#ok so i do like the whole “great chaos” vs “great order” thing

[thatbendyfan]

read minecraft the end today

i definitely have some criticism but the way the end was portrayed was neat

(spoilers in the tags)

[mickstart]

what do you think are some iconic/memorable schumi moments? i just got into f1 and would like to know more about him bc somehow i can’t really find anything like that about him.... just stats which are incredibly impressive but i can’t find anything about how he behaved or just anything about his personality..... thanks <3

:) Hi anon, thank you for unleashing the beast.

Ok I love you for asking me this thank you SO MUCH. Welcome to the circus I’m glad you’re here! Also yeah, Schumi is often talked about in terms of statistics and not as a human, Which is a shame bc like! Schumi is fascinating and the dynamics on the grid in late 90s F1 is so much fun! Also, this is mainly going to be late 90s -> early 2010s stuff bc I was born in 98 so uhhh I didn’t properly witness ANY 90s stuff and had to learn about it.

OK so I got super carried away but I’ve divided this into 3 sections: Drives/races that I think showcase some of his talents, human moments we need to talk about more, and Chaotic Little Bitch moments. The key thing to remember w/ Schumi is that he personally tends to be nice but as soon as you put him in a competition, Bastard Mode activates like a cat’s pupils going wide.

I am so sorry for the following short essay. Also some crashes are briefly mentioned but only ones with absolutely no injuries and there’s no details.

Chaotic Little Bitch Moments

Schumi debuted as a SUBSTITUTE driver for Jordan when one of their drivers was in police custody (yes. really.) The highest a Jordan had qualified all year was 10th and in his DEBUT at SPA, one of the toughest tracks, in the middle of the season, Schumi qualified that Jordan 7th! THEN his clutch failed before the first lap was even complete, but Benetton and Jordan WENT TO COURT to fight each other to sign him for their team before the next race in Monza. He couldn’t debut normally he HAD to cause a scene and set the tone.

The Red Strings of Fate: He qualified 7th, his iconic 7 starred helmet, his first victory next year was ALSO at Spa - his first complete race would be at Monza, Ferrari Holy Ground, and he finished 5th which 👀 1) he was immediately racing with The Greats. 2) Mr 5 Championships With Ferrari.

Winning a race by taking a stop and go penalty on the last lap, crossing the finish line in the pits, and making such a complicated argument about said penalty that in a hearing that was SUPPOSED to be Mclaren protesting the race result the stewards scrapped the entire penalty and the 3 who awarded it handed in their licenses??? Iconic.

Austria 2002 where Rubens was ordered to give the win to Michael. And then Michael fucking made him stand on the top step on the podium like “oh no no no RUBENS deserves this” and made a big SHOW out of it and its like “Michael stop you’re not making it heartwarming you’re making it WORSE Michael STOP” The Tension of germany 2010 podium VS the theatricality of THIS podium.

Team orders were banned because of this which also makes this indirectly responsible for Fernando Is Faster Than You having to be a coded message. You can’t escape him,

Blocking Alonso in Monaco qualifying and then, years later in 2010, overtaking Alonso technically illegally at Monaco (the race was ending under safety car, but the safety car doesn’t lead them over the line it pits and they’d crossed the safety car line and the regulations were NOT specific about the rules) and getting a 20 second penalty bc Damon Hill was a steward. Haunting FERNANDO specifically at Monaco like the ghost of christmas past? Getting a harsh penalty because ANOTHER driver he’d fucked over was a steward? Forcing the FIA to rewrite the rulebook to account for his nonsense when he was in his FOURTIES? I don’t know another chaos king.

Winning the 1995 championship by crashing into Damon Hill, getting AWAY with it for some reason, and then trying to do the same thing in 1997 to Villeneuve, failing to do so and simply rebounding off of him harmlessly, almost COMICALLY, and beaching his own car in a gravel trap at which point the FIA said “I have had ENOUGH of you Wacky Races Man!” and disqualified him from the entire championship

Forcing Mika off the track so bad at Spa 2000 that Mika realized the only way he was gonna be able to get past him was to re-invent the overtake and go for it whilst they were passing a backmarker. (The overtake itself is at 2:05 in the video but the build up to it is Important bc the key part it’s not just badass, it only happened bc Mika knew who he was dealing with.)

Spa 1998 was a Ridiculously Chaotic race it truly was the Mugello 2020 of its year, and after a crash at the start that took out almost the entire grid Schumi accidentally collided with Coulthard later in the race. (The teams used to have a spare car at every race then, so the race was able to continue after a restart.) This wasn’t a racing thing, Coulthard was getting lapped. So something in Schumi SNAPS, and he storms down the pitlane and tries to fight Coulthard while the mclaren and ferrari mechanics both hold him back and finally drag him away. He projected into the future, saw Coulthard was gonna talk non-stop shit about Seb, and acted accordingly.

Monaco 2012 Pole don’t talk to me about this I still can’t believe the audacity of this man to get the only pole of his comeback, at MONACO, at the ONE RACE where he had a 5 place grid penalty to take!!

In general, I know Cheating Bad but. I HAVE to admire the brainpower it must take to have the rulebook so memorized that whilst driving an F1 car Schumi could spot a loophole the size of the eye of a needle and then dance through it, forcing the FIA to add ANOTHER page to the rule book specially for him bc nobody else even REALISED that loophole existed.

Human Moments

A quick rant about Mika and Schumi’s entire friendship. After Spa 2000 Mika goes up to Michael, says something like “Don’t ever do that again” then they’re friends again. They had this mutual understanding that Racing was not Reality. This goes all the way back to their F3 days they were rivals AND friends for their entire career. They truly were the Sewis of the era if Sebastian was like 50% more evil. Their entire dynamic is “You’re the only motherfucker in this pit lane who can handle me”. Schumi would do some bullshit and every other driver would throw up their hands in frustration and Mika would just go “Okay” and drive better to put him in his place bc he was the only one who could keep up, and Schumi very visibly LOVED that he’s grinning after Mika owns his entire ass with that overtake at Spa. They were unstoppable force meets immovable object and I’m so sad their rivalry isn’t more talked about bc the way Mika is the only driver who can get him to behave like a normal human being is SO entertaining.

This is a sad one so I won’t link it but he started crying in the 2000 Monza press-conference with his brother and Mika when he equaled one of Senna’s records. The press kept trying to ask questions about it and Mika just has this death grip on his shoulder and tries to get them to stop or let them take a break and it’s so sad but also important to know about.

Once said he didn’t want Mick to race in F1 bc the pressure of his name would put Mick under so much stress and he wanted his son to be happy. (He fully supported Mick in his endeavors! But only after making absolutely sure it was what Mick wanted, and making sure he knew he could just race for fun if he wanted and it didn’t have to be F1)

This whole interview just after Mick was born with the Schumacher family. Special shout out to Gina on his head the entire video and also Corinna talking to the press while Michael is captivated by Mick. Me too Michael.

Once allegedly pleaded to take a stray kitten home from the track?

I reblogged this yesterday but. Sticking like glue to Sebastian at an F1 test and immediately being like “This is my new son he’s gonna go far”. There’s a lot of pictures out there also of Michael being a guest at the karting races Seb went to as a kid and baby Seb visibly losing his fucking mind at being given a trophy by his idol. Every day of my life I think about him trying to ruffle Seb’s hair through his helmet at Brazil 2012

WInning the championship in 2000. Him thanking the entire team individually and pausing mid-celebration to kiss his wife Corinna so tenderly it’s in the F1 opening. Also, the way it literally cuts from the rest of McLaren looking like they’re attending a funeral to Mika grinning at him and hugging him fucking SENDSSSSS me.

Schumi was a little shit in all the 2010-12 press conferences like, lowering Lewis’ chair, playing with a microphone wire, but ESPECIALLY corrupting baby Seb and getting him to mess with Nico Rosberg.

He’s just GOOFY! Like I refuse to let him be remembered as a terrifying force of nature he was so goofy kind of similarly to Seb. PLEASE watch this incredibly awkward interview he did with Coulthard on a golf buggy where they both had to pretend they hadn’t thought about murdering each other at least once. I think Sky F1 should force Brocedes to do this when covid’s over. “Do you mind if I drive?” “Yes.”

EDIT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I forgot the 1999 Canada press conference where Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen get into a water fight and Schumi immediately grabs a towel and hides behind it and is like “I had NOTHING to do with it” 🥺 adorable, actually

A lot of people at Ferrari, including Rob Smedley (who was on the other side of the garage with Felipe Massa so not in his inner circle) have said that a lot of the success of the team came from Schumi’s LEADERSHIP more than anything, that he’d make the team get together to bond all the time. When Schumi moved to Ferrari in 1996 they were NOT dominant. He did the same thing Lewis did - went to a team that everybody said would be a huge mistake and helped build them up behind the scenes.

THIS bit of the Canada 2011 Rewind where his engineer gives him the strategy and he’s like “... OkaAaAaAay?” and then when it turns out to be the wrong strategy he cheerfully tells them it’s too late. Little shit.

Speaking of Mercedes I also wanna say that like. They were a MESS in 2012 and his car DNF’d because of a failing on their part MULTIPLE times. (In Canada qualifying his DRS was stuck open and they couldn’t close it.) He did not say a single bad word about them EVER even though the press used this to attack him non-stop as washed-up and bad without Ferrari to cheat for him. At Ferrari he was the exact same with the team, any bastard antics Schumi had for his rivals did not extend to the engineers and crew.

OK this one is soured bc Top Gear is trash BUT if you were like, a kid in England who followed motorsports? Schumi’s fake reveal as The Stig on Top Gear was like the coolest, sickest thing,

Please view this image of Schumi and Mika when they were young and stupid

Iconic Races

ok so I have limited myself to a few races that show off some of his key strengths!

Hungary 1998 / France 2004 - STRATEGY/SPEED - Schumi switched to a 3 stop strategy in 98 and a FOUR STOP strategy in 04 and won both races. In order for the strategy call to work he’d have to basically make every single lap a qualifying style ‘flying lap’ and you best fucking believe he DID THAT. God I fucking miss when Ferrari was the king of strategy.

Argentina 1998 -  has it all. Talent, battling Mika, pit lane mind games with mclaren, and bullying coulthard xxx

Spain 1996 / a majority of the wet races - RAIN - One of Schumi’s nicknames was Rain Master bc he was so fucking good in the wet. If it started raining and you were a Schumi stan you were cackling evilly before the red lights even went out. I single out 1996 bc it was his first win for Ferrari and it was unexpected but in most wet races, even Canada 2011 post comeback, you can see Schumi thriving.

Malaysia 1999 - Schumi missed pretty much the entire second half of the season with a broken leg, came back for the last 2 races with everybody murmuring about whether he would struggle, and immediately put the Ferrari on pole. Also worth noting is that he was the number 2 driver for these 2 races bc his teammate Irvine was fighting Mika for the championship and he went along with that without complaint, allowing Ferrari to win the constructor’s championship if not the driver’s.

Monza 2002, 03, 04, or 06 just because it has the energy of the tifosi kneeling at the feet of an idol to their red god.

Brazil 2006 - Fuck All Y’all - Schumi’s last race for Ferrari. He got a puncture and ended up almost lapped, and then drove his way back from that to 4th bc he couldn’t go out without reminding us he’s a bad bitch.

Monza 2012 - Defending - Don’t tell F1 Twitter that there’s actual footage of Lewis and Michael having a genuine lengthy battle on track but DO watch Michael defending like a motherfucker and Lewis breathing down his neck for half the race we need to talk about this more.

Valencia 2012 - This isn’t necessarily anything special but I cried in my living room over the only podium of his comeback so it goes on here. It doesn’t have the same impact if you haven’t been watching him struggle with the car for years, DNF-ing from car failure most of 2012, and having BBC F1 telling you he’s washed up every single weekend, but you can just enjoy one of the best drives of FERNANDO’S entire career as he DRAGS that Ferrari by its hair to a home grand prix win and then watch the crowds embrace him like jesus and also Schumi being happy on the podium. Also, the very start of this clip from the press conference: him forgetting what language he’s supposed to be speaking 

Basically, Schumi was a hyper-competitive ambitious bitch who turned into a goofball as soon as he switched the engine off. This is by NO MEANS everything if I was making an exhaustive best races guide I’d do more research and another post but I hope this is what you were looking for?? THANK YOU SO MUCH for letting me go MAXIMUM SPECIAL INTEREST and I apologize.

[kjack89]

Zoom

For the 2020 Same-Prompt Fic Challenge as set up by @shitpostingfromthebarricade, which had to use the quote, “I didn’t know you could do that”.

This is a different take on a COVID-19 self-isolation fic, mainly because I started my Quarantine AU before my state, at least, actually had a stay at home order in effect. That’ll come up at some point in that fic, but in the meantime, I thought it would be fun to come at it from a slightly different approach.

E/R, modern AU, Zoom call-related shenanigans and hijinks because why not?

Enjolras took a deep breath before clicking the link to the launch the first official virtual Les Amis meeting. The Stay at Home order had gone into effect almost two weeks, but with the chaos, Enjolras had made the decision to delay meetings. Between the Stay at Home order and navigating the schedules of those members who were essential workers, it had taken this long to find a time where they could all actually be on the Zoom call together, and even though he knew it was just going to be some of his closest friends, he still felt inexplicably nervous.

His nerves disappeared almost instantly when the first person he saw was Grantaire, hunched in the dark, a beer bottle just in view at his side. “Are you the first one on?” Enjolras asked, and Grantaire shrugged.

“It wasn’t like I was doing anything else,” he said, a little sourly, “especially considering—”

He was cut off by the tell-tale chime of someone else joining the meeting, and Combeferre appeared on screen. “Good evening,” Combeferre said, and Enjolras grinned at him. 

“I know you and I just talked but it’s really nice to see you.”

Grantaire mimed throwing up. “Get a room, you two,” he said.

Combeferre flipped him off as several more people joined the meeting at once. For a few minutes, there was the usual wild cacophony of nearly a dozen people having at least a half dozen conversations at once, and Enjolras waited patiently for the general din to die down so that he could get started.

As per always, whether virtually or in person, Grantaire, Joly and Bossuet were the last ones to stop talking, and everyone else had mostly stopped when Joly asked, curiosity clear in his voice, “Grantaire, where the hell in your apartment are you?”

Grantaire glanced around himself. “Oh, uh, I’m in the closet – physically, obviously not metaphorically.”

He winked, and after a few scattered laughs from the group at large, Bossuet asked the question most seemed to be thinking. “Why are you in the closet?”

“Because my walls are paper thin and I didn’t want my mic picking up every time a train goes past?” Grantaire said, as if it was obvious.

Joly arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, but you’ve got your headphones on, so would it even pick it up?”

Grantaire rolled his eyes and sighed. “Ok, fine, truthfully, I’m hungover as fuck and the dark in the closet helps. Happy?”

“Hang on,” Feuilly said, jumping in, “It’s five in the evening and you’re hungover still?”

“What the fuck is this, twenty questions?” Grantaire snapped, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Besides, what the fuck else is there to do in isolation besides get drunk all the time?”

Enjolras cleared his throat. “As ever-fascinating as the subject of Grantaire’s drinking is,” he said, a hint of disapproval in his voice, “how about we actually get back on subject?” His arched eyebrow was enough to silent the rest of the conversation, and he allowed himself a brief moment of triumph before continuing, “Alright, I’m just going to go ahead and mute everyone— There. Ok. So obviously the biggest thing we have to worry about is further degradation of workers’ rights in light of this pandemic. We know the right-wing talking points, we know that they’re going to pivot pretty quickly toward being ok with sacrificing poor folks, and black and brown folks, and we need to figure out a way to safely demonstrate that we will do everything in our power to stop that from happening. We’re about three weeks out from International Workers Day, so I think that means—”

He broke off as his phone chimed. “Oh, hang on a second, I’m so sorry, I forgot to put it on silent—”

Again he broke off, this time because of the text from Combeferre: You appear to have muted yourself when you muted everyone else.

