#talking about it like it's any less nonsense or more obviously metaphorical than the original

[dkettchen]

[hexalene]

how to truly annihilate data from your flash/external drives for both windows and mac from someone who also glazes over and zones out of those jargon-laden tech bro tutorials trying to maximize your desperation for ad revenue by breaking every single step into a separate article with more jargon and more links and more jargon and more li-

So there you are, hand CLENCHED around your brand new 32GB flash drive from the discount bin left over from the back to school blitz at Walmart. 32GB of POSSIBILITY.

Unfortunately, after a few months or years of packing the damn thing with weird shit, like, idk, furry porn and weird candid shots of Gritty, idk I’m not here to judge your life, you clear out the damn thing, empty....but not.

Those 32GB of possibility now struggle to accommodate a PITIFUL 800MB of deep investigative research into the origins of the Florida Skunk Ape. What has happened? How could your memory have been eaten away like this?

So it turns out your flash drive will hold on to as much of the data you put onto it even AFTER you’ve dragged the files to the recycle bin or the trash. 

This sort of news can be a blessing or a curse. For the blessed, yes! If you’ve deleted something by accident, YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO GET IT BACK. But that’s not this tutorial. 

If You Gargle Cock For The Google PC Master Race:

>Plug in the flashdrive >Go to “Start” >Go to “This PC” >Go to “Devices and Drives” >Right click your flash drive >Click “Format” >Careful now boys, it can get scary here: >Okay, so now you’ve got some spicy options. >In “Capacity” This should show approximately whatever the drive’s original capacity was, maybe a little less. Leave this alone. >We’ll come back to “File System“ ignore for now >Skip to “Allocation Unit Size” and make sure it’s on the default setting, whatever that is. >For “Volume Label” this is just the name of your drive. Call it whatever you want. It’s the thing you can rename whenever, so it literally doesn’t matter. >Now all that’s left is “File System” and “Quick Format”

File System For Basic Bitches:

>All memes aside, you can end up with a few or a lot of options. I’m sure there’s a proper answer for this, but the options you MOST LIKELY need to worry about are “NTFS” and “ExFAT”. If you’re needing more than that, that’s way out of my paygrade. > “NTFS” is your default, 100% safe for windows option. Can’t go wrong, especially if this drive has only ever been used with Windows. >HOWEVER: >If you need to switch between Windows and Mac for whatever reason, you’ll want to pick “ExFAT” >”ExFAT” is the option for compatibility across both systems.

Format Options Making Your Files Unrecoverable Even With The Patriot Act:

>I’m being funny, but this IS actually, kinda, for real, what you’re dealing with, so READ CAREFULLY. >The default is for “Quick Format” to be UNchecked >UNchecked will unleash holy nuclear hellfire upon your drive, burning away your sins and leaving only a pure, newborn flash drive behind. >THIS CAN TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT SHOULD. If you need this drive quickly, DO NOT CHOOSE THIS OPTION. >This will annihilate all the data on the drive. The data will be UNRECOVERABLE. >Now, memes about the CIA and weird furry shit aside, you may want to be cautious about using this. If this flash drive has ever stored anything important, like family photos or important paperwork, or anything you’d be turbo fucked to lose, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BACKUPS.

>If you’re uncertain about going full nuclear hellfire, CHECK the “Quick Format” option. >This is faster, and leaves the data somewhat recoverable on your drive. How much or how little? No idea. That Basic Bitch comment up in file systems also applies to me.

>WITH THAT NONSENSE DECIDED: >Click “Start” and then “Yes” >Now you’re cookin’ with peanut oil. Fresh, beautiful, full of data and ready to ride.

If You’re a Slut For Steve Jobs’ Forbidden Fruit:

>Plug that drive in >Go to “Applications“ >Go to “Utilities” >Go to “Disk Utility” >In the column on the left, you should see your main drive, and under “External” should be whatever you call your flashdrive. >Click it to enter the SpiceZone >Now here we have a few interesting things to note >The main section breaks down all of the info about your drive, and actually lets you see the Invisible Memory Eater haunting your device. You’ll see what data is under “Used“ versus the drive’s actual capacity. That used shit is what we’ll be clearing out. >On the top of the window, you’ll see five options: >First Aid (worth talking about, so we will) >Partition (abandon all hope ye who click thee) >Erase (THE GOOD SHIT WE CARE ABOUT) >Restore (out of my paygrade) >Unmount (fancy eject key this is fine we just don’t need it now)

File Systems For Basic Bitches: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

>Click “Erase” >”Name” is whatever your drive is called. Call it whatever you want, it can change any time, no harm no foul. >”Format” is where it gets spicy > “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” is your default, 100% safe option. Can’t go wrong, especially if this drive has only ever been used with Apple computers. >HOWEVER: >If you need to switch between Windows and Mac for whatever reason, you’ll want to pick “ExFAT” >”ExFAT” is the option for compatibility across both systems

Format Options So Tight It Meets The US Department Of Defense (DOD) 5220-22 M Standard For Fucking Over The CIA

>It sounds funny, but the title is literally an option you can pick, I’m not kidding >First off is “First Aid” >TECHNICALLY, this is not an erasure function. This is a basic system diagnostic tool that can be used on your main hard drive to find any errors or corrupted files. It can do the same for a flash drive, which in my experience often results in freeing up some of that precious precious data without the commitment of a full wipe. If you’re nervous about nuking the drive, this is a safe place to start. >If all you want is a quick and easy wipe of the drive, ignore “Security Options” and hit “Erase” >Now for the good shit: “Security Options” >Click this bad boy. The window that drops down will be a slider with four options. “Fastest -> Most Secure” The middle two don’t have names. >”Fastest” is the default option. This is the equivalent to Window’s “Quick Format” which clears your drive, but like, leaves a potential breadcrumb trail back to your embarrassing One-Direction-During-The-Purge fanfic, so be warned. The second and third options are escalations of erasure, each taking a little longer, since it’s re-writing the data more and more each time. >”Most Secure” is your CLEANSING NUCLEAR HELLFIRE option with the hilarious note about the DOD. >THIS CAN TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT SHOULD. If you need this drive quickly, DO NOT CHOOSE THIS OPTION. >This will annihilate all the data on the drive. The data will be UNRECOVERABLE. >Now, memes aside, you may want to be cautious about using this. If this flash drive has ever stored anything important, like family photos or important paperwork, or anything you’d be turbo fucked to lose, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BACKUPS. >HAVE YOU CHOSEN? >Hit “OK” >Hit “Erase”

AND WE’RE DONE.

This last bit down here isn’t necessary for the tutorial, but I wanted to include it as a fun side trivia thing:

All this shit is the secret behind those cop shows recovering “““““deleted””””””” computer data. Remember how my joke example went from 32GB to 1GB despite the flash drive being “empty”? The Invisible Memory Eater is actually the drive’s previously held data, despite what efforts you may have put into deleting it. It’s still there, like a ghost. 

This is my best understanding of what exactly is happening, and why some data is recoverable, and why some is not: Using a painting as a metaphor, let’s say this:

You have a blank white panel and you paint a picture of a cat.

Next, you take white paint and cover the cat up. The cat is still there, but now there’s no way to see it. 

You paint a sunflower. And then you cover it in white paint. The cat and the sunflower are still there, and now your panel is pretty thick with paint. 

You paint a house. And then you cover the panel in white paint. All three paintings are still there, and the panel is really bloated and heavy. You had two options.  

1. It’s not as capable of being worked as it was previously, so you give the panel away. The next person gets the canvas and notices how thick the paint is. With an x-ray, they can see multiple paintings under the plain white layer. Now, with a special tool, they can carefully scrape off each layer of paint to see each image. The house shows up well enough, maybe a bit of a mess. The sunflower is more degraded, and the cat is unrecognizable. But now they have an idea of what the old paintings were. And that wasn’t your intention at all, that was private. But you can’t do anything about it now.

OR

2. You decide to freshen up the panel. Maybe it won’t be as good as new, but you can work with that. You take the panel around back, and blast the damn thing with the power washer until all traces of the paint are gone. Maybe the board is a little worse for wear, not quite brand new, but the evidence of the old work is absolutely gone, forever.  There’s no image left to access. 

Now when you give the panel away, well, maybe someone could notice the wear and tear, maybe a hint of old paint in the nooks and crannies, but there will never be enough to bring the old paintings back to life. Or even know that there were more than one painting at all. 

That’s simplifying, obviously, and doesn’t perfectly line up with the technical things that are happening, but I think it’s a decent metaphor. To line it back up to the cop show bits, they’ve basically got the x-ray and the special tools to get at the old data, and the tutorial above would be the power washer annihilating everything. 

[regrettablewritings]

Podcasts, Youtubes, and TV Shows to Distract Yourself With Because Why Not, and Also Because I Wanna Blab About Some of These

Since I can’t go to work and horrify my coworkers/make them realize I’m a mess and/or nerd by telling them about the type of media I’m into, I’m foisting my recommendations on all of y’all who choose to read this. I frankly do not care how many people have actually heard of these things because I’m also sure there’s plenty of people who, like me, are very slow and oblivious to entertainment, or who have heard of the property but were never that convinced.

Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts

Type: TV series

200 years after a mysterious yet earth-shattering event, much of humanity has taken to living beneath the surface in communities called burrows, wherein life goes on, if effected somewhat by the bizarre fauna that exists above them (referred to as “mutes”, short for “mutant”). One burrow girl, Kipo, founds her world turned almost literally inside-out when she finds herself not only separated from her father and the only world she’s ever known, but on the surface, no less. What ensues is her trying to find her way back home with the help of a stony-faced little girl with a massive chip on her shoulder; a music enthusiast and his literal gadfly friend; and some . . . unusual allies that only an oblivious optimist like Kipo could make. All to a kickass soundtrack, a beautiful backdrop of art, and a world where animals have basically evolved into gangs under a looming threat known as Scarlemagne. If you can’t already tell, I love this series to bits and now is the perfect time for people to get into it and encourage another season of it. Just . . . don’t think too hard that whatever happened to cause the Event in the show happened in October 2020 . . .

Available on: Netflix

My Dad Wrote a Porno

Type: Podcast

This should go without saying, but this podcast is definitely meant for more mature audiences. Or somebody with a strong stomach. Not that it’ll always be easy to tell with the type of content this series gives. When Jamie Morton’s father handed him his manuscripts for his self-published books, he had no idea he was being given a pinnacle of a polished turd: It was erotica. Really, really, really bad erotica. But the ear’s trash is the heart’s pleasure with this bad girl, as Jamie enlists the company of friends Alice and James to provide commentary on “Rocky Flintstone”’s series Belinda Blinked, a drama chronicling the sexcapades of Belinda Blumenthal as she climbs the ladders (and men and women) both in and out of the cut-throat world of pots and pans sales. What follows is a goldmine of awkward metaphors, strange bedmates, and just an overall stampede of whiplashing events that somehow exceed expectations. Listen in if you dare . . . And make sure you’re in good company for it. Fun Fact, though: Daisy Ridley, Ben Barnes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Sheen, Mara Wilson, Elijah Wood are but a few well-known fans of this series! Nobody is safe . . .

Available on: Wherever podcasts can be found

Lore

Type: Podcast

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. And what better way to be reminded of that, then to have the dulcet tones of Aaron Mahnke tell you about the lighthouse incident that the 2016 movie The Lighthouse was loosely inspired by? Suffice to say, this podcast could also be interpreted with some advised discretion, but definitely in a way that’s different from My Dad Wrote a Porno. In the centuries humankind has existed, we’ve managed to create a menagerie of beasts, both fictional and in ourselves. Lore explores all the many different kinds of events and persons and creatures we have to offer. In any given episode, we could be talking about anything from the bizarre story of a lady who convinced 18th century physicians that she was giving birth to rabbits, to something more disturbing like the life of H.H. Holmes. Or something as relatively innocuous as the relationship between gremlins and flight. Regardless of the subject, however, you’ll definitely walk away knowing something new, if bizarre. And perhaps slightly terrifying.

Available on: Wherever podcasts can be found

The Amelia Project

Type: Podcast

Congratulations: You have been made aware of The Amelia Project. If you’re not interested in this, exit the page. Now. If you continue, there’s no unhearing it. Good choice! A new interest awaits. If you don’t enjoy it, please consider the whole thing a hoax. Okay but in all seriousness, there’s no way to do The Amelia Project justice in just a simple description. The plot sounds quite simple, really: People want to disappear and start a new life, The Amelia Project is there to help – with a price. And that’s if you can actually get a hold of them! What really makes the show, however, are the people and the writing, and I’m not just talking about the almost childlike Interviewer with an obsession for hot cocoa. I’m talking about the clientele: I’m talking about the macabre-obsessed theme park owner who’s out for revenge; the cult leader who’s in way over his head; a Santa impersonator stuck in a miserable marriage with his own manager; an actual podcast character trying to outrun his creators. And obviously this would all be nowhere without the spectacular writing! I really can explain this series without blabbing on and potentially spoiling things; The Amelia Project is an experience!

Available on: Wherever podcasts can be found

LegalEagle

Type: Youtube channel

To be frank, I just like learning for the sake of learning, even if I may not always necessarily understand the topic or have any plans to use it in the foreseeable future. The big difference here being that at least this channel makes learning about the law fun and breaks it down. Headed by a certified lawyer (because what an age we live in, where professionals actually take time out of their lives to teach us common folk), there’s a multitude of series D.J. Stone uses to help break down the complex world of law, from reviewing the realism of procedural favorites (Law & Order, The Good Wife, HTGAWM, etc), to analyzing real-life situations, to even watching childhood media that has nothing to do with the law and determining how much money, say, Willy Wonka would owe in a lawsuit. In short, it is one of my worst subjects done in one of my favorite ways to learn! Plus, Stone hates business students and is perfectly willing to poke fun at law students so it’s all fun, frankly.

Available on: Youtube

Nando v Movies

Type: Youtube channel

Sometimes, movies are bad. Sometimes, they’re good. And sometimes, they could use a few adjustments in hindsight. Especially the nerdier movies where the directors may or may not have tried way too hard or way too little. And that’s where Nando comes in: Whether it’s explaining why a different villain might have worked better for a hero’s origin story movie, or analyzing how one seemingly small adjustment could’ve potentially made more sense in explaining characterization, this channel is always providing a new perspective on a movie or show you’ve probably seen and maybe weren’t necessarily too pleased with. (Or maybe you were – I enjoyed Justice League okay but I love the version he rewrote more.) Oh, yeah: Sometimes he does rewrites of movies or even series. So if you’re anything like me and you’re way into that, this is a channel you don’t want to miss out on.

Available on: Youtube

DEATH BATTLE!

Type: Youtube channel

Does anyone remember Deadliest Warrior? No? . . . How about that one time during lunch where you and your friend got into it over who would win in a death match between Superman and Goku? Good news: A buncha geeks did the math for you and have come out with the results! Specifically, hosts Wiz and Boomstick have analyzed the weapons, armor, and skills of each combatant in every episode, resulting in an ongoing series of absolute nonsense and satiation of bloodshed. The description is admittedly nothing crazy, but the amount of detail applied is honestly where it’s at: From calculating how loud Black Canary’s screams are to approximating Scrooge McDuck’s speed (I’m not kidding you), there’s actual thought put into the characters being assembled and how they might fair with their respective combatant. And it all comes together for an actual fight, often animated but always amazing. So if you’ve ever wondered if Thor could beat Wonder Woman, or if McGruff the Crime Dog stands a chance against Smokey the Bear (I’m…I’m being honest), then this is the show for you!

Available on: Youtube

Sideways

Type: Youtube channel

If there is music in that movie or show, it will be analyzed to a degree that, unless you’ve been trained in music, you would’ve probably never thought about. There isn’t necessarily much rhyme or reason to Sideways’ videos in terms of themes beyond music, but really, must they? Is it not enough that this man is screaming to the internet these wack and awesome trends he’s noticed in certain pieces associated with movies and musicals and the genius behind them? Could life not just be him explaining the symbolism of the instruments associated with the Crystal Gems of Steven Universe, or breaking down the cultures explored by way of the Black Panther soundtrack? Also, here’s a fun drinking game: Take a shot every time he mentions leitmotifs or the Dies Irae.

Available on: Youtube

Craig of the Creek

Type: TV show

In the woods of suburban Maryland, there exists a kid’s utopia: A place where horse girls are free to roam the fields, where a boy can be a king of garbage, and where children travel the sewers completely unsupervised. That is, until the dinner horn rings; then they have to go home until the next time they can return to The Creek. The show focuses on one specific trio (Craig, JP, and Kelsey) as every day, The Creek (and their own childish naivete) brings them new hijinks to experience. There’s a blissful lightheartedness to the show, in addition to a lot of creativity that feels like it was ripped straight out of your own imagination as a child (robots made from cardboard boxes, building portals using lights, etc). But beneath it all, there’s something just plain wild brewing. I don’t want to spoil anything, but CotC has some G-rated GOT shit going on the further along the series goes and I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds!

Available on: CN app, wcostream.com

And that’s probably enough for now, I think. Lemme know if you want any other suggestions, or how you’re findin’ ‘em if you take any of them up! Stay safe, stay healthy my dudes!

