#that can probably all be attributed to my boy Greg

[celadon-arcade-champ]

So turns out this blog hit fifty followers. Fifty whole people in the world thought Greg was cute enough for a follow so- to celebrate here's another Greg as we're getting ready for bed :]

He also wanted to leave a message so here's a message from Greg:

,i8sda,j 09sad,ikewaq'm ;jma;l **dNJL:AS kiOmkmji2ops;molp

He's a poet, truly 😌

[assassinmidnight]

Their resident Genius

The BAU is called in by Scotland Yard to help with a case, Spencer becomes intrigued when he hears that they have their own resident genius.

_________

Spencer Reid x Holmes!Autistic!Female!reader

_________

Honestly Spencer was unsure why Scotland Yard had called them in, he always knew that their team was one of the best but the fact that Scotland Yard had called them in had surprised the Genius a lot.

--

“Okay team, we’ve been called in by the English. We’re gonna be gone for a bit so pack accordingly. Airstrip in 30,” Hotch called. “Wait, the English? You mean Scotland Yard? Scotland Yard called US in, why?” 

“Really Reid, I thought you’d be the most excited to meet their team. Apparently they have their own resident genius,” The reply from Hotch had Morgan smiling “Resident Genius? Is he smarter than Reid? Man I have to see this,”

--

During the entire flight Spencer had been thinking of the so-called Genius. He didn’t really believe in genius as a word but he had become intrigued. He wondered if Hotch was honest, if he was correctly informed. Spencer had for a long time kept track of Scotland Yard but he’d only heard of Sherlock Holmes being their resident genius, but he was a consultant not an official agent. Did he decide to join them officially?

“Reid stop, I can hear the cogs turning in your head and it’s keeping me from my sleep,” 

“Shut up Morgan,” Morgan looked over “Reid I get it, you’re stressed about meeting new people and maybe even someone who can go against you in brainiac power. But dude chill, it’s gonna be all good, chances are they aren’t even close to your level.” 

Spencer took that into consideration, it’s true most people who are called geniuses aren’t close to his level.”

_

“Okay team we’re gonna meet the people from Scotland Yard. Behave,” Hotch sounded more serious than he looked.

Spencer was surprised when they entered the building, it was nothing like their own. This place was not messy or filled with people stuffing the rooms, it was all quiet and strict as if it was a classroom. “This way to the office,” Hotch pointed towards a room and they all headed there.

“Ah Agent Hotch, thank you for coming,” The man smiled and shook hands with Hotch, “This must be your famous team of profilers,” The man quickly looked at his watch before looking up again. “We should wait with the introductions, one of ours is running late,” Morgan smirked “Your resident genius?” The man looked up surprised before nodding, he looked like he was about to answer but got interrupted by the door swinging open.

“I’m sorry for being late, you know how my brother is,” A woman came in, a bit out of breath. She looked around 21 and had (y/h) colored hair, quite long too.

She seemed to realize the company they had and went beet red, Spencer thought she looked pretty cute. 

She turned back to the man, “So this is the BAU team lestrade? The best profilers,” 

“Wait you’re Greg Lestrade? You worked with Sherlock and Dr. Watson,” The two brits looked over at Reid, the girl cocked her head to the side before smiling. “Dr. Reid I presume. I’ve read a lot about you, three PhDs and working for the FBI at 24, impressive,” now Reid turned red earning a laugh from Morgan. “You did your homework,” The woman looked at Morgan, “Yes I did, I like knowing who come here, Agent Morgan.” 

“Y/n behave. I know you prefer working alone but no need to be rude, you are better than your brothers aren't you?” The girl named Y/n sighed and nodded. “Good, introduce us to the UnSub.”

__

Throughout the entire briefing Spencer had been staring at Y/N, he couldn’t figure out how such a young woman was part of Scotland Yard. He tried to profile her but all he could decipher from her movements, which were many. She fidgeted a lot, tended to stare at the wall and kept her arms crossed over her chest. She was distracted, bored and introverted. That profile didn’t fit someone in this field. 

“Yes Y/N?” Hotch's voice brought Spencer from his thoughts.

