#so only like. 50% of those lions were created this year

[centrally-unplanned]

Doing some tab closing and I enjoyed this piece a lot; it has a clean thoroughness on investigating each of the different possible causes of the Baby Boom of the mid 20th century.

For those who don't know, the Baby Boom, despite what is often taught, probably had little to do directly with World War Two - it was not a phenomenon of soldiers "coming up" and releasing their pent-up baby-making drive. This is most easily proven by the fact that countries that didn't participate in the war had the same boom! And that the boom was already starting in the 1930's.

Its cause is still unproven, but the article makes a solid case for it primarily being a product of affordable housing (which itself is connected to WW2 in some ways) and more importantly medical technology, as maternal mortality declined between 1930 and 1960 by ~90%:

Which is another classic case of the 'short' being made by time into the 'long' - most people probably think of safe pregnancy as this gradual process of improving sanitation & medical technology throughout the 19th and 20th century, but in fact the lion's share of the decline was the invention of antibiotics that could treat sepsis over the span of 20 years. The "price" of having a child, combined with the housing boom creating the space for it, induced a fertility bump.

The article ends by stating that these forces could, in some way, be reproduced - that if today you make pregnancy safer and childcare cheaper again, you can get a similar rise. I think this is the false, solutionist optimism that only a concluding paragraph can bring, however. For one, if that was the case, you think you would evidence along the income spectrum of that - for a 75% income band couple in Sweden or the US, housing is more plentiful then ever, and pregnancy safer than ever, but in the main fertility continues to decline across every band (the super-rich in some countries are a tiny exception).

But more importantly, I think it mistakes why this happened. If you portray it as a cost-benefit calculation, as "oh the price of kids is way down now, lets shift our consumption basket", then sure it sounds replicable. I don't think that is right, however - you should instead look at this as a cultural revolution induced by rapid change.

The role of women in the workplace & wider society was undergoing a ton of flux in this era, and it was in a period of "contestation" - these changes were not settled or agreed on by society at large. What a woman should "do" with her life was very open, and many factions still pushed for a form of family traditionalism. The counter-forces to that 'benefited' from things like maternal mortality as counter-arguments; women (and their husbands) both desired the old way but feared the price, one they no longer had to bear due to no longer being mass farmers. That was the equilibrium of the 1920's.

Then technology came along and throw the whole game into whack, changing the equilibrium. It was so rapid, so sudden, it induced a culture shift. You can metaphorically think of it as like a consumer rush, buying the hot new toy - in this case the hot new thing was safe pregnancy and houses to raise the kids in. Everyone wanted a piece of that *new* possible life, different from the old. It was, in a sense, a fad.

Which you cannot replicate - its done. We have the tech, we have the wealth, it didn't last. The culture shift that began of the 1960's was absolutely a response to new equilibrium of the 50's, its gender roles were never stable. Radical new technology (like exo-wombs) could change that, sure, create a new hotness. But 5% reductions in maternal mortality or slightly cheaper childcare won't cut it. It could shift the margins, but it can't make a boom.

Or so I predict at least. Its certainly hard to quantify that dynamic, but I think if you study how people saw themselves & family in that time, this comes out from the narratives of the time - with no equivalent today.

[snowangeldotmp3]

idk when babylon became a comfort movie for me but. here we are.

anyways. did you guys know that babylon comes from the akkadian word “babilu” meaning “gate of god.” however in the biblical narrative of babylon, it’s a center of sin and evil. hence, the name of the movie being babylon. losangeles is the “city of stars” and “city of dreams”but here, even in its excess, it’s presented as this twisted, evil city where your dreams can come true, but there will always, always be a price. truly i will never understand people who watch this movie for a semi-truthful narrative about hollywood before sound. because that’s not what it is. this is nowhere near what it is! sure, these characters are based on real people and there are real world movies used and referenced in this film, but during no part of this movie does it claim to be like, actually historical. this is historical fiction, this is a story with something to say. idk like. i know a lot of people turned away from this movie because it's gross and beyond disgusting and a distorted look at hollywood pre-talking movies but like. that is the point. it's to show you the evil. why do you think it opens up with that wild party???

do you know two other things the historical/biblical babylon is famous for? the tower of babel and the figure, hammurabi. the tower of babel, of course, is where the babylonians were trying to build a tower so they could reach god & the heavens, only for god to destroy the tower and scramble the languages so nobody spoke the same language after. this time around while watching i couldn’t help but wonder if that part was here in the film, too. because around that halfway mark is when the downfall begins, talking pictures are introduced, after we’ve spent this last hour and a half or so in the grandeur of the stars and their silent movies, trying to reach the heavens—their godhood; their fame—only for it to all come crashing down once talking pictures come onto the scene. talking pictures and the public here being our metaphorical “god” that will tear these silent movie stars down. 

hammurabi, of course, created hammurabi’s code. you know, “an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth,” that guy. i think this movie has traces of that, too. mostly in terms of everyone in this movie has to give something—some part of themselves—up or away. they give, the movies take. an eye (the actor) for an eye (the viewer, the audience) 

(this is also a bit of a stretch, but the animal of historical babylon was a lion. “the lion of babylon.”  and MGM makes quite a few appearances throughout the movie. their logo, quite famously, is the roaring lion.) 

there are some other things too, completely unrelated to the historical babylon, that i can’t help but notice. and one of these things is that: there’s a musical motif here that sounds incredibly similar to a few notes of “someone in the crowd” from la la land. i don’t know if this was intentional on justin hurwitz’s part, or completely accidental, but i think that the musical motif accidentally connects la la land and babylon to one another. that, and the fact that mia and sebastian’s theme and nellie and manny’s theme also sound similar. there’s a connection there that i haven’t been able to make just yet, other than the fact that both couples end, and both couples are kind of doomed. both themes are short and sweet, lively and melancholic at the same time; they know they can’t last, but they’ll always love each other. hell, the ending of babylon is manny reminiscing on his time with nellie, because watching singin in the rain brings back all of these memories of her, and of the work they put in all those years ago. (it does, also, call to memory elinor st. john’s speech from a bit earlier—how a child in 50 years will remember them, and how their ghosts will dine together. i think it’s important to remember that 1.) by the end of the film, we know that jack, elinor, and nellie have died. sidney and lady fay have not, but we don’t see them, either. 2.) there was, famously, a lot fire—quite a few, actually, because it was nitrate film—which destroyed like, most of all silent films.) either way. if mia and sebastian’s theme is melancholy and nostalgic, nellie and manny’s theme could be considered a ghost, as it’s played frequently throughout the film. perhaps it’s nellie haunting manny even before she dances off in the night, just like she said she would. 

sorry this got kind of long….i could pick apart this movie forever <3

[benjamindisco]

Okay. Huge Guild Wars 2 rant.

I love GW2. I was in the beta test. 3 of my characters are turning 12 real life years old this month. I have played this game for 4,310 hours (or 179.58 DAYS) of my human life. I stopped playing for a bit in the early years, but then came back with a vengeance right around the time Path of Fire was released.

I think it's a good game!!!

I loved the base game. Looking back on it now, and trying to get friends into it later, it was a bit clunky. But it was a new MMO, almost completely different from the original Guild Wars. They needed time to fine tune what they had. I mostly missed Living World Season 1, but LW2 was still very similar to the base game.

With the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, things started to change. They moved away from dungeons, they added new movement options with gliding (no more having to run around cliffs), and overall changed the feel of the game. There were still some issues (I still have trouble navigating Tangled Depths, haha), but the game was finding its stride.

LW3 was excellent. The maps are all so unique, the story more and more engaging with every release. I cannot stress how unique and amazing each map is in LW3!! They put so much care into those maps, which I think is exemplified by the extra long jumping puzzles in Ember Bay and Siren's landing. They didn't have to have such incredibly in depth puzzles showing parts of the maps we never had to see. But so much love and care and attention went into creating all of this.

Which leads to Path of Fire. To me, this is peak GW2. The most beautiful maps and most engaging story yet. The love and passion the devs feel for this game is tangible. The main NPCs are so wonderfully written. The achievements and unlocking the mounts (especially the griffon) were challenging, but it kept you so invested. Every challenge was different, and I felt like I had to keep playing because there was always something new and exciting to do. This continued on beautifully into LW4.

Then ArenaNet announced massive layoffs of the GW2 team in February of 2019. In September of that year, The Icebrood Saga began.

I felt that the writing was still pretty good here.... but the cuts were noticeable. The achievements for each map changed from being incredibly unique challenges to do this event 50 times. The maps started being released in segments instead of all at once. In Champions, they didn't even make new maps, you were just in old maps again.

End Of Dragons. Every map has the achievement touch 1 million lanterns. The maps are large, but feel so empty. New Kaineng is just nearly identical skyscrapers you need to navigate around. Echovald is large swaths of trees with nothing in them. The NPCs aren't particularly memorable. They introduce 3 factions in Echovald that just.... don't matter, and aren't very different. I am a person who loves a fishing mini game (soooo much), and I really dislike the fishing system they introduced here. And skiffs. These things were added to make it feel like more was added to the game, but they were not well thought out or polished. And the Gen 3 legendary weapons. They feel more like a Black Lion set than legendaries. Gen 1&2 legendaries were each unique, with unique animations and footprints to each one. The Gen 3s are all the same thing over and over. Oh but you can get recolors of them, so CLEARLY that makes them good lol.

And now Secrets of the Obscure. The story is oh here's secret Wizards you've literally never heard of, who are protecting the world from secret Demons you also have never heard of. The whole thing was pulled straight out of someone's ass. Like they only have 1 writer now and they're under the world's most massive time crunch. This is a paid expansion, and they released the story in parts. Frankly unacceptable. This is a LW but you need to pay money for it. One of the maps was released in THREE SEPARATE PARTS. They cut it in THIRDS and released it slowly!!!! The whole first map is reused assets again, and the last map is covered in ugly, undistinguishable textures. So many of the achievements in the last two expansions are run around and click on 1 million small things on a map. Instead of anything fun or engaging.

It is so hard to believe the drop in quality that has been happening here. Very clearly because the dev team was eviscerated. There used to be a huge team of people who loved working on this game. Now they have like 3 people who are being forced to churn out """"full expansions"""" in a year.

I haven't been able to bring myself to finish the last release of SotO yet. It's gotten depressing and frustrating to play.

Next is Janthir Wilds, and I do not have high hopes. They're doing Homesteads as the 4th type of home base they've tried to introduce to the game. They're focusing on re-releasing Warclaws, a mount that has been available for 5 and a half years.

I miss when this game was loved.

[becausemusicfeedsthesoul]

Eminem:  A Year in Review, 2022

From turning half a century old, late in the year, to being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Eminem has had a stellar year.  The year 2022 was a busy time in the top-selling artist’s career.  He marked 20 years for 2 albums in his repertoire, The Eminem Show as well as the 8 Mile Soundtrack.  Celebrating both, two new anniversary albums were created & brought out with extra songs for them both including a handful of instrumentals on each.  There was also an album created for his many, many hits:  Curtain Call 2.  All three projects came with posts online offering clothing, collectibles & more. A lyric video for the great 2010’s Won’t Back Down, featuring Pink, was a highlight for some fans that have been enjoying the skills put into Eminem’s lyric videos that are included in Shady Records signed artists’ videos as well.  In part of the celebrations for Curtain Call 2, Eminem’s cover of the album was made into a mural in his hometown, Detroit, Michigan USA.  

 Further, Eminem was part of the all-star Hip-Hop halftime show at the 56th Superbowl which made history as the first ever all hip-hop/R&B line-up.  To celebrate the season Eminem gave us Shady Football that offered a clothing line to enjoy.  His restaurant, Mom’s Spaghetti Detroit celebrated big in New York as well as Los Angles & also hit their first year in business at a stationary location. As well, Marshall’s memorabilia shop, The Trailer, located above Mom’s Spaghetti in Detroit, had also been up & running for a year as of September 29th, 2022. As well, this year fans saw Marshall make it out to be a wonderful piece of the Detroit Lions Football club’s Hardknocks series on HBO Plus.  Eminem made his fans truly happy to see him sporting sunglasses & a smile at the event, showing the world he was full of quick wit & good humor.  In early Fall this year Eminem was XXL Magazine’s cover once again, but this time for their 25th Anniversary issue. Along with the cover Marshall gave us an incredible article & an equally incredible photo shoot.  It was an amazing year for the fans of Eminem, even without the “new” album some wanted so badly.  

 Getting in on the fun, Eminem took part of the B.A.Y.C’s (Bored Ape Yacht Club) spree that was running like wildfire during 2022.  Doing videos, making appearances & performing came from this venture in 2022 for Eminem.  To give fans an incredible look into the man behind the amazing art, Marshall & friends separately took a seat with PaulPod, a podcast that spanned weeks with manager Paul Rosenberg at the helm.   The Youtube’s 50 Million Subscribers Club, Minions, Elvis, Shazam, UFC & Spiderman all meant something to Eminem fans as he joined all of these aforementioned in this year, 2022.  Eminem took you to the cleaners, he took you to the trailer park.  He also gave us his early musical influences (over 100 listed) on Spotify & so much more – all for his fans.  What will 2023 have in store for our favorite superhero, Marshall B. Mathers III?  Only time will tell.  One thing I’ve learnt - you can’t rush an artist for their art, they must feel it so that you will, in turn, feel & experience it yourselves.  The saying goes:  All good things to those who wait.  2023 – here we come!  ~

 From C./Inkhouse5

[marshallbmathers]

Eminem:  A Year in Review, 2022

 From turning half a century old, late in the year, to being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Eminem has had a stellar year.  The year 2022 was a busy time in the top-selling artist’s career.  He marked 20 years for 2 albums in his repertoire, The Eminem Show as well as the 8 Mile Soundtrack.  Celebrating both, two new anniversary albums were created & brought out with extra songs for them both including a handful of instrumentals on each.  There was also an album created for his many, many hits:  Curtain Call 2.  All three projects came with posts online offering clothing, collectibles & more. A lyric video for the great 2010’s Won’t Back Down, featuring Pink, was a highlight for some fans that have been enjoying the skills put into Eminem’s lyric videos that are included in Shady Records signed artists’ videos as well.  In part for the celebration of Curtain Call 2, Eminem’s cover of the album was made into a mural in his hometown, Detroit, Michigan USA.  