[simptasia]

hc questions 5, 6, 7, 26, 44 & 47 for any or all of the science team members if you want? :)

oh bless!! thank you!! i’ll go with My Beloved Three, as usual, the sci trio

Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)

my hcs on this have wobbled over time but overall i imagine dan, char and miles are all like, fairly, neat. tho they all have a tendency to leave papers around

and miles doesn’t make the bed as much. cuz imagining miles napping in rumpled quilts is a very cute mental image. hair disheveled

i think a good term for whats going on with dan and char is Organized Chaos. they’re both scientists (and a musician) for heck’s sake. it doesn’t look like they know what they’re doing but they do. but ur not gonna walk into their house(s) and be like “ugh gross what the fuck”. it’s nice. dan tends to make the bed

and i imagine dan keeps The Rat Room (yes, you heard me) immaculate because you reeeeeeally want that area to be well cared for

as for personal, lets get this out of the way, none of them are yucky. but dan is showering the least, just due to absent mindedness and hyperfixation. like ya really get into a project and then suddenly oh fuck i need a shower. but thats relative. he’s not a stinky gross boy. i imagine miles washes the most because like, he has body piercings and those GOTTA be cleaned every day, especially the downstairs one. miles values his dick, he don’t want an infection

also its amazing how much more you shower/bathe when you have a partner. or in this case, two partners. in general and for sexy purposes. hell yeah

well thats enough of me picturing these three showering, moving on

Eating habits and sample daily menu

its odd how often i’ve pictured these people eating together

dan: eats the least (and for once that isn’t a skinny joke, he could eat cake every day and he’d still be like that) because for the most part he doesn’t have much of an appetite. he eats what he needs, with random bursts of being really hungry (it’s a neurodivergent thing). i imagine he has a extra fondness for pasta and can put a surprising amount of it away when he wants to. tho typically for ease, he’ll stick to noodles. he takes his coffee mild and decaf. i hc him as a vegetarian due to not being able to process meat. his body also cannot handle alcohol and the one time he tried it he needed to be hospitalized. his ice cream preference is vanilla with chocolate sprinkles. or honeycomb. favourite vegetable is capsicum (which he’d call a bell pepper because he’s american), favourite fruit is pineapple. on that note he likes pineapple pizza. overall he eats simple but isn’t against trying new things. he has a very neutral disposition towards food

char: of the trio, i define charlotte as the Loud Passionate One so obviously being a big eater goes with that, likes a big breakfast (eggs, sausages, sometimes french toast!), sometimes skips lunch when she’s working at the museum due to focus, has a ravenous sweet tooth (i haven’t been subtle that i’ve made her ADORE chocolate but in general i see her liking sweet things), she can handle eating less tho because she’s gone on plenty of expeditions and such. so i think she eats a lot under normal circumstances because, like, she can. i don’t think i need to tell you what her ice cream or starbucks preferences are, do i? takes her coffee with three sugars, two coffees and creamy. likes mochas and hot chocolates too. with marshmallows. naturally, her fave kind of chocolate is galaxy because she is an English Woman. another fave of hers is cadbury’s creme eggs. but lest you think Good Lord Sapphire This Woman’s Entire Body Is A Sugar Molecule, don’t worry she does eat well. like veggies, fruits, meats, she’s fine. of meats, she has a fondness for fish (i have no further information, im terrible with fish. but she’s a pom, so...). favourite fruit is pear, favourite vegetable is peas. likes a bacardi, or rum and coke

miles: he eats a “normal” amount but he’s a grazer. which means, not so much Set Meal eating than eating/snacking thru out the day. he takes his coffee black, no surprise, but with sugar! see, its a metaphor. for him. likes fried eggs and hash browns. his fave food is very cheap mac and cheese. i think in general he really likes cheese. he doesn’t have complicated tastes, like, he grew up poor. he likes seafood (in particular fish tacos) but not lobster as he discovered when he got cashed up. he likes salty food but likes sweets too, in particular i can imagine him snacking on m&ms, skittles, gummi bears. little things. doesn’t have a fave vegetable because he doesn’t care enough, to him veggies are things to eat so you won’t die. doesn’t hate him but isn’t excited to eat ‘em. fave ice cream is mint choc. he’ll drink whatever (except for vodka) but is used to beer. thinks pineapple on pizza is an abomination, espech since he really likes pizza otherwise. i consider him a food opportunist, like, oh theres food here? yoink. or like, oh hey, if everybody else is eating, i’ll have whatever’s going on

....i feel like whenever i write hcs about these guys my brain takes on their tone. like, that was a lot of short, eh whatever, sentences for miles there

Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time

dan:

- reading (really depends on how you define Wasting Time). also he composes music and when he was alive, that was considered wasting time (ugh)

- sometimes even just doing hobbies or work or whatever, even then, he tends to have this feeling of never doing enough due to his Perfectly Healthy And Supportive Upbringing [seethes] so uhhhh basically, anxiety? like this was a dude raised to think anything other than his work was a waste of time. it didn’t exactly work but a decent amount of that Pressure has to still sit with him

char:

- watching tv, espech star trek

- not a waste of time if you’re enjoying yourself

miles:

- card and board games (weren’t expecting that, were ya? i’m not saying that's his Fave Thing To Do, but he considers that a good chill out thing to do. something to do when ur bored but you don’t feel like watching tv or having sex)

- “it’s something to do”

Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?

dan:

for original lifetime dan, it was Do Science, Make Mom Proud (tiny voice: and maybe spend the rest of my life with charlotte. if i’m lucky. maybe. please? love?) cuz i imagine dan, although very focussed on the future, actually doesn’t think/care about HIS future. i just don’t think he cares about himself enough

limbo dan is like Make Music, Love Charlotte. which is fair. and then Love Miles on top of that. so yeah, just wants to be a good musician and husband. and one day, father. with char actually in his life in this world, thats def on his mind. he won’t bring it up tho, he’ll wait for her to mention it :3

(dan’s canon contingency plan for things not working out is hydrogen bomb)

char:

alive char, like, ADVENTURE! ISLAND! SOLVE MYSTERIES! that makes it sound like she’s a fucking scooby doo character. i mean, her Goal was to find the island and find out what the fucky duck is going on. she did that. and overall his goals seem like adventure/career orientated. i hc that this version of char never intended on getting married or having kids. she wasn’t Against the ideas and she’s certainly had romances but she was more thinking of other things. (that and i think deep down char thought nobody would ever wanna marry her)

in limboverse There Is No Mystery but she still has her great job(s), that is she works at a museum and i think she goes on expeditions sometimes. so theres that, she’s got the great career. really, her Plan for the future in this world is live the live she couldn’t before. she (and dan!) died young so they’re gonna like, actively adore each other and get married and have kids. and also miles is there. ha, that sounded so rude. she loves miles too. (besties/fuck buddies turned Hey You Wanna Join Me And Dan’s Relationship and miles like... yeah sure)

miles:

step one: get money to fill gaping hole of sadness in chest

step two: ????

step three: die

and even my limbo miles whomst i’ve put with dan and char doesn’t have any plans for the future, besides like, do his job and maybe become a dad again (context: i hc that miles had two kids with richard when he was alive). so he’s still chilling but without the depressing ache of loneliness and bitterness

so basically long story short for all of them (in limboverse): Love & Family

Superstitions or views on the occult?

ohooo i like this one

dan: didn’t grow up believing in magic and such (which is super ironic because his mother is a fucking other) but he has a very open mind. i think he’ll believe it if he’s thrust into the situation. it’s interesting really, dan is known as the science guy and that's great but he’s super fucking accepting of not science shit. tho of course, he’s not seeing the island time travel as magic but science. but more importantly, he regards miles��� powers with zero doubt or questioning. he doesn’t even seem confused, he is absolutely on board with miles being able to talk to dead people. this all implies miles told him off screen and dan believes him

so basically he’ll accept whatever is presented to him as true

which honestly, is what a good scientist is like. the trope of the scientist character who is ultra non believing of the supernatural, even when they’re seeing it before their eyes, is annoying. like, you know the ones? the ones who get angry about it. the overly skeptical scientist. hate that. dan is not that

and his character arc includes embracing free will over destiny so there's that

char: she’s not superstitious and doesn’t believe in magic or the supernatural at all. tho thrown into bizarre situations she’s like ???? but has to accept it. and she KNOWS something is up with the island. she knows its different. i just mean, under normal circumstances she’d regard magic stuff as funny nonsense. i hc that char, in living life, doesn’t believe miles can speak to the dead. really fucking weird this isn’t addressed in the show but hahaaaa they wasted char! anyways and like, if presented with the concept that dan’s brain damage is being healed by the island, she’d look confused, say thats impossible but she’d think on it

what i’m saying is she’ll rule out magic concepts at first, on reflex. but would grow to accept them, especially with stuff she knows/has repressed

she doesn’t believe in ghosts, psychics, visions, magic healing and all those exist in her world, so it’s all a matter of experience

miles: WELL WHADDYA THINK

actually it’s funny. miles has magic powers but he’s 0% superstitious and i imagine outside of his own powers, he really doesn’t believe in the occult. i hc that until he personally proved otherwise, he grew up thinking he was mentally ill. and once he realised it was true, thought he was some kind of freak

and he’s incredulous when he finds out hurley has powers too. tho miles, being miles, does roll with the punches a lot in the show, he’s skeptical when it comes to hurley's power. and i find that interesting. also i fucking love how when hurley describes his power, miles says “thats not how it works”, like ???? babe???

but overall his attitude on the island is like “well. this is happening”

i do think thru his life, despite his power, he doesn’t believe in All Magic or occult or whatever. i also hc that he attracted those kind of people who are REALLY into astrology and auras and stuff like that and he found them exasperating. (i think he’d be a lot more okay with it if it was claire who was talking about astrology and palm reading with him. he’d be endeared when its her)

and i think he thinks other psychics he’s met or seen on tv are straight up bullshit. he can believe he has it but he’s skeptical of other people. just assumes they’re scammers. hell, he was a scammer. who just happened to have the power. he was like “well i have this, i may as well get some use outta it”

oh and in limboverse, they all kinda have to accept their situation. and they take it with ease due to appreciating getting happier lives

How do they express love?

a dan who loves you will pet your face and look at you like ur his entire reason to live. a char who loves you will squeak at your jokes and will never once let you feel bad about yourself. a miles who loves you is sorry he isn’t better at this stuff but he really is trying... sure we can cuddle if you wanna, that’s cool v///v

the dan and char we saw in the show was them holding back and i find that very amusing because they were HEART EYES AS FUCK for each other and so affectionate and so soft hearted, like oh my gosh. canon show dan/char is them when they’re pining... when they’re not even a couple (yet, damn it)

imagine them at full power

i figured it out, dan/char couldn’t be an Official Couple because then jeremy davies and rebecca mader would have destroyed us all, especially me

anyways. they’re both very protective of each other. they... they touch each other a lot. like a lot for people who aren’t dating and whomst don’t think the other one loves them. like char is surprised when dan says he loves her. that fucking astonishes me. HE’S NOT SUBTLE. char are you okay???

dan is more open about the love than char, seeing as he said it. and double downed on it. char i feel was holding back for different reasons than dan. dan was holding back (fucking barely) because of eloise’s Love Will Only Bring Pain upbringing, which’d give somebody a serious complex. so he was adverse to actually pursuing a relationship AND i figure he thought “she wouldn’t wanna be with me anyways”. but char i imagine, a deep seated insecurity and need to be defensive, but also! dan was like REALLY mentally unwell before the island. and that's the dan that char knows (and loves) but she’d feel guilty if she pursued anything with him. like she’s taking advantage of a brain damaged person

ah fuck i went on a big thing about why they didn’t become a couple instead of like.... the question. how do they express love? like they did in the show. smiles, touches, longing gazes, protectiveness. they would die for each other

as for miles, how does he express love? Not Well. at first

whoever is the first person he fell in love with (i imagine richard), he was not good at... being open about that. i don’t think miles is good with love. lived his life pretty detached/bitter about the concept, which i imagine is due to having cynicism about life and death. everybody you love is gonna die, so why bother? (his mom dying hit him pretty hard) so uhhh its gonna be... baby steps

slowly becoming more open about liking somebody, becoming more affectionate, more... uh, couple-y (and later throuple-y). it’d take time and he will always be miles, but hey, he gets there. he’ll still always have his snark but he won’t be a Genuine Asshole to people he loves. heck, i imagine he’ll be downright soft in the right situation. and he can be gentle and kind. he’s a salty boy not a cunt

but i digress. basically he’s a little “yeah, yeah, i love you too, shut up” about it but he does have that soft gooey center. basically those who know him, and love him, know his true heart. it’s just a part of being miles “defensive walls” straume

feels love (and even that takes him a while to realise, cuz he hasn’t been a romantic relationship kinda guy, most of his life his relationships have been a Just Sex thing), not Great at like... Doing Love, you know what i mean? but like once he’s used to it, he can be quite a tender little pudding cup, actually

[honeylikewords]

Gimme your thoughts about Us, I’m still dumb af - You know who it be

I’m putting off an essay to write this but let’s ROCK and ROLL, BABY!

So, spoilers below the cut, just as a warning for anyone who still wants to see Us (2019), dir. Jordan Peele. If you’re unable to see the movie for whatever reason, you can feel free to read this and garner some ideas from it, but I still suggest seeing the film, in the end. A lot of this won’t make sense unless you’ve seen Us!

I normally don’t go out for too much horror, but I do think the Jordan Peele movies are legitimately great works of art, and very culturally relevant, so if you want to be supportive of black artists, black art, and the vocalization of the black experience, I highly suggest going to see these movies or watching them at home. 

They’re not actually overly violent or exploitative, and understanding that the violence in the films is meant to be metaphorical for the systemic violence perpetrated against oppressed groups helps to contextualize the stuff you do end up seeing. So, without further ado, let’s get into some Thoughts about some Cinema.

So, first of all, I have to say that I haven’t stopped thinking about this movie since I saw it at, like, 5:30 pm on Sunday. It’s been on my mind non-stop, and I’ve been fixated on the soundtrack, particularly “Anthem” and “Pas de Deux”, along with the “Tethered Remix” of “I Got Five On It”. I love the intentionally jarring combination of sounds, and how “Anthem” is directly reflective of the idea of the “U.S. Anthem”. “Us Anthem”. 

Jordan himself has been very open about the fact that the title Us is meant to also represent “U.S.”, and when Red is asked “what she is” and she rasps out “We’re Americans” it just... stuck with me. 

The nonsense-singing of “Anthem”, too, fixates me, since the scorer for the film has talked about how it’s the “voices of the Tethered”, and how they’re “angry” and “ready to get free”. We know that the Tethered cannot speak, which is a major and interesting facet of their life, to me, since they’re never given “a voice” beyond this kind of animal screaming and groaning. 

It’s what makes a lot of viewers see them as “sub-human”, but always gets to my heart and makes me think about the fact that they are so very keenly human. It makes me think about the repression of “lesser” languages, native languages, “non-verbal” languages. The Tethered DO have a means of communication-- clicks and rasps, cries and screams-- which definitely do pull at the human fear of “unnatural” noises, but also remind me of native languages that utilize clicks or throat sounds often not found in English. 

The Tethered are deeply, intimately human. While it is mentioned by Red that two bodies cannot share the one soul, that doesn’t mean to me that the other is soulless. I really don’t think that about the Tethered. I think that they are their own people, and that their rising proves that. They’re not hollow machines that just mimic their “original” on the surface, but are just people with their own souls, people who have been wrongly oppressed and mistreated.

Us is openly a discussion about the way we, as people and as Americans, treat “others”. Whether that means the racial other, the cultural other, the class other, the gendered other, or anything other system we try to dichotomize, binarize, or diametrically oppose to something else, it’s very definitely about the ways we abuse and mistreat people in order to systemically oppress them and gain from that.

Adelaide represents this interesting kind of class-traitor, in a way, because she rises “above the others”, both literally and figuratively, and instead of making an effort to free those around her, she just rises to the top and forgets where she came from. Whether that’s about assimilating into white culture and “rejecting” the culture one came from (joining in the oppression of your own people by claiming to ‘not be one of those kinds’) or about rising to a wealthy position and oppressing the poor, forgetting what it was like to be poor one’s self, or about any number of other things, that’s up for interpretation. But the issue is still there.

Jordan intentionally left the specific meaning of the film open so that every viewer would be forced to engage with it personally. Who do you, personally, help to betray? Who do you, personally, help to oppress? Whose suffering do you, personally, benefit from? You’re forced to grapple with that, and forced to acknowledge the reality that every single one of us is part of the issue. You only climb higher by putting someone below you, and this movie forces you to recognize that. 

I’ve heard people complaining that Us isn’t as good as Get Out specifically because it’s more open-ended, but I think that’s what makes both films fantastic and beautiful. Get Out brazenly exposes the direct experience of everyday black horror, and is completely open about it. It’s a one-to-one analogy. But Us is for everyone, making you wrestle with yourself. You are your own Tethered. You are the good and the bad of yourself. And neither one is fully good and neither one is fully bad. Get Out was a master-class in analogy, but Us is more of a metaphor; it doesn’t need to have everything laid out. Its horror and its beauty lay inside of its intentional cloudiness.

I’m really obsessed with the rabbit imagery, too. I love bunnies, and seeing them become symbolic of this horror really was an interesting take. Jordan himself has expressed being uncomfortable with and scared of rabbits, specifically because he can see that they’re “soulless” inside; he says that if you took the brain of a rabbit and put it in a person, you’d get Michael Myers. Totally void, just ready to hurt. And I think that’s an interesting take on them. He also points out that the image of rabbit ears, the shape of their head, mirrors the shape of the scissors that the Tethereds use.

I also love the way that rabbits are largely docile little creatures, but can bite pretty hard if provoked, and I feel that’s a good way to look at the Tethered. I don’t see them as inherently evil or violent, just pushed beyond their own limitations. They did what we all did as Americans: they led a violent uprising against their oppressors, then ‘peacefully’ took their place, all the way across America. They are us, for better, for worse. 

The choice to use the 80′s references really often also caught my attention; Jordan talks about how the 80′s nostalgia is this double-edged sword, since everyone is longing to go back, but not realizing the costs and weights of that, the evil lurking under the placidity and “wholesome American image” that the 80′s sought to project.

The all-American, apple pie, small-town fun and games of the 80′s also came with the Reagan administration, the AIDs crisis, the war on drugs, a massive rift between the rich and the poor (with a steadily more wealthy middle class expanding from just middle class into rich, upper middle class individuals and extremely poor lower middle class), and “sublimated racism”. We pretended, as a nation, that we were now post-racial, but that was such, such, such a huge lie.

So setting the memory scenes in the 80′s, using 80′s film references, 80′s imagery, 80′s sound-a-likes, the Michael Jackson stuff: it all points to the duality of what we love, what we are nostalgic for. Michael was a hero of the 80′s, but now... 

Speaking of Michael Jackson, notice carefully the costuming of the Tethereds. Red jumpsuit, single glove, ‘the monster is not what it seems’, the “Thriller” t-shirt... why, Jordan, one might think that you made the Tethereds look like Michael in “Thriller”!

Which he obviously did, guh-doy.

I mean, the glove/sharp symbol also is an homage to good ol’ shithead Freddy Krueger, too, but it’s definitely a potent nod to Michael Jackson. We know that Adelaide (now Red) had seen the “Thriller” video as a child, and that she wanted the shirt with him on it, so the image of the Tethered is this combination between the Hands Across America symbols and the Michael Jackson look in “Thriller”. Adelaide (now Red) never forgot. 