He looked in horror at his screen, at the 20-odd messaged in the Zoom chat, and at the telltale microphone icon with a line through it. He closed his eyes and counted to five before clicking to unmute himself. “Was no one going to tell me sooner?” he asked with a sigh.

“In fairness, we did,” Courfeyrac said after unmuting himself, grinning. “Not our fault you didn’t bother to check the chat.”

“Besides, we’re all social distancing,” Bossuet added. “What did you want us to do, hop in a car and drive to your place to let you know you were on mute?”

Enjolras gritted his teeth. “Preferably, yes,” he said, glaring at the screen. “Though it isn’t actually necessary, considering—”

“Why don’t we just cut to the chase and go over whatever damned document you shared us on before this whole thing began?” Grantaire interrupted. “Because I’m almost out of beer and at this point, this meeting could’ve been an email.”

There was what certainly sounded like a murmur of agreement, and Enjolras bristled. “Fine,” he snapped. “Everyone, open the document and let me know when you’ve got it opened.”

“And how would you like us to let you know, dear leader?” Grantaire asked, his voice saccharine sweet. “Should we all raise our hands when we’ve got it? Blink twice if we aren’t able to get into it? Perhaps bring into song and—”

“Or you could just tell us if you aren’t able to access it,” Courfeyrac interrupted, saving Enjolras from the rant he had been a second away from launching into.

“Besides which, he can tell if you’ve clicked away from the Zoom meeting by using Zoom’s attention-tracking feature,” Combeferre added, a note of warning in his voice.

Enjolras blinked. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, sounding surprised. “That seems like a huge invasion of privacy! Should we be switching to another platform? I don’t want—”

“The feature was permanently removed at the beginning of April,” Jehan interrupted, sounding bored. “The easiest way is probably just to see if we’re all in the Google Doc.”

“Right,” Enjolras said, and while it was hard to tell with the lighting in his shot, it certainly looked like he blushed, just a little. “That’s what I was planning on doing.”

Joly let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like a hastily-stifled laugh. “In that case, it looks like we’re all in the doc.”

Enjolras heaved a sigh. “Very well,” he said. “Then let’s get started.”

The next twenty or so minutes of the meeting went without a hitch, and Enjolras felt himself finally relaxing, feeling much more like he would at any regular Les Amis meeting. 

When they had finished with the document Enjolras sent before the meeting, he pivoted the conversation. “So obviously the federal government has been focused on mortgage relief, which is great for the owner class, but doesn’t do a hell of a lot for the renter class. I had Combeferre compile some statistics and proposed solutions, and I’m just going to share my screen with everyone to show those, give me a second—”

“Great time for me to get a refill,” Grantaire said, draining his beer bottle. “Someone chat me if I miss any other great technology SNAFUs.”

With that, the thumbnail of his image went black, just displaying a capital R, and Enjolras rolled his eyes before turning back to the statistics Combeferre had sent him. “Ok, they should be shared now, so Combeferre, go ahead and walk everyone through them, and I’ll just scroll through as you go.”

“Absolutely,” Combeferre said, adjusting his glasses, his tone already sounding professorial. “So let’s start with this chart demonstrating renters vs owners in all the city wards.”

He took over from there in earnest and Enjolras muted himself before sitting back in his chair and breathing a sigh of something close to relief. As little trouble as he had talking in front of any variety of large groups of people, he didn’t do so well in virtual meetings, and it was nice to let someone else do the talking for the moment.

A hand touched Enjolras’s shoulder and he practically jumped up, whirling around before instantly relaxing again when he saw who it was. “Jesus Christ,” he huffed. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire said, sounding anything but. “I told you I needed another beer.”

“I know, but I didn’t think you’d stop in here on your way back to the closet.” Enjolras couldn’t quite stop the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Sorry to make you go in the closet, by the way – it was the only part of my apartment I could think of that, well, didn’t look like my apartment.”

Grantaire shrugged. “It’s honestly not bad,” he said, “though being out here is infinitely better.”

Enjolras nodded sympathetically. “Better lighting,” he offered, and Grantaire rolled his eyes.

“Better company,” he corrected, leaning down to press a kiss to Enjolras’s forehead.

Enjolras laughed, somewhat breathily, and tilted his head up to capture Grantaire’s lips with his own. “It’s not like you don’t get to see me on the screen,” he pointed out, and Grantaire gave him a look.

“That’s not the same and you know it,” he huffed.

“There’s only another half hour left,” Enjolras told him. “And then after that, I’m all yours.”

“No,” Grantaire corrected. “After that, you’ve got at least three other meetings you’re supposed to be sitting in on, so forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but—”

He let out an ‘oof’ as Enjolras pulled him down onto his lap. “Yes, but for those meetings, I don’t have to be on screen and I also don’t care all that much about those, which means that you and I can spend the entire time—” He tilted Grantaire’s chin up with two fingers, his grin matching Grantaire’s. “—doing this.”

He kissed Grantaire, deeper this time, his mouth opening against his when Grantaire ran his fingers through Enjolras’s hair and—

“Um, Enjolras?”

Enjolras pulled back from Grantaire, who groaned and leaned forward to rest his head against Enjolras’s shoulder, and reached out quickly to unmute himself. “Yeah, Combeferre, what’s up?”

There was a moment of silence before Combeferre cleared his throat delicately and asked, “You do know that when you present your screen, we can still see you, right?”

Enjolras and Grantaire froze. “Wait, what?” Enjolras asked weakly, as Grantaire repeated, “You can see— Oh, shit.”

Without warning, Grantaire practically rolled off of Enjolras’s lap, assumedly dropping out of frame as he fell heavily to the floor. Of course, judging by the cat calls and hysterical laughter that greeted them, it was far too little, far too late.

Surprisingly, Joly was one of the first to stop laughing, mostly so that he could ask, mock-stern, “Enjolras, what is Grantaire doing at your place in violation of the Stay at Home order?”

“It’s not technically in violation of the Stay at Home order,” Enjolras muttered, his face beet red.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bahorel asked.

Grantaire reappeared on screen as he slowly struggled to his feet. “It means, uh, it means we’ve been keeping something from you,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “And when the stay at home order was announced, Enjolras thought it would make more sense for me to stay with him than to stay at my place.”

“How—” Courfeyrac started, his voice cracking. “How could you possibly keep this from us?! During a mandated isolation order?! I could have been living for this instead of rewatching Love is Blind a million times on Netflix!”

Enjolras sighed. “We didn’t want to tell anyone until we knew for a fact it was going to work.”

“And?” Jehan prompted. “Is it?”

Enjolras and Grantaire exchanged glances, a smile returning to both of their faces. “Well, we haven’t killed each other yet,” Grantaire said bracingly. “So I guess it just might be.”

“Ok, but you have to tell us—” Bossuet started, but Enjolras cut him off.

“We aren’t really going to spend the rest of the time talking about this, are we?” he asked exasperatedly.

“Why, you got someplace better to be?” Courfeyrac asked, clearly still smarting over having not been told earlier.

Enjolras considered it for just a moment. “Actually, yes,” he said. “We’ll reconvene next week.”

With that, he clicked the Leave Meeting button, turning to look up at Grantaire. “What do you say, want to go do something better?”

Grantaire grinned. “Absolutely,” he said, fumbling for his phone in his pocket, where the Zoom call was still active. “Let me just—”

Before he could leave the meeting on his phone, they could both hear Courfeyrac squawk, “Hang on, did he just hang up on us?” at the same time Bahorel demanded, “Wait, how is Marius now the host?”

Grantaire laughed as he left the meeting, sliding his phone back in his pocket before pulling Enjolras out of his chair. “Now,” he murmured, leaning in, “where were we?”

Enjolras kissed him hungrily, both of them stumbling towards Enjolras’s bedroom and quickly stripping out of their clothes and falling onto Enjolras’s bed. After a long moment, Enjolras pulled away to glare at Grantaire’s pile of clothing, from which his phone kept chirping obnoxiously. ”Who is blowing up your phone right now?”

“It’s Venmo,” Grantaire said with a laugh. “Just our friends, paying me what I’m due. Now get back here.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes but went back to kissing him before pulling away again. “Hang on, does that mean that you bet on us?”

“You bet your ass I did,” Grantaire said, grinning. “Easiest hundred bucks I’ve ever made, and when the Stay at Home order is lifted, I am using that money to take you out—”

“To a locally-owned, locally-sourced, vegetarian restaurant?” Enjolras asked, only half-teasing.

“To wherever you want to go,” Grantaire told him. “Now shut up and kiss me.”

For once, Enjolras was only too happy to oblige.

[msfbgraves]

I see you, villain? The problem of Percival Graves

Thinking about the othering of villains, of course I thought of Percival Graves (because when do I not think of Percival Graves, aight) - and the problems he creates if you present him as a villain. Because in the world Rowling created he cannot have that function. In fact, Percival Graves a living, breathing indictment of JKR’s morals.

More under the cut because this is going to be long!

Simply put, a villain has to embody everything the narrative, and the audience, instinctively and collectively knows is wrong. In-story, a few characters can understandably choose their path, but for the most part - no. What they do is antithetical to the morality of the audience. Yetr what Graves does, for most of the movie, is not clearly villainous. In fact, hardly anything he does is.

Hang on, though! He wanted to kill Tina and Newt without so much as a trial! And we know she is good, right? She works at  MACUSA, she tries to protect the wizarding world, she likes our hero, her sister is a sweetheart...

Graves also works at MACUSA. Queenie works at MACUSA. So that cannot readily code them as evil. Graves also works to protect the wizarding world. He’s shown to be a kind man to Tina, at least - he is not an all out bully. He is also more openmindend than the leader of the supposed good guys, Seraphina Picquery.

Then, maybe, the point is that MACUSA is not good, and aligning yourself with them is an evil thing to do. Fair enough, but if that is the case - what does that make Tina and Queenie at the end of the film?

Getting back to the fact he wanted to kill Tina and Newt...

Yes, he wanted to execute Tina and Newt. And as such, was exercising powers that the institution they both represent, sanctions. Again, the institution our heroes support, and if not do not actively oppose, condones this. In that light, is Graves the only villain? Or is he supported by a greater evil our heroes also align themselves with? To the audience the execution order is a great big no-no, but in-story, Graves is completely within his moral rights to do what he does.

But Graves is manipulating Credence.

Yes. Graves is manipulating Credence. And in doing so, is doing more for him than anyone has ever done for him before, including Tina. There’s little Modesty, but even she turns away from him in the end, and, being ten, there’s not much she can do for him up until that point. Tina went after his Ma once, and that changed exactly nothing as he was made to forget the whole incident. (The script implies that he hasn’t but that wasn’t made clear other than in one look, so it’s hard to take that as fact.)The rest of the wizarding world has left him to rot for his whole life. Graves wants something from him, yes - but he also promises him something in return and does him smaller favours: he listens to him, more than once (”You’re upset. It’s your mother again. What did she say? Tell me.”) he heals his wounds, he puts a meal in him (in the Lego movie at least) and he gives him physical affection.  Conditional love is an abuse tactic, but in context, this can hardly be seen as a villanous action, not when our ‘good guys’ are worse than useless.

Graves wasn’t going to make good on his promises to Credence, though. He dropped Credence like a hot potato when he didn’t need him anymore.

Yes. Graves’ in-story, truly immoral flaw is that he is racist towards Squibs. But you know, so is almost the entire wizarding world. They also condone the subjugation of non-human magical creatures, as Newt is all too aware. Graves is certainly no hero, but this alone also can’t make him a villain in the context of the world he is in, because then everybody is.

He hit and verbally abused Credence.

He did (poor boy). It wasn’t a random moment - more of a ‘Snap out of it, we have no time for this’ we’ve seen people do in movies before, but that was inexcusable. That’s his society’s racism in full view.

He went after Newt.

Of course he did. Newt was a fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast - it really was kind of his job.

He went after Tina.

Again, fugitive trying to tamper with a dangerous beast. Kind of his job.

He tried to manipulate Credence again

He tried to save his life. In order to use him later, perhaps, but he might have absolutely made good on his promise to get Credence a place in the wizarding world now he knew he was a wizard (and his racism thereby no longer a factor). (”You are a miracle. Come with me. Think of what we could achieve together.”)

The Graves we’re presented with is a manipulative, dangerous man, complicit in an evil system - but so are they all. In this system, human life, wizard or no, is extremely cheap. Yes, Graves can execute on a whim, but so can, and does, Picquery. She too takes life for some perceived greater good, just as we already know Grindelwald does.

The one who calls this all out? The one who refuses to be complicit? Is Graves!

If the wizarding status quo is as rotten as it is, being opposed to it cannot make a character villainous. And yes, when Graves is revealed to be Grindelwald - and as a visual shorthand is immediately othered more (he is made uglier and is spouting nonsense) this point still stands. Yes, he’s killed people to further his objectives. Well, so has MACUSA! They’ve killed Credence! They would have killed Newt and Tina. And is there any justice for the non-magical people that get killed due to MACUSA’s negligence? (Chastity Barebone? Shaw - he may be an asshole, but what of his Dad? All those other people Credence’s unchecked magic has injured or killed?)

JKR desperately wanted to write a good-vs-evil dichotomy, but what she has actually written is a chaos-vs-order dichotomy. True, a lot of what codes our heroes as good is their rejection of of the established, inhumane order, but so does Graves. Yes, he is ultimately a worse person than our heroes because he is a racist and abuser where Tina, Queenie and Newt are not. but that is not what the movie is about. Our heroes are not trying to fight for magical and non-magical integration - that is supposedly what Grindelwald (and so too, Graves) is doing. They are trying to restore order. That’s what the whole conflict is about. Order vs chaos. In the beginning, Newt’s creatures cause chaos that needs to be stopped. Credence causes chaos that needs to be stopped. Well, they succeed - in the end, Newt’s creatures are caught, the non magical people neutralised, Credence is killed, and Graves - who has declared his opposition to order openly - is defeated.

That is also what technically makes Graves the villain of this story - he is very much trying to further chaos by using an Obscurial. But when order is inhumane, trying to disrupt it cannot be seen as evil.

That’s why Grindelwald, as a villain, really doesn’t work. The audience isn’t convinced the current order should survive. After all, what good does it do? Why perpetuate an institutional evil?

In the second film, they have to ramp up the otherness of Grindelwald - he is uglier and very much more chaotic and he kills more people than the established order does - at least, so we’re told. He goes on causing massive chaos, and this actually, is coded as one of the Crimes of Grindelwald - but the audience doesn’t buy it. Going back to the first film, what we’re presented with as the villain is a handsome, extremely competent, eloquent, manipulative and abusive (granted), but at times merely friendly influential man who is the sole source of comfort for a suffering teen, whose life he tries to save. (For his own ends, ok, but Credence himself is also not entirely pure - he does cause multiple deaths.) Graves then goes on to rebel, magnificently, against a morally corrupt world order, because he could not save Credence’s life. 

I kind of stan that last bit, too.

Now, I’m not surprised that JKR’s subconscious believes that order should be protected against chaos - she is a middle aged white billonaire trans exclusionary radical feminist. But the rest of the world really isn’t that on board with her “The world is fucked but let’s  keep it that way” worldview. The end of the first film still kind of works because both Newt and Tina are rebels at heart who are falling in love and Queenie is also saying “Kindly fuck off” to the established order. But it is a bittersweet ending, because a young troubled man could not be saved and a handsome, badass rebel turned into a bleached pineapple.

Or did he? Where is he?

Where is Percival Graves...?

[charliejrogers]

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis

Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.

Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.

But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?

So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.

Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?

Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.

But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.

The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.

That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.

These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.

And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.

Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.