 Further, Eminem was part of the all-star Hip-Hop halftime show at the 56th Superbowl which made history as the first ever all hip-hop/R&B line-up.  To celebrate the season Eminem gave us Shady Football that offered a clothing line to enjoy.  His restaurant, Mom’s Spaghetti Detroit celebrated big in New York as well as Los Angles & also hit their first year in business at a stationary location. As well, Marshall’s memorabilia shop, The Trailer, located above Mom’s Spaghetti in Detroit, had also been up & running for a year as of September 29th, 2022. As well this year fans saw Marshall make it out to be a wonderful piece of the Detroit Lions Football club’s Hardknocks series on HBO Plus.  Eminem made his fans truly happy to see him sporting sunglasses & a smile at the event, showing the world he was full of quick wit & good humor.  In early Fall this year Eminem was XXL Magazine’s cover once again, but this time for their 25th Anniversary issue. Along with the cover Marshall gave us an incredible article & an equally incredible photo shoot.  It was an amazing year for the fans of Eminem, even without the “new” album some wanted so badly.  

 Getting in on the fun, Eminem took part of the B.A.Y.C’s (Bored Ape Yacht Club) spree that was running like wildfire during 2022.  Doing videos, making appearances & performing came from this venture in 2022 for Eminem.  To give fans an incredible look into the man behind the amazing art, Marshall & friends separately took a seat with PaulPod, a podcast that spanned weeks with manager Paul Rosenberg at the helm.   The Youtube’s 50 Million Subscribers Club, Minions, Elvis, Shazam, UFC & Spiderman all meant something to Eminem fans as he joined all of these aforementioned in this year, 2022.  Eminem took you to the cleaners, he took you to the trailer park.  He also gave us his early musical influences (over 100 listed) on Spotify & so much more – all for his fans.  What will 2023 have in store for our favorite superhero, Marshall B. Mathers III?  Only time will tell.  One thing I’ve learnt - you can’t rush an artist for their art, they must feel it so that you will, in turn, feel & experience it yourselves.  The saying goes:  All good things to those who wait.  2023 – here we come!  

[cryptofmadness]

Interview: Hunter Gorinson (Oni Press/EC Comics Imprint)

Interview conducted by Chet Reams

Hunter Gorinson is the President and Publisher at Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group, Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group own Oni Press, who are printing and co-publishing the new EC Comics imprint titles beginning Summer 2024! Crypt of MADness Publisher/Editor-In-Chief Chet Reams reached out for an interview and Hunter was kind enough to accept the invitation… This interview was conducted May 2, 2024, so it’s “hot off the press!”

Hunter Gorinson: Nice to meet you! Chet Reams: …Nice to meet YOU! …How did the EC relaunch come about ? Gorinson: First and foremost, I’ve been a lifelong EC fan. I got introduced to it probably when I was 6 or 7 years old and it kind of totally blew a hole in my mind as to what I thought comics could be. I knew that they were ‘classic comics’. At the time I thought they were from the ‘70s or something. This was in the early ‘90s. I didn’t realize they were from the ‘50s. They seemed even much more contemporary than the Silver Age Marvel and DC Comics I read . So that led to me being, not only an obsessive EC Comics fan for my entire teenage years as I progressed through my different levels of fandom, also continuing just to notice and spot the kind-of-pervasive-influence of EC in pop culture… So you see the logo for the band, The Cramps or Electric Frankenstein or something -And you realize like, oh, like music’s tethered into this, comedy’s tethered into this, horror movies are tethered into this ! It only deepened my fascination and appreciation of EC. …The comic book industry is actually a relatively small place. I’ve worked at several publishers. My first job was Marvel. I worked at a company called Valiant for quite a while. I worked at Boom Studios… So I’d met Corey and Cathy Mifsud who are respectively William Gaines’ daughter and grand-son in my travels over the years. I had developed a friendship with them. We’d worked on some stuff, in passing, previous to this coming about. Once I found myself in the Publisher chair at Oni in … I think it was late 2022 … December 2022; The first thing at the top of my mind was ‘I wonder if there’s anything we could do with EC?! Now, is the time, in my opinion, for us to do something..!’ and fortunately they were quite tolerant, patient and receptive to my impassioned, phosphorus pitch that ‘We should do this!’ Then one thing led to another, and I’ve essentially been working on this since Day One of me stepping in as publisher at Oni Press.

Reams: Why are you introducing new series titles and new hosts for it? Gorinson: Yeah, it was actually part of my original idea. ..I think if this was another comic book publisher.. what you’d be getting is Tales From the Crypt “#1” with, probably an exaggeration to say 197 variant covers, but not uncommon for big books to launch with like 100+ variant covers now! Any other publisher would probably be “I’m gonna go with the tried and true safe thing. We’re going to do Tales from the Crypt again….” For me, I look back at the intense period of creativity that is the EC Comics “New Trend” … It’s like a ‘Marvel’ - no pun intended - that those books were essentially created between 1949/1950 and part of 1955. It’s 5 years of intense creativity from William Gaines, Al Feldstein, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig and on down the line… …The ‘ending’ of EC is one of the great unresolved question marks at in comics history: What could have been??? I’ve kind of always felt like there’s an entire alternate universe out there somewhere, where the Comics Code Authority doesn’t happen, EC continues to publish, MAD stays a comic!! And instead of Stan Lee coming in to take a ‘last shot’ at Marvel Comics in 1962 and 1963 to do superheroes and see if that’s a thing that ‘can work’ and reinvent that genre, that never happens !!… If EC continued to chug along and things like crime, horror, war, science-fiction, satire continued to be the dominant trends in the industry … that could have continued decade, after decade, after decade. The ‘thesis’ behind the line of books that we’re putting together at Oni is… Why ‘look backwards’ when we could ‘look forwards’ into what EC could have become ? And also, just to be blunt about it: Like, no matter what we do, we’re going to be compared against the original books, which is maybe the highest ‘high watermark’ that comics has ever accomplished. I think that there’s 40+ perfect issues of Tales From The Crypt. Why would I want to make that comparison any more difficult by trying to ‘replicate’ them or ‘compete’ with them?? I think the original EC books should stand on their own … as they have very successfully for 70+ years. And we are thinking something that’s new, and in the same spirit and energy and intensity, but is an evolution and not a direct continuation or imitation of what came before.

Reams: So, is there going to be ANY use of the GhouLunatics inside the new ones, any ‘callbacks’ besides the variant covers that you have [announced]? Gorinson: Shhh… I’m smiling right now… Here’s what I will say… “Spoilers, my man!” I can’t give away too many ‘spoilers’, but there will be a ‘lineage,’ and hopefully, ‘continuity’ with what has come before ..

Reams: What about the EC imprint beyond comic book media, the Anthology Style. Are there plans for .. “beyond comic book media”? Gorinson: …The order of the day is ‘Let’s make the best possible comics right now!’ EC, as I said, has a pervasive influence beyond comics - if any of that happens down the line - which is definitely possible.. we’ll be happy, and ‘beating the drum real hard.’ Right now, as the order stands, we have our work cut out for us in trying to not do an ‘EC imitation’, not do something that’s ‘EC adjacent’ - we’re making EC Comics. Like, I refuse to put the Oni logo on these books because I think it’s ‘sacrilegious’… I consider these to be EC Comics. They’re not part of the ‘Original Canon’ obviously, but we’re trying to embody that to the greatest extent possible. … We’ve got to make sure that the stories are good, that the covers are good, that these books can stand on their own … I don’t want this to be a 6-issue thing. We have a plan that extends for years into the future. Hopefully we can get to a place where you have a couple EC Comics reliably on shelves, every couple times a month, for the foreseeable future. You know what I’m saying? Reams: Yeah, like just like the “New Trend” ! Gorinson: Every two weeks… yeah!

Reams: …That kind of covers one of the others I had which was ‘What do you think EC’s prior missteps were, with comic reboots, and how do you avoid such pitfalls?… Gorinson: I mean a LOT has changed… SO MUCH has changed since 1954. There are weird echoes and synchronicities between what American culture and comic books are going through then, and now… Which I think makes this the right time to do this for a lot of reasons! But I do think ‘off-the-bat’: the audience is matured. …I don’t think we’re gonna sell Epitaphs From The Abyss #1 to 8-year-olds. You know what I mean? Fact: 8-year-olds were reading Tales from the Crypt… but that probably won’t be the mandate here. I don’t think we’ll be accused of “engendering juvenile delinquency,” hopefully…

Reams: What about having “preachies”-type stories, kind of like with the old Shock SuspenseStories “preachies”? Gorinson: You mean stories with a more socio-political, cultural … ? Reams: Modern social stories, though! Gorinson: Yeah, 100%! I think that’s actually integral to what makes EC work. One of the things… I hesitate to call it a ‘formula’, but there’s a ‘voodoo’ to the way that EC worked! …This is where I think another comic book publisher doing ‘EC books’ in 2024 would be, ‘yeah, we’re just going to do the horror one. That was the most popular!’ But EC had this quadruple-helix of horror, satire, war, science fiction that all weaved together and made a really compelling mix of genres and tones. In terms of the socio-political content - That’s the other thing, ….if you want to go read an EC pastiche or homage story right now - you’ve got a million ways to do that! But, what all of those homages and pastiches have failed to do is… …It’s really easy to do a story about ‘Christmas Eve. There’s a killer in a Santa Claus costume who chops off somebody’s head on Christmas morning. It opens to a box under the tree and his dad’s head is in it!’ or whatever could be perceived as ‘EC-adjacent’. Reams: They had one [a story] very similar to that… [“And All Through The House….”] Gorinson: I think there’s a Creepshow that’s very similar to that, etc.. There’s tons of stuff that came after EC, where they embraced the violence and the gore, the shocking quality of ‘your neighbor next door could be a monster!!’ It doesn’t have to be Frankenstein or the Wolfman or whatever… but those homages often fail to capture .. that strong socio-cultural-political ‘edge’ and not every EC story has that but some of them do.. .. It’s an important part of the mix.. they’ll definitely be part of that brew from early on of what we’re doing, especially with Epitaphs From The Abyss! I was talking to Corey Mifsud about this. It’s not a straight ‘one-to-one’ equivalency with Tales from the Crypt or The Vault of Horror. It’s in the lineage of what those stories were like, but there’s also a little bit of Crime SuspenStories and there’s a lot of Shock-Suspense in Epitaphs From The Abyss. Just people being ‘terrible’ to one another. …There’s a lot of that in Epitaphs!

Reams: Can you tell us any other creatives’ names that are going to be contributing to EC’s new books? Gorinson: Yeah, we put out a big old list of folks initially. There’s some true comics A -listers in there. Jason Aaron. I don’t think you guys have seen.. Jason’s first story is going to run in Epitaphs From The Abyss #2.. Issue #1 is Brian Azzarello; Stephanie Phillips; A really talented writer named J. Holtham. And, Chris Condon plus Peter Krause ; Vlad Legostaev - who’s a phenomenal Ukrainian comic artist… Who am I forgetting? There’s two… I don’t have PREVIEWS in front of me! Reams: There’s Phil Hester .. and Jorge Fornes. Gorinson: Jorge Fornes drew Batman with Tom King, most recently did “Danger Street” with Tom King - INCREDIBLE artist, perfect for what we’re looking for with the EC mold. And of course Phil Hester - industry legend, deeply influenced by EC. The minute we made this announcement, Phil was kind enough to reach out and be like “put me on this..!” I don’t want to spoil too much … there’s a bunch of people who didn’t get announced yet .. the lineup for Cruel Universe #1 we haven’t shown anyone yet. It’ll be out next week … And then Epitaphs From the Abyss #2 has, in my opinion, one of the most impressive lineups of creators. I never dreamed that I would publish a book with these five creators on Epitaphs #2 - One of them is writing AND illustrating their own story, which is phenomenal! It is truly a “Cavalcade of Riches”, my friend. I’m gonna be excited to share it with everybody!

Reams: What about veteran ones like Angelo Torres, Kelley Jones, Ralph Reese, people like that? Is it just gonna be newer people or are you gonna bring on older people? Gorinson: I have not yet had a chance to speak to Angelo Torres; I would love to. I don’t know what his interest is …to be honest with you, it makes me a little afraid to pitch Angelo the idea of drawing a ‘quote-unquote’ “EC story” because I’m sure he will have feelings about that, but obviously a huge appreciator of his work. But in terms of veteran talents from the comic book industry and also people who were “Generation Two” after the EC crew. .. Reams: Like, from CREEPY/EERIE? Gorinson: Yeah, who either apprenticed, knew or worked alongside some of the original EC creators.. I’ve viewed it as incredibly important to hopefully get some of those people along for the ride…Phil Hester kind of falls into that box - he’s been doing this for 30 years at this point. There’s a couple names coming that you will be like… ‘WHOA!’… Specifically, in Epitaphs From The Abyss #2!