Also, god, Hands Across America? Talk about 80′s false optimism! It’s incredible how potent that image is for the issue being discussed. For those of you who don’t know, Hands Across America was an initiative in the 80′s to help end hunger and homelessness in America. The idea was that every person in America would join hands and form a line “from sea to shining sea” across the entire lower 48 continental states, and for each person in line, $10 dollars would be donated to the cause.

The event, of course, failed in many ways. First, there’s no POSSIBLE way for people to join hands across the whole continent; the terrain of the US makes it entirely impossible. Plus, the time necessary to conduct that would be incredibly exhausting for people standing in line! But what’s worse? The project did successfully raise ~$34 million, but nearly $20 million of that disappeared into “event costs”: paying the celebrities that endorsed it, paying the event organizers, et cetera. Only around $15 millions made it to the homeless and hungry. While $15 mil. is no small number, that’s.... less than half of what was raised. So where did all that go? Into the pockets of the already rich. It’s such powerful symbolism, especially within the context of the film.

Oh, also, while still on the 80′s talk, the opening shot of the film features a VHS copy of the movie C.H.U.D., a movie about “sub-human underground sewer dwellers” who rose up to eat the surface humans. These “CHUDs” were one-to-one analogies for the homeless and impoverished.

I cannot get over how strong the storytelling is in Us, I just can’t. I’m obsessed with it. I cannot help but wanna talk about it all the time! It’s so GOOD and I’m so FRUSTRATED that I’m gonna cut myself off here to stop from ranting about every teeny tiny thing and every big major thing because no one will know what I’m on about, but, seriously, do yourselves a favor and go see Us. 

This movie will make you have to sit down and think about whose suffering you’ve benefited from, and what you need to do within yourself to change this.

Also, before I go, I just gotta say I love, love, love the decision Jordan made about having the 1980s version of the hall of mirrors be “Native American” themed, only to have that “politically corrected” in the 2010s to be “Merlin’s Hall Of Mirrors”, which is just a facade thrown up over a still-racist, exactly the same hall of mirrors. The problem lurks within, never gone, just covered.

Also, that ties to the Kubrick connection (The Shining is a major inspiration for Jordan) and the genocide connection, so, uh, it’s deep out here, lads.

Anyway, I have opinions about movies.

[corishadowfang]

WIP Prep Tag Game

Tagged by @siarven--thanks for the tag!

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag as many people as there are questions (or as many as you can).

I debated back and forth about which WIP I’d do, but since I’m going to be entering the rewriting/editing phase soon, I thought I’d do it for On my Heart!

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

A boy named Aiden is temporarily turned into a dragon by his Familiar, Kiru, in order to save his life--something that’s both incredibly illegal and incredibly dangerous.  Now on the run, he enlists the help of a former police officer and a hermit with an unusual amount of knowledge about dragons to help prove he’s not the monster everyone thinks he is.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

I’ve planned the story so that it’ll fit into a single book!  Right now it’s approximately 250 pages, but after rewrites I think it’s going to be closer to 400 pages.  (I ended up rushing through a lot of things to finish this draft, so...lots of additions are needed.)

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

It’s very...blue.  This is probably because Kiru’s--and by extension, Aiden’s--primary color theme is blue.  Most of the time when I imagine scenery there’s a mix of monochrome and blue-tinted colors with a couple muted colors thrown in.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The two most notable are the Fate series and Brave Story.  Fate was actually one of the things that initially inspired the story (more accurately, it was a question that came up while I was playing Fate/Stay Night), and Brave Story has a nice mix of fantastical grounded by more relatable problems that I’d really like to emulate.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

They’re not neatly organized or anything, but there they are.

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

The primary character the story follows is Aiden Cooley.  He’s a sarcastic, adorkable child who really isn’t cut out for the nonsense he’s being put through.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Technically speaking, that would be these three:

Kiru, Aiden’s Familiar, who is something of a trouble-maker but cares deeply for Aiden

Gertrude, a very morally gray woman who would probably be really helpful if anyone could figure out what her motives are

And Jackie, an amputee who helps Aiden out of a combination of pity and worry that turning him in could actually cause bigger problems than helping him out.

8. Who is their enemy?

I joke that it’s himself, but that’s actually not entirely wrong.  One of the biggest problems for Aiden is that he tends to sabotage himself, whether by accident or on purpose.

As far as outside problems go, though, the most immediate ‘enemy’ would be the police.  They’re not really ‘bad guys,’ but they’re the major antagonists considering the position Aiden’s been put in.  The wider-scope antagonist would probably be society at large, though it takes a while for this to dawn on Aiden.

9. What do they want more than anything?

He’d really, really like to just go back home and, you know…not be arrested.  (He had other worries before the story’s start, and they get to be addressed throughout the course of the story, but this has quickly become his immediate concern.)

10. Why can’t they have it?

To give a really brief explanation about how some of the workings of the world: Familiars a readily-available for purchase, and, while all of them have the ability to turn their owners into dragons (should the owners so choose), the act has been outlawed both due to the fact that this would normally kill a user, and because dragons running rampant in the streets would generally cause a lot of panic. Aiden not only transforms into a dragon (albeit against his will), but is completely unharmed by the transformation. Basically, this means that even if he somehow manages to not be arrested, nothing’s going to be the same for him ever again.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

He tends to have very low self-esteem.  To explain a little, he talks to his Familiar a lot because Kiru has higher artificial intelligence than most Familiars.  However, most kids outgrow this habit by, like���ten, and since Kiru can’t actually talk to anyone but Aiden, the rest of his peers all think he’s pretty weird. This has kind of seeped into his psyche over the years, to the point where he agrees and assumes that no one would actually be interested in being around him and Kiru.  He’s mostly convinced himself that he might be able to live a quiet, uneventful life where no one has to be disturbed by his ‘oddities,’ even though he wouldn’t be entirely happy doing so.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

OH GOSH.  Okay, so, this picture is pretty old, but here’s a rough idea of what Aiden looks like:

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

I’ve obviously already explained some of it for Aiden; there’s a lot about him learning how to move forward after an event that has drastically changed his life and how to find a ‘new normal,’ and also kind of learning to accept himself.  

For Kiru, a lot of the conflict relates to his own sense of self.  How much of him was created by Aiden as coping mechanism, and how much is himself?  What kind of role does he really play in a world ruled by humans?

For Gertrude, a lot has to do with her own past failings…though I won’t say too much on that.

Jackie’s arc actually parallels and ties with Aiden’s.  They complement each other, since Jackie has already started to learn how to find a ‘new normal’ after a life-changing event (the loss of her leg), and slowly helps Aiden come to terms with the situation through her own experiences.  On a more personal note, her views on Familiars and the people who use them are challenged constantly through working with someone who’s so close to them.

14. What is the external conflict?

The biggest conflict revolves around both evading the police and figuring out a way to get Aiden out of a situation where there are no real easy answers.  On a less important note, trying to understand why Aiden wasn’t affected by his transformation is a constant current in the background, and factors into some key areas of the story.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?  

The only remaining support system he has turning their backs on him would probably be pretty bad.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

That’s spoilers.

17. Do you know how it ends?

That’s…actually a good question.  I’ve finished the draft, so I know how that ends, and originally that was the ending I’d always envisioned for the story. However, I know this draft’s going to need a lot of edits and rewriting, so there’s a very strong possibility that a new ending will appear that works better.  So, we’ll see if it stays the same or not!

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?  

A pretty major over-arching theme is what you do when you’re in a situation where there are no good answers—where there is no clear-cut right and wrong, and you just have to try your best to pick the right option.  This isn’t just present with the main characters, either; the police officers—especially Chief Harris, who hates this whole situation—and Aiden’s parents have plenty of their own struggles trying to figure out the right thing to do.

A smaller theme, though, is the subject of humanity—what makes us human, and, to use a trope name, “What measure is a non-human?”

19. What is a recurring symbol?  

…Dragons, I guess?  Or water, maybe, because it plays such a heavy metaphorical role in the story.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

On a large scale, it’s set in an alternate version of Earth where dragons and humans once coincided. The two races ended up fighting, and humans eventually drove dragons to extinction.  A couple decades later, humans decided to try and make the power of dragons their own.  This eventually led to them creating Familiars, which would bestow the power of dragons on humans (with the idea that they’d be less likely to turn on their own kind).  Unfortunately, the dragon transformation was pretty fault due to the fact that it forces a person’s body to change and grow in unnatural ways.  Familiars are still used in every-day life, though—and they’ve been given extra abilities to compensate for the fact that they can’t really be used for their original purpose.

On a smaller scale, the story takes place in the city of Provenance, aka “The Birthplace of Familiars.” It’s a medium-sized city that sits along the bank of a river and used to be the fishing village of White Water. Since the creation of Familiars and Familiar Co. (the primary Familiar manufacturing company), it’s started relying more and more on tourism and Familiar-based exports.  Provenance is kind of this weird mix of historical, tourist trap, and modern city with a lot of weird legends and out-of-the-way places.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already? 

Originally there were several scenes I had in mind, but as for this upcoming draft…I actually don’t? I might once I get through with editing, but right now there’s nothing major.

22. What excited you about this story?  

So you can probably guess from the theme question, but I really like exploring difficult topics and morally-ambiguous situations in fiction.  A lot of times it’s how I personally work out solutions to those problems (at least on a personal level), and exploring those themes can actually be pretty fun!

But I also really love the characters and their interactions.  They’re basically one big messed up family and I love them.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!  

Honestly, it’s nothing very exciting.  I usually pick out a song to listen to on repeat—most of the time it has some relation to the story, but other times it’s just one that I like a lot.  Then I’ll set it going and start writing.  I usually have a goal in mind.  So, for example, “Get to the end of this part,” “finish this chapter,” or “write this many pages.”  Basically this just makes sure that I actually make a decent amount of progress on it.  And that’s…basically it?  Sometimes to get myself inspired I’ll read world-building or analysis posts, but that’s not every time; it just kind of depends on my mood.

This was a lot of fun!  Now to tag people...

I’ll tag @paladin-andric, @touchingmadness, @moonbow-ink, @diwrites, @sleepy-and-anxious, @fatal-blow, @focusdumbass, @thatsmybluefondue, @junglefae, @feathersandfortunes, @roselinproductions, @forlornraven, @aureliobooks, @maple-writes, @jess---writes, @aleshirewrites, @ad-drew, @nepeinthe, @novelier, @spacebrick3, @infinitelyblankpage, @insertpenname-here, @theta-lee, and anyone else who wants to do this!  (No pressure if you don’t, of course; this one’s pretty long.)

[sagamemes]

podiots sentence starters, part i.   contains 143 lines of dialogue collected from episodes one through three of the vidiots’ fortnightly podcast podiots. i’ve edited some lines to fit roleplay better, and randomised the order. contains two mentions of violence against nazis---last two sentences on the list, if don’t want to see it---feel free to change those into your muse’s in-universe equivalents, as well as edit anything else needed to fit your muse’s mouth or life better.

❝ after my dad showed me that, i never trusted him again. ❞

❝ that’s actually an explanation for a lot of ghost sightings, carbon monoxide poisoning. there are symptoms that cause like hallucinations and feelings of dread and fear. ❞

❝ i would be called chocolate thunder, and i’d wear a cape. ❞

❝ would you just get over it? i was a kid! ❞

❝ it was just this weird rag doll girl who happened to be in a bikini just falling, forever. ❞

❝ is there ever not a sexual element to it?! ❞

❝ well, you’ve clearly never met a salaried genie who’s on a retainer. ❞

❝ you’ve had your money taken. ❞

❝ i just want people to pay attention, for fuck’s sake. ❞

❝ you guys are really into your obscure shit. ❞

❝ it’s a bit like class tourism, isn’t it? ❞

❝ that’s what i was saying, this is---this is probably not legal. ❞

❝ you asked to bring weird things. ❞

❝ boy, do i hate facebook! ❞

❝ to be fair, her balloon animals are quite impressive. ❞

❝ jesus, why aren’t you on neopets yet? ❞

❝ you can’t always afford the homemade stuff. and typically, there’s less of it. and sometimes it’s not very good. and you’re paying a premium! ❞

❝ i’m so fucking over [thing]. to be fair, i ruined it for myself. ❞

❝ he’s just some time traveller, fucking with them with a fucking mp3 player. ❞

❝ what the fuck is a ‘num noms’? ❞

❝ so it’s a miracle that [name] didn’t asphyxiate himself as a child, and it’s amazing that i didn’t have some kind of cardiac issue almost immediately in my late teens. what do you bring to the table here? ❞

❝ i’m a big fan of weird gameboy stuff. ❞

❝ i’m like that rabbit from alice in wonderland. tiny, and late, and white. ❞

❝ it’ll make you terrified of ever going to a hotel again. ❞

❝ i like watching it but it’s not teaching me anything. ❞

❝ no, i don’t think there was any bubbles in it. ❞

❝ what do your mums think about what you’re doing? ❞

❝ gho-mophobic. that was a really difficult pun. ❞

❝ should we just start it? should we just go without him? ❞

❝ not that i could out-style you in any capacity. ❞

❝ i shouldn’t have asked for a horse. ❞

❝ our problem was nobody would take us seriously. ❞

❝ i’ve spent months trying to explain the job to her. my old job, she kind of got that, but now... ❞

❝ about halfway into the first [food] i went ‘oh... this is a lot of food’.---/i ate it all/, and then i felt sick for the rest of the sunday. ❞

❝ you were skirting around it, but if you ask me, directly, that’s what i’m going to say. ❞

❝ say a ghost laid a ghost poo on the floor, does it just stay there forever? ❞

❝ do you have an answer to this? because i’ve never given /any/ thought... ❞

❝ i’ve heard somewhere you can do that now. ❞

❝ my mum thinks you’re very funny, [name]. ❞

❝ no, that was all you. every penny, all you. ❞

❝ not the reason i was there, but it was a nice benefit. ❞

❝ stop. i mean---don’t stop. but /stop/. ❞

❝ [name] is the kind of man who’s so rich, he thinks a can of beans costs two thousand dollars. ❞

❝ just before going/coming in, my taxi driver said ‘oh, be careful, people get stabbed around here, bye!’ ❞

❝ be aware that this is /not/ a donation to a charitable cause. ❞

❝ i just do shots of olive oil. ❞

❝ no wonder he’s so fucking weird. ❞

❝ get a big old truck, for all that junk inside your trunk. ❞

❝ you’re not supposed to put cotton swabs in there, let alone a lit flame. ❞

❝ fuck you... [name]. i’m gonna... suck. your dick. ❞

❝ i’ve admittedly grown more bold with my culinary disgusts. ❞

❝ my chocolate shotgun, it’s a legally non-threatening weapon. ❞

❝ you did look very smart. very respectable. ❞

❝ everyone’s pulled the legs off a daddy longlegs, but that’s just like level one, that’s where you leave it. ❞

❝ see, that just sounds like batman. ❞

❝ i forgot that was the origin of this. ❞

❝ i feel like there’s something in the air. ❞

❝ there’s cosplaying and dressing up, and then there’s furries. ❞

❝ obviously, he--i mean i say obviously, like it’s /logical/, but... ❞

❝ if they did that, it’d be a lot more convenient for me. sometimes, it’s not the end of the world, is all i’m saying. ❞

❝ i am a freak. i have hands and feet, and if you’d saw me, you’d be petrified. ❞

❝ they have a meal deal which is like [£40/€45/$55]. and you get like a 25" square pizza, like seven garlic breads, and several ice creams. i could never make a dent in that, but the idea of it sounds very sexy. ❞

❝ well, he’ll be back soon! ❞

❝ you know, like a hammer throw---if i tied a string around it, i think i could throw a ps2 pretty far. properly like, swing it around, lean against it, do a spin. ❞

❝ day to day... i don’t eat breakfast. ❞

❝ we’re trying to be on everything, that’s our goal. ❞

❝ my finishing move would be called the ‘fuck you.’ ❞

❝ but i could never do that, i've got stuff to do! ❞

❝ i like dad rock. ❞

❝ if you’re having a party, i’m going to tell you what to do. ❞

❝ she looks far more normal than i expected. ❞

❝ i asked metaphorically, not physically. ❞

❝ i asked for some ___. we got about fifty. we only needed five. ❞

❝ there’s still time to save this american icon. ❞

❝ there were two [job title]s in there, who were like, super young and sexy men with really nice hair. ❞

❝ it’s read like it’s a documentary, not like ‘haha, and then he died!’ ❞

❝ i don’t want my lampshade looking at me! ❞

❝ give him something to do, he’ll be quiet, [name] and i can go to the shops and talk about where our marriage went wrong. ❞

❝ you don’t need to look at the front. usually, you’re behind ____. if he’s got a nice arse, that’s all that matters. ❞

❝ what’s your favourite cereal? ❞

❝ i’m just saying---sometimes local shops are shit. ❞

❝ i don’t think if you know this, [name]---i think you do, because you told me. ❞

❝ you take kids to a mcdonald’s, they’ll play at mcdonald’s. ❞

❝ you exist and then you don’t. ❞

❝ [name] is going through some financial issues, by which i mean, it’s fucked. ❞

❝ that’s a bit morbid. ❞

❝ i was thinking about ____ earlier. yeah, it crosses my mind at least like once an hour. ❞

❝ i had a great day, we went outside for lunch, i got gelato, it was great! ❞

❝ the tabloids loved the story. ❞

❝ you have to be really confused. ❞

❝ i really wanted to include h. h. holmes in this list because he’s my favourite murderer. ❞

❝ we’re not journalists, we’re just idiots on the internet. ❞

❝ it’s not the kind of name you gloss over. ❞

❝ ‘how did it get there?’ this is a /talking mongoose/ and you’re wondering how it got there? ❞

❝ is he a cat?! ❞

❝ i bought a replacement [name]. ❞

❝ i grew up in a village that didn’t even have a supermarket. ❞

❝ he was just---he was borderline abusive in my own house. ❞

❝ that’s gonna take you forever! ❞

❝ okay, well, i’m uncomfortable, what are we doing? ❞

❝ we’re not like... ‘i think i can make a joke about fighting your mother while playing a game’. we don’t know that well. ❞

❝ he’s like a genie, we only get one wish per day. ❞

❝ you take a drink and then you’re like ‘i don’t wanna drink too loud’ so you end up taking a tiny amount but then you don’t want to swallow too loud so you sort of inhale it a little bit and you’re like ‘i can’t cough, i can’t cough’... ❞

❝ now, [name] just heard that i wanted the attention and instantly decided he needed it instead. ❞

