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jcmarchi · 10 months ago

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Most Early Galaxies Looked Like Breadsticks Rather Than Pizza Pies or Dough Balls - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/most-early-galaxies-looked-like-breadsticks-rather-than-pizza-pies-or-dough-balls-technology-org/

Most Early Galaxies Looked Like Breadsticks Rather Than Pizza Pies or Dough Balls - Technology Org

“Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University, and the lead author of a new paper slated to appear in The Astrophysical Journal that outlines the findings.

“Galaxies that look like long, thin breadsticks seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surprising, since they are uncommon among galaxies in the present-day universe.”

Sample shapes of distant galaxies identified by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin)

The team focused on a vast field of near-infrared images delivered by Webb, known as the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, plucking out galaxies that are estimated to have existed when the universe was 600 million to 6 billion years old.

The pizza pie-shaped galaxies were found to be as large as breadstick-shaped galaxies along their longest axis. “They are more common in the nearby universe which, due to the universe’s ongoing expansion, is made up of older, more mature galaxies.”

Which category would our Milky Way galaxy fall into if we were able to wind the clock back by billions of years?

“Our best guess is that it might have appeared more like a breadstick,” said co-author Haowen Zhang, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. This hypothesis is based partly on new evidence from Webb—theorists have “wound back the clock” to estimate the Milky Way’s mass billions of years ago, which suggests its likely breadstick shape in the distant past.

Images of what researchers believe are elongated, ellipsoid (i.e. breadstick-shaped) galaxies, captured with the James Webb Space Telescope. The word “believe” reflects the fact that some of the galaxies may be disk (i.e pizza pie) shaped galaxies seen from the side. Image Credit: Viraj Pandya et al.

“Identifying additional categories for early galaxies is exciting—there’s a lot more to analyze now. We can now study how galaxies’ shapes relate to how they look and better project how they formed in much more detail.”

But researchers still wondered: Would additional detail show up better with the sensitivity to infrared light that the Webb telescope, which launched in 2021, has? “Webb confirmed that Hubble didn’t miss any additional features in the galaxies they both observed. Plus, Webb showed us many more distant galaxies with similar shapes, all in great detail,” Huertas-Company said.

These filaments still exist, but they have grown much more diffuse as the universe has expanded, so they may be less likely to promote the formation of breadstick-shaped galaxies.

“The bananas are another way of saying that these intrinsically elongated galaxies seem to be the dominant ones in the first 4 billion years of the universe,” Pandya said.

“These are early results,” said co-author Elizabeth McGrath, an associate professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. “We need to delve more deeply into the data to figure out what’s going on, but we’re very excited about these early trends.”

Source: Columbia University

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tipco613 · 2 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://cryptonewsuniverse.com/citibank-report-says-asset-tokenization-a-killer-use-case-for-blockchain-and-cbdcs-what-about-crypto/

Citibank Report Says Asset Tokenization a Killer Use Case for Blockchain and CBDCs What About Crypto?

Citibank Report Says Asset Tokenization a “Killer Use Case” for Blockchain and CBDCs. What About Crypto?

Citibank's latest global perspectives and solutions report claims that tokenizing financial and real-world assets could be the "killer use-case" and a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. The report focuses on Asset Tokenization as the “killer use case” that blockchain needs to drive a breakthrough, with trillions of dollars worth of securities tokenized by the decade's end, forecasting up to $4 trillion.

Citi is an investment bank on the list of the “Too Big To Fail” banks. Its 165-page research report is titled ‘Money, Tokens, and Games. Blockchains Next Billion Users and Trillions in Value’ and contains bold projections for Blockchain, NFTs, and Central Bank Digital Currencies.

The report noted that the crypto industry is “approaching an inflection point,” and conversations by a few key figures in the crypto industry were aggregated in the research paper. The list includes Algorand founder Silvio Micali, Aave founder Stanley Kulechov, Ava Labs president John Wu, Polygon Labs president Ryan Wyatt, and even Zooko Wilcox, the founder of Zcash.

The report pdf is very long, so here’s a summary of a few noteworthy sections and some counter-arguments of why it may be a little askew in these areas. Could it be intentional, or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on their part? And what does it mean for the crypto industry?

Image credit: Citi GPS pdf

Report’s Brief Introduction

The report begins with a brief introduction from Kathleen Boyle, the managing editor at Citibank, who, presumably, put this report together. She commences by explaining that the potential of blockchain has been overlooked primarily because it's a back-end technology, not a front-end technology like ChatGPT. She says successful blockchain adoption will be achieved when “Blockchain has a billion-plus users who do not even realize they are using the technology.”

However, she does not say this adoption will come from crypto; it will come from Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). She also implies that the trillion-dollar opportunity of asset tokenization will come from the blockchains that power these CBDCs, not cryptocurrency blockchains.

This starkly contrasts what the crypto headlines say about the report. – As DeFi Edge points out there are already some prominent crypto protocols focusing on real-world asset tokenization. This underscores the importance of whenever you hear an institution, be it a mega bank or a government, talking about the benefits and potential of blockchain technology, 99% of the time, they are not talking about cryptocurrency. In almost every case, they talk about private and permissioned blockchains they will control.

This is why it's a bit scary to see Kathleen explain that blockchain needs “decentralized digital identities, zero-knowledge proofs, oracles, and secure bridges to achieve mass adoption.” She's probably not talking about the same technology we use in crypto. She's talking about different technology. Kathleen also notes that “regulatory considerations are also necessary to allow adoption and scalability without ‘hindering innovation’.”

Image credit: Citi GPS pdf

Kathleen and her crew estimate the mass adoption of blockchain, not crypto, is 6 to 8 years away. Some would argue that the mass adoption of crypto will come much sooner than that, and the value of the assets tokenized on cryptocurrency blockchains will exceed the $4 trillion the report is projecting. Moreover, the sentiment of crypto heavyweights et al. believes the adoption of CBDCs and asset tokenization on private blockchains will be much lower than the authors' pitch.

That's because data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the bank for central banks, shows that only 4% – 12% of people will voluntarily adopt CBDCs. The same goes for tokenized assets on private blockchains. If governments control these blockchains, then having all your assets tokenized means you won't truly own them; the government will own them. This is precisely what entities like the World Economic Forum are pushing for. This article explains how you can reject what the globalists are planning.

Central Bank Digital Currencies – CBDCs

The first part of the report worth covering is about CBDCs. The report projects that between 2 and 4 billion people will voluntarily adopt CBDCs. This is inconsistent with the adoption projections from the BIS and actual CBDC adoption in countries like Nigeria, where adoption is a fraction of a percent.

It begins by revealing that the obsession with CBDCs comes from the fact that they will allow governments and central banks to micromanage monetary and fiscal policy. In other words, they can control how much you can spend, how much you can save, what you can buy, and so on. Citi’s authors estimate that as much as 20% of all the currency in circulation will be converted into CBDCs by 2030. They also claimed that;

“The successful launch and adoption of CBDCs would lead to more stablecoin projects becoming mainstream. This is because the stablecoin protocol is now able to hold reserves in CBDCs, which are more stable and liquid than money market instruments.”

For context, stablecoins are currently backed primarily by US government debt. This is a double-edged sword because it allows the US government to subsidize its spending but also risks crashing the bond market in the event of a stablecoin run. It sounds like stablecoins will soon be backed by CBDCs instead. This is concerning because if CBDCs back stablecoins, it gives governments and central banks de facto control of all the stablecoins in circulation.

This, in turn, would give governments and central banks control of cryptocurrencies, whose ecosystems rely on stablecoins, such as Ethereum. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin said that stablecoins like USDC would have the power to decide future blockchain forks. What’s needed is a genuinely decentralized stablecoin to be developed that will protect crypto projects, like Ethereum, from future stablecoin control.

The authors list countries that are working on CBDCs and include notes about which technologies they're using. Australia and Norway appear to use Ethereum as part of their CBDC development. It's safe to assume they will use some private version. To their credit, the authors also list risks associated with a CBDC rollout. These include competition between central banks because of currency competition, a loss of privacy, a loss of bank deposits leading to financial instability, and limited adoption. Critics argue that the latter isn't a risk.

Image credit: Citi GPS pdf

Regarding the adoption aspect, the authors highlight the less than 0.05% adoption rate of Nigeria’s eNaira and the slow adoption of the Bahamas Sand Dollar, with FTX’s collapse and C-19 said to be contributing factors to the loss in momentum. This makes their projection of wide-scale CBDC adoption that much more implausible. They blame the absence of said adoption so far on a lack of financial literacy. Arguably, financial literacy is precisely why people aren't adopting CBDCs.

As explained in this article, it’s important to note the difference between CBDCs and cryptocurrencies. Certain institutions are already trying to market CBDCs as having the same benefits as cryptos as cryptocurrency adoption continues to rise.

Citi’s report presents timelines for when some CBDCs will be deployed. It states a digital Euro will be up and running around 2026. The digital pound will be ready by 2030, but the digital dollar is yet to be determined, and it slams the few brave US politicians for trying to stop its development.

Decentralized Social Media – DeSo

The second part of the report is about decentralized social media (DeSo). Unfortunately, this chapter is relatively short because DeSo is highly critical due to the overwhelming efforts of governments to censor the internet. This article explains that governments worldwide are in the process of passing online censorship laws. In the European Union, these online censorship laws have already passed and are set to go into force in June this year.

Since trust in institutions has been declining for decades and slumped after all the pandemic restrictions, their need for this crackdown makes sense. Trust in institutions is crucial for the financial status quo to continue. The recent banking crisis exemplifies what happens when that trust is entirely lost. This is why the authors note that “Blockchain's ability to create a shared, immutable, digital record of transactions could also help users see where particular information originated in order to judge its credibility. This could help build trust.”

The catch is that trust only exists when the blockchain is trustless. The report also notes that with DeSo, “ownership of content and control over the distribution channels remains with users.” This is required to resist online censorship, and it's the same principle that underlies all crypto. You are only financially free when you own and control your assets.

The report’s authors include a conversation with Aave founder Stanley Kulechov; the remainder of the section is an interview with him. This is primarily because Stanley and the Aave team are working on the Lens protocol, a decentralized social media protocol that will serve as the backend for future DeSo platforms. Stanley believes that games and social media might be how most people become aware of blockchain technology.

They are unaware that a monolithic crypto project in the DeSo space has been in development and is now up and running for the most part. The founder and architect of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast, envisioned the dystopian system we are experiencing currently and is ahead of the curve with a decentralized platform incorporating a social, marketing and broadcasting network for entrepreneurs that services as a cottage industry. Markethive is an ECOcentric DNA system.

The Markethive ecosystem culminates with its unique, comprehensive economic center housing the wallets and account facilitation for the user, with merchant accounts for eCommerce facilitation, and enables creators to monetize their content. Its cryptocurrency, Hivecoin, is the cornerstone of this decentralized economic sanctuary and is a portal to sovereignty and financial freedom with gamification thrown in. This is where people are learning about and experiencing crypto and blockchain technology.

Decentralized Digital Identity – DID

Another section of the report is about decentralized identity. Citi starts with a spooky sentence: "Decentralized identity is a core technology component that will enable regulatorily compliant uses of blockchain while still preserving anonymous/pseudonymous access.”

They seem to suggest that the purpose of decentralized digital ID is not to do things like interact with cryptocurrency protocols but to be the “identity layer for the entire internet.” Logically, this means whoever controls this identity layer will have unprecedented power.

Moreover, the report specifies that decentralized digital ID “Does not imply a lack of centralized parties in identity issuance or verification, but that the mechanism of owning, sharing and verifying identity is done in a permissionless, decentralized manner.”

This is a problem because if the issuance and verification of a decentralized digital ID are centralized, the issuer or verifier can revoke your ability to interact with online services. That's not decentralization, underscoring the need for crypto to find a way to issue and verify digital ID in a decentralized manner.

Consider that a decentralized digital ID tied to a government-issued document is no different from a centralized stablecoin. Ponder a scenario where your government-issued ID is digitized like the CBDCs backing stablecoins. Additionally, governments worldwide are actively working on rolling out Digital IDs. Countries are at different stages, but skepticism and pushback have existed.

Naturally, the authors say that the need for digital ID comes from the relentless data collection by big tech. They don't say that most of these big tech companies are aligned with governments and that these so-called decentralized digital IDs will likely just provide this data directly to said governments.

The authors showcase the recently released Polygon ID as an example of a decentralized digital ID solution, and the infographic suggests that it's built exactly how the authors describe it. There's a centralized issuer and verifier – you only control what you reveal on-chain.

Image credit: Citi GPS pdf

The report also provides an example of an actual decentralized digital ID: the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). ENS lets you buy a decentralized domain name ending in .eth for those unfamiliar. It has no central issuer or verifier; it's entirely decentralized and is run by a DAO. With that said, you could argue that DAOs aren't that decentralized due to their governance structures.

The authors appear to argue that an actual decentralized digital ID isn't a solution because it's not tied to so-called verifiable credentials such as government-issued IDs. Instead, they shill their version of decentralized digital ID, which they also call “Self-sovereign identity. They then provide examples of self-sovereign identities and include digital IDs developed by Microsoft and the European Union. To add insult to injury, the authors omit centralized control as one of the risks associated with this technology but imply that crypto is a risk.

Smart Legal Contracts – SLC

The last part of the report is about so-called Smart Legal Contracts (SLC), also called Contracts 2.0. The authors start with a statistic, and that's that 60% – 80% of all business transactions involve a contract. They note that companies lose 9% of their profits and miss out on an additional 40% of profits from bad contracts. Nick Szabo is the creator of Smart Contracts; however, SLCs are not the same as his smart contracts. It’s the authors that deem them an official subset of Smart Contracts but with different characteristics.

They clarify that smart legal contracts have no universally agreed-upon definition, but the main difference is they don't involve blockchains. Smart legal contracts are also legally enforceable in their countries of origin. By contrast, legal enforceability is rarely a consideration in smart contracts.