Reams: So a big part of EC, original EC, was the artwork-to-story balance. You had “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, you had Jack Kamen, Reed Crandall: very detailed/Pulp-like artwork!; Matched with very Prose-like writing. In the modern landscape, how is that gonna go… Gorinson: Yeah, there’s certain rules because.. what you don’t want to do, the last thing we want to do. … …I should give a shout-out to our editor and chief Sierra Hahn who’s my partner in crime on this entire thing! She’s a phenomenally talented comic book editor, has been doing this for close to 20 years, worked previously at Dark Horse - as well as at Boom Studios where we first crossed paths. Me and her have kind of debated and pushed-and-pulled over ‘what is the ‘bend it, don’t break it’ approach to the EC formula?’ …The last thing I wanted to do was find one-to-one artist equivalents. We have to have a Graham Ingels - kind of super hyper-detailed, gross, drippy-features guy! …We didn’t want to find ‘imitators.’ Part of what makes William Gaines one of the greatest comic book editors of all time, probably in competition with Stan Lee for the single greatest editor ever in the history of the medium, was his ability to pick artists and then let them ‘do their thing.’ That’s kind of the mandate that we have too, which we want super-capable storytellers because the amount of information ..The last thing we wanted to do was find ‘direct imitators’. Each original EC artist had their own definitive style; the one thing that they shared was a really powerful, clean economy of storytelling! Honestly, it’s a lot easier to draw a 22-page comic or an entire 4-or-6-issue arc of a comic book, than it is a 6-or-8-page story. It’s very hard to ‘hide your mistakes’ in a 6-page story.. ..What I think we ‘rightly diagnosed’ that we ‘needed’ is extremely clean, powerful storytellers - instead of someone who’s going to draw a horror host in a cool pose …plenty of guys can draw a horror host in a cool pose! I don’t know many who can do one of the most disgusting shocking 6-page stories that you’ve read all year! It’s a pretty short list!! So that was the mandate.. Gorinson: …In terms of the actual story-construction, there’s certain things that we’re going to retain - obviously all the stories have to be self-contained! Can’t do the “Dark Horse Presents” thing, or whatever, “2000 AD” where the story is continued from issue-to-issue. Don’t want to do that, it breaks the EC formula! The stories, where we can, they’re all probably going to have something similar to that original half-page Splash introduction … have a nice cool title treatment that introduces each one. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Leroy lettering, the books have to have this! We don’t have a Leroy Machine, can’t do it ‘exactly’ but we’re gonna letter the books in the same style, because when you see that - you know you’re reading an EC Comic. You know what I mean? It’s essential … Gorinson: We released a piece of promotional material today, like these little pre-order cards that are going to comics stores, that has the Leroy lettering on it… Gorinson: We released a new cover… for Epitaphs from the Abyss #2, by an artist named Adam Pollina, it’s a guy getting a nail hammered into his head in the true kind-of-Crime SuspenStories tradition. Reams: Is that in the PREVIEWS catalogue, or…? Gorinson: This is for Epitaphs # 2, so no one’s seen it yet. I think it’s on Bleeding Cool right now if you go check it out.

Reams: I’m gonna ask a few more questions…What themes can we look for during the future issues? Like will there be war themes? Satire-comic type themes? Or just sci-fi and horror? Gorinson: Adam [Pollina] drew one of my favorite comics when I was a kid.. “Rise of Apocalypse” from Marvel in the ‘90s. And then he went on to be a fashion designer. He’s a very accomplished artist. Gorinson: In terms of other genres, yeah, that’s part of the ‘mandate’. Starting things, we didn’t want to start with like, “Here’s 5 books - go get them!” We’re doing something radical - I’m well aware that we’re doing something provocative, possibly controversial, definitely treading on sacred ground by even inhabiting the EC logo on new books, not by the original creators. Now that we have people’s attention, we have to gain their trust. Part of the idea was ‘let’s start in a familiar place…’ with anthologies in the two kind of most central EC genres, horror and science fiction. But as I said, I don’t believe EC should be limited to that alone .. I think part of the success of EC was it had a broader tableau of storytelling that it did .. I’ve teased this out a little bit for retailers, and won’t say too much, but I will say that the third book we do - will be in a genre that EC told stories in, but never did a full book about. Reams: What is that? Picto-Fiction??! Gorinson: I don’t think I’m gonna be running back to Picto-Fiction anytime soon!!! But in 2025, we’ll also do something that is not an anthology! So, I’ve teased enough… Reams: Will there be collected volumes,? Gorinson: Oh 100%! Each of these will get collected as a graphic novel. Reams: Will they be hardcover or softcover? Gorinson: …It’s a little early for us to make a definitive call on that - I think the ‘rough draft ‘of the answer to that question is, We’ll probably collect the first 5-or-so issues of these series as softcover graphic novel, then once we have a larger group of them done, we’ll collect them in the big oversized deluxe hardcover format. We’re gonna see how it’s gonna go.

Gorinson: I don’t know if Cruel Universe will be like 12 issues or maybe it’s a shorter series and then we rotate it, and then we bring Cruel Universe back… where we do a second Sci-Fi series; kind of like Weird Fantasy/Weird Science thing, and rotate through a couple of them. Don’t be surprised if we do that! We want to keep people on their toes a little bit. We also just want to keep the level of quality and consistency high with what we’re doing. Reams: Yes… Um, the Sci-Fi titles were historically the least-selling EC titles, but they were the most loved… Gorinson: Science fiction in today’s market … not that much has changed - the three most bankable things in comics are superheroes, horror and science fiction. There’s a lot of great stories in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy; that was always amongst one of my favorite books. Again, I wanted to do something that was important to the team at Oni -that we not just do horror. The minute that we landed on the title ‘Cruel Universe’, we knew we had something! ..They’re all kind of ‘functionally’ horror stories to some degree. They may not be ‘overtly horror’ about people getting killed or maimed or whatever, but they’re all terrifying and upsetting and deranged to some degree. You know what I mean?

Reams: Well, I think that’s most of the questions I had and it is now 30 minutes… Gorinson: Oh, you did it! Fantastic job, man. Reams: We got most of them done! Gorinson: That’s awesome… Anytime you have questions - Please feel free! Reams: Sure! Thanks so much!

[sundaysstrawberrykombucha]

ONE NOTE! LET'S FUCKING GO!!! (this is a very long post)

Actually, you'll probably want to know about Belle as I continue the skunk HRT, she's going to show up a LOT. WARNING! This is probably going to be longer then the "do you like the color of the sky" post.

Okay! For those of you who don't know, THIS is Belle!

At least, my artistic rendition of her. please ignore the fifth finger, I've only just been getting back into drawing, so I'm a little rusty on things that I tend to omit

Annabelle Heights: She's an anthro, bi-pedal, striped skunk. She typically wears faded green cargo pants, and no shirt. She HATES shirts, but she also doesn't have anything to really "show off" and most of her torso is covered by a mantel that drops down to the top of her pants. she's two toned black and white, the white being on her belly and her stripes that start on her face and go all the way down her back, joining back at the tip of her tail. She is about 50% tail, as well. We've also, recently, realized that she has some lion influence as well, because her ears, muzzle, and teeth are very catlike, and the mantle of fur she sports around her neck and shoulders is very mane-like. She's was my first headmate, and quite possibly my best friend.

That all being said... We're not sure WHAT she is. I CREATED her. I actively made the decision that, fifteen years ago, I was tired of being alone and so I was going to make an "imaginary" friend, and had a character from a wannabe comic that I could use.

literally the oldest drawing of Belle that I have. probably one of, if not the, first. Belle... Exists. She manifests in the physical world around me. I can "see" her to an extent (the same way one could 'see' and apple they imagine on the table). To some limited degree I can hear her, feel her, interact with her. She is VERY bad at fronting, but is so strong in her own personality that when disruptive thoughts barred me from being able to communicate with my other alters, recently, she was STILL there. She has been through so many emotional problems and through all of my anxiety and doubt, always there to do her best to help me, tell me, things are going to be alright. She also reminds me she's not real, and uses the fact that she ISN'T real to do very not real stuff, like go through walls, levitate, teleport... You know... Things to keep me humble to the fact that she's still completely made up, and completely in my head.

again, at least fifteen years old. Many things have changed, she's lost the collar, and her stripes have changed. She *has* gotten a bit more curvy as well...

So... She's a tulpa? Maybe? Again, we're not sure, but compared to the other alters that have introduced themselves, she is completely unique in her origin, and roll she plays.

just a sketch page of old old Belles, I STILL can't get the forward facing look correct.

So some interesting facts about Belle.

1: She literally told me her name. Me and my mom were driving around one day, and as she was talking about our cat, and how she was named one thing, but Mom had started calling her "Belle," I legitimately heard a voice in the back of the car say "that's my name." I had to look in the back to make sure, but obviously she wasn't there.

2: She was only supposed to stick around until I got a girlfriend... Well, sorry girls, she's staying even after that now.

3: The moment we realized that she had achieved autonomous thinking and a full personality that I KNEW I wasn't in control of was when I was showering, and she made a joke that I laughed at... And then realized I didn't make the joke, she did.

4: Although bad at fronting, like our other alters, we did, once, wake up with Belle fronting. It was a weird situation where when we pushed ourself out of bed, and looked at the arm and hand doing that, we got dysphoric and confused that it wasn't covered in fur. That's something that I hadn't ever felt, and after some thought, we realized it was her that was at the front at the time.

Roy was supposed to be a character in a comic that was going to feature both him and Belle

So to call Belle and alter or even a headmate isn't exactly... Correct. That being said, I can still call myself a system because a few others HAVE introduced themselves to me, and they're the ones who actually act as alters. They have an easier time fronting, they live in our head, they all have their own look, but they can't actually manifest in the physical space like Belle can. It's a very weird situation. Belle, also, has been getting a LOT of "first-child-now-has-siblings" jealousy towards the others. Afraid of being forgotten, or even just so similar to the others. Wondering what her role actually is, and envy that others have been able to get me to do stuff that she has literally yelled at me to do, but hasn't had the ability to do so (again, bad at fronting, unlike the others). It's been a learning experience for both of us, since I'm honestly REALLY new on the whole "system" thing (literally, if we don't include Belle, the first alter actually introduced themself this year after a bad thing that happened with a friend.)

A much newer, and updated Belle that I drew while working at a register in retail. I have a TON of these pen drawings, and this was a VERY favorite pose of mine to draw.

Belle also has some envy on not being able to front like the others. For the last fifteen years, it was something that both of us didn't want her to do to help keep my head appraised of the fact that she wasn't real. That was the big thing that we both agreed on when I made her.

If I ever started thinking she was real, she'd remind me otherwise... And vice-versa.

So we haven't really thought of her fronting, and actually USING the body, instead we focused on how we could take her from the headspace and superimpose her into the real world. I wanted a friend that would stand next to me, not someone who could take control if I couldn't handle something...

At some point I switched from three stripes to two, which is much more skunk-like

I guess that leads to the point. WHY did I create Belle in the first place? And the answer is simple. I was incredibly lonely. I had just graduated high-school, and none of my school friends kept in contact with me. It was before I got into any social media (Facebook was still in its infancy, and I didn't like myspace). I had taken a third shift job, so I was awake through the night and slept through the day, and my job only had me working with three other people!

I literally interacted with NOBODY, and it BOTHERED me SO MUCH! I wanted someone, NEEDED someone. I WANTED SO MUCH for a friend to be there, for someone to talk to, someone who was awake with me. I wanted a friend. I didn't have any, and I was incredibly lonely.

So I did something that a lot of children do. What did it matter if it was childish, why couldn't I do the same thing?!? I created an imaginary friend. We're a little fuzzy on the details, but finding the old drawings makes it seem like I knew her name before I even created her, so there IS a argument that she is, in fact, an alter that was looking for a way to be seen... And boy did she find one!

I just thought this one was cute. Belle has always been a bit athletic and more on the physical side then I have.

I had made her to be a lot of things I wasn't. confident, cocky, ready for physical activity. A lot of things that I had when I was a child, but grew out of. She liked video games, but that's because I liked video games. She was the yin to my yang, a mash of things I wasn't to help fulfill the feeling of her being her own person.

A lot of those attributes have stuck around over the years.

She was also supposed to be slightly shorter then me, BUT SEEMS TO HAVE DECIDED THAT WASN'T FOR HER RECENTLY... It's fine... really... I'm good.

another old pic, this one featuring Roy again. My art has always felt flat to me, and only recently have I been wanting to improve on that.

In conclusion, I love her. She has been my best friend for fifteen years. To think that in five more years, she'll have been around for half my life, that's still a fact that we don't want to get used to.

This is so much more then I've admitted to anyone, it's not quite the easiest thing to bring up to a group of friends. "Oh yea, I have this friend... She's imaginary, but VERY MUCH her own person... She's right over there!" But... That's kind of how it is for me and her. She IS her own person, she has consistently made that fact known to us. She's absolutely unique in how she presents herself, and I do hope that the strength at which I'm able to perceive her only gets stronger.

If you got this far... Thanks. Thanks for reading all of that, and I hope you have a wonderful day. I DID need to put this out there so that I could use it to help answer any questions I get from my Skunk HRT thing I'm going to try to do. If anyone who has read this still has questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, reader, take care and be safe, alright?

Roy giving Belle a piggy back ride, I really loved this pose for two people. This was about 15 years ago.

Boy what 15 years can do. I redrew it, this time with me instead of Roy. Belle is looking a bit crazed here, but hey, it's been a few years since she's had so much artistic attention, she wants to go a little gremlin mode right now.

Who wants a massive info dump on my headmate Belle? Including

1: old art and new art of her

2: massive walls of text

5: our history together

3: recent developments

4: other misc things I can't predict right now

Would anyone be interested?

[saltycharacters]

i love love LOVE your designs sm, esp your lion characters! theyre so unique! did any of them take a lot of trial and error to design just right? and if so, which one(s)? theres gotta be fiddling with different concepts to some degree for all of them id think, but i imagine some mightve been harder to come up with than others?

((ps: i like your content and send asks pretty frequently, and from what i can tell, you seem like such a kind and genuinely cool person!! your work is also a big inspo for a younger artist like me!! i hope life has been treating you well!))

