#so 'small vignettes for each one' was the solution!

[weepylucifer]

steban and uli. prompt 17

17. “Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while…”

They're squeezed inside a broom closet, uncomfortably close to each other, where Cindy pushed them in, locked the door and ran away, vowing not to open said door until they "deal with their feelings", whatever that means. Naturally, Ulixes isn't going to take that lying down, and is searching the door for anything - structural weaknesses, a way to force the lock open.

"The cleaning lady has a second key," Steban supplies. "And she comes here every day when her shift starts and ends."

Ulixes pauses running his fingers down the edge of the door and says, "This is good news."

"Yes, well, the bad news is that she probably already turned in for the night." Steban scrunches up his face in silent apology, as if this situation is his fault. "Maybe we should just... do what Cindy says and discuss 'our feelings', whatever that means?"

Panicking, drowning on dry land, Ulixes says, "I have no idea what she might have been referring to."

"Then we best get comfortable... looks like we'll be trapped for a while..."

---

They're hunkered down with their backs to a barricade that's not even really meant to be A Barricade writ large, just a few apartment buildings' worth of people - it's becoming increasingly en vogue to think of them in terms of 'civilians' - who have banded together to block off their street by haphazardly piling up furniture in a desperate bid to defend their doorsteps from the roving mobs of all political persuasions, the burnings, the break-ins, the random violence. But to Coalition ground response, a barricade is a barricade: a sign of resistance. They are under orders to dismantle barricades as they find them. Slowly but surely, the defenders are being hemmed in. What at first looked like a refuge to the people here is turning into a kettle.

Uli knows that Steban knew that this would happen. They're here anyway. The alternative would have been abandoning these people to their fates.

"How's that radio coming along, Ulixes?" Steban asks as he peers out beyond the barricade through the scope of a rifle. (His fingers have grown disturbingly steady on the gun and Uli doesn't like it at all.)

He sighs. "I don't exactly know how this thing works, Steban." If he sounds a little snippy, surely the circumstances will excuse it. "I just saw a comrade handle one at the aid station."

"There we go, you're practically an expert." Steban pats his shoulder. "Look, if you can't get this thing to transmit, there'll be no way to call on the unions for help."

"I..." Ulixes begins, but is interrupted by the sound of a gunshot tearing through the air. It comes from outside.

Steban scrambles to his feet, hissing what is undoubtedly a curse in Mesque. "Shit, they're starting to breach." He turns to his squadron, grabbing their weapons, and the locals cowering in fear. In that beauteous and disturbing new command voice he acquired when they were separated, Steban shouts, "Alright, everyone who has a gun to the front here, please! Children and the elderly in the back! Ulixes, you can grab your medical stuff and set up a field hospital behind the bombed-out car over there and keep at readiness. Vamonos!"

Ulixes grabs his crutch and rises, groping for his bag of scavenged medical supplies. Who knew it would turn out like this? He doesn't even have a weapon on him apart from the knife he uses, mostly, to cut bandages. "What about the radio?" he asks.

"Work on it whenever you find the time, but prioritise the wounded." Steban is already trying to affix his bayonet. He seems to be anticipating close combat.

"But if we can't signal for reinforcements..."

"Yeah. Looks like we'll be trapped for a while."

---

They're sitting at the kitchen table of an apartment that's still cramped by most standards, but leagues larger than what they used to have - they have a kitchen now, and enough space to put a table in it. There's even a bathroom, and a tiny balcony. Accomplished men, they are.

"If I manage to get elected, apparently there will be a small salary," Steban is saying.

It has astonished Ulixes somewhat that, after finishing their degrees together, Steban hasn't wanted to stick around and lecture like Ulixes is doing. That he'd get this embroiled in political work that is, quite obviously, not going to be leading much of anywhere. Sure, a part of Steban is very fond of quibbling over ideological minutiae, but to make a career out of that...?

"I know what you're thinking of our new parliament... I wholeheartedly concur," Steban says now. "But this'll be a decent enough recruiting ground for the next coup attempt."

"Do you think there will be one?" Ulixes asks.

"If no new attempt at revolution is forthcoming, we shall manufacture one," Steban replies like it's self-evident, like the war didn't suck any desire for violence out of him (Ulixes fears it didn't, but rather added desire where there used to be none). Steban looks good now, with his sleek hair and crisp shirt and neatly trimmed beard, but Ulixes perceives his eyes and knows he can become what he became in the Return again.

"This new so-called independence is nominal only, and people will realize that," Steban continues. "We exchanged a foreign occupant for a domestic one, that's all. Sure, we can form political parties, even communist ones, but there's no real power to them. People will see. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually."

"So we go back to hiding." Ulixes sighs. How disappointing.

"For now. Best if people think we've settled down. I'll take a small, meaningless post in parliament, and let our friends in the RCM believe I've given up on real revolution. It happens all the time, people grow older, they start to compromise, they start to let reaction take hold and abandon their radical ideas. It'll look convincing. Once they believe us to be harmless, we'll make new plans."

It's probably good to tread carefully for now - there had been voices in the new security oversight council, staffed with ranking RCM members and their friends, calling for putting them both in prison. Still, a part of Ulixes, the one that was louder before his injury, clamors in frustration. "And there's nothing else to do right now."

"Not right now, not anytime soon," Steban says glumly. "Looks like we'll be trapped for a while..."

---

"It looks like," Steban begins, "we'll be..."

"Don't say it," Uli interrupts him. "There is absolutely no need to say it."

"We are on the Western Plain, Ulixes, and life as we know it has ended. Grant me this one affectation."

"I need grant you nothing," Ulixes says. As he nests in middle age, makes himself comfortable in it, he finds curmudgeonliness suits him. Their conversations have, after two decades of quasi-married life, a levity to them that they didn't have at the start. Back then, Ulixes would have never imagined they'd bicker one day. They're fonder of each other than ever.

In less harmonious news: everything else.

A patch of... well, of what? Of matter, of being, of reality extends outwards from them. To their knowledge, this is the last speck of real world that is left. The pale is diffuse, but Ulixes could swear he can physically feel it, pressing against their little sanctuary, threatening to squash it into nothing, into itself. The perimeter holds, for now, but there is no guarantee - no guarantee at all - that it will continue to. Will he be feeling that pressure forever from now on, every passing moment, until he dies or the perimeter collapses, or the world, through some miracle, changes again? For a moment, fear almost chokes him.

How can they possibly presume to be strong enough to keep this up? Who are they to entertain such hubris? They're just some guys. How can they possibly be able to beat back entropy?

Steban squeezes his hand. "It's okay," he murmurs. "It'll be okay. As long as we stick together."

He turns to the small group of people huddling behind them, frightened, grieving, untethered. Friends, comrades, followers and whoever they managed to grab and pull along.

The remnants of the world.

And the last people in it.

Steban doesn't give a speech, not really. He just says, in his soft voice that always manages to sound like he's talking to everyone here confidentially, "Alright, we knew this day would come. We practiced for this. We cultivated our plasm. I know you're scared, I know you're asking yourselves where we can go from here, if we have what it takes to keep this up, if we can make the communal effort. And I know that we can try, and we have to try."

"What now?" someone pipes up from the back.

"Now we will build a tower." Suddenly, quickly, Steban leans in and whispers in Uli's ear, "Because it looks like we'll be trapped for a while."

He smirks and dodges as Ulixes bats at him with his cane and an inarticulate shout of indignance and, Ulixes thinks, maybe with Steban, even the pale will be bearable.

They roll up their sleeves, and get to work once more.

[bengiyo]

Love in the Big City Eps 7-8: Always Forward

Writing about the end of Love in the Big City is hard for me because it’s hard to seem to happy about a show going so dour for this long, but I mostly feel relieved that the show didn’t completely pull back on Yeong’s bleak existence after Gyu-ho. Overall, I really loved this adaptation, and especially enjoyed Sang Young Park’s opportunity to revisit this story after a few years away from it.

Starting with the way Gyu-ho haunted this section, I absolutely loved how they were able to flash back to the previous part and allow us to see how much closer Yeong got to Gyu-ho. I thought the looks at their trip to Thailand outside of the Yeong depressive haze of Part 3 played out really well here now that he’s mourning the relationship. It’s always so sad to me with Yeong how he will choose to isolate rather than subject his bullshit on others.

I find myself thinking a lot about the pills they got for Gyu-ho, how they were able to have one night of lovemaking without Kylie hanging over them, how the side effects of those drugs were pretty rough at the time, and how Yeong probably hated the idea of Gyu-ho taking pills forever because of him. It’s ironic that the idea that they could build a relationship around Kylie scared him more than anything because he knew it would be less than what he envisioned Gyu-ho could have for himself.

I wrote last week about how the apartment was too small, and I’m so glad that we got to see Yeong move out of that apartment in the finale. It felt so appropriate that he moved to a new place that literally looked like a blank slate for him to start over. I’m glad he took so little of the old apartment with him. He kept his mother’s nicest liquor cabinet and her trophies, a few personal items, and otherwise gave himself a new start. Like many of us, he had a big love in his 20s and it didn’t work out. He’s had some success as an author, and now can try to move forward. I like that the only things he takes with him to the new apartment beyond a few personal items are his friends. That feels like the right place to end a story like this.

Speaking of the T-aras, I really loved including them in this show. I hope that for SYP, there really was a group of friends like this for him during his 20s when he was experiencing the events that inspired some of this story. It feels like a not-so-quiet love letter to those friends that he made sure we saw how they grew and supported Yeong over the course of the story.

I loved that we saw Yeong grow closer to Eun Su in this section over the broken engagement. Gay relationships can be hard because we don’t have the structures of heteronormativity to help keep us together, like child rearing. So much of it comes down to whether we want to be with this person in and of itself, and for many of us marriage just isn’t the right solution to affirm that. I like that Eun Su realized this about himself before they committed to far, and it was Yeong who he knew would understand him on this.

I am so glad they went with different directors for each section. I think Hur Jin-ho might be my favorite with the way he used a lot of still shots to capture the stifling nature of Yeong’s time in the hospital and his broken relationship with Yeong Su. I loved the way Kim Se-in shot the follow up look at the trip to Thailand in Part 4, after the beautiful work Hong Ji-young gave us in the small details of the relationship with Gyu-ho that Hong Ji-young captured in Part 3. I would also like to applaud Song Tae-gyum for getting so much energy out of the cast and the shots in Part 1, because the long toll of events on Yeong does not land without coming down from the energy of Part 1. Absolutely phenomenal work from all four directors and the crews.

As a single story instead of four connected vignettes, I respect the choices the adaptation made to soften some of the heaviest parts of this story, and in particular give us a more hopeful look at Yeong’s future. I love that I feel like I can love the book and drama together and separately. It’s rare that I find a drama adaptation does a good job or elevates the original work, and I’m really glad that I can say that about this show. Everyone put they whole foot in this drama, and it shows.

Finally, I would like to give a huge thanks to Nam Yoon Su, Jim Ho Eun, Lee So Kyung, Kown Hyuk, Na Hyun Woo, Lee Hyun So, Byun Jun Seo, Jung Chan Yeong, and Oh Hyun Kyung, and the rest of the cast for all their work on this show. This feels like a once-in-a-generation show, not unlike Moonlight (2016), where we may never see the direct impacts of it. Someday, I hope we see the spiritual successor to this show, and can point back at it and thank it for getting us to that future. It’s rare that we get this much experienced talent in dramas playing queer life this frankly, and I will carry Go Young with me for the rest of my life, and will reflect on him and myself in his relationships with his mom, the T-aras, Gyu-ho, Yeong Su, Mi Ae, Nam Gyu, and even Habibi. What I am thankful for with the drama is that we leave Yeong looking forward and not back.

It has been an honor reacting to this show with all of you in the Love in the Big City Book Club. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts, gifs, and creations with us for this past month. I am so thankful that we got to do this experience together twice. I look forward to our next big outing.

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 12 - Destructive Testing

Breaking from the usual format for this one, and it’s going to be a bit shorter, but this is important.

At the beginning of November was Metatopia, a convention dedicated to playtesting roleplaying games. It’s an excellent place to go to break games in order to fix them stronger than ever, and in that respect Torchship did not disappoint. While its parts all worked beautifully, there were some issues with the connective tissue tying it; the game needed a stronger mechanical framework to put these pieces into.

With that in mind, we’ve started a new draft of Torchship designed to be rapidly playtested and iterated, into which all the other stuff we’ve built up can be plugged back. This new draft focuses particularly hard on making sure the game’s fundamental tablefeel is strong, that you always know what to do and where to go next.