This begs the question of why smart legal contracts are required at all, and the authors reveal the answer. “Smart legal contracts are more dynamic to changing circumstances – to achieve legal compliance, they must include terms that allow them to be paused, modified, or rectified.”

It sounds like the authors are insinuating that smart contracts cannot be legally compliant due to their immutability. If smart legal contracts don't exist on blockchains, can be adjusted on a whim, and occasionally require human execution, as noted by the authors, then it begs the question of what makes SLCs different from a standard digital contract. The authors don't have a clear answer here.

To their credit, they concede that smart contracts are likely to be much more popular than smart legal contracts because they provide the following benefits.

They can exist indefinitely.

They are transparent.

They are tamper-proof.

They are secure.

They are built on a single source of truth.

This section of the report is long and consists of the authors tripping over themselves to try and explain why smart legal contracts are the future despite being objectively inferior to smart contracts.

Image credit: Markethive.com

What Does This Mean For Crypto?

So here’s the big question – What does Citibank’s report mean for crypto? If anything, it reveals that institutional investors are looking at the crypto industry through a radically different lens from us retail investors. CBDCs, de facto digital IDs, and changeable smart contracts are not crypto.

The few sections of the report about crypto were much shorter than those about dystopian technologies inspired by crypto. As mentioned, the chapter about decentralized social media was the shortest of all and could be interpreted as not a coincidence.

Consider that the purpose of cryptocurrency is to replace megabanks like Citi, as well as most of the institutions that the other authors of this report work for. The first step to this replacement is the awareness of what crypto offers and why it's valuable. This information can be found on social media for now; however, with all the plans and legislations to continually broaden censorship of what authorities deem as mis/dis-information may see it disappear from the mainstream.

In fact, leaked documents from the Department of Homeland Security stated that the US government was looking to censor information on social media, which fosters distrust in the financial system. Whoever still doubts that the government would resort to censoring financial information look no further than the recent banking crisis. In the subsequent hearings about the crisis, multiple US politicians pointed to social media as the cause of the bank runs that precipitated it.

If you read this article about bank bail-ins, you'll know that US government officials discussed censoring discussions of bank runs on social media in their bank bail-in simulation late last year. It's more than likely that other governments would secretly consider the same behind closed doors. Now, I mention all of this because Citibank's report is part of what can only be described as an ongoing information war against cryptocurrency by the establishment.

Another example is mainstream media articles about how Bitcoin mining is killing the planet, which is untrue. When it becomes clear to the establishment that they are losing this information war, they will resort to censorship to ensure that the trust in their increasingly unstable financial system remains.

This crossroads is coming sooner than people think because everyone is waking up to CBDCs. People are also starting to wake up to the fact that not all cryptocurrencies are created equal, and the establishment is co-opting some crypto projects, companies, and technologies to usher in a dystopian new system. This system requires a digital ID; their fake decentralized digital IDs are the trojan horse.

Always remember that blockchain does not equal crypto, and take every statement about crypto from megabanks and central banks with a massive grain of salt. The same goes for headlines about how mega and central banks embrace crypto. The likelihood is that they're doing the exact opposite.

This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Editor and Chief Markethive: Deb Williams. (Australia) I thrive on progress and champion freedom of speech. I embrace "Change" with a passion, and my purpose in life is to enlighten people to accept and move forward with enthusiasm. Find me at my Markethive Profile Page | My Twitter Account | and my LinkedIn Profile.

#Blockchain #cryptocurrency #markethive

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desskywalker · 3 years ago

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•Ghost of You•

Inspired by Ghost by Justin Bieber

"To me, for saving your ass for the hundredth time," Anakin raised his glass towards you with a cocky smirk, the smirk you hopelessly fell in love with.

You raised your glass of Jogan juice with him as you chuckled, "And for saving the Chancellor and getting us out of there alive whilst carrying me unconscious on your back." You clanked your glasses together. He insisted on drinking as he always does after a mission wether big or small, but you chose to refrain from alcohol for the night.

It was actually on one of your nights together like this where both of you began to explore your feelings for each other. One drunken night of you landing yourself into his quarters, turned into nearly every night of you landing yourself into his quarters.

Eventually you found yourself walking down an aisle, and secretly taking his name. Only his former Master and your own, Aayla Secura, were present; no one else was trusted with your secret affair.

You both knew it was wrong and against the code you swore to live by, but neither of you cared; you only cared about each other and the love you shared.

You had a plan, you were going to leave the order together once the war was over and the galaxy was safe; that's when you both decided you would also start a family. Late at night Anakin likes to share baby names with you, Luke for a boy, and Leia for a girl. You loved his choices, and you were excited for your future with him.

"Don't forget I killed Dooku too," He added with a wink before downing his drink easily, as if it was water. His wedding ring shined in the light as he had his hand raised and it warmed your heart every time you remembered that this angel was yours.

"That's hot," You sipped your drink as you watched him place his empty glass on the bar top, "But you never did tell me how you accomplished that." You pried for details. The last thing you remembered was a hit to the head with the hilt of Dooku's lightsaber.

Anakin cleared his throat as he twirled the glass in a circle under his fingertips, contemplating on telling you the truth; that he killed an unarmed man. He knew what he did was wrong, but the image of Dooku nearly killing you pushed him over the edge, and so he ended the Sith Lord without much hesitation. Plus the devil whispering on his shoulder, known as the Chancellor, wasn't much help either.

But he decided to keep you in the dark, he was nervous that you, the person who meant the most to him, would look at him differently, "Because I'm me." He responded narcissistically as he went into his pocket and pulled out a few credits to cover your drinks, as well as giving a generous tip.

You rolled your eyes at his arrogance, oblivious to the lingering darkness within your husband that is only being laid dormant because of you. Without you, he would've been lost to his internal suffering a long time ago. You keep it at bay, but that doesn't mean it's not still there.

"You want to leave after only one drink?" You asked confusedly as you finished the rest of your beverage.

Usually he enjoyed two or three before calling it a night, you feared for his liver. But then again, you drink just as much as him, sometimes more. You were the one who initiated your first hookup after drinking the bar dry; still the best choice you ever made.

He nodded as he stood up and stretched his arms up with a yawn, "Being the hero is exhausting," He arrogantly remarked as a joke, before smirking and dropping his hands down, "And that rough landing into Grievous's ship dented up our ship so I'm going to go and fix that before heading home." He informed you as he rubbed his tired eyes.

You stood up with a sympathetic sigh, "Ani just go home and get some rest, I can fix up the ship."

He shook his head, "No babe it's okay, I can do it," He placed his hand on your shoulder and rubbed it gently, "You should go, you took a rough beating today."

"I feel fine," You responded with an eye roll. You were annoyed that he always insisted on doing everything himself. Anakin is tired nearly every second of everyday, and that's because he hardly takes a well-deserved break, "I'm not even tired since I basically slept the whole mission," You shrugged; causing him to smile with a light chuckle, "You saved my life today, again, the least I can do is bang out a few dents from our ship." You reminded him that it was both of yours, not just his, so the responsibility for its maintenance isn't entirely on him.

He bit the inside of his cheek in thought. Then he sighed in defeat, knowing that your stubbornness won't allow him to win. Plus he really was tired, he was falling asleep on the ride to the bar, "Fine, only because I know I won't win and I'd rather you not make me sleep on the couch again for arguing."

You laughed at the memory, "You act like I didn't come out an hour later and pull you back to the bed."

"It was still the worst hour of my life," He playfully wiped away a fake tear.

"You're annoying, go home," You chuckled as you pushed against his shoulder; prompting an angelic laugh to part from his lips, "I'll be there in about an hour two, depending on if I decide to take my time."

He nodded; yawning once more, "Okay, I love you." He mumbled quietly, knowing there were more Jedi in this bar other than you two.

"I love you too," You whispered with a wink.

He sighed in annoyance as he glanced around the dimly lit room, "I want to kiss you so bad, think they'll mind?" He nudged his head towards Master Windu and Master Piell who were just a few tables away, indulging in a conversation.

You smirked, "Pucker up and let's find out."

"(y/n) Skywalker, you rebel," He eyed you up and down playfully as if he didn't recognize you, making you laugh, "Kinda hot," He winked, "I'll see you at home beautiful, and don't forget to fill the tank too please." He boldly planted his lips on your temple and stole a kiss, luckily no one saw; they were too interested in their own conversations or drinks.

"I won't angel face."

✦

It was late in the night and everyone was either asleep, or divulging in the underworld bars of Coruscant.

So you were alone at the dock where all of your ships were held and prepped for missions. It was an annoyingly long walk to get to yours as you passed multiple rows of other ships, and fighters. But finally you reached the black ship that held a yellow painted A.S. on the exterior.

You both argued for so long on what color to paint it. Anakin had his heart set on yellow, but you wanted it black to blend in with the darkness of space. Finally, you won when he realized the stealth benefits of your color choice, but he insisted on having his initials in yellow as a compromise, and you agreed.

You waved your hand for the ramp to lower, and walked upon the ship; instantly tripping on a wire that wasn't meant to be there.

That's when you heard it, a familiar beeping that began to blare more rapidly as each second passed.

You immediately knew what it was.

You triggered a bomb that was planted on your ship, a bomb you knew was meant for Anakin since most don't know that you shared this ship.

You knew you had no time by how fast the beeping was going; you knew there was nothing you could do. But you weren't afraid, you weren't angry, and you weren't sad as most people would feel when they realize they're about to die.

In your one second left of life, you only felt one emotion; relief.

Relief that you came instead of Anakin.

✦

Anakin woke up to an aggressive pounding on the apartment door that you and him shared. He threw on his robe and wiped his tired eyes, before slowly answering the door.

He was expecting it to be you, you had a habit of forgetting your key and you can't open the door with the force. He insisted on having one that was force resistant; mainly for any unwanted force user visitors, he was a paranoid man. Understandably so.

But his expression grew confused when the person at the door wasn't you, but Obi-Wan, "Obi-Wan? What are you doing here so late?" Anakin questioned, too tired to realize that you should've been home hours ago.

Obi-Wan who was on the brink of tears took a deep breath, knowing that this news was going to shatter Anakin's world, "Anakin," He choked on a lump in his throat, "It's (y/n) she-" He paused, finding the words to be too difficult to say. You were like a sister to him, and he loved you dearly.

"She's what?" Anakin impatiently asked. That's when he brought his watch up and checked the time, realizing that you parted nearly five hours ago. Dread overcame his body and a feeling of ice in his veins crawled over his skin as his mind raced to the worst possible scenarios, "Obi-Wan tell me where my wife is." He demanded in a tone filled with worry and fear, silently praying that you—his light—was okay.

"There's been an attack on the Temple," Obi-Wan dropped his gaze to the floor and painfully pushed the words from his throat, "Multiple ships in the dock area were rigged with explosives, and they triggered upon entry." He began, "The security holograms showed (y/n) entering your ship prior to it explo-"

"No," Anakin whispered before his former Master could finish, not wanting to believe that you were a victim of this terrorist act against the Jedi, "Please Obi-Wan, please tell me she got out." He begged as tears pooled in his eyes, he feared never seeing you again. That you could truly be gone in the blink of an eye, "Please tell me she's okay." He whimpered.

"I'm so sorry Anakin, but she's dead."

6 months later

Releasing his hand from a fist, the rebel dropped lifelessly to the floor. And your husband, who lost himself to the darkness after his only source of light was ripped away from him, spun around and left the clones to dispose of the multiple bodies of rebels he left in his wake.

It's been six months since he lost you, six months he's wallowed in agony - blaming himself for not being the one to go that night.

He wished it had been him instead of you. And the pain of no longer having you around, became worse as the days progressed; not better as most told him it would. That, along with the guilt, and what the Jedi did to him after your demise; pushed him to where he is now.

Darth Vader was born the moment you died.

With the wave of his hand; he lowered the ramp of his personal ship, one he painted black just as you liked, and he even added your initials on the exterior.

Once he got into the ship that had drawings of you scattered across the metal floors, he closed the ramp, breathing out a sigh now that he was finally alone.

He loved being alone, but he hated it at the same time because that's when the memories of you were the strongest. That's when he could actually hear your laugh as if you were standing next to him.

Vader quickly left the planet of Alderaan where he just killed dozens of known rebels, along with anyone accused of being associated with them.

He was doing the bidding of the Empire as an apprentice to Darth Sidious. He fell to the manipulation much easier without you around to guide him to the light, so he lost himself to the darkness.

He flew the ship through space with no set destination, he was merely trying to get you off of his mind, and flying had a way of distracting him; especially if he happens to come across a rebel ship.

After awhile, he did find something, but it wasn't a rebel ship. He came across a black hole, which would suck up anything that gets within a certain distance. It would be an instant death.

He was tempted.

He hasn't smiled or felt any kind of joy since the last moment he saw you, only misery. And he doubted he would ever feel anything remotely similar to happiness again.

Then there was one thought that pushed him to place his hands back on the handle, and edge dangerously close to his death.

Maybe I'll see her on the other side.

Just as he was getting near, he paused at a voice coming from behind him, "Stop."

He didn't move, he only stared straight ahead of him, too stunned to turn around. He was wondering if it was his mind playing tricks on him, since it wouldn't be the first time he heard your voice.

"Baby look at me." You spoke again when you got no response from him, but you knew he heard you. You knew by the way his body stiffened.

Vader slowly turned around and momentarily stopped breathing when his eyes that were covered by the helmet he was wearing, landed on the ghost of you.

"You're not real." He spoke allowed in a voice you didn't recognize. He assumed that you were merely a hallucination that his guilt-filled mind conjured in an effort to torture him, it's happened before. But that doesn't mean that seeing you didn't warm his cold, unused heart ever so slightly.

"Yes I am," You stepped closer to him, "Take off that helmet for me angel face."

His chest tightened painfully at the nickname you made for him, the name he could hear you whispering in his dreams, "What is below this helmet is not the face of an angel, but of a demon."