Aaaaah thank you!!!! Very flattered to hear that my work has made an impact on you :,]

As for the lions, I actually designed most of them once and right as I drew them, only having a vague idea of what I wanted beforehand. When I went on my lion designing spree, I specifically had a paper with some quick sketches of lion mane ideas and what they were meant to look like, such as a sunflower or egg- everything else was thought of on the spot. However, technically not all of these lions were invented within one year- about half I've actually owned for a long time, and were either pre-existing lion ocs or characters I redesigned into lions. Those were easier to because I already had some groundwork to work off of. Here's some examples;

All that said, I think the lions i struggled with the most were Molian and Ravencrow. Both technically came from old ocs, but I had trouble perfecting the balancing act between preserving that nostalgia and coming up with something fresh and good looking- I'm still not quite happy with either. Molian has way too much going on and RavenCrow's colors could use adjustment.

[route22ny]

BY MICHAEL J. MOONEY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE SHAFER

Staring at the front of the Royal Theater, I feel as though I’m looking backward through time. Taking in the cerulean marquee, the painted red fringe around the box office, the vertical ROYAL sign jutting into the afternoon sky—it’s easy to imagine why the denizens of Archer County flocked here for decades. The theater was a dark, cool respite from the blazing sun, a still escape from the whipping winds of the North Central Plains, a glimpse of entertainment from the outside world.

The theater—or what’s left of it anyway—peers out from the northeast corner of the town square. Without the storied theater, this could be any small town in Texas. Weathered barns and rusted oil pumps dot the landscape. Anchoring the town is the imposing three-story Romanesque Revival county courthouse, with stone archways and provincial peaks. There’s also a small café (Murn’s), a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it police station, a few antiques stores, and a single four-way stoplight swaying in the breeze like an apparition.

The Royal Theater as it is now and as it was then.

This isn’t just any small town in Texas, though. Archer City is the Texas small town. It’s the setting of both the novel and film versions of The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age story rendered in black and white that earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Directing, and Best Picture. In Larry McMurtry’s book, published in 1966, the town is called Thalia. In the movie, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released in 1971, it’s called Anarene—a name taken from an abandoned town 8 miles away. But rest assured, both places are Archer City: the looming courthouse, the blinking stoplight, and the Royal Theater, where so many of the most dramatic moments of The Last Picture Show take place.

The novel, which McMurtry called a “spiteful” book intended to “lance some of the poisons of small-town life,” received critical acclaim when it was published. But it was Bogdanovich’s film that truly introduced the entire world, in utterly unromanticized fashion, to the intense, sweeping sagas of everyday life in Archer City. The Last Picture Show turned this particular and peculiar town into art.

Both the novel and movie contain language that was considered lewd at the time. McMurtry’s own mother, Hazel, once said that after reading the first 100 pages she hid the book in the closet and called her son that night. “Larry, honey,” she said to him, he revealed in his 2002 travel memoir Paradise, “is this what we’re sending you to Rice for? Those awful words!”

The film, with its nudity and frank depiction of teenage sexuality—including Cybill Shepherd’s first and only topless scene—absolutely scandalized upright, moral Americans all over the country. Nowhere more so than in Archer City, where it was regarded at the time as a “dirty” movie.

Now, 50 years after the film’s release, the town’s past dalliances with Hollywood are somehow simultaneously scuttled and omnipresent. There’s no billboard at the city limit announcing the place’s cultural significance, no notation on the water tower. But there are echoes of the art formed here, about this place, along every street, around every corner. Some might even feel the spirit of McMurtry, who passed away in Archer City earlier this year.

Over the last five decades, Peter Bogdanovich, a New Yorker who operated in Los Angeles, has told the story of the movie’s origin many times. He’d seen the novel in a store, liked the title, saw what it was about, and immediately put the book back down. Then actor Sal Mineo, who’d starred alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, gave Bogdanovich a copy of the novel, saying he thought it would make a good film. Bogdanovich still didn’t read it, but gave it to his wife, production designer Polly Platt, and asked her to read it. When she inspired him to finally read it himself, he was intrigued by the challenge of conveying small-town life in Texas and eventually co-wrote the screenplay with McMurtry. Bogdanovich, Platt, and McMurtry took a long road trip scouting locations in Texas, but ultimately the director realized he wanted to shoot the movie in McMurtry’s hometown.

Set in the early 1950s, the story follows three teenagers—the co-captains of the football team and the so-called prettiest girl in school—through their senior year of high school, as they each struggle to make sense of adult concepts like love and sex and the fragility of human life. Sonny Crawford is the sensitive, thoughtful boy from a broken home. Duane Jackson is Sonny’s lovelorn best friend who escapes first into the oil fields and then the Korean War. Jacy Farrow is the coquettish rich girl who yearns wholeheartedly for something beyond the confines of her surroundings. The Last Picture Show also famously includes an ensemble of carefully rendered adults trying to cope with their own expired dreams and broken lives.

McMurtry repeated over the years that the characters he created weren’t based on any real-life individuals, but the people of Archer City always suspected otherwise. A man named Bobby Stubbs, who was photographed with McMurtry in their high school yearbook, believed he was the inspiration for Sonny. Stubbs had a troubled home life and worked nights like Sonny, and he drove the same kind of pickup truck. He was also once hit in the eye by the boyfriend of a girl he liked. “It kinda pretty closely followed me,” Stubbs used to say.

A woman named Ceil Cleveland Footlick was often asked if she was the inspiration for Jacy. She was “very good friends” (her words) with Stubbs and had been voted “Most Beautiful Girl” in her class. For years she brushed off the question, but in 1997 she published a memoir with the title Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?

Because of the book’s reputation, getting actors to audition was a challenge. Randy Quaid was cast as Lester, an awkward, sleazy suitor of Jacy’s. He’d only read the parts of the script that involved his character, which mostly centered on Lester taking Jacy to a naked swimming party. “I just thought it was going to be like this B-movie, teenage, soft-porn movie,” Quaid would later say. “Something you’d see at the drive-in.”

None of the young stars had much experience in film. Timothy Bottoms, who’d only been in one movie before, was cast to play Sonny. Jeff Bridges, cast as Duane, had been a professional actor nearly all his life, but at 21 years old, this would be his first major film role. And Bogdanovich cast Shepherd as Jacy after seeing her face on the cover of Glamour magazine.

Most of the adults in the movie were played by established Hollywood actors, including Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan. For the role of Sam the Lion, the wisdom-dispensing owner of the town’s pool hall, Bogdanovich cast Ben Johnson, the champion-rodeo-cowboy-turned-stuntman-turned-Western-movie-icon. At first Johnson turned down the part on account of the foul language, but Bogdanovich called in a favor from his director friend John Ford, who convinced Johnson to do it.

Almost as soon as filming started, real life began imitating the art being created. While making a movie about illicit sex and barely veiled scandal, the set was awash in illicit sex and barely veiled scandal. The actors spent a lot of time drinking and smoking together in their hotel rooms 30 minutes north in Wichita Falls, and that led to drama. Bottoms fell in love with Shepherd. Bogdanovich started an affair with Shepherd, dissolving his own marriage while his wife, Platt, continued to work on the movie. (Most mornings Platt styled Shepherd’s hair.) “It was quite a soap opera,” Burstyn said in the documentary Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas.

This was everything the locals had feared: all the immoral luridness of Hollywood, right here in a part of Texas not so comfortable with unwholesomeness that didn’t stay behind closed doors.

Outside of Archer City, it was a different story. The movie received great reviews from coast to coast. Johnson won the Oscar for Actor in a Supporting Role and Leachman won for Actress in a Supporting Role. The film is still beloved today and maintains a spot in the coveted National Film Registry.

But at the time of its release, most of the locals disapproved. Strongly. The Los Angeles Times ran a story about it with the headline “Movie Riles Town It Depicts.” McMurtry, who was involved in Bogdanovich’s vision, eventually got so annoyed by the vicious gossip in town that he sent a letter to the editor of the Archer City newspaper, challenging anyone in town to a public debate.

His offer went unrequited.

Archer City’s population is 1,848, only a couple hundred larger than it was when McMurtry grew up there in the ’30s and ’40s. The town is the seat of Archer County, created in 1858 by the Texas State Legislature and named after Branch Tanner Archer, former secretary of war of the Republic of Texas. Ranching and oil have long been the predominant industries—by late 1926, there were more than 400 oil wells within 13 miles of Archer City—but many people are increasingly attracted to the town for its proximity to prime hunting.

Many of the locations where The Last Picture Show was filmed are gone now. Where Sam’s dusty pool hall once stood, with its door flapping in the wind, there’s nothing but an empty dirt lot. The Rig-Wam Drive Inn, the burger joint where Jacy dangled french fries over Duane’s head as if he was a trained seal, is just a plot of asphalt and patchy grass. The West-Tex Theater in the neighboring town of Olney, used for the interior movie theater scenes, was torn down in the mid-’80s. Today it’s a small, quiet park with a gazebo.

Some places are still here, but different. The restaurant where Brennan’s character worked turned into Booked Up No. 4, one of four bookstores McMurtry set up around the town square before shuttering all but one in 2012. The high school has some of the same old features, though it’s been updated and decorated with a handful of granite statues marking state titles the school has won through the years.

Much of the town looks and acts remarkably like it did when The Last Picture Show was made. Boys about the age of Duane and Sonny still speed through town in pickup trucks. Men the age of Sam the Lion still stop them to talk about football. The dance hall at the American Legion, where Jacy and Duane twirled around the room and Sonny ran into his estranged father, looks like it could host the same event today. On a recent evening, four or five locals were perched on barstools, sipping cold beers, listening to songs on the jukebox. They got rid of the old Wurlitzer years ago, but the updated digital version there now still plays all the Hank Williams Sr. songs from the movie.

In time, feelings in Archer City softened a bit. Mostly, the people here don’t talk much about the movie, or about McMurtry, the town’s most famous son. You can spend all morning at Murn’s Café and all night at the American Legion, the only bar in town, and never hear The Last Picture Show mentioned once. It’s not the source of tension it once was.

The public change of heart was most apparent in 1989, nearly 20 years after The Last Picture Show was filmed, when Bogdanovich returned to Archer City to shoot the sequel, Texasville, based on a book of the same name by McMurtry. This time the townspeople lined up to participate as extras. People came from miles away to sell concessions or to take photos or just get a glimpse of the nearly $20 million production.

“The bad taste that the movie left for some folks, that’s gone now,” then-high school principal Nat Lunn told the Austin American-Statesman at the time. “Especially with money being short in town, they’re ready for another dose of Hollywood.”

By the late 1980s, the three leads in the first film—Bottoms, Bridges, and Shepherd—had all become stars. While the entire budget for the first movie was around $1.3 million, Shepherd alone was paid $1.5 million to reprise her role. Bridges was reportedly paid $1.75 million. Bottoms, who’d complained publicly about Bogdanovich and said he didn’t like any of his co-stars, would only agree to return if he was given an additional $100,000 to fund the Picture This documentary.

In the two decades since the first movie, Bogdanovich’s career had soared and crashed. He and Shepherd had broken up; he went on to have multiple relationships, and she had two divorces. Bottoms was also divorced and remarried, but on the set he confessed the crush he’d had on Shepherd. Platt returned, too, and brought the 21-year-old daughter she and Bogdanovich shared. It became a grand, twisted Hollywood reunion, right there on the streets of Archer City.

Drawn by the potential spectacle of what was by then some sort of love-octagon, media outlets from across the country sent reporters to town. There were long feature stories in both Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. By all accounts, though, the entire production served as a therapeutic experience, healing the wounds of the past. At one press conference, the often-sullen Bottoms hugged Bogdanovich. Behind-the-scenes footage caught Shepherd hugging Bottoms. Residents of Archer County took photos of themselves on the set.

But when the movie was released, it tanked. It received middling reviews, earned back only a fraction of its budget, and even today it’s not easy to find on any of the major streaming services.

A lot of people associated with The Last Picture Show are dead now. Stubbs, who claimed to be the basis for Sonny, died in 1992. Johnson in 1996. Sam Bottoms, the real-life younger brother of Timothy Bottoms who played the mute boy Billy, died in 2008. Platt, the producer and production designer who somehow never pulled Shepherd’s hair, died in 2011. Then Brennan in 2013.

In January of this year, Footlick, the woman who wrote about being the real Jacy Farrow, died in North Carolina. Leachman died almost two weeks later. And on March 25, McMurtry, the writer who created all this beautiful trouble, died at the age of 84.

A few days after his death, nobody answered the doorbell at his house in Archer City, a majestic, three-story mansion just down the road from the high school. Looking through the front window, everything seemed to me to be just the way he left it, from the table made from a giant dinosaur fossil to the towering shelves of books in every room. McMurtry bought this place, the biggest home in town, after he won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. He’d wake up early in the morning, type for an hour and a half or so at his long oak table, then go to the bookstore to price antiquarian volumes. Most of the locals would leave him alone.

On the house’s front porch, a single rocking chair was situated to look out over the front yard into the surrounding neighborhood. Someone sitting there could see the comings and goings of a lot of people. As the early-evening wind moved through, the chair began to rock ever so gently.

These days, I sense the people of Archer City think differently of The Last Picture Show. It’s a part of the town’s story, just like the cattle industry and state titles. The movie is even mentioned on the town’s website, though it’s certainly not prominent.

There’s also a tiny park just off the square with a fiberglass horse covered in brands from local ranches and a display that chronicles a bit of the town’s history. The welded metal wall has separate panels for the town’s founding, the first successful oil well drilled here, and the giant fire that swept through in 1925. There’s also a panel explaining how the town was the filming location for The Last Picture Show and Texasville. Bogdanovich’s last name is misspelled.

A couple hundred feet away is the Royal Theater. Most of the building is a burned-out hull, popular for weddings, photo shoots, and occasional performances. The front of the building has been restored, though. It looks just like it did in the movie, the image that begins and ends the film. It’s haunting and beautiful, weathered and damaged—but still here, still standing, still looking at that single blinking light swaying in the wind.