“Dr. Reid, why are you staring at me so much? Is it really that hard to profile me?” Her voice was quite gleeful. She was proud, she had an advantage and she knew that. “Mm, yes sorry, I was profiling you but it wasn’t hard. You are clearly bored by this, unfocused throughout the entire briefing and you are closed off. These are not common attributes in Agents, that’s why I was staring,” He felt pretty proud of himself until “You didn’t introduce me Detective?” “No, I thought it best to keep the introductions til we're all here. But it seems like you know them well enough which I expected but you should probably introduce yourself,” Lestrade smiled and Y/N nodded. “My name is Y/N Holmes, little sister of both Mycroft and Sherlock. I am the one who usually works alone in my cave but apparently I was needed for this case. And no Dr. Reid I was not bored or unfocused, quite the opposite actually. I was just in my mind palace,”

“You’re the sister of Sherlock? Wait you’re the resident Genius,” Y/N laughed at Morgan’s reaction. Once again she cocked her head to the side, smiling. “How many PhDs?” She turned to Reid, “None, school bores me. Also resident genius isn’t what I would call myself, creative genius with hypersensitivity. All the Holmes boys got none of the emotion so I got all of it,” Reid nodded. “Well now that we’ve been introduced to the most interesting thing in England, how about we get started.”

__

“You still thinking about Miss smartypants, Pretty boy?” Reid tossed a pillow at Derek, but he did nod. “There is something about her, she wasn’t looking at me but knew that I was watching her. She assumed Lestrade had introduced her to us but was happy when she got to do it herself and she pointed out that she is more creative and sensitive than her brothers who are known sociopaths. I can’t understand her brain, or her profile,” Morgan stared at Reid before laughing “Dude it sound like you have a crush on Miss Holmes, well if she is as smart as they say your kids will definitely be something out of this world,” Morgan kept on laughing even when Spencer turned around on his bed.

__

“Welcome to my cave, don’t touch anything without asking.” Y/N was stern, her look was cold as well Spence nodded. “So um, why am I working here instead of in the field?” he asked, she looked at him annoyed before turning to her screen. “Because your boss thought it would be best to keep the two geniuses in the same room.”

The two kept working, Reid was surprised at all the tea Y/N was drinking and how she compulsively played with her bracelets whenever she was thinking. OCD, that did fit but something still felt off. “Just ask, get it out of the way before you drive me absolutely nuts” she looked at him expectantly. Spencer gulped before asking the question “Why can’t I profile you? I know it’s nothing on my end so it must be something on yours,” She shook her head and smiled, looking back at her screen. Spencer sighed thinking she wasn’t going to answer. 

“I am autistic with traces of OCD and dyslexia, that’s why you can’t profile me. I don’t fit the general profile for autistics. I have a deep emotional understanding but I lack logical intelligence that is usually paired with the diagnosis. My OCD traces are caused by my autism and the compulsive behaviors are mainly caused by anxiety. I suffered deep trauma in my childhood like both my brothers but unlike them I never emotionally distanced myself, this is why you can’t profile me Reid, I don’t fit the general profiles just like you,”He was surprised at her answer but considering what she just said he really shouldn’t have. 

“Wow, that’s- that’s a lot. Wait, you profiled me?” He was genuinely surprised, she laughed at him, breaking her cold act. “No I didn’t, but most intelligent people are the same,” he nodded before laughing with her.

__

“So thanks to the BAU and our own Agents we’ve managed to catch this killer and he will soon be behind bars,” JJ announced on the news. The team were currently at Lestrades house having a drink. Reid kept looking over to Y/N, ever since they’d solved the case she’d been distant towards him, it hurt for some reason. He thought they were getting along, especially after they’d started to talk about Dr. WHO, guess not. 

“Something wrong, Reid?” He turned and saw that the voice belonged to Lestrade, he nodded. “In my experience with the Holmes siblings, they rarely act like this unless it’s something that will actually impact them. You should talk to her, as much as she detests it she is like her brothers and when angry instead of being consumed by emotions like them she turns them off and goes all logical. Easy to have a conversation with if you watch your words,” When Spencer didn’t move Lestrade pushed him slightly making him go over to Y/N.

“Why are you ignoring me?” She turned to him, cup of tea in her hand, she sighed then gave him a strained smile. “Reid, go back to your team,” “Not until you tell me why you’ve been ignoring me?” She gave him a cold look before sighing again. “I have been ignoring you because I like you, Reid. You are going back to America so I am simply distancing myself to get used to not having you around any more. It’s all logical,” 

“You like me?” he was genuinely surprised, he found Y/N cute and even had a bit of a crush on her, something he’d never admit to Morgan but he never thought she liked him back.