❝ we’re in dire need of new shelves. that money is going straight to shelves. ❞

❝ i never played ____. i kinda missed that train. ❞

❝ i could do the face for free. ❞

❝ it’s immediately feeling very warm in here. ❞

❝ presumably, this guy owns a lot of toys, so num noms is a thing. ❞

❝ i think that’s just a [region/state] thing. ❞

❝ let’s play a game called ‘how many people did they murder?’ ❞

❝ who is getting out of this room alive? ❞

❝ it’s like that song about the grandfather clock. ‘and it stopped, short, never to go again, when the ooold maaan died’. ❞

❝ [in the tune of new york] you’ll get punched in yoouur face. ❞

❝ don’t---don’t entertain his odd nonsense! ❞

❝ i don’t like people! i want my own space! ❞

❝ that’s something i always found really fascinating, like just wanting the username ‘batman’. how early would you have to be just to be ‘batman’? ❞

❝ you can’t complain about something disappearing if you’ve not been using it. ❞

❝ oh yeah, i always go to the dentist and get my brows done. ❞

❝ i loved [old place], and [this place] is also very lovely, it’s just a lot more expensive. ❞

❝ it’s a shame. just a couple of months longer and you would’ve had some employee rights. ❞

❝ there is a very good balloon elmo in this picture. ❞

❝ so, with all of this, what do you think the result is of this kind of upbringing and toxic relationship with your mother? ❞

❝ yeah, think about that. maybe we don’t like you. ❞

❝ they're’s so comfortable, i could almost fall asleep. ❞

❝ could you take this bottle of water, pour it in the sink, fill it again, and bring back to me? ❞

❝ it’s a sex number, i like it. ❞

❝ so what did the police do?---return him to [person]. ❞

❝ i wish /my/ mum thought i was funny. ❞

❝ okay, that’s gonna be interesting, having someone with a blade on my throat. ❞

❝ they can fire me if they want! they can fire me! ❞

❝ i don’t know why i said ‘basically’ like i’m about to explain how the internet works. ❞

❝ before, i had---there’s a shame element, isn’t it? you don’t want to do it because you’re afraid of judgement. ❞

❝ at one point, he had me squatting barefoot in my own bath. ❞

❝ eventually, we’re just gonna have to buy a storage locker for all this stuff. ❞

❝ i’ve got quite a sizeable list, i won’t talk about all of them. ❞

❝ how did we become the internet goblins we are today? ❞

❝ are you allergic to a.i.? ❞

❝ at least this is something you’re self-aware. if it was something other people had picked up on... ❞

❝ we have yellow and black, kind of a barry b. benson inspired look. ❞

❝ i was very disappointed at like eight when i found out they weren’t called ‘the food fighters’. ❞

❝ oh yeah, kicking hitler and shooting nazis is a lot of fun. ❞

❝ i’d love to throw a bop it extreme at hitler’s face, is what i’m saying, and i could do it from a long distance away. ❞

[agonizingjest]

The Tellstales Heart - E.A. Poe Parody

Yes, I’m annoyed. Ridiculously annoyed I had been, and still am; but mad, you say? You’d think putting up with those terrible stories would dull my senses to reality, but no -- rather, it has destroyed my imagination. Above all, it destroyed my ability to think about anything decent. As a philosophy major, I have considered heaven and earth. I have thought of hell, but those tales put me through it. Listen! I’m going to tell you what happened, and it’s going to have an actual damn POINT to it.

It’s not easy to put into words how the idea first entered my mind; but once I thought it, I could think of nothing else. There was nothing I wanted, I couldn’t feel anymore. Sure, I loved the old geezer. He had been a nice enough fellow. He’d always been supportive. He didn’t have money, and if he had, I wouldn’t have wanted it. It was his storytelling! Yup, definitely that. He had the wit of a goat -- his stories were drawn out, his characters were flat, his grammar was atrocious, and his plots, oh don’t even get me started on his ambiguous, dry, tangled, boring plots! Whenever he would start telling me a tale, I would have to zone out for hours; and then -- over time -- I decided that I had to kill him, to put an end to his rancid taste in words.

So here’s what I’m getting at. You think I’m crazy. Insane, out of my mind. But you should have heard what I had to put up with. You should have witnessed how well I tuned out that blathering idiot -- how hard I worked to stay awake through his -- how tough--how immensely difficult it was to pull this off. I was so patient with the old fart and his awful stories for the whole week before I finally shut him up. Every night, from around eight until midnight, I’d sit next to his bed and let him disappoint me with his flat works of fiction. Then, after he’d finished his tale of an orphaned boy who lost his parents to a murderous pyromaniac and went on to become the world’s fastest swimmer after having given up at becoming a figure skater, or the tale of a mouse who befriended a cat and travelled across the Great Wall of China in a post-apocalyptic world in search of the last samurai in order to -- well, you get the point. I let him tell me these tales and I pretended, with oh such difficulty, to enjoy them, and over time, I even started to act them out as he told them. Oh, you would have laughed to see how I acted out a little girl who found a lost, rusty bicycle and rode it every day until she was an old, decrepit woman, and was seen by a handsome young prince who claimed it was his when he was a child (which, yes, I already know doesn’t make sense in terms of how time works) and who married her for finding his lost childhood bike and his magic kiss turned her young again. It was awful. Yet, I acted every step out, fooling the old man into thinking I was just so caught up in his tales that I couldn’t help but to react in such a jolly way. It took hours of sweat and misplaced modifiers and lack of originality and gaping plot holes to convince the guy I was actually enjoying it. Ha! Anybody with a mind less keen than my own would have cracked under the pressure, if not the appalling prose. And every night, every night after being afflicted with awful anecdotes, after the old fart talked himself tired, he would take his book (self printed, of course, since not the most desperate of publishers would dare touch his work), tuck it under his pillow, and snore, unaware of his disgrace, his lack of attention to detail or originality, his non sequiturs and nasty narratives. For seven long nights I listened to his crap, and it was impossible to do the work; see, it wasn't the old man himself that vexed me, but his stories, his words, his evil writings.

And so, after every night of this nonsense, as he slept, I crept back into his room and slithered toward his bed. I slid his book out from under the pillow and cautiously, oh so cautiously (for the book sleeve crumpled) -- scribbled out the pages with a marker, one by one, ever so slowly, to seal those lousy words from innocent eyes. I did this for seven long nights -- there were a lot of pages, you see. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into his room, spoke to him in a courageous manner, calling him by name in a tone so hearty, and inquiring as to whether he dreamt any dreams -- boorish cliches of dreams, no doubt, if a mind so simple as his could dream even any dreams. So you see he would have been a very profound old coot, indeed, to suspect that every night, at the witching hour, I looked upon him with hatred while I destroyed his work. But he had committed them all to memory, his horrible stories, and never did see the inside of that hardcover monstrosity.

On the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than mine did. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers -- of my keen mental judgement. I could hardly contain my feelings of triumph. I had rid the world of his book. But in that triumph, I knew, with his book no longer readable, the tales he told existed in but one place, still looming over me. His mind. His dull, dreary mind. To think that there I was, opening his door, bit by bit, and he couldn’t even dream of my secret deeds or thoughts -- no, he definitely wasn’t creative enough for that. Which is why I had to snuff out that mundane mind. I chuckled lightly at the idea; and maybe he heard me, because he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back -- but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (you see, he had blackout curtains, to block out the bright city lights), and so I knew that he couldn’t see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it, steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and was about to do the deed, when my thumb slipped from the handle and the doorknob clicked and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out -- “whoozit eh what?” I kept quite still, obviously, and said nothing. For a whole hour I didn’t move a muscle, but in the meantime I didn’t hear him lie back down. No, no, he was still sitting up in his bed, listening; just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to his damn crappy stories.

Suddenly I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror, not of pain or of grief. It was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. The groan of a total wuss! I knew the sound well. Far too often, just after sunset, when all the world readied for sleep, it has swelled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terror of seeing that old codger walk toward me, book in hand, ready to lay upon he is ill-written words wrecked terror upon my mind. Oh yes, I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him -- although not really. Sorry not sorry and all that. Yes, I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. I knew his fears had been growing and growing ever since then. He’d been trying to imagine them as no cause for concern, but his imagination, weak as it was, could not do so. He was probably trying to say to himself -- “It’s nothing but the wind in the chimney, maybe a mouse on the floor. Or heck, maybe it was just a cricket that chirped, like, one time and one time only, right?” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these thoughts; but he had found them all in vain. All in vain, because Death, in approaching him, had stalked his black shadow before him; death had enveloped him, the victim. And it was the mournful influence of that unperceived shadow of Death that caused the uncreative old man to feel -- though he had neither seen nor heard -- to feel the presence of my head within his room.

(Typical. Absolutely no skill when it comes to writing, but an acute spatial awareness of his surroundings. Gosh, this man choked me -- not, obviously, literally in the way I planned to choke him, but... well, you get the picture.)

Anyway, after I’d waited a long while, very patiently I might add, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to push open only slightly -- very, very slightly the corner of the curtain next to the door. So I pushed it aside -- you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -- until, at length a tiny ray of nighttime light pollution, like the thread of a… I don’t know, neon spider? (Ugh, his inability to create basic similes or metaphors is rubbing off on me.) Anyway, a tiny thread of light, just enough for my eyes to adjust and see his silhouette, fell upon him as he was -- I just cannot believe this -- writing. Yes, apparently I had been waiting there for hours, unmoving, barely breathing, thinking he was all paranoid and attentive, when really he was just night-writing. IN THE DARK! Who even does that? Jotting down ideas for his next incohesive instalment of story-time drudgery -- and I grew furious as I gazed upon the sight. I knew without a doubt he was coming up with a bunch of ridiculous ideas that have nothing to do with each other, his pen scribbling out more and more nonsense onto the page, a dull, blue-ink stream of terrible writing, the idea of which chilled the very marrow in my bones; it was all I could focus on, that damned pen in his damned hand, writing in that damned notebook, his damned awful ideas! And didn’t I mention to you that what you mistake for madness is merely over-awareness of this godawful writing? Yes, I majored in philosophy, but I also minored in creative writing, so it’s not just that I personally didn’t like his writing, but I knew, from a technical standpoint, that it wasn’t merely unenjoyable, but also just… just really, really bad! Now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull sound. Despite its softness, it was not unlike the deafening chirp of spring cicadas, enveloping the entire atmosphere for hours upon hours, in just a few moments of his mumblings. It was the old man muttering his ideas out loud as he wrote them, just as horrid in their first draft dribble dripping monotonously from his mouth as they become in their final draft. This heightened my rage as the dripping of a leaky faucet in an otherwise silent room drives a man’s mind to unrest.

But like, seriously, this guy’s prattling is way worse, because on top of his voice just sounding outright awful, there are the words -- which, by this point, I don’t have to tell you again are just -- oh but I will -- they’re the worst! The absolute worst!

But despite my inner turmoil, I refrained and kept still. I barely breathed. I stood motionless, steadily holding the curtain so as not to draw attention to myself, to burn into memory exactly where his pen was, how it slid on the paper, writing that filth, that garbage, as the hellish hand moved quicker and quicker, and his mumbling grew louder, yet more incomprehensible.

I continued to stay still, though. I didn’t move a muscle. I barely even breathed. Completely motionless. I was completely still. Through all that, the old man kept mumbling. In fact, he started mumbling faster. Like he was hoping writing some crap down on paper would calm him down or something, I guess; and apparently he can’t write without murmuring out loud to himself. His creative muscle, had he even one in his entire body, must have been straining. The scribbling of his pen grew faster. At such a pace, the flow and syntax of his words must have been extremely messy. And yet the ferocity of his writing grew harsher, I say, harsher every moment! -- I told you I was nervous, right? Well, I was. Still am. But seriously, at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of this old house, so annoying the noise that was his scribbling and mumbling excited me to uncontrollable irritation. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the mumbling and scribbling grew louder, louder! I thought he’d rip through the paper with how aggressively he was writing. And suddenly a new fear came up -- the fear of what another of those rancid stories being finished, being fully brought to reality, what it would do to my very soul. I was very much personally offended by how bad these were. Seriously. If you read one, you’d understand. But don’t. No, really, don’t read one. Don’t subject yourself to that type of torture. Trust me.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, the story. I couldn’t have him finish it. So then, I decided, the old man’s hour had come. With a loud yell, I threw open the door and leapt into the room. He shrieked once -- just once. In an instant, I ripped the writing utensils from his hand and dragged him to the floor, then suffocated him with his own pillow, keeping from him the air like he, with his horrid stories, had snuffed the light from my very soul. I smiled, knowing the mumbles I heard through the pillow must not have been the tellings of terrible tales, but the sounds of muffled terror. This didn’t vex me, because I couldn’t make out any poorly-chosen words; and, of course, because that’s totally what he gets for instilling within me the terror of both poetry and prose. For turning fiction into some sort of severe psychological torture. Seriously. Like bad-writing ptsd or something. I just can’t even. But, like all things, it eventually came to an end. The old fart was dead. I removed the pillow and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon his heart and held it there for a while. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His stories would bother me no more.

Look, if you still think I’m mad, you won’t think so after I tell you about all the wise precautions I took in concealing the body. The night went on, and I worked quickly, but silently. First things first, I dismembered the corpse. I removed the head and arms and legs. And to top it all off, I cut out his heart and stuffed it into his blabbering mouth. Eat your heart old, oh man. Hah! Then I took the book, that bloody awful book, and stuffed it into a bag with the head. Even with its pages unreadable, I wanted the damn thing out of my sight. Anyway, then I took up a few floorboards -- they’re mahogany, you know -- and stuff his, uh, parts, right under there. Then I replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out -- no stain of any kind -- no blood-spot whatsoever. What, you think I don’t know how to lay out a tarp? Not to mention I used the tub. Anyway, when I was done all that, it was about four o’clock. Still dark. But then, right on the dot, just as the old grandfather clock chimed, there was a knocking at the door. Pretty coincidental timing, eh? I knew I was in the clear, so I went down and opened it with a light heart. Three cops. Apparently someone heard the old bugger’s shriek and called it in. Annoying. But hey, I had nothing to fear; like I said before, they couldn’t have found anything. I let them in, even though they didn’t have a warrant. No need to raise suspicion. I smiled and told them the shriek was mine -- night terrors. The old man, I said, was out of town. I gave them a once-over of the whole apartment, told them to check out whatever they wanted. Eventually, we got to the old man’s room. I showed them that all his stuff was undisturbed. Being a little overly enthusiastic, I must admit, in my confidence, I dragged in some chairs and told them to take a load off. I had the audacity of my perfect triumph to actually sit right on top of where I hid the old victim’s corpse. Yup, right there.

The cops were satisfied. I’d convinced them with my manners. I was completely at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted openly. But before long, I felt myself getting pale, and wanted them gone (ACAB, after all). I had a headache, and there was a ringing in my ears. Yet, still they sat and chatted away. The ringing got worse. It went on and one, louder and more distinct. I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling, but it continued and gained definiteness -- until, at length, I realized that the noise wasn’t in my ears. Now I was getting really pale -- I talked more fluently, and slightly louder. But the sound increased -- and what could I do? It was a low, dull, aggravating sound -- like the sound of neighbours chatting through poorly insulated walls. No, no, not neighbours chatting. That old man, telling his stories, reading them out from beyond the grave, through the floor. I gasped, but the officers didn’t hear it. I spoke more quickly -- more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I got up and started ranting about trifling things, high pitched and with passionate gestures; but the noise kept increasing. Why the heck wouldn’t it stop? I walked back and forth quickly, almost as if I was getting frustrated by the cops’ observations -- and that noise still kept getting louder. Oh gods! I could almost make out the words. I could almost visualize him writing out poorly planned passages right there in the space under us. What could I do? I ranted, raved, swore! I flipped over the damn chair I’d been sitting on, and grated it along the floor, but the noise was everywhere, continually getting louder and faster. Louder and louder and louder! And still, the cops chatted pleasantly, and smiled. How the heck couldn’t they hear it? No, wait. Yeah, of course they heard it! --They suspected! --They knew! --They were mocking me, making fun of my horror. I thought so and I still think so. But honestly, anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this mockery! I couldn’t take it anymore, those hypocritical smiles! I knew I had to say something or die! And now -- again! --listen! Louder! Louder! Louder!

“Villains!”I I shrieked, “enough of this sham! I admit it! --Tear up the planks! Here, here! --It is the bothersome blabbering of his hideous head!”

[elizabethrobertajones]

Has anyone compared/contrasted Lucifer pulling Mary into the AU at the end of s12 and Sam and Michael in "Swan Song" going into the Cage? What are your thoughts on the parallel structure, if any? [Thanks so much for your meta; I look forward to the tumblr discussions just as much as the episodes sometimes

Ellooo!

I’ve seen it commented on a LOT right after the episode, although I can’t actually find a gifset comparison… And I would have to get out the DVDs and cap it by hand to make a comparison so *ugh* :P

I can’t find any meta on it though when going through my 5x22 tag so it had to all be passing comments just on how similar it looked.

I guess obviously the surface level parallel is just to give a sort of cinematic contrast to what Sam did because even though she’s not possessed and didn’t MEAN to fall through with him, she was doing a sort of sacrifice play, living the dream to go punch Lucifer in the face like she said she wanted to do. In defence of her boys. I mean, obviously. Not just punching Lucifer. I don’t *think* this all happened because of her vindictive need to punch him to make up for everything that ever happened because of her, although that is a valid reading I guess :P

It’s all a bit messed up because Lucifer pulled her through because of spite, while Michael was the one who latched onto Sam, and tried to stop him, but fell into the Cage with him because he couldn’t let go and be chill about the fight he was supposed to have with Lucifer. You can’t line up motives with the reasons why Mary went into the AU with why Michael got dragged into the Cage, and Lucifer wasn’t even in charge when it happened in 5x22. 

So going more than superficially makes it pretty hard to say it’s more than using the parallels as the means of removing Mary from the story and a comparison that like Sam she was doing something heroic for them, and ended up trapped in another world, and when they first see her again, she’s in a cage, ironically with Michael (I guess with dramatic irony that they don’t know this but we do so it’s somehow even more obvious to us)… 

It does make a direct parallel to Sam though, that he was trapped with Michael and Lucifer in the Cage, and though the AU stuff has been pretty thin so far and we’ve only had one real episode of Mary there, plus a glimpse for us in 13x01 and a glimpse for Jack and the Winchesters in 13x09… The parallel we got on screen was to Dean in Hell, and they were VERY not subtle about that since they used 13x08 to show that - which makes a parallel instead that Mary has been condemned to the AU, which is the world that *technically* she broke since it’s the world where Sam and Dean were never born, because she didn’t take the deal. 