Which is to say, fans of my games having big circles in them somewhere? There’s a big circle in this one now too. Torchship now has two distinct modes; an Action mode where you go out and gather information, and a Reflection portion where that information is managed, damage gets fixed, and plans are made. Action takes the form of ongoing narrative play, dropping into turn-based combat when needed, where Reflection takes place in a series of special scenes called Vignettes to represent timeskips, with more impactful ‘Resupply’ Vignettes acting in some ways as bridges between episodes or story arcs.

While it may sound similar to some of our previous games, this isn’t like in Flying Circus where each part of the Routine is a commitment to a certain kind of gameplay before you can go back. You’re able to switch between the two pretty readily; so long as there’s nothing bearing down on you this minute, you can go into Reflection and play out Vignettes, with the number available before you need to go back into Action depending on the in-universe time until the next important thing.

This structure imitates the back and forth you see in many episodes of Star Trek. To use Devil in the Dark as an example, the Action scenes are things like arriving at the planet to meet with the staff, or going out into the cave to track down what’s killing the miners. When they go back to talk about their findings, prep security crews, or bring in new resources, that’s Reflection. It covers your beloved TNG meeting room scenes, the cut to sickbay as we find out what happened to the redshirt, and the montages of inventing or building the tools that’ll solve this week’s problems.

As part of these rewrites, some parts of the game have been modified from previous dev diaries. We’ve simplified the way Harm works; you now have two Harm tracks, Injury and Panic, and a new accumulating penalty called Strain which builds up quickly as you make checks or use medicine to manage the other tracks or boost your abilities. Strain is easy to clear so long as you have supplies available, so it acts to pace out scenes and give less-skilled characters a reason to roll; if you know there’s a lot of a certain kind of work ahead, you might want to save your expert for the rolls which really matter!

(Radiation no longer uses a whole track, but instead consists of a small card the GM can hand you entitled “Congratulations, you’ve been irradiated!” with a list of dosage effects.)

A variety of changes large and small have emerged from these changes. Relationships act as an excellent starting point for Vignettes, while access to meetings have let us place restrictions on the number of checklists out on the field at a time, as you can always call meetings to retire checklists, propose others, and figure out what your next Big Question is about the mission. We’ve created a new XP system where you train skills directly by using them, with the pace of advancement limited on a per-episode basis to encourage you to play wide and learn new things.

Finally, we’ve come up with a neat solution to one of the longstanding problems that original sci-fi games often run into, where players are unsure what their technology can do, resulting in decision paralysis. We’ve added a very distinct CAN & CAN’T field on the info cards which lists exactly what everything does and what their limitations are so you can jump straight in without slowing the game to ask the GM where the boundaries are. 

Things are bound to change more over time as the game is refined and tested, but that’s a good thing. Good games take time, revision, and a willingness to recognize and rewrite when things aren’t working as well as they could.

[flimflamfandom]

Room Mates (vignette)

Ivy Pepper stared at the wall in her dorm room, and grumbled as she wiped the chalk off with cloth. “You’re lucky I took a picture of this, Helen, or my homework would be RUINED!”

“You’re lucky I even let you write up there in the first place!”

Ivy furiously scribbled down notes from her notebook, after VERY quickly getting some fi;m developed. She grumbled to herself as she worked. “Stupid Helen...bet she can’t even SPELL Nodal!”

Ivy had been working hard at a few problems her projective geometry teacher had given her, all to do with Self space dual curves. She HAD been working the math on the wall and writing the shapes onto graph lined paper. But Helen, the STODGY WENCH SHE WAS, had demanded she wash the wall off. So, she was back to work, trying to get her numbers down. 

Helen looked over her shoulder at her work. “That Y should be negative.” “I know it should be negative.” “Then why didn’t you write down that it was negative?” “Because I KNOW it’s supposed to be! You already bungled my process once!” “...is this really about that boy?” Ivy scoffed. “What? No. I don’t care WHAT you think about him. But I DO care that now I have to waste notebook pages like some sort of PHILISTINE!” “Yeesh, what is it with you and the chalk anyway!?” “The boys won’t let me into the workrooms! You know how boys are.” Ivy sighed. “Mathematics is a woman’s world and here they are, traipsing around like they own the place because every other science BeLoNgS to them.” She grumbled. “Makes me wanna hurl ‘em through a window.”

Helen shrugged. “I never knew anyone considered Math a girl thing.” “Sure, Emmy Noether?” “...who?” “The woman who figured out Commutative rings?” “...whats?” Ivy sighed, and opened up another sheet of notebook paper. “Commutative rings,” She said. “Are any ring in which multiplication is commutative.” She wrote a few things down. “So AB=BA for any B or A value.” “...You lost me at rings, actually, where do rings come in?” Helen turned her head to one side. “It’s a nonempty set with 2 operations and fulfilling certain requirements!” She began to write something down. “Here’s what you need for a ring.”

She hastily wrote, her tongue out, her eyes determined. Until she came up with...

1)  If a∈R and b∈R, then a⊕b∈R.

(2)  a⊕(b⊕c) = (a⊕b)⊕c

(3)  a⊕b=b⊕a

(4)  There is an element 0R in R such that a⊕0R=a , ∀a∈R .

(5) For each a ∈ R, the equation a⊕0R=a , ∀a∈R . a ⊕ x = 0R has a solution in R.

(6)  If a∈R, and b∈R, then ab∈R.

(7)  a⊗(b⊗c) = (a⊗b)⊗c.

(8)  a⊗(b⊕c) = (a⊗b)⊕(b⊗c)

...the rules for rings.

“...wow. That’s...a bit much, don’t you think?” “It’s not SO bad. It’s basic algebraic structuring, Helen! The building blocks of math!” “...sure it is.” Helen nodded slowly. “Oh, c’mon, don’t tell me you aren’t able to follow this! You’re smart as a whip!” “I look at stars and make charts out of them, Ivy. The math I know about is geometry and-” “Well, if it’s geometry you’re after, take a look at my homework!” “Not THAT sorta geometry!” Helen said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I need some fresh air...you math people are bonkers.” Ivy crossed her arms and looked as she left. “Well, sure, go on and leave us mathematicians for your scientific breakthroughs and easy headlines! But when you need to calculate the trajectory of an asteroid, DON’T COME CRYING TO ME!” “I won’t!” Helen waved. She shut the door. Ivy grumbled.

Later that night, Ivy was still hard at work, and Helen came back in, with a few things. Looked like a brown paper bag of things. She looked over. “Still working?” “Mhm.” “Damn...Professor Holly really IS a jerk, huh?” “Yeah...I work better on chalk.” She said. “I guess I just...visualize it better.” “...” Helen handed her a small chalkboard. “It’s not the wall. But it’s there.” She smiled. “I also got you a coke. It’ll help you finish.” “...” Ivy smiled, warmly. “Thanks, Helen...sorry about earlier.” “It’s no trouble...so, self space dual curves, huh?” “Yep.” “How do those work?” “...I’m glad you asked...”

[usagirotten]

Review: Watchmen Chapter One as an animated adaptation leaves us with the media

Comics have been around for many decades. Some take them seriously as literary material, and for others, they are just simple entertainment. The truth is that behind this, there is a lot of work to do. Hollywood from the beginning saw in this ninth art an opportunity to bring adaptations of these characters to the big and small screen, to make them more real with completely new and different stories to represent their adventures. In this medium it has stood out for having great writers and cartoonists, over the years this has been evolving and changing, they have adapted to each era reflecting in some cases the social and global problems that we have had, it is undeniable that one of the artists who has stood out in the medium is Alan Moore, outside of any controversy that may cause his contribution to the medium has been invaluable. One of the most representative contributions during 1986 and 1987 was giving a radical turn to the superhero genre. Watchmen marked a before and after. Moore used this story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties, deconstructing and satirizing the concept by making political comments that bothered more than one. Watchmen as a comic explores the multiverse and its variants early on. This is an alternative story in which superheroes emerged between the 1940s and 1960s and their activity in society changed history so that the United States as a country and world power won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. Such power of these beings was abused and reached a very critical point in which the consequences could be devastating. There have been several reissues in the form of trade paperbacks, single issues, an animated film based on these characters, a movie, and a live-action series along with their respective sequels that have not been as good or recognized as their original. In 2024, the story is presented again in animated form by Warner Animation in 2 parts that explore in detail what has happened in each of its dialogues and vignettes. It is now the turn of director Brandon Vietti and writer J. Michael Straczynski to take us to this dystopian world where unexpectedly anything can happen.

What is Watchmen Chapter One about?

Watchmen Chapter One faithfully tells the story of the first 6 issues of the original 12-issue miniseries published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987. A complex alternate world history set in 1985, the government-sponsored murder of the Comedian (Rick D. Wasserman) draws his outlawed colleagues out of retirement and into a mystery that threatens to upend their personal lives and the world they inhabit. If the right solution is not found, all of humanity is in danger. This fundamental story returns now in a 2-part animated film in animated form, 1986 Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore created one of the most innovative and shocking stories of that time, Watchmen in its 12 issues radically changed the panorama in comic book narration for generations to come and served as a starting point to develop this medium as something more serious and profound, with elements that addressed political issues, the superheroic irony of whether these beings deserved to have that place before everything and everyone, set in an alternative 1985 with the world on the brink of World War III, a more complex and mysterious conspiracy than we could all believe is slowly developing, reflecting the Cold War and the nuclear conflict that can put the entire planet at risk. Following this in 2008, a motion comic was presented with an impeccable production directed by Jake Strider Hughes, in 2009 a live-action film directed by Zack Snyder, and a sequel in 2019 as a television series, its story has been adapted again into an animated format and the question we ask ourselves now is: was this film necessary? The answer may be controversial and polarizing for some it will be a yes, for others it will be a no and for others, it will be an I don't care. Retelling this story is extremely risky, we are in a time where the lack of creativity of the studios in presenting new things is evident and this may or may not be a comfort zone in which once again they go for the easy way of telling us something that already had and still has its success, one of the aspects to highlight about the original material has always been the relevance of its story, what Watchmen Chapter One intends is to divide this story into 2 parts, first the 6 issues and in the next part the other 6 that concludes with everything. Retelling the same story from another perspective can be shocking and boring, but what enriches this work is its perspective and its animation, the cast of voices and the music, the fact that the important subplots are explored in more depth and detail, that of the boy reading a comic and Rorschach's diary, which are fundamental to complement the main story, what Warner Animation has done is not risk anything and is based on something that already exists but now with a more mature detail. The film itself does not risk much, neither in politics nor in its graphic violence, nor its sexual situations, it seems that it is for adults who are not very mature and who understand the important issues less, they are guilty of being purists in an era in which a whole generation dedicated more to the fast and the simple can result in a nostalgic work only for fans and connoisseurs, some of comics and others of animation.

We can question several things about this last point. Although the animation is good and impeccable, at times it doesn't seem to be as spectacular as we expected for a material of this quality. From a visual perspective, its animated work is very lacking in this first part, which leads us to an inevitable comparison with Marvel Animation in its series What If…? Although they have similarities in their strokes and backgrounds, what they present here is a pseudo-mature work for adults and it doesn't turn out to be a good decision. The fact that both look alike is undeniable, the use and abuse of its CGI have obvious flaws in the symmetry of its characters, its color palette, and the backgrounds, and even with this against it, it manages to capture the emotions and development of each character more effectively. Its CGI at times helps to understand this world by giving it a more elegant dark appearance that approaches the realistic in its environment and surroundings, the vehicles in the background are timeless and remain between something classic and modern justifying it with the fact that it is a different world than ours, the symmetry of its characters as human figures look rigid in some action sequences, its highest point is that they tried to emulate the colors that appear in its original material pretending that this is a comic that complies with the rule of animation. On this point, the studio has not understood that its creator Alan Moore, and its writer Dave Gibbons have insisted together and separately that their story in a 12-issue comic series has been impossible to take to another medium due to the complexity of its atmosphere that was created and designed to be presented in a format of Nite Owl, Nite Owl II, Silk Spectre, Silk Spectre II, Rorschach, Ozymandias, Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan as well-established and concrete characters achieve their narrative objective, their adaptations have failed when not respecting this rule and making freer versions that break the scheme and the essence of what it is. For example, the film directed by Snyder was not perfect. It does not faithfully adapt its story and much less respect the established rules by imposing its own rules of cinema. If the production design does a great job in its framing, costumes, and cast, in terms of story it falls far short of what was expected. Possibly one of the most difficult parts of adapting Watchmen to other media is the way of telling its story, as is the case of Tales of the Black Freighter, which acts as a moderator of the main plot and simply does not exist in this film.