“Of course I like you. You are smart and cute and have these small quirks about you. You are funny and a geek and get almost every single of my pop culture references,” Reid just looked at her with fond eyes, she liked him back and was now rambling on about why. It was cute, really cute. He pressed his lips against hers, successfully muffling her rambles. She seemed surprised at first but soon reprocrated the kiss.

“WHO IS THAT GUY KISSING MY BABY SISTER!” The two geniuses broke apart, red and turned to the voice. Seems like Sherlock Holmes had invited himself in and based on the look in his eyes said one thing, the high functioning sociopath was not happy with Reid kissing his sister.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: A Tale of Two Slaves (1/17)

Summary:  "Soulmates don’t exist. Fate doesn't exist. Everything is a choice." At that moment, Levi could only watch as she made the choice for him."

Reincarnation AU. Levi remembers everything from their past life. Hange doesn't.

Note: This has been sitting on my computer untouched for a while, along with the timeline I prepared for a multichapter fic. Will probs go back to it soon. Feedback is very much appreciated.

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Link to cross-postings: AO3

In dreams people only see faces they already know.

It was an interesting fact Levi had probably come across, lazily scrolling through his social media timelines or opening countless tabs after getting into some Wikipedia blackhole in between the long days of schools and the short nights asleep.

He spent a fair amount of time on the internet, reading up about whatever bullshit politics came up with, controversies and bathroom reader fun facts. During his first year of college, it had stuck to him for a time. Maybe because it just seemed too unrealistic, too unbelievable.

After all, ever since he had started college, he felt like he had been dreaming of more and more unfamiliar faces. It could have been attributed at least to the fact that he was exposed to more people in a crowded city than he had been in the small town he grew up in. As time went by, these faces he barely recognized though, had become the main actors in his dream.

The long haired boy with the elvish features. The man with the clean cut appearance and a glint of mischief in his eyes. The oriental girl with subtle European features. The cheeky girl with a beat up pair of glasses and unkempt hair.

They and many others had been regulars in his dreams and Levi had come up with names for them already, names he remembered muttering, names he screamed multiple times in his head. By the time he woke up to the four walls of his bedroom a few hours before his first class, they were vague memories, only as intelligible as his view of the world right after waking up.

Some mornings, he had found himself more exhausted than when he had slept. Some mornings, he found his throat sore from screaming. Some days, his eyes were swollen from crying.

He lived alone in a dormitory and he had wanted to infer that it had been homesickness that had made those nightmares possible. He had never really abhorred being alone though, in fact he liked the privacy that came with having his own room.

He quickly shot down that theory and did not think too much about it soon after. His daily life did not give him too much time to ponder such fleeting and abstract of a concept as dreams in between lessons and training.  

The dreams never left him, some days they were more vivid than others. After a few years of navigating academics, trainings, and obligations, Levi had gotten used to brushing off that one tear he’d get as he woke up, taking a lozenge to soothe the sore throat or just leaving the lights off in his room to alleviate the pounding headache he would get some mornings.

Daily life and obligations never did allow him the time and space to ponder too much on those dreams. Levi chalked it up to stress and unexplained trauma, easily soothed by ten minutes scrolling through social media or hours reorganizing his room for the third time that week.

Financial and time constraints made it impossible as well to even consider consulting about it and Levi found himself compartmentalizing those dreams into those few hours of sleep he got at night and the one hour he allowed himself each day to adjust to the waking world.

The line blurred one night though when one of those names was nonchalantly mentioned among others.

"Hange Zoe..."

It was just one name in a list recited by their coach before they were all dismissed for the evening. Sandwiched between a few other names before and after it, it wasn't supposed to stand out like that. Oddly, it did.

As Levi rode his bike to his dormitory room after a tiring day of training, he found himself repeating that name again and again. He tried to make sense of the odd familiarity which came with a name he could have sworn he had never heard before.

A family friend? A childhood friend?

Levi entertained those possibilities. Having grown up in a small town, his family friends and childhood friends consisted of everyone in that tight knit community and he could have listed out all their names then and there. She wasn’t part of it.