I’m not entirely sure what that’s saying about anything or if there’s an unintentional crappy message if you dig too deep :P But in 12x23 it was a sort of vindication at least. That their world was so nice BECAUSE they were all in it and their entire chain of events had happened the way it was supposed to since before they were born.

Thinking a few other loose thoughts while prodding this. Season 12 started with a strong theme of season 6 being reversed, and if you roll it backwards far enough you get to 5x22. Obviously all the events being messed up so it’s all a bunch of superficial similarities but all the results and characters and motives and even the angle of the hole they’re falling in are all changed around, arriving at that end and falling into an apocalypse does seem to finish rolling season 6 back through to season 5. 

Also if Mary is a Sam parallel in terms of circumstance, more than Dean being in Hell despite the superficial parallel which is more about motivating him than drawing a proper allegory - Mary’s there accidentally and getting tormented by Lucifer and then Michael just because she happens to be around and caught in the middle of all of it - Sam was saved by Cas in this example. Of course, brought back soulless so there’s got to be consequences… That was part of Cas’s post-apocalypse (lol that phrase is meaningless in this show) hubris and at that point feeling like he could do anything so why not jailbreak Sam from the Cage because Dean would want it and it would be a happier ending than what they had, and of course that causes a whole bunch of problems. 

BUT it is a Winchester codependency deal free zone, because although Dean was LOOKING for ways to do it all through that year, Sam was already back, and the deal he cut with Death to get Sam back turned out to be a lesson Death wanted him to learn and he was intending to give Sam back, because he felt there were bigger problems they needed to deal with. An advantage of Gamble being really un-critical of the codependency is that while none of this is particularly healthy, it’s not all being put on full blast like in Carver era.

I think there’s the obvious parallel now that Jack is the one who had the means to get Mary - like Cas did while Dean had no clue how to save Sam - and had been pursuing it behind their backs for 3 episodes, before coming up with a solution to get her back that’s preeeetty sketchy because aside from any of the consequences they’ve already been warned by Death to back off from messing with the cosmic stuff and here they are… In 6x11 he’s warning them before Cas opens Purgatory, in 13x05 she’s warning Dean before they go universe hopping and cause what’s already happened plus I bet a whole bunch more nonsense on top of that yet to come :P

But anyway Jack has been given the sole task of rescuing Mary because no one else made it to Apocalypse AU with him, and that seals the comparison to Cas in/before season 6 saving Sam, especially as we get a lot of motivation overlap, but Jack’s is much more clear and personal in some ways because we’re seeing it as it happens and getting explanations as we go, such as his need to do something good and seeing the whole process by which he would arrive at deciding that he can and should save Mary, and why, and who for, and all that. 

I think we need to see more of the consequences/Jack’s overall season to keep on comparing him to season 6 Cas because so far as we’ve seen he’s not cut any shady deals (and I doubt he has, at least because anyone who he could cut a shady deal with is still looking for him :P) and he’s still just at the part that technically Cas had already done before the end of season 5 since Sam was already back before the credits there. We really just have Cas’s explanations in season 6 to go on, told from the perspective of the END of season 6, where everything’s got all hecked up… 

I’m guessing if this is going to be bad in some way it will continue to be a different sort of light on things, especially to make a parallel with Cas which could be like one of those scenarios about the son accidentally atoning for the father’s mistakes or whatever by having a take 2 and doing it better on their go around - it’s Cas’s biggest mistake and it’s why, for example, so many angels are dead and they’re pestering Cas to get Jack to make more angels (and we’ve had a few reminders this season about Cas being responsible for that, with his face in the Empty when it tells him all the other dead angels are in there too). I think Cas has long ago redeemed himself *personally* to the Winchesters for the season 6 stuff, but it would be nice if this is heading a way to make Cas less catastrophically guilty to Heaven because he could move on with his life if that guilt was lessened. 

(On the other hand I do worry about Jack doing the exact same thing he’s doing with Mary in 13x09 - “Oh you want this done? And it will make everything better! Okay!” *just goes and friggin… does the thing… without stopping to consider the consequences* - oh, Billie will be facepalming if all the previously-dead angels suddenly drop out of the Empty or something like that :P) 

Anyways this is all getting really ahead of where we are, but something like knowing it would be a season 6 parallel with Mary in “the cage” and Jack going off to rescue her metaphorical guns blazing is definitely only something that solidified SINCE 12x23 so I guess it’s one of those things that is only easy to talk about looking back from 13x09 (even if we’ve been wondering if/how Jack would at the very least open a rift and get Mary back since the summer) because now we know for sure he’s doing it for very similar or at least comparable reasons to what Cas did for Sam. So we’re seeing another thing that only happened off-screen in the original loop happening on screen this time but told through different characters and in different ways (like Patience leaving home to go hunt monsters being an emotional and situational reverse parallel to Sam leaving for Standford, but possibly being the closest version we’ll see on screen to that moment). So there’s a whole parallel structure going on here which just *starts* with Mary going into the AU like Michael and/or Sam falling into the cage in 5x22…

Don’t *think* she’s going to come back soulless although every friggin time a character returns from somewhere or other since, like, ever, people start speculating if they’re soulless so in before that :P

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND LOT

The more and more types of work in which problems are presented to you and that you have to be doing really, really well to raise money after Demo Day. Ideally you should be able to.1 One of the best young researchers, you could create in a couple years for another company before starting their own. Was neither so hard nor so boring as I feared. But aside from that, I don't think they realize how much it is. That is, if you try to raise money at all you'll probably raise it at higher valuations than Dropbox and Airbnb are the most common type, so being good at solving those is key in achieving a high average outcome across all situations, and smart people by definition have odd ideas. Conversely, an investor who will invest a lot, but I think it needs even more emphasizing. They would say that. And finally, since a few good hackers have unbearable personalities, could we stand to have them around?

If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram is illuminating. Almost everything is interesting if you get deeply enough into it.2 So what tends to happen is that they all wait as long as it has the right sort of unruliness—that it is a home not just for the smart, but you can tell them that you'd be happy to talk about your idea is to get there first and get all the users, leaving none for competitors. Then I'm worried.3 Tell them that valuation is not the test that matters. There are only 5 MBAs in the top 50. The problem is, people who propose new checks almost never consider that the check itself has a cost.4 If you're among that number, Trevor Blackwell, Daniel Giffin, Sarah Harlin, Shiro Kawai, Jessica Livingston, Matz, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, Guido van Rossum, David Weinberger, and Steven Wolfram for reading drafts of this essay. Almost everything is interesting if you get a couple million, we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom.

Many founders do. Works. Unless you're experienced enough at fundraising to have a co-founder. And like most people who lead a precarious existence, they tend to peter out. Pride and Prejudice sales rank, 6191? Do the founders of a startup. One reason people overreact to competitors is that they don't lead, translate that in your mind. How could it be otherwise?

And we loved them, because when you're not in fundraising mode. One founder put it very succinctly: Fast iteration is the key to success as a startup.5 It's too complicated for a third party to act as if they were a single person—the workers and manager would each share only one person's worth of freedom between them. Actually the best model would be to say that is, if you want to make a difference. If you talk to investors, you should do in college is work on your own projects. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are.6 We were compelled by circumstances to grow slowly, and in addition will help you raise more. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. How many people are going to want computers in their houses? Everyone knows these, because they're not used to asking that. Data. The river's algorithm is simple.7

When I worked in fast food. When I worked in fast food, we didn't prefer the busy times. Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell a company run by marketing guys. If you laugh, they're not. They're good at doing what they're asked, since that's what it takes to please the adults who judge you at seventeen. At certain moments you'll be tempted to ignore them.8 It protects you from investors who flake in much the same things, because most startup investors are nerds themselves. This didn't merely make them less productive. Henry Ford did it to the car makers that preceded him.

In particular, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. Ideally when you've raised enough.9 If you want ideas for startups: what do people who are not like you want from technology? Ever notice how much easier it is to raise money before you can convince investors, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you'll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of their lives. That might be worth exploring. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. And what we've found is that the raison d'etre of classical scholarship was a kind of fake tribe. That's what you're looking for space for a startup.10

Notes

You may not care; they just kill you, it could be ignored.

Founders rightly dislike the sort of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the restrictions on what you learn about programming in college. There is no grand tradition of city planning like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but whether it's good, but it might seem, because the money right now. If they really mean, in one where life was tougher, the best hackers work on stuff you love.

If you're good you can stick even more clearly. Digg to respond gracefully to such changes, because any story that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding nonsense seems to be a niche within a niche. As I explained in How to Make Wealth in Hackers Painters, what if they make money from them. We consciously optimize for this essay.

By heavy-duty security I mean by evolution. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup.

But it isn't critical to do wrong and hard to grasp this than we can teach startups a lot, or working in middle management at a blistering pace in the world, write a subroutine to do the equivalent thing for founders; if their kids in a certain size it gets presumptuous for a really long time? Pliny Hist. A servant girl cost 600 Martial vi. So the cost of having employers pay for stuff online, if the statistics they use the word philosophy has changed is how important it is less secure.

No one understands female founders better than Jessica. But it's a problem this will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up than any design decision, but I think this made us seem naive, or magazines.

When governments decide how to do business with any firm employing anyone who has them manages to find a blog on the x division of Megacorp is now replicated all over the super-angels. In practice you can probably write a subroutine to do it is because other places, like arithmetic drills, instead of reacting.

There's a variant of compound bug where one bug happens to compensate for another. So as an investor who merely seems like he will fund you, it will become increasingly easy to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's no longer working to help the company.

No one wants to program a Turing machine.

This is one you take to pay dividends. The liking you have to do it is. So far the closest anyone has come is Secretary of State and the company's PR people worked hard to mentally deal with slaps, but for the more accurate metaphor would be to write every component yourself, but investors can get for free. By this I used to be good?

Thanks to Lisa Randall, Geoff Ralston, Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, Guido van Rossum, and David Cann for inviting me to speak.

[sammyday-everyday]

Disney films of 2018, ranked

I finally watched Mary Poppins Returns yesterday, and I realized that I watched every Disney film this year, at least, according to Wikipedia.

really weird, I was expecting a Disneynature film, Ghibli film or a Disney India film at least but hey, who cares anyway, we got an Incredibles sequel. Yay. So, here are the 6 Disney films of 2018, all ranked from best to worst.

#1: Mary Poppins Returns

Finally a good Disney film! I have so little to say against the Mary Poppins sequel-- it embraced the original’s magic and resurrected the cadaver that is Disney magic. If we look at only Disney titles (excluding Pixar and the others), the last good Disney film was 2016′s Zootopia, that although very good, was very different. I’m talking the classic Disney magic, the grandiose musical numbers, colorful characters, original narrative and of course, 2D animation.  The music is amazing, I don’t know how music works really, but the songs of the sequel matches what I’d call a “musical palette” of the original, hence each new songs sounds like unused musical number from 1964′s Mary Poppins, making it so you could listen to both soundtracks on shuffle together and they’d match perfectly. Then, as you might know the movie features 2D animation, and it is beautiful: exactly what you’d expect from Disney, and I missed it so much I can’t hide that a few tears made their way into my eyes. Emily Blunt nails Mary Poppins, keeping the character very much alive, Lin-Manuel Miranda is Lin-Manuel Miranda, so he is obviously great in this movie also. Still, the film feels a lot like a big broadway musical, which is to be expected since it was produced by the same guys who brought you Into the Woods and La La Land, but the problem is that if feels too much like a broadway musical. Not that much of an issue, but I wondered, a few times too many during the film, why they didn’t just made it into a broadway musical. Finally, it is a sequel, and unfortunately it does exactly what the original did, rather than doing something different, fresh and special. It is frustrating when sequels does that, but that’s a common problem, and even though it makes Mary Poppins Returns less special, it doesn’t make it bad. If you miss the old Disney magic though, that’s the best you’re getting these days.

Beautiful, magical, but still a sequel.

#2: Ralph Breaks the Internet

In a world where big studios try to be relevant to the youth by making films featuring Internet and its wonders, Ralph Breaks the Internet surprisingly isn’t a wreck. The same post-mermaid structure, still very boring, but that’s practically every Disney film these days, so let’s ignore that. The film itself is a great sequel, as nice as the first and they’re trying something different. Sadly, in the end, it’s just Emoji Movie by Disney, a lot of references to giant companies and culturally important websites, making the film feel a lot like one big ad. I won’t go too deep into the film right now, but I’ll say that although I have good things to say about the film, it’s forgettable. They’re still mocking the Disney genre much like Moana, pretending Enchanted never existed, but it’s all fine, then I enjoyed the little hint of a message about Internet hypocrisy in anonymity, but it’s so small you could miss it, and for a film about Internet, I was expecting more of that. The film is so filled with references that it becomes the one thing driving the film forwards, almost forgetting that it is a film, so rushed character introductions leads to a rushed ending when the filmmakers realized they were making a film. Little to see here, but if you like Internet, it isn’t bad, you can try it. For others, this film will be irrelevant. Only notable moment is the Disney Princesses’ appearances, which is excellent, but fan service over-shading the whole film is pretty embarrassing.

Film so empty it makes you wish it was just 112 minutes of Disney Princesses hanging out.

#3: Incredibles 2

Little to say here; to me, Incredibles 2 was a big let down. Misses the magic of the first film, and really fails to give out the same 60s atmosphere the original gave out. Little to no grown-up humor, only the best part from the first, and of course, a lot less fresh and special. If you like the Incredibles, you will get enjoyment out of this one too, the characters are as great as they were in the first. My biggest criticism is that the film doesn’t understand what made Incredibles so special: not only did the original animated a realistic and relatable family as the protagonists, it brought something new to the superhero genre. The first had washed out superheroes and illegal superpowers, really different from the superhero films of the time, like X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but first and foremost it was a family film, about the struggles of an unsatisfied family. The sequel focuses way too much on superheroes, and the superhero part isn’t even anything special: the question of “are we giving too much power to superheroes?” is nothing new, we’ve all seen Civil War and Batman v Superman and we’re all already tired of it.

We wanted a sequel, but not THAT.

#4: Christopher Robin

I am huge Winnie the Pooh lover, my childhood was marked by hours of Winnie the Pooh episodes, hence you might think I found 2017′s Christopher Robin a huge embarrassment and disappointment, but you’d be wrong: I loved it, although I recognize it was junk. You don’t understand how much I love Winnie the Pooh, I love him so much you put him in the worst film ever and as long as you don’t mess him up too much, I’ll love your film. So, what about Christopher Robin the film? It’s lovely, because Winnie the Pooh’s in it, but even Winnie and the gang aren’t as lovable as they used to be. They’re good, but they miss the quotable lines and dreamy metaphors to gain forgettable quotes that’ll make you go “I guess that Winnie-ish” and really obvious metaphors that’ll make you “yeah, I got it, thanks.” The Winnie part was failed, and the rest of the film isn’t better. It’s exactly like Mary Poppins Returns, same concept of retrieving your inner child, but done lazily and without passion. Winnie the Pooh was great because you knew it lived in Christopher Robin’s imagination, now seeing Winnie in London is really weird and unpleasant. Nobody asked for that.

Masters of the Universe but it’s Winnie the Pooh.

#5: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is one of those horrible films that had good ideas, not that it could have been good, but it could have been a lot less horrible. It has an ensemble of characters that are either painfully annoying, terribly boring or plain forgettable, and although it tries to be that grandiose adaptation of the gracious Nutcracker, I wish I could say it’s all “Razzle Dazzle”, but even that isn’t true. I went to see it with my mom and she kept saying how beautiful the film was, and while I guess they were fine, you’ve probably seen awful films with prettier shots, I know I did. Nothing to see here, the story is terribly boring and makes no sense, but it’s so boring you won’t even care about making sense out of it. It’s sprinkled with fragments of good ideas like “let’s have a ballet scene in the film explaining the origins of the four realms” ruined by more obvious annoyingly awful ideas like “but since it’s so genius and subtle and hard to understand let’s have the annoying pink b**ch explain everything during the scene and ruin everything”. Fortunately, I’ll forget about it soon enough. The film tries to be an epic tale but it ends up being insignificant, little, and forgettable. 

Let’s make The Nutcracker but stupid.

#6: A Wrinkle in Time

I wish I could hate A Wrinkle in Time with a burning passion, but I just don’t understand it. If I’d tell you the plot of the film, you’d say “This is so stupid, this does not make any sense”, but don’t go thinking A Wrinkle in Time is one of those films, those that makes you go “I mean sure it sounds stupid but if you watch it it’s a lot better.” It is stupid, and the film glorifies not making sense, or at least I think it does. Most scenes I don’t know if it’s one of those glorified scenes of nonsense or just a metaphor for something I don’t get. Scenes come out of nowhere and lead nowhere, to an extent where you’re left with scenes like “so the kids go to the beach and a guy gives them food, but then one of the kid eats sand so the girls’ brother becomes evil” and concepts like “to teleport to another dimension all you need is to set your frequency to love”. With an ending where the kids exterminate all evil in the universe so everyone in the planet becomes good or something, I can’t find anything good about this movie. It’s so weird and unpleasant and incomprehensible, I couldn’t recommend it any less. It’s a mess trying to be progressive and give a message of love, but even Barberella is better in this department.

“...what?” -Me, during the entirety of A Wrinkle in Time.

What 2018 a good year for Disney? Well, it was better than 2017 so I guess yes. This year we’re having a couple of titles too. Remakes of Lion King, Aladdin and Dumbo sure sounds like big disappointments, and I wonder if they’ll give the Genie a kid since he’s played Will Smith-- can’t imagine the guy playing a role other than a tragic dad. Frozen 2 and Toy Story 4 have potential, but they will be sequels. I am curious for that Artemis Fowl film though, but since Kenneth Branagh is directing it (Director of Thor, Cinderella and Murder on Orient Express, all the worst ones) I’m gonna be expecting a bad year. 

[domliddle]

Potentially Great Albums. Eric B & Rakim - Follow the Leader

"Follow The Leader", Eric B & Rakim's 1988 second coming, is not a good album.