This subplot is presented here in a not-so-successful way and refers to a few moments in which a few panels are shown leaving its narrative unfinished, the action is summarized in something too fast for the length of the film and its screen time that tries to cover a lot by telling everything and assuming that the viewers who have not read the original material understand what is happening and this hinders its main story and leaves us hanging, this is the reflection of poor planning and execution of what they have. This first part, in general, is a very dry and simple adaptation of the comic with an animation that could have given more, its opening scene has a different approach to the comic but captures its essence, two detectives investigating the death of a Comedian and try too hard to try and only try to recreate what its vignettes have been, another of its flaws is the duration, it's 84 minutes of duration are not enough to properly develop what it has, it goes very quickly from one sequence to another which makes the story too rushed which as viewers does not allow us to appreciate the greatness of what this could have been. Although the dialogue is a very important and essential point when telling this story, it is the voice talent that fails to live up to expectations and does what it can with what they have. Here, no one stands out with a bad performance that could have been much better if director Brandon Vietti knew and understood his source material and managed to convey the emotion of its essence and its message. Nothing justifies a bad job in a work that is complete and rounded in itself, that also does not need sequels or to be told anything more about what happens in this world. Some things should stay as they are, but we are facing a very uncreative and unoriginal industry. The voice cast includes Kelly Hu, Katee Sackhoff, Adrienne Barbeau, Gray Griffin, Titus Welliver, Matthew Rhys, Troy Baker, Jeffrey Combs, Yuri Lowenthal, Kari Wahlgren, Phil LaMarr, Dwight Schultz, Geoff Pierson, Michael Cerveris, Corey Burton, Jason Spisak, John Marshall Jones, Rick D. Wasserman and Max Koch. The music composed by Tim Kelly is an element that manages to frame this work very well, which does not emulate or try to imitate what Lennie Moore has done in the Motion Comic, Tyler Bates in the film, and what Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross did for the television series, composers with completely different styles who have a common harmony and who have given their personality to their works. This still does not have a conclusion and remains pending like the second part, this story will continue... Watchmen Chapter One is now available in a home format and on the Prime Video streaming platform. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-s-cxTnH2Q Read the full article

[klixxy]

Genshin Fic Recs

so... i ventured into the vast world of Google looking for some good GI fic recs... only to find such a pitiful amount that i was promptly devastated. therefore, the solution is to make my own! :D

keep in mind most of these will be ChiLi or XingYun, and yes, i will try not to include smut unless it was one i really really liked. if anyone wants a separate list for just smut (though that will most likely be shorter) i can try to make one later.`

ft. my bookmark comments :)

CHILI

wrapped up in pure gold by beyondwinter

(chili; accidental marriage; chili/childe-centric; 22k words; ongoing)

"Do you understand its meaning, Childe?" He finally asks. There's a hard glint in his eyes, like he's trying to steel himself for his answer.

"Yeah." Loyalty and devotion, right? Between business partners? "I do. It's traditional, isn't it?"

Zhongli's eyes glow a warm amber in the near darkness, reflecting the soft shine of the lanterns. He studies his face with a strange intensity, as though Childe were a piece of high quality Nocticulous Jade being sold for suspiciously small sum and he's trying to find the blemishes that would explain the price. The weight of his gaze should be uncomfortable, boring into him like he can see into the very depths of his abyss-tainted soul, but Childe finds himself preening under the attention instead.

Childe accidentally proposes to Zhongli. Zhongli accepts.

The World is Water by Millereflets

(chili; smut; hurt/comfort; chili-centric; 7k words; oneshot)

Childe doesn't visit Zhongli until it's almost too late.

(my bookmarks: HOW DO YOU MAKE A SMUT SCENE SO POETIC HOLY SHITTTTT)

Set in Stone by seredemia

(chili; fake dating au; angst; some smut?; chili/chiilde-centric; 55k words; ongoing)

What do you do when you write about a certain six thousand year old consultant so much in your letters that it somehow convinces your entire family you're not only dating each other, but that you're also engaged?

In Childe's case, the answer is plain and simple: he goes along with it, of course. Absolutely nothing can go wrong if he makes a contract with the God of Contracts, vowing that the two of them will pretend to be lovers for the duration of his family's stay in Liyue. Afterwards, they'll return as normal and speak no more of this mess. No feelings or complications involved whatsoever.

Contract accepted. A fool-proof plan set in stone. Right?

Private Ledger of the Eleventh Harbinger by JuHuaTai

(chili; humor; getting together; chili/ekaterina-centric; 5k words; oneshot)

“So guess what I did next?”

Ekaterina contemplated not answering, but Harbinger Tartaglia was just… grinning and waiting. It’s honestly rather creepy the longer time passed.

In the end, she gave a long suffering sigh that seems lost on him, “You bought him the Erhu—“

“I bought him the antique, cor lapis based Erhu,”

-

When she first left her homeland for the unknown nation of Liyue, Ekaterina was ready to be many things: To be a soldier, to fell Tsaritsa’s enemies in her name, to bring glory to Snezhnaya and her leader.

Being a receptionist in a cozy bank wasn’t so bad in comparison, but she absolutely can do without the front row seat to Harbinger Tartaglia’s (expensive) love life.

i know i'm where i'm meant to go by paperclips (pastel_paperclips)

(chili; humor; fluff; chili-centric; 12k words; ongoing)

"Childe," Zhongli says suddenly. "I am enjoying myself greatly." Childe’s face breaks into a grin. "Then-" Zhongli gasps, grabbing his wrist and tugging him over to an unsuspecting peddler with a cart full of rocks. "Is that an intrusive igneous pegmatite formed in the Inazuma regions?" Childe’s grin smooths into a small, adoring smile. He has all the time in the world to figure the other man out.

OR: Finding the Geo Archon is on Childe's to-do list but hanging out with Zhongli is significantly more fun.

CHILIVEN

Crumbling Stone by avtorSola

(chiliven; ANGST; PAIN; mind control; zhongli-centric; 74k words; ongoing)

When Morax unleashes his plan to test the Liyue Qixing and his adepti, he does not take into account the stirring of the Abyss Order in the north and the corruption of Dvalin - for why would he fear an organization that works in such shadows? He is secure in his power, after all, unlike his flighty ex, the absentee archon of Mondstadt who rises only when his people are in danger.

But, somehow, the Abyss Order discovers his plan. Somehow, they capitalize on it. And he, the God of Stone who cannot sicken, is struck down - taken by an order bent on destroying all of humanity as Liyue crumbles around him. For even Archons aren't immune to Durin's blood, and Morax is no exception. But then the question becomes - if even Archons may fall to the agony of this corrupting burn - how is their traveling friend Aether immune?

The answer comes from beyond the stars - an ancient malice that knows no kindness or mercy. A malice whose legacy the Abyss Order now bears, seeking to topple all the Archons and their people into the void of utter destruction. And they have begun in Liyue.

Fortunately, it takes a long time to erode stone.

(my bookmarks: IM SCREAMING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

PLATONIC ZHONGVEN

left-behind city by trixstar

(platonic zhongven; angst; ANGST; venti-centric; 1k words; oneshot)

"An associate of mine has just informed me that Rex Lapis, the Geo Archon has been assassinated."

Venti blinks.

Or: Venti and how he copes with finding out he is all that remains.

i circle ten thousand years long; and i still do not know if i am a falcon, a storm, or an unfinished song by birdsofpassage

(platonic zhongven; angst; hurt/comfort; zhongven-centric; 4k words; oneshot)

Venti and Zhongli, and the vignettes of a much-needed vacation around Mondstadt.

(my bookmarks: ; - ;      ;  -  ; )

oh ye with little faith by air_fried_air

(platonic zhongven; angst; hurt/comfort; zhongven-centric; 2k words; oneshot)

Two former archons do a little tour around Mondstadt.

(my bookmarks: why are all genshin angst fics so melancholy.... i feel so empty)

the wind through the mountain tops by glassdrachma

(platonic zhongven; humor; hurt/comfort; zhongven-centric; 21k words; finished)

Boredom brings Barbatos of Mondstadt to bother a certain ex-Archon of the Earth.

(my bookmarks: venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship venti zhongli friendship-)

XINGYUN

the art of exorcism by Agried

(xingyun; ghost au; hurt/comfort; chongyun-centric; 9k words; oneshot)

On the road back from one of his jobs, Chongyun runs into Xingqiu, the wandering swordsman. And then they keep meeting, over and over again. or, alternately; how a ghost and an exorcist learn how to love, one step at a time.

Bane of All Evil by tzitzimeme

(xingyun; humor; romance; chongyun-centric; 24k words; hiatus)

When Chongyun unintentionally offends Liyue's second most powerful adepti, he vows to mend the thorny relationship between Adeptus Xiao and human exorcists-- even though no one has succeeded in currying Xiao's favor for over a thousand years.

His best friend Xingqiu offers to come alone, mainly because he's worried about what kind of trouble Chongyun will run into. Along the way, they receive help from others: Xiangling packs them meals for their journeys, while Zhongli gives them advice on what demons to track.

Childe is just there because he thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

[On indefinite hiatus due to burnout; sorry!]

kiss me slowly (so i don't forget) by xiwangmu

(xingyun; humor; romance; light angst; xingqiu-centric; 8k words; oneshot)

Wangshu Inn Bulletin Board

Guest Message: My best friend whom I harbor affections for kissed me last night, but due to his special condition he does not recall a single moment of it. I am quite conflicted about whether to disclose these events to him or not, because that would most certainly require me to confess my feelings as well. If anyone has experience in romancing boys with excessive positive energy, this one humbly asks you to share some advice.

Reply: Our greatest apologies—although we would like to offer some words in response, we simply cannot decipher your handwriting. Perhaps you may return with a neater message next time?

time trials by idlestars

(xingyun/many ships; humor; modern au; xingyun-centric; 2k words; oneshot)

A modern social media AU.

Xingqiu Teases Demons. Chongyun Almost Cries. [The clip shows Xingqiu, lit by the sickly green of night vision, as he stares bored into a dark room. He’s alone - Chongyun left to see if Xingqiu could lure out the ghosts. Xingqiu glances at the camera, smirks, and then opens his mouth.

“Hey demons, it’s me, yah boy.”]

OTHER/GEN

woe be the wallet of the god of wealth by glassdrachma

(gen; humor; identity reveal; keqing/zhongli-centric; 12k words; finished)

Or, the story of how the Yuheng of the Qixing came to idolize, befriend, and discover the identity of the God of Geo, in that order.

(personal comments: hilarious, made me burst out into laughter multiple times, and was just a masterful piece of writing)

to dream of dust by miao_x

(guili/gen; ANGST; hurt/no comfort; zhongli-centric; 5k words; oneshot)

Some nights, Zhongli dreams.

He dreams of soft light, golden song, and a gentle breeze whispering tales of millennia past. It is warm, familiar, and comforting.

It feels like home.

And then he opens his eyes, and awakes to reality.

(my bookmarks: oh zhongli... made me cry)

To drown in your own tears by C_rin_nyan

(guili/gen; ANGST; TEARS; PAIN; zhongli-centric; 2k words; oneshot)

As Rex Lapis, he had never shed a tear, even as he slaughtered hundreds, destruction following his every step. As Zhongli, he had shed much more than he would like to admit, however.

Or, “Zhongli’s soul gave its last scream long ago, yet even now, the echo of said sound was still strong enough to reach Rex Lapis.”

[project-paranoia]

Let’s Watch: Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

I have watched this movie 85 Whole Entire Times and I do not regret.  The only thing wrong with this movie is that it wasn't a fifty episode series.  I cried, I laughed, I fell in love.  The cinematography is on point, the acting is amazing, the crew member who put snow on people's eyebrows did an amazing job, and the acting!  The subtlety, the gentleness, the love and affection, the discussion of race is one of the best I've ever seen.

As people have pointed out before in series like X-Men that fear of mutant's is practically if not thematically justified due to the laser eyes in a way that fear of ethnic minorities just isn't in real life.  In Dream of Eternity however humans are equally if not sometimes more super powered than the yao they hunt.  Demons - very much not in the Christian sense - are a mixture of spirits, resentful souls, and animals and plants who cultivated to human form.  They often appear human at first glance and in some cases the extent of their power seems to be the limited to turning into a smaller more vulnerable animal.  Qingming's deliberate care and gentleness not only reflects his upbringing as a Yin Yang Master, but parallels the experience of racial minorities labelled as aggressive.