***

The Last Picture Show wasn’t the first movie based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, and it certainly wasn’t the last. You might besurprised by just how many films and TV shows have been made from his novels. Here are a few:

Hud, 1963 (based on Horseman, Pass By) The Last Picture Show, 1971 Lovin’ Molly, 1974 (based on Leaving Cheyenne) Terms of Endearment, 1983 Lonesome Dove, 1989 Texasville, 1990 The Evening Star, 1996

https://texashighways.com/culture/how-the-last-picture-show-changed-the-worlds-view-of-small-town-texas/

[goldemas1244]

Heyyyy I have a question :3

Do you have any headcanon/s for these character : Scraptrap, Scrap Baby, Lady Dimistrecu, the three daughter of Lady D, Heisenberg and/or Molten Freddy ? :3

You don't have to do all the proposition, you can choose what character you want to do :3

Have a good day/evening and stay safe ! :3

*Cracks knuckles* \(^v^)/

You already know I'm doing all of them! Thank you for the ask! Headcanons under the cut!

FNaF6

Scraptrap

He loves rice and would do anything to get his paws on it. Fortunately, the pizzeria is quite close to a Chinese restaurant so rice is easy to get.

He orders a rice-based menu at least three times a week, so the owners aren't at all that surprised to see a tuxedo-clad zombie-rabbit come in and ask for their signature fried rice with buttered lobster on the side.

Since he like to dine-in there, he usually asks Michael to give him a bath in exchange for pizzeria improvements. Michael usually shrugs and gives him a well-deserved bubble bath and his tuxedo.

He likes it when Michael gives him head pats and rubs. It makes him feel loved and appreciated.

He has a pet pigeon named Fernando Buschmann. It's German and likes to listen to the violin.

He likes ASMR and memes. ASMR makes him go feral with murderous intent while memes make him question the modern generation.

He has social media accounts, all named "Willton-Moldover". He usually posts cosplays and furry art on them and has 93 followers on his Reddit profile, 1.5 million followers on his Instagram, 550 followers on his Tumblr, 35 on his Snapchat, and 3.95 million on his TikTok.

He also has a YouTube channel with 10.784 million subscribers called "Willton-Gameover". He plays videogames one-handed and roasts popular YouTubers and famous people. He would never roast Keanu Reeves though, because Keanu Reeves is precious bean.

Due to his popularity he gets a lot of hate mail and private pics. He doesn't like them at all so he blackmails the people who post them. And if the media and police are involved? Well, he has a strong fanbase that's not going down as well as a good alibi so that works out well for him.

Yes, his fanbase also knows of the Fazbear Murders, and he admits to it but frankly, he's shown them the approving ghost kids (who've bonded and gamed with him) so that's no big deal. Only Cassidy hates him, but it's usually constipated anger.

He's bisexual and has an ENORMOUS crush on one of his favourite game characters, Karl Heisenberg. Something about that man reminds him of himself and Henry, although he's not sure what. Still, don't let that distract you from the fact that he owns a nude Karl Heisenberg body pillow, CAPCOM official.

Scrap Baby

Her favourite Monster High doll is Draculaura. She doesn't understand how pink goes well with black but oh boy, pink goes so well with black.

She knows how to skateboard like a pro. Despite her weight, her trusty skateboard still stands and, if she falls, she's always got her skates to spare. She likes to impress the boys at the skatepark with her ability to perform even the most difficult of moves with ease.

She's subscribed to fifteen different tabloid subscriptions. She likes to read them and criticize the stupidity of the human race, like her father. Hey, it's hereditary.

The lights in her boobies glow in the dark. They also glow whenever she gets tired.

She likes reading furniture and gardening catalogues. She's judgy of the prices though and usually becomes a full-on critic with Lefty listening.

She owns a crab named Mr. Tootie. No I will not elaborate on the name. I'll only tell you that it's taken a liking to kazoos and party favours.

She's listed as the No. 1 Best Fan of her father's social media accounts. Michael's in nineteenth place but don't worry, he's as emotionless as a mushroom.

She likes to make origami lotuses. She's such a pro at it that she's even got a mini-stall at the pizzeria: 1 lotus for 50 cents. It's a lucrative business, and it's still growing. Oh, and she switches to other origami works of art every week such as origami guns and origami nine-tailed foxes.

She's the Restaurant Rescue manager. Usually she saves kids from trouble. For this reason, yes, she's commonly seen in the pizzeria itself. Kids love her though the claw worries the more irksome parents.

She's a professional Karen dealer. Karen comes to see the manager? She's hypnotically talented in weaving her words through the toughest of craniums so don't be surprised if a Karen walks out with a new viewpoint of life.

She performs on stage on the occasion, which usually gets her a lot of fan love. She cherishes everything good they give but ignores the problematic everythings. Problematic stuff? Oh, she's good friends with the police chief.

Molten Freddy

He loves noodles. Give him a bowl of ramen and he'll shut up for the entire night. Enter him in a noodle-eating competition and his high metabolism rate means absolutely non-stop spaghetti.

He misses Bon-Bon very much. To the point where he's even tried to make a scrap version of him. Sadly, it doesn't work. He cried that day.

He dies inside whenever he finds out there's a spaghetti shortage in Utah. Poor Molten.

He's a bit wonky, but if he tries to play with you or get into your personal space, don't get mad at him! He's just lonely and wants someone to talk to and play with.

He likes to play Exploding Kittens. It's the only card game he's good at. It's also the only card game he owns.

He sees Helpy as a little brother and boops his nose on a daily basis. He also likes to reenact The Lion King with him (It's the ciiiiiircle of liiiiiife~). Hopefully Helpy doesn't mind.

He knows a lot of jokes in a lot of languages. So German-speaking Molten Freddy wouldn't be too far away from expectation. His favourite jokes are in French though; the wordplay is just immaculate.

He's good in French, English, German, Russian, and Malay. He's currently learning Japanese because he's a mega weeb.

His favourite cartoon is Charlie and Lola. He just likes to see the sibling shenanigans as it somehow reminds him of the good old days.

His favourite shows would be prankster shows. He especially loves the ones that give him new and creative ideas. He doesn't like the scary ones though. They make him feel unsafe and give him anxiety.

Surprisingly, he has a distinct taste for opera. He can modulate the remnants of his voice box to perfectly sing I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General. This both pisses off and impresses Henry to an extent.

Resident Evil 8

Lady Dimitrescu

She might act like the opposite but she really loves Heisenberg as her little brother. His determination, strength, speed, dexterity, and workaholic nature impresses her, who can't even fit through a doorway. She sometimes wishes she's as short as him too.

She's an avid collector of glass, porcelain, and anything fragile. It's a good reason to always be careful where you tread in her lair. She'll make you swallow every last shard if you don't.

She's an avid romance fanatic and is very loving towards the romance novels she owns. All those books you see in the in-game library? They're her collection of lesbian romances that she's collected over the past decades.

She doesn't like hats and prefers to stick to the one she wears in-game. She DOES have a collection of hats though. Last anyone counted, there were over fifty, one or two for each decade she's lived through.

She files her nails on a constant basis and owns an ornately decorated nail-clipper. Hygeine is of the utmost importance. She doesn't want to be compared to that filthy Heisenberg.

Despite her size and carefulness she keeps losing her stuff. Over the course of a week she could misplace three wine glasses, two reading glasses, and fifteen bottles of wine.

She's an expert at dodgeball and golf and even owns a lifetime access to the most prolific Country Club in Romania. With permission from Mother Miranda she goes there every year for the yearly party. It's one of the times she gets to see modernity (and Ed Sheeran) at its finest.

She loves bands from the 1920s and 1940s. However, she gets bored of them occasionally and switches them to something more modern, like Ed Sheeran. Seriously though, what is up with mums and Ed?

She's into executions and torture methods. So it's no surprise that she's a HUGE fan of Horrible Histories; even if she can't watch the show, she'll binge-read the books over and over again. She's even had the chance to encounter (and receive an autograph from) Terry Deary. They have sworn a bond not to tell anybody about this.

She loves exotic animals like anacondas and jaguars. She may or may not have owned a 10ft long Saltwater Crocodile (which was also about 5ft wide).

She's an incredible physicist and mathematician. She's also created many original formulae but unsurprisingly, she doesn't tell anyone about them, for fear that either more people may know of her, or that she may be wrong.

Dimitrescu Babes

They can devour an entire human being in mere seconds as flies. It's sort of like the scarab beetles in The Mummy movies. However, unlike the beetles, they are able to strip the bones as well. They leave nothing behind.

They all know how to play the piano with varying levels of success. Daniela can already play professionally while Bela is still stuck on Grade 5.

They love to listen to their mother when she tells them stories. Gotta hand it to 'em, when you're a fly, you know how to enjoy life in its most simple of moments.

They all love being around the hunky Soldats of Uncle Karl. Fortunately, they don't know of the rebellious plan to conquer Miranda.

Bela is bisexual, Cassandra is asexual and pansexual, and Daniela is demisexual.

It gets hard when you're a fly during the summer. If it's not the lizards, spiders, and other predators, it's the heat. Because of this, despite the material waste, they have invented the world's first blood-powered air conditioner.

The three girls have never ever ever touched a stove or oven in their life. They HAVE touched the hot end of an iron though. A good reason to not touch a bloody oven. Alcina has though, but doesn't tell them that.

They love puppies! Uncle Karl brought them a baby labrador. For the rest of the week Alcina had lost quite a bit of favour from them. Not that they minded of course. IT'S A PUPPY.

They don't like snow one bit. Not just because it's cold, but because it's too white. Too bright. Too shiny. They just can't focus on their prey!

They like to go over to Auntie Donna to play with Angie. Well, you know what they say, crazies attract the crazies, and the crazy has attracted the crazies.

They also like to go to Uncle Moreau's because he's the only one in the village with a PS4. Usually they'd spend about three-quarters of a day playing his games and eating his cheese.

Karl Heisenberg

He owns a dark blue armchair named Junkyard. Despite the name, he loves it dearly because it was a gift from Alcina for his twenty-first birthday. It became part of his final transformation too. Right under the hat.

He's a little blind in the right eye, much to his annoyance. It was a minor accident with Sturm; another reason for him to hate the uncontrollable wretch. He'll never live that day down.

Somehow, he sees better in the dark, which is why he wears such tinted glasses. He also wears them to hide his expressions, since, more often than not, he tends to end up wearing his heart on his sleeve, and his emotions in his eyes.

He's under a lot of pressure so it's no surprise that he breaks down in his factory when he knows he's alone. And by break down I mean crumple into an exhausted heap on the floor. Not even his Soldat Jet squad can wake him up until he's had a reasonable eight hours of rest.

He bathes once a day, every evening, but only three times a week. Perfume, tobacco, and cologne keep care of the rest.

He's the only Lord with a daily contact with the outside world due to his electrical abilities. Don't tell Miranda, but he can electrically CONNECT TO GOOGLE AND THE ENTIRE INTERNET IN GENERAL. He likes to play funny YouTube cat videos in his head when Miranda's having a boring meeting. It's also how he finds out that Chris is a boulder-punching asshole.

He does stimming! He likes to tap his fingers on his desk and the metal rails in his factory. He also buys stim toys from the Duke and keeps them in a well-kept box. His favourite is a non-ripping squishable toy duck. He also sings to chill out.

He's absolutely in the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, and may have once believed in the pizzeria's existence. Come on, he's a mutated Overlord with magical magnet powers. Children souls stuck inside animatronics isn't too far-fetched of an idea. His favourite characters are the Funtimes and the Scraps, mainly because of the blueprint complexity. He HAS tried to replicate the animatronics in his spare time, but he's usually too busy with his Soldats so the project gets scrapped. He loves The Living Tombstone's songs and remixes though.

He doesn't like William Afton at all (though he marvels at his survivability). William's nature and habits remind him of Mother Miranda. He DOES however enjoy Michael Afton and often thinks how it would be absolutely amazing to have that resilient being in his Soldat army.

He's scared of what lurks below the watery depths and fire. Ironic because his brother is a literal fish and he works in one of the most hazardous fire-conducting environments. He's also scared of heights, though he doesn't get airsick.

He once died due to a killing electric shock whilst working on Sturm. It's the only time he's felt that sort of pulsing agony and also the first time he's had the confirmation that yes, Hell is real and yes, he'll end up in quite a dark pit in it. Or it could've been an electric dream, who knows? Anyways his soul apparently ran towards the opposite direction of the flames and he woke up alive after the passing of FIVE ENTIRE WEEKS. Oh boy did Alcina get worried when she couldn't find him.

Thank you for the ask! I hope you enjoy!

[fanfiction-funtime]

Self insert oc: Alexander Vodka

AKA: Eis Cay'zar

Author of fate

A writer from Schneznaya who was driven from his home for his anti-Tsaritsa paper.

_____________________

Physical description:

A chubby fellow in a 1950's style noir trenchcoat and hat, some would even say he looks like he jumped right out of a noir comic book and into reality. He has brown hair and green eyes, a cowboy mustache, and a pointed beard like some kind of comic book supervillain genius.

He often acts confidently and even a bit egotistical when in places he's recognized and famous in, however in newer places he often seems distant and shys away from almost all contact.

Noone knows where his vision is, but they know he has one because of the cold aura that surrounds him.

At night he'll often trade his outfit for one more reminiscent of demons or vampires.

_____________________

Abilities:

Weapon type: Catalyst

Basic attack-truth: uses his catalyst to shoot a short burst of up to 3 ice shards, can attack in fast succession.

"Truth hurts, especially in bursts"

Charged attack-Bifrost: Alexander quickly makes an ice clone behind the enemy and fires 6 shots, this can increase to 3 clones if charged enough(times: 1 for 1 second, 2 for 2 seconds, and 3 for 2.5 seconds)

"I hate crowds, best company has always been myself"

Elemental ability-ice wall: creates an aura of sheer cold around himself that will damage enemies the more they stay in it, and apply the normal sheer cold to them. Does not affect party.