And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)

[theheightofdishonor]

Top 10 Battles in the Metal Saga (in no particular order)

Kyoya-Ryuga 

There aren’t many battles that are just about raw power the way this one is. The whole thing is just so extra, from ruining the stadium before the battle even begins to ending with Ryuga’s possession and Kyoya passing out with a dragon’s tail going through his chest. The power-play between these two is riveting. And on top of that, it’s the closest anyone but Gingka and Nemesis ever gets to beating Ryuga. However, it does annoy me that Kyoya is the only one of Ryuga’s opponents in Battle Bladers who comes out unaffected in the long-term. After their respective battles, Hikaru retires from Beyblade, Tsubasa suffers with possession, and both experience a healthy dose of PTSD but apparently, Kyoya gets away with no signs of it? I call bullshit. 

2.Da Xian - Julian 

If you didn’t love Da Xiang before, you had to after this battle. It did a brilliant job of highlighting how good Dashan is at manipulating people, and doing so “coolly, and brilliantly”. Dashan sees the scene as the opportunity it is and coaxes Julian from a disheartened shell of his former self to someone who’s willing to try again without the man even knowing. Oh, and he gets Julian to appreciate the value of his friends too. And beats him in battle easily. And delivers, “You think you and I are alike? That’s an insult, ” decimating Julian’s remaining pride. Talk about being cool. (Chao Xin should definitely take pointers)

3. Gingka vs 100 (supposedly) Face Hunters 

I had a hard time choosing between this and the battle earlier in the episode where Gingka first saves Kenta from Face Hunters, but I think this holds more impact and the one Kenta thinks is more notable. As a fight itself, it’s short compared to some of the other more epic battles on this list, and its placement is more about the consequences of it than the contents of the actual battle itself.  It’s the moment where Kenta’s admiration for Gingka really cements, and the moment that Kyoya takes a serious interest in him, shaping his relationship with two people who will be monumental in his life. Also, Gingka looks super cool and baby Kenta is adorable. 

 4.  Excalibur-Gan Gan Galaxy 

This battle has one of my favourite scenes of ALL TIME- Masamune single-handedly cutting through Sophie and Wales’s joint special move. Let me just take a second to gush about how powerful he is and how much I love him and how he deserves so much more love and did I mention he stopped the twins in their track with ONE MOVE. Your fave could never but if I don’t stop now, i’ll be talking about Masamune all day. 

The visual of Pegasus and Striker moving as one force, with the music crescendoing only for Destroyer to cut them down at the climax, is breathtaking. Seriously, I’ve watched that one scene on repeat and my breath catches. 

I love to see Masamune and Gingka work together as a team, especially because it’s not their preferred dynamic and it doesn’t always come easily to them. But when they try, they’re magic together, partially because they’re so alike. This is the only battle where we get the full force of the Y-Masamune-Gingka dynamic, a god-tier trio who can only possess one brain cell when they’re together because otherwise, they’d be way too strong. Let’s be real. If these morons actually combined their intelligence, they would have crushed Excalibur to dust. We need more scenes with them tbh

As a side note, it was not at all ok for these guys to crash the festival or for Yu to ruin a culturally important arena. It’s played off way to lightheartedly for my tastes.  It’s not even the only time they’re insensitive- in Fury, Yu and Kyoya damage ancient ruins and Gingka’s group explicitly disobeys orders to not step on a sacred volcano. The whole thing is kinda gross and the Metal Saga should address its serious disregard for other cultures. Sophie losing her shit on a literal 12 year old was funny though. 

5. The Legendary Bladers-Nemesis part 2 

This is a pretty long battle, I linked it to where the battle begins but it doesn’t end until the end of the next episode. There’s a lot about this battle that drives me crazy- like why are you people just letting Kenta destroy himself, why are the strongest bladers in the world who were specifically chosen for this battle unable to withstand for more than two hits, etc  BUT- this is when Ryuga hands over the Star Fragment which is cool and emotional enough to let everything else slide. It’s a pretty satisfying conclusion to the Kenta-Ryuga arc and rings parallel to Metal Fusion down to Ryuga pulling a Storm Pegasus and disappearing into thin air.Which talking about, I will forever be mad Storm Pegasus doesn’t ever come into play after Metal Fusion. Shogun Steel would have been such a perfect time to bring Storm Pegasus back to play and assure in a new era- such wasted potential, but I digress. 

Oh, and friendly reminder that Yu’s Inferno Blast breaks through Rago’s barrier while 8 Legendary Bladers combined couldn’t leave a dent on Nemesis. 

6. Kenta-Reiji

Talking about emotional, if you didn’t cry during this battle, you’re a liar- it’s painful to watch. The entire thing with Kenta using Libra’s performance tip and his insistence that he has to win for Yu- it breaks your heart. Reiji is such a great villain because he does exactly what he’s meant to do- make the audience be invested in him. He’s so unnecessarily cruel, so irredeamable, and this episode drills that into your skull. Even the spectators of the match can’t look on as Reiji tortured Kenta well after Sagittario has stopped spinning. 

7. Easter Island

It would take too long to name everyone involved in this, so i’m not going to. But boy is it a ride You’ve got King starting it off with Chris for insulting/defeating/humiliating Masamune- a noble cause if there ever was one. His impassioned defense of his boyfriend is one of the best speeches/declarations in the Saga and is also 80% of the reason this battle is on the list. The guy has his priorities straight, ok. Gingka says it’s either Masamune’s feelings or the world and King chooses Masamune, no questions, no hesitations. Can’t say I blame him. Especially after seeing the heartbreak on Masamune’s face when Chris insults him. But of course, the world is actually more important so 

 Gingka jumps in to stop King which as Benkai mentions, you can’t stop him from battling by actually battling him, so I don’t know what Gingka was thinking. Johannes’s lackies, including Aguma and the Beylin Fist, joins the battle, prompting Zeo, Toby, etc to also join. Then Ryuga appears and starts draining Chris’s power before Kenta stops him (thus publically revealing their affiliation to the world) and the two disappear. Literally everyone is involved, Johannes tells Chris to “man up” when he dares to show pain that Ryuga is literally stealing his power away but then vanishes because he doesn’t want to face Gingka head on yet. Can you say hypocrite? And while this was all happening, Johannes somehow managed to buy Chris’s loyalties.

It’s insane and so much fun. 

8.Tsubasa-Jack

I didn’t expect to put this on the list but I watched it recently and had a newfound appreciation for it so here it is. While the team battle with Excalibur was the climax of Tsubasa’s arc, this was the resolution. It is arguably Tsubasa’s best battle of the series. He made his recovery with Excalibur, had a practice run with the Garcias, and by this battle, Tsubasa is better than ever. There’s a satisfaction in watching Tsubasa beat Jack with ease. After struggling the entire season, it's very cathartic. There’s this one bit where Jack is complaining about battling Ryuga and how Tsubasa can’t possibly know the disappointment he felt  and Tsubasa snaps, because how fucking dare he, who the fuck did Jack think he is. Again, very cathartic.

Irrelevant, but this episode has some of the best quotes including gems like

 “What is this? A bunch of creepy pictures”; 

“Oh dear Tsubasa” queue Jack asking for a battle; 

“You’re really lacking in the culture department” - Jack to Madoka,  “

The rest of Gan-Gan Galaxy are common, unrefined types”.

 The list never ends. Do yourself a favour and watch the episode.

9. Zoe-Toby-Masamune

This is the only season where there’s no one Final Battle but instead two separate climactic moments- Ryuga and Gingka working together to stop Hades City from melting down(?) and Toby and Zeo  fighting to bring Toby back to normal. 

Unlike the Finales in Fusion and Fury, this one’s private, personal. Not only were Ryuga-Gingka battle and the Battle against Nemesis attended by a lot of people, they were also widely broadcasted across the world. In comparison, Toby, Zeo and Masamune (and Ziggurat at one point) are the only ones to witness the Finale in Masters. It’s a very intimate moment. Their friendship is fractured-Toby's brainwashed,  Zeo was manipulated, and there’s still tension because Masamune left them in a time of need. The two of them are finally confronting just how much their friendship has strained: Masamune never imagined Zeo would resent him when he only ever wanted to fulfill Toby’s wish; he’s almost offended Zeo would think so badly of him. On the other hand, Zeo wrestles between accepting Ziggurat manipulated him but also his very valid resentment towards Masamune. They both hurt each other but get past it and forgive each other for the sake of their best friend. Bey battles are when bladers communicate through each other and in this one, these three use it to find their way back to each other. 

10.  

Gingka-Kyoya

Of course, the list wouldn’t be complete without a Gingka-Kyoya battle. Despite Kyoya being Gingka’s second biggest rival, they only have 3 complete battles with a clear winner. (Kyoya is disqualified in Survival Battle, and neither won in the Championships Team battle or the one in Fury). Despite there being so few options, it was still hard for me to choose because they’re all brilliant and my opinion changes every other day. 

Honestly, I didn’t remember why I chose this battle, so I went back in and re-watched it- SO many thoughts. For one thing, Kyoya sounds like a cheesy bat man villain.  Seriously though, the battle feels so off to me because in this episode, Kyoya is more or less just another evil villain; a pale foreshadow of what Ryuga will become in the Final Battle. I’m not even kidding. This hits almost the exact beats that the Gingka-Ryuga battle will.  I didn’t like this battle when I re-watched it for this post. Gingka and Kyoya’s battles are important because of the history and bond they share and in this battle, neither of those are solidified and it’s just not as satisfying. 

I will admit though that this battle was important for them, mostly Kyoya who was headed towards unhinged-Ryuga territory before Gingka saved him. It kickstarts Kyoya into being the lovable grump we know he’s capable of being and creates a debt towards Gingka which in turn develops into an actual friendship. It’s an important step of their journey and I can’t begrudge it too much ig. If you really want to watch a Gingka-Kyoya battle for non-thematic reasons, though, I recommend the World Championships or the one in Metal Fury Ep 1

[kaiju-z]

DnD 5e One Shot - The Dragon and The King

So, last saturday our group had our second one shot. I’m writing this up first, because the first One Shot was a Winter Solstice one that takes place in the near future of our party and stuff happens in it (will write down an episode on that once we catch up).

Our ranger @unholysavior​ was the DM for that one, so our regular dm @lozwithasideofcheese​ got to play with us again as a player.

Our party consisted of:

Reed, the Firbolg Ranger (as played by our Goblin Barbarian player Hayden) and his companion, the mountain lion and BEST GIRL Ginger;

Kit, the Changeling Rogue (as played by our DM);

Gamin Steak the Eldarin Necromancer (as played by our Half-Orc bard @langsty-mc-langstface​);

Nemo Olzien, te Aasimar Paladin (as played by our Air Genasi Monk, @kittehr​);

and lastly Esteban “Ban” Carrera, the Halfling Cleric, as played by me.

We started at 5th level and were called to the court of King Adavier (a rather empty court as we found out later on). He tasked us with the job of arming ourselves in the town of Greenburrow/Greenborough (I’m not sure on how it’s written), climb a nearby mountain and fight a 500 year old tyranical red dragon atop the Stone’s Peak of the mountain.

He will pay us “handsomely” 40 gold pieces each for the task and immediatelly we should’ve figured something was wrong with the job. It felt off. But I think we were mainly distracted with Gamin’s shenanigans. Gamin was a bit unhinged (and by a bit, I mean a lot) and almost dove out of a window.

He also secured himself bones from the royal catacombs??? I don’t think we ever followed up on that.

After some shenanigans (for some reason I wrote down that the king sleeps commando style?! Gamin was great, XD) in the court and introductions to each other outside the king’s castle, we made our way to GB. On the way there we avoided a fight with highwaymen?? I think that was a thing that could have happened. But we were too perceptive to be caught by surprise, so they never made their move.

Ban, after some reluctance, ended up riding on Ginger’s back along the way to GB and Reed talked to some horses to get their take on how they were doing in the service of rent horses (Tap once for doing ok, tap twice for nah).

Kit basically robbed Gamin in plain sight, but we all rolled low enough to where we didn’t see her pull that off.

We learn that Gamin doesn’t remember where he lives, but he wants to go home. He wasn’t always like this, the insightful Ban understands from his rolls (It felt so nice to play a character, who doesn’t roll low on wisdom checks X’D). And before we reach the outskirts, everyone but Kit flexes. Yep. Even Ginger.

In the outskirts of the town we meet a black dragonborn named “Dennar” (or Donnar? I’m not sure on the pronounciation), who lives outside of town in a barn, painted black. Gamin adopts him immediatelly.

From Denar’s snoot to our ears, we learn that Sleekclaw isn’t a baddie. In fact, he’s the protector of these lands. Kind and wise. Which gets us to start questioning the king’s motives. (Us not being locals, but travelers from our own paths, we don’t know much about the local lore).

It seems that ever since the king took the throne, he has been a tyranical ruler, who would wreck any town within his kingdom??? He held hostility towards all the non-humany races (Dragonborn and Tieflings included).

We comfort the troubled DB and he basically joined the party from that point (cue the dm making a sheet for Denar, while we have a break).

We continue on the way to the town and find a sword amidst burned buildings. But not from above, which corroborates Dennar’s story to us. We learn, through Nemo, that the sword is cursed and that diamonds are growing from it. According to Reed, the sword is infused with Conjuration type magic. After some more shenanigans between Ban and Gamin (They have a very Order vs Chaos dynamic developing here), Gamin uses a clever way to carry the sword, as it may be useful for later.

The king took power 5 years prior and since then things have been going bad. My favorite quote from the one shot came next. “ It’s like a royalty card! You need to punch a card in corruptness.”

We reach the town, which is covered in diamons of various sizes. It’s disconcerning as we enter town. Greenborough is a small town with a few shops. But that doesn’t really matter, because it’s overrun by these black, red and purple diamonds that have grown all over the place.

Further north in town is the castle of the Lord and Lady, who run the township. Gamin looks at a tree and starts crying after a trip to the secret chat. My heart 8(  Dennar taps him. “You ok?” Gamin: “Peachy!”

Big oof.

Gamin suddenly decides to run for the castle and we end up following him inside. Once in, we all make will saves and for all we know, we all pass. We find the lady, a green tiefling with heart shaped horns,curled up close to the staircase, looking traumatized. There’s blood up the staircase.

Ban tries to comfort the woman, while upstairs, Gamin finds a door blocked by diamonds. And starts magic missiling the shit out o the diamonds. Once he hears a faint cry for help from the other side.

After a perception check (we made SO MANY in this one shot, amazing), Ban noticed that diamonds were slowly growing on the woman’s wrists and throat. It seems that some kind of diamond plague had reached this town???

Gamin shatters a diamond and sees a red tiefling, stuck under diamonds inside the room that was blocked by the diamonds.

It’s at this point that things go bad. Dennar’s legs are petrified to the ground because of diamonds, growing on him (I guess he failed his save D: )

Through quick thinking on everyone’s part we managed to save the Lord and Lady AND Dennar, thanks to Kit’s swing with the greatsword, taking out the crystals on the lady, Reed bringing the Lord to Ban and Ban using some spells to restore both the Lord and Dennar to a non-plagued state.

The couple embrace and we learn more about what happened.

Yep, the king’s a piece of shit and needs to go down. We discuss a gameplan and ultimately agree to talk with Sleekclaw for back up. (I mean, come on. You give us a dragon, we gotta talk to the guy at least!) Ban promisses to keep Kit safe, as she doesn’t want to die before becoming an adult.

Also further developement happens between Gamin and Ban. Ban explains his faith (He’s a Life Domain cleric to Lady Istus). and Gamin is not impressed. Ban understands.

The party go to Aurora’s peak, where Sleekclaw’s cave is. We have a Proclaimers montage. It’s great.

After a callback to when Gamin befriended Dennar, Sleekclaw joins the party and flies us to the king’s domain, where he disguies himself as a person. Kit stealths like a boss and basically becomes a backpack for Nemo.