You shook your head, "That is where you're wrong Anakin," He winced at the name he hasn't been called in months, "You will always be my angel."

He stood up from the pilot seat and fully faced you in his full armor, the armor that makes him Darth Vader, "Is it really you?" His heavy voice came out soft, and nearly trembled as his covered eyes finally took in your appearance; you were in the same dark robes that you died in.

None of his hallucinations of you lasted this long, and most importantly, they never called him Anakin. He's usually taunted by the image of you calling him a disgrace for who he's become, as well as calling him a monster, or a killer, or Vader; but never Anakin. As if you were ripping him of his previous identity.

Leading him to believe that this may really be you, in the form of a force ghost; something he learned about years ago, but believed it to be a myth until this very moment.

You nodded as a sad smile spread across your cheeks, "If you don't believe me, I'll gladly describe our first real date." You offered and he slowly nodded, needing some form of assurance before getting his hopes up, "Your speeder broke down and we had to land on top of the senate building. Which is where we stayed the whole night instead of calling for help, and gazed up at the stars, naming them." You walked closer to him as you spoke until you were barely a foot away, "Then you admitted to being in love with me since we were sixteen, and I countered by saying-"

"You've loved me since the day that kid stole your cookies, and I split my last one with you so you wouldn't cry anymore." He placed his hands on the helmet and began to slowly take it off, "We were nine." He spoke on his normal voice, and the yellow in his eyes glowed; highlighting his unscathed features.

His face looked just as beautiful as you remembered, aside from the amber eyes that shattered your heart. You hated seeing what your death did to him.

Anakin only chooses to hide his face with the mask, because he himself doesn't like what's underneath anymore. A face that you once called an angel, was the last face many saw, including the innocent children of the temple. He doesn't feel deserving of that name anymore.

You raised your hand and wished you could touch his cheek, "My angel, how you have fallen so far." You spoke softly. You knew everything that happened to him, all that he's done; you had a front row seat. It was only now that his walls had weakened and you were able to break through, so he could finally hear you instead of you constantly talking to a person who had no idea you were around.

His heart skipped every other beat as he remained quiet and gazed down at you with longing and a devastating sorrow, "Did you see what they did to me?" He asked in a low whisper as his eyes watered, "How they locked me in a cage like an animal after losing you?" He reached forward but his hand went straight through you, causing his eyes to water even more. All he wanted was to feel you, and to have that kiss he desperately wished he stole that night before leaving the bar.

You nodded slowly, "For good reason Ani, you killed Barriss," You nearly cringed at the memory of her gruesome death, "You were losing your way."

His jaw clenched as his eyes darkened, "She murdered you, she deserved exactly what I did to her," He spat hatefully through gritted teeth.

"I know what she did," You sighed quietly, it was Barriss who was working undercover with the separatists and planted the bombs on the ships, "But going down this path wasn't the right thing to do An-“

"Right?" He shouted in disbelief as he took a few steps away from you, "I had every right to rip her heart out!" He sneered as the red line surrounding his eyes expanded as the darkness within him grew, "She deserved to feel how I felt the moment I was told that you were gone forever." He cried as the tears in his eyes poured down his cheeks, "We were supposed to start a family together, to live a happy life, and that traitor took that away from us. She is the one who had no right to do what she did, she didn't deserve to live after taking you away from me!" He continued to shout and the ship you were both in began to shake violently with his emotions.

You could feel his pain as if it were your own, and all you wanted to do was hold him and make everything okay as you used to, "Calm down angel before you tear this place apart." You placed both your hands near his cheeks and used the force as a way of creating a touch that he could feel.

At the feeling of your ghostly touch, his fists that had involuntarily clenched; loosened. And he took a few deep shaky breaths as his eyes stayed locked with yours - the ship slowly stopped shaking. You sighed with relief.

"Listen to me," You began, hoping your words would be enough to break the hard shell that Vader had created, "I'm so sorry that you went through all of this alone, and I'm so sorry that I left you behind, I wish I had been there to save you from it all. You didn't deserve to have to go through any of it, and what she did to our future is completely unforgivable," You began to cry, and Vader only wished he could wipe away your tears,"But what you're doing now, who you've become isn't you. My angel isn't a murderer, he's a savior. He's not a plague, he's a blessing. He's not curse, he's a miracle. And he's definitely not a demon, he is and will always be a beautiful angel."

The pain in Vader's chest grew to be unbearable and he dropped down to his knees, so he had to look up at you with tear stained cheeks, "I'm not who you used to know anymore, Anakin Skywalker died along with you." He feels like he disappointed you, that this man he is now is not someone you could possibly love.

Oh but how wrong he is.

You gazed down at him, knowing that his words were completely untrue, you had hope, "You're wrong again, my Anakin is still very much alive; just lost."

"Lost without you," He dropped his head down as his body trembled from how hard he was crying, "t should have been me, I never should have let you go." He blamed himself.

You dropped down as well so you were on the same level, and his broken gaze stayed on you, "Please don't say that, I'm glad it was me instead of you, the galaxy needs you."

"I've destroyed the galaxy," He choked on the lump in his throat, "They hate me."

"Everything is mendable." You spoke positively as you watched that hard shell crack, "And everyone is redeemable."

"Even me?" He asked as he used his gloved hand to wipe under his eyes that flashed a familiar blue.

You nodded with a reassuring smile, "Especially you, you're their chosen one. You alone can destroy the Sith, and bring the balance back. As I've always told you angel face, I believe in you."

He slowly smiled back, "My number one cheerleader," He echoed your words from nearly ten years ago.

Many made fun of his title as the chosen one, but not you, you were always his biggest fan; his biggest supporter. You always knew he'd do amazing things one day, you never once doubted him. And even now when you had a million reasons to give up, you still didn't have a single doubt.

"And I always will be." You placed your hand near his cheek again, and this time, it was as if you could really feel him; even without the use of the force.

He did the same, and brought his gloved hand near your cheek. You were able to feel a slight touch because your souls had finally connected, since his soul was no longer plunged into darkness, it was slowly shifting back to the light.

You were the only thing he needed to guide himself away from the darkness. You sparked a light inside of him, that began to grow with every second that you were with him.

His amber eyes had finally went back to the beautiful crystal blue,"I missed you more than you could ever understand." He whimpered painfully as he used his thumb to caress your cheek.

"I missed you too Ani," You brought your face close to his, "But I'm always with you. I'm here, waiting for you."

"Do you promise?" He questioned as he also got closer to you, both of you wanting to experience that final kiss you didn't get to have.

You nodded, "I promise, just as long as you stay you, and not lose yourself again."

"I won't let you down my love, I promise," He pushed his lips to yours, and tears slid down both of your cheeks as you both thought of the life you never got to have.

But eventually, after he fulfills his prophecy and rights his wrongs; he will join you in the afterlife, and eternity will be yours for the taking.

#anakin x y/n #anakin angst #angel #angst #star wars #ghost #ghost of you #anakin skywalker #hayden christensen #love #angel face #dark side #vader #darth vader #obi wan kenobi #writing

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mizgnomer · 5 years ago

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Excerpts from the SyFy Wire & Film School Rejects interviews with Claire Anderson, the Emmy-nominated costume designer for Good Omens:

[ Film School Rejects - by Ciara Wardlow] “I worked through it with gut reaction images. So, two guys. Two guys, kind of close, nearly in love, if you like,” she said. “I just went in and we had a really big, very open conversation about how you related to these people in the script and how we would make them real and plausible, but give them a fantasy element. Give them something otherworldly.”

While Anderson says that she ultimately took this approach with more or less all of the characters, mixing period and modern elements to give characters somewhat timeless, yet also somewhat fantastical “out of time” looks, in the early discussion stages it was all about Aziraphale and Crowley. For one thing, Sheen and Tennant were already cast, which was a major help in determining their looks. It took some time to settle on the duo’s main, contemporary looks, but once these were locked in they played a significant role in determining everything else they wore.

[...] Aziraphale maintains a look with significant nods to the late Victorian era. Crowley too, although he manages to put an edgier twist on things than his angelic contemporary. “We re-appropriate bits of period stuff so that it echoes. [Aziraphale and Crowley] echo one another in their visual identity with pieces from their past—where they’ve touched each other in the past perhaps, or bumped into each other.” Regarding how Crowley manages to keep more of a modern, cool vibe, Anderson gives David Tennant’s performance the lion’s share of the credit. “He’s a very nice man, but he’s very sexy. He brought all of that swagger, that rock star, snake-hipped sexiness, and we built on that.”

[ SyFy Wire - by Jennifer Vineyard] GARDEN OF EDEN, 4004 B.C. - Anderson looked at everything from Pre-Raphaelite paintings to Al Pacino’s hippie clothes in Serpico to determine just the right flow for Aziraphale’s rough-hewn robe, which has gold embroidery on the shoulders and side. Aziraphale is also wearing a golden ring, which later becomes a signet ring stamped with wings in the Victorian era.

NOAH'S ARK, MESOPOTAMIA, 3004 B.C. - “As aged as I am, I wasn’t there,” Anderson says, laughing. “And there wasn’t any painting or documentation from this era. But what we do know is that tunics remained pretty simple, and the earlier shape would have served them well for many years.” Aziraphale’s robe becomes more streamlined, and he wears gold beads at the neck.

THE CRUCIFIXION, GOLGOTHA, 33 - By this time, both Aziraphale and Crawley — now Crowley — are wearing turbans and head wraps, which Anderson attributes to “a bit of vanity.” Plus the wrap helps Crowley conceal his snake-like eyes (it’s too soon for glasses). Aziraphale dons a soft leather coat over his tunic, while Crowley wears female attire of the region — an abaya.

ROME, 41 - Switching from tunics to togas was difficult, since togas contain 6 to 12 meters of fabric, which is a lot to carry around on camera. Anderson reduced the size by cutting the togas to fit for the character’s movements, and she gave each actor a thematic decorative pin to hold their togas together — Crowley a serpent and staff, Aziraphale a pair of wings (both courtesy of George Easton at Danegeld Historic Jewellery). Although history might argue that it’s too soon for sunglasses, Crowley starts to shield his eyes with a very small, eye-shaped lens. “It’s suggestive, rather than historically accurate,” Anderson says. And as a sign that Crowley is adapting to the humans around him, he also wears a silver laurel wreath.

ARTHURIAN ENGLAND, THE KINGDOM OF WESSEX, 537 - Anderson sent character descriptions and visuals for Aziraphale and Crowley to armor specialist FBFX, which sent a van to London full of pieces that could work for angelic and demonic armor. Instead of focusing on historical accuracy, Anderson looked for shapes and fit that suggested an ethereal — or snakelike — quality, once the pieces had been painted black or silver. For Crowley, she found a helmet that had a smaller face that could suggest a snakehead, and for Aziraphale, shoulder pieces that were slightly wing-like. To add to the wing effect, Anderson added a white fur caplet to Aziraphale’s armor. “It was terribly grand, but not very practical,” she says. “And the poor guys, it was murderously uncomfortable to stand around in that armor.”

GLOBE THEATRE, LONDON, 1601 - Crowley and Aziraphale catch an early version of Hamlet, looking more period-appropriate than ever thanks to the Globe’s vast archive of costumes. Aziraphale’s wardrobe, which includes a neck ruff edged with gold thread, has a metallic look with a hint of iridescent blue, which opens up his color palette. Crowley, meanwhile, wears a cleaner neckline and leather on his doublet, as well as fabrics that provide sheen and luster to suggest his snaky origins.

REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE, PARIS, 1793 - This is not a period to be dressed like an aristocrat, but Aziraphale couldn’t resist a lace collar, gold brocade and fitted jacket — which explains why he’s stuck in a prison cell (at least until Crowley intervenes). Crowley, more mindful of what revolutionaries would wear, dons a dark red jacket that’s almost as dark as his usual black. When Aziraphale miracle-changes his clothes, he wears the red cap of liberty. “It’s a soft beret that falls somewhere between a modern French beret and a pirate headdress,” Anderson notes.

ST. JAMES' PARK, LONDON, 1862 - This is the time period with which Aziraphale gets most comfortable, fashion-wise, and settles into a Victorian look with tartan flair. Anderson also bestowed some heavenly nods to his angelic nature — a feathery velvet top hat, a stopwatch with angel’s wings on the chain, and the signet ring. Crowley, meanwhile, wears a pair of long, elegantly cut trousers that we will see again in the 1960s. “The trousers repeat, which is basically what fashion does anyway,” Anderson says. “And it’s what the story does. There are notes backward and forwards.”

THE BLITZ, LONDON, 1941 - Aziraphale’s tartan necktie becomes a bow tie, and his penchant for wide lapels, a nod to his wings, continues, this time with a spear-point collar. Crowley, who comes to save Aziraphale once again, is dressed more formally, in a full double-breasted wool suit that must have been hard for David Tennant to wear in the South African heat. “The rest of the crew were in flip-flops and T-shirts, and David was in the suit, hat, and those big boots,” Anderson says, recalling the shoot. “He had to be very physically active in that scene, and yet David didn’t complain about the heat or anything. He’s amazing.”

SOHO, LONDON, 1967 - Crowley, as noted, continues to wear his Victorian trousers, which are right up to date, and which he pairs with a black paisley velvet jacket with contrasting lapels. His sunglasses now have more of a John Lennon vibe. Aziraphale, perhaps inadvertently, is also looking stylish with his Victorian topcoat, spear-point collar, and cravat (modified from his scarf in Victorian England). “You can’t avoid being affected by changing trends,” Anderson says. “However bookish you are, you still notice other people. And you would have had Rolling Stones and Beatles fans wearing that kind of thing. That was our argument for Aziraphale wearing his Victorian topcoat all the way through, and Michael Sheen loved it. He said it inspired him. And the cravat rang in the changes and helped us with the passage of time, rather than always having him wear a bow tie.