"My therapist said I put up walls because of trauma, but I couldn't hear them through the wall I had just built"

Elemental burst-a story to be told: Alexander takes out his book and opens to a random page, then randomly summons ice sculptures of one of 8 beings:

"Aster": this summon looks like the flatwoods monster, it surrounds the party in a swirl of ice blades that deal 2X damage as the character for 10 seconds.

"Who needs brawn, when you got brain"

"Ultimate foe": a demonic, pointy being of shadow. Will independently deal 25000 damage to three random foes.

"Meet my penultimate friend"

"Beethoven": a sculpture reminiscent of a ww1 zombie general, calls down a barrage of ice bombs that deal 5000 damage to enemies hit for 7 seconds.

"Good scifi doesn't predict, it prevents"

"Sorrows Joy": an angelic, faceless, robot like humanoid that spawns 25 angel shaped traps that freeze enemies around the character.

"With any luck, you're the only real one I've made"

"Death rider and the magic prince": two statues, one of a mummy like Schneznayan mystic of ancient barbarian times and the other an elven cavalry knight from the myths of mondstadt. The knight gives the party a 45% boost to speed and attack while moving, and the Schneznayan gives +10% damage bonus to elemental skills and +55% damage bonus to Catalyst.

"Feel the wrath of honor long passed"

"Zero point and Lion queen": a knightly man of spiked armor and a golden ottoman warrior woman whose golden chain completely obscures her head. Your enemies become inflicted with pyro and you are surrounded by thorn bushes that deal continuous damage of 1000 for 10 seconds.

"Walk down the way on a moonlit day"

The traveler: a child in a red straight jacket, his binds become undone after 4 seconds at which point all enemies take 10,000 X Alexander's level of damage.

"I uh,wont have to pay any copyrights will I?"

"Giota": a child in pyjamas who looks ready to sleep, this summon is very rare. It fully restores all party members and gives a 200% boost to both defense and damage of your characters.

"This fella's been with me since I was a kid"

"If it is a soldier's duty to escape the confines of a prison, is it not every person's duty to escape reality if even for a moment? A wise man said that, pray that I may one day be like him."

Passive-part the wasteland: Alexander is immune to sheer elements, and Grant's 50% resistance when in the party to all members.

_____________________

Story

Abandoning a dream

As a kid, Alexander was always put down when he said he wanted to write fiction, "there's no money in it" they all said.

He couldn't get into any art schools without support so he focused his mind elsewhere, a place he could hopefully use his writing to do just as much good: the first newspaper in Schneznaya.

Horrible truth

He didn't start as a trouble maker, but the more he sought out the truth the more he couldn't stand back and watch. He published numerous papers about the Tsarista's wrongdoings and the crimes of the fatui, how they would harass merchants in other nations, the unfair taxes many shipping businesses had to keep quiet about, all the way up to the war crimes the Tsarista had done in direct contradiction to her own laws.

Sadly, not many believed him even with evidence, but some got his message.

Those who fight

One day Alexander was approached by a man who claimed to have formed a resistance against the fatui. Alexander had inspired many people to disrupt the organization, and have even begun working with those outside Schneznaya.

With their help he didn't just publish some crimes, he published them all, he even got information that turned the general public against the fatui even if just a little.

In a way h had achieved his dream of helping others with his writing, even if it wasn't how he wanted.

Stop the presses

When the Tsarista started her big move of taking gnosis, she brought the hammer down on dissent like a boulder on a ten year old's wrist. One day a squad of thirty fatui stormed Alexander's home and business to silence him, and while they shut down his business they couldn't catch him.

Alexander fled into the wastelands of ice and snow and wasn't seen for several weeks.

Deus ex Vodka

One day Alexander showed up in Inazuma, a nation that had been oppressed for some time now and had recently reached it's height, yet no resistance had formed.

That was until Alexander came along.

Alexander published numerous books, spreading them throughout Inazuma. All of them spoke of freedom, of bravery, of rising up to achieve your ambitions.

And with those stories he inspired countless to take up arms, and in turn inspired countless to join the resistance.

And with mere fiction he had brought about hope,

And with mere fiction he shall do it again, in every form, and in every nation.

Vision: cold hearted

While wondering the waste Alexander fell down and looked to the skies.

He did not ask celestia why, he did not grieve or blame that he did not do more, instead Alexander did something he hadn't done in a long time:

He imagined.

And after he imagined he took out his notebook and wrote. In the freezing cold for seventeen days he wrote stories of hope and freedom.

For seventeen days the cold did not so much as cause him to flinch as he wrote tales of bravery.

For seventeen days Alexander Vodka lived how he wanted to live.

And at the end, he lied down to die.

Then a light shown, and when he opened his eyes to look he saw that the storm parted around him, and in his hand was an ice blue gem.

But Alexander was too paranoid from years of abuse from his peers as a child to wear it loosely, and far to extra to just get a lock. So instead Alexander shouted to celestia "if I shall have this Vision for my art, then it shall not kill me no matter what I do!"

He then shoved the vision into his heart and fell down.

Before he could bleed out however, a woman appeared.

"Hey Tsari, how ya doin." Alexander said as blood poured out his mouth.

"You dramatic fool," the Tsarista sighed as she put a hand on his chest, "you have my element, do you know how bad it'll look for me if you die by shoving your vision into your heart?"

"Why do you care? We hate eachother, in case you forgot."

The archon sighed, "you're just rebelling against what you see as unjust, just as I am. To be honest I feel a sort of rivalry with you, so it'd be a shame if you just died. Also," she painfully shoved the vision all the way in, painfully, "if your going to die it better be because of me, got it?"

Then Alexander sat up, and the god was gone. Along with the hole in his chest.

"Rival of a god eh?" He sat up, putting his gat back on his head, "I like the sound of that."

_____________________

How is this an insert?

Well his story can't be the exact same as mine, so I took my life and goals and made predictions, then fictionalized those predictions and expanded.

His appearance is pretty close to how I'll likely look based on my current appearance, and his dramatic attitude is exactly how I wanna act.

Him being shy in new places with strangers is me exactly as I am now really, however I do believe I'd act confidently if I were famous so he does as well.

Him being Catalyst is because I'm not athletic at all, and I figured a dps Catalyst would be cool. His main ability and resistance/immunity to sheer cold is based on how I wrap up in warm blankets when it's cold, and his ultimate is made up of characters I've made.

_____________________

Tagging: @genshin-obsessed, @golden-wingseos, @storytravelled, and @love-psxlm

[matthiasschoenaertsdaily]

Matthias Schoenaerts full interview for De Morgen Magazine (original in Flemish, translated into English by @matthiasschoenaertsdaily​)

Interview by Els Maes, published on November 28, 2020

Even a global pandemic will not destroy the optimism of actor Matthias Schoenaerts (42). Because he knows from his own experience how much beauty can emerge from the most hopeless situations. "I've had my back against the wall often enough, I'll always find a way out."

A bleak autumn day on a concrete square. There is lukewarm coffee, lukewarm Chimay and rolling tobacco. At dusk we see the silhouettes of fat rats that shoot past our ankles. And yet Matthias Schoenaerts will tell us in a glowing argument that this, here and now, is the very best place to be. That there is so much beauty to discover, he says. Le paradis c'est ici. As long as we want to see it.

"It's strange to say in this unpleasant period, but I've enjoyed the past few months enormously. It's the first time in ten years, since Runskop actually, that I'll be home for a long period of time. This is so beneficial: I am photographing, painting, writing. I can devote time and attention to the very simple things we'd otherwise race past."

"Seriously, look at that," he says, picking a leaf off the ground. "Those colors, that pattern. I can spend hours looking at the pure beauty of the things that surround us."

Above us a pigeon is wreaking havoc between the thinned out foliage. "While you are singing about the wonderful beauty of nature, that animal is going to shit on our heads," I say. "And that too will be a s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d moment," Schoenaerts answers.

Matthias Schoenaerts is Belgium's most successful international film star. But here and now, on a bench in his hometown, he is a technically unemployed actor, an all-round searching artist, but above all: fighter of cynicism. "I refuse to go along with all negativity and fear. The true battle today is cynicism versus courage. And I always choose the latter."

We're on the Oudevaartplaats, the square that everyone knows as the Antwerp Bird Market, and where Schoenaerts' childhood memories are waiting to be picked up. It comes into the conversation just like that: Brando, the cute chow chow that little Matthias got from his mom on this square, when here on the bird market puppies were still sold. "My dogs were my great loves. The home situation was often difficult, and with my dogs I found security. We had three chow chows, those fluffy lion dogs with a blue tongue. Brando was the first, I loved that animal."

"We lived in a small apartment with three dogs, anything but ideal. One day we let them go, to people with a large estate. That was heartbreaking."

There is a beautiful lesson in that, about love and letting go. It would have been selfish to keep your dogs if you could give them a nicer life elsewhere, wouldn't it?

"Absolutely, but I obviously didn't process that departure properly. Brando still appears in my dreams, after all these years. Then he returns home unexpectedly, and am I mad with joy.

"I often dream about my parents too: that reunion is so intensely beautiful and warm. Oh, there you are, finally! Those dreams are true to life, and the awakening is rock-hard."

Is that one of the reasons why you like being here in Antwerp, because here you feel more connected to the people that you loved?

"This is my home, my zero, I can't imagine a place in the world where I would rather live. When my mom was alive, and especially when she got sick, in between filming I tried to be with her as much as possible here in Antwerp. In the meantime I have an apartment here, my first permanent place of my own, but I've hardly been there in recent years. Now I can finally enjoy my home, I find peace, tranquility and inspiration there. I have seen fantastic sunsets on my roof terrace in recent months. So much beauty, and you can just admire it there, every day, for free. As long as you take the time to enjoy it.

"Normally I would have started filming again in April, and left for a hectic ride of at least two years, with projects that would follow each other quickly. I was at my limits, sooner or later I was going to bang my head against the wall. I feel how beneficial it is to slow down for a moment. David Lynch said that: 'Just slow things down and it becomes more beautiful'.

"As an actor you have to work in a big machine, according to a tight schedule. I have now discovered the pleasure of creating things for myself very spontaneously in my own cadence."

Is that work something you ever want to go public with?

"I want to do something with my photography someday, but I'm in no hurry. I'm also writing a film script, I've had an idea for a trilogy for a long time. It's a very personal project, and it takes time for it to crystallize into something very pure and proper. Maybe those films will come within ten years, maybe never.

"The most important thing is to keep busy. You have to look for something, anything, on which you can focus your passion, love and attention. Of course I would like to return to set, and those projects will come back later. But if I can't change anything about a situation, why worry about it?

"From a very young age I learned that there are not many certainties in life, I adapt easily to unexpected circumstances. There is one thing I can't stand, and that is feeling powerless. I never want to be the victim of a situation, I will always think: what can I do myself? Which way can I go? I have often enough stood with my back against the wall, I will always find a way out and take matters into my own hands."

So Schoenaerts decided to use this period to put Zenith - his artist name as a street artist - to hard work. Since the lockdown he has already created nine impressive murals, including one in the courtyard of the Oudenaarde prison, and one at the beginning of this month in the Antwerp Begijnenstraat, on the bare walls that form their furthest horizon for the prisoners. A moving event, he says. Not only by the touching conversations with inmates, and the forty-minute applause with which the prisoners welcomed him. "The mural contains a poem by my father. While I am there painting those beautiful words of my dad on the wall, I suddenly remember that my mom used to give meditation lessons to the prisoners there in the Begijnenstraat. I had completely forgotten about that until I stood there. How beautiful that is. Suddenly I felt my parents very tangible, very close to me."

It's a bit funny: a long time ago you were arrested for graffiti, now they invite you to prison to make a mural.

"I used to tag a lot, but I really don't like the vandalism that sometimes comes with graffiti. Defacing a facade, that's just ridiculous. But trains, bridges, tunnels.... frankly I think that's the max. Soon I'm going to do another oldskool graffiti wall, with some friends, back to the roots. But with permission, yes."

Scary dudes

The problems of the Belgian detention system are well known: outdated infrastructure, overcrowding and a system of pre-trial detention which means that some people are innocently stuck for years. Schoenaerts: "These are human lives that are destroyed by the Belgian state, isn't that scandalous?"

Schoenaerts' engagement started years ago, after meeting Hans Claus, prison director in Oudenaarde, who contacted him when he wanted to organize a screening of Le Fidèle, the film by Michaël R. Roskam starring Schoenaerts. Claus has been fighting for many years for a reform of our detention system, among others with the non-profit organization De Huizen, small-scale centers that are more focused on rehabilitation and reintegration of the detainee. How does Schoenaerts see his role? "Those murals are a kind of lubricant for me, to get attention for this problem. I am not the expert and I am certainly not a politician. This injustice touches me as a human being, and my message is clear: please listen to the people who have been working hard for decades to reform the system from the inside."

In The Mustang, your last feature film to be seen here before the lockdown, you take on the role of a prisoner who learns to tame wild horses and his demons. Has that role changed your vision?

"That rehabilitation program with mustangs really exists, and the chance of recidivism is almost zero percent. I had a conversation in the Begijnenstraat with the minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld, ed.), and he told me that the chance of relapse here is 40 to 50 percent. Isn't that madness?

"That's what fascinates me most of all: what do we do with those detainees while they're stuck? How can we help to break the destructive patterns that put them in prison? Imprisonment is a punishment in itself, but someday we'll send those people back into society, so let's mainly support them in their self-development.