Before entering town, more shenanigans happen between Gamin and Ban. Ban gets frustrated to a point where he has an outburst at Gamin and asks him to “MAKE SENSE! PLEASE MAKE SENSE!” and I think he cured him (if temproary?!)  of his madness?!

Because Gamin rolls a history check and suddenly remembers EVERYTHING O_O!!!

In tears, on his knees, he reveals his story. His name is Simon Everwinter. He was married to a man named Luke, who tragically died. Simon tried to bring him back through necromancy, but things went wrong and his mind was taken away. (PAIN!!!!)

Simon begs the party to help him remember this, should he forget it. Ban swears to him that he will do his very best to help him remember.

And so, we enter town and meet with the king. We bluff well enough and Reed ends up stabbing the king, initiating a fight that lasts less than two rounds of combat.

Simon ends up with the HDYWTDT for the game, much to Ban’s chagrin.

An argument starts between Ban and Simon over what to do next. Simon wants to raise the king as a zombie, Ban wants to revivify the king and have him stand trial for his crimes against the kingdom. Ginger bites a chunk off the king in the meanwhile (holy shit). The time for Ban’s revivify passes and he ends up distraught over the situation (god, the feels of the whole ongoing narrative between Ban and Simon. Big oof </3).

With the king slain, we have our wrap up. And learn that this game takes part in the same universe as Seon Adventures. But on a different continent. And through a mirror we see our characters from the main campaign.

And that’s how the game ends.

[offworldcolony]

Zack Snyder's Justice League, 2021 - ★★★

Daddy Issues: The Movie.

I'm conflicted about the existence of this film; as an exercise in studio interference it's fascinating, as a parable of what can happen when fans rise up, it's a cautionary tale, and as the shape of things to come, it's questionable. I don't think fans should get to decide anything; hiring the correct filmmakers and giving them creative freedom would be the ideal option because you give the people what they need and never what they want. What they want, as evidenced by everything, almost always sucks and they're left unhappy anyway. And this film might be the exception that proves the rule.

And although Zack Snyder's Justice League was a film worth creating from the butchered remains of the original incarnation, it shouldn't have come at the behest of how much vitriol was cast out there in the process, and it shouldn't be a signal that a rabid and butthurt community of internet trolls that believe they deserve whatever they want, exactly as they want it, should ever influence the film industry ever again.

This should instead be a reminder to Studios that they know about as much as Marketing departments or gamblers or stock market traders: they're just pissing in the wind and when it lands in the toilet they claim it's by some kind of design of their own making and brilliance. Hire somebody good and get the fuck out of their way. At least if it's shit (like this film basically is) it is the fault of one person's vision and I'd rather have a noble and coherent failure than a luke-warm, mediocre carcass of a Frankenstein's monster made up of opinionated Suits, en-vogue and focus group-driven decisions acting only as a commercial for toys like 2017's Justice League was.

So the film itself? It's incredibly enjoyable, I had an absolute blast with my family round watching it like an old-school movie night. Is it a better movie? Yes, 100% in practically every way. Is it a good movie? Nope! But it's one person's coherent vision, I just hate that vision and I don't think he pulls it off.

Snyder constantly undercuts his own good ideas by his own execution, stumbling into his own sandcastles; some sequences have some really fantastic starts and then they're shot and edited in a way that makes me crawl inside out with cringe; singing a Nordic-style Aquaman song: great, having someone really close up sniff his jumper and sing right at us: horrific. And there's legion of these terrible choices by Snyder, usually things that don't make logical sense but mean he can do something because it's simply cool. (Martha Manhunter anyone?) But we already know by now that cool on its own isn't enough. Snyder doesn't. Having Batman say "fuck" isn't cool, it's dumb. Having Superman say a cocky (rubbish) one-liner when he saves someone from Steppenwolf is out of character, it's dumb. More than once I was able to predict what a character was going to say before they even said it. Come on, this isn't Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Team Justice League.

On the undeniable positives are the colour grading, score, the reels of added and altered material and more. Most of the added scenes are way, way better, more coherent and the film looks great actually. It does look Olympian and classic as I imagine he wanted it to, like the cave murals Diana sees. The extra character and coherence allow the jokes and interactions to breathe; Wayne is a little funnier, Diana, sadder, Cyborg, actually here for a change with something to do, and seemingly powerful, and Flash (thank god) not annoying. Even Irons' Alfred gets basically the best material and comes out of it my favourite character. Truly the Alfred of the group.

What doesn't work with this is that there's so much slow-mo that it becomes laugh-out-loud funny and goofy rather than impressive and dynamic, and in a 4-hour long film, you'd better be damn sure that amount of slow-mo is necessary, even in the slow-mo shots you can palpably feel they drag on for a few seconds too long each time.

And my god let's talk about the soundtrack. So Snyder has now consistently proven himself to be awkwardly tone-deaf to good music in all of his films. He can't pick an appropriate track, he can't pick an ironic track. Every time he does one of his patented slow-mo, nothing sequences over a full track of music (it feels like) it's so awkward I almost got up and left my own fucking house. There's like five of these.

But the action here (apart from being blasted in the eyeballs by insane amounts of bright lights) was all really genuinely good here, he's got it down, the dynamism didn't feel stodgy and CGI-ified, wasn't just a big invulnerable guy bashing someone aside for ten minutes, they fought as a team, it looked and felt fun, and at times, really tense and involving. It's a huge step up from whatever they did for the theatrical. The Amazonian stuff was motivated, gripping and grand. Anything with Steppenwolf felt imposing and had heft and tactics to it. Bravo.

Speaking of Steppenwolf, his Middle Managers and Head Office in the form of marble liquid Henchman, Darkseid and CGI Anette Benning(??!!) felt like strange meaningless additions, as did the anti-life equation shit (this is what Marvel doesn't do, they're expert-level at exposition for newcomers and easter eggs for fans combined). Darkseid looked like a troll, neither imposing nor unique or cool, and I'm not talking an ordinary troll, I mean one of those shit ones that gets turned to stone in the sun, not even a proper fighting troll. He looked like the first mini-boss encounter in a Lord of the Rings videogame. But...

But Steppenwolf looked awesome and I actually liked him here and his Simp for Daddy schtick. I laughed at him a lot, but like Synder I had a lot of endearment for him and his cute, sad, hopeful eyes. Daddy please love me! I promise I'll do better! I can't explain why he worked this time but he did. Maybe it's because the story felt interesting (dumb but at least it all made sense internally) and it felt grand in scale and scope and had stakes and whole added motivations for everybody.

Speaking of what else worked, yes I enjoyed the 4:3 aspect ratio, I thought it would just be Zack Snyder wanking himself off again (see: Justice League: Dark or whatever they'll call his upcoming Black and White version) but I kind of loved it, it was almost euphoric and actually did replicate some of what going to the IMAX felt like. I liked feeling like these colossi of comic books were towering above like statues.

What didn't work was that the chapter headings had nothing to do with the chapters at all or anything that happened in them which felt strange. Also, characters over-egg their lines as if we're dumb and keep stating the obvious in such a first draft way that I felt myself getting stupider.

One of my main gripes is if you keep trying to one-up yourself, these character do not feel understandably epic and powerful. They're all kind of idiotic and silly and po-faced and posture so much and say snappy one-liners and prance around like Chads. Snyder thinking he’s some kind of subversive genius and all that is sweet, but most of time I'm laughing at his cloying fan-service. He's the kid that keeps telling you how great he is and you don't mind because you can see he's got no friends and he's been bullied. Snyder isn't as aggressively dumb and bullish like Michael Bay is, for example, and Snyder's movies are largely coherent. But he's trying too hard and I just don't like his vision. As little elseworld graphic novels this kind of shit between Batman and Joker works, or in films like Joker you can do some out-there things, rather than in this, a mainline, flagship series.

Zack Synder is a little like a first-time Dungeons and Dragons DM trying to impress his table with all his edgelord grittiness and "vision"; He is a child that has two figurines and is smashing them together and yelling "Look! Look what I'm doing! Superman is beating everyone up! LOOK!" Zack Snyder's Justice League is simply, more than anything, endearing. That's the best way I can describe it.

Endearing.

And this film being endearing means I can't hate it, even though I think it's rubbish; because if a child builds a fortress of Lego, it's not exactly the Taj Mahal, but it is impressive. But when he knocks it all down I'm right there yelling for him to pick up all the destroyed pieces now because it can't always be playtime. A film can't just be spectacle and chaos and whatever-the-fuck-you-want. It has to be about something.

Justice League is about nothing. The Dark Knight was about Chaos in a system used to Order even if there was chaos inherent in the order. And it asked you to look at that chaos vs unbridled chaos. With both Dent and Joker as two sides of the same coin; chaos and order, and it put that paradox or that choice to the people of Gotham. It was about surveillance states, money, and sacrifice. And so much more. The Dark Knight subsequently became timely and timeless.

Justice League is about nothing and it will fade into nothing because of it. The euphoria will pass. It's OK it exists. It OK that we move past it now.

source https://letterboxd.com/offworldcolony/film/zack-snyders-justice-league/

[theabominableblogger]

Rewatching “Revenge of the Sith”

Ohhhh yeahhh, I’m going there.

My apologies in advance because this post is so long...

*silently boogies out to 20th Century Fox jingle and ends up throwing popcorn everywhere*

*mouths along to opening theme*

WAR!

“Evil is everywhere.��  Dude, this is Star Wars we’re talking about...

Just a heads up, I am so freaking glad that we have The Clone Wars because honestly, it has a lot more flowing character development when it comes from jumping from “Attack of the Clones” to this movie, especially Anakin.

Lens flare!

Holy snot how many Republic ships are there?!?  Did the Separatists come with every single ship imaginable?  Is that why?

Aaaaand that’s a dead body.

The hell are those things?

“Nothing too fancy.”  Says the man [Obi-Wan] who dramatically drops his robes whenever possible.

*imitates the buzz droids*

“IN THE NAME OF-”  Finish the sentence, Obi-Wan!

R2′s taser thingy looks like the Twelfth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

What if they didn’t notice the shield in time?

Boom!  End of saga.  Cue end credits music.

Ohhhh this asshole.

WHAAAATTT’SS THE SITUATION, CAPTAINNNN???

*imitates the droids saying “Roger roger”*

How come Anakin and Obi-Wan aren’t getting jostled around when the elevator car first stops?

*quotes the entire “No loose wire jokes” conversation in the elevator*

Is that the same freaking chair that’s gonna pop up in “Return of the Jedi?”

Anakin and Obi-Wan fight Dooku but every time their lightsabers clash, it’s Obi-Wan going “Hello there”

Did Dooku just backwards kick Anakin away?  Oh my God...

DEW IT

 *Anakin kills Count Dooku*  Well done, prequels.  You done didn’t use your Christopher Lee effectively enough.

ALL BATTERIES FIRE, FIRE!

Wilhelm Scream!

*imitates droid saying “Reversing stabilizers...”*

Holy crap, you can actually see Grievous’s face kind of twitching with anger when he commands the droids to level out the ship.  Dang.

Freaking Obi-Wan’s little yell of horror when he wakes up...

*ugly cackles*

*quotes the entire ray shields scene*

I cannot freaking believe that the TV show took the time to make freaking sure that Anakin never met Grievous until this movie.

Actually, yes I can.  They have a goddamn script continuity department.

How come one of them didn’t take one of the electrostaffs?

The Separatist flagship just tore in half when it entered the atmosphere and yet I remain completely unfazed.

“8 plus 16...”  Pfftt, what the heck does that mean?

Guys, I think I found the origin for the Dramatic Hair Flop of Angst in TCW

Pretty sure that’s the Millenium Falcon at the bottom hangar

“Oh, I’m not brave enough for politics.”  *cough cough*

Obi-Wan gets a whole freaking bus to himself.  Chaos will ensue.

How has no one noticed Padme just hanging out next to one of the pillars?

“There were whispers... that you [Anakin] had been killed...”  Really?

Anakin’s reaction to Padme telling him that she’s pregnant is actually really good.

Wasn’t there like a deleted interaction where Anakin first accused Padme of sleeping with someone else while he was gone but then they decided that was not that great of an idea?

The music that plays when Grievous exits the shuttle is pretty sweet

*imitates Grievous saying “Yes, Lord Sidious?”*

*claps with each word*  This is not how you write romance, [George] Lucas!

Oh I didn’t realize that you could actually hear Anakin’s robotic arm move when he puts his face in his hands

“How long is it gonna take before we start being honest with each other?”  You [Padme] should have asked that before you two got hitched in the first place.

Ladies and gentlemen, the absolute worst therapy lesson in the history of Star Wars:  Yoda telling Anakin to basically get over himself and accept the sudden, incoming death of the people he loves.

“What must I do, Master Yoda?”  MOTHEREFFING IGNORE HIM!

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”  NOOO, OH MY GOD...

There’s actually a whole video by Pop Culture Detective that went into detail how terrible the Jedi Council were when it came to giving Anakin emotional support.

“Be careful of your friend Palpatine.”  And your pal, Friend-patine.

I just noticed that there are less chairs in the Jedi Council room

“The Council doesn’t like it when he [Palpatine] interferes with Jedi affairs.”  Then why the heck don’t they confront Palpatine about it?

Holy crap, I just realized that this movie came out 13 years ago.

“Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo...” Was that really “holding” though?

Anakin’s delivery of “At last!” sounds like Darth Maul when he said “At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi” in the first movie.

This entire opera scene should be a dead give away to Anakin learning about Palpatine being the Sith Lord.  The minute Palpatine even said the word “Sith” should have raised a few red flags...

This entire Darth Plaguesis explanation is so good and ominous.  Just the minute Palpatine finishes the story and tells Anakin that there are other ways to gain that sort of power, you can just gradually feel the dread setting in for the rest of the movie.  You just know something bad is gonna happen (besides Anakin becoming Darth Vader)...

Look at the way Obi-Wan’s sitting in his chair!

Oh my God... the Wookies just did a Tarzan yell...

Headcanon:  he’s [Anakin] checking for updates about the Siege of Mandalore

OK, everyone craps on the Utapau storyline with the fight scene between Obi-Wan and Grievous but I actually think this is one of the best parts in the movie.

I love the design for the Pau’ans

GUYSSS I LOVE BOGA SO MUCH YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!

Someone get me a plush animal of her on my desk pronto!

HELLO THERE!

GENERAL KENOBIII... YOU ARE A BOLD ONE...

That pose though!

That spinning helicopter move Grievous does while stalking toward Obi-Wan was always really cool to me.  A little extra, but still cool.

ARMY OR NOT... YOU MUST REALIZE... YOU ARE DOOMED!

Oh I don’t think so!

*imitates Obi-Wan using the Force to throw Grievous*

Wait, so how many times has Cody had to hold onto Obi-Wan’s lightsaber when Obi-Wan freaking drops it?

Death Star plans?

Big question:  so how old is Anakin here?  He’s 19/20 in “Attack of the Clones” and there’s at least a one or two year time jump in S3 of TCW.

Yo, that means he was like late 30s/early 40s when he died in “Return of the Jedi.”  Well shoot, man...

Yeah, Obi-Wan, let’s freaking kick the crazy homicidal cyborg.  Great idea.

Is Grievous just covered in gasoline or something because he just went up in flames *snaps* just like that.

Ohhhh this scene with Anakin and Padme looking at the windows of their respective places is really good...

Look at freaking Anakin here! 

George Lucas deserves any and all sins for the bad dialogue for Anakin because Hayden Christensen can really act when he’s not given any dialogue and he’s just told to react. 

So, with that, henceforth, there shall be no dissing Hayden Christensen on my blog.

I AM THE SENATE!

Dramatic window break!

Palpatine’s lightsaber just freaking deactivated as soon as Windu kicked it out the window

Wowwww... the prosthetics on Palpatine look.. bad....