To at least, satisfy his own curiosity, Levi had sent a message to his parents before going to sleep. Just in case he had met her before.

Levi woke up the next morning, his throat a little scratchier, his body a little more tired. The first thing he did was check his phone.

Hange Zoe wasn’t a family friend.

Levi put the covers over himself and closed his eyes. His head was pounding and his chest was heavy. He had only noticed a moment later that his eyes were wet, his breaths were coming out in heaves.

What did I dream about this time?

Levi needed the whole morning to recover.

                                  A Tale of Two Slaves

Levi managed at least to drag himself out of bed for afternoon training. By then, others have already started warming up. Levi wondered if he would be able to carry his body through a warm up jog, given his state only a few hours ago.

In the end, getting the jog done became a matter of discipline more than anything else and he had finished well above everyone else.

He had always been faster, given his smaller build and he had the natural muscle and athletic skill to be versatile as well. That was what made him stand out as the best athlete in the track and field team. He never cared too much either way about the admiration many of his teammates held towards him.

The recurring nightmares and the aftermaths of these though had left Levi averse to human interaction. Ironically, as he moved away from his small town and into the bigger city, his world had gotten smaller. Levi found himself keeping his world only wide enough to win track and field events and pass classes.

No man could really ever be an island though, no matter how much they try. Levi soon found that out when he saw that aforementioned Hange Zoe on the side of the track, talking to one of their coaches.

“This is Hange Zoe.”

“You can call me Hange.”

Levi did not need that quick introduction his coach had just given him. Somehow, the name and the face just clicked inside him. He looked expectantly at his coach and back at Hange.

Hange held out her hand to him and smiled. “I heard you’re the best one in the team. Coach Greg spoke highly of you.”

Levi narrowed his eyes at her. “What's she doing here?”

“Didn’t I tell you last time? Some of the premed students wanted to do case studies on athletes here for their final thesis. If you could help them out?” The coach turned to Hange. “Levi here is one of our best jumpers. He holds a pretty good record for sprinting, hurdles and throwing events as well.”

“Your jogging form looks amazing! I’d love to see you in action.”

Levi was not prepared for the invasion of privacy that came a second after. Hange held both of his hands towards her and leaned closer towards him. Before Levi could even stop himself, he had pushed her away and ran, the screaming of his coach to come back had become mere muffled screams in the background.

The only reason Levi did drag himself to training was for the fact that it was still one of the few hobbies he found complete calm yet complete liberation in. Those few moments after launching himself up in the air, those magical few moments high up in the air with only the empty sky above him, Levi felt free.

As Levi powered through, he found within him a burst of energy, built up from an idle morning cooped up in his room.

He had done those same drills so many times before. The excitement he got from flying through the air and running easily took over whatever exhaustion and rattledness plagued him only a second ago. He let his body memory guide him through each drill, concentrating his consciousness on other things like the cool wind on his skin as he shot through the track and the purple sky that stretched above as he performed horizontal jumps.

If Levi had been any more aware of his surroundings, he would have noticed his teammates leaving the track one by one. Maybe, he would have noticed as he started moving to the hurdles that the purple sky was slowly turning into a dark blue and the scenery around him was becoming just a little more than shadows.

It was nothing new. Levi had stayed behind to work on other skills multiple times and his coach and teammates had just learned to leave the club room open. Levi would leave an extra thirty minutes to an hour later than his companions,

At that training though, with little incentive to break away from that small bubble he had built for himself, not  a lot of things could have broken his concentration. Fifteen minutes into his hurdles exercises, the distraction came. Levi was raising one leg, positioning himself to jump a hurdle when he caught a shadow from his peripherals.

Someone had been watching him in the dark.

He was alone. Or he was supposed to be alone at least.

The combination of those realizations and the exhaustion that threatened to take over Levi only caused Levi to stumble on the hurdle in front of him and fall forward onto cold ground.

“Hey! You okay?”

It was that same voice from that same conversation Levi had walked away from just an hour ago. The voice was as loud and as annoying as it was an hour ago that even when his shadow was still a good few meters away, Levi remembered how it felt with her forehead once again pressed on his and her grip on his two hands.

Levi was frozen on the ground, his body still in shock at the sudden loss of control and the whiplash of what he had just imagined.  