The movie takes particular care as well in the way it looks at trauma, grief, and love.  The three of which haunt the main characters and send out ripple effects into the world around them.  In the world of Dream of Eternity no loss is purely private, it spools out into the world around the person effected until they make an effect to acknowledge and deal with their experiences.  Qingming's warmth and gentleness isn't just marked by his behaviour but by the orange light he's lit by and his variety of shishen - but he is also separate, standing alone in frame and facing away from the people around him.  Boya's loss has made him unforgiving and as cold as the blue light he's lit in, and yet he is open and instinctive, talking and acting as soon as the thought enters his head.  The Empress is lost and drifting, trapped and grief stricken, vulnerable to those who profess to love her.  The film is simple, it says and shows what it means when it means it - but it is also as complex as the very human characters it depicts.  

The movie is made even more complex by its pull from theaters.  Claims of plagiarism drench the edges of the movie, which as true as the assertion that Fan BingBing went on a spa vacation in 2018.  Although this blog is about Chinese censorship dealing specifically with BL content, Chinese censorship also effects those who criticize governmental policy.  I hope that supporters of this blog will also support Chinese media threatened by censorship for many reasons so that artists and others involved in film making can continue to make meaningful content.

Doing a watchthrough of a movie is not feasible, but please enjoy a few thousand words - with spoilers on Yin Yang Master included:

* That gentle chiming and rain soundscaping is so soothing, what a great way to calm and lull the audience before the movie even starts * Qingming is so small and isolated in the frame - cinema! * The lighting and cinematography is just so good * Shifu, soft gentle teacher * So much love stored in the Shifu * Instant grow * This boy is Sassy * This theme of deflection in Qingming's character is established early * Deflection with a teleportation portal and then immediately deflection verbally * Shifu is certainly an attractive man aged up, but his face is also soft and gentle, something to note when his double pops up later * Also the awkward question of don't you have someone you want to protect, maybe part of the problem is that shifu is just really bad at wording things * The answer that yes he does has several meanings, one of which is immediately apparent when Shifu acts out one of those Father Saves Child By Yeeting them youtube videos * ACtion MuSIC * I love them your honour * The spirit guardian's design is so specific and elegant, absolutely superb you funky little shishen * I wonder if Qingming ever thinks about that if he didn't come back with all his fellow disciples that Shifu would have been fine * Maybe it's not that he doesn't have someone he wants to protect and more that he believes that he's not capable of protecting those he wants to * subtle indication Shifu's qi is corrupted * Precious Magic Childe ;-; * The framing, I'm living for it * The Serpent graphic is lovely * Also the way they set things up * Qingming cares so much about his shifu * Mark Chao just has the ability to crumple his face like paper * Sad Time exposition involving the corrupting influence of desires * "When you're gone I'll be all alone" in just about all you need to know about Qingming at this point in the story * Also like, sympathy for Shifu in raising this lonely child.  By all accounts he was an absolutely superb father figure, and Qingming I'm sure was not an easy child to raise.  He's the sort of kid that would take a lot of calm and patience. * Slumber party! * It's kind of interesting that this is an activity Fangyue and He Shouyue are doing together.  He's definitely obsessed and in love with her and she's just doing friends and family activities with him * Also yellow/gold lighting is kind of their thing * It's interesting how they do the make up for He Shouyue.  The actor is very attractive, but they make him up to look doll like, a little too pretty, a little too shiny.  Like a porcelain doll. * Cool lit Boya and warm lit Qingming appear! * Camels! * The framing is so good, they're careful to be sure he's shown as obviously isolated as much as possible * And it should go without saying that I adore the City * The matte painting is outstanding * But there's also the lighting, the vignettes, the clusters, the foliage * It is a supremely beautiful set * The irony that Killing Stone is playing along with Boya's music and then it's Boya who kicks him around * A small note, but one I appreciate - even when Boya has warm highlight's they're red instead of orange * "It's Jason Bourne!" * I hope Qingming paid for that water taxi * It's interesting how Killing Stone goes from the safety of Qingming's orange light to the danger of Qingming's blue * Colour related foreshadowing! * Look at this poor sweet man, how could anyone suspect him of anything.  He's just a sad man who loves his dead wife * Qingming's use of a fan is interesting - battle fans show up all over wuxia and xianxia, but it feels like it also ties into the way he's so very careful in how he presents himself.  There's that quote that a sword can only be a sword but other weapons are also able to serve other purposes - not a perfect quote but the point is got across. * The way Qingming just knocks Boya back, like get An Clue, my dude * The way that Killing Stone curls around the pipa ;-; * So the movie is based on the book series 'Onmyoji' by Yumemakura Baku.  The books start with Seimei (Qingming) and Hiromasa (Boya) already in a relationship talking about various cases Seimei has recently experienced.  Plotwise, obviously the stories are different, however thematically Seimei and Hiromasa discuss why some yao stick around and solutions to the difficulties and dangers they might cause - which is generally from Seimei's very successful perspective to listen and treat them like humans.  So in that way the plots of the books and the movie are quite different, but the themes are just about identical. * Boya says Don't Talk Me I Angy and also that demons don't have feelings and Qingming's face takes out a billboard that's just like Ah, Another Fantasy Racist, Excellent * Qingming also does what should be done in this situation, taking care of the victim not the racist * Fight scene!  Fight scene! * Qingming's first few moves aren't to attack, they're to distract and just hold his fan up to block Boya's way and his view - it's only when Boya persists in attacking that Qingming fights back * Qingming's sassy smile, he is very much deliberately irritating Boya as much as he's refocusing his attention and distracting him * "nICE sWORD" * I've sighed that sigh before * This boy is taking great pleasure from teasing Boya, but also he makes a really good point * I understand and relate to what Qingming did, but also I can understand why Boya was ready to throw rocks at Qingming when he saw him again * Killing Stone lit in Qingming's orange light again * Killing Stone, my beloved * A good gauge to the state of the world for yao is no one has told this sweet boy before that demons have feelings too * There are several lines like this in the movie that just drop kick you with Implications * The same way Qingming clung to Zhongxing, Killing Stone wants to join up with Qingming to have some compassion in his life * The way he asks to be a spirit guardian is so formal too, and Qingming is so gentle with him, I cry ;-; * The warm orange light of Qingming's love ;-; * He heals the wounds * It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise it's the actual imperial degree speaking and not one the of Jingyun Temple Masters * The mutual this guy again is delicious * "Is it because of your pretty face" * Boya draws his sword so fast and Qingming is so amused by it * Longye!  Queen!  I love her! * The two of them seem to understand each other instantly * Those sassy little smiles * He Shouyue looks even more like a doll than before * Longye has her head on a swivel from second one, she plays the Maiden so well like she's not a skilled master * And her customer service smile * Qingming is shooketh

* What happens next?  You'll have to watch and find out!

[shieldcodex]

Codex ‘Verse Masterpost (completed/updated, plus additional non-arc fics 2016-2018)

The ‘Verse series is a completed second set of stories based around the theme of rebuilding a family. Still lightly AU, canon-flavor. Like its forerunner, it also  predicts or predates a lot of current MCU and will absolutely contain spoilers. There are characters from the comics that are introduced MCU-style and do not require comic knowledge to understand. The ‘Verse fics are written to not contradict the Postscript of the original Codex and continue the story after When the Man Comes Around, because these bastards wouldn’t stop talking to me.

The ‘Verse:

The Lion in Spring

Synopsis:

Recent events have left each Agent of SHIELD in emotional disarray, and Daisy Johnson most of all.  So when Coulson asks Loki to reach out and help her, he accepts... but in his own way.  A storyteller first and foremost, Loki reveals a story of old Asgard - the embattled start of love between Odin and Frigga.

Notes: Will spoil the end of Season 3 AoS. Is 90% a flashback tale.

Season of the Witch

Synopsis:

When horror engulfs a small Pennsylvanian town at the edge of abandoned Centralia, the Agents of SHIELD are called to investigate.  But when their strangest ally and agent, Loki, fast realizes he knows more about what's going on than he ever wanted to admit, the investigation takes a dark turn into understanding not only the history of the cursed region, but the birth of Chaos itself.

Notes: This is the Oct 2016 Codex Halloween fic, but also ended up paralleling AoS’s season 4 events in very strong and strange ways. Bookends with the original Codex fic, A Clear and Present Loki. Aggie Harkness becomes a recurring character and member of WAND, a magical division of SHIELD currently run by Loki.

Generation of Animals

Synopsis:

A phone call from an unexpected source puts Phil Coulson (along with his unlikeliest friend) on the hunt for a resurrected ghost straight out of the worst nightmares of world history - and on the way, Coulson must remember how to uphold the beliefs of his greatest hero, the currently exiled Captain America.

By punching Nazis.

Lots of Nazis.

Really hard.

Notes: I didn’t handle the 2016 US election very well, and honestly, come 2020, CAN YOU BLAME ME. This was one method of coping. Fortunately, it’s also a pretty rollickin’ story where Loki beats on an awful lot of awful people. The theme of making peace with himself and his place in Asgard and Jotunheim continues on from this story.

Riders on the Storm

Synopsis:

Loki and Doctor Strange are forced to work together to hunt what they discover is a cannibal - and maybe a killer. To pass the time, they share a couple of similarly horrible stories from their pasts, from a bleak ER encounter to Loki's first real battle with the demons and the flames of Muspelheim.

Notes: 2017′s Halloween fic is a longer work that contains substories, similar to We Lived in Castles. Strange and Loki’s aggressive frienemy-ship continues to build. 

The Liminoid Space has a Self-Checkout Lane

Synopsis:

Loki's having a day. The sort of day that makes him long for an era where sacrifices to the Gods were still a thing. Instead, he's in a big box store buying cheap shirts and animal crackers and crappy coffee, and he's none too happy about it.

Notes: Like some vignettes in the original arc, this one doesn’t connect to anything. It does have a nice but short flashback to Loki being a dumb kid too smart for his own good.

An Ocean Deep and Cold

Synopsis:

Having uncovered the trail of even more buried family secrets, Thor turns to his brother to help him puzzle out what he believes may be a secret of his own lineage - but Loki's weariness with Odin's faults means he is at first unwilling to help.

When he does give in, the brothers together must face what the Realms have to offer them for all-new struggles, from Earth's intrigue to Alfheim's bureaucracy... and they must also share the weight of their own fraught relationship.

Notes: The finale of the shorter ‘Verse arc, Loki finds himself finally making a kind of real and lasting peace not only with his brother, and with Odin’s bizarre way of parenting, but also with his heritage. Farbauti has a strong role here that will come back up in the next arc, and this fic lays out where Hela is in the Codex continuity.

Additional Works:

All Our Dawns

Synopsis:

Young Thor has a problem, a suddenly sickly and withdrawn Loki who won't confide what's troubling him. With nothing else to do but turn to their mother for help, it's up to Frigga to find a way to help Loki walk out of the dark - not only for the sake of his childhood, but his future.

Notes: This short predates Generation of Animals and was part of the same coping mechanism - looking for hope in darker times.

Run, Black Rabbit

Synopsis:

A quiet tribute from a trickster to a storyteller.

Notes: A very short fic written on the day I learned author Richard Adams died. Watership Down has an important but understated role in some of the Codex stories, as Loki gradually recognizes both the fragility and strength of littler creatures - and also his own parallels with El-ahrairah, the Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Black Spot on the Sun

Synopsis:

When Thor and Loki are sent ahead of a war party to warn a village of a coming attack, the young princes discover they're too late and need a new plan. Loki's wits and Thor's steel have to find a way to defend the people long enough for them to survive - but is Loki's solution Asgard's way?

Notes: Another short fic and something of a trial run for the next one. Written in bursts over the course of a long and difficult month, I was proud to be able to finish it on the day the first Thor: Ragnarok trailer dropped.

Let Me Tell You About the Time I...

Synopsis:

Loki has been here before.

Enough that not only does he have opinions on what he's going through, but plans.

Notes: A non-canon and non-Codex musing on what might’ve gone through Loki’s mind after the start of Infinity War.

[sometimesrosy]

I feel like I am always bothering now, but I’m a really indecisive person and your insight always helps me make up my mind, even if I end up doing something totally different. I’ve been trying to replot this story of mine that I’ve tried writing about... 3 or 4 times now. I always stop around the same part. But that’s not my problem now (dunno why). My problem is that I’m too stuck on my plot being too big. This first “book” is divided in 3 parts: the journey, the “staying”, and the war. +

+ I always stop at the “staying” part. My current issue is that the journey is always super long but I need my main characters to develop their relationship so that they can solidify it on the “staying” part. Means they have to be in love by then. I don’t want it to seem rushed & I don’t like making big time jumps. So journey gets too long & with a lot of fillers as I need to develop their relationship somehow and make them have deep and funny convos, etc. Am I worrying too much for a 1st draft?