The duo had four albums before they went their separate ways - while most agree that "Paid in Full" was their magnum opus, from there it gets a bit more difficult. The other three have their own great parts, and their own flaws. Both "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em" (1990) and "Don't Sweat The Technique" (1992) had broad underlying themes both musically and lyrically. They were demonstrably different from the duo's other works, and polar opposites of each other; there was a sense of artistic development in both cases without sacrificing their own consistency.

Therefore, Follow The Leader is recognisable as somewhat of a transitional album, sitting comfortably between the duo's debut and the more mysterious yet aggressive "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em".

So why is it still loved, even quoted by some as an improvement on Paid in Full?

As it starts with the title track (Follow the Leader, obviously), it's plain to see that they are both in their prime; the beat is magnificent and perfectly fits Rakim's umpteen brilliant lines. This is where any doubts were dispelled. From there, we go straight into "Microphone Fiend"; a brilliant song that caters perfectly to Rakim's lyrical strengths. It employs a broad theme that allows him to deviate from braggadocio and metaphor into something more, without seeming forced. The beat is also perfect, different to the opener and employing a rhythm that allows Rakim to twist his words around it in different ways. "Lyrics of Fury" is the third track in a row to be one of their most praised; a raw, simple breakbeat that Rakim destroys.

So what's the problem? Well, from here, it falls off a cliff.

"Eric B. Never Scared" is nothing out of the ordinary. A good DJ interlude over a good beat. The problem is that it's over 5 minutes long - aside from the title track, the longest of the lot. Eric B's showcases are, at first, an important part of he and Rakim's albums. However, the track becomes repetitive at, if I'm being generous, 3 minutes in.

It gets worse though. I would contend that "Just a Beat" is the absolute worst song across the duo's entire work. It is simply Eric B, warped voice and all for some reason, talking nonsense before a nice beat comes in. His warped voice then reminds you that it's "a beat", in case you hadn't worked that out, and continues to do so throughout the whole thing. Thankfully, it's a bit shorter than the previous one.

"Put Your Hands Together" is strange. It begins with a minute-long piano piece - one that is actually great, but at odds with the rest of the album, and serves to needlessly drag the song out. When the actual thing starts, it's good - nothing surprising, simply Rakim rhyming over a good, stripped-down funky beat about how great he is in front of a crowd.

"To The Listeners" begins with a pretty awful beat, and someone whispering repeatedly about how it's "To The Listeners" and not the people smelling or tasting the album. Rakim's alright on this, but nothing more. In fact, he sometimes sounds off-beat, and raps too slowly to mesh with it.

"No Competition" is a good song. Not bad at all, and more braggadocio over a faster beat that sounds like Follow the Leader's little brother. "The R" is a song that I've never got - apparently ghost-produced by Mark the 45 King, so expectations are high. It's not bad, but clashes musically with the rest of the album, and Rakim himself. Compared to how raw the rest of the beats sound, it almost dominates the song - not catering to Rakim's strengths.

"Musical Massacre" is also great - probably the best of the lot aside from the opening 3 tracks. There's no unique theme lyrically, and the beat is fast and raw - fitting with much of the album's high points.

The ending is what saves the album. Actually, no it's not - it's the instrumental version of the worst beat on the album, appropriately titled "Beats for the Listeners". I wouldn't even have this as a bonus track.

So, judging from the above, not a great album. But I believe something great could have been made from what's there. So let's rearrange things.

Other opinions are available.

1: To The Listeners - cut down

I have to include this song. Therefore, let's begin by cutting the opening loop (and whispering) down - it's not really a song that needs to showcase the beat. Have one 4-bar loop, before Rakim comes in, and one verse - perhaps the actual opening one, or picking at lines that suit a broad, introductory song. Either way, as a stripped-down, slow interlude of a song, it's better placed to open the album.

2: The R - Extended Remix - cut down

Like I said, "The R" wasn't my favourite song on the album. However, I believe the 45 King's extended remix is a perfect opener after the intro. Strip down the opening part a bit, and cut straight after the "what happened to peace?" sample, and you have a good song. The rest of it can come later...

3: Musical Massacre

My main problem with "Follow the Leader" is that it promises so much - I don't think I've ever seen an album of any genre quite so frontloaded. Therefore, "Musical Massacre" is the perfect follow-up; different to the previous vibes, switching it up without giving away the absolute best. A fast, frenetic display that shows the variety on board. I imagine this as best with "The R"'s ending sample cutting straight into this without a beat.

4: No Competition

Same principle as the previous one - great without being the best.

5: Microphone Fiend

It's now necessary to deviate from the two similarly-minded songs, and at the same time throw one of the duo's best moments in. So here it is. Perfectly placed to break up the album.

6: Put Your Hands Together - cut down

The piano bit needs to go, unfortunately. But it's a smooth song that follows "Microphone Fiend" relatively well, not being too jarring.

7: Eric B. Never Scared - cut down

Well, obviously. Cut it down to 1:30 at the absolute max, and you have an interlude to break up the album. Take it simply as that, and instead of a bad song, you have a good buffer between the previous two relatively smooth tracks and...

8: Lyrics of Fury

One of the album's three great openers. Placed perfectly to remind any of the listeners how great the duo really is, in case they'd forgotten.

9: The R - Extended Remix

Another musical interlude. I love musical interludes. "Paid in Full" was helped a great deal by how Eric B's showcases broke up Rakim's - I would argue that one isn't enough on here. Technically there are 3 musical interludes on the album, but let's forget those exist. Cut in after the first half of the song cuts - starting with "Peace!", and it serves the purpose of giving the album a start-to-end correlation. It would also need to be cut down towards the end.

10: Just a Beat - with a rapper

Picture that. Who'd put Rakim on an Eric B. beat? Ridiculous. I think the levity of the song would at least allow for a grand verse or two from Rakim, broken up with scratching on the start and end.

11: Follow the Leader

To me, this is the perfect end to the album. It's a fantastic song, but one which is best suited to a roaring conclusion. In the end, the listener's last impression becomes that of the duo at their peak. Somewhat different to the quiet fart that is "Beats for the Listeners".

Ok, I understand - creative decisions are a small part of an album's tracklist. Record companies will obviously prefer an album frontloaded with the album's prime cuts. For me to argue that the above would make a better album is not only a matter of opinion, but also entirely moot. Granted, telling the reader that the article is moot at the end is the written "Beats for the Listeners (For the Readers - lolz)". But the great album was in there - with this minor shuffle, I feel that the album stands up as well as Eric B. & Rakim's others.

Disagree? Let me know in the comments below. Oh hang on, nobody's reading this. Don't let me know, then. Keep it all bottled up until years later you go on a blind date and vent to them about how "Beats for the Listeners" is actually a masterpiece.

Bonus Rubbish

- The Piano part of "Put Your Hands Together" could potentially serve as the backbone of a great song in its own right. As long as the mixing was right (as in, not Rakim being drowned out), and the rest of the song was similarly grand, it could serve as a great centrepiece for the album.

- Another thing that "Follow the Leader" would've benefitted from is a thematic song. The duo's other albums always have at least one track that steps out of braggadocio, keeping things relatively fresh. "Paid in Full" had the title track, "Let the Rhythm Hit Em" had a few, and "Don't Sweat the Technique" had a couple. The closest one is "Microphone Fiend" - a brilliant track, obviously, but one that doesn't deviate from Rakim being a good rapper. Said theme would only need to be broad, but it would help make the album seem less dry and repetitive.

- There's a great history of labels forcing changes and cuts to a song in order to make it suitable for single release. So here's where the original version of "The R" comes in - quite mainstream, grander-sounding than the other tracks, and a good introduction to the group. If you buy it and are interested, the real version's on the album.

[thesinglesjukebox]

ASHLEY O - ON A ROLL

[5.00]

It's Amnesty 2019! In which our writers choose singles from the year that we didn't get to. And what better way to get the ball rolling than with a song that's got something to say about pop music...

Joshua Lu: In the final episode of season five of Black Mirror, Miley Cyrus plays pop star Ashley O, whose desire to escape her contract leads her aunt to put her under a coma, which leads to two of her fans saving her, which leads to her performing "Head Like a Hole" at a night club, happy now that she's freed from the literal and metaphorical restraints that came with being a pop star. Undergirding the episode is "On a Roll," a remake of that same Nine Inch Nails song but made so overtly benign and bubbly that it becomes as unnerving as the original. Most of these unnerving aspects are probably intentional: the ambiguity behind lines like "'Cause I'm going down in history" or "I'm gonna get what I deserve," the distorted moans and cries buried in the instrumental, or the way the bass drops off at the start of the chorus, leaving Ashley O screaming motivational platitudes over an unfeeling beat. But there are so many parts that are equally unsettling yet don't come across as intentional -- were they really expecting us to hear "hey yeah whoa-oh" and not "hey I'm a hole," or is this mixup supposed to act as commentary on, say, perverse undertones in popular music? (The fact that the original song has "hole" in the same spot makes this mondegreen all the more suspect.) Are the dozen or so seconds of dead air at the end of the song just a consequence of a lazy audio engineer, or was this silence deliberately included to let the song's termination settle uncomfortably into nothingness? It's these parts of "On a Roll" that make it so fascinating -- not the rockist message of its origin, and especially not the corny, ham-fisted cracking screen in the music video -- so much so that even after streaming it for months, I can't tell how much of this song I'm supposed to enjoy, and how much I'm supposed to fear. [8]

Vikram Joseph: Like "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too", the Black Mirror episode which birthed it, "On A Roll" serves as both escapist fun and a pointed facsimile of meticulously-constructed big-studio pop. Brooker and Reznor's four-part construction is unexpectedly good -- a cheerleader-chant of a chorus (surely intentionally written to, in turn, be wilfully misheard as "hey, I'm a hoe!" by gay twitter) sandwiched between big, melodic, reverberating synths in the pre- and post-chorus sections. Squeezing "achieving my goals!" into a pop chorus is worth an extra point, and also works as a sly joke about influencer culture's obsession with productivity. [7]

Alfred Soto: Imagine shouting "achieving my goals!" with less enthusiasm than an assistant vice president of human resources at a two-day retreat. At least "California Gurls" put the self-help gumption behind solid beats. [1]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "On a Roll" was designed to be a hollow shell of a prototypical pop song grounding a Black Mirror episode satirising toxic music stan culture. And yet, contrary to the episode's whole point, the Gays™ have still found a way to make it the object of stan culture anyways! Frankly, I can see why: it's low-key a bop, the kind that burrows under your skin and slowly takes over your body until you're singing it all the time. I can't help but like it even though I know I'm not supposed to. Do we really have free will? [6]

Kayla Beardslee: Yas queen, I'm literally gagging. We love a thinly produced bop! New main pop girl Ashley O has done it again, constantly raising the bar for all of us who want to make basic pop that serves looks? eh vocals? I guess its story without ever impressing outside of its narrative context. We stan. Keep her in that coma so she can churn out more average, serviceable music for AO2! [5]

Natasha Genet Avery: Ashley O's Gaga impression had me in the first half, I'm not gonna lie. But Gaga would never waste a verse and bridge this good on that laughably staid three-note chorus. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: A fizzing, swaddled bass synth lopes around the black hole of drums that sucks down every other musical instrument, burying a thinning synth key patch pushing up and sinking while Miley scrapes it off the bottom of the ice cream pail. [3]

Tobi Tella: In the same vein as A Star Is Born, turns out executives trying to make empty, vapid pop music actually ends up slapping. It's a perfect pop parody, with a million meaningless hooks; the drawn out "oh honeyyy," the pre-chorus that has nothing to do with anything, and, of course, the chorus, which hits the cheesy pop vibe perfectly. Not to mention the fact that it's an interpolation of a hard metal song, everything about this is nonsensical yet amazing, and it's honestly probably better than anything Miley Cyrus has put out this year. [7]

Jackie Powell: Ashley O might have just performed my "I can beat burnout" theme song. While this track was released in mid-June, it's exactly what is needed to deal with the darker days of December. It's almost as if I'm visualizing that Rachel Bloom on a stage somewhere singing about burnout, but I'm not actually hearing a musical theater melody. It's one hundred percent pop. It's also sexier while still cheering me on. How's that for an anti-burnout fight song? It's also ironic that "Head Like a Hole" is lyrically so dystopian while "On a Roll" sonically and visually -- with its simple synths responsible for the track's chord progression and a purple wig and white bodysuit -- projects more of a utopian vibe. But as a song featured in Black Mirror, the choice to pay tribute to "Head Like A Hole" was more deliberate than not. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: As long as Nine Inch Nails have existed and yarled, people have observed, often intending to blow your minds, that they might Actually Be Pop. There were the band's early appearances on questionable proto-TRLs. There was that Sound on Sound interview about how Dave Ogilvie mixed "Call Me Maybe" like a NIN song, resulting in this (featuring, in the comments, one "DigitalPimp" marveling at how it sounded like something out of a Black Mirror episode, four years before "Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too"). There was the weird spate of offhand references in media about and/or marketed to young, non-generally-industrial-listening girls, from Clarissa from Clarissa Explains It All to Cassie from Animorphs to the babies in A Visit From the Goon Squad who are sold future!NIN's hit "Ga Ga." There are the many real-life "Ga Ga"s, like this, this, or this by Devo, or this seasonally appropriate medley. And there is, of course, this deeply strange year 2019, in which Trent Reznor earned his first No. 1 hit with one "Old Town Road," and in which there was this. I'm not a Trent purist -- I'm too much of a Tori Amos fan for that -- but "On a Roll" misunderstands the medium. The track, at least, is done by actual pop producers, The Invisible Men, and thus sounds plausible, though it can't decide whether it wants to be "California Gurls" or Weeknd-produced-by-Max-Martin smooveness or whatever the hell that half-time prechorus or Can't Take Me Home faux-soul backing vocal are. But the lyrics are by Charlie Brooker, and though he nails the inane in-universe promotional bullshit, he doesn't understand songwriting. "Bow down before the one you serve" is a more plausible pop lyric than "I'm stoked on ambition and verve." One shamelessly plunders greed and S&M and melodrama and does so the way actual people talk. One is a thesis statement rather than a lyric, doesn't scan, and is finished by rhymezone.com-ing vocabulary that for the life of me, I cannot remember if any pop lyrics have used. It's not even a timely thesis; in cynical 2019, post-Madonna, post-Gaga, post-Eilish, hell, post-"7 Rings," a pop star is less likely to put out "Everything Is Awesome" jingle music than just cover "Head like a Hole." And indeed, "On a Roll" exists so Black Mirror can get a cathartic moment out of Ashley O singing the actual "Head Like a Hole," which sounds great, because by comparison what wouldn't? Trent says he's OK with it, but then we know his stance on what he'd do for money. [2]

Iain Mew: I was at the lower context end of the scale for my initial listens to "On a Roll." I haven't watched the Black Mirror episode; I was vaguely aware of a Nine Inch Nails link but not its form; I don't know "Head Like a Hole." In that context "On a Roll" sounded like an intermittently functioning pop song with some unusually scanning lyrics that ranged from awkward to witty to both. Listening to the Nine Inch Nails song afterwards brought it together in a different way, but "On a Roll" stood up without that at least as well as most of the high concept early-'00s mashups that it's the conceptual successor to. [6]

Katie Gill: Does this work more if you're canon-familiar? Because I get the joke: ha ha, we're going to turn Nine Inch Nails into a pop song as some sort of commentary for Charlie Brooker's Ham-Fisted Social Commentary Hour! But I've only watched one or two Black Mirror episodes, so I can't help but feel that I'm missing something here. Because if the joke is that this complete antithesis of a pop song is now turned into a pop song, I don't think it works. The lyrics are sheer beautiful banality, a 2010s take on the same joke Music and Lyrics made over ten years ago. But the pop instrumentation & reworking doesn't hide the fact that "Head Like a Hole" is not fundamentally built like a pop song. It's like going into a guest bedroom that was obviously once a storage attic with low ceilings and poor insulation: put on a new coat of paint and the bones still show through. Maybe I have to watch the episode in order to fully appreciate the joke. But then again, great examples of musical parody & homage stand wonderfully on their own without context. Why doesn't this? [5]

Alex Clifton: As a parody of manufactured pop, this is pretty good; unsurprisingly, I'm reminded of Hannah Montana's "Nobody's Perfect" with its aggressive positivity ("riding so high! achieving my goals!"). But I'm seen people refer to this as an "accidental banger" and that's overrating the song. It's serviceable, it's catchy enough to be in the background at a party, but if you're going to go for manufactured pop, go hard or go home. This just doesn't commit itself enough to the genre to meet my expectations. [4]

Will Adams: I've spent the better part of the decade railing against PC Music's uncanny valley pop and its purported inability to make satisfying commentary on pop music. Allow "On a Roll" to serve as my mea culpa. Clickable premise of Miley Cyrus covering Nine Inch Nails for a Black Mirror episode aside, "On a Roll" feels pointless. Especially when a pop version of "Head Like a Hole" already exists, deliberately cynical pop by mainstream artists already exists, and your chorus hinges on a line as fatally clunky as "I'm stoked on ambition and verve." [3]

David Moore: A few months ago I was doing my weekly Spotify trawl and came across what sounded like a long-delayed aftershock of self-titled-era Taylor Swift. I was amused to see that this artist was Taylor Acorn, suggesting an elaborate algorithm designed to generate successive Taylor Swift clones named according to a variation on the NATO alphabet: Taylor Acorn, Taylor Bravo, Taylor Charlie. And this in turn gave me an idea for a television pilot with this exact premise, which I wrote ten to twenty minutes worth of before it fell flat. The problem, as it usually is with these sorts of things, is that the music needs to be good, and it can't just conjure its goodness from the perspicacity of its commentary. And of course most bizzer behind-the-curtain shows fail even at this basic commentary level -- the easiest part! -- and are doomed to be not only bad both in show and in soundtrack, but a little insulting, too. So it's a pleasure, if a mild one, to hear those exhausting try-hards over at Black Mirror let a decent pop song just kind of sit there. I didn't see the episode, but from what I can tell Miley Cyrus is supposed to be a bit of a cipher, which of course she isn't at all -- and funnily enough it makes this song do almost the opposite of what it's supposed to; it acts instead as a kind of metacommentary on how hard it is to make Miley Cyrus sound cool and competent. What, Taylor Acorn wasn't available? [6]

Michael Hong: It's nice to see Hannah Montana aim for something that fits directly into the image of the pop machine. "On the Roll" lodges itself firmly in your head while attempting to stimulate your pleasure receptors, rather than forcing all its energy to generate the cycle's "new authentic me," which ends up barely being a reinvention but more of an embarrassing reminder that Miley Cyrus is once again, back at it. Next time maybe she can aim for something good. [2]

Kylo Nocom: As satire? Boring, but not unexpectedly so! A good rule of thumb is that blanket parodies of pop music are never smart and rarely funny. Just last year A Star Is Born and Vox Lux soundtracked rockist paranoia with gratingly obvious piss-takes: "Why Did You Do That?" had a title that doubled as a lament for Ally's career; "Hologram (Smoke and Mirrors)" drove accusations of artifice that seemed directed equally at an imagined lover and Celeste herself. "On a Roll" suffers the same issues through less obvious signaling, being the commodification of an anti-establishment song, yet even here the writers can't resist an ironic nod. An uncomfortably extended silence following the last "I'm gonna get what I deserve" leaves room for interpretation: is this about Ashley exiting the pop machine as a break into authentic living, or about her suffering as retribution for being part of the pop machine? Who knows! The song is otherwise fantastic, and it being fantastic fucking sucks. Interpolating Nine Inch Nails wholesale puts Miley in her most enjoyable mode: anthemic rock-adjacent joy, some of the best she's done since her Hollywood Records era. Even if Black Mirror's idea of future pop is suspiciously like 2017, with tropical percussion breaks from "New Rules" and the pulses from "Sorry Not Sorry," the arrangement of "On a Roll" suggests actual, realized verve. The charm of the song concerns; in the context of the show itself it's the result of exploitation, and outside its context it's packaged with tacky viral marketing bullshit. But I can't resist. [9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I was prepared to give this some begrudgingly high score based on the weird, feverish week in the early summer where I listened to this on loop. But on the return visit, the appeal of "On a Roll" fades away with its novelty. All that remains is the general structure of "Head Like A Hole," which ties that undeniable melody to a much more compelling creep of a beat, and a slightly-above-average vocal performance from Miley. With every year of this nostalgia-focused decade I have grown wearier and wearier of this sort of reincarnation pop, yesterday's pleasures repackaged winkingly for an audience that sees the artlessness, the lack of aura, as the point. There's no way to listen to this sincerely, and I'm no longer amused by irony's mirror. [3]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[shepgeek]

Infinity Chore

Warning- FULL SPOILERS

 “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain,

he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer."