“That looked painful.” Her voice was softer than it was a second ago. Hange put her hand on his.

Levi pulled away instinctively, and winced as his palms protested the quick action. Levi looked at his palms. In the dim light, he could see three long gashes lined up in the middle. Blood was starting to come out as well.

Levi was exhausted. The impact and the aftermath of falling on the ground, front first and the friction burns that followed, only further drained what was left of his energy.

By the time Hange helped him up by the shoulders  Levi was almost motionless, the small movements he made were carefully calculated for fear of aggravating the dull pain.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

                              A Tale of Two Slaves

“Sorry about a while ago… People say I’m just a little too intimidating  but I just get really excited about these types of things. You had such a good running form. You jump so high. You get a really good height above the hurdles… “ Hange gave him a consoling look. “Except that last one.”

Hange was closer to him than what Levi would have preferred at first. Oddly, he had gotten used to it quickly enough, particularly because he had no other choice.

The gashes on his palms were bloody and painful. With little to no means to bandage them himself, he was left to rely on the only person there and as Levi soon found out, she had problems with maintaining a comfortable social distance from people.

And she never stopped talking.

“Are the bandages too tight?” Hange asked, in between other ramblings Levi had tuned out.

“‘No.” The only words Levi had said since they had arrived in the club room fifteen minutes ago.

“Okay, let’s move on to your knees.”

Levi had not surveyed the damage himself but he guessed it was probably worse than his palms from Hange’s concerned frown.

“You’re gonna need stitches for this. The clinic probably isn’t open so you might have to go to the hospital… We could call a taxi and---”

“You’re a pre-med student, can’t you do it yourself?”

Hange blushed. “You trust me to do it?”

"A trip to the hospital will just be a waste of time." Levi admitted.

Hange rummaged deeper into the first aid kit. "This is gonna be painful though."

Better than taking a trip to the hospital now. Levi braced himself for it and decided to distract himself from the discomfort of the whole ordeal.  

“How does it feel? Flying in the sky like that?” Hange asked. At that point, Hange had started to talk more purposefully, as if she wanted to get a point across to him.

Levi guessed that it was all an attempt to distract him from the mini operation she was giving him. From his angle, Levi could not see the extent of the injuries, nor did he want to. The pain was bearable, although it was still much worse than what he would have considered a discomfort.

“I’ve always wanted to take a sport like that, maybe gymnastics, maybe figure skating or track and field? That’s the closest people can get to flying right?” Hange was asking too many questions but it was obvious she was not expecting answers.

Her words flowed as smoothly as the movement of the needle and thread he could see from his angle.

Something about the way she talked to him was comforting and eventually Levi had almost completely relaxed, the pain of needle to torn skin a distant memory. He lay back on the bench and closed his eyes, focusing not on her words but instead on the familiar warm tone as she spoke.

The sensation of needle to skin, the burning pain, the dizziness that followed. They were all too familiar. All accompanied by that familiar warm voice.

Maybe we should just live here together. Right Levi?

If we keep running and hiding, what will that get us.

Hange's voice tore into his daydream. “What do you mean? Are you running from something?"

[castrosaitabau-blog]

WISDOM OF THE MAASAI

In quest for a fathomable perspective, bunduzman had to go further north of Kilimanjaro to the wilderness of Maasai land. In pursuit of a lifestyle, cultural and cohesive human-fauna co existence I finally set my foot on the soil I always wanted to explore since years in memorial. Maybe we could say the time was right, destiny had aligned itself . little did I know of the pot of gold awaiting . I visited my late granny`s sister my only resource person I knew and a cultural hardliner to get the wisdom of the guru.

First impression and am pretty at peace, I knew this all I wanted. Hemming the landscape in abundance are dark black volcanic boulders but dispersed as compared to `shetani lava` free flow lava rocks. beneath the  blue skies, amidst hillsides, sparsely distributed shrub tower from the dark soil but there`s magic that this place offers, afore me is the most photogenic Kilimanjaro background and am sure this place harbours wisdom and treasures of the land.

According to maa culture , upon a meet up  a catch up is mandatory. My holism side is coming out alive strongly. The maa call it `lomon` and so do i. every minute here is a crucial learning opportunity for me so my indulgence is eclectic.