+++

Well. Hm. I don’t think there is one way to get it done. You COULD plot it out and get all the important points out and manage the pacing and stick to a wordcount to keep it from stretching. 

OR you could keep writing to discover the story and cut it down later for pacing. 

OR you could decide that you LIKE the convos and relationship building and sacrifice an exciting story with lots of conflict for a more domestic kind of fluff. 

I think you might want to think about that one, because in fanfiction you can get away with 60k of fluff, because the audience is often looking for that and it will meet their expectations, but in original fiction, in a book, the audience often demands that something be HAPPENING. They need more plot and obstacles. If you want to make the Staying section about building their relationship, then you might want to add conflict into it, so the plot is actually ABOUT their relationship, so the struggle would be, also. If you don’t give plot and obstacles and movement in the Staying section when people are expecting it, they might get bored.

If you always stop in the staying part, then it sounds like subconsciously you already know it’s not working. Whenever I get stuck while writing, I know I’ve gone off track and my under-brain is not happy. So it’s my job as the over-brain aka author, to go back and figure out where I went wrong.

You already have figured it out. You told me. It’s too long. It’s too much filler. 

You WANT to develop your relationship. You DON’T want long time jumps or for it to feel rushed.  Those are two conflicting needs, but they are not mutually exclusive. You can develop your relationship, keep it timely, well paced and without long time jumps, but it’s going to be tricky.

I think you have to choose WHICH moments of deep and funny convos are the most important to your story, and which you can cut. Too many deep and funny convos will start seeming tedious. You need to add tension, build tension, relieve tension. All deep, funny convos keep the pacing all on the same level. You’ll get farther with a believable, ENJOYABLE romantic development by alternating between deep funny convos, action, obstacles, etc. 

This is the part where they tell you to cut your darlings. You may love the deep funny convos... but are they serving your needs? Needs being keeping the audience interested, moving the relationship and story forward, and keeping the pace lively. Keeping YOU satisfied.

Figure out what information or development you must have, and then see if you can cut some scenes and spread out the information in a more compelling way.

I once had to cut out, like three chapters, because it made the story drag. It was all backstory and chatting, a literal pause to the action. “let’s take a break, have a coffee, and explain.” Tedious. I ended up cutting it and slipping the info learned into other scenes, while they were running, when they first meet, in confrontations with other characters. And all of a sudden I stopped feeling that niggling doubt in my mind that the story was dull and that was filler.

Not all relationship scenes are filler. But removing us from the action gets to be kind of fillerish. Maybe the Staying portion has a lot more of the relationship scenes, and maybe that means you have to be even more rigorous about making sure the story is moving forward and you add conflict.

I have learned lessons from watching The 100. There is a LOT of action. The tension is actually way higher than I am used to writing or even feel comfortable with. That’s a style I think and not necessarily a bad thing, but the WAY they keep the tension going and the way they slip those relationship development moments into small scenes between the action and tension is rather masterful. They build relationships in the moments between, and so the while we get some relief to make the next drama more tense, we never feel safe. Which is important to the genre and story. 

You have a structural pickle to resolve. Separating the story into three parts is a good solution for your large story (if you want to get published traditionally, please be aware of genre word count expectations.) But having very different feels to the pacing of each part might be a struggle. Or maybe you’re actually writing a trilogy, and each of those parts is actually a book, and rather than being too long, each section actually needs to be developed OUT into a book. 

Do you follow the three act or five act story structure? That might help you figure out the pacing. There’s a format that might actually help clarify for you why it feels too long and slow. Because even if we’re not consciously aware of that traditional story structure, subconsciously our brains are expecting a story to fit along that pacing. 

Honestly, I’m not sure my advice will help you. I’ve given you a lot of options to look through to figure out your story. I guess I can’t figure it out for you, but I do suggest you trust your instincts that tell you it’s too long.

OH. One possibility. If you want to avoid a long time jump but keep development from feeling rushed, you might add in a montage or two. A montage, like that part in a movie where we watch a makeover or a warrior’s training, can give us little vignettes as time passes, so there’s no jump, but we also don’t bog down in smaller bits of development that add up to a major change. 

Don’t worry about bothering me for writing questions. I like answering writing questions. I love teaching writing and helping people with their creative process or narrative issues.

Sometimes It takes me a bit to answer the questions because I want to make sure my brain is working and I give good answers. 

(also posting this to my writing blog @rosy-writes )

[badsext]

A New Darkasher on Carnival Row: Vignette x Tourmaline - Part 2

Part 1

It was difficult for Vignette to find excuses to visit the Tetterby during the day and Tourmaline worked most of the night, so they devised a signal. Two lanterns in the window meant Tourmaline wasn’t entertaining any more customers and it was safe for Vignette to fly up and stay the rest of the night.

Tourmaline had a nightly ritual after the last customer. She’d strip the bed sheets and take a bath. For most of the girls at the Tetterby, this was a luxury. For Tourmaline it was a necessity, but it was far from glamorous. She bartered for a galvanized metal tub which she would fill about a third of the way with water heated in a tea kettle. She had to refill the kettle several times and the water became luke warm in the process. When she finally sat down with her knees bent, the water level came to about mid-thigh. She’d sponge herself down with lavender scented soap until the water began to cool. Then she would drain the tub off the balcony. It was a lot of work, but she couldn’t fall asleep until she’d had a bath.

One night after Imogen had gone to bed, Vignette was cleaning the kitchen when the master of the house, Ezra Spurnose, dropped in. Imogen was spoiled and vindictive and petty, but Ezra was a powder keg of venom and hate. Vignette did her best to avoid him, but he was drunk this night and determined to take what he felt she owed him.

Vignette read his intention and started backing out of the room, but Ezra threw his weight at her and pinned her against the wall. She kneed him in the groin and grabbed the closest kitchen knife. Once he caught his breath, he just sneered at her and laughed, confident that the constable would believe his word over hers and she would have no recourse. Vignette knew she couldn’t stay and when she left, she’d be wanted for beech of contract. To make matters worse, Ezra concocted a story about Vignette stealing from him to explain her sudden disappearance.

She ran straight to the Tetterby. Both lanterns were lit in the window, but Vignette was earthbound in a corset designed by humans to keep the servant class from flying away. She picked up a pebble and lobbed it at the glass. Tourmaline stirred inside. She must have been taking her bath, because it took her a moment to come to the window. She emerged wearing a silk robe that clung to her wet skin. One look at Vinnie and she knew something was wrong. Tourmaline made up an excuse for the madam and escorted Vignette through the brothel. Vignette paid closer attention to the girls this time, what they wore, how they moved. Could she survive being a whore in the Burgue?

Tourmaline squashed that notion as soon as she brought it up. “It’s not you, Vinnie,” she said while replacing the sheets on her bed. “Tell me what happened. I know you’re not wearing those clothes for comfort. Was it that blond piss ant?…Spermnose?,” she scoffed. He had a go with Charlese a while back. She said he whined the whole time and couldn’t keep his ugly little cock from going soft. He blamed her and refused to pay. Madam kicked him out.“

"Spurnrose…and, yes, he tried to have a go with me. I fought him off. Arsehole laughed at me, can you believe it?”

“I’ll kill him,” Tourmaline hissed.

“Thought of that. Not worth it. They kill fae here like swatting flies. Judge, jury and executioner. I’m not losing you.”

“There’s got to be a way to make him pay. I hate the idea of these men going through life free of consequences, blaming everyone else for their inadequacies and walking around like they own everyone and everything.”

“I agree, but I just don’t see a proper solution. For now, if I don’t get thrown in jail, I’ll need a new job…Know of any?”

Tourmaline looked at Vignette and took a breath as if to say something, but then her eyes darted away and she went silent. “What?…What were you going to say?”

“No, Vinnie, it’s too dangerous.” Vignette stared back at her until she relented. “The Black Raven. They are a fae gang…they mainly smuggle ‘lixer.” Tourmaline immediately regretted opening her mouth with the look of peaked interest in Vignette’s eye.

“They’re dangerous, Vinnie.”

“I’ll be careful,” Vignette smiled coyly. She loved the way Tourmaline played mother hen. “Will you help me out of this thing?, she asked, spinning around.

Tourmaline unzipped the servant frock and got her fist look at the corset used to bind Vignette’s wings. "They really are sadists, aren’t they?,” she gasped.

Vignette’s breaths became deeper as Tourmaline untied the knot and began loosening the rows of tight laces. She couldn’t resist kissing her exposed neck and shoulders before pulling the corset over her head. Vignette unfurled her wings with a relieved sigh.

“Mmm, that feels so good.” She turned, seized her hand and drew two fingers into her mouth slowly and sensually with her eyes locked on Tourmaline.

“Damnit, Vinnie, I’ve been at it all day…” Vignette removed her hand, raking her teeth over the finger flesh and pouted. Tourmaline took a ragged breath…“And still I want you.” Vignette’s pout never failed to weaken her resolve.

Vignette huffed confidently at the affirmation and began slowly kissing a trail down her lover’s neck. Tourmaline was happy to be seduced and grateful for the orgasms she wouldn’t have to fake. Vignette’s eyes gazed lustfully over Tourmaline’s radiant skin as she slipped out of her robe and sat on the tufted satin bench at the foot of the bed. Her smooth complexion hid the scars born from a difficult life, those scars etched into her mind.

Vignette sat in Tourmaline’s lap and gently parted her thighs. A sweet sigh escaped her lips as Tourmalines’s fingers made contact with her aching pleasure center. She stroked her in gentle circles then slid her middle finger into her tight wet heat. Vignette arched her torso and Tourmaline responded, sucking one of her rosy nipples into her mouth and stretching her walls with the addition of two more fingers curling and moving in rhythm. Vignette’s breath caught in her throat and her body tensed as the sensations radiated through her. She purred in Tourmaline’s ear as she came down off of her high.

When she opened her eyes, Tourmaline looked back at her wearing a cocky grin. Vignette shoved her playfully backwards onto the bed and buried her face in her neck, pressing her own subtle curves against her lover’s. She tugged and teased Tourmaline’s dark taught nipples until she whimpered and eagerly bucked her pelvis. Then she used her long, graceful fingers to reach that aching place deep inside with the perfect pressure and friction to send Tourmaline fluttering above the mattress. Tourmaline made a low satisfied growl at the moment of her release. From inside her, Vignette felt the unmistakable rhythmic constriction of her climax and it filled her with deep satisfaction. She didn’t stop until Tourmaline came a second and third time, finally crashing back down on the bed with a thud.

Vignette laid contently on her stomach, playfully kicking her legs. “Where’s that little kitten…Where’s Orageux?,” she wondered.

Tourmaline looked up, tickled that she remembered his name. “He must have gotten out while I was washing. I hope he didn’t go far. I’ll leave the window open for him,” Tourmaline responded, looking around, slightly panicked.

Vignette heard the worry in her voice. She had her own doubts about his chances. A small critter on the street faced multiple dangers: cold nights, horse traffic, impoverished fae hungry and desperate enough to eat something cute. “Let’s get some rest. It’s past curfew. If he hasn’t come home by morning, I’ll help you look.” She curled herself around Tourmaline and kissed her on the temple.

“Alright, love.” Tourmaline agreed, closing her eyes, still worried, but too exhausted to do anything about it. The couple fell asleep wrapped in each others arms.