 I really should know more about Alexander the Great, given his name is both my middle name and also my Son’s first name. I know he was a warrior, who, in certainty of his own righteousness, killed lots of people and I wonder if the film makers held him in mind for their main character here? That quotation seemed an apt place to begin reflecting on Infinity War, since the main takeaway from a first viewing will surely be that final unexpected revelation that Thanos is, in fact, the hero of this piece. Indeed the very final promise that “Thanos will return” was probably my favourite moment in the film, staying true to its convictions right till the death. I saw this film on its opening weekend at a sold out IMAX screening where hundreds of residents of Britain’s second biggest city gathered to create a pre-screening atmosphere of almost tangible excitement. Upon leaving, however, I experienced a genuinely remarkable mood that was unlike any other I have ever felt before. One boy in his early teens was incredulous when talking to his Mother, sounding confused by his assumption prior to the film that this was meant to be the “last one”. Another lad (aged about 6, so why he was there was anybody’s guess) responded to his Father stating that the story “clearly wasn’t finished” replied simply with: “yes it was, Thanos won.” The Dad then went on to say “well obviously there will be another” before moving beyond my hearing, but I think this boy understood the film perfectly and just as Kevin Feige intended. Indeed when I look again at the Alexander quotation, it puts me more in mind of Feige- Marvel have stood at the summit of blockbuster cinema for a decade now and have crafted hit after monster hit from material that, when it was famously put up for sale, was not deemed worthy of any interest from the major studios. Their triumph was stupendous, their legacy assured and now, when faced with the problem of having exhausted their own source material, they have hit on this film as their remarkable solution and yet, although such a genuine surprise feels it should be rewarded, the more that time passes since I saw the film, the less I like it.

 Legacy

Why would anyone rewatch this film 10 years from now?

I wonder what its legacy will be, apart from on how spoilers are managed. Upon leaving the cinema I was mightily impressed by the artistic courage to suddenly punch an audience in the balls, but found that hard to reconcile with the feeling of having just been punched in the balls.  This film feels less of a story than an animated flowchart, with a screenplay not unlike a lego manual, sequentially assembling (natch) the characters via increasingly desperate battles but, unlike the first Avengers film (with its witty lightness of foot and themes of family, power and righteousness) there is little broader storytelling afoot. It feels like Marvel knew that the audience demanded of them to make this colossal unification film and, in so losing their ability to control the story, have opted for a conveyor belt of CGI and one liners to culminate in the final mega meta twist. This would work pretty well as a comic, but the lack of both thematic and character development (I struggle to recall anything approaching an arc in anyone except, at a push Gamorrah & Nebula) undermines the emotional impact.

Who would revisit this film then? I’ve always been a fan of Thor, especially in Branagh’s wittily pompous opera which, for my money, was cheaply discarded for goofiness in the flippant and messily indulgent Ragnarok. Here, however, the God of Thunder is used to glue franchises together, veering within minutes from devastated holocaust survivor to pompous wisecracker, and manages only a faded caricature. After having his entire social circle casually terminated earlier in the year, Thor then swiftly loses his best friend (who, bafflingly, chooses to save the Hulk instead) and brother in order to add dramatic weight that is almost immediately squandered when another hero immediately enters stage left. Any Thor fan, therefore, who is looking for a nostalgic blast 10 years from now is not going to seek it here, but would rather turn to any of his other films and, this argument can readily be applied to the entire roster. I also really enjoyed the cinematic debut of Dr Strange, but here he treads water throughout to ultimately act so stupidly and stupendously out or character in order to allow the villain to win, he is either a complete moron or, more likely, is playing a Dumbledoresque long game that, ultimately, will render this entire film moot so, either way, there is no point in coming back to it. Each other character has their finest hour elsewhere in the MCU, so this film, with its dusting of story and character, must stand on its visuals which, whilst stunning, are not significantly more stunning those of other Marvel films. If you’re an Iron Man fan then his better work is in any of his standalones, and Cap gets to have a beard but almost literally nothing else- the stage is so crammed that nobody has space to actually do anything. I loved the sad and strange Banner/Romanov relationship in Age of Ultron but, worse than ignoring it, that core relationship is reduced to a camp “Awkward!” gag, and it even looks like Johansson and Ruffalo never even managed to share a set, never mind a scene. The film simply has no space for the sad, strange or interesting: “Ladies and Genelmen, next up to the plate, put your hands together for Rocket Racoon!” Infinity War does spark when it wrestles two great actors into the same shot, which it only really manages twice. Vision and Scarlet Witch’s vignette in a gorgeously shot (although curiously sparse) Edinburgh comes closest to giving the film a heart, but even actors of this quality need space and the CGI carnage is never far away. There is also joy in Strange & Stark’s bickering (entirely understandable since the film makers know that they are the same bloody character) but then it leads only to that baffling denouement. The film offers us a picnic of dozens upon dozens of insubstantial slices of fun, but there is always are more nourishment to be found in any of their previous works. As I run through the metaphors, this film is thus reduced a queue: 150 minutes you have to sit through in order to get onto the next ride, an infinity chore.

 Trolling

When our myriad of heroes is reduced to a parade, the villain is then given considerable focus and, whilst the performance is terrific, his master-plan seems to be based on eliminating the perils of overpopulation which, considering space is infinite (and in it there exists a time travel stone which would solve this issue!) the nonsensical choice to kill half the universe completely undermines the pathos that Josh Brolin works so hard to sell. Maybe Thanos’ nihilism is borne of those at Marvel longing to rein in uncharted growth of the MCU which has stretched beyond their own control- perhaps Feige isn’t Alexander the Great but Thanos himself! Regardless, the film adds fuel for a long-held blockbuster bugbear of mine- can we not get some plain evil instead of conjuring increasingly daft motivations for villainy? DC certainly now have a great opportunity now to steal a march and simply portray Darkseid as a gleefully sadistic arsehole. On DC, it is saddening to read stories about “fans” who troll Marvel, howling about conspiracies and I am worried about adding fuel to so paranoid a fire, but I simply cannot get past the fact that I much preferred Justice League to Infinity War. In that flawed film, the clear failures can at least be (mostly) compartmentalised into a weak villain and a wobbly upper lip, but it knew to allow its characters to breathe, to be who they should be and even grow a little. Infinity War allows each of its heroes to simply process across the stage for their mandatory 5 mins of plot-serving quippage to then get hooked from the wings.

Maybe this is just me, as a 41 year old nerd, finally reaching superhero overload. Or has my affection for the career of Joss Whedon and his original Avengers films, coupled with my fanboy credentials firmly planted on the DC side of the divide allowed me to use a downer ending and as a lighting rod to indulge my Marvel frustrations? I have to acknowledge this possibility but, for me, there is little between this film & X-Men Apocalypse- for different reasons, both are overstuffed puddings with little to emotionally hang on to. Infinity War isn’t a bad film, but it is an empty one which left a sour taste in my mouth.

 The End?

That feeling of frustration is what the departing audience at my screening were exuding- weary irritation that we would all have to return a year from now, cash in hand, to sit through the same procession of CGI only now with an actual ending. We now have to wait for everything here to be undone and, once this undoing has happened, there will be even less of a reason to rewatch this film. I feel for the directors, who can certainly bloody make this stuff visually sparkle, but this barely feels like cinema to me- it’s a comic event issue with a surprise downer ending, so ‘Catch next issue to find out what happens next! With added Brie Larson!’ But it is not 4 weeks at the newsagents where we have to wait, and even if this franchise does get the final chapter and character resolutions we hoped for this time out, my sympathy and patience has been basically spent. Cap, Tony & Thor deserve a hearty send off but I can probably live without it, and the ghastly fear of using the Infinity Gauntlet to start everything all over again with a reboot would close the door completely.

As someone who has long complained about not being surprised by Marvel films it is fairly rich for me to ignore that I certainly got a big one this time out, but this film offered nothing new apart from the requirement to come back for the next instalment, which exiting parents were audibly grumbling about. This risks looking like corporate greed, leaving the customer dangerously close to feeling cheated. Once the dust settles, I am sure that those who have flat out loved this film series are likely to find Infinity War thrilling (certainly other reviews seem to back this up) but even they are unlikely to come back to the film repeatedly in the long term. After dozens of hours I simply I no longer care enough about all these characters to feel invested any more. As Marvel have run out of stories to tell and worlds to conquer, they have played their final joker with astonishing courage and gleeful conceit but, once it hits the table, they are left with an audience that is as best exhausted and at worst annoyed. I like the idea of the audacity of this film, but suspect that the decision to have the villain triumph was not borne of courage and creativity but instead came from an exhaustion of originality.

 Coda

As a teacher and a cinephile I spent a few moments in each of my classes last Friday urging any students who love stories to see this film on the opening weekend, to celebrate it with a huge audience and suck up the atmosphere. In my showing I detected a collective flatness midway through the film- the jokes were not landing as heavily as you’d hope and you could feel that everyone was saving their emotional investment for the denouement. The perplexed incredulity as the lights went up, therefore, makes me regret my promotion of the value of a shared cinematic experience to my students via this film and, at a time when cinema is fighting to lodge inside the inboxes of the next generation, I do not think that this film has helped.

One final memory: as a lad I had some friends round for my birthday party and, as a treat, I asked if we could watch the Beastmaster, which we had rented as a family previously and I had loved. We did this for 2 birthdays running but, on the third year, my Dad came back with a different fantasy film (the name escapes me), as the Beastmaster was already booked out on loan. I and my friends sat down to watch this substitute and I remember only 2 things about it. Firstly, it was rubbish, but we seemed to enjoy laughing at it. Secondly, it finished on a pointless cliffhanger with “to be continued” filling the screen as the hero trudged into the horizon. Bollocks to that, we thought, and went outside for a kickabout.

Avengers: Infinity War

5.5

**

[ericleo108]

The Collective (Un)conscious in Music & Media

This is the old version. I have rewritten this post in two parts that are better, more accurate, and more appropriate to read:

〰️ The Unconscious Mind in Media

🎤 Music Artists’ Composition and Communication

Intro

This essay is an outline or framework in understanding Music and Media in terms of “The Collective (Un)conscious.” As you will come to see there are definitely conscious forms of lyrical, musical, and cinematic mirroring. What we will explore are the various forms of that mirroring and try to make sense of what most people consider is schizophrenic nonsense.

When we think about music we think of our favorite composers.  No matter what genre though your favorite artist got their start learning from someone that came before them. Doing things like learning another artist's songs and what their favorite cords, words, phrases, or metaphors are, will mold the proceeding artist in their image. As with anything familiar, their artistry will be ‘imprinted’ in their mind.

Influence

I will be focusing on hip-hop but as long as I know the proceeding artist I can usually tell when artists have been influenced by another. For example, My mom (and friends) used to listen to Alanis Morissette and it took me a while to notice it (back in the day) but you can tell Avril Lavigne was heavily influenced by Alanis. Just listen to “Head Over Feet” and then “Complicated.”

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

Asher Roth talks about how he thinks he’s been successful because he sounds like Eminem in “As I Em.”

Some bands use other bands work explicitly and deliberately. For example, Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” is just a riff from The Red Hot Chilli Peppers “Pretty Little Ditty.” I heard “Butterfly” when I was in grade school but never knew it was from TRHCP until College. I knew the first time I heard it though.

I’ve shown this to a couple people that have heard both songs and they couldn’t tell. If the lay-person doesn’t recognize this, as we go deeper “down the rabbit hole” into the mind, it (should become self evident that the similarities) between various associations becomes harder and harder to see!

Musical Samples

What most people don’t see are “samples” which are small snippets of work from another artistry. Some examples of obvious samples are Kid Cudi sampling Lady Gaga’s Pokerface in “Make Her Say” or Mac Miller sampling Nas in “Nike’s on my feet.” But in music you can take a certain sound and create a whole new musical pieces, creating an original work from a classic.

This happens so often certain sounds (and phrases) are considered intellectual property. The most obvious quintessential example is Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and Queen’s “Under Pressure.” Less noticeably, Mac Miller was sued for "Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza" because he didn’t clear samples from Lord Finesse's 1995 single "Hip 2 Da Game."

This also (famously) happened to Robin Thicke who (more noticeably) ripped off Marvin Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up" when he wrote the smash hit "Blurred Lines" with Pharrell Williams and T.I.

These things are obvious, identified, and published because it’s protected and institutions get involved in protecting their property. But to people or the regular person, they can’t tell and have no idea!

Understanding Metaphors in Hip-Hop

There are other ways artists share. In hip-hop artists use metaphor and samples to communicate in music. The following are common metaphors, themes, tropes, or cliches in hip-hop that are (pretty) universally used (to show talent and ability).

The “Lab” = Producing Hip-Hop, example:

“What, cause I been in the lab, wit a pen and a pad, try’na get this damn label off” - Forgot about Dre by Dr. Dre

“Back to the lab again yo, this whole rhapsody” - Lose Yourself by Eminem

“I be in the Lab” by G-Eazy

“Whipping” it in “the Kitchen,” example:

“Catch me in the kitchen, like a Simmons whippin' pastry” - Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z

“I throw down in the kitchen might hit your mom with my omelette” - Despicable by Eminem

"Woke up in the kitchen and I started mad whippin'" - Whippin' by Gucci Mane

Voltron/Weapons Capabilities of Transformers (archaic), example:

“Come on, you know the 'Tics connect like Voltron Collect so much grass, popo thinking we mow lawns.” - Shake Ya Tail Feather by Nelly

“But I form like Voltron and blast you with my shoulder missiles” - Just Don’t Give a F#$k by Eminem

"We form like Voltron, and GZA happen to be the head" - Can It Be All So Simple by Wu-Tang

“I'm a beast when you turn me on Into the future cybertron” - Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas

“Sleep on Me” is so cliche I don’t need any examples.

To identify metaphors you need to be able to recognize certain words and phrases and how they associate to one another. Another factor is the music. Like what is the tone/mood, is it reflecting another work, etc.? If you’d like to know how rappers use and write metaphors watch THIS video from a pro himself!

Lyrical Samples

There are musical samples but there are also lyrical samples. When it comes to “sampling” (and “schizophrenia”) you have to be able to recognize patterns! Lyrical sampling is when you take another artist’s cadence (i.e. flow) and make your own (new and original) lyric progression. This typically starts with the first line from the original, sampled lyric followed by original lyrics in the same cadence (flow) as the sampled work. Some examples of sampling are as follows.

Drake samples Dead Prez’s “It’s bigger than Hip Hop” in “Over” starting with the lyric, “One thing bout music when it hit you feel no pain.” And G-Eazy samples Kanye West’s “Stronger” in “Let’s Get Lost” starting with the lyric “Let’s get lost tonight.” Rita Ora is sampling Biggie Smalls in “How We Do.” ...and 50 Cent’s is sampling 2pac’s “Picture me Roll’n” in “Places to Go.”

Biting is when you sample but “flip” the words/sentiment to make them negative or pejorative (i.e. a diss).  Sampling is usually a sign of respect and admiration. Biting is more of a competitive condescending back-talk.

This is (obviously) the conscious part of music, but what about the unconscious?  

The Unconscious in Music

I talked to/lived with a rapper named “The Real Seville” in Los Angeles for a while, while I was considering going to the Musicians Institute to study music business. We both remarked on how hip-hop would “echo,” or repeat certain words or phrases, all of a sudden, like a trend. We both recognized that it WAS NOT sampling. Sampling is when you take someone's specific lyrical cadence and match it intentionally. We were talking about the use of words and phrases that were being repeated at an unusually high frequency in a short period of time (i.e. trending). The genesis/origin is unknown and seems spontaneous because there are so many rappers coming out with the same words/phrase. We determined it had to be unintentional and there must be some sort of “collective consciousness.”