Soon am shown my accommodation and as per maa culture it is far from the boma (homestead) as am a moran(warrior). Morans sleep further from women and children . the set up is spectacular. Set in serenity and tranquility I must acknowledge my uncle Loserian sundowner`s eye for a choice of such a picturesque scenery.

My room`s background is the most perfect quaint I would ever capture of the Kilimanjaro. Certainly  kibo it`s stature like a benevolent giant embracing the Amboseli plains, it`s snow caped top like a kings crown and from my conservation and ecological proficiency I understand the sleeping giant role in providence and sustainability. Set near an oldonyo (hill) rocks are arranged symmetrically in the interference -free solace and solitude.

Everywhere I have gone as an adventurer I have always valued the virtue of making friends. It`s 1700hrs  and my uncle and I are sitted for a perfect sundowner moment. The view is blissful as the sunset glares are twilighting Amboseli national park plains.my guide who`s my uncle is quite familiar with the geo-location , a true warrior of the land!

My guide points out a large mass reflecting the gleams  and says it`s Lake Amboseli in the horizons, further north and to  the east a hill protrudes to my knowledge the landmark of Namanga town. From namanga you go to `sanya ya juu’ a vast area occupied by maas both in Kenya and Tanzania.am overlooking the pastoralists corridor from my sundowner`s point of view.

Deep to Tanzania is kijiweni,then to murtoni, sangarini, murtot, entonet, barazani ,kilombero, shauri moyo, bustani then to mtamburu heading west.day by day my stay opens up a deep understanding of the population dynamics, transborder cultural influence  and cultural role in identity and heritage.

My pursuit of a multi lingual perfection is bearing fruits. It`s a couple of days and my maa tutor `mr. ole Naanyu credits my efforts.am familiar with basic words likje ` aaoomon olorika( can I have a chair please?), endaah(food), kuleeh(milk), osoit(rock), oldonyo (mountain), sambu(brown),aang( home), enkaji(house) ndare(goats), enkolong(sun), alapa( moon) enkare( water) just but a few….

Culture is the antidote of propaganda – always my mantra. Basic rules first for a common entity and understanding of anything in my bunduz pursuit.i attribute this to my flexibility and open mindedness that I can morph and fit in anywhere if only I take care of the language barrier.couple of days and am totally in love with thebunduz in maa land.is it the solitude? Is it the simplicity? Is it the community unity and compassion? Sure I feel a sense of belonging every homestead I visit.

My maa is getting better as I can now structure a sentence, `aeeyoo adol ingwesin lo Amboseli’-( I came to see the wildlife around Amboseli) is my introduction everytime I meet a local . `Ayaauwa lomon ol la shumbaa pedol motonyik, ingwesin-(my work is to show tourists  birds and wildlife ) is the skeleton key phrase for my stay here . Am euphoric to meet even toddler named after me, `Fidel Saitabau’. it`s maa wisdom to name a child after a relative for matriarch continuity and remembrance.

My quest for a deeper `Ambo-kiili ecosystem burns deep within me . am in tune with the universe and so does my fate.i get a phone call from another uncle who invites me to visit them at their camp and this totally uplifts my spirit. The next Sunday  morning am amped in my combat  cargo pants and jungle green shirt ready  to be picked up. The first sight of his giant sized physique reminds me am in the land of warriors- a reassurance of some sort I must say.

`Big Boy’ I call him knows the ways of the land and totally the Amboseli-tsavo ecosystem and it`s neighbouring conservancies. It’s a Sunday so we on easy mellow chill mode as I get acquinted with his fellow warriors of the bunduz. Their hospitality is warm though in solitude , out in the cold lies the camp amidst bush ambience.

I harbour a great conviction and passion with the conservation inclined  personnel as we are in the same area of professionalism- CONSERVATION for future generations. To my surprise , Big boy has planned a reconnaissance survey and am totally stoked! In his Big boy boots , I board his offroad bike as we fade into the wildnerness.

Since my arrival I have been anxious to find out a story of a great tusker and am told not worry no more since I found the soldiers in the field who were there till the demise of the supreme tusker. slowly we cruise and transverse the plains of the conservancies.  Big boy showing me the wildlife and local maa terminologies . we go deeper into an eco-tourism perspective as we are sombre on how `Rona virus’ has robbed tourism it`s liveliness.