@dandycandy75 @marychovny @bi-satanist @wrong-planet-boy @dopeybubbles @unlikelymoors @miraclesoflove @the-og-witch-boy @coleblackblood

[kemetic-dreams]

In 2011, Eric Ries made a big splash in Silicon Valley with his book “The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.” He defines “startup” rather loosely (“an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty”) and encourages organizations of all sizes to avoid creating elaborate business plans and instead work “to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust…” This is almost precisely the same argument made by NYU economist William Easterly in his controversial 2007 bestseller, “The White Man’s Burden: Why West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” which is a direct assault on traditional development economics, the very field he has dedicated his life to. For the past half century, he argues, development economics has been beholden to a “legend”, a legend he once very much believed in: That poverty traps constrain impoverished nations and these poverty traps can be overcome with a “Big Push” – massive Western foreign aid packages and tops-down plans for eradicating poverty, disease, and illiteracy, while promoting various forms of economic growth. This attempt at a big fix – massive programs of aid with lofty goals but little accountability – has been the world of classically trained development economists, who he derisively dubs “The Planners.” They think they have the answers, he says, and rhetorically they have the advantage because they promise great things, such as “the end of poverty.” Reality, however, is much different according Easterly. There are no easy answers. “The only Big Plan is to discontinue the Big Plans,” he says. “The only Big Answer is that there is no Big Answer.” The promises of the Planners, such as his professional rival Jeffrey Sachs, “shows all the pretensions of utopian social engineering,” he writes rather caustically. Yet they flourish in a world without feedback or accountability, and where big plans and big promises play well with politicians and celebrities. Nobody (especially those with no direction connection to the problems) wants to promote small but achievable objectives. They want “to do something” – and do it big. Easterly claims that the West, perhaps innocently and unintentionally, has written itself into the hero role in saving the uncivilized world. Indeed, he writes, “…the development expert…is the heir to the missionary and the colonial officer.” In contrast to the Planners, the author encourages those who want to help to “think small”: the little answers that work and that can make a material, if not revolutionary, difference on the lives of the impoverished. He calls these people, mostly locally-based activists, “The Searchers.” They possess an entrepreneurial and experimentation mindset, and naturally embrace the iterative testing model promoted by Ries in “The Lean Start Up.” They get regular feedback from the poor they serve and are held accountable for their work. They don’t promise to solve world hunger, but they often make incremental yet substantive impact where they work. “The dynamism of the poor at the bottom,” he writes, “has much more potential than plans at the top.” The book is broken into four parts, each of varying interest and value. The first part, “Why planners cannot bring prosperity” is dedicated to undermining the theory of the “Big Push,” which Easterly writes is demonstrably false. He claims that “Statistically, countries with high aid are no more likely to take off than are those with low aid – contrary to the Big Push idea.” Likewise, attempts to promote free markets from the top down, as is often the case with IMF and World Bank-led structural reforms, ambitious schemes to promote capitalist growth that Easterly admittedly once believed in wholeheartedly, are doomed to failure. The same goes for top down efforts to promote democracy, although he sees democracy as important because it can supply the two things most important for meaningful reform: feedback and accountability. In Part two, “Acting out the burden,” Easterly accentuates “The tragedy of poverty is that the poorest people in the world have no money or political power to motivate Searchers to address their desperate needs, while the rich can use their money and power through well-developed markets and accountable bureaucracies to address theirs.” He highlights the insanity of the international development industry, which he likes to repeat has pumped $2.3 trillion (yes, “trillion”) into the developing world since the end of World War II – and for what? He says. He cites Tanzania as a typical case study in development economics absurdity, as that country was forced to produce 2,400 reports and host over 1,000 donor visits in a single year. The author hammers home on his two main themes of feedback and accountability, noting what little input the poor actually have on the aid that they receive and that the Planners at the top are usually divorced from reality on the ground. Easterly writes that development aid is a classic “principle/agent” relationship, where the principle is a rich donor country and the agent is the aid agency. The actual target, the poor, are nowhere in the system of response. The principle wants to see big results, and yet is in no position to check on the work and achievements. The agents are thus cloaked in a sort of invisibility – and it’s under this invisibility, the author claims, that the Planners take over. The Planners thrive in the dark, Easterly says; the Searchers in direct light. The Planners benefit from the fact that there are so many aid agencies, all with very similar missions, all supposedly coordinating efforts, yet no single entity is ultimately accountable for achieving results. The smaller and more focused an NGO’s mandate, the better. Or, as Easterly complains, “If the aid business were not so beguiled by utopian visions, it could address a more realistic set of problems for which it had evidence of a workable solution.” If the aid agencies have failed because their mandates are too broad, what about the IMF, which has the relatively narrow mission of promoting “trade and currency stability”? Easterly argues that the IMF suffers from poor data, a misplaced one-size-fits-all approach, and is all too willing to forgive loans. What should be done? Simple, Easterly says, focus the IMF on emerging markets only and reserve the true bottom billion for aid agencies, thus removing the politically unpopular conditionality that has marked IMF interventions over the past several decades. Part 3, “The White Man’s Army,” is lengthy and the least insightful in the book. Easterly’s core message, as told through vignettes about Pakistan, the Congo, Sudan, India, and Palestine/Israel is that Western meddling with the Rest has been damaging, whether it was colonialism, de-colonialism or well-intentioned aid intervention. He further argues that US efforts to restructure societies via military force, either directly or through proxies, has all the hallmarks of utopian planner mentality, as suggested by case studies on Nicaragua, Angola and Haiti. In other words, neo-conservatives are the Right wing on “The Planner continuum”, with idealists like Sachs on the Left. In Part 4, “The Future,” Easterly argues that 60 years of Planners in control of the economic development agenda is enough. It is time to drop the utopian goals of eradicating poverty and transforming governments. “The Big Goals of the Big Plan distract everyone’s attention…” he writes. “The rich-country public has to live with making poor people’s lives better in a few concrete ways that aid agencies can actually achieve.” Even worse, he writes, “The Planners’ response to failure of previous interventions [has been] to do even more intensive and comprehensive interventions.” It is time to empower the Searchers, those who probe and experiment their way to success with modest efforts to make individuals better off, even if only marginally. As far as the aid agencies are concerned, Easterly recommends: 1) end the system of collective responsibility for multiple goals; 2) and instead encourage individual accountability for individual tasks; 3) promote aid agencies to specialize rather than having many all pursue significant goals; and 4) employ independent auditors of aid activities. The central theme developed by the author throughout this book is that aid agencies need to be constantly experimenting and searching for modest interventions that work. And they must employ more on-the-ground learning with deeply embedded staff. Thus, Easterly encourages the idea of “development vouchers” that would empower local communities to get the aid they most need from the agencies that are most effective. Theoretically, those agencies that either don’t deliver value and/or don’t deliver as promised would be put out of business. It’s a compelling idea that Easterly nevertheless stresses is no panacea. Easterly writes with a certain punch, which I’m sure ruffled more than a few feathers not only with his arguments but with his style, which can be cynical and snarky. For instance, when looking to catalog the redeeming benefits of U.S. interventions over the past several decades, he cites an “Explosion of Vietnamese restaurants in the United States” for Vietnam, “Black Hawk Down was a great book and movie” for Somalia, and “Salvadoran refugees became cheap housekeepers of desperate housewives” for El Salvador. He goes on to characterize U.S. Angolan ally Jonas Savimbi as “to democracy what Paris Hilton is to chastity.” Amusing commentary, for sure, although perhaps a bit misguided given the gravity of the subject matter. In closing, Easterly makes a compelling case to “go small” with development efforts and always seek feedback and accountability. He may not be on the Christmas card list of Bono and Angelina Jolie, but I’m afraid he is much more insightful and directionally correct than their hero, Jeffrey Sachs.

[jakelionstumblr]

Thoughts about Luigi’s Mansion, 3, and why it lacks the magic 1 had.

below the cut, may be some spoilers but I’m only at floor 9

As I’ve been playing through Luigi’s Mansion 3 in the way I play games with collectibles (at least these days,) trying to marathon rooms, looking for every type of secret or collectible in one run, I find myself getting bored, only putting in an hour to two at a time, before needing to get a bit of space. I may have had similar breaks on my first playthrough of the first game in the series, though it’s been too long to really remember. But what I’m focusing on here is what I’m coming away from the play experience with, what I’m thinking about between sessions, as well as what makes me want to take a break.

In the long distant memories of those first experiences on the gamecube, I recall spending so much time thinking about individual rooms in the house. What do I need to do in the exercise room? How do I light up the fortune teller’s room? What will get me to the next floor?

These sorts of thoughts, memories highlights a key difference between games 1 and 3. Luigi’s Mansion 1 was about the house, the whole house, and nothing but the house.

When thinking about the first Luigi’s Mansion, I think back to some of the early 3d platformers and their allure, which I find has been lost on a lot of modern attempts. Especially in Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, I feel developers had mastered what I called the Vignette worlds. or maybe Playgrounds. These were levels that were very finite, really quite small if seen from a distance, but had so much to do in them.

This may have been due to limitations of the hardware that forced this type of world and gameplay, but I feel it had a huge impact on the way players would relate to a world. Because you spend so much time in so small a place, you start to become incredibly familiar with all the features of the world. You know by heart where the ramps are, you recognize the tower in the distance. These worlds all became like homes in a sense, and a game featuring 15 or more of these “worlds” felt huge, because of the amount of time you spent in each helped to make the move between different ones feel like a powerful move, like the feeling of leaving home for college, or taking a month long vacation.

When we saw these developers try to move to larger worlds, like Banjo Tooie or Super Mario Sunshine, that feeling of home was lost. We zip past details, we’re on a long trek to somewhere with nothing in between. Take a look at how far apart things are in Super Mario Odyssey, and how little the space in between means.

Coming back to Luigi’s Mansion, one might infer that a similar forced hand was occurring, albeit at a next gen level. They were trying to showcase the step up in graphics, which Nintendo was never a huge player in. Their solution, was something incredibly beautiful to look at, and yet incredibly small. There weren’t even 15 separate worlds, maybe... 30 rooms in a house?

So what made this a playable game? How many times can you do the ghost mechanic before it feels like you’re just bumping into the same 4 walls?

It was the mystery, the uncovering of all these many mysteries, in such a small space. Within this house were so many unique ghosts, and each one had some sort of trigger to allow you to actually catch them. You had to watch, observe, try to figure out. You would read the whole room, where any object could be important.

You might fail, you might not figure it out, and start running about the house, thinking or looking for clues or inspiration. The game played to this. Rooms you had ‘cleared’ of ghosts remained safe places, where you could think, look for money. Maybe read a book off a bookshelf. Dark rooms might always spawn ghosts, they were always a source of danger, and were never lit until cleared - you wanted to see how lovely these rooms could be. You wanted them to be safe. It was a HUGE motivator.

There were the elements of fire, ice and water. Objects in the room could relate to that, and be part of the problem solving. But you might not notice these things in a room until much later, when you got the power to do something with them. This instilled the idea that every room was important - everything in the room is important - and learning each room was as valuable a play experience as learning every world in a platformer might be.

What a huge idea! Showing us how magical rooms in a house and things in a house could be. Secret passageways, basements, attics. A candle might be magical if only you had the fire to light it.

Another important thing was feeling alone. You might get a bit of advice from E. Gadd, and you would come across Toads, but they never went with you. You could visit them, but the mystery and adventure was yours alone to unravel and discover, call out as you might for your brother. You were also never trapped in the mansion, but bound by a sense of duty.

----

When you get into Luigi’s Mansion 3, you might not notice a few things right off the bat, but maybe feel something is different. The battle mechanics feel... a bit more like a beat-em-up? The introduction of the slam mechanic makes dealing with ghosts a lot quicker. Which is a good thing... right?

Not really. Ghosts aren’t a threat to fear and a motivator to “clear a room.” There’s no way to actually clear a room of ghosts - sometimes they’re in there, sometimes they’re not, but - either way, you just slam them and move on. A nuisance at best. In the first game, you could flee from a fight by entering another room - you could double back quickly, and it still might be going on. In this game, if you’re not locked to a zone for a meaningless fight, there’s no feeling of fear like you’re running away - you’re just moving past them.

The slam mechanic, though, as well as the plunger move, highlights what I feel is the most - literally- destructive move the series has made - you can destroy everything in a room. It’s fun a hell and looks cool as hell, but what does it imply?

Rooms don’t matter. The things in rooms don’t matter.

Really, if you can’t break something in a room, then it’s obviously used as a puzzle mechanic. But in this game, if it’s not a grate that gooigi can walk through, or a tube gooigi can go through, or a big thing you can stick a plunger to and yank away, it doesn’t mean shit.

There’s no bookshelves on a book you can read, no candles that might light up with fire. There are ‘things’ yes, like a fan you can blow, but they stick out like a sore thumb. A few clever things, like seeing two cymbals and being rewarded for crashing them together, hearkens to the sort of smarts this game could have more of. But you’re not in a  house where every room is special, you’re not exploring what the parts of a house are and what they do.

I’d actually say that the first 5 floors of this game, -almost- do that. Because, in the first 5 floors, you are exploring a traditional hotel. Bathrooms, dining halls, some actual hotel rooms. That has the magic that the home-snooping 1st game had. You get to see the first rooms you were in change drastically. You get elevator buttons in a random order, sending you to 3, then 5, then finally 4.

Floor 6 is where the game pretty much tells you “nah, this isn’t it.” It’s a thematic castle floor. All the rooms are linear, castle themed puzzles. Besides looking pretty, there’s no reason you would want to come back to them. You’ll need to, if they didn’t obviously place all the thematic gems, but you won’t feel rewarded for “reading the room.” You’ll feel rewarded for noticing the puzzle, framed by a boring ass room.