"In preparation for The Mustang, I visited prisons in the U.S., and talked to men who had been detained for 20, 30 years. Heavy guys: Aryan Brotherhood (powerful crime syndicate of neo-Nazis in American prisons, ed.), Mexican gang leaders... real scary dudes. You know what those say to me? That they live in fear every day, but they must not show weakness. Psychological counseling and things like that have their value, but that's often very cerebral. I especially believe in the healing power of art. Imagine that inmates can express all those fucked up emotions through art: I think that there is an enormous potential in this."

I heard you're playing with the idea of giving acting lessons to inmates?

"That's not a concrete plan yet, but I would love it if people from the creative sector would commit themselves to this: musicians, sculptors, dancers. Or writers who help prisoners put their own story into words.

"The cultural sector needs to start sticking its neck out. The sector is lying flat, and that's terrible. But we have to keep moving. We can all do something for the community, without being paid for it. Planting small seeds, doing something good for your fellow man, something beautiful always comes out of it."

Had you been to a prison before The Mustang?

"To visit friends, yes. In Merksplas, Hoogstraten, Hasselt, Dendermonde... We shouldn't talk about that any further. A prison is deep tristesse. Who dares to call that 'a hotel', shame on you."

This summer you painted an impressive mural in Paris in honor of George Floyd, murdered by American officers. And in Ostend last week a new mural was unveiled, with a 'decapitated' Leopold II. Is activism an important part of your street art?

"Graffiti used to be more of a style exercise for me, you want to create things that get noticed within the scene. But gradually I felt like communicating with a wider audience. I like to incorporate a lot of symbolism in my paintings, such as the cracks I photograph all over the world and then magnify them in another place. And the praying hands, a universal image of hope and faith in yourself. Art has the power to speak to our deepest emotions, and that is what binds us to the other. Connectedness, empathy, harmony, solidarity, that's the essence for me."

The corona crisis is one big exercise in empathy and solidarity. Sometimes we seem to lack that.

"I refuse to surrender to cynicism, and I surround myself with positive people who do beautiful things for others. This period would lead us to insights: how do we deal with each other? Do we help each other, or is it every man for himself? A human is such a wonderful creature, but we mess it up so much for ourselves.

"Yeah, I know. Some people who read this will think: this guy is smoking too many joints. (laughs) I don't smoke joints, and I'm not an unworldly idealist. But I will always focus my attention on the good, in spite of everything."

If you always want to see the good in people, are you sometimes disappointed?

"Yes, of course. I'm not a naive brat, I've learned to guard my boundaries. I can't please everyone all the time, and I don't let anyone rush me. I react badly when people put pressure on me because they want things from me. The perception of me that others have of me, I can't control. I don't let myself put out of balance easily anymore."

I saw that on your Instagram Stories you warned about fake profiles on social media, of people pretending to be you. That made you visibly angry.

"Really, that makes me angry. Every day I receive screenshots from people who have been tricked by crooks who approach innocent victims with my name and my pictures. There are stories of fans who have paid thousands of euros because they were promised a meet-and-greet with me. How disgusting is that? One person has transferred 14,000 euros to someone who pretended to be my manager.

"Of course, that raises questions about how gullible some people can be. But I've seen those chat conversations for myself: those criminals are terribly sneaky. They know how to play on the vulnerabilities of their victims in a very cunning way. This is manipulation and swindle of the filthiest kind.

"Really, I get physically unwell when I think about it. How can someone be so mean? If I ever catch these guys, I'm gonna bash their skulls in, I'm not kidding. Sorry."

Or: those crooks get a jail sentence, where you're going to give them acting lessons.

(laughs) "Okay, let it be clear that I think everyone should be punished for their crimes. My commitment to the prison system is not a plea for impunity, and I certainly don't want to romanticize crime.

"But when someone abuses innocent people's trust in such a cunning way, the question is: how did you derail so morally? And above all: how can we initiate a transformation in that person? Surely you can't lock someone up and expect that person to suddenly make better choices years later? First such a person has to take responsibility for his own actions."

Do you have something criminal on your conscience?

"No." (Thinks for a second) "No. Thank God. I couldn't live with that.

"I've probably hurt people in my life, like everybody else. Sometimes we just hurt people because of who we are, or because we can't fulfill what others want from us. But I have never harmed anyone consciously or criminally, no."

As a teenager you sometimes came into contact with the juvenile court, for vandalism. Do you think you could have ended up on the other side of the bars?

"Probably, a life can take strange turns sometimes."

What made you sit here today, and not get on the 'wrong' path?

"Wait... that's a good question. There's the one terrible dramatic event that caused a total turnaround in my life: when my dad went into a coma after a psychosis, and I was told he only had 24 hours left to live.

"I was 21 then, thrown out of school for the umpteenth time. I was doing graffiti and wanted to find my way creatively. But I was messing around, going with friends who... Anyway, there was latent danger, it threatened to go a little bit the wrong way.

"And then I got that phone call: come and say goodbye. Bam. The relationship with my father had been sour for years, we hardly saw each other. Until I stood there at his deathbed in intensive care... I only felt love, a wave of emotions that I had pushed down very deeply. That realization was rock-hard: this was it. My father and I will never get the chance to figure shit out, I thought.

"Long story, the rest is known: after 72 hours my father woke up from a coma against all odds. Like a plant: he could not speak, reacted to nothing or nobody. According to the chief psychiatrist, we had to accept that his condition would never improve. That was without the fighting spirit of my mother and me.

"It's because of that unlikely event that I've changed my whole lifestyle. For eight months, my mother and I went to visit my father every day. We talked to him, but he seemed to look straight through us. For hours we sat with him at the psychiatry department of Stuivenberg, how desperate those first months were also. We continued to fight, taught him to talk, to eat, to walk. A miracle, the doctors called it. Bullshit of course. It was love, dedication and stubbornness. Especially thanks to my mother, the lioness who kept fighting for him. And see how much beauty came out of it. My life then received an entirely different impulse.

"I suddenly think of an anecdote I've never told before. After a while we were allowed to take my father to the cafeteria once in a while, or to the garden. But he was absolutely not allowed to leave the hospital. Fuck it. I hid a bag of clothes for him, secretly dressed him in the toilet and took my father to the city. By bus, because I didn't have a driver's license. I wanted to stimulate his senses, test if any memories would come back. He was fond of Our Lady's Cathedral, so that's where I wanted to take him."

Matthiaske, why am I crying?

He plays it out. The written version here is only a dead script compared to the lived-through performance, right there on that dark square, just around the corner of the Arenbergschouwburg, where Matthias made his stage debut as a 9-year-old boy next to father Julien, as The Little Prince.

Matthias shows how he supported his frail dad, and how they shuffled in small, careful steps towards the cathedral. Dad looking at the ground to be sure not to fall. "I say, 'Dad, look up'. He looks up, and I see the tears rolling down his cheeks. I had never seen my father cry. 'Matthiaske,' he says, 'can you tell me why I'm crying?'

"I had already decided then that I would take my father into my house. Overconfident, yes, at that age, but they have become the most beautiful years of my life. Mom came by every day to help. Suddenly we were a bit of a family again, something we had only been for a short time when I was young."

It was at that time that you decided to become an actor. Why did you decide to become an actor?

"I had always resisted following in my father's footsteps. In my youth I mainly wanted to break away from my father, and seek my own path. I didn't want to have anything to do with him and all those loudmouths around him in the theater world. But most of all I was terrified that compared to the great Julien Schoenaerts I would never be good enough.

"Only now do I understand why I then decided to go to the conservatory. Not to become an actor, but to understand my father. We had so many years together, and now that we had been given a second chance, I wanted to get to know him as well as possible. By acting, maybe I could get closer to him." (pauses)

Sentimental fuss

He banishes the tears. It's one of the many things he has in common with his father, he says: they're both very emotional, but they hate sentimental fuss. "Come on, Matthias: breathe," he commands himself.

"Voilà, see how much beauty can come out of misery. What a chain of beautiful things came out of the fight my mother and I put up in the most hopeless situation. Who knows how differently my life would have turned out?"

"There are so many lessons in that. If we just talked about the rehabilitation of detainees, for example. It takes commitment. Not a workshop of two hours. You have to persevere, even in the event of a setback, with no guarantee of a happy ending. That's why I think it's so important to keep telling that story about my dad. Those are the values I believe in: dedication, stamina, attention, love. You can apply that to everything in life. Love is the fuel."

You often talk about your parents as if you want to keep them alive with your words.

"Because my mom and dad are the people I've loved most. With them I shared the most important moments, built the most beautiful memories. That loss is enormous. Life has been really fucking tough since they've been gone.

"That's what grabs me so much in this period. How many people have died of corona in Belgium?"

According to Google, today, on the day of the interview, the counter stands at almost 14,000 deaths.

"Fourteen thousand! Imagine how many people that has an impact on? How many people have suddenly lost their mother, father, brother, sister, best friend or neighbor? Behind those figures lie tens of thousands of poignant stories, of people who see a loved one torn from their lives. That is a mountain of unresolved grief, and far too little attention is paid to it."

Earlier during our conversation a guy had walked past coughing and maskless. It pissed Schoenaerts off: "And whining about masks or strict measures. Grow some fucking balls. Having to say goodbye to a loved one, that's the worst thing."

"Isn't that what this period teaches us? That our time here is limited? And what really counts in life: sharing moments of beauty with the people you hold most dear. All the rest is wallpaper. Having success, making movies, that's all fun. But the day you lie on your deathbed, you really don't think about the professional successes on your resume. No way."

[pinepickled]

I posted 8,954 times in 2021

171 posts created (2%)

8783 posts reblogged (98%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 51.4 posts.

I added 249 tags in 2021

#pine talks - 79 posts

#pine's asks - 43 posts

#sk8 the infinity - 24 posts

#🌿 thirsts - 21 posts

#sk8 adam - 19 posts

#pine's art - 15 posts

#obey me shall we date - 13 posts

#my art - 12 posts

#sk8 - 12 posts

#yugioh - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#not to mention that greece is a poor country going through a lot of economic hardship and literally went through genocide with the armenians

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Oh my god....

3 Gatsu No Lion fans, yall remember this?

Good ol' Souya putting pure glucose into his tea?

Spoilers below

And you know how Souya suddenly lost his hearing for unexplainable reasons? How doctors were stumped?

Well

I've never laughed harder in my life

48 notes • Posted 2021-06-29 07:35:51 GMT

#4

I like how in the Battle City arc, Kaiba shows up right after Joey says he can beat anyone. He stays for exactly 2 minutes just to intimidate Joey and then leaves to go get the Egyptian God Cards. King shit. Only there for the drama. Only there to call Joey a dog and fulfill their mutual pet play kink and then scram. You love to see it.

52 notes • Posted 2021-05-30 05:29:32 GMT

#3

Tea shouldn't have played Duel Monsters at all, she should have just had an AR in her purse and whenever someone pissed her off she just takes it out and kills them. Pegasus? Deadasus. Those goons that kept chasing Kaiba in the early episodes? Dead. Her landlord? Dead. Censor that, 4kids.

67 notes • Posted 2021-05-28 04:41:17 GMT

#2

Before I start fuckin crying

The European Parliament has recognized the Armenian genocide.

A big step for the 1.5 million Armenians who lost their lives to Turkey, and who continue to be ridiculed by Erdogan.

90 notes • Posted 2021-04-24 02:58:23 GMT

#1

I love the sort of Justice League dynamic where Batman is a complete cryptid who only shows up sometimes and the only person who can act normally around him is Clark. In this au verse Batman is like one of those drawings where he's just a black shape with eyes so none of the JL can see that he's actually human, and all of them are absolutely flabbergasted at how normal Clark can act around Bats. Like he's normally quiet and keeps to himself, only occasionally chatting with Clark, so the JL don't really know what to expect when he addresses them all.

Example:

Batman: I need to leave early today

Green Lantern: What? Why?

Batman, dark and brooding, gravelly voice dead pan: I have a little league game to attend.

Superman: oh! Tell Robin i wish him luck!

Batman: hn.

The rest of the JL: ?????????? Robin is Batman's kid??

Example 2 (inspired by @/batshit-birds)

Batman: This is Red Hood. He is my little boy.

The JL: *looking at the tall, buff, grown ass man with guns on his hips and who sounds like the opposite of inhaling helium and who is wearing what is functionally a muzzle with a hood that looks like it used to be a different color before something dark red got all over it*

Red Hood: hi

Clark: Good to see you again Hood! How're the others?

And the only reason Clark can be so normal around them is because he and Batman work together often because Metropolis and Gotham are so close by, and Clark has had to babysit unruly Robins when Batman needed a day off. He's seen all their spoopy tricks and knows that under the cowl and mask there is just a normal man who's really good at freaking people out.

6290 notes • Posted 2021-10-23 19:45:50 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Welcome to the weekend!

Today’s status is dedicated to old friends. People that have known me ten years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, there are even one or two on here who have known me for 50 years! Yes, that hairy freak standing in the playground of Highgate Wood Secondary Modern Comprehensive on the first day of term; that weirdo was 11 on that day and I am 61 now! In a few weeks’ time, I am having a reunion brunch with some of those people and I’m really looking forward to it. Two of the most used words on here are “time flies” and many of you reading this will know exactly what I mean! 40 crept up on you like a thief in the night, 50 will be a sneaky bastard and 60 will completely do your head in! Time flies! We’ve seen people younger than us die this year. I’m definitely not coming with that old cliché “make the most of every moment”. All of my friends know how to make the most of every moment. I would merely advise you to take care of yourself. If that means drinking until the early hours then do it, if that means an early night with some cocoa then do it. If you don’t understand this term ‘wellbeing’, it’s really all about you maintaining good health and staying sane. As my dad used to say, “These things are sent to try us!”

I have friends and family that have died from catching the virus, I know people that have caught it, been on ventilators and been very near to death (and you know some of these people too!) So, when I hear people saying that the virus doesn’t exist, my respect for them is gone. I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies as far as I can throw them but, in this situation, I believe they worked with experts to create a vaccine and, ever since we were young, we’ve been getting jabs with no fuss, so I don’t understand why everyone has gone into conspiracy theory mode. Lockdown reduced the number of deaths, people walking around with no masks has caused the numbers to go back up; it’s not rocket science. While The Disease Spreaders dig their heels in, we are trapped in this living hell.