#good omens #david tennant #michael sheen #ineffable husbands #crowley and aziraphale #claire anderson #long post #tennant tuesday #costume design #apologies for the length of this post #but it was all so darn interesting!#(guess I should have done part 1 and part 2?)#stuff i posted #they put so much thought into everything #I hope they win that emmy!#I'll probably reblog this with the links intact when I get home tonight #because it's killing me to not include the links to these two articles #p.s. I love the bit about david's snake-hipped sexiness #good omens costumes long post

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jobblogs360 · 3 years ago

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Reviews: How Santa Stole Christmas! or Scrooge is kind of a dick

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody! Christmas begins on this blog with the last new Ducktales of the season! Time to break out some eggnog, presents and warmth of good family, i’ve got a bushel of Christmas reviews planned for the season, and this one is just the start of htem. As you can probably tell by my enthusasim I love this holiday. Oh sure it has it’s bad sides, paticuarlly several jackasses making huge deals out of the fact some people say happy holidays because “there’s a war on christmas” when really their just petty morons who can’t accept theirs more than one holiday in the month and not everyone likes christmas. I do, but I know not everyone does, and that’s fine. But overall it’s a fine holiday with warmth, cheer, family, generosity and of course, what brings us here today, really damn good episodes and specials of television. It’s just a really warm and cheerful time that , whlie it can bring out the absolute worst in people.. can also bring out the best more often than not. And that’s why I love this holiday. If you don’t that’s just fine, but it’s my blog, I can love what I want. And I love this holiday.. and I loved this episode, a good end to a great run of episodes. So let’s rock around the Christmas tree and find out why Scrooge hates santa, this is How Santa Claus Stole Christmas!

We open with the classic night before Christmas poem.. only naturally since Della is reading it to the boys, it’s Scrooge’s version involving barbed wire and calling the man a traitor because what honestly did you expect. Though I find it ironic a man introduced in a Christmas story has a one-sided blood feud with Santa. The boys are annoyed with this and just want free presents and the presecne of a jolly fat man and don’t get why Scrooge hates him. And yeah.. all of that tracks. They were raised by Donald who, while he clearly spent several years at Scrooges tolerating this feud, likely figured the Feud was just some personal gripe of scrooges and that Santa had done nothing that terrible. Which given Scrooge isn’t personable on the best of days and the episode goes out of it’s way to point out Scrooge has no friends, is entirely accurate and Donald was, as always the sane one in this situation. Plus he was already mad at Scrooge, this was just another way to tell him to go fuck himself.

The boys hear what they think is Santa on the roof but turns out to be Scrooge, in full Scottish war garb manning traps with webby.. in full chimney camo... putting a knife to Dewey’s throat for siding with santa.. well okay pointing at his throat but still god damn. Every now in then i’m reminded how ready Webby is to murder someone. It never gets easier or less disturbing. The boys.. continue to make a good point: Scrooge says he’s the richest duck in the world and can provide them whatever.. but being Scrooge just gives them itchy hats made of cheap fabric, and bemoans them wanting a trampoline, a new electronic game, and a new phone. And while Scrooge can give them whatever he wants, it’s his money, he also could’ve put some actual thought into it and clearly views the holiday more as a transaction and less for hte acutal sentmient. Instead of giving them personal mementos, or making them personal mementos, or even just simply building them a sled or something, a simpler toy than what they want but still something nice that comes from the heart.. he just gave them the cheapest hat he could find and tries to guilt them for not liking his thoughtless present he probably bought in bulk for everyone in the manor and his employ because he’s kind of a dick sometimes. IT’s good storytelling though as it sets up that Scrooge.. can possibly be int he wrong, so when the main plot comes to his front door, quite literally, there’s some doubt as to wither he or santa is in the wrong. Speaking of which Santa is at the door. So cue the credits and cue the cut for the rest of the plot as is usual. Full spoilers, and full plot under the cut. Ho ho ho.

First a quick comment on the Holiday version of the theme, the same one from Last Christmas! IT’s really good, a really nice frank sinatra style verison of the theme. Good stuff. My only real complaint is like last time.. there’s nothing unique about it, it’s just the normal season 3 intro but with snowflakes. And that’s.. more on Disney than the creators. If Frank and Matt had the option they would likely do an entirely original intro.. it’s just Disney can be cheap when it comes to intros, see how possesed ludo stayed in the star vs intro long after that plot point was resolved, and only affords one a season. That being said they still have one up on most networks, who, with the exception of Netfix with she ra, never really let intros change more than once, if at all. I mean I get it, budgets are higher here than with anime, they can’t do a new song and intro every half a season.. BUUUT it wouldn’t kill more stuidos to do this more often and do a complete intro overhaul, as it adds freshness, and you can still use the same old theme, just over a new set of pretty images. Most just allow a few swap outs, Disney included, and while I get intros are expensive, this is something you can use for a whole season, or more, why are you like this?

Anyways one theme song and me complaning about an animation trend I don’t like later, we’re inside the Manor with none of the other adults present because this season hates me. I do actually get it this go round: Besides Della, Donald and Launchpad getting a full subplot in the other holiday episode, they aren’t really needed. In fact most of the episode’s present day is a framing device for the tale of how Scrooge and Santa met and why Scrooge hates him, so for once the minmal use of the supporting cast.. is actually done well. The focus is on Scrooge and Santa, a feud that’s had four years build up in real time, and two years in series and a bunch of months. So yeah, i’m okay with sidelining everyone for once, because this story really needed all of the space and there was no real place for them aside from the climax. This is Scrooge and Santa’s story, with Webby there as an impartial-ish observer. We’ll get to that in a moment. Also if your curious where in the fuck this episode fits on the series massively warped time scale.. i’m going with this and “The Trickining!” taking place before season 3, since “Astro Boyd” takes place in march, and “Forbidden Fountain” takes place in probably late april, huge thanks to a friend on discord for help with the timeline. Otherwise it just makes no sense whatsover and while it dosen’t TECHINCALLY need to, I prefer the series timeline at least making some rational sense. The world dosen’t have to but time still does. So the boys are at least 12, possibly turning 13. Congrats. Or maybe they just don’t age. I dunno.

Now time and plot concerns aside, Santa gladly gives the boys their gifts which is.. everything they listed: A mini tramp for Dewey, Legends of Legend-Quest 2 for Huey, and another phone for Louie, which Scrooge dosen’t get. But Louie gets it on 2 levels: One, the one he asked for is probably a nicer model and as someone who just got a very marginally nicer model on insurance, I get it, even if like Scrooge i’m fine as long as mine works, it’s still nice to have more space to do shit. And two, he plans to sell the old one and keep the money. So yeah the boys already loved Santa but now they have every reason to since, you know, Santa actually gave them what they asked for and Scrooge gave them itchy hats because he’s cheap not because he put the slighest thought into it. And no i’m ont letting him get away with that: Again, off list, perfectly fine. Right behind me on my sprawl of book shelves is Weird Al’s biography, a really fun, really intresting book with photos on his career. I did not ask for it, but my mom rightly knew I would love it and got it for me for my birthday, which is very close to christmas, the 16th if you were curious, anyway, and I’ve treasured it since.. and really need to re-read it. My point is you CAN get someone something they didn’t ask for and still have it be something they LIKE. I did that for most of my christmas gifts this year. Scrooge just, as I went on about above, didn’t give a shit and was a bit callous about it so yeah, Santa wins this round. But Santa naturally needs Scrooge’s help to save Christmas because his ankle’s sprained and he’s out of options. Scrooge.. naturally refuses because, as i’ve made clear this and past episodes, he can be kind of a dick and Santa is one of his worst enemies in his mind. Why help him? So Santa, reluctantly, offers Scrooge the one thing you can get for the man who has everything: An agreement to leave his house alone. The boys aren’t happy about it, but Scrooge reluctantly agrees to the deal. They prepare to mount up though the boys aren’t invited, as Scrooge thinks their too far in the Santa camp and Scrooge does not trust him. Which again is both accurate and fair on their parts as again, he gave them things with well meaning and love, he gave them hats he fished out of the dollar store clearance bin. I mean at least go for the dvd’s and blu rays man. Yeesh. Santa does lightly buy them off by offering them another present if their good boys. Though honestly given Santa in this universe, he probably was going to anyway and this is his nice way of getting them to stay behind to make Scrooge happy.

So as they take off, while Webby is wary of Santa, she is curious what happened, especially since earlier Scrooge actually did finally voice his gripe, if without any full length explination: Santa took Christmas From him. And Della might know that, Scrooge likely didn’t tell her or Donald the full story and Donald rightly didn’t buy it was that one sided. And it isn’t as we’ll see. Since the episodes divided up into two storylines, i’m once again splitting the difference. This time though I would like to mention the story is beautifully woven in, with both complementing each other: there’s some legit suspense as we wonder if Santa did something really that bad or if he’s lying to webby, or if Scrooge being Scrooge was just exaggerating or holding onto a grudge that was partly his fault. It’s genuinely well done to build up the story and helps really flesh Santa out as a character in both stories. i’m only not doing that because my short term memory, while good enough to hold the story for now can be spotty, and this is a lot less taxing on it. Also parts of this segment happen before the boys leave, but it’s easier this way. Sooooo...

Times Past: Santa’s Worst Christmas Some time ago... seriously I don’t know. Scrooge was born in the 1800′s and Christmas well existed by then, to the point there’s actually a story starring young scrooge published over seas. Granted the Duck’s are no stranger to christmas, as I already covered Christmas on Bear Mountain for Scrooge’s birthday, and will be covering “A Christmas for Shacktown’ sometime this December. It’s just something worth noting. But given this universe can do whatever it wants, having it invited sometime in the early 1900′s or late 1800s is fine just fine.

Scrooge is a coal salesman, selling people what they need but getting no shelter as he’s, again, an ass. But in the depths he finds Santa, whose having trouble puling his sleigh, and gets them in the previously closed door with kindess and saying he’s with me. We now get an idea of who Santa truly is: a kind, selfless soul who thinks nothing of himself, and is happy to offer a gift in exchange for something, but does so only in the most well meaning, warmest way possible. In short this Santa really is.. what Santa is at his best in stories; a kind, generous man who just wants to make people happy. He just gave a gift not because he wanted to bribe his way in, but because he was genuinely hoping for some shelter and wanted to be greatful. It also shows that clearly, even if something did happen.. Santa probably isn’t evil. A twist still could’ve come.. but spoilers.. it dosen’t. Santa is genuinely this kind and self sacrificing and noble. He’s just a good person.. and that would ultimately be the problem but we’ve got a lot of subplot to cover. So Santa parties with what are clearly going to be his elves, and turn out indeed to be elves at the end when the fire goes out and Scrooge is suddenly in buisness.. and he and Santa make a great team, as Santa talks him up and says he can deliver a whole year’s worth of coal all over the world by Christmas Morning, so Christmas DOES exist here, it’s just Santa didn’t which kind of tracks. Well played. I’ll keep my earlier mistake in there though. Keeps me fresh. But Santa offers to help.. after all what are friends for? And Scrooge says their not friends.. their partners.

And Santa says why not both. And a friendship is forged. And it makes sense.. while i’ts not as tight as it will be, Santa is a warm generous guy who helped Scrooge multiple times just to be kind: He helped him find shelter to repay his kindness helping him.. then helped him sell his coal, when he didn’t have to and while he upsold him on what he could do, did so not out of malice, but so his friend could sell MORE and with eveyr intention of helping. And this friend is someone he just met, is kind of cranky and rude.. but as we all know is a good person underneath and to Santa.. that’s what he sees.. the kind young man who helped him pull his sleigh when he didn’t have to and was already cold and miserable. And that.. that just warms my heart a lot. But Scrooge being Scrooge has a mystic artifact that could help: The Feliz Navidiamond, a mystic artifact that can seemingly control time he got off a spanish sailor needing coal. The two head in but encounter it’s guardians. The Magic reindeer! And that’s part of what I love about this episode: besides really getting christmas, we’ll get to that, it has a creative and intresting Santa origin baked into the show’s mythology that also shows off an intresting part of Scrooge’s past. Santa manages to pacify them with jingle bells and our heroes head inside. In the cavern they find a Giant Snowman.. because this show is fucking awesome and Santa’s attempt to be nice bacfires but Scrooge’s natural paranoia and gumption pull through. It shows off why they make a good team: Santa’s niceties helped them with the reindeer, and netted them future transportation, while Scrooge’s natural grumpus tendencies help when nice just won’t do it. They work well together: one’s a showman and the other hasn’t learned how yet, one is nice the other naughty. It’s easy to see why they worked so well together.. in both senses. They make it past the Snowman and find that the diamond slows down time running on “christmas time!”.. seriously a great pun and one of many this episode. This show had a chance to go all out on holiday puns this go round and they did not blow it.

But... sadly... and obviously the good times can’t roll forever and when we next return to the story it’s a year later. McDuck and Klaus coal is a MASSIVE concern, and Scrooge is eager to get started... but Santa.. wants to just give gifts instead. To do something Generous. Buisness just isn’t in him and he just wants to do something kind. It’s.. not a bad goal.. i’ts just not Scrooge. To Scrooge it’s a betryal of all he stands for: foreswearing profit to give something for nothing for seemingly no reason and to a younger even meaner scrooge.. it’s an utter betryal.. and a breaking point. Either his daft presents idea.. or Scrooge. And why yes this episode is dripping with ho yay and why yes this does resemble his painful breakups with goldie. And why yes is glorious.. Imean I wasn’t shipping Scrooge with santa before but now? Hot damn. But yeah the two have come to a parting of ways, and Scrooge bitterly leaves, while the elves reveal themselves. And my heart hurts “The Empire Builder from Callisota” bad so thank you and fuck you show. It also probably shows why Scrooge has exactly one friend, who also works with him so it’s complicated, in present day: He just dosen’t want to let people in... and now we know WHY. The first genuine friend he made, the first person he let into his heart.. betrayed him. It’s no wonder it took decades for Beakly, then the kids to get into his heart again: the guy’s been betrayed by goldie, in his mind betrayed by santa and as we’ve seen his own dad turned against him eventually. He had no one for so long, he built a wall all around him but the wall was too tall and it blocked out all the birds and the son. But this .. is a really damn good story that fleshes Scrooge out and explains his hardness. In the comics it was Glomgold.. here.. it’s much more personal and cuts much deeper. And I absolutely love it. This story could’ve neatly fit into life and times if it made any sense in Rosa’s timeline, and it would be just perfect there.