UNLIMITED.... POOWEEERRRRR!!!

I just realized that Anakin kind of walks over to Palpatine on his knees before he pledges himself to Palpatine

Why Darth “Vader” though?  Is there any special reasoning for that?

AN:  Holy crap, there’s an hour left and Anakin has just turned to the Dark Side...

Pfftttt....

THESE SHOTS THOUGH

Man, I need to download more tracks from this soundtrack...

You can tell that that’s green screen behind Cody

*in best Palpatine impression*  Execute Order 66!

Nooooooooooooo, Boga!

Aaaaand everyone dies and it sucks now!

Ughh, Aayla Secura...

NOOOOOOOOOO PLO KOONN!

What planet is that?

Here’s my question:  in Rebels, how the heck did Thrawn get Gree’s helmet?  Was there an imperial campaign out on Kashyyyk and he found it somewhere?

That small matte painting shot of the Jedi Temple burning is actually really pretty now that I see it again

Yooooo can we talk about this padawan though?

Kashyyyk has twin moons...

So what happens to Chewie after this and before the Han Solo movie?

Heeeyyyyyyy I know that kind of ship!

“Have faith, my love [Padme]...”  Uhhhh... Padme should have picked up on how... off that line was

How has NO ONE in the Senate (besides Organa and probably Mon Mothma) picked up on Padme’s pregnancy?

*imitates Palpatine*  Mustafaaarrrrr....

“Could be a trap.”  It’s Star Wars.  There’s always a trap.

What’s that planet right next to Mustafar?

Random xylophone scales!

Yoda is taking no prisoners!

Where are the lightsaber/balster holes in the younglings?  Yoda said that they were probably killed by lightsaber so where are the marks on their bodies?

Yellow eyes...

“So this is how liberty dies:  with thunderous applause.”  Best.  line.  Ever.  Someone send flowers and chocolates to Natalie Portman.

“I've recalibrated the code, warning all surviving Jedi to stay away.”  Aaaagghh and we see it in Rebels and in the Last Padawan comic!

Don’t mind me casually dying

I just noticed that gradually throughout this movie, you can see Obi-Wan get grey hairs in his sideburns

*Obi-Wan sneaks onto Padme’s ship to Mustafar*  Where did he come from?!?

“You [Darth Vader] have restored peace and balance to the galaxy.”  *in best Anakin voice*  OK... now what?

“And together, you [Padme] and I [Anakin] can rule the galaxy! We can make things the way we want them to be!”  Wow, “The Last Jedi” is just smackin’ me in the face right now

Anakin... you’re breaking my heart!

That is just extremely bad timing on Obi-Wan’s part

YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOURSELF!

Your new Empire?!?

DEMOCRACY!

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”  A what?

That’s a pretty nasty lisp you have there.  Might wanna do something about that.

You know how this Yoda vs. Palpatine fight could be more amazing?  Just add helium

Honestly, for the BIG DEAL fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, it just goes on for a little bit too long.

Plus when it’s intercut with the Yoda vs. Palpatine, the latter is way more entertaining (hello, two most powerful peope going head to head with actual Force lightning being involved?)

Are they [Anakin and Obi-Wan] just kicking each other with the Force now?  Wow...

NOT EVEN HITTING EACH OTHER!

Seriously, they’re just banging their lightsabers together and calling that a fight.  C’mon... actually try to hit the opponent!

Duel of the Fates!

*Palpatine throws the Senate chairs at Yoda with the Force* So I threw the Senate at him!

Honestly, you could cut out this whole balance thing on the sinking balcony and mining buildings/walkways

Commander Fox?

ExPLOsions...

Noooo... cut this out...

“Into exile, I [Yoda] must go.  Failed, I have.”  And yet people complain about Luke doing the exact same thing in the sequel trilogy

You’re not even trying to hit each other!

FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, THE JEDI ARE EVIL!

IT’S OVER, ANAKIN!  I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND!

YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!

“You were my brother, Anakin.  I loved you.”  Uuuggghhhh....

I actually read somewhere that Ewan McGregor actually asked George Lucas to change the line to past tense instead of the original present tense.  Which is sad, so thanks Ewan.

Can’t you just put out the fire with the Force?

How did 3PO and R2 get an unconscious Padme on board?

Where is this?

*Palpatine’s shuttle lands in Coruscant*  It was a dark and stormy night...

Y’know, at this point, me comparing Anakin being repaired and transformed into Darth Vader and the creation of Frakenstein’s monster is almost inevitable at this point...

Stupid question, but what’s the significance of the names “Luke” and “Leia” concerning the themes present in the movies?  Or is that up to people like me who enjoy the meta to find that out?

He [Darth Vader] just killed that medical droid next to him...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Do not want....

“...[Qui Gon] learned the path to immortality...” In the TV show!

I like how the last line in this freaking movie is “Oh no!” and it’s from 3PO...

Triceratops rams!

The design for Padme’s funeral garb is actually Iain McCaig’s favorite concept art

How did they develop TIE fighters so quickly?

Oh my God, the dude they got to play Tarkin... oh God...

Definitely not Peter Cushing

*gasp*  Leia’s theme!

Random eopie noise!

Oh my God, “Binary Suns”...

Obi-Wan’s like “Great, now I gotta help a pair of random, separate Force-sensitive teenagers and their astromechs in the near future...”

Wait, they put Ewan McGregor in top billing?

“With Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu”  Thamuel El Jackthson!

Holy crap, I forgot Joel Edgerton plays young Uncle Owen

[rottenrainbowbabe]

Pink Prophecy

(Hey! I wrote the first chapter of my filthy frank fan fiction. It takes place before the release of the pink season album and the chin chin vs. frank fight. Please enjoy! Sorry if there was any grammar mistakes I might of missed. Thank you if you are reading!)

Introduction -

The prophecy states that a Lycra creature will become a warrior that will be the savior and protector of the universe. The civilians respectfully adress him as “ピンクの戦士 (pink warrior)” and have faith in him to restore normalcy in their lives ever since a self proclaimed god has ruined the lives of many innocent people. A false black lycra god by the name of Chin Chin. Chin Chin has become notorious for stealing chromosomes from civilians and demanding sacrifices in a greedy amount in order for his powers to grow. He enforces people to worship him as the one and only god of the omniverse. However, He who does not follow the commands of Chin Chin will suffer punishment for their disobedience and ‘traitorous actions’. Injustice and chaos have spread across realms, all because of the greedy and wicked Chin Chin. Who and where is the champion that the world needs? Who could bring back peace to the universe?

Chapter 1 - “Wow, people really want this album, right?” A raspy voice spoke up, looking over at his pink “friend”. Frank pushed up his sunglasses as he stood over pink guy, who was looking over at how hyped up pink season was all over the internet. “Well i gotta hand it you Pink guy, it seems like your music is pretty powerful…” he patted the pink creature on the head. Pink guy faked a smiled, pretending to appreciate the gesture. Pink guy wished that the hand patting him was actually from the real deal. He knew that this Frank was a phony, set up by the dark lord himself into tricking the filthy frank viewers into thinking that everything was ok. He had to play along so fake Frank wouldn’t become suspicious and snitch out Pink guy and his other friends to Chin Chin. Although sometimes, he likes pretending that it’s his real friend in order to fill in that empty, lonely space in his heart. The lycra closed the laptop, putting it aside. “Hey uh… Frank…do you know where salamander man is? Haven’t really seen him at all today..” pink guy in reality didn’t exactly speak English, it was gurgled out gibberish, but everyone could understand him well. Frank paused for a second before nodding. “Yeah man, he should be outside in the back just getting some air I think.” Pink guy gave him a slight glare before he made his way outside to the backyard to search for his friend. Salamander man was sitting on the ground, staring at the sky in admiration. Pink guy got down onto his knees and hands, crawling to him. “Yo, haven’t seen you at all today man, what the fuck you doing out here?” Pink guy asked him. Salamander man turned his eyes onto Pink guy, smiling. He made a long 'nyess’ noise as he looked back up at the sky. “Yoo, I’ve been just chilling. It’s fucking nice out.” Pink guy looked up as well, looking at how beautifully bright and blue the sky appeared. “I guess it is pretty nice out here, it’s better than being around filthy fakeass…” pink guy responded. Salamander man stood back on his feet as he stayed crouched down, rubbing his nipples as usual. “I was thinking, since this whole war shit is going on, do you suppose we should start recruiting soon?” Pink guy sighed, nodding. “We gotta. The omniverse is in big danger. Chin chin’s kinda already after our asses, especially mine.” Salamander man stayed quiet for a bit before speaking up in a quieter tone. He knew they have had to travel several times in order to stay out of Chin chin’s way. “We must be careful. Who knows what the dark lord has up his sleeves. We already gotta deal with fake frank.” Pink guy clenched his fists a little, becoming serious. “I know, i know..that cunt always manages to have it his way somehow.” He mumbled as he stood back on his feet, his eyes still looking upwards. “I wish he saw things the way I saw them. Life is a precious thing. I believe it is something worth protecting..” Salamander man nodded in agreement. “Nyess.. but i think the dark lord is too much of a dumbass to figure out why. He’s too caught up with wanting to be an almighty powerful god.” Salamander man stated as he started to slowly make his way back into the house, “C'mon, let’s not let this shit consume us.” Pink guy was silently still before he deeply sighed, following right behind Salamander man. Safari man was in the dining area, sitting alone as he looked down at the floor, upset. Ever since Frank left, Safari man was much less happy and he liked to distance himself sometimes. Salamander man and Pink guy walked in, eyeing him. “Hey Safari man.. you doing okay man?” Pink guy asked him, both approaching him slowly. Safari man stiffly looked up at his friends. “Ah, hello you two. And…To be honest with you, i have seen better days, my friend.” He spoke softly in Japanese. Salamander man patted his back in a comforting manner. “We’re here for you dude. We’re gonna get through this bullshit together.” Salamander man hoped. Pink guy nodded. “Yeah man, i know we’ll find real frank soon. We’ll be together again..” Pink guy added, offering his friends a smile. However, Frank abruptly barged into the kitchen, making the trio flinch. “Hey! Where the fuck is the safari bitch?!” He shouted, stepping into the dining area. “There you are! Where’s the food i told you to make you dumb cunt?? I’m fucking starving!” Safari man began to feel much smaller, hunching over in fear. “A-ah! Gomen'nasai (I’m sorry)! I got dis-stracted but i will do that right now!” He cried out. Fake Frank had been kind of abusive to the crew, always screaming at them to do shit for him, especially safari man, who was the weakest of the crew. Pink guy stood in front of safari man, protectingly. “Yo, back the hell off! You can do that shit yourself, you lazy asswhipe! We’re not here to be your servants!” Pink guy retorted at Frank. Frank glared at them, throwing his hands into the air. “Fine! I’ll do it since i have to live around you ungrateful fucks! Just remember who pays the bills here!” He turned away, stomping back to the kitchen. Salamander man laughed at Frank’s idiocy. “What a fucking asshole.” Pink guy looked back at Safari man, who was wide eyed with shock. “Hey, don’t let him push you around like that. The real Frank wouldn’t do this shit.” Safari man sighed. “You are right. If the real frank were to ask me to make him something to eat, I’d have more guts to deny him, Ahaha!” He joked. Frank could be an asshole sometimes, but he knew when enough was enough. If Fake Frank didn’t like the meals he was prepared, he would throw the food at their faces while verbally embarrassing them. The true Frank would of just called out that it was shit, and would simply get up and cook it to his liking. “Well, if next time he’s being a dick to any of you, let me know. I ain’t afraid of that fake son of a bitch.” Pink guy said, pointing at Salamander man and Safari man. They nodded, thanking Pink guy for his courage. Pink guy walked out of the dining room area, into the kitchen where Frank was cooking. Pink guy remained silent, just wanting to leave the area, until he felt Frank pull on his pink suit. He tuned around quickly, eyeing him oddly. “What Frank?” He said, annoyed. Frank sneered at him, getting his face closer to him. “I suggest that y'all stop talking shit. Don’t think that I’ll hesitate to fight you, just 'cuz your my friend.” Pink guy pulled away from his grip. Friend. The word echoed in his head. That Frank was no friend to anyone who lived in that apartment. He was a crooked imposter and will always be one. “I know dumbass..” He muttered, leaving the kitchen as fast as possible. Pink guy deeply sighed, heading to the room where frank use to make his videos originally before he was banished into the rice fields. He crawled onto the bed, lying there as he contemplated what he should do. “Hm..I could always just..” he looked over for his laptop, turning it on. “I could always either work on music, or watch some porn.” He said, typing in “milf gets gangbanged by midgets”. He’s into some strange stuff. He scrolled down, not really find anything good. Just some things he’s already seen. Pink guy exited the porn site, clicking onto his musical program instead. “Music it is then.” He hummed, tapping his chin in a ponderous manner. He was still working on Pink season, which would service the return of frank soon hopefully. He wanted to make it as good (or as shitty in some people’s perspective) as possible, not only for himself or for the fans, but for Frank’s wellbeing. He started working away, thinking up beats and lyrics that suited up to his taste. Suddenly, Salamander burst in the room along with Safari man, who’s face was brightened up. “Pink guy! We have great news!” Safari man exclaimed. Pink guy stopped writing down on his notepad, quickly looking up. “What’s up? What happened?” Salamander man rubbed his nipples faster, grinning. “Frank’s playing a recorder from a distance and i can sense it! He’s trying to communicate with me!” Pink guy’s eyes widened, a smile growing on his face. “Are you fucking serious!? That’s amazing!” Pink guy stood up on all fours on his bed. “You two, you guys need to head out to find him. Salamander man frowned. "But, then you’ll be alone..” Pink guy got off the bed, placing his hand on Salamander man’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine. If we all leave, fake frank will become suspicious. Plus, i have to work on the coordinates for Frank. I can later travel realms one at a time to try to find you two, and I could give them to you once I’ve finished so frank can return home! So, how about it?” Salamander man and Safari man looked at each other and then back at Pink guy. “That sounds like a plan. Please take care of yourself. Don’t let Fake Frank get to you too much.” Pink guy smiled, hugging his friends. “I’ll make sure of it. You two stay safe ok? Always be on the look out for Chin chin’s henchmen.. you never know.” Pink guy let go, taking one last look at his friends, waving goodbye to each other. Salamander man and Safari man left to travel to wherever the recorder noises where coming from. Pink guy had to cover for them and lie to Frank if he questioned where the two went. It was going to be a long couple of chromosomes before they got to see each other again. But in the end, Pink guy believed it was all worth it. To have his friends reunited was something he was wishing for badly. To be able to see Frank again. To be at peace in the omniverse once more.

[madelynhimegami]

Been wanting to ramble about Fire Emblem 9 and 10 at length for a while. Dunno how interesting it’ll be, but I’ll give it a shot. Spoiler warnings for both games

I got both of them the respective years they came out, so that’s 2005 for PoR and 2007 for RD. Holy shit that was a long time ago. At the time, I hated the former but loved the latter. FE9 was, for a long time, my least-favorite game of the series, while FE10 is still my second favorite, after 7.

FE9 bothered me in a lot of ways when I was younger. The music felt half-hearted (aside from the Black Knight’s theme), the animations were stiff, something about the character portraits looked... weird to me (they still do to a degree, but I still can’t quite pinpoint why), the gameplay felt ponderous, and even back then, I felt like the game was padded to hell. Also, for some reason, I didn’t like a lot of the characters, though on reflection I’m not sure why. I remember liking Lethe enough for her to be a constant most of the game, I apparently liked Jill and Nephenee well enough. But I also thinking Ike was pretty “eh” at best, I thought Elincia was annoying, and for a lot of the rest it wasn’t until later that I looked at them and thought “man these characters rule.” Think it’s safe to say my not liking the characters much severely dampened any appreciation I could glean from the story, though.