Look forward to your company tomorrow afternoon at 1.00 pm for ‘The A-Z Of Mi-Soul Music’; The Letter C (Pt. 2.) My executive producer this week is the legend that is Sandy Patel. Thanks for your help, brother! Have a fabulous and funky Friday! I love you all.

If you’re anywhere near the Streatham area this evening and you fancy a drink and some good music, I will be spinning proper tunes for grown folk alongside my brother Stevie Dundee at The White Lion, 232 Streatham High Road, SW16 (5.00-1.00).

[unnursvanablog]

The books I read in 2020 / part 3.

I read over 50 books this year... so I had to section it off into three parts.

The Subtle knife - Philip Pullman: ☆☆☆☆ I wanted to revisit the story before watching the second series of the TV show. This book was always my favorite in the series, or at least when I first read the trilogy. I just loved the blossoming friendship between Will and Lyra so much. There are lots of answers we get here, but we get far more newer questions than I remembered.

Lyra’s Oxford - Philip Pullman: ☆☆☆ I am so fond of this world that Pullman has created and I always find it so wonderful to visit it again. I really enjoyed this story, I but I also found it just a bit too short.

Perfume: The Story of Murderers - Patrick Süskind: ☆☆☆☆ I really enjoyed this one. It's not a large book, but it's really interesting and very unusual. I had the movie in my head the whole time I was reading the book, which took a bit of the fun out of reading it though. But the writing was beautiful.

Archenemies, Supernova – Marissa Meyer: ☆☆☆, ☆☆☆. All the books that I have read by Meyer have really interesting premise, nice and likeable characters with some great dynamic between them and comradery, which is just so fun to read and this series certainly delivers on that. The romance is cute, and the plot is very fast paced and exciting. It's a very fun and easy read. Now, while I do think this series explores some interesting themes such as abuse of power, challenging your leaders to recognizing that the views that other around you and those you admire aren’t always correct, I also felt part of the last book, and the ending fumbled over some of them or didn't really uphold them well enough or go as hard as I wanted them to go. It almost felt too easy. Just like some of these superhero movies it's very entertaining, but might not always leave a lot behind in the end.

The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oatbringer, - Brandon Sanderson: ☆☆☆, ☆☆☆☆, ☆☆☆. When I first started this story I felt like it was really slow, a bit boring and just sort of dragging it's feet through clunky worldbuilding and backstories. The first part of the Way of Kings was not a fun read to me. Although Sanderson is great at creating a interesting and dynamic worlds and setting for his fantasy story (it's one of the things he's known for) I wish he could do so with a little less info-dumps. It really bored me, there wasn't enough story to hook me and that was the main reason why I switched to the audiobooks for this series. The audiobook finally managed to draw me into the story.

All the books in Stormlight Archive suffer from a similar problems as the first one, in various degrees, although the stakes do increase as you go further into the story and towards the plot has escalated so much that you do not seem to be able to put the book down, it's the start and the meandering middle that kinda suck a lot of excitement out if this story for me. The story is sometimes a little too slow for me, although I find some of it enjoyable. I just personally like a bit more plot. You're constantly learning more about the world and how it works, but I wish there was more rise to the story all throughout the books, and I think Sanderson is extremely weak when it comes to such political intrigue. I want a bit more escalating tension. I experienced very similar thing with Mistborn. There is also the fact that some parts of the books are more interesting than other depending on the POV, but that can happen with a story as big as this one. I just wish there was a little less info-dumps, a bit more suspense throughout the plot and that the worldbuilding could be mixed better in with the actual plot.

The Burning God – R. F. Kuang: ☆☆☆☆ The Poppy War series is one of the most stand out series I have read in a while! I flew through the first two via audiobooks earlier this year and then I picked up the last book in the trilogy as soon as it came out. It is very dark and does not shy away from the gruesome details of war and what it can do to people and how it can just break them and the aftermath that it leaves behind. Even with all the magical powers that some of characters have things never get easy. They only seem to get worse.

I admired Kuang's use of real history as inspiration for this series and how she did it, as I read a little bit more about the Chinese civil war and the opium wars in the process, and how truly morally gray the characters were (the term morally gray gets throw around a lot) and how everyone could turn on each other at any given moment, the characters are someone you can empathize with but they are also so flawed and unlikeable at the same time. You are supposed to be conflicted on these characters and I think Kuang manages to do that so well and I enjoyed reading a whole lot.

The story surprised me at almost every turn, and it was so satisfying when every piece fell into place and we got to the ending that this story deserves. The writing itself is quite straight forward and to the point and not very flowery, which I think suits the story and the subject matter quite well. It does have some pacing issues, especially in the second book for me, which can sometimes be a bit of a drag. But the overall story is super strong. It is not for people who want to have a light, fun fantasy read or cannot stomach a lot of violence. This is an adult grimdark after all. Lots of trigger warning for this one like substance abuse, self-harm, rape, death, violence etc. I can personally handle a lot, but even I found it hard to read at times. But the way these things were handled or written about in the story and how it was handled did usually not bother me. It was not done for sheer shock value.

The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden: ☆☆☆☆ I actually sort of knew before I read this book that this would be something I would really enjoy. And I was right. I loved the atmosphere, the feeling of it, and this world that was brought to life by this book. It felt like reading a folk tale by the fire, it had that feeling, as it is some sort of retelling of Slavic folktales, I think. The story is rather slow and I felt it dragged its feet in some places. Especially towards the middle. But I always found it really fascinating and captivating read.

The Polar Bear Explorers ’Club - Alex Bell: ☆☆ This story never really captured my attention. I often found it rather confusing, a bit vapid and even a bit all over the place. There was not enough danger, not enough conflict and the main character got on my nerves a bit as I thought she was this typical 'I'm not like other girls' female character that you meet from time to time. Although I associate it mostly with YA books.

Daemon Voices - Philip Pullman: ☆☆☆☆ I did not read this book page by page, but when it comes to such a collection of essays and so on, I personally don't think you need to. I often have a hard time reading non-fiction and I usually find it more fun to listen to them. It's not a straightforward story that really pulls me forward as there is no plot. I am a plot driven person. So reading it did take some time, but I still found a lot of interesting thoughts and ponderings about what it means to tell stories, write them and publish them. It really made me ponder at least. And I also found a lot of great quotes as well.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S.Lewis: ☆☆☆☆ I just wanted to reread one good and short classic that gives a little Christmas feeling. However, I was not always in the mood to re-read books and I didn't always find myself in the mood for it this Christmas. But that is not the fault of the book. I've read it before and loved it. I just do not re-read books often and I just often am not in the mood to read books during the Christmas holidays for some reason.

[tinyshe]

still worth reading ... more now than ever:

The Kraken Unleashed: Are We Ready to Fight the Beast?

Father Richard Heilman  January 14, 2015

“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names.  And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority.  One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. They worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it? – Revelation 13:1-10

“In the 2010 film, Clash of the Titans, there is a scene in which Zeus, angry with the humans, is persuaded by Hades to visit vengeance upon the mortals in the form of the Kraken, a giant monster from the depths of the sea. The visual of this great evil being unleashed is something to behold:

“If this scene is evocative, perhaps it is because it’s familiar. Like a Kraken released, we have a colossal problem in our world today. There are few who are not stunned by the growing specter of evil; a darkness more profound and spreading more quickly across the globe than any civilized human being could have ever imagined. Many of those I speak with have admitted that they now abstain completely from watching the news: “It’s just too much,” they say. “It’s just so horrifying!”

“For the past two years I have been confiding to close friends my own growing sense that something is happening, that something unholy is stirring. I have spoken with others who have admitted the same suspicion. The way I have tried to describe it in the past is like the rumblings felt just before a volcano explodes.

“Now, I find myself wondering if the eruption is upon us.

“Who could ever conceive of atrocities like those we are seeing executed in the name of religion? Where once we might see coverage of a tragic conflict far away, we now face an evil that is not confined to some distant corner of the planet. With the always-on, near-instant spread of information in our digital age, your next door neighbor can be radicalized from the comfort of their living room.

“What we are facing is, first and foremost, a form of spiritual warfare. In a time where violence is rampant and the innocent are threatened, it is true that we must be ready to physically engage the malefactors. But if we deny the spiritual nature of this surge of evil we are facing, we will have no hope of victory.

“When confronted with atrocity, the immediate reaction of most people is, “What can we do to stop it?” Yes! That is the exact question we need to be asking. Summoning us to courage, St. Augustine challenges us to do battle: “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

“But to begin to answer the question of what we can do, we must first properly assess where we are. What are our capabilities? How is our strength? What is the state of our conditioning? Without this kind of brutal honesty, we are likely to flounder rather than fight.

“Jesus warned, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth” (Luke 21:34-35).

“And yet isn’t that exactly what has become of us? Consider this sobering analysis of our present condition from columnist Jeffrey Kuhner at the Washington Times:

“For the past 50 years, every major institution has been captured by the radical secular left. The media, Hollywood, TV, universities, public schools, theater, the arts, literature — they relentlessly promote the false gods of sexual hedonism and radical individualism. Conservatives have ceded the culture to the enemy. Tens of millions of unborn babies have been slaughtered; illegitimacy rates have soared; divorce has skyrocketed; pornography is rampant; drug use has exploded; sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS have killed millions; birth control is a way of life; sex outside of wedlock has become the norm; countless children have been permanently damaged — their innocence lost forever — because of the proliferation of broken homes; and sodomy and homosexuality are celebrated openly. America has become the new Babylon.

“This cultural assessment is bleak. And I believe that underlying it all is a deeper evil, a more ancient and intractable error which gives rise to all the rest. Many have pointed to “Modernism” as the heresy of our times. Modernism, while it takes many forms, is basically a break or rejection of our past in favor of all things new. And, while it seems evident that our Church is fully infected with the heresy of Modernism, I believe that it, too, is a symptom of this more fundamental threat.

“What am I referring to? Something that impacts the very nature of human existence and the opportunity for our salvation. Lacking an official name, I call this monster, “Stealth Arianism.” Students of history know that the Arian heresy – the worst crisis in the Church before our present age – was rooted in the belief that Jesus Christ was merely a created being, not equal to God the Father.  Stealth Arianism follows the same fatal error, but with a twist: while the Arians of the fourth century openly denied Christ’s divinity, today‘s Arians will profess Jesus as God, and yet through their actions deny it. In other words, they don’t even know they are heretics. Many even believe that they are doing God’s work in their attempts to elevate Christ’s humanity at the cost of His divinity.

“You see, once we diminish the identity of Christ as the Son of God, we are left to view Him as simply a historical figure that was a nice guy, a respectable teacher and a good example for how we are to live. Religion is then reduced to a nice organization that does nice things for people as we seek a kind of psychotherapy for self-actualization. And this is not only not what He came to give us, but it’s something He made sure to leave no room for.

In his Christological examination, [easyazon_link asin=”0060652926″ locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”onep073-20″]Mere Christianity[/easyazon_link], C.S. Lewis makes the case plain:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

“Over the past 50 years, the Stealth Arians have done everything within their power to remove from our lived experience of Catholicism anything that would point to the divinity of Christ, and the supernatural quality of our faith. Everything has been stripped from our churches – sacred art, sacred architecture, sacred music, and the sacred elements of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – and we are left in the barren desert of the banal. It is no wonder many Catholics think nothing of approaching the Most Holy Eucharist dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and grabbing the host like they’re reaching into a bag of chips. As Flannery O’Connor said, “If it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” It’s more surprising that these individuals even bother to attend Mass at all.

“Moreover, the Stealth Arians have deliberately chosen to keep their teachings muddled, ambiguous and elusive in an effort to increase “pastoral sensitivity” as the highest of all values, which keeps people feeling good about themselves just the way they are – though never challenged to strive for sainthood! Of course, when people like the way their church makes them feel about themselves, that keeps the money flowing into the collection basket. But whether confused and uncertain, or simply spiritually blind for lack of true pastoral care, the faithful who have been abandoned by their spiritual leaders are prone to be conformed to the world and its prince, a murderer and liar from the beginning.

“St. John Chrysostom exhorts, “Let us be filled with confidence, and let us discard everything so as to be able to meet this onslaught. Christ has equipped us with weapons more splendid than gold, more resistant than steel, weapons more fiery than any flame and lighter than the slightest breeze … These are weapons of a totally new kind, for they have been forged for a previously unheard-of type of combat. I, who am a mere man, find myself called upon to deal blows to demons; I, who am clothed in flesh, find myself at war with incorporeal powers.”

“That sounds noble for St. John, but about for us? Are we really prepared to such a fight? Just when we need mighty spiritual warriors for these dangerous times, Satan has spent the past 50 years diminishing the Church’s legions to little more than a bunch of Girl Scouts. Now that we are left in our weakened state, Satan seems to be calling out to deal the last blow, “Release the Kraken!”

“Indeed, what can we do?

“St. Paul gives us the answer in his epistle to the Ephesians (6:10-18):

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.  As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

“Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

Originally published on September 18, 2014.

Father Richard Heilman

Fr. Richard M. Heilman is a priest of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin State Chaplain for the Knights of Columbus. He is a regular guest host on Relevant Radio’s The Inner Life, and is the founder of the Knights of Divine Mercy, which is an apostolate for Catholic men’s faith formation..

He is also he founder of the Ladies of Divine Mercy, which is an apostolate for Catholic women’s faith formation. He is the author of the Church Militant Field Manual and the Roman Catholic Man website, which are both dedicated to helping Catholics understand and train for their role in the mission of combating evil and rescuing the souls of our loved ones who have lost the precious gift of faith.