PRESENT DAY: Concentrated Awwww

The present day plot is a lot simplier but still fantsatic: Webby slowly warms up to Santa depsite herself.. despite Scrooge clealry seeing she is.. she sees the man is just.. nice. He gives her a new crossbow, a really nice one she probably didn’t even expect to get given you know, everything and knowing scrooge, and appricates the sentiment and slowly sees the man isn’t some monster, but just a jolly old fat man who wants to give presents. Even Scrooge seemingly warms up a little. We also get tons of cameos during delivery, as they visit tons of supporting cast.. sadly no Darkwing.. but this one was clearly meant to go anywhere and is clealry set before “Let’s Get Dangerous”, but tons of other great bits: We get the Drake recidence with Boyd getting a present.. and somehow also doofus whose filled his stocking full of.. something. I don’t want to know and you can’t make me ask. You can make me ask why the fuck Doofus gets a present, but it could be filled with bees or maybe Santa truly thinks theirs good in him.. which .. yeah tracks. I mean not their being good in him.. I think dr. loomis said it best.. I mean it was about micheal meyers but.. same diffrence minus the patricide?

I mean points for trying though Santa, you mean well you loveable bear in both senses of the word you. But anyways other cameos include Fenton, alsleep with his armor strewn about, aww, with the gizmo armor set to hit people with fruit cake. Thought that was against the geneva convetion but alright. Scrooge’s been hit with worse. We also get them visiting the boat and giving Donald and Della presents, awww. And of course I saved the cameo I put up top for last as Webby visits her closest friend and her gilfriend and gives both an adorable cheek kiss. Though only Lena reacts.. probably because this isn’t the first time Webby’s snuck into their bedroom at night but probably the first time it hasn’t been accidently creepy because she’s still learning boundaries. Also i did not realized they shared a room. Aww. Also it’s the first time we’ve seen their room, which as you’d image from a sorceress and a magical researcher/bookworm, it’s a massive sprawling library from what we see with a skull with a candle in it, a picture of a house, and a calender. IN short it’s perfect and i’m glad we finally saw their room.

So yeah things are going well and Webby finally realizes “Shit Scrooge is the bad guy in this scenario” at the end of the story, realizing Santa was just as hurt by the split as Scrooge was and that he had to make the harder choihce for the right reasons. Unfortunately, as i’ve said a lot this review, SCrooge is a dick and only coperated, as he wasn’t using the magical present sack, but his own filled with Coal to teach people about responsiblity. Thankfully, Scrooge realizes he’s been a dick to the globe when he happens upon little Jeniffer, a small pig girl who mistakes him from santa and takes his coal, meant to warm her fires.. and makes it into a doll. And resists his attempts to take “Coalette away”... Scrooge then rants and .. we actually get a good reason for why he’s being such a douche... as a kid he had nothing, and a gift of coal for his fires would’ve been welcmoed. He simply just.. dosen’t get the frivolity. He gets the warmth and joy of the season but not the gift part. And it’s only seeing this small, innocent child, play with a doll, he realizes “A warm heart can keep you going through the coldest nights”. And it’s then he finally realizes why his old friend did what he did.. because as i’ve been saying the real gift.. is in the giving.. of giving someone something that makes their memories glow and their heart warm. Even a lump of coal can do that in the right hands... a toy can get someone through the roughest times and it’s the WARMTH of the gift you remember, not the gift itself. I remember that book I mentioned proudly.. as do I remmeber the copy of the art of the venture brothers right next to me, or the copy of the people’s doonesbury my best friend mike bought me, and so on.. not because of the book itself... but because of the thought and warmth of someone getitng something for you because they care, not for their own reward, but just to make you feel nice this holiday season. That’s the true spirit of christmas. Naturally realizing the errror of his ways in true christmas story fashion, Scrooge is devistated by his own actions. And Santa is PISSED.. but Scrooge is now regretful.. if also pissed because Santa stormed in there and it turns out this was all a ploy to get his friend back... which destroys Scrooge’s anger as he realizes just how much his old friend missed him and how many years he wasted lashing out at him when , in the end, Santa was right. So with only so much Diamond power left, and time running out, what can they do to right this? Simple, Scrooge suggests splitting resources.

So we get a glorious shot of the three boys, and the twins riding the reindeer. Also we get Launchpad!

Who naturally wonders if he can crash a reindeer while Beakly thankfully stops him from murdering Dasher. So Christmas is saved and Scrooge and Santa exchange gifts: For Scrooge, a set of bells with their old company name.. and for Santa? a garage door opener. While Santa’s confused turns out.. it’s to turn off the traps. He’s welcome any time.. just use the front door. Cue a big hug, and Webby narrating us out as Scrooge wishes everyone a merry christmas once again letting people into his heart. I have.. the approirate response to that.

Final Thoughts: Excellent, easily one of the best of the season, the series and possibly of chirstmas show episodes all together, we shall see when I put together my list. And given how utterly excellent Last Christmas already is, it was hard to top.. but they did it. This was a warm, wonderful special that gets to the heart of christmas.. and really why I LIKE santa so much. For all the comercailsim around him.. he’ s a kind generous man who gets kids to belivie in magic for a while, wants nothing in return , with the offering of cookies just there to be nice and thank him for being a good person, and just wants best for people. He’s what’s best about christmas rolled into a person. And the series gets that and makes him the kindest guy around. It ends up being a story abotu Scrooge learning the meaning of christmas, an irony that’s not lost on me, but in a way that’s diffrent and unique from last time and works just as well. It’s just a warm wonderful epsiode with plenty of great gags and adventure and a beautiful, unique story at it’s core that could only be told here with tihs cast and this version of scrooge and that’s what makes it so damn magical. Easily a fantastic note to go out on. Next time on Ducktales: I don’t know! Next time this blog covers ducktales: We’re going back a few seasons to the only episode i’ve never seen, not even a little bit. It’s the treacherous summit of mt neverest! Until then, if you liked this review, reblog and all that good stuff, follow for more ducks, and if there’s an episode of any show you want me to cover, my cyber monday sale is still going till midnight central, and even past that if you get in a liittle past it, so you can comission a review of any episode for just 3 bucks right now, 5 if you get to this review after monday. So spend if you have it.. and if you don’t.. happy holidays to you anyway. Have a wonderful season.

#christmas #ducktales #how santa stole christmas #santa claus #scrooge mcduck #webby vanderquack #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #donald duck #della duck #violet sabrewing #lena sabrewing #weblena #launchpad mcquack #bentina beakly #doofus drake #boyd drake #fenton crackshell cabrera

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vtenvs3000 · 4 years ago

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Blog Post #8: Float like a butterfly...

As I’ve mentioned in many of my previous blog posts, the relationship I have with nature did not come naturally to me and I never found a “sense of place” in nature while growing up, as it began to develop during my time at the University of Guelph. That being said, I believe that this course plays a major role in the constant development of my relationship with nature and the way in which I interpret it by encouraging me to learn about topics I never would have taken the time to learn about on my own. After working on our podcasts this week, I learned a lot of new and fascinating information about my species from all of my research, which was the Mottled Duskywing Butterfly. Today, I have decided to share some of this interesting information about butterflies with all of you!

This is a picture of the endangered Mottled Duskywing Butterfly (Erynnis martialis). Photo credits: https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/butterfly/species/121-mottled-duskywing

I decided to discuss the butterfly species as I slowly begin my nature interpretation journey to love the creatures that live in nature. The naturalistic type of intelligence, as mentioned in our textbook, explains that nature interpretation includes having the ability to identify and make distinctions in nature and the creatures that are a part of it (Beck et al. 2018, p. 112). It’s important for individuals to understand multiple intelligences because it will make them a better and more well-rounded interpreter (Beck et al. 2018, p. 112). I think it’s essential for an interpreter to understand multiple intelligences because it will allow them to apply their knowledge to many aspects of the world and share that knowledge with others. Now, let’s get right into those fun facts!

The most interesting knowledge that I learned from my research about butterflies is the unique way in which they consume food and liquids due to the structure of their mouths (North American Butterfly Association, 2017). They have tongues that function very similarly to a straw that they will often drink nectar from flowers with (North American Butterfly Association, 2017).

This is an image of a butterfly tongue (that acts in a similar manner to a straw). Photo credits: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/392939136215150520/

Another fact that I learned is that a butterfly’s lifespan is dependent on several factors including the size, species, location/habitat, and the time of year that this butterfly becomes an adult (Wetherbee, 2012). The average butterfly species will live approximately two weeks as an adult (Wetherbee, 2012).

Finally, the life cycle of a butterfly consists of four life stages, which includes the egg, caterpillar/larvae, pupa/chrysalis and adult butterfly stage. Butterflies use pheromones, which are specific scents that belong to each gender of butterflies (male and female), that are used to attract each other (Mottled duskywing, 2021). Once they attract each other, the female will lay her egg on her host plant of choice and the reproduction process begins there!

Some other interesting facts that I was previously unaware of is:

1. They have four wings, rather than just two (Rothery, 2021).

2. Butterflies are very antisocial creatures. They are very solitary, and it is very rare for them to socialize (Rothery, 2021).

3. Butterflies need heat to be able to fly or move, which is why they lay in the sun to warm up their wings before taking flight (Rothery, 2021).

Have you ever heard any of these facts before reading my blog post? Which fact was the most interesting to you and why?

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References:

1. Beck, L., Cable, T., & Knudson, D. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage for a better world. Sagamore-Venture Publishing.

2. Kris Wetherbee | For The Oregonian/OregonLive. (2012, June 23). 7 fascinating facts about butterflies (plus a quick quiz). Retrieved from https://www.oregonlive.com/hg/2012/06/7_fascinating_facts_about_butt.html

3. Mottled duskywing (Erynnis martialis). (2021). Retrieved from https://wildlifepreservation.ca/mottled-duskywing/

4. North American Butterfly Association. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.naba.org/qanda.html#:~:text=What%20do%20butterflies%20eat%3F,matter%2C%20and%20other%20organic%20material.

5. Rothery, B. (2021, February 04). Sensational butterflies: 12 amazing Butterfly facts for kids. Retrieved from https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/children/2019/jan/amazing-butterfly-facts-for-kids.html-butterfly-facts-for-kids.html

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Thank you so much for reading!

Victoria

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wazafam · 4 years ago

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Between the 1980s and before a decline in the early 2000s, the erotic thriller was one of cinema's most popular and risque genres. Usually, an erotic thriller features storylines that focus heavily on romance and contain graphic nudity and sex scenes.

RELATED: 10 Great Thriller Movies You Won't Believe Are Not On IMDb's Top 250

Some of these films have been praised while some have been considered "trashy" for focusing more on the salacious elements instead of the story. And while not as popular today, recent hits like Fifty Shades Of Grey prove there is still a market. During its heyday, Hollywood produced some great erotic thrillers that are still viewed by audiences looking for a dangerous and naughty evening.

10 In The Cut (2003) - 5.3

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jane Campion, In The Cut's story revolves around a teacher, Frannie, (Meg Ryan) who gets questioned by an investigator, Malloy, (Mark Ruffalo) after the limb of a murdered girl is found in her garden. The two begin a relationship. but Frannie starts to suspect the murderer might be Malloy himself.

Upon release, the film was controversial for graphic sex and for Meg Ryan's nude scenes, which many believed to be brave due to her wholesome image and for normally appearing in light romantic comedies. Despite mixed reviews, Ryan's performance has been praised as one of her best.

9 Crash (1996) - 6.4

Perhaps one of the most controversial erotic thrillers of all time is Crash. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg, the film concerns a TV director (James Spader) who gets involved with a group of people who become aroused after watching automobile collisions.

Crash's premiere screening at the Cannes Film Festival incited "boos," but it was awarded a Special Jury Prize, which jury president and Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola refused to present to Cronenberg, due to his distaste for the film. The movie was banned in many countries around the world because of its subject matter and sex scenes, and its American release was delayed for several months.

8 Wild Things (1998) - 6.5

During their popularity, erotic thrillers were mostly made for mature adults, however, Wild Things was aimed at the younger 20-something generation. The film concerns a guidance counselor (Matt Dillion) accused of rape by two female students, but the detective (Kevin Bacon) investigating the charge detects a conspiracy is afoot.

Remembered for its verging-on-pornographic sex scenes, Wild Things actually has some clever twists and turns, plus a surprising performance by Bill Murray. Salacious on the surface, audiences enjoyed the fact there was more to it than just sex. Notably, the end credits connect the dots for the viewer on the film's twists.

7 Sea Of Love (1989) - 6.8

Similar in premise to Basic Instinct, Sea Of Love concerns a detective (Al Pacino) on the trail of a serial killer. He attempts to find the killer by placing a personal ad for himself to lure them on a date, but he ultimately begins falling for one of the suspects (Ellen Barkin).

Unlike Basic Instinct, which puts emphasis on the sexual chemistry between the leads, Sea Of love puts the emphasis on the romantic chemistry, making the viewer hope the killer isn't the sexy Ellen Barkin. Over the years, Sea Of Love has become a favorite among Pacino fans.

6 Fatal Attraction (1987) - 6.9

Perhaps the most popular erotic thriller of all time, Fatal Attraction succeeds not because of its more lurid and graphic moments, but because those moments elevate and make more meaningful everything else in the movie. The film concerns Dan (Michael Douglas), who has an affair with Alex (Glenn Close). Unfortunately, she grows attached to him, and when he tries to break off the relationship, he realizes she won't give him up easily, leading to dangerous consequences.