Then, you start getting elevator buttons linearly. 6, then 7, then 8, then 9. Each floor is themed, but even worse then having a linear arrangement of rooms, some floors are only 4-5 rooms, with hardly any amount of play value in them. The “museum of history” which would be RIFE with nooks and crannies, moving through displays, ending up in the gift shop - is one big, boring, lifeless room.

It brings some nice things from the 2nd game - the light to reveal invisible objects, though - you just end up passing through a room twice, once with the vacuum, the other time with that light. Not as rewarding as, say, having to learn that an object in the room is obscuring something. But the way spiders move and react, the way some small animated interactions happen, give little bits of life.

Every ghost encounter, though - of which there’s like 15, talking main ghosts - is pretty much dictated to you, through a series of cinematics if not just a boss fight delivered on a silver platter _at least up to floor 9). There’s no time spent uncovering a solution, giving these bosses character and meaning - it’s just something you’re progressing to on a linear basis. Even the cat segment was boring, as it didn’t take long for you to reach the end of that arc.

Even as point a-to-b as the game is, you never feel alone, and that’s a huge detriment to the motivation the first game gave you. You don’t feel like Luigi, the under appreciated brother using his wits to figure out a situation. You feel like Luigi, the pawn that does what he’s told. E.gadd isn’t just checking in with you at the end of each floor, or maybe after a big event with a few tips. Unless you turn it off, he’s calling, constantly. If it’s not him, it’s the ghost dog. You can’t even walk down some hallways without the dog popping out and arbitrarily halting your exploration, so you can watch him walk through the door you’re SUPPOSED to go through. Or, fail a few times getting the hang of a mechanic, or try the wrong thing - never fear! Your ghost dog friend will show you how to do it!

A few instances of this can feel charming, a refreshing break between the tenser times of a trickier game. But this game floods you with it. When you finally get to some periods of silence in between, though, there’s not much for you to discover yourself that feels cumulative, feels like you’re really figuring it out - you almost rush to the next context sensitive moment, because that’s obviously where the game is.

I can see where a hotel setting for this game would have worked really well. It could have expanded in a larger sense, if it was inside of these rooms, that secret passageways took you to unbelievable areas. But you would still be exploring a hotel, the architecture, the way a hotel works, and trying to understand how to awaken and capture the tenants that otherwise would just ignore and pester you - not just be the obvious point at the end of an obvious line.

[freedomisunderrated]

Elected officials have always had their reasons for wanting to end America’s recent unpopular wars, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Some cite broad concerns over blood and treasure, others focus on the geo-political and domestic consequences of prolonging quagmire and endless foreign intervention. Many are outright pacifists, they don’t believe in war to begin with.

Conservative Republican Congressman Walter Jones was the only lawmaker I can recall who turned on war out of profound guilt. Life-changing guilt, borne out of watching coffin after coffin return to his North Carolina district draped in the stars and bars and met with the white, blood-drained faces of mothers and wives, fathers and children. For anyone, such a scene—repeated as much as it would in a district that hosts one of the largest Marine Corps bases in the country at the height of war—would be devastating. But for Jones, a man of deep Catholic faith who had come to believe that the Bush administration lied to Congress to get its approval for the Iraq invasion in 2003, it was intensely personal. He wept openly and talked about it. There was no whiff of political contrivance or calculation. In fact, his pain was so visceral it was at times hard to look at directly.

Those of us who did look, saw a brave, brave man who chose the isolation of his peers in the Republican party over compromising his own convictions. Simply put, there was Walter Jones pre-Iraq vote, and Walter Jones, post-Iraq vote. The latter spent the rest of his life—until his passing on Sunday at the age of 76—working towards redemption and a future where America’s sons and daughters aren’t sent into a meat grinder for politicians’ senseless wars of choice.

He told me in 2009 that writing thousands of letters of sympathy to the survivors of dead servicemembers was in part, penance for his vote. “I think I have been forgiven, though all of those letters, I really do,” he said. In addition, he’d joined a small, but stalwart cadre of conservative voices against the wars based on moral and Constitutional grounds (including new interventions in Libya and Syria). He became one of the loudest voices in favor of invoking Congressional war powers, starting with a pair of unsuccessful bills in 2012. He worked across the aisle with anti-war Democrats, as well as tireless independent voices in his own party like Ron and Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash. He sought, and became a friend and compatriot to activists and non-interventionist media like Antiwar.com and The American Conservative.

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“I would answer the phone and hear, ‘please hold for Congressman Jones.’ It made me feel really great,” Antiwar.com founder and editor Eric Garris told me last night. “(He) was a very sweet and principled man.”

Garris sensed that Jones was animated by his guilt over “sending soldiers to their deaths.” I remember his speech before the TAC’s foreign policy conference in 2017 where he recounted an anguished conversation at the airport with a young woman carrying an American flag folded in accordance with service members or veterans who have died. “It was so sad for me, Jones said, describing how he struggled, even after all of these years, to come up with words that did not sound trite or canned, to soothe her.

It was a lonely burden, this cross he carried. Republican hawks and neoconservatives were the most venomous in their spite and disregard. Just see how they sneered at Ron Paul in the 2008 presidential debates when he suggested that America was creating terrorists, rather than beating them, after bombing Iraq since 1991. In our upcoming TAC print edition, writer Bill Kaufmann describes how the party took away Tom Massie’s committee chairmanship and tried to sabotage his re-election over his anti-interventionist views.

In 2005 Christopher Hitchens, then a darling of the pro-Iraq War, called Jones a “right-wing big mouth…a moral and political cretin.” Years later, in 2014, “Wall Street billionaires, financial industry lobbyists, and neoconservative hawks” tried to unseat Jones (he was in his 12th term when he died), by bankrolling his primary opponent. Turns out much of the “dark money” funneled to defeat him that year came from a PAC called “The Emergency Committee for Israel,” headed by neoconservative Bill Kristol, with the suggestion that Jones’ war views, which have included diplomatic solutions with Iran over confrontation, were anti-Israel.

Daniel McAdams, who worked with Rep. Ron Paul for years on Capitol Hill and now runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, recalled to me a vignette that perfectly encapsulates the daily challenges that Jones met, always with fortitude and grace: It was yet another emergency evacuation of the Hill, very common around 2005. A plane had flown too close to the center of Washington—but it was ultimately a false alarm, and members started walking back to their offices.

“As it happened, I spotted Walter Jones walking back up by himself,” McAdams said. “While the other Republican Members greeted each other, walked a bit together, shared stories, and compared notes on the way back up the Hill, no one spoke to Walter Jones. No one smiled at him. No Member extended him that normal courtesy. They looked the other way.

“I watched this play out in astonishment. Again and again. Once Walter Jones exited the war cult he simply ceased to exist. A man alone, wrestling with his guilt, determined to make amends. There are few in life I have admired as much as this brave, decent, and gentle man.”

Jones was indeed a man who viewed every soldier a human being, each a fellow member of God’s family on earth. He loathed to think they were pawns, and died a little more with each of them, every day. There are few people left in public life, particularly politics, who will leave such a legacy for the rest of us to both measure up to, and mourn. No doubt he achieved his redemption.

[atelierduclubs-blog]

Waterproofing Your Leather Goods

Decorating and set up a house can be an exciting task. Without a doubt, important areas to installation will become your living environment. This will be the scene a number of happy and joyous occasions and experiences. A living room setup should be charming, comfortable and upscale. Using brown leather sofas and couches can a person achieve just such an impression?

There was one particular bedroom area that caught my eye; so much so that club armchair I need to pick up the entire vignette and have it brought to my your residence. It was a lovely mix of French country with contemporary and soil effect was simply smart! There was a decorated fauteuil club replica of a shower attached to this bedroom that was simply restful. There was a sunken jet tub has been surrounded with beautiful blue marble tiles and an attractive sink basin made the actual glass.

Choose these types of cleaning solution wisely. Make sure that fauteuil club is not too harsh for your sofa. Test the solution on a small part first. Some harmful chemicals may cause the protective layer of the item of furniture to break-down thus leaving it in contact with dirt and bacteria. This may also tarnish the color of the insulation material. 

A sectional leather sofa is far more versatile than a single that is actually piece. For houses are generally limited in space, it may be split along with the sections put in different facilities. Or, a section could be put against each wall for this room, spreading them out and giving a unique type of room environment. More and even more leather sofas have gotten a popular option for living room furniture. The leather is an older look that wears well over time. Trial not easily stain or fade, and is for you to clean and. Leather sofas match well with a large range of other textures, patterns, colors, styles and so they will look good in nearly any settings. Take care not to underestimate the total amount of work involved in any home improvement project, anyone begins. Require only a few to go ahead and take time and write down all in the things that need to be done. Additionally, it is valued at your time for line up a second opinion from our professional. A professional can assess whether or not your list is complete and plausible. If you distinct you specifically what ends up being done, it is easy to assist costs into.

[poemsfromthealley]

[fic] wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving (alec x magnus, T)

Alec and Magnus wait, and survive, and process each in their way. A vignette about small mercies. (Coda to 3.10.)

*shows up three weeks late with experimental formatting, angst and the weirdest domesticity* This will 100% get jossed, but fuck the police, here’s 2K words about characters coping bittersweetly with the aftermath of 3.10.

There might be a second part.

(I know Clary lives, but the characters don't. I figure they’ll at least consider the chance that she’s MIA rather than dead.)

*

Loss has a language. It is, Alec is finding out, spoken in silences.

Ever since Lilith's defeat, he seems to have a good part of his conversations without words. He can't pass Izzy without squeezing her arm, can't see his mother without hugging her too long. He spends hours and hours scouring the city with Jace, just being an extra pair of eyes, a steady support in a hopeless search. Jace refuses to mourn. Alec's not about to force him.

There's no body. No tangible evidence. Just a lack, an absence, the world bled of color.

Demon alerts taper off in the metro area. The Institute exhales for the first time in months. Alec signs off on leave requests, pushes time off on people he hasn't seen leave Ops in way too long. At least taking care of them is within his power.

Every day, when he's done, he makes his way to Brooklyn. The wards around the loft feel different, cool and prickling like a mint leaf pressed to the palate. Catarina's handiwork, until there's another solution.

Magnus is fine. That's his own word. The morning after Catarina's magic and the Silent Brothers' efforts had mended Alec's pierced lung, he woke up at Alec's bedside in the Institute infirmary and, after an aching, salt-tinged kiss, said, My magic is gone.

Alec held him, splinted wrist be damned, crushed him into a hug and cried some more. For Magnus's return, for the pulse of curdling despair from his parabatai, for the tears trapped under Izzy's lashes. Then, as details clicked and his fuzzy brain processed those first words from Magnus, he stopped. Slow horror replaced his relief.

It took four words to say. Magnus could as well have carved out his heart, or torn the intangible substance of his soul free from his self. That was how it sounded to Alec.

Don't say you're sorry, Magnus went on. Biscuit paid a higher price.

As if you could weigh that on a scale. As Shadowhunters go, Alec's lucky. He's buried fellow soldiers, peers and elders, but no family yet. He was too young to really grieve for his maternal grandmother, the only grandparent he ever met.

He's not ready to bury Clary. None of them are.

You can't compare like that, he tried to tell Magnus, that morning in the infirmary, because Clary was—gone, missing, presumed dead, and Magnus had given up his magic and with it the thing that made him ageless. A life in the balance, either way. He'd done it for Alec's sake, for Jace's sake, for the safety of their city.

How do you ask forgiveness for that? How do you show gratitude? Which is the right thing to do?

For the time being, it seems to entail daily meals and nightly research. The kitchen has become a hub of their routine; cooking lets them share time and space while doing something concrete. So does the heap of books bought and borrowed that fills the study like a crumbling rampart.

I need to understand all this, Alexander, Magnus offered by way of explanation. Clary's fate. What's become of me.

They don't know what happened to Clary or Jonathan, beyond Simon's distraught testimony. They go over the site of her disappearance with warlock spells, werewolf senses, detection runes. Anything to keep up hope.

They don't know what will happen to every ward and ritual, charm and spell that Magnus has made over the years. Lorenzo Rey bars Magnus from the libraries of the Spiral Labyrinth, and Magnus barely stops Alec from tearing Rey a new one. The Institute depends on warlocks for its magical security. Angering the High Warlock is a sure-fire way to throw a wrench in those works. Alec knows.

He desperately wishes he didn't have to care. That he could fight some battle to victory, drain some part of this mire of troubles they're all swamped in.

The point is that they've called an armistice with loss, a grace period before they admit the inevitable.

