocky esoterica, it is just a film that carries the Rocky branding. And I love the way it dealt with legacy. Every single character was trying to do something before life took the opportunity away, and it felt honest while still feeling sort of like meta-commentary, like Creed knew it was going to be judged against Rocky and wanted to prove it was Creed before people called it Rocky in the same way Adonis needed to prove he was Adonis before people started calling him Apollo's son. That's me reading way too much into the movie, though. It was dope. Hey guys did you know that movies a bunch of other people also have seen,,, are good? Sometimes things in the mainstream are OK, too! Anyway here's another French film.

8) A 14 ans, dir. Helene Zimmer: I don't think I've ever seen a film that allowed teenage girls to be the assholes they are in this film. Like, movies like Mean Girls or Easy A or what-have-you are about how teens can hurt each other, but the teens' assholishness is heightened for comedic effect, and the teens all learn lessons in the end. This presents an unvarnished look at how teen girls can absolutely fuck up everyone's lives, and I thought that was fairly admirable. Yet while it was doing that thing, it never lost sight of the fact that its characters were still developing as people, that they weren't necessarily aware they were doing monstrous things they were just kids who don't know any better who were fucking up in ways they might never be able to understand, so the film wasn't this dark look at The Dangers of Teening, it was a sympathetic portrayal of young women figuring out who they wanna be. It’s not a coming-of-age story, it’s a being-of-age story. This is an accurate descriptor of the portrait of young women being painted by this film, and also a joke about how nothing actually like happens in this movie, yeah hello hi it me I like songs that go everywhere and movies that go nowhere.

9) 4:44, by Jay-Z: Everything everyone is saying about this album is correct. I initially balked at the concept of a response album to Lemonade, but I never considered that the word "response" was being used as shorthand for "detail of Jay-Z's emotional response." It's not just that it's a rapper going through his life and loves and considering how he failed, it's that it's Jay-Z, who has spent the last five years rapping about how many yachts he owns. (And it's also just that any rapper this side of Rhymesayers is being this introspective. Like damnit man this is our thing, how dare you be better at this than us.) And just like Lemonade, this is a really fucking good album, and even if it deals with difficult topics, it doesn't handle them in a difficult way, this is an album I'm excited to return to.

10) Singles, by Future Islands: Maybe I'm just not remembering The Far Field well enough, but this man was doing some things with his voice I don't remember doing on The Far Field. There are moments where he dips into this soft growl that are so out-of-place in the middle of these dreamy synthpop tracks yet don't feel jarring, always sort of feel logical. (One would assume the band knows how to structure songs around the things the dude wants to do with his voice. It's weird how bands that are good know how to write songs!) And, gosh, the world has been saying this for a thousand years, but "Seasons (Waiting on You)" is just such an absolutely perfect song.

11) Heart Beat, by Dami Im: Let's go back to Souled Out for a little bit, because if I'm going to listen to something mid-tier, I'd rather listen to something overdramatic than understated. Something like this is what I can get into, All The Singing over the most trashy pop production, not vibing over droning electronic beats. This isn't to suggest that this album is better than Souled Out, Souled Out is probably better on an objective basis, just that this is the sort of thing which more easily draws me in. I am always going to be into a young woman singing joyously about how super a certain emotion (in this case, Love) is. This was a fun 35 minutes or so. I prefer having fun sometimes!

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topweeklyupdate · 8 years ago

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TØP Weekly Update #23: The Title Picture Pretty Much Sums It Up (1/29/16)

The Emotional Roadshow kept on chugging this week, giving us plenty of news morsels to... chew on, I guess? Whatever, failed metaphor. Read on, we’ve got a lot to cover this week.

This Week’s TØPics:

New Festival Shows Announced

Emo Show Recaps- Interviews, Shenanigans, and Everything In Between

UPCOMING: Moline, Madison, Omaha, Wichita, Sioux Falls

Major News and Announcements:

The only major news from this week was the announcement of a few more summer festival headliners for our band. I predicted this was going to happen when the lonely Hangout Fest date was released a few weeks ago, and it’s nice to have my predictions feel validated every once and awhile.

The boys will be leading the lineup of Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington, a festival that they’ve played a couple of times in the past. The Memorial Day weekend event made minor news last year for its poor attendance numbers; only around 11,000 of the expected 25,000 guests showed up, which led to the festival being noticeably scaled back this year- it’s back to a three day length, and, besides the headliners, there aren’t too many a-list artists on the lineup. Still, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, consider hopping by to support the festival and the artists- and, of course, Twenty One Pilots.