FE10 was such a vast improvement when I played. Skills were reusable. The animations were better. Battles progressed a lot more smoothly. Character art was better. The music was fantastic. The main character was a mage! That was something I had been hoping would happen for a few games, so Micaiah being a magic-focused “lord” was awesome to me. Still is, actually. I like Micaiah, but I’m apparently in the minority. The story kicked ass, too. It was the first time I had been exposed to an “Order vs Chaos” conflict (which probably partly explains how I got hooked into playing the mainline SMT games for the first time), and I thought Yune turning out to not to be evil was great.

It’s been over a decade, now. FE9′s grown a lot on me. I still have some beef with it, particularly with how long and padded out it is. There are several points in the game where any enthusiasm I could have just comes to a dead halt, and I have to force myself through it. Chapters 14-17 are probably the biggest offenders here, with 22 and 23 being close seconds, and I’m not even sure why chapter 25 exists.

All in all, though, as a gameplay experience, I put it about on par with FE6--not terrible, but compared to the sequel they’re pretty dull. Though what makes FE9 good, and what FE6 is lacking in, is the story and worldbuilding.

A recent epiphany I had somewhat recently is that, while the “old school” Fire Emblem games has some great characters, they also had some boring and flat ones, too. But that’s OK, because unlike what Awakening and Fates would have you believe, the strength in Fire Emblem games isn’t the characters themselves, but the settings. A lot of FE games have great worldbuilding to them (though again, it’s very weak in 6; 7 more than makes up for it), and FE9 is a very solid example of it.

I never really got good chances to discuss the series at length with many people before recent years, so I never personally encountered this myself, but I get the feeling that there’s a portion of people who say FE9 and FE10 just boil down to “racism is bad” and that’s about it. But after the things I’ve learned reading from and listening to marginalized people on here, Twitter, and college, I gotta say, there’s quite a bit that this game does really well with racism and prejudice. It’s eerie how close to home some of the dialogue is at points.

That said, I’ll acknowledge that there are almost certainly plenty of flaws with how FE9 and 10 deal with racism, prejudice, and marginalization--one thing that sticks out to me is that the Serenes arc is wrapped up way too easily, but I’m certain there’s other stuff--but it does better than a lot of the stuff I’ve seen. Some examples that spring to mind... (screencaps of game dialogue courtesy of the Path of Radiance Let’s Play on lparchive dot org; highlights mine)

Honestly, I feel like FE9 exceeds FE10′s story in a lot of ways, which is kind of disappointing since it’s pretty dang clear that the story was all planned out from day 1. But perhaps they bit off more than they could chew with FE10. It, too, is a very long game, and while it doesn’t necessarily feel padded in the same way FE9′s campaign is, I get the feeling that the whole thing was a big juggling act between keeping everything moving forward, while not giving too much away too soon, but still managing to resolve the story before running out of time or going over budget. 

The second and third points are what really hold it back, in my mind. I think there should have been more hints that Sanaki has an older sister and that the apostle’s family has heron ancestry, because once those hints start trickling in, it’s so late in the game that they seem to be asspulls. I frankly doubt they were though, I just think that they wanted it to be a grand revelation but didn’t want the audience to figure it out before the big reveal... but they couldn’t just end the game and not mention it.

The resolution to Naesala’s arc is another victim of this--it lacks any catharsis beyond Naesala’s boss dialogue with Lekain, and you’re not given any guarantee that you’ll see it. It would have been amazing to see someone like Tibarn or Reyson come to grasp what Naesala and Kilvas had to go through.. but we don’t. Likely because there wasn’t any time left.

Anyway, this is all very long and meandering, so I guess I’ll end it here. I was gonna compare Ike and Micaiah a bit more, and a list of things I could tweak about Radiant Dawn, but I can do those some other time. Soon I expect I’ll start replaying Radiant Dawn, first time I’ll be at it since my very first playthrough... it’s a long story.

That’s all for now, I hope this was interesting to somebody.

[bloomholistichealth]

OVERTHINKING, DEPRESSION AND ACTIVITY

Yet another of us is languishing in a depression, his mind doing battle with his body in an attempt to decide what to do.

Our minds evolved to solve problems. Our bones evolved to provide structure to an otherwise floppy organism. Our muscles evolved to bind that structure together and move it around. Our nervous system and senses evolved to provide information to the organism about it’s condition and environment. Our digestive systems evolved to consume energy from the environment… you get the idea.

Our minds evolved - well the ‘thinking’ part - to solve problems. It takes all the memories it can store of important things that have happened in the past, and all the information it can cope with from the other parts of the body that are being sent up through the nervous system, and makes some calculations in order to help the whole organism decide what to do.

So the eyes see a berry, and the stomach says ‘need food’ and the brain gets involved and says: “woah, wait a minute arm/hand… let’s just see if we’ve done this before?”  It runs a check and:

if there is no memory or prediction of a problem it sends out a ‘proceed with caution’;

if there is a memory that these berries are the BEST then it releases happy chemicals and a ‘lets go crazy! eat them all!’ message;

or, if it has a memory (and negative memories are stronger for obvious reasons) that these berries made our stomach’s hurt, or Jeff had some last week and died, then it won’t let that arm move to get the berry.

That seems like a great idea. What an evolutionary advantage that has been.

OVERTHINKING

I don’t like the phrase ‘overthinking’. Generally, thinking is a brilliant thing to do. I have a HUGE brain, it is constantly thinking about stuff. I love it. I am so proud to be a person with this remarkable piece of equipment.

Oh the thinks I can think!

But as Dr Seuss wisely warned, there is a problem with our minds. Well, not so much with our mind, but with mind vs ‘reality’. Our minds are matter. They are part of our organic, animal functionality. They don’t really care about economic theories of capitalism. They don’t really prioritise the advancement of the Islamic state, or any other state. They are part of a singular organism, a system, that is ‘me’.

A lot of the things we experience in modern daily life don’t make much sense to us as an organism. Tight uncomfortable clothing, plastic food, leaving things alone that we want but don’t belong to us, expressing emotions through electronic devices using our thumbs.

Every moment, our brains are working really hard to process natural instinctive physical responses and behaviours into actual actions that are acceptable to the societies that we live in. I am really aware of this as I frequently move between different communities and the rules of behaviour change significantly. Sometimes I can’t eat because it is day time. Sometimes I should wear shoes. Sometimes I need to be exactly on time. Sometimes precise timing of events is almost rude. Sometimes touching is OK, sometimes it isn’t.

When we encounter a problem, our brains try to help us out. Imagine being hungry, really hungry, and there is a market stall with food just in front of you. Your body is going to want to take that food. Your brain is going to intervene with reasons why you can’t.

So, as much as possible, we spend our lives checking in with our brains and letting our thoughts dominate our actions with good reason. It helps us to live together in communities. But there is a cut-off in our systems. Our bodies just won’t easily do things that will harm ourselves, there’s a mutiny and it is a real battle to do something our bodies (or ‘instinct’) doesn’t want to do. Not something that we ‘think’ will hurt us. That’s different. But sometimes our body-systems know more than our minds can. Sometimes we can feel when something is right or wrong for us, no matter what the logical pattern-matching memory says.

Sometimes we call this our ‘sub-conscious’.

DEPRESSION

When our subconscious and our conscious disagree it is really difficult to decide what to do. Even that statement is a problem. Should we ‘decide’ at all? We don’t decide to sneeze, or to breathe, or to digest our food. How much of our activity should be entirely dependent on our conscious mind’s instruction?

I get depressed sometimes. Many of my friends do too. And probably my family, but we don’t talk about stuff like that. Sometimes, my depression is characterised by frantic unfocused thinking and an inability to make any decisions or move really at all.

It’s like my whole self is in stale mate.

Because that’s what it is. Stale mate. The brain runs all the programs. It goes as fast and a broad as it can as if it is searching through every corner of my memory and system for the answer, running all the scenarios, listening to all the input.

Often we lose the ability to do anything really at all. Even get dressed, eat, stand up, sit down. Our  body is waiting for a clear signal from the brain. It wants instruction, but because the brain can’t decide what to do, it doesn’t get one. All it understands is that there is a problem: it stays in ‘fright fight flight’ mode and is only really capable of attack, defence or camouflage.

ACTIVITY

When the answers we can find in our mind from our experiences and ‘cultural programming’ don’t seem to fit with the things we are facing, perhaps because the things we are facing are just wrong of we simply have no suitable experiences, we don’t know how to act. The brain doesn’t tell the body to do anything clear.

Modern society is changing rapidly for humans. A lot of the things we encounter in our daily lives just didn’t exist at all before. So sometimes we really don’t know what to do. And nor does anyone else. Eat the berry, don’t eat the berry? Our bodies need to know, but our brains just can’t help them.

Stale mate.

And for me, that’s what depression is. It is a complete breakdown between the things we are asking our bodies to do and the things our bodies are capable of doing. And by ‘bodies’ I mean ‘selves’. Some things we just know are wrong. When I wear a wired bra I find it very hard to breathe easily. This is really a problem. It makes me angry.  I tend not to wear a wired bra when I can. Some of my friends can’t cross international borders, others can. Some things are just hard for our physical bodies to accept. People sit on the streets with no food or shelter, while billions are spent advertising food and shelter products. Some things are just hard for our minds to accept. We don’t know how to act.

YOGA

There is no quick fix for depression. We need to fix the bigger issues of the society we live in to stop people from feeling this way. And I really think we should. I have personal experience of people taking their own and other’s lives because they can’t function within the conventions of modern society, too many personal experiences and it’s not OK. People are dying because of cognitive dissonance. But individually there *are* things we can do.

We can control the inputs. We can choose what we listen to. We can turn down the volume on the inputs from outside and turn up the volume on the signals coming from within ourselves. Asanas or other physical activity are a great way to do this as the body becomes ‘louder’ when it’s being used. We can breathe. There is a simple truth in breathing that helps us to start again from the beginning when our minds are spiraling out or down or up and we want to bring them back. To turn off our thinker-uppers. Simply watching the truth that we are breathing in and out reminds us how little the other stuff - like governments and travel - really matter. That we have enough right now, right here. We can stop. Part of the discipline of yoga, and one that is sometimes overlooked, is the art of doing nothing. Of waiting. Of stillness. One of the contributing issues in depression is that the modern, internet age creates an enormous sense of urgency around all things. The idea that you could just wait and see, or do something later, is totally absent. If you don’t know what to do, best do nothing.

This isn’t to say we should all stop trying to change the world, or striving towards something. Not at all. What I’m saying is that it is only by keeping our own minds and bodies clear and functioning that we can really see what we would like to do and how we can achieve it, and then take real steps towards our goals.

Essentially, and eventually, we can get back to a place of balance - between our minds and the rest of our bodies; between our inner and outer experiences; between ourselves and others. Eventually we can take the pressure off of our own organism to act and know and allow ourselves to ‘be’ and ‘feel’ instead. Practioners know that this is where the magic happens, that only in this space does all the information become available, are all the elements active, can the best thing to do be known. Much like the famous ‘eureka’ moments in science, the brain functions best when it is relaxed, and calm, and creative. HOLD ON For some reason humans have decided that their significant powers of calculation give them some extraordinary ability to see into the future. Bizarrely it is often those that consider themselves to be the least religious that believe themselves to have this remarkable mystic skill. Rational thinking. The world is chaos. Not even the biggest super computer could reliably model the future for all possible organisms alive on this planet right now. And you are one of them. The feeling that we should, if we just think hard enough, always know what to do, never make a mistake, always be able to achieve what we intend to is insane really. And egotistical. So slide back, hold on, and have faith. No, this might not be what you want. No, it might not be easy to cope with. But it can’t be entirely your own fault, or anyone else’s. Nor can you alone be held responsible for the next step. Stay calm, breathe, accept what you are experiencing and be patient. But most of all, don’t worry that you don’t understand. The truth is that you probably can’t understand most things. So stick to what you can feel to be true, and the answers will come with time. Sometime the best thing you can do, is nothing at all.

[evajellion]

Part 9, the finale and review overall

Richie doesn’t end it off with a bang, but with a lazy whimper, with a nonsensical partnership and rivalry that I can’t think to improve.

So… Pit and Olimar, of all things.

Pit is bowing down to Palutena as she looks through the Goddess Book.

Ah, the hero, Pit, having somehow defeated Hades and saved the world from peril, is once again called by the Goddess of Light, Palutena.

Mmmm, plagiarizing Sir Dan’s intro yet again, huh Richie?

I’m surprised he at least knows enough about (modern) Kid Icarus to mention Hades at least.

Both of them are in shock to see some pages have been missing.

But what's this? The pages from the Goddess Book has gone missing. Someone must have took them. Without it pages which guided the world, it would be in peril.

Oh, we’re ripping off Sly’s Arcade Mode too?

I dunno shit about Kid Icarus beyond a few key characters and the Eggplant Wizard being in Captain N, but a quick search on the wiki told me there’s no such thing as a “Goddess Book”. There’s a “Book of Divine Prophecy”, but why would the pages of that be taken?

And what's more. Below, 2 dimensions have clashed, all because of a false god which controlled the Hands. Pit decided to go and find the pages before it is too late.

Really, this should have been the big concern, not the shit plagiarizing Sly Cooper’s story. Pit and Palutena being concerned by a deity controlling Master and Crazy Hand was all they needed to set off for adventure!

As Pit about to leave, the door opened and to Pit's and Palutena's surprise, Olimar came in carrying his diary. Following him are the Pikmins.

Suddenly, a surprise guest appeared. Captain Olimar. His pages has been missing too which has notes on his research on Pikmins.

Pit and Olimar agreed to work together and sets off to recover their pages.

To recover the stolen pages and save both the world and Angel Land, Pit joins forces with Olimar. Their adventure is just beginning.

What fucking reason is there to steal pages from Olimar’s diary?

Pretty sure the plural for Pikmin, is also just Pikmin.

"Can you see them yet?" Olimar asked as Pit looked through his telescope on top of the Rival Arena.

"Aha. There they are" Pit said spotting the pages in Nathan Drake's hands, accompanied by Sly Cooper.

Does… Pit even have a telescope? 

I figured Olimar would be the one have some kinda fancy, hi-tech equipment to see things from a distance. But I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t know much about Pikmin either, other than the gameplay and some of the cool enemies.

Of course though, this is only happening because Richie is plagiarizing Sly’s rival scene.

"You decode them yet?" Sly asked getting impatient.

"Man, I'm sure we're getting closer" Drake said looking at the pages. "All we had to do is figure out the last bit."

At that point, Pit and Olimar stood before them making them stop.

"Careful, careful." Pit said pointing his blade at them. "Despicable thieves like you and your pet would know how treasured those pages are."

Really? Pit saying Sly’s line?

Pit is young, and panics over certain situations. I think he would be more like “Hey! W-what are you doing with those!?”, not acting chill on how they should “be careful”.

OOC Counter: 39

Rest of it is copypasted, with the only difference being an out of character Olimar, who I’m gonna slap the counter on for how he’s talking.

OOC Counter: 40

After beating Sly and Drake, Pit and Olimar recovered the pages, but before they can leave...

"Going somewhere, little men?" Polygon Man said with his controlled Hands "You're not going anyway!"

"Master Hand and Crazy Hand?" Olimar gasped "What the...?"

"They've being controlled by that giant head. We must stop them" Pit said as they prepare to fight.

Pit, you should have told Olimar about this beforehand, idiot. That’s a far bigger concern than some pages being stolen.

Also lol, the typos here. 

Pit and Olimar returned to Palutena safe and sound.

Pit and Olimar have successfully vanquished all their foes and recovered the stolen pages, and even stopped the ones controlling the chaos.

As Pit and Palutena put the pages back, they noticed something very unusual.

But as Pit put the pages back, they noticed some sort of code that could releashed demons from the underworld, and Hades and Medusa would eventually return. In order to prevent this, Pit and Palutena decide to find someone to undo this code.