We are at the AA Amboseli lodge and it`s a perfect totaln dysfunctionality thus when I spot my first aves , the black flecked yellow throated francolin and marabou stalk. To the north we head leaving behind the `lemongo museum’- dedicated to the study of wildlife .Am impressed as am aware of a fully stocked  library.To the south west is the Osero house .

In a while we are at Sopa lodge and kibo safari camp all in a total shutdown.As an intrepid adventurer my soul cries as I understand the replica to the tourism kitty.intersecting the junction from sopa is the road down to the Kenya wildlife service headquarters and next to it is Amboseli National park kimana gate all in a total shutdown.on the main road is      `The Mada hotels kilima camp also is the same state.

My  point of interest is the Or kelunyet village – a maasai cultural village perfect for briefing of the maa culture but that not of my concern as of now. Outside or kelunyet  is a watering place that has natured one of the greatest tuskers that has transversed this plain. Compared to the mighty historical Ahmed  of marsabit who was mandated presidential escort.

As the water trickle down and fade so is the presence of the mighty tusker Tim who gave up ghost after five decades.But the glory still triumphs  the land as every villager around here knew or must have heard of the great tusker and even the global village where he won the hearts of many.my uncle Big boy is a marshal in the wildlife field under `BIG LIFE FOUNDATION’.

February `4th is the morning of demise of Tim. Big boy was one of the first person in the `scene of crime’ as he explains this was        Tim`s favourite feeding area just opposite or kelunyet the other side of the road to Amboseli gate.am glad am getting first hand information from  a ranger who witnessed Tim`s last presence here before being taken to the museum.

A peace loving, gentle and benevolent tusker he was for tourist to take photos of him sometimes pushing away other tuskers who tried to be vicious . Tim would relax for them to get a perfect caption- a photogenic legend he was.

December 1969 is when the great legend was born in Amboseli national park. four years later he got the name Tim from an intrepid American researcher Cynthia Moss who had arrived in Kenya in 1972-founder of Amboseli trust for elephants.

From her research ,Cynthia Moss reckons that Tim came from the  TD family led by his matriachial grandma Teresia and the  mum was Trista. For a while we observe the place as my uncle even shows me his last cloacal emittance a prove that this was his area he liked. Rather than outside or kelunyet Tim would sometimes change environment to the yellow barked acacia filled and water abundant kimana sanctuary for water or greener pastures or probably his females, a gentle bull who filled  Amboseli with his progeny.

Tim had survived the 1980 Amboseli severe drought an era when Tim lost his grandma Trista from spears of pastoralists. prior in 1977 he lost his  mum so he was left to wander alone but survived-a soldier of a kind. Tim`s death was a twisted gut but my uncle Bid boy explained to me he had found him lying and bleeding from injuries incurred from another Tusker perhaps a confrontation. Tim was gentle ,carefull and grandiose as his tusks were ground touching .probably it is the MUSTH that brought about a conflict of interest.

As we transverse the  airstrip outside Amboseli gate closer to Tawi lodge Tim`s memories just run my mind obnoxious in some way but I have to let nature take it`s cause. upclose sights of maasai giraffes distinctive by their yellow fawn, common ostrich and gerenuks divert my mind as I go back to the camp reminiscing my day.

Another day another dollar, but dollars won`t come easy here in the bunduz since Rona invaded. My mind is at ease when my uncle promises to show me Tim`s brother Greg, a great tusker like him and of close resemblance and supremacy he says.

Am euphoric by the mention of a foot patrol as I know this will give me an upclose  real time floral fauna encounter .For me euphoria is preceding vulnerability .As i rub mosquito repellant on my body ready to zip my self in my sleeping bag as I sleep amped.

At 0600hrs I wake up to the most soothing ambience of aves wildebeasts in the background. sorrounded by bones of great mammalia is our camp.my maa friend gives thanks in maa as we head to make breakfast. we collect `rigiek’ (firewood) as we catch up in a while breakfast is ready.

At 0700hrs we ared out of the camp ready for the routine foot patrol.My uncle takes me through the GPS mapping process and `The Black View IP-68’ for data collection and we begin mapping our waypoints and sightings in the field. We are amidst grants gazelles and wildebeasts as the hilly breeze hits us to a rude awakening .