After that, we have the Firefly Festival in Dover, Delaware, another one that the band’s played before in a much smaller capacity that they are now headlining. The festival is set for the weekend of June 15, making it now the last known touring date of this cycle. Will it stay that way? Only time will tell, my young friends.

Performances, Interviews, and Other Shenanigans:

The performances have mostly been consistent(ly as awesome) with last week. At Allentown, Tyler’s cousin did the zorb run, and an attempted effort to run Mario Kart petered out and led to the contest winner and Tyler resorting to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Mario Kart instead made its successful return in Chicago later in the week, where it was Zack who made the ball run. Also, there’s a boy band dance number now. Tyler keeps mixing up his Trees Speech with continued promises to not go anywhere and to continue to make music, and, of course, plenty of expressions of gratitude to the the fans (the speech in Albany was particularly good).

Quite a few local and national papers have done features on some of the performances and on the band in general this week, but all of them are fairly generic, save for an Albany paper’s caustic review of the show, a Pittsburgh paper’s in-depth analysis of how small the arena rock scene has become, and, most interestingly for me, this article from Slate. “The Mood Swing Vote” is one of only a handful of intellectual/artistic looks at Twenty One Pilots that really looks at their musical and creative choices with a sharp critical eye and a mind for politics. I’d like to give a little consideration toward the ideas presented in this article, just because I find the ideas he has fascinating for various reasons.

"The Mood Swing Vote” goes very in-depth, covering a vast array of topics. The writer criticizes many aspects of the band’s sound, but not in the “it’s not real rock” way I’ve seen on so many message boards. Instead, when he has something to criticize, its mostly cultural/political: he perceives in some of their music problems with cultural appropriation (which he handles somewhat fairly- “I wasn’t raised in the hood” is probably the most objectively bad lyric Tyler’s written- but his accusations of the style being used for commercial reasons lacks much merit/evidence for me) as well as even some light misogyny (which is a freaking reach to say the least). He also makes many more reaches by associating the band’s popularity to the politics of today. This effort, like most political analyses of popular art, likely has some kernel of truth way down at its core but neglects the personal history and wider context in favor of tailoring the facts to present the narrative the writer wants to convey (I’m a history major, that’s kinda what I want to do for a living). For instance, he follows Rolling Stones’ lead in emphasizing the band’s Christianity more than they ever have, and even tries to read “Fairly Local” and “Hometown” as criticisms of Ohio for going to Trump nearly two years before the election even took place.

At the same time, the article is not the type of bashing I expected it to be- the author, if not a fan himself, definitely did his research into the band’s history and fandom. He regularly acknowledges Tyler and Josh’s real talents, and he definitely has a ton of respect for how much the band obviously cares about and for their fans struggling with mental illness. While the author, one Carl Wilson, may not reach the same conclusion... wait, this was written by Carl Wilson? *quick Google* Oh, I like this guy. He showed up on The Colbert Report years ago to discuss his efforts to try to account for taste by listening to Celine Dion for a year. He’s pretty darn good at getting to the heart of how people’s backgrounds influence the music they like. Check out some of his stuff if you never have it’s interest- oh, right, this is a Twenty One Pilots blog, moving on.

We only got a handful of radio interviews this week, but they were all pretty fun or interesting in their own ways. (There was also this one I missed from last week in Providence- not too much to say about it other than they talked about Tyler’s dodgeball b-day party.)

Charlottesville, Q94

Good talk about the Grammy acceptance speeches.

More discussion of the heaviness of trying to care for fans as individuals- Tyler again says how proud he is of the Clique for supporting each other when they can’t (apparently, some of those feelings are already being incorporated into the next album).

When asked what he would point his fans toward in order to do some good in the world, Tyler claims that he doesn’t have any charities or anything in mind primarily because he knows that his fanbase will follow them wherever they’re pointed with their dollars and he doesn’t want to risk misusing that power. Instead, he calls back to what he’s been saying since the video where they joined FBR- be others-minded, not just others-aware, because that makes the world better while also making you more happy with yourself. Good guy, that TyJo.

Allentown, Spin Radio 107.1

We don’t get many pranks like ‘Nana’d anymore mostly out of fear of escalation.

Tyler really loves architecture (not really), while Josh is trying to “take all the botanical goods and turn them into sustainable breathing”.

Albany, KISS 102.3

The interviewer’s... interesting. He tries a little comedy bit at the opening that doesn’t really play, but Tyler and Josh play it off by being just as awkward back and lowkey save the interview. There’s cuddling involved.

We now have Tyler on record saying “dick pic”, which is almost as good as Josh’s “penis-sized nipples”.