RELATED: 10 Best Thrillers Involving Husbands And Wives

Director Adrian Lyne crafts a thriller for adults with the intention to not just thrill and titillate but to ask viewers important questions about fidelity and marriage. Lyne would have similar success in the genre with Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful. Ultimately, Fatal Attraction was a huge box-office hit, earning a Best Picture Oscar nomination and a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Close's brilliant performance.

5 Basic Instinct (1992) - 7.0

Following Fatal Attraction's immense popularity, Basic Instinct kicked the genre into high gear. Erotic thriller veteran Michael Douglas stars alongside, at the time, rising star Sharon Stone. Douglas plays a detective, Nick, investigating a murder that resembles the work of a writer, Catherine Trammel. As Nick investigates further, he begins an affair with the seductive and possibly murderous Trammel.

Known at the time for its graphic sex scenes, Basic Instinct is not only salacious but a well-crafted, and at times, Hitchcockian thriller. The screenwriter, Joe Ezsterhas, would eventually write more erotic thrillers like Sliver, Jade, and others. A sequel, Basic Instinct 2, with Stone, would be released 14 years later, but by then the genre had declined in popularity.

4 Dressed To Kill (1980) - 7.1

Considered to be the erotic thriller that started the trend, Dressed To Kill is directed by suspense master Brian DePalma, who constructs the film with elaborate Hitchcock-style sequences. Starring Michael Caine, the plot concerns a woman who witnesses the murder of a psychiatrist's patient by a mysterious blonde woman, only to find herself the murderer's next target.

Praised by critics and audiences at the time for being suspenseful, lurid, and shocking, Dressed To Kill has since been considered problematic due to its depiction of women and violence toward them.

3 The Last Seduction (1994) - 7.1

After stealing drug money from her husband, sexy and alluring Bridget (Linda Fiorentino) flees to Chicago, seduces a local man, and devises a way to get him to kill her pursuing husband. Because of the script, the production company responsible for the movie felt The Last Seduction would be something for late-night television audiences that want a sexy watch, however, the filmmakers set out to make the movie something much more than that.

RELATED: Taxi Driver & 9 Other Neo-Noir Masterpieces

Despite being an erotic thriller, the film received great reviews upon release for its wit, dry humor, and especially for Linda Fiorentino's sexy performance. In the years since, viewers have praised Fiorentino's character as a refreshing spin on the femme fatale character type.

2 Bound (1996) - 7.3

Before the Wachowskis directed The Matrix, they needed to make a "practice film" to prove they could do it, and the result was Bound - an erotic thriller about two lesbian lovers who attempt to steal millions of mafia money. At the time, it was rare for a lesbian relationship, let alone lesbian sex, to be depicted in a mainstream film.

When released, critics praised the film's stylish direction and neo-noir plot, and for having LGBTQ+ leads without the plot revolving around it. From there, the Wachowskis went on to make The Matrix and more cinematic history.

1 Body Heat (1981) - 7.4

Inspired by the classic film Double Indemnity, Body Heat centers around lawyer Ned (William Hurt), who kills the wealthy husband of his sexy lover, Matty (Kathleen Turner), so that she can inherit his money and they can run away together. However, Ned soon discovers Matty isn't who she seems.

At the time, the film was noted for its many graphic sex scenes, with even more left on the cutting room floor. Fortunately, what director Lawrence Kasdan clearly really cared about was the hard-boiled thriller elements, which are stylish and skillfully crafted. In addition, Kathleen Turner gives a powerhouse and obviously sexy performance in her screen acting debut.

NEXT: 10 Best Movies About Cheating And Infidelity, According To IMDb

10 Best Erotic Thrillers, Ranked By IMDb | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/33BFltx

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bunnymcbunnister · 4 years ago

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SPN Season 15 Spoiler Sheet, update 10/3

Lots and lots of updates abound. I took out some old general stuff because this monster is huge (but it will only get shorter, sniff sniff) Spoilery goodness under the cut.

DISCLAIMER: This is gathered info from various sources. This is not confirmed information. Stuff in this WILL be wrong. Don’t take this too seriously. This is for fun. Also, if you use this info for another publication, please let me know as a courtesy. Don’t be a dick. It's all out there, but it hurts to see my same phrasing on other publications after all the work I’ve done to consolidate it…

General Info (oldest to newest). This is a blend of pre-COVID and post COVID, so some might change.

In an interview, Kripe indicated that the series ending would have “peace” for Sam and Dean

Misha will be in 15 out of 20 episodes this season (he’s missed 3 so far and I suspect will miss 14. Unclear about 16, 19, and 20).

Dean and Amara’s connection will be explored

JaxCon/Vegas Con spoilers:

Misha said the ending was “happier than he expected” but also had some sadness. He later used “sad and redemptive”

Misha mentioned that Claire will be mentioned on the show, but as of yet not appear.

Dean says the line “stop killing my people” (to god?)

Jensen said he doesn’t see how the story could continue past this season, but Jared said its more of “a see you later”

Al Cal posted a pic of a “thrown away” call sheet that seem to indicate Micheal, Lucifer, and a character named “Betty” interacting in the bunker. Unclear as to the validity, could be from 19 based on casting

Charlie (original flavor) will return

Filming resumed on Aug 18th. Per Canadian policy, they must quarantine for two weeks. Those quarantining seemed to include:

Fairly Clear: Jared, Jensen, Jake Abel (Micheal), Rob Benedict (Chuck/God) Mark Pelligrino (Lucifer), Al Cal (didn't need to quarantine, but he is definitely on set), Jim Beaver (Bobby)

Unclear/Rumored: Misha (he is being deliberately cagey), Osric Chau (Kevin- but likely for another project, he was a week ahead of everyone else)

Reasons Unlikely: Sam Smith (chemo treatment), Kim Rhodes (working at a camp during quarantine), Ruth Connell (posted from Malibu the entire time)

No idea: Shoshannah Stern

Jensen said sp 19 is more of a season finale, while 20 is a series finale. Repeated in interviews/livestreams.

Megan Fitz. complimented both Dabb’s and Glynn’s writing on twitter. Not sure if it is in reference to rewrites or the special retrospective that is planned.

Jensen indicated that the ending did change per COVID protocols. Later interviews (Variety) confirmed this, but it seemed to indicate the changes were in regards to how many people filmed at once (crowd scenes, recurring characters returning)

Misha is being very, very cagey about where he was. Some live streams seem to indicate he is not at home, but he has yet to confirm- his presence in 19/20 is hard to track. In an interview with Metaverse, he was in bed in a hotel looking space and you could see mountains in the background. He was not on set for the first week of filming, so he could be a week behind.

Misha has thrown around the words “final” and “what he <Misha> would have wanted” per Cas’ ending. “Sad/Proud” and “poignant” were also used. His latest line is “sad but satisfying”

The final episodes will premier October 8th. The finale will air Nov 19th in conjunction with an hour long special.

Dabb confirmed to TV line the episode 19/20 explanation Jensen’s mentioned- For the most part, we wrap up a big chunk of our mythology in Episode 19,Episode 20 is more character-based and is more concerned with Sam, Dean and this family they’ve built around them than it is with figuring out the Case of the Week.

When talking about the lightheartedness of returning on ep 14, Dabb said deeply depressing and upsetting episodes are coming (USAToday). He also said we would see “new sides” of Jack, Cas, and Billie. A revisit of Chuck and Amara’s “sibling issues” as well is on tap. Jared said sacrifices are coming.

From TV Line- re the battle with Chuck. Allies will return, buit was repeated several times in the article that is comes down to Sam and Dean. Jack will struggle with getting his soul back but will be helped by Cas.

It was confirmed there will be no appearances by mamma and papa Winchester, possible due to COVID. (TVLine)

A trailer was released on 8/27. Scenes included:

A moving speech from Sam to Dean

(Possibly from 18) A teary conversation between Dean and Cas

Injured Dean being helped by Cas in the bunker

Jack breaking some cuffs/bring thrown into a wall/saying he has to kill god

Dean and his grenade launcher and a purple nightgown

Sam in a sweater vest getting a gun from under a pillow

A glimpse of a body with “Lust” written above it/a matronly woman (I think the villain from 14) saying “Boys”

Ghose Dean? Little Sam cutting off a hand

Some intermixed scenes from past episodes

https://youtu.be/d5AzUa5zABI

A second trailer was released on 8/31. Scenes included:

A monologue from Billie about god coming to destroy the planet plus her banging on a bunker door (with her hand all gooey) and striking someone with her scythe

Jack continuing his speech about killing god but expanding that he has a ritual to do

Lots of red danger lights in the bunker/ 3 people getting tossed around in the bunker/Chuck in the bunker

Chuck saying he doesn't believe Sam and Dean can kill him

Young Sam and not ghost Young dean

Dean angrily driving the Impala then saying “its time”

Cas drawing his blade in front of an old truck to protect someone in a suit (Jack? I can't tell)

More Dean tears

A surprise appearance from Bobby

Some of the same scenes as before

https://youtu.be/mBTwCWkOFKw

A third trailer was released on 9/24. It was a rehash of the other two, but a new new scenes included:

A handcuffed Jack asking Dean if his plan will work, Dean cheekily replying, and swing a machete at the cuffs

More of Dean and his nightgown

Sam saying “it's our one shot”

A pair of werewolves/vampires?

https://youtu.be/7oVO9BdADnQ

A Shaving People, Punting Things trailer was released on 10/2. Scenes included:

Dean in a bar with a blond woman

Sam by the mountain lake with facial wounds

Sam in a birthday crown

Several scenes with Sam and Dean in a barn

Team Free Will 2.0 in a bunker corridor, Jack looking injured (?)

Cas digging near a stop sign

Sam, Dean, and Jack walking down a street/later in a church/in the Impala

Sad Dean in the dungeon/Sad Sam drinking and knocking over a book

Sad Jack and Cas leaning on the Impala

Scattered shot of Sad Sam and Dean (drinking in the bunker, learning against the Impala)

Sam/Donna hug

Sad Jack on a bed

Dean entering a motel room

Amara looking blissful

Dean giving Sam an encouraging face pat

Billie choking Cas

Sam and Dean shooting/swinging machetes/knives

Glowing eye lady in the bunker

Sam and Dean getting thrown around the bunker

Sam in Death’s library, hurting

Billie swinging a scythe

A bunker door getting blown up

Many behind the scenes shots, including one of Felicia Day (Charlie)

https://youtu.be/yex3jbuf8Mo

Episode 15x14

Title: Last Holiday

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME – Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) discover a wood nymph (guest star Meagan Fey) living in the bunker who is determined to protect her family, at any cost. Eduardo Sanchez directed the episode written by Jeremy Adams (#1514). Original airdate 3/30/2020.

Written by: Jeremy Adams

Director: Eduardo Sanchez

Filming Dates:1/15- 1/24

Airdate: unknown- October 8th

Photos: https://www.tvinsider.com/gallery/supernatural-returns-season-15-episode-14-last-holiday/

Promo: kind of lumped in with the other promos

Sneak Peak: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CF0HK1blaFU/?igshid=o2ffwvgud56j

Sneak Peak 2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/10/07/final-supernatural-episodes-lead-climactic-amazing-showdown/3632212001/

Castiel ? eh… I don't think so Jack ? yes

Guest stars: Meagen Fay (fae lady)

Other Spoilers/info:

Misha mentioned being at an airport the first day of filming, maybe he’ll miss this one

The director shared a BTS shot with AlCal’s chair in the background. He also posted on that looked like the statues in hell. Lots of filming at the bunker. A few impala shots were shared as well.

In an EW article, “a mysterious woman gives Sam and Dean every holiday they ever missed”

Episode 15x15

Title: Gimme Shelter

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: MATT COHEN DIRECTS – Castiel (Misha Collins) and Jack (Alexander Calvert) work a case involving members of a local church. Meanwhile, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) go off in search of Amara (guest star Emily Swallow). Matt Cohen directed the episode written by Davy Perez (#1515). Original airdate 10/15/2020.

Written by: Davy Perez

Director: Matt Cohen

Filming Dates: 1/27-2/5

Airdate: unknown. October 15th

Photos: http://www.ksitetv.com/supernatural/supernatural-gimme-shelter-preview-images-released/205510/

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ?yes Jack ? Yes

Guest stars: Emily Sparrow?

Other Spoilers/info:

There was some filming done at the crossroads with only Misha.

Alex and Misha filmed together

It seems as if J2 didn’t film at all the first week, Misha filmed six or seven days, is this is a Cas centric ep?

Episode 15x16

Title: Drag Me Away (From You)

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: FLASHBACK TO A YOUNG SAM AND DEAN – Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) are asked to investigate the murder of a childhood friend, calling them back to a motel from their past and perplexing the brothers with a case they thought was solved a long time ago. Amyn Kaderali directed the episode written by Meghan Fitzmartin (#1516). Original airdate 10/22/2020.

Written by: Megan Fitzmartin

Director: Amyn Kaderali

Filming Dates: 2/6-2/17

Airdate: October 22nd

Photos:

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? I think so… briefly? Jack ? not sure either.

Guest stars: IMDB credits Lisa Berry (Billie/Death) as well as Young Sam, Young Dean and both grown and young Caitlyn

Other Spoilers/info:

Alex got a cast of his face around the filming of this- so this ep or the one after

Looks like we get Dean in a robe!

They filmed at Rooster’s Sunrise Hotel for 3 days/nights

This is the flashback ep

From TVLine- “It worked not only as a case right now, but also as something that informed the journey Sam and Dean have taken, where they started as kids, how they kind of came together and then how that has [led up] to the point that they are, emotionally, when the episode airs. So it ended up being a really good reflection of our guys now, telling a story about our guys then, which, to me, are always the best versions of those types of flashback stories.”

Episode 15x17

Title: Unity

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: ONE WAY OR ANOTHER – Dean (Jensen Ackles) hits the road with Jack (Alexander Calvert) who needs to complete a final ritual in the quest to beat Chuck (guest star Rob Benedict). A difference of opinion leaves Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Castiel (Misha Collins) behind looking for answers to questions of their own. Catriona McKenzie directed the episode written by Meredith Glynn (#1517). Original airdate 10/29/2020.