The best example of this I can site is when Jay-Z released “The BluePrint 3.” He rhymed “iPod” with “my god” and I didn’t stop hearing (especially) “my god” from other rappers until Eminem’s lyric on Roman’s Revenge. Here’s the example (and progression):

Blueprint's in my white iPod. Black diamonds in my Jesus piece, my God” - Off That by Jay-Z released September 8th 2009

“In the back, I sit and I nod. To the beats that are bumping from my iPod. My God, they're starting to pray.” - Rant by Bo Burnham released October 2010

“Quit hollerin' ‘Why, God?’” - Roman’s Revenge by Nicki Minaj (Eminem’s lyrics) released October 30th 2010

When I created “The Machine” idea/theory (which I will talk about later) I thought this phenomenon was being deliberately created by a (lets say) a “manipulator.” But it could just be a similarity that other rappers pick up on and then (therefore) reflect. Basically, The conscious or unconscious mind (of the rapper) picks up on “it” (consciously or unconsciously) and responds (consciously or unconsciously). Either way, there is a response. Whether the creation of this reflection-effect phenomenon is deliberately created by a corporeal entity or natural (needs more research/study and) is debatable. However, the fact is, it’s there! And I call this reflection-effect phenomenon “residual echo.”

The “my God” trend makes sense because the biggest artists in the industry started and stopped the trend.  

Pandora’s Box

Questions abound like:

Did Bo write his lyrics before Jay-Z published his?

Did Bo sample Jay-Z intentionally? ...or maybe unintentionally?

Did Eminem (un)consciously catch on to the “my God” trend and that was his ([un]conscious) response?

It’s probably unconscious (whether manipulated or natural) because there are other examples in other (similar) entertainment professions that deny plagiarism after similarities with colleague's work. An example of unintentional/unconscious “sampling,” is Dane Cook and Louis C.K. as explained in Louis C.K.’s show Louie (and exemplified in this clip).

I already know how I would gather resources and analyze the data to identify trends and themes in music. It would be data driven for the most part but with certain quintessential examples interviews can be conducted to get “in the mind” of the artist that created the work in question.

I would ask artists’ questions like:

Have you ever written down a lyrical progression that was similar to one that someone else released at a similar time? Have you ever written lyrics that you didn’t use that someone else later used or sounded like they sampled you? Have you ever written any lyrics and then noticed it was similar to one of your (favorite) pieces by another artist? ...have you ever had anything similar happen?  etc.

Basically the point is to get into the mindset of the artist and ask specific questions from a questionnaire created specifically to identify attributes of the “collective (un)conscious.”

The provable crux, that there was a collective unconsciousness, would probably rest upon data analysis. If we looked at the data we could probably see when certain events, movies, or social movements happened. You could probably also decipher when certain products came out, or marketing campaigns happened, due to the corresponding commercial(s) and how the product’s concept, if the not the product itself, affected the “collective consciousness.”

Taylor Swift Visual Sampling Example

Then you have the music videos that add a visual element. You can group characteristics and similarities in music videos to cross reference other artist’s music videos. Think of it as visual sampling. (If I explained this to any of my friends they would think I see these things because of my schizophrenia but the truth of the matter is much more complex.)  The most recent and relevant example of visual “sampling” in a (music) video is to look at what people are saying about Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.”

I picked this article TIME wrote about Taylor visually sampling other artists to show it doesn’t get any more normal and mainstream to connect and associate visual similarities and references (that I have been told I’m schizophrenic for seeing). For example, TIME talks about what the dollar bill means in the bathtub of diamonds.

In other articles there are a lot of people saying that Taylor copied Beyonce because she has a bat in the “bank scene” like Beyonce does in “Hold Up.” I personally see that as a stretch because the bat is an independent association with no other references (to “Hold Up”); but other (non-schizophrenics) are convinced! What would strengthen that argument is that people think the V formation in Taylor’s dance scene is actually copying Beyonce’s Superbowl dance formation. But still, I don’t see it. I think it’s more likely Taylor is copying the “V” formation for “The Mighty Ducks.”

There are other articles about how Taylor’s “cage scene” is referencing Lindsay Lohan’s “Rumors.” I actually thought of Miley Cyrus’s “Can’t be Tamed” when I first saw the “cage scene” but I agree with the consensus that Taylor is (most likely) referencing “Rumors.”

Proof of Subliminal Communication

Regardless of all this, Eminem’s “Warming Shot” is proof artists communicate and respond to subliminal messages in music (videos). Basically Em got mad Mariah put him on blast in the music video “Obsessed” after they broke up. People see this subliminal communication and they go, “duh.” But would you have noticed it if Em didn’t? What if you didn’t know Em? The only reason people see the subliminal communication here is because they are both big name artists, the events surrounding them in connection with each other, and an overt response by Em saying “Oh gee, is that supposed to be me in the video with the goatee?.”

No one thinks it's possible when you’re not an established artist,  that's schizophrenia!

Visual Sampling

I actually have a good eye for this, but you can be the judge of that.

The best representation of a similar music video is Nick Jonas’s “Chains” and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” The music and it’s themes are similar. They are both shot in widescreen, same style, hue/shade, and have the same props and characters. The music videos are so similar (in fact) I expect that both (music videos) were made by the same creator studio.

Two other videos that are probably different creators/studios but are the same style, hue, and have the same theme are Taylor swift’s “Trouble” and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie.”

Demi Lavotto’s music video “Sorry Not Sorry” is in the same style and format as “Beauty and the Beat” by Justin Beiber. (seems intentional)  

If you take away the fact that one is in black and white, there’s a lot of similarities between G - Eazy’s “Calm Down” and Drake’s “The Motto.” (seems unintentional)  

Pandora’s Box Visualized

The question is, what does all this reflecting mean? Is it just mindless, random mirroring and similarities? Or is there a deeper metaphor and narrative that the “collective unconsciousness” is creating/painting.

(Remember it’s like playing balderdash where you have to associate words. You can tell what’s on a person’s mind and what they’re thinking by the words they use. You can also give people ideas in the same way.)

For example, it seems like Selena Gomez’s character in the song “Hands to Myself,” could be in the house of the boy she’s obsessed with, the one with the curly blonde hair. Meanwhile, Rihanna's song “Stay” is about the same curly haired blonde boy just over at Rihanna's place singing with her... while Selena’s breaking into his place.  This seems unintentional.

What does seem intentional is Camila Cabello’s “Havana.” The music sounds very similar to Selena Gomez’s “Same Ol’ Love” and at the end of the “Havana” music video Camila says (verbatim) “...if you don’t like this story, go write your own sweetheart.” ...which seems like a ([un]conscious) response to Selena’s song.

What’s in the Box?

What does it say (about the “collective consciousness”) if “Chains” and “No Church in the Wild” were NOT trying to reflect each other (being so similar in [audio and visual] style, themes, and content)? What are the artists trying to say if they DID do it intentionally?

Demi Lovato’s music video “Sorry Not Sorry” is clearly in the same style and format as Justin Bieber's “Beauty and the Beat” music video. What does it say if “Sorry Not Sorry” and “Beauty and the Beat” was intentionally reflected but “Trouble” and “Love the Way You Lie” are not?

Are they connected? If so is the connection conscious or unconscious? Are there underlying themes, metaphors, and narratives? Are the unconscious connections of the “collective consciousness” manifested, manipulated by a corporeal entity, all natural, or some combination of them?

The Machine in Theory

"It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly-knit, highly efficient machine…” - JFK

Back when I was going through the pinnacle of my “schizophrenia” I couldn’t understand what was happening to me and why the response rate was so fast on (what I perceived to be) technological manipulations (such as, what I now describe as ‘points of realization’ [which will be described shortly]).

To make sense of what was happening to me I created a theory where I postulated there is a “machine’ or super-computer that is doing systematic semantic priming (among other various disturbing forms of behavior manipulation) in order to manipulate (popular) artists into creating works that are sympathetic to (lets say) the established power structure in form, style, and metaphor.

In college I took a class called Behavioral Psychology. In it we had to create a behavioral modification program to end the bad habit of someone we knew. The strategy included associating certain colored sticky notes with mental reminders that you’d place in strategic places in order to remind you to do things. For example, stick a blue sticky note on your lamp by your bedside to remind you to brush your teeth before you shut off the light and go to bed.

My theory is that (basically) ‘The Machine’ does behavior modification through a similar mechanism. Instead of sticky notes though it uses metaphors, phrases, words, and visual cues (like symbols, insignias, and mirrors) to paint a subtle but consistent picture that your mind would recognize but you wouldn’t consciously perceive.

‘The Machine’ basically “gives you ideas” and ‘programs’ you ahead of time and uses psychological triggers to “fish out” behaviors that are designed to benefit itself. How ‘The Machine’ “gives you ideas” is called semantic priming and there is a section dedicated to understanding it below.

This means that ‘The Machine’ would effectively create a “tapestry” across the entertainment industry where all you’d have to do is “anchor” the psychological association and then use a symbol, word, color, etc. to recall that thought or idea (and continue to build off and on to it).

Unquantifiable Known Unknowns It’s worth mentioning there's a whole nother level in writing lyrics where you say something that sounds similar, imply it, omit it, say it without saying it, or give a double meaning.  

An example of just omitting words is in Eminem’s “Toy Soldier” when he says “I went my whole career without ever mentioning ___.” It’s clear he’s talking about “Suge (Knight)” by the rhyme scheme (in relation to his history and what he’s talking about), but he doesn’t say it.

As an example of saying it without saying it (more subtle, but [what should be] just as obvious) is Taylor Swift’s “Picture to Burn.” She says “So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy. That's fine, You won’t mind if I say... By the way, I hate that stupid old…” It’s obvious she’s going to “say” he’s “gay” because what else would she tell everybody that’s gonna hurt him and rhymes with say and way?  ...but how do you quantify that?

An example of saying something that sounds similar is when Taylor Swift says “make fun of our axes” in 22. She clearly means “accents.” One of the most famous examples (that’s probably unintentional) is from Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” when she says “I have a long list of ex lovers” because everyone thinks she is really saying “starbucks lovers.”  

Back when I first started doing hip-hop and getting my schizophrenia my name was “Apollo” and I thought Avril Lavigne’s song “Never Growing Up” was about me. It sounds like she’s saying “got Apollo but whatever,” when she’s really saying “I got a bottle of whatever.” To this day I still wonder if this was coincidence or the effect of the collective unconscious and/or ‘The Machine.’

Some examples of songs that imply what you are saying is Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.” I swear everyone I tell this to says they see it and can’t get it out of their mind afterwards! In her music video “Wrecking Ball” Miley is naked and crying as it sounds like she’s saying “you Ra-a-aped me.” It’s almost as if the producers of the music video deliberately wanted the listener/viewer to make that connection in their head between her vulnerability, tears, and what it sounds like she’s saying without saying it, and used those similarities to such a tragic event to (boulderdash and) sell records...    An example of a double meaning Is Uncle Kracker's “Follow Me.” Is it about love or cocaine?

These tactics throw a wrench in my analytical desires because there’s no way to track or quantify words you don’t say, only imply, or misrepresent.

Pattern Recognition

Regardless, whether the similarities just discussed are conscious or unconscious the fact is it’s still happening and the mirroring IS THERE. To be able to see it, it’s all about pattern recognition of all the various forms (audio and visual) that we talked about. It (should be) obvious that with my “schizophrenia” I recognize these patterns very easily.

What needs more research and debate is what all of these mirrorings and similarities in metaphor, phrase, and visualization means for the artist, the listener, and the industry. Again, the (burning) question (on everyone’s mind should be) is there a deeper metaphor, reflection, and/or narrative in the collective (un)conscious?

If there is, can it, or does it drive us to action?

The (unnoticed) “Physicality” of Music

One thing I have noticed “with my schizophrenia” is what I like to call ‘points of realization.’ This is when you find yourself doing something physical in real life that is in ‘associated’ coordination with the music (or media). For example, I would notice that if the song said “I opened the door, went into the kitchen,” I would be opening the door to the kitchen right as the artist was singing that in the song.

For an actual example, I have caught myself on multiple occasions, while driving, noticing I was turning on the bright lights right as Taylor Swift sings “headlights” from the lyric “Midnight, you come pick me up no headlights” from her song “Style.”   

I started writing this, knew I needed an example, and one happened, so I logged it. (They happen all the time!)  At around 1:30 AM on October 17th I was in bed listening to Taylor Swift’s “Everything has changed” and I was feeling hungry. I made the decision that I was gonna eat an Atikins bar so I jumped up, grabbed a bar from the shelf next to my bed and right as I opened the package Ed sung “and opened up the door for you.” (Right after, Taylor sings “and all I feel in my stomach is butterflies.”) I know I wasn’t opening a door, but I was still doing the act of opening something right as the song said “open up.”

This brings up the question, did I grab the Atkins bar because I made up my mind about eating it and (subconsciously) reacted to coordinate the time of me opening up the bar with the music? ...or did the music, with it’s (also other associated) lyrical content (e.g. “stomach is butterflies”) make me hungry and drive me to grab that Atkins bar? If it did stimulate me to action, what does that say that I was in coordination with the music?  Was it a combination of both influences? (I would say it’s random, chance, or happenstance but it really happens way too often to be a fluke!)

(If this is possible what does that mean about what large corporations do for marketing products and what their capabilities are if used in combination. You could use movies and music as an “anchor” and/or “primer” and drive to action in news and commercials! For more information on these capabilities watch “The Persuaders” and “Unconscious behavioral guidance systems” videos from the Semantic Priming section below)

Vibration is Life

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” - Nikola Tesla

What if…

... ‘points of realization’ are real and it’s because your physicality is in coordination with the music (or media). This means your brain subconsciously syncs your body with the music (or media) and calculates and coordinates the time and action to have ‘points of realization!’

The Problem with the Mirror

The question is, are these ‘points of realization’ primed (by ‘The Machine”), a “reflection” (of the music you heard before), or natural (i.e. part of the collective unconscious)? My mind reflecting the music makes sense because it is my brain recognizing the music, it’s pattern, and timing and coordinating it with my actions and physicality. I’ve heard it before. I’m merely reacting at a subconscious level. That makes a lot of sense to me.

What I don’t understand is when ‘points of realization’ happen and I’ve never previously heard the music, show, or broadcast before. ...because what does that mean? Again if ‘points of realization’ do exist and I’m “in tune” with (the frequency of) the media I’m consuming there has to be a natural collective unconscious (that you can tap into) or an external manipulating entity (like “The Machine”) coordinating the reflection if I’ve never consumed the media before. It could be a combination.

The Real Question

The real question is: Does this happen to other people? Do other people get ‘points of realization?’ If they don’t, is it because it’s not happening… or they just don’t notice. Would they notice if you pointed it out to them? Is the whole association just in my head? What really drives me crazy is to think it is real, but it’s only happening to me! ...cause what does that mean?

What I think is actually going on is ‘points of realization’ are real, it’s just that no one notices (for what should be an obvious myriad of reasons). What does that mean? Do some see it and others don’t? Does that have to do with experience, knowledge, or genetics? Can it be taught? (As you can see I have a lot of questions and I’m quite perplexed)

I bet people who have careers in entertainment, (big) musicians, and (especially) movie directors that do this same sort of subliminal communication and mirroring techniques (therefor) have a higher propensity to recognize the ‘points of realization.’ But for the most part, I think it goes wholly unrecognized.

Making Cents

While staying at the mental institution in East Lansing I had a conversation with one of the activity counselors about vibrations or frequency in music. We were discussing how humans have a certain vibration or frequency that they are in tune with...

Think of these vibrations as feelings, these feelings get associated to thoughts (which combine with the other influences as discussed). Can those thoughts drive you to action? There’s countless stories of artists being inspired to write songs from action/events (like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”). But, can you think of examples of stories by people that were driven to action because of a song? I’m honestly struggling to find examples. Is that because it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t get noticed (because it’s more of a combination of things), or because people just don’t talk about it?

I actually think Michael Jackson did so well because he was in tune with people’s natural rhythm and vibration. (Along with using popular chords, notes from pop music and just being an lovable & awesome nice-guy.) But that is just a hunch and what my intuition is telling me, I don’t know (much or) anything (really) about frequency, latency, music theory, or how to even play any instrument for that matter. So know it’s speculation.

My “Schizophrenic” Digression

How this relates to my schizophrenia and ‘The Machine’ is that I used to think I was getting primed to do negative actions at ‘the point of realization.’ This would severely agitate me after a while because it was clear they were meant to be self-defeating, pejorative, disrespectful, condescending, and hurtful.  (I will talk about some of the perceived negative ‘points of realization’ in a future post I’m working on.) Then it felt like my every move was being watched and manipulated which became debilitating. In combination with this, poor attitude, poor thinking, and “other factors,” made me severely angry! I have since changed my attitude for myself and my family;  it’s honestly better, and I never wanna go back!              

Think

If you found this interesting, trust me when I say this is only the beginning. If you think this is complicated, this is just in music (videos). The collective (unconscious) becomes (almost) exponentially harder to grasp when you think about how shows, movies, news, and corporations in their commercials intentionally do subliminal advertising all the time, every single day. If the collective unconscious is real, how is it being influence by (sheer) market forces literally competing for space in your mind! What a responsibility (I hope) marketers must feel to act ethically and make sure the collective has the right mindset.

Semantic Priming

In ‘The Machine’ section (above), I talk about how it functions in theory. THIS information is how the machine would function in practice. As I said in “The Problem with the Mirror” section (above), if you want to understand the capabilities of what I call “The Machine,” you have to know the following information. Once you do, imagine you made a machine (e.g. a supercomputer) to manipulate human behavior that automates what Derren Brown does to those taxadermy marketers (as shown in Mind Control) or what Edward Bernays did to America (as explained in The Century of Self)! ‘The Machine’ is therefor a computer that does automated semantic priming.

Derren Brown’s Mind Control 

The Century of Self

Propoganda and the Public Mind, Noam Chomsky

PBS’s The Persuaders

Subliminal advertising with Jeff Warwick

Manufacturing Consent

Unconscious behavioral guidance systems

The Real Problem

“You can’t be told what the matrix is, you have to be shown” ...and some people just can’t see it.  When Columbus came to the new world shaman/priests had to show the regular citizens that there were actually boats on the water. The regular people couldn’t figure out why the waves were breaking. The priest had to explain to them that there’s a ship there. (This is shown/explained in THIS clip from “What the Bleep do we Know.”)

If you’ve ever read the book Blink, you know you can build intuition off knowledge and experience. I have a degree and (hopefully) you can see I know what I’m talking about. My intuition is that there’s a “Machine,’ AND a (sort of) collective (un)conscious.

Conclusion

For me to be able to tell you if there is a collective (un)conscoius or a machine that is influencing human thought, song, or speech, let alone physical actions (or sequencing behavior,), for sure, I would need resources I don’t have, evaluate data (scientifically) I can’t get, and conduct interviews that I have no access too. But with those requirements met I think I could draw concrete, provable conclusions.