Peanut butter is better than the Internet. “Reese, you got nice pieces!”

Albany, 99.5 River

The interviewer goes for the rapid-fire mode, which never really works as planned with this band.

Tyler wishes he could have written either “Hey Jude” by the Beatles or “My House” by Flo Rida.

Tyler’s favorite movies are “Donny Darko” and “Signs” (big shock); Josh’s are “Fight Club” and “What About Bob?”

Tyler gets very sassy when the interviewer asks what song they’d like to never play again (guess he’s turned around on “Stressed Out”); Josh states truthfully that designing a setlist for the next album cycle’s going to be a pain because they have no idea what to cut.

Tyler’s TV guilty pleasure: “Friends”. Josh: “Family Guy”.

Their favorite talk show host is Seth Meyer, but “Jimmy [Fallon]’s cool”. They still have a grudge against Conan.

The next place they want to play? They both agree Egypt, because they’re twelve and want to play by the pyramids.

Albany, Fly 92.3:

Tyler gives a big “deep” explanation for why he shaved his head and Josh makes fun of him for it.

Tyler would be honored to take the stage with The Wiggles.

Albany, Pete Kelly Radio: Only one real highlight, but it’s a doozy: another“How They Met” story involving Tyler as a hot air balloon salesman trying to help out Josh and his terrible band, the Lumineers.

Upcoming Shows:

The next week of touring pushes the band further into America’s “heartland” than it’s been in quite some time. Let’s take a look at a couple of these shows and venues, some of which lie a bit off the beaten path.

Show 10: iWireless Center, Moline, Illinois, 1/29

Capacity: 12,000

Tonight’s stop is in one of the smaller urban markets in the United States. Moline is one of the Quad Cities, a grouping of small cities and towns on the Illinois-Iowa border that is perhaps most notable for being the home of the John Deere farm manufacturing company. Despite being a lesser known city nationally, nearly half a million people collectively live in the area, and the iWireless Center should be able to seat plenty of excited fans grateful that they won’t need to drive all the way to Chicago to see an A-list show. As far as I can tell, it’s the first time the band has played in the area, which should make the set extra special.

Show 11: Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum, Madison, Wisconsin, 1/31

Capacity: 10,000

The tour will then loop up north to the capital of Wisconsin. Our Midwestern boys have been playing shows in the state for awhile, with eleven total shows currently under their belt. However, Madison has often been neglected in favor of the bigger city of Milwaukee- this will only be the fourth show in the city and the first since 2014. No offense to any Milwaukee readers, you’re city’s great but I’ve got family in Madison, and I dig the college-town atmosphere (and all the lakes).

The Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum is part of the Alliant Energy Center, a larger entertainment complex. The venue itself has a history stretching back to the 1960s, though it’s become a little neglected since the University of Wisconsin-Madison teams got their own on-campus arena. It still seems like a pretty cool area to go see a show.

Show 12: CenturyLink Center, Omaha, Nebraska, 2/1

Capacity: 19,000

The tour buses will then loop back west to the far side of Iowa for their third show in the state of Nebraska. The band played just outside of Warren Buffet’s base of operations during the Blurryface Tour two years ago, but this will be the first time they will be playing directly in the city.

CenturyLink Center is a massive complex that hosts Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings, U.S. Olympic swim trials, and Creighton University basketball games. There’s going to be a lot of Nebraska and Iowa fans packed into this building. Should be a fun show, but every show is a fun show. I really gotta start coming up with better adjectives.

Show 13: Intrust Bank Arena, Wichita, Kansas, 2/3

Capacity: 15,000

The tour then veers further back down south to the largest city in Superman’s home state. The Air Capital of the World (and, indeed, the state of Kansas) has never directly hosted a concert from the band before- instead, they’ve always played in Oklahoma or the confusingly named Kansas City in the neighboring state of Missouri because geography. Anywho. Next!

Show 14: Denny Sanford Premier Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2/4

Capacity: 12,000

The last show of this week falls in another oft-neglected part of the country. Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota, accounting for nearly a third of the entire state’s population, and a lot of that population can fit in the new Premier Center. Show on the prairie should be a nice way to wrap up the week.

Community Spotlight:

I saw a lot of cool community stuff from this week, but what stuck out most to me in the last week was someone featured by Josh himself on his Twitter: this awesome eight-year-old drummer who has more talent in her pinkie finger at her age than I do in my entire body now. Petition for Milana Nigro to be the one to knock Tyler off his Mario Kart winning streak.

That’s all for this week. Power to the local dreamer.

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#twenty one pilots #tyler joseph #josh dun #top weekly update

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