Written by: Meredith Gylnn

Director: Catrion McKenzie

Filming Dates: 2/19-2/28

Airdate: Oct 29th?

Photos:

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? yes Jack ? yes

Guest stars: Rob Benedict and Emily Sparrow. IMDB credits Robert Wisdom (Uriel)

Other Spoilers/info:

Chuck and Amara trailers were seen on set when filming in a garden

Jensen was in NOLA Friday, possible Monday

“Uriel” was around for filming (Post COVID update: Misha seemed to indicate that this was because the actor was nearby filming? Not sure if this is to cover up the spoiler or the truth)

Alex and Jensen filmed in the imala

Episode 15x18

Title: Despair (it was The Truth at some point I think)

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:

Written by: BOBO

Director: Speight

Filming Dates: 3/2--3/11

Airdate: Nov 5th?

Photos:

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? yes Jack ? yes

Guest stars: IMDB credits Billie

Other Spoilers/info:

Misha and Alex filmed near the impala. J2 showed up later that night. This was the source of the “last time they all filmed on set” photo)

An really emotional scene was filmed with Misha and Jensen. Jared was definitely not there, but Alex was on the flight they took with Rich, so its possible he was too. This was revealed at a con in which the four of them were on a plane that had an in-flight problem.

Filming watchers saw a bro hug

Tape Ball posted a shot of field that looks like where dean came back from hell

Misha indicated this was his “favorite episode” in a recent interview

Episode 15x19

Title: Inherit the Earth

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:

Written by: bucklelimg

Director: John Showalter

Filming Dates:: 3/12-3/23/cancelled for COVID and then 8/18-8/27

Airdate: Nov 12th

Photos:

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? unknown Jack ? yes

Guest stars: Jake Abel (Micheal), Mark Pelligrino (Lucifer)

Other Spoilers/info:

Production shut down as a precaution for coronavirus on 3/13, two days into filming. It is scheduled to start again on Aug 18th.

Jensen indicated there might be some re-writes for this ep to account for COVID protocols.

When they started filming, they indicated they were on day two. So maybe they could only use some of the scenes they shot? Then they added an extra day all called it day 9. COVID protocols makes things take longer

AlCal was definitely on set.

Jake Abel is definitely on set, and he posted an instagram story with his trailer and Lucifer’s (Mark Pelligrino)

Some filming was done at a gas station called Showalter’s (name of the director) with Jared, Jensen, and Alex

Jake “Spoiler King” Abel filmed a video showing chairs for Jared, Jensen, and Alex as well as Rob Benedict (Chuck/God). They were filming near a lake with a mountain view (that looked similar to where Cas died in season 13)

Rob Benedict posted it was his last day in Vancouver, indicating we won't see Chuck past this episode? Or very very briefly in 20? Jake Abel posted a similar message, also baiting fans about Misha’s whereabouts

Scene “28” took several days and seemed to go across both 19 and 20? So they might have done some combo filming?

Episode 15x20

Title: Carry On

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:

Written by: Dabb

Director: Bob Singer

Filming Dates: 8/28- 9/10

Airdate: November 19th

Photos:

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? maaaaybe? Jack ? maaaaybe?

Guest stars: Jim Beaver

Other Spoilers/info:

Jensen indicated filming would take two weeks, longer than usual (looks like a 9 day shoot, with a day off for Labor Day)

According to Superwiki, 9/3 was the last day on the bunker set, the final days are on location.

Scene “28” took several days and seemed to go across both 19 and 20? So they might have done some combo filming?

Filming locations seemed to include a barn (pic with a stunt guy showed wooden walls and straw) and a lake (not the mountain lake from 19), and a forest. Filming signs spotted at Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve.

Jim Beaver confirmed his appearance on Twitter

There was a pic of J2 with baby on a bridge. Baby had her original plates. They seem to be wearing the same clothes they were in the pilot. There may be grey (??) In their hair, but that could be lighting

Misha posted some creation videos, saying he had been on an impromptu camping trip. He was back in his house. They were posted on the last day of filming and he had pretty decent scruff. He also mentioned that it was the last day of filming and he wasn't up there.

The show officially wrapped at 6:25 on 9/10

Jared said “the last time Sam and Dean see each other is the last time Jared and Jensen film together” but seem to imply that was not the final scene? It was a confusing answer to a question about filming the final scene.

IMDB credits a vampire?

#supernatural #spn spoilers #supernatural spoilers #spn season 15 #spn 15x14 #spn 15x15 #spn 15x16 #spn 15x19 #spn 15x18 #spn 15x20

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jcmarchi · 10 months ago

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Research Shows That Most Early Galaxies Looked Like Breadsticks Rather Than Pizza Pies or Dough Balls - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/research-shows-that-most-early-galaxies-looked-like-breadsticks-rather-than-pizza-pies-or-dough-balls-technology-org/

Research Shows That Most Early Galaxies Looked Like Breadsticks Rather Than Pizza Pies or Dough Balls - Technology Org

Columbia researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like breadsticks—and are rarely round, like balls of pizza dough. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University, and the lead author of a new paper slated to appear in The Astrophysical Journal that outlines the findings. “Galaxies that look like long, thin breadsticks seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surprising, since they are uncommon among galaxies in the present-day universe.”

While most distant galaxies look like breadsticks, others are shaped like pizza pies and balls of pizza dough. The “balls of pizza dough,” or sphere-shaped galaxies, appear to be the smallest type of galaxy and were also the least frequently identified. The pizza pie-shaped galaxies were found to be as large as breadstick-shaped galaxies along their longest axis. “They are more common in the nearby universe which, due to the universe’s ongoing expansion, is made up of older, more mature galaxies.”

Which category would our Milky Way galaxy fall into if we were able to wind the clock back by billions of years? “Our best guess is that it might have appeared more like a breadstick,” said co-author Haowen Zhang, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. This hypothesis is based partly on new evidence from Webb—theorists have “wound back the clock” to estimate the Milky Way’s mass billions of years ago, which suggests its likely breadstick shape in the distant past.

These distant galaxies are also far less massive than nearby spirals and ellipticals—they are precursors to more massive galaxies like our own. “In the early universe, galaxies had had far less time to grow,” said Kartheik Iyer, a co-author and NASA Hubble Fellow also at Columbia University. “Identifying additional categories for early galaxies is exciting—there’s a lot more to analyze now. We can now study how galaxies’ shapes relate to how they look and better project how they formed in much more detail.”

Hubble, the space telescope that launched in 1990 and collects data to this day, “has long showed an excess of elongated galaxies,” explained co-author Marc Huertas-Company, a faculty research scientist at the Institute of Astrophysics on the Canary Islands. But researchers still wondered: Would additional detail show up better with the sensitivity to infrared light that the Webb telescope, which launched in 2021, has? “Webb confirmed that Hubble didn’t miss any additional features in the galaxies they both observed. Plus, Webb showed us many more distant galaxies with similar shapes, all in great detail,” Huertas-Company said.

One question, of course, is why early galaxies tended to be so flattened and elongated. One hypothesis, Pandya explained, is that the early universe may have been filled with filaments of dark matter that formed a kind of “skeletal background,” or “cosmic highway,” that ushered gas and stars along it. These filaments still exist, but they have grown much more diffuse as the universe has expanded, so they may be less likely to promote the formation of breadstick-shaped galaxies.

The paper is called “Galaxies Going Bananas,” yet another food analogy that sprang into the authors’ minds as they looked at their data. When the authors plotted galaxies’ aspect ratios against their longest axis length, they found that the diagrams that emerged looked distinctly like bananas, a shape that reflects their elongated, ellipsoid (i.e. breadstick) shape. “The bananas are another way of saying that these intrinsically elongated galaxies seem to be the dominant ones in the first 4 billion years of the universe,” Pandya said.

There are still gaps in our knowledge. Researchers not only need an even larger sample size from Webb to further refine the properties and precise locations of distant galaxies, they will also need to spend ample time tweaking and updating their models to better reflect the precise geometries of distant galaxies. “These are early results,” said co-author Elizabeth McGrath, an associate professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. “We need to delve more deeply into the data to figure out what’s going on, but we’re very excited about these early trends.”

Source: Columbia University

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

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gauribhalekar · 4 years ago

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#hr tech #fintech #business trust #earn money online #artificial intelligence

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renwritesstuff · 4 years ago

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first impressions

I submit to #MERWEEK2020, First Impressions. Samantha Traynor x FemShep

Sure the first time they spoke was on the Normandy SR-2, but that was not the first time they met.

October 22, 2183

“I thought you were allergic?”

“To free food and rubbing shoulders with the top brass?” A plump woman with a short bob of brown hair and blue eyes arched an eyebrow as she swept lipstick over thin lips.

“To bullshit,” Specialist Samantha Traynor clarified, her arms still crossed as she hunched in her desk chair.

Specialist Mary Dietrich gave an acknowledging shrug. “You’re not wrong, but free food does wonders for keeping my bullshit allergy at bay.” She made a theatrical sniffing noise.

Sam pressed harder, “You know the ANN vultures will be there. Probably Khalisah al-Jilani too, your archnemesis.” She took a loud slurp of cold tea from the mug on her desk, racking her brain for more reasons why they shouldn’t go out tonight. “Also Staff Lieutenant Jeong and the rest of the smug quartermasters who love rejecting our grant proposals. You know we would be done with the new defense suite if Jeong wasn’t besties with Bautista in applied physics, right?”

Sighing, Mary made flicking motions to smooth out wrinkles on the sleeves of her dress blues. “Well now I want to go just to kick Jeong in the balls.” The orange holo screen projected from her wrist that was acting as a mirror disappeared as she set a glare on her fellow R&D mate. “C’mon Sam. Contrary to your belief, this is actually one of the perks of working on Arcturus Station. First on the victory tour to celebrate the end of the Eden Prime War! Oo-rah!”

Oo-rah, Sam groaned inwardly and more than a little sarcastically. Her nose wrinkled with her silent scowl.

Mary must have seen the face Sam made, because she stood up, hands on hips. “Suck it up, newbie! I will pull rank on you if it’ll make you leave the damn lab.”

Samantha squawked in protest. “I leave the lab!”

Sometimes! To sleep!

Traynor.

Okay, I sleep on the couch most nights. To change?

...Traynor.

Well they shouldn’t make the laundry service so convenient then. To shower?

……Traynor.

Fine! L Wing has the best faucets! Not my fault the washroom is one door down! I am a slave to convenience, okay??? It keeps my mind researching and developing per my job title, doesn’t it??

“Sleeping and making tea don’t count,” Mary scoffed back. “Plus this is a big deal. Don’t you want to be able to tell your grandkids about meeting all the heroes who saved the Citadel and the Council?”

“...Do I have to?”

A laundry back was draped over Sam’s face, filling her vision with crinkling plastic. Mary patted her head through the bag. “Damn right, you do. Or you get to tell Lydia you made me late.”

Oh fuck. She had only met Mary’s wife Lydia half a dozen times in the 6 months since she started at R&D on Arcturus, but the woman made an impression. A stern, stoic Kodiak mechanic, Lydia had never cracked a smile once at any of the dozens of quips and small jokes Sam compulsively made. And Lydia had a voice like a drill sergeant that made Sam want to stand up straight before offering to do push ups please-and-thank-you-ma’am.

Pulling the bag off her face, Sam unzipped it to find her dress blues freshly laundered and folded crisply. She mumbled, “....I’ll be good.”

Arcturus Station was the pride and joy of the Alliance with a state of the art light rail to traverse the 5km diameter arms. At the center was a large convention hall that could hold 20,000 of the 45,000 population at one time. Surrounding departments had been cleared out to serve as food stations, coat checks and privacy areas to host the current set of guests.

Sucks to be them, Sam frowned in empathy as she waited with Mary in the biometric security line. I can’t imagine having to clean up and stash all the rubbish we have lying around just so some fancy-pants donor can hang their coat up. Reminds me of a grammar school open house.

The overwhelming number of people made it hard for her to carry on a conversation with her coworker. Mostly human, with a few asari in sleek dresses and tuxedoed turians sprinkled in made up the meandering line that started at the light rail station. Background noise consisted of a dull roar of voices that grew louder the closer the two women got to the convention hall proper with just the faintest bass beat of music.

As they finally crested the last stairwell, the site of the grand hall was truly breathtaking. Large blast windows revealed a swirling backdrop of the Arcturus Stream nebula. Even the Arcturus mass effect relay was visible, the blue element zero core at its center flickering like a star. A few moving pins of light appeared next to the relay, more ships arriving to join the fleets already at Arcturus Station.

Decorated in heavy Alliance blue and gold, there were holo posters posted at intervals around the circular hall. Dramatic vid portraits of human heroes (with occasional notable alien Council SpecTRes appearing in between, no doubt a nod to the Council guests present) animated silently, larger than life.

A red-headed woman appeared multiple times at different angles and wardrobes on the vids, clearly the focus of the event. In one image the woman was pictured with a straight backed salute wearing dress blues, another wielded a rifle in heavy armor, another was flanked by a group of men and women (human and alien alike).

Commander Annelise Shepard, First Human SpecTRe. Hero of the Citadel. Captain of the Normandy SR-1, the most advanced ship in the Alliance Navy.

The room was warm with all the bodies and Sam found herself clinging to Mary, who was busy texting Lydia to attempt to meet up somewhere on the crowded floor. The clamor of conversation barely dipped during a few speeches broadcast across the hall. Admiral David Anderson’s low bass voice welcomed the guests to the station and indicated there would be a meet-and-greet with the Heroes of the Citadel after cocktails.

Excited jabbering was all around them as people tried to catch glimpses of the headliner heroes. Sam was only somewhat familiar about the events from a few weeks ago, much of it still under top secret clearance. Just that all the recent geth activity triggered from the terrorist attack on Eden Prime culminated in the attack at the Citadel. A joint task force crew, helmed by the first human SpecTRe, was responsible for bringing the terrorist down and saving the Citadel and the Council at the cost of human lives.