So they study. Magnus spends hours on the phone with Catarina and various other old contacts in soft-voiced debate. Alec bangs his head against fine points of Latin grammar that he hasn't touched since he was fourteen. Sometimes Izzy joins them, because like Magnus, it calms her to sink her teeth into a problem. She doesn't offer to take samples or run tests, because it's tacitly understood that nothing they learn is to go anywhere near the Clave, and that includes the databases of the Institute. Not before they've exhausted other options, anyway.

It goes slowly. More people over the centuries have tried to achieve immortality than be rid of it. Still, Magnus collects any scrap of information he can find on either end of the conundrum. Cover all the angles, he says, and sets another hand-scribed volume of 15th century Latin into Alec's hands.

Alec groans and gets to work.

Sometimes all they're good for—whether by two or three—is takeout and old movies and lying on the couch in a drowsy and possibly drunk pile of limbs. Grudgingly Alec accepts the necessity of those evenings, too. As long as they keep moving forward somehow, the armistice holds.

Other nights, he and Magnus flee into the early-winter city on long, winding walks that go nowhere. They take random lefts and rights at intersections and end up thawing their chilled faces in late-night coffee shops. Magnus lingers at landmarks whose stories only he knows, puts his hands on the sides of buildings and the trunks of old trees in Central Park and tells Alec, in spare words, who or what the spots remind him of.

As they come home at 2 AM, Magnus fumbles with the key at the building door until Alec reaches past him to jostle the door the way that makes the lock turn. They laugh it off in the stairway, halt on a landing, deep in each other's space. Alec's hand lands on Magnus's arm. Magnus smothers a rare chuckle into his shoulder.

When the stairway light times out, they keep kissing in the dark, at the slow and heady tempo of people who've decided they have all night. They don't talk while they stumble up to the loft. Permission is asked and given in the tug of fingers and slide of mouths. They make it to the couch or the bed and take refuge in each other's bodies. More often than not, Alec yields to Magnus's smallest signals, doesn't make him ask, does his utmost to be what he needs.

They don't talk about that, either.

Then there are the nights when Alec's phone lights with a message: Not today. I'll see you tomorrow. He texts back a goodnight, I love you, and reverses his steps back to the Institute.

The pattern repeats itself, in variations, as days grow into tangled weeks. The lull in demonic activity persists. Alec counts his blessings.

Clary remains lost. Alec takes care to refer to her in the present tense, especially around Luke and Jace. He's loath to block himself from Jace for even an hour or two, after the unnatural silence of Jace's time under Lilith's control. Mostly he tries to keep Jace tethered to some semblance of normality: something to do, somewhere to be, somebody to check on him. Izzy and their mother help, as do, unexpectedly, Simon and Maia, Luke's second-in-command. She seems, in fact, to be in charge of the pack at present.

Alec didn't think the day would come when he'd be glad that Simon Lewis existed, but weirder things have happened. He's living them out right now. His warlock boyfriend hasn't quite turned mundane, but the difference might be academic.

Magnus's eyes remain the dark brown that was their first color, that he chose as the shade of his usual glamour. He still has the Sight, or something like it: they try it out, warlock glamours and rune glamours, and he picks up the subtle imperfections like no ordinary mortal could.

Alec is grateful for Magnus's penchant for doing certain things by hand, even when he didn't need to. It cushions, if only a bit, his moments of disorientation. It takes time to get from place to place. The trash won't teleport itself curbside on collection day. Bruises will linger and jabbing your finger into them by accident hurts. It's not that he's suddenly helpless; it's that he's not used to the world as immutable, or as changing at its own uncaring pace.

What do you do with a warlock without magic?

For Alec, the answer is simple. (Love him, with everything you have.)

For Magnus himself, it is not.

Alec thinks he and Catarina make the two people Magnus allows to see him with anything less than a flawless face, hair in place, nails lacquered in some dramatic dark hue even when the pads of his fingers are peppered with papercuts and rubbed-in ink smudges. To Alec, he looks the same as always, vivid, restless, impossibly beautiful. Not like somebody time can touch.

They fought over time, over a past Alec couldn't look at without flinching. Now they're fighting for time. That's what keeps Alec coming back and squinting at the abysmal grammar of yet another occult volume until his brain hurts. The hope that there's a way to undo what Asmodeus did to Magnus, to stir his magic back to life or to restore it to him.

Alec can't be the cause of that loss. Magnus would correct him, but Magnus isn't in his head. That's only fair, since half the time Alec has no idea what Magnus is thinking.

I made that choice with my eyes open, Magnus said, holding Alec's good hand, sitting sideways on the edge of his bed in the infirmary. Lilith had to be stopped.

The tactician in Alec agrees. In war, you take the option you can see. They hadn't even known there was another option. Simon taking out Lilith with his Seelie-crafted mark won them the war, bitter as that victory turned out to be, but it doesn't diminish that Magnus did what was required. He found a solution.

Alec gave Simon his stele to give to Clary. If she's dead, he wants to think she went down wielding it.

Someday, Jace will have to stop looking. As will they all.

That knowledge sleeps under the revolutions of Alec's days, Institute business, training with Izzy, hunting with Jace, evenings with Magnus. He borrows Izzy's cookbook and leaves it on top of the desk in his bedroom so he'll remember it when he leaves.

His mother calls a little before he's done, and asks, without preamble, Have you heard from Magnus?

It takes a minute for alarm to set in, as she gives him the details. She was meeting Magnus for late lunch—Alec doesn't stop there, no matter that the prospect's still a little staggering—but he neither canceled nor showed up.

At the loft, after Alec's called four times and sent seven texts to a phone without reception on the way, everything is quiet. It looks downright tranquil in the cool late-afternoon sun. Last night's notes, with Magnus's graceful cursive and Alec's narrow, ungainly hand competing for space on the sheets, are stacked on the coffee table. The throw pillows are dented where Alec sprawled, an open book on his face, deep into the small hours. There Magnus finally gave in and slumped dramatically on top of him, his cheek to Alec's chest, as if listening to his heart.

Maybe he had. But whose heart? Alec's, or his own?

There's a folded note laid on a pillow. Alexander, it's addressed, in Magnus's script. The sentences fall like snow around his head as he reads through.

You've done all you can for me, and I'm grateful. The others need you now, more than I do, and I need to understand this new reality I live in.

Alec thought that was what they were doing. Looking for solutions, for remedies.

So I'm going away for a while. You and Isabelle are welcome to the books, if they can be of any help in finding Biscuit. I have hope.

I am sorry for the manner of my leaving. There's that abrupt, almost archaic formality that sometimes peeks through in Magnus's phrasing. It hitches Alec's breath, constrains it into a shuddering pull of air. I know you'll worry, but I've told you since the first: I'll be fine. It only takes time. How long, I'm not sure.

Alec reframes a host of little details from the past weeks in the space of a breath: Magnus wandering the city with him, revisiting beloved memories; Magnus talking to Maryse, who's suffered a similar loss, who might understand better than Alec can hope to; Magnus touching him with silent, shadowed tenderness, so his voice wouldn't betray him.

Magnus was not looking for solutions. He was looking for explanations. For meaning, for reaffirmation, for the language to redefine himself now that he's irrevocably changed.

I only ask that you wait for me, Alexander, and, as you'd put it, stay on mission. If I learn anything on my own, I'll contact you.

I am, and remain, yours.

Alec doesn't know how long he kneels there, staring at the curling M. that rounds off the note. His shoulders jerk, but the tears are clean as they come, hot and silent and somehow necessary.

I only ask that you wait for me. If it's all he can do for Magnus, then he will. For as long as it takes.

*

[flhomeshows]

Build the Backyard of Your Dreams with TV’s Matt Blashaw!

Summer is almost here and it’s time to make your home and garden dreams a reality! The Fort Lauderdale Home Design and Remodeling Show returns to the The Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center, Memorial Day Weekend from May 25th to 28th. Headlining the Show is Matt Blashaw of DIY Network’s Yard Crashers, Money Hunters, Deconstruction and Project Xtreme, and many other shows.

Blashaw will present: Dream it…Build it. Designing the Backyard of Your Dreams.  “The hardest part of renovating a backyard is figuring out where to start,” explains Blashaw. “I will give people my secrets to designing a backyard that is not only beautiful, but will be functional year-round. See many of the amazing transformations from the latest season of “Yard Crashers” and also learn what is trending in landscape design this season.”

Blashaw speaks at 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 27th and Monday (Memorial Day) May 28th.

From Traditional to Trendy: Find Thousands of Choices! 

Find everything needed for your home, backyard and office: furniture; fine art and décor; landscaping items, patio furniture and grills; appliances; doors, cabinets and fixtures; flooring; home automation; wall and window treatments; home automation; hurricane protection, pergolas, awnings and much more. Plus, enjoy special savings exclusive to the Show!

Other Show features will include:

Home Style 411: Let the Home Show featured Interior Designers show you what’s new, plus answer your design and décor questions. They’ll each create a beautiful room vignette filled with ideas and inspiration, so that you can get started on the next project. This year’s featured Interior Designers include Julia Alzate of Julia Alzate Design and Tips; Francy Arria of Max Space Design and Décor, and Roberta Black of RB Design.

Lifestyle and Professional Development Seminars: There will be different speakers throughout the weekend at the Ygrene Home Improvement Stage including seminars presented by members of Florida Master Gardeners of Broward County Parks and Recreation and Ygrene.

Broward County Property Appraiser, Marty Kiar will speak about Property Tax Savings Exemptions at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 26th.

Family Day: Sunday is always Family Day at the Home Show and special, kid-friendly activities are designed to encourage creativity. Enjoy Broward County Parks’ Kids Creative Critter Corner where children will be taught to make construction paper models of marine and terrestrial animals and plants. They will learn about how important our oceans, beaches, estuaries, wetlands, and other habitats comprise their natural heritage.

Enjoy $1.00 admission for children 11 and under, the whole weekend! Regular Adult Admission is $10.00 available Online or at the Box Office. Purchase tickets by Thursday, May 24th and SAVE $3.00.

 About the Home Design and Remodeling Show 

For the FIFTH consecutive year, BizBash named the Home Design and Remodeling Show as one of Miami/South Florida's Top 100 Events and placed fourth in the Trade Shows, Expos & Conventions category. The Miami and Fort Lauderdale Home Design and Remodeling Shows have been South Florida’s largest and premier home improvement expos for over forty years. Homeowners can find a diverse range of products and solutions tailored specifically to the Florida housing market. Plus, encounter some of South Florida’s most prominent home designers and home remodeling companies. Because the Home Show features superior vendors, tens of thousands of excited homeowners attend the Home Shows, every year. 

About Matt Blashaw

A native of Orange County, California, Matt Blashaw began his building career at a very young age. His father is an engineer and home builder, so construction is in his blood. Blashaw started developing his skills working in his father’s lumberyard and diving into fix-it projects around his family’s home.  Blashaw’s love for building and the arts led him to Chapman University where he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in film and television production.  He also earned his department’s highest honor, the Filmmaker of the Year Award.  After graduating, Blashaw enjoyed working in many facets of the construction and entertainment industries. In that process, he felt inspired to sell houses, and became a licensed Realtor. In 2006, Blashaw entered a contest for DIY Network called Stud Finder, a search for America’s next top handyman, with the prize being their own show.  Although Matt was a runner-up, the exposure led to a small role on an HGTV show and an audition to be the host of Deconstruction, a new series for DIY Network.  He landed the role, and because of the show’s success, has been a contracted host for DIY Network since.  He has gone on to host several series for DIY Network and HGTV including Yard Crashers, Vacation House For Free, Project Xtreme, Money Hunters, Blog Cabin and Professional Grade, and specials such as Cool Tools Builders Show, Stud Finder 2009, Fright House Secrets Revealed and Worst Kitchen In America.  He has appeared as an expert guest on The Today Show on NBC, CNN’s Newsroom, CNBC’s Squawk Box and multiple Fox News affiliates, and is a recurring personality on CBS’ The Early Show.  Currently, Matt is a Realtor with the Smith Group at Coldwell Banker in Orange County, CA and is hosting the upcoming DIY Network series Ultimate Retreat 2018. 

Where, When and Contact Information 

Fort Lauderdale Home Design and Remodeling Show

May 25-28, 2018 (Memorial Day Weekend)

Friday: 4:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Saturday: 12:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Sunday: 12:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Monday: 12:00 pm - 7:30 pm 

The Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center

1950 Eisenhower Blvd.

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316 

$10.00 adults; $1.00 children 11 and under. Online or at the Box Office. Purchase tickets online by Thursday, May 24th and SAVE $3.00. 

www.homeshows.net

info@homeshows.net

info@homeshows.net