Olimar turned to the doorway as Pit and Palutena waved.

Olimar boarded his ship and returned to Planet Hotate, his diary pages recovered. But if an new evil would rise, Olimar would rejoin Pit...

Both Pit and Olimar glowed blue.

...and stop them once again.

I guess this ending could have been worse. Palutena says nothing about what happened though? No cameo from Viridi either?

Then again, I’m not exactly fond of them to begin with, so I doubt I’d care if Richie ruined their character.

--

How much lazier is the scenario for Nathan and Sly?

One day in Paris, Sly is going through some pages with Bentley and Carmelita Fox.

Carmelita? And not Murray? Seriously, you’re leaving the big lug out?

Carmelita is only “forced” to help Sly a handful of times, otherwise, she’s trying to arrest him. Where does this take place in the Sly games anyway? Before, or after Thieves in Time? Because you already formed a big hole in any case.

"So, have any idea on deciphering this?" Bentley asked as Sly has got the pages from Goddess Book and Olimar's diary. Trouble is, the text is hard to read.

Bentley, you’re the smart one. He’s the fucking brains of the team. Did you switch out their dialogue by accident, Richie?

OOC Counter: 41

"Hmmm... this is bizarre." Sly said "But I cannot make out the writing."

"Yoink!"

Nathan Drake appears and snatched the pages from Sly's hands.

"What the...? You again?" Sly was shocked.

"Ha. Call yourself a master thief if you cannot understand the writing" Nathan said "I already have half of the pages already, and I'm getting closer."

"You think it would lead to untold mysteries, mr treasure hunter?" Carmelita said, surprised by Nathan's wit.

"Hmm... I guess it must be over there. I gonna need Racoon Boy's help here cause I heard other people are after this treasure" Nathan said, pointing to a distance.

"Really? Alright then. Lead on. But I am making my own shots of action, Mr. Two-bit treasure hunter" Sly said as he and Nathan set off.

"Whatever you say, roadkill" Nathan said.

It’s… not a bad way to start the team-up, but really? Bentley isn’t going to say a word about it?

I think it should be the other way around, Sly seems more like the type to approach Nathan Drake suddenly, brag, and then ask to work together. Yeah, Nathan stole pages from the Thievius Raccoonus, but Sly probably wouldn’t hold too much of a grudge. It’s not like the Panda King, who had a hand in killing his dad…

Rival scene is copypasted AGAIN, so here’s another OOC Counter for Pit stealing Sly’s lines, while Olimar is just… there.

OOC Counter: 42

With Pit and Olimar defeated, Sly and Nathan began to finish the pages until...

There was a laugher and they spun around to see Polygon Man appear with the hands. "Power is an illusion. Absolute power is a seamless illusion."

"Oh brother, not you again" Sly groaned.

Sly is about as fed up with the dialogue exchanges as much as I am.

Sly and Nathan founds Nate's plane where Bentley, Carmelita and Sully awaits them.

Richie seriously, what do you have against THE MURRAY?

Where’s my boy Dimitri Lousteau, for that matter? He’s like, the best character. 

Who am I kidding? It’s good to have him spared from this trainwreck.

Blahblah, copypasted scenes--

"Is something wrong, Drake?" Sly asked as the screen turned back.

Nathan only said "We've punched a chicken and a giant turtle."

… That… line doesn’t work when…

Uuuugh, I get he was trying to say “Nathan punched Bowser on their adventure”, but the line doesn’t fucking work when tied in with copypasted shit, and…

You know what? Because of how horribly delivered that was, I’m adding one more, the last time this counter had to be used.

OOC Counter: 43

A/N: Ok so next is Kat/Ememet VS Lucario/Meta Knight scenario and then the Fire Emblem vs Fat Princess and Sir Daniel Fortesque, stayed tuned.

Well, guess what? Richie never follows up on this.

My main man Dan remains untouched by Richie’s fan-fic to this day.

Also lol, how would those rivalries even work? Lucario sensing the aura that Kat and Emmett have? Would Lucario be a chick with tits like he is in the comics?

Actually, a badass, non-sexualized girl Lucario teaming up with Borb would be a much cuter pairing than the Bimbocario x Pikachu one.

Funny thing, even the reviews were confused by the chicken comment. And another reviewer said this, which made me laugh:

Is it me, or is the grammar becoming poorer and poorer as this goes on?

Same guy who pointed out how Richie plagiarized from Street Fighter x Tekken. Good on you, reviewer who I will keep anonymous.

Alright, so, enough of that… what could have been changed about this chapter?

Nothing.

You would have to delete this whole chapter, set up a rivalry that makes sense, and start from scratch in order to fix this big of a mess.

You kinda have a limited cast to work with in PSASBR, unless you’re adding new challengers, otherwise you’re not going to be able to have all the sensible rivalries against Smash Bros. characters, and eventually run out of material.

Of course, it could have simply been Richie lost interest because it didn’t have Crash maybe.

Yeah, I know. It’s not just a thing Richie does, I’m aware. A lot of writers on FF.net seem to drop off their stories and leave them hanging, and never say anything about them like “I can’t write this anymore because of something going on”, or just deleting them. It’s very annoying when they do it, and it encouraged me to give all of my stories an ending, even if they weren’t too great.

But enough about that, let’s get to…

--

Final Thoughts

This fan-fic has potential to do something good. The rivalries between Pikachu & Kirby vs. Sackboy & Toro, Ganondorf & Bowser vs. Zeus & Heihachi are the best ones that come to mind. Others however, make zero sense.

Granted, this was the earliest SSB x PSASBR fan-fic (and also one of the first to suddenly die), besides one other, which is basically just four one-shots.

Is this story any good? No, besides the fact it’s not finished, there are unfinished stories that do the rivalries much more nicely, and don’t insult the the existing characters, or the lore for each game represented.

The Smash Bros. and Playstation All-Stars were out of character, or ruining a certain continuity, 43 times altogether. Which is a lot, for something with only nine actual chapters.

These things could have been fixed by just looking further into each series. Even if you had never played them, it doesn’t kill to pull up a video, or a wiki, or ask someone who understand a particular franchise.

The ones that stand out the most, where I had to revise everything, were parts 4, 6, and 8. Meanwhile for part 9 (this one), it should have been purged completely.

Plotting everything out, especially the rivalries, will help you in the long run. Studying each character also helps a ton.

Another thing I obviously have to criticize, is Polygon Man.

I like Polgyon Man. I don’t think he’s a “bad Master Hand rip-off” like most Smash fans do. He’s his own character. He’s possibly driven by envy, being that the All-Stars are recognized amongst Playstation fans, but he was left behind-- rejected.

Him using Master and Crazy Hand? Perhaps that was fueled by jealousy over them being loved, and appreciated by the Smash Bros. 

His interactions with the Smash Bros. also could have been interesting. He could have recognized Snake, wondered why Sonic (a SEGA character) is suddenly with Nintendo mascots, or Lucas (and some other characters maybe) could have tried to turn Polygon Man around-- stopping him from being fueled by his god complex.

There was a lot of potential to be had, and some authors do that with Polygon Man in these crossovers. Richie doesn’t do anything, and makes him the generic baddie.

Oh, and the plagiarism, yes. The one thing that tells me Richie can’t think of a solid plot without having to resort to ripping something else off…

Nearly all of this is ripped from Playstation All-Stars, with the very small except of Street Fighter x Tekken not being safe either. Only a handful of times were the intros, rival scenes, and endings written to be rather creative.

That makes things very boring to read. No one wants to read a Playstation All-Star story, if it’s nothing new. The rival scenes in PSASBR, were great! And I do love them, it’s one of the things that drew me to the game, were the unique rival scenes, some of which were pretty silly. (Sir Dan and Radec instantly come to mind, along with Big Daddy and Sackboy)

You want to do that again, but in a new, creative twist involving the Smashers? That’s good, I’ve seen people try it before… but this wasn’t it, because a whole lot of them were fucking copied.

I’m not a perfect writing myself. I’m still learning, and when I look back at my older stuff, I kinda cringe-- but I leave it up, because I know people enjoyed it, and I still considering it an accomplishment. Yet, I’m trying to learn how to grow, how to do different things, and how to finish them.

Richie doesn’t want to change. He’s in his later 20′s, and hasn’t budged from his usual, predictable style. This is going to bite him when people get bored, have grown up from these sorts of things, and want to move on, away from his content. They’ll put on a new pair of glasses, and see things in a new light, so to speak.

Tl;dr

Overall Rating: 3/10

Pros:

+ Some of the rivalries aren’t too awful

+ The idea of tag-teams for both parties is different, and reminds me of Street Fighter x Tekken.

+ Some of the team-ups actually work-- in concept.

Cons:

- Nearly everyone is out of character. (Except perhaps Toro, Heihachi, PaRappa, and Sonic)

- A lot of things were copypasted, word for word.

- The two big Richie clichés. The damsel-in-distress fetish for one. Seriously Richie, stop doing this. This along with his “villain cliché” for Bowser and Ganondorf.

- Polygon Man doing nothing almost in his scenes, rather than something interesting.

- Potential rivalries and team-ups are uninteresting, and feel lifeless.

- The typos. 

- It’s not finished. People like an ending, and one that would have wrapped up all the scenarios would have helped.

Well, that’s it for this… I wonder, is there anything else I could tear apart that Richie wrote? It’s mostly boring, thankfully (for him) no Star Fox trash for me to rip into, considering how badly he would depict the characters.

Maybe I’ll poke around, if not, then I hope you enjoyed this series of riffs.

[kayfabejake]

WWE Survivor Series 2018 PPV Review

I mean, I’m not expecting it to top TakeOver of course, but I am pretty excited for this PPV. Let’s go ahead and get started.

Date: 11.18.18 / Arena: Staples Center - Los Angeles, CA / Attendance: 16320 / Tagline: N/A

Women’s Survivor Series Match Nia Jax, Tamina, Mickie James, Sasha Banks, & Bayley “Team Raw” def. Naomi, Asuka, Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, Carmella “Team Smackdown” Sole Survivor: Nia Jax in (20:09)

Bayley and Sasha inserted last second? Okay, I like it

Crowd is hot at first but seems to have cooled down unfortunately

Wonderful Thesz Press off the top rope by Mickie James. What a pro

Dissent between Deville and Rose

GOD THE MARKETING OF THIS SHOW IS SO ANNOYING WE ALL KNOW SMACKDOWN IS THE BETTER BRAND

“Well Cole, you’re an idiot.” GO OFF GRAVES

Backstabber into Banks Statement is a dope sequence

Asuka looking mildly vicious? What’s this?

Nia Jax’s heat is absolutely nuclear. I’m honestly starting to suspect the whole thing with Becky is a work like Jericho says.

Jax & Banks vs Asuka is a sick matchup

Lol yeah Jax throws Banks off the top rope. Imagine not thinking you’re being worked here

Becky Lynch run in?

No! Jax is the Sole Survivor. The fuck?

My Rating [2*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [2.75*]

Seth Rollins pins Shinsuke Nakamura in (21:26).

Fuck, what a cool matchup. Yet another moment where I just sigh and remember how much I love wrestling

Shinsuke rocking the blue, not an awful look! The deep V is hawt

COME ONNNNNNN yess Shinsuke get in this man’s head

The feeling out phase is going on too long here

“Nakamura is also an American hero” yes, Graves, he is. I agree

Absolutely brutal punishment on the outside between both guys

They keep putting over Rollins’ head not being in the match but its not really showing in the match itself

So many fucking rest holds OMG. Both these guys are so dynamic, why is the match so slow?

Rollins dumps Nak off the side aaaaaand the suicide dive! The double suicide dive! The crowd calls for a triple and ROLLINS OBLIGES! 

Flying springboard clothesline from Rollins!

A badass spinning kick from Nak

High impact superkick from Rollins...wow, that was brutal

Rollins reverses the triangle hold into a bucklebomb on Shinsuke!

Rollins does the superplex roll-through into Falcon Arrow is super cool but...he does it constantly. always impressive but i knew exactly what was coming when he went up there

Reverse exploder from Nakamura sets up Kinshasa, misses, Rollins counters into a two count

Curb stomp and Rollins beats Nakamura. Cooooooool, man. Not boring or uninteresting at all considering the lack of interference or anything.

My Rating [3.5*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [3.75*]

Sheamus & Cesaro “The Bar” w/ The Big Show def. Akam & Rezar “AoP” w/ Drake Maverick in (09:04).

What the fuck is this match lol. Insane skill on display with the Big Show just standing around.

If they’re putting over Maverick’s ability to make AoP tag champs...are they technically burying Ellering?

Punch, Cesaro, punch away! Again and again!

a pretty sweet double hot tag spot and Sheamus goes ham

Drake Maverick fucking pisses himself, but that’s a distraction and AoP roll up Sheamus after a double team hit. Jesus christ this is so cringey. You could also see Drake grabbing at his crotch to get the gimmick going. Boring with an incredibly bad finish

My Rating [1*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [1.75*]

Cruiserweight Championship Match Buddy Murphy [c] pins Mustafa Ali in (12:19)

Right out of the gates they’re going hard, insane flip by Ali off the top rope and onto the side

And a massive fucking push into the barricade from Murphy to Ali jesus

These guys are insanely good but they probably need two TakeOver type events a year in order to make me feel invested in the stories at all

Some fucking comically complicated and impressive spinning DDT from Ali, holy shit

Ridiculous Spanish Fly by Ali off the table

Vicious powerbomb into sit down powerbomb by Murphy

“This is awesome” chants kick in, and it’s seeming like they’re turning down crowd noise here--I can’t imagine why to be honest

Dope match but Itami / Murphy the other week was better tbh

My Rating [3.75*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [4*]

Men’s Survivor Series Match Bobby Lashley, Finn Balor, Dolph ZIggler, Drew McIntyre, & Braun Strownman “Team Raw” def. The Miz, Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe, Rey Mysterio, and Shane McMahon “Team SmackDown” in (23:58)

Already pissed because Balor has to wear a fucking shirt

CHA CHING CHA CHING HERE COMES SHANE O FUCKING MAC

Claymore Kick from McIntyre to Joe and IMMEDIATELY pins Joe. Fuck that. The crowd agrees and chants bullshit.

Shane O’Mac throwing them potatoes at Ziggler lmao

I understand he’s not a great wrestler, but I will never ever understand the vitriol of some of the Shane hate. He’s so fun and so willing to put his body on the line

a pretty great story being told here with SmackDown being able to cooperate and mack up for the difference in size and skill while Raw has insane amounts of power but can’t work together

SHANE MCMAHON OFF THE TOP TURNBUCKLE ONTO THE ANNOUNCE TABLE YES KING

Such a stiff stomp from Balor he would up falling on top of Miz omg

BALOR JUST POPPING THE FUCK OFF WHAT CHAOS

Mysterio pins Balor, damn

Lashley just fucking up Mysterio

OH MY GOD SHANE ISNT GONNA GO COAST TO COAST ON ZIGGLER BUT HE DOES AND HE PINS DOLPH

SHANE IS NOT GOING TO GO COAST TO COAST A SECOND TIME ON LASHLEY WHAT THE FUCK BUT HE TRIES AND GETS DECKED BY BRAUN ON THE SIDE

Shane is the last one left for SmackDown. Get ready for some bullshit that will make the internet mad lmao

Or...not. Raw just fucking wins. Ok. What the hell. This is dumber than Shane shenanigans.