It seems kind of far-fetched, doesn’t it, Traynor?

Like something I’d read in a story. Or play in a video game.

Ooo, I hope it has a character creator. And I can make the character super hot.

It took the better part of a half hour of crowd weaving to track down Lydia Dietrich, Mary’s wife. A tall woman with very short, slicked-back hair was nursing a beer while she chatted with a small group of fellow mechanics hunkered by the dessert table. While Lydia and Mary started a row of friendly bickering (“What took you so long?” “What took you so long?”), Sam wandered over to the desserts to seize an opening in the line.

Ooo, lemon curd tarts! Her fingertips drummed impatiently on her pant leg as she watched the pile of tarts diminish with each new tiny plate down the buffet line. Couples in front of and behind her were laughing and gossiping.

“Oh did you see the Commander? I saw Cameron snap a holo of her.”

“I thought she’d be taller.”

“Not sure why they felt the need to bring the quarian, too.”

“I mean, it was on the crew, right?”

She. She is on the crew. Even Sam knew that.

“Can’t believe General Williams’ granddaughter was there, too. I thought all that family knew how to do was surrender.”

“Maybe she and the quarian were a distraction for the real heroes to do the real work.”

Simpering laughter followed which made Samantha’s skin crawl.

“Not sure why they had to open this event to all the little minions at the station. We paid forty-five thousand credits a plate for this? While little desk-jockeys like miss-didn’t-even-do-her-hair over there can show up and eat our food?”

It took a glance backward for Sam to realize they were talking about her. She resisted the temptation to lift a self-conscious hand to her hair.

Poppycock, I know I look amazing. I always look amazing.

“I know, darling. Our tax dollars pay their salary. You’d think they’d have the courtesy to stand behind us in line. Like good help.”

Remaining silent, Sam continued the slow march to the dessert table. She did fire up her Omni-tool and do a quick scan while waiting, the extranet chugging a bit due to the density of guests. But she was satisfied with her results.

The long-awaited distance closed and Sam finally stood before a half-empty buffet table. The dextro desserts had been picked over, as had some of the hybrid mini-cakes and parfaits. It looked like everything was in the process of getting refreshed by the catering company. Several waitstaff with tall silver trays were making their way over from the back.

But all that mattered is that there were still three lemon curd tarts left. All of which ended up on Sam’s dainty white plate as she swept out of the line. She felt a tug on her sleeve.

An older human woman in a far too tight evening gown scowled back at her. “I beg your pardon! Where do you think you’re going? How dare you take the last tarts? Have you any idea how long we’ve been waiting?”

Sam shrugged. “I’d wager about five seconds less than you as I was ahead of you in the same line?”

The woman’s date, a balding, rat-faced gentleman in a shiny tuxedo stuck a finger in Sam’s face. “Such rudeness! We actually paid good money to be here, so we deserve priority.”

“Perhaps she’s with the catering company, darling,” the wife simpered back as though struck with a thought. “She’s certainly dressed like them.” Her saccharine-smile was betrayed by cold, smug brown eyes.

An excited commotion could be heard behind them in line, but Sam didn’t dare glance away.

Remember, Traynor. Fixed eye contact. Bullies look for weakness.

She smiled back. “I wouldn’t say you paid Good Money to be here, did you?” She took a bite of lemon tart, savoring the acerbic flavor accented by a light sugary texture.

“What do you mean?” The couple replied in unison matching their haughty glares.

“You really should have better security on your Omni-tool. I mean, any old desk-jockey could just waltz right in and see that your asari mistress scored you free tickets. An asari mistress in the quarian slave trade, no doubt. Tsk tsk.”

The glaring transitioned to sputtering, confusion from the husband and outrage from the wife.

“Oh don’t worry, I reported her to the authorities for tax evasion, too. I mean, how else will your tax dollars pay my salary, right? It's the only way I can afford to eat such delicious tarts.” And Samantha took another large satisfying bite before saluting with the pastry, turning on her heel, and walking proudly off to go find Mary and Lydia.

The couple stepped out of line to argue, hands gesturing wildly. They turned to leave when they walked straight into the source of the commotion: Commander Annelise Shepard flanked by Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams and Tali’Zorah nar Rayya. All 3 women stood, hands on hips, glaring back at the pair. The two fled the hall, pushing past other lines in a desperate bid to save their dignity.

Ash and Tali burst into laughter before spotting Garrus Vakarian waving them over to a photo op with the turian hierarchy. Shepard remained behind, watching the dark-haired lieutenant disappear into the crowd. Her eyes crinkled and she suppressed an airy laugh.

“What are you so happy about, Shepard?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re smiling.”

“Am I?” Commander Annelise Shepard tried for nonchalance as she helped herself to a fresh lemon curd tart. She sniffed the confection, intrigued. She had never seen anything like it, but she couldn’t wait to try it.

“You are. It’s been awhile.” The asari in a low-necked evening gown came up and wrapped a hand around Shepard’s elbow, careful of the sling that held her left arm hugged tight to her chest.

“Oh, uh, yea. There’s just been a lot on my mind lately.”

“Well, I’m grateful for whatever it was.”

“Me too, Liara. Me too.”

And for the rest of that night Shepard’s smile came a little easier.

#merweek2020 #june 1 #first impressions #shaynor #samantha traynor #femshep #better late than never?

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astonishinglegends · 4 years ago

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Ep 197: Mrs. Hingely and the Mince Pie Aliens plus Listener Stories

Christmas tree element in the main image composition courtesy of Elekes Andor

"We come from the sky."

– 3 purported aliens to Mrs. Jean Hingely on January 4th, 1979, shortly before they attacked her artificial Christmas Tree and left with her mincemeat pies

Description:

Tonight's episode starts with the coverage of a strange and funny case involving aliens and holiday pies. On January 4, 1979, Mrs. Jean Hingely of the town of Rowley Regis in the West Midlands region of England was visited by three fishbowl-helmeted and friendly aliens with wings. After some spiritually uplifting exchanges, her holiday visitors thrashed her Christmas tree and nicked three of her mincemeat pies. The second part of our episode features heartwarming personal stories of hope from some of our listeners. These stories may not be proof of an afterlife for some, but for others, they may bolster the belief that our existence doesn't end with our physical death and that somewhere there is a world where everything we cherish is waiting for us, and proof that love is eternal and boundless.

Location:

The 12th century village of Rowley Regis in the West Midlands region of England, where Jean Hingely was visited on January 4, 1979 by three winged, benevolent aliens who trashed her Christmas tree and made off with three of her mincemeat pies.

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Credits:

Episode 197: Mrs. Hingely and the Mince Pie Aliens plus Listener Stories. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2020 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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robynmarkius · 4 years ago

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Language Differences (Part 2)

Welcome back to the (delayed posting of) ramblings on memories of Amaurot; glimpses of a long-forgotten past. Now, obviously, there’s Patch 5.3 Spoilers in this, so if you haven’t gotten through Shadowbringers yet, I would suggest not yet clicking through.

This post discusses the first Echo vision we see in 5.3. It’s kinda-sorta short, but I feel like it’s very important to set up the longer vision we see in Anemnesis Anyder later; which will be the focus on the next post. (I know I said that before, but I mean it this time. lol ^_^; )

Once again, credit where credit is due, and much thanks to @xehniscreations and @shiro-from-cafeberry for the French and German Translations! We’ve got one more for me to finish writing up/formatting yet after this!

[Cut for Spoilers and Images]

Part Two: Welcome, Elidibus

The first of two Echo Visions/Flashbacks we have is on the lookout tower in the Crystarium when Elidibert shows up behind us and doesn't know why he's there.

He saw us as Amaurotine for only a blink. After we glimpse into his memories, he asks us straight, what was it that Emet-Selch seemed to see in us. We have the opportunity to tell him what Hytholodaeus said to us or keep silent. Either way, he doesn’t seem doesn’t seem to recognize us at all.

The vision we had here, is from when he was welcomed to the Convocation; when he first gained the Seat of Elidibus.

English: ”On behalf of the Convocation, I bid you welcome to our order.

At times you will stand with us. At times you will stand against us. All that you might steer mankind and the very star upon their true course.

For yours is the seat of Elidibus, the Emissary, and by this name shall your every action be guided."

Japanese: 十四人委員会の議長：おめでとう、お前を十四人委員会の一員として迎えよう。

十四人委員会の議長：ときに我らと同となり、ときに我らに異を唱え、人と星とが正しく進むよう、尽力してほしい。

十四人委員会の議長：調停者の座……エリディブス。それが今より、お前のしるベとなる名だよ。

Romanization: Committee Speaker: omedetou, omae o jyuuyonnin iinkai no ichiin to shite mukaeyou.

Committee Speaker: toki ni warera to dou to nari, toki ni warera ni koto o tonae, hito to hoshi to ga tadashiku susumu you, jinryokushite.

Committee Speaker: shouteisha no gi......ERIDIBUSU. sore ga ima yori, omae no shirube tonaru na da yo.

English Translation: “Congratulations, you're accepted as a member of the Convocation of Fourteen.

At times, we will agree, at times, we will yell at each other in opposition, I'd like you to endeavor to properly advance this star and its people.

Elidibus... The Seat of the Arbitrator From now on, let this title become your guidance.”

French: (Thanks to Xehnis) Président du Concile des Quatorze: Félicitations, to fais désormais partie du Concile des Quatorze.

Président du Concile des Quatorze: Tu nous conforteras dans nos idées ou tu t'y opposeras, mais toujours pour le plus grand bien de la planéte et de ses habitants.

Président du Concile des Quatorze: Elidibus, le médiateur. Bien plus qu'un poste ou un titre, ce nom guidera désormais chacun de tes actes.

English Translation: President of the Council of Fourteen: Congratulations, you are now part of the Council of Fourteen.

President of the Council of Fourteen: You will consolidate in our ideas or you will oppose them, but always for the greater good of the planet and its inhabitants.

President of the Council of Fourteen: Elidibus, the mediator. Much more than a position or title, its name will guide each of your actions.

German: (Thanks to Shiro) Anführer des Konvents: Hiermit bestätige ich deine Erhebung zum ordentlichen Konventsmitglied. Willkommen in unserer Mitte.

Anführer des Konvents: Du wirst uns zuzeiten bestärken, zuzeiten widersprechen. Du wirst unser Tun leiten, auf dass dieser Planet und seine Kinder dem rechten Pfad folgen.

Anführer des Konvents: Dies ist deine Aufgabe als Elidibus - als Fürsprecher. Beherzige sie stets.

(Note from Shiro: “Konventsmitglied” means 'member of the convocation'.) English Translation: Leader of the Convention: I hereby confirm that you have been promoted to be a full member of the Convention. Welcome to our midst.

Covenant leader: You will at times encourage us, at times contradict us. You will guide our actions so that this planet and its children may follow the right path.

Covenant Leader: This is your job as Elidibus - as an advocate. Always heed them.

From the moment he's brought in as Elidibus, he's told exactly what he held onto for the rest of his existence. He is Elidibus; his title will dictate his actions. The phrasing may be slightly different in each language, but no matter what, he is told that he may not always be on the same side as the Convocation, however, so long as he holds onto his title as his identity, he'll guide the Star and its inhabitants on the proper course, and that is what is the most important aspect of his Title. Mediation, Arbitration, Advocacy, Emissary. So long as he does this, he will fulfill the expectations and duties of Elidibus.

After all this time, Elidibus knows what drives him. Elidibus knows what Zodiark was summoned to do. He only remembers "I am Elidibus."

We saw this because it helped us understand his motivation, and an understanding of how it could have gotten so far out of hand. He was not a Primal when he gained his seat, that happened when he became Zodiark’s Heart; one could even argue, Zodiark himself. To quote Emet-Selch/Hades, one of “the eldest and most powerful of Primals”. He held on to just enough of himself to remember what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to save the star, save the people, save his family and friends, prevent the star from being destroyed; he was to maintain homeostasis as best he could, while trying to return things to the way they once were. The desires of those who had first summoned Zodiark.

The question Y'shtola asked him after she confronted him in the Capitol, "you who've spoken with such a cacophony of voices, how can you be so sure you still speak with your own?" is a perfect one. After all this time, how can he be so sure he retains anything that is his own? I believe we saw what was left in the last scene, the Remnant of Elidibus; his sorrow and his own hope to be with everyone again when everything was over.

There is an importance to this moment though. It's the first time since we gained our 8th shard that we've seen into the memory of an Ascian. Before the final battle with Hades, we saw nothing from him as much as we were around him. The argument could be that it's because Elidibus was inhabiting the body of Ardbert; the body that once belonged to a piece of our soul; that we were able to break whatever protection there was and finally see something with our Echo. It could also be argued that since we regained another soul shard, we've grown in power too. The Echo in these situations seemed different too, more static, and a brighter light when they started and ended. Perhaps because the memories were so long ago, but... maybe also because Elidibus might not even consciously recall much of his past. After all, he says we wouldn't have seen anything useful, but who's he to say what we consider useful? lol

This actually sets up the second, longer flashback we see in Anemnesis Anyder later in the patch, when we go to pick up Y'shtola and tell her that she's been in the library long enough, she should come eat this breadcake Tataru sent over before she passes out. (...only to find we were a bit late on that last part. Oops!)

This was a short-ish post but it better sets up the second flashback sequence, and I think helps understand what drove him to awaken the Warriors of Light at the end; it was just instinct. Oppose Darkness. Awaken Heroes. Save the World. He's been looking at things in such black-and-white terms for so long, he's completely forgotten the shades of gray that exist on the Moral Spectrum. Something we learned by helping the First and forestalling the Eight Umbral Calamity. We aren't perfect, but we can strive to do our best to give everyone hope even when we're no longer there; for those we have lost and those we can yet save.

I will update with a link to the next part when I’ve compiled it... it’s longer just because the flashbacks are longer, but it contains the line about the rain, which we only call back to in English.

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