My Rating [3*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [3.75*]

Ronda Rousey def. Charlotte Flair by DQ in (14:11)

Not smooth or technically sound, really, but absolutely brutal and believable

SPEAR FROM CHARLOTTE ON A FIRED UP ROUSEY GODDAMN

Ronda is really good at selling that leg, I was genuinely concerned at multiple points

RONDA HITS THE PIPER’S PIT THAT LOOKS VICIOUS

Charlotte viciously attacks with the Kendo stick is this a HEEL TURN? A DQ finish but goddamn do i love this

CHARLOTTE WITH THE CHAIR

NATURAL SELECTION ONTO THE CHAIR ROUSEY IS SO FUCKING BLOODIED

THE CHAIR AROUND RONDA’S NECK HOLY FUCK

where were you when Ronda was kill

such props to Ronda for taking this beating

All of a sudden Rousey looks very mortal and I love it

My Rating [4.25*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [4.25*]

Brock Lesnar pins Daniel Bryan in (18:43)

So...is Bryan gonna win via Heyman screwjob? Because the commentators keep putting over how Lesnar is absolutely guaranteed to win

Bryan just fucking around with Lesnar lmao

“I’m...legit concerned for Daniel Bryan” -Renee Young

Lesnar just fucking ragdolling Bryan

Bryan is “out”

yeesh...just what the fuck

REVERSAL WHAT THE FUCK

THE YES LOCK

THE YES LOCK

Lesnar wins. I can’t believe I let my hopes get up. Fuck.

My Rating [4*] / Daddy Meltzer’s Rating [4.5*]

Overall PPV Grade: B

One of the better main roster PPVs of 2018, Survivor Series had an incredibly strong card despite the loss of Becky Lynch. The SS matches themselves were a mixed bag but overall enjoyable, and Bryan vs. Lesnar as well as Flair vs. Rousey tore the fucking house down. Really solid stuff.

-11/20/18

[sualkmedeiors]

1 Awesome Way To Create Great Content

Whether you’re fresh on the job— getting the lay of the land, or you’re a veteran at your organization, as a content marketer you probably face the constant challenge of delivering interesting, valuable, and relevant content at the pace that your organization demands. And while part of that problem can be solved with a bit of internal education around delivering value over volume, some of the need for fresh content will still exist.

There are many different ways to create the content you need in order to publish at the cadence that your audience and organization requires—freelancers, repurposing assets, and curation, just to name a few. But this blog will cover one incredibly productive content source that will not only help you provide value to your audience, and hit your objectives by publishing at the pace you need but will help shine a spotlight on content internally at your organization. That source? Your own employees. 

Why Create A Guest Blogging Program?

As a content marketer at Marketo, I’m responsible for making sure a blog goes live five days a week that is informative, entertaining and offers value to our audience (based on a detailed matrix of topics and audiences). As a lean team, doing this alone is an impossible task and, quite frankly, sounds scary. And that’s a feeling that it seems other marketers also have, because one of the most frequent questions I get asked when I am at an event, talking to a prospect or customer, or speaking is, “How do you scale your content?” Consistently, my answer is to be savvy about the resources you have at your disposal. Similar to repurposing content, I invite other marketers to ask themselves, “how can you get the most out of what you do have instead of focusing on what you don’t?”

One of the best ways to get the most out of the resources at your disposal is to broaden your view of what counts as a resource. If your resources are limited to already published blogs, and other assets (like whitepapers, ebooks, datasheets, and infographics), you can definitely find ways to create new content by repurposing, which will help you produce a few more pieces of content. But, if you shift your focus to include your human resources—across the organization—you have successfully found a content jackpot. Think about it for a second. If you have 1,000 employees and you are able to get even 1% of them (10 people) to blog for you, you’re already ahead of the game (vs. repurposing). If those authors, or even half of them, write a second post, you will have knocked it out of the park.

Build Your Program

Ok, so let’s talk about how you actually make this happen. Guest content, specifically guest blogs, sounds amazing until you consider that you’re going to have to do the editing. To prevent a guest blogging program from descending into unmanageable chaos, you’re going to want to start with a few foundational elements:

Content Style Guide: Your content style guide, or style guide, usually spans all content created for your brand, whether that’s technical documentation, public-facing copy, or sales training. It will include everything from capitalization and hyphenation (is it Internet or internet?), to your boilerplate, personas, and brand voice/tone guidelines.

Program Guidelines: Program guidelines detail how your program specifically works. If an employee is interested, what do they have to do to get started? Document your workflow for internal submissions, reviews, feedback, and publication. Clear expectations that are established early make everyone more successful.

Executive Buy-In: Never underestimate the power of executive buy-in. In fact, for a program that you want to span your whole organization and stand the test of time, you need an executive who not only believes in your idea but will champion it at the executive level. Change needs to happen from both the top down and the bottom up. Ask you sponsor to socialize the program with their peers. More specifically,  if you can, have your sponsor ask their peers to give their teams time to participate and positively recognize those that participate.

Just to recap., don’t launch your program without those three elements in place. They. Are. Critical.

Once you have the foundation of your program, it’s time to add some important details. You will want your program guidelines to not only include the editiorial expectations like I covered above, but the rewards (who doesn’t love a prize?), resources to get started, and examples. Basically, your program guidelines, whether they are on an internal wiki, a landing page, in an ebook, or part of an internally shareable slide deck, need to tell your audience what’s in it for them, how they can get started, what to expect, and the expectations. Here’s a deeper look at some of the elements you may want to include:

Rewards: A reward doesn’t always have to be monetary, but, let’s be honest, cash doesn’t hurt. What I’ve found to be successful is a combination of prizes like gift cards and electronics for different levels of submissions in addition to sharing the career benefits. That way, not only does your contributor get a physical reward, but they are building their personal brand. Worried about the cost of prizes? You get to set the reward amounts—so do what works for your budget. If you have to argue for budget to fund the prizes, share an example that uses how much it costs for a freelancer to write an article vs. an internal article, and that outsourced article also doesn’t have built-in brand/product knowledge, or build loyalty in your employee base.

Resources: Writing can be incredibly scary for someone who doesn’t do it as a core part of their job, day in and day out. Give your participants resources on how to get started. Think about what you could offer that would remove some of the barriers to participation. For example, are you available for “office hours” to coach them once a week? Do you have a blog template that you can share?

Examples: As much as you can explain what you’re looking for and how your participants can get there, not much can beat an example. Here are a couple types of examples that you can share: do you have an ideal blog that you can share with your participants with notes about what makes it work? Or, can you share other blogs, either in your industry or out of it that capture the tone or topic range that you’re looking for?

Launch Your Guest Blogging Program

So you created an awesome program that’s going to generate a crazy-amazing amount of content for your organization, but that’s only true if you share your program with your organization and get people excited. At this stage, you will want to come up with a launch plan. Launch plans will be unique to each organization, but you may want to consider some of these activities to launch it.

Communication from your executive sponsor to the organization announcing the program and encouraging people to join (could be an email, an all-hands mention, etc.)

Incorporating it into your Employee Advocacy program. If you already have a channel that rewards employees for engaging with and sharing company news and announcements, make sure you’re sharing your program there.

Internal Wiki. If you have an internal site that your company uses to share information, it probably makes sense to post your program guidelines or at least a link to them.

Food. Let’s face it, people love donuts, pizza, coffee, boba…[insert name of delicious snack here]. Use food, specifically a meal, to launch your program to a captive audience (because you bribed them with food).

Signage. Sure, a plain, old-fashioned poster or even flyer is not super trendy, but in the context of an office environment, they work. Think about where people would take a moment to read something—by the coffee, maybe on the bathroom mirror—and leave a flyer there with a few details and a memorable short URL or chat channel for them to learn more.

Effectively launching your program internally has many variations and ultimately you need to understand your audience, and company culture and craft a launch strategy that will get people engaged and keep them engaged.

Make Your Blogging Program Sustainable

Launching your program is just the beginning! The real key to success is to make this program sustainable. There are a few things you can do to ensure it’s ongoing success, like:

Incorporate it into new-hire training: New hire training/onboarding today is more than figuring out your health insurance and getting an office tour. Many organizations provide a good amount of information in new hire training and go over things like their social media policy, products, and social events. Talk your HR team to see how you can get your program incorporated into the onboarding process.

Reward internal referrals: If you have bloggers who act as program advocates for you by sharing the program with others in the organization, formally or informally, reward them! This word-of-mouth recruitment will not only help you by delivering more content, but it will probably help save time because your advocate is likely to coach their referral toward success.

Thank your top bloggers: Of course you’re already rewarding your bloggers, but there are always going to be a few that go above and beyond. How can you thank them publicly? Think about what motivates them and what makes sense for your organization. Maybe it’s a shout-out from their boss, or from your boss, or it might be a certificate you create that they can add to their LinkedIn profile.

I hope that this gave you some good ideas to go mine a new content source, or if you are already having employees blog, to create a program that’s more robust and scalable. This method could work for more than blogs, so don’t be afraid to brand out. Are you running a content submission program at your organization? I’d love to hear what’s working and not working in the comments below.

The post 1 Awesome Way To Create Great Content appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/0j7y4HEb7oQ/1-awesome-way-create-great-content.html

[racheltgibsau]

1 Awesome Way To Create Great Content

Whether you’re fresh on the job— getting the lay of the land, or you’re a veteran at your organization, as a content marketer you probably face the constant challenge of delivering interesting, valuable, and relevant content at the pace that your organization demands. And while part of that problem can be solved with a bit of internal education around delivering value over volume, some of the need for fresh content will still exist.

There are many different ways to create the content you need in order to publish at the cadence that your audience and organization requires—freelancers, repurposing assets, and curation, just to name a few. But this blog will cover one incredibly productive content source that will not only help you provide value to your audience, and hit your objectives by publishing at the pace you need but will help shine a spotlight on content internally at your organization. That source? Your own employees. 

Why Create A Guest Blogging Program?

As a content marketer at Marketo, I’m responsible for making sure a blog goes live five days a week that is informative, entertaining and offers value to our audience (based on a detailed matrix of topics and audiences). As a lean team, doing this alone is an impossible task and, quite frankly, sounds scary. And that’s a feeling that it seems other marketers also have, because one of the most frequent questions I get asked when I am at an event, talking to a prospect or customer, or speaking is, “How do you scale your content?” Consistently, my answer is to be savvy about the resources you have at your disposal. Similar to repurposing content, I invite other marketers to ask themselves, “how can you get the most out of what you do have instead of focusing on what you don’t?”

One of the best ways to get the most out of the resources at your disposal is to broaden your view of what counts as a resource. If your resources are limited to already published blogs, and other assets (like whitepapers, ebooks, datasheets, and infographics), you can definitely find ways to create new content by repurposing, which will help you produce a few more pieces of content. But, if you shift your focus to include your human resources—across the organization—you have successfully found a content jackpot. Think about it for a second. If you have 1,000 employees and you are able to get even 1% of them (10 people) to blog for you, you’re already ahead of the game (vs. repurposing). If those authors, or even half of them, write a second post, you will have knocked it out of the park.

Build Your Program

Ok, so let’s talk about how you actually make this happen. Guest content, specifically guest blogs, sounds amazing until you consider that you’re going to have to do the editing. To prevent a guest blogging program from descending into unmanageable chaos, you’re going to want to start with a few foundational elements:

Content Style Guide: Your content style guide, or style guide, usually spans all content created for your brand, whether that’s technical documentation, public-facing copy, or sales training. It will include everything from capitalization and hyphenation (is it Internet or internet?), to your boilerplate, personas, and brand voice/tone guidelines.

Program Guidelines: Program guidelines detail how your program specifically works. If an employee is interested, what do they have to do to get started? Document your workflow for internal submissions, reviews, feedback, and publication. Clear expectations that are established early make everyone more successful.

Executive Buy-In: Never underestimate the power of executive buy-in. In fact, for a program that you want to span your whole organization and stand the test of time, you need an executive who not only believes in your idea but will champion it at the executive level. Change needs to happen from both the top down and the bottom up. Ask you sponsor to socialize the program with their peers. More specifically,  if you can, have your sponsor ask their peers to give their teams time to participate and positively recognize those that participate.

Just to recap., don’t launch your program without those three elements in place. They. Are. Critical.

Once you have the foundation of your program, it’s time to add some important details. You will want your program guidelines to not only include the editiorial expectations like I covered above, but the rewards (who doesn’t love a prize?), resources to get started, and examples. Basically, your program guidelines, whether they are on an internal wiki, a landing page, in an ebook, or part of an internally shareable slide deck, need to tell your audience what’s in it for them, how they can get started, what to expect, and the expectations. Here’s a deeper look at some of the elements you may want to include:

Rewards: A reward doesn’t always have to be monetary, but, let’s be honest, cash doesn’t hurt. What I’ve found to be successful is a combination of prizes like gift cards and electronics for different levels of submissions in addition to sharing the career benefits. That way, not only does your contributor get a physical reward, but they are building their personal brand. Worried about the cost of prizes? You get to set the reward amounts—so do what works for your budget. If you have to argue for budget to fund the prizes, share an example that uses how much it costs for a freelancer to write an article vs. an internal article, and that outsourced article also doesn’t have built-in brand/product knowledge, or build loyalty in your employee base.

Resources: Writing can be incredibly scary for someone who doesn’t do it as a core part of their job, day in and day out. Give your participants resources on how to get started. Think about what you could offer that would remove some of the barriers to participation. For example, are you available for “office hours” to coach them once a week? Do you have a blog template that you can share?

Examples: As much as you can explain what you’re looking for and how your participants can get there, not much can beat an example. Here are a couple types of examples that you can share: do you have an ideal blog that you can share with your participants with notes about what makes it work? Or, can you share other blogs, either in your industry or out of it that capture the tone or topic range that you’re looking for?

Launch Your Guest Blogging Program

So you created an awesome program that’s going to generate a crazy-amazing amount of content for your organization, but that’s only true if you share your program with your organization and get people excited. At this stage, you will want to come up with a launch plan. Launch plans will be unique to each organization, but you may want to consider some of these activities to launch it.

Communication from your executive sponsor to the organization announcing the program and encouraging people to join (could be an email, an all-hands mention, etc.)

Incorporating it into your Employee Advocacy program. If you already have a channel that rewards employees for engaging with and sharing company news and announcements, make sure you’re sharing your program there.

Internal Wiki. If you have an internal site that your company uses to share information, it probably makes sense to post your program guidelines or at least a link to them.

Food. Let’s face it, people love donuts, pizza, coffee, boba…[insert name of delicious snack here]. Use food, specifically a meal, to launch your program to a captive audience (because you bribed them with food).

Signage. Sure, a plain, old-fashioned poster or even flyer is not super trendy, but in the context of an office environment, they work. Think about where people would take a moment to read something—by the coffee, maybe on the bathroom mirror—and leave a flyer there with a few details and a memorable short URL or chat channel for them to learn more.

Effectively launching your program internally has many variations and ultimately you need to understand your audience, and company culture and craft a launch strategy that will get people engaged and keep them engaged.

Make Your Blogging Program Sustainable

Launching your program is just the beginning! The real key to success is to make this program sustainable. There are a few things you can do to ensure it’s ongoing success, like:

Incorporate it into new-hire training: New hire training/onboarding today is more than figuring out your health insurance and getting an office tour. Many organizations provide a good amount of information in new hire training and go over things like their social media policy, products, and social events. Talk your HR team to see how you can get your program incorporated into the onboarding process.

Reward internal referrals: If you have bloggers who act as program advocates for you by sharing the program with others in the organization, formally or informally, reward them! This word-of-mouth recruitment will not only help you by delivering more content, but it will probably help save time because your advocate is likely to coach their referral toward success.

Thank your top bloggers: Of course you’re already rewarding your bloggers, but there are always going to be a few that go above and beyond. How can you thank them publicly? Think about what motivates them and what makes sense for your organization. Maybe it’s a shout-out from their boss, or from your boss, or it might be a certificate you create that they can add to their LinkedIn profile.

I hope that this gave you some good ideas to go mine a new content source, or if you are already having employees blog, to create a program that’s more robust and scalable. This method could work for more than blogs, so don’t be afraid to brand out. Are you running a content submission program at your organization? I’d love to hear what’s working and not working in the comments below.

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