My uncle Big boy is my resource person as I gain a lot of lessons on bushlife survival techniques. I can identify male and female ostricvhes , their milky like excretion and general ostrich behaviour like laying eggs at the same periodand the role of female and males to protect the eggs tillthey hatch.Bog boy explains the colour variation and advantage in terms of camouflage.

At night the dark feathered male take roll of roosting on the egg as the female feeds while during the day the female takes over brown feathered blending with the savannah. Am more amused by ostriches` behavior once the eggs hatch. The responsibility of caregiver is left to one of the females, the most ferocious one as the others leave.

Our mission is to transverse the conservancy on a `wreck patrol’ leaving no point unattended as the GPS maps our path indicating bordering conservancies.Am now well conversant with the interface and from a conservationist and wildlife manager to be perspective am  impressed. The app has  a ranger unit entity, members present, patrol method, patrol area ,are poachers armed? Additional is a record of  wildlife sighting, tracking live or dead, scat/dropping ,number of animals ,wildlife treatment, illegal human  activities, animal mortality, human wildlife conflict, community service by rangers e.t.c

Amboseli neighbours kimana group ranch an area which my grandpa Mr. Elijah Mwatee had demarcated in his tenure of duty long before moving to kwale and kilifi. The group ranches that make up kimana ranch are kilitome conservancy, nailepu, osupuko, naalarami and olitiyani conservancies anf far is the kimana sanctuary and the olgulului group ranch.

As an avid birdwatcher I enjoy spotting the augur buzzard, black flacked yellow throated francolin, the Kori bustard, superb strerlings, helmeted guinea fowls , just but a few. I encounter a rare type of ungulate and Big  boy tells me this is their hotspot area. Am talking gerenuks as they browse on the shrubs near the windsock area.

Despite the dominating grant`s gazelles, impalas, wildebeests, gerenuks attract my attention as these arid survivors are wise in their own nature. Gerenuks eat the fleshy part, buds, fruits, flowers and climbing plants and do not require water if ever, rarely reducing predator risk as they graze in open areas.

Gerenuks have a pre-orbital gland ( like topis) that emit a tar like scent bearing substance that is deposited between twigs and bushes. This alerts other gerenuks in the area that there is a claim of territory. Gerenuk itself is a oromo - somali name meaning giraffe like gazelle in Swahili(swara twiga).

A fascinating thing is also gerenuk`s male performing a courtship ritual to an oestrus female. He will approach herand horizontally lift one of his front legs and repeatedly tap the female under belly and flanks. Or else he will rub his pre orbital gland on her body marking her with his scent to mate. The local maas call gerenuks` enkoilii’.

Am glad beinga plant community enthusiast to learn their local maa names. The maa community widely cherish flora and have a name for every plant / tree and to my surprise a nutritional or medicinal value.

The acacia tortilis is treasured in most homesteads as a source of shade local name `ol tepesi’ and loved by elephants as they rub theirselves on their rough bark. The whistling acacia , local name `elwai’ is an ingredient for soup once they slaughter, oremit is a stomach cleanser, `elokii’ finger like euphobia for hedges, `entialong’ a stomach remedy, oltiasmat found  near Amboseli gate on the saline soil has an aesthetic value, olo songori ( devil`s whip).

It`s almost noon and the overhead sun is scorching , determined in our hats we beat the shrubs bearing in mind the vulnerability we are exposed to. Of worth recalling is a Laxadonta Africana in solitude usually  very vicious behind a bush who was throwing mud at himself. We came to such close proximity about five metres  unaware of the staring danger just that a gut feeling saved us.

We are now at Tawi lodge Amboseli as we surpass the thicket and to Big boy`s precision of his line of duty he teels me have a break at ` The zebra plain hotel’. Our GPS reading 37 0025E 12 79S at UTM. Pressure 96 99 690

As I heave a sigh of relief and down my cold concoction am humbled by the dedication the rangers have devoted from `BIG LIFE FOUNDATION’ to ensure a peaceful cohesion of humans and wildlife in the Amboseli conservancies  that stretches to kimana sanctuary and chyulu  hills.

By the time we arrive at the camp at 1330 hrs  we have done a pretty 28 km patrol leaving me with nostalgic memories. On the contrary to fatigue am motivated  to explore more of the camps in chyulu hills and the other conservancies.

As my maasai is getting better I can identify wildlife like `ol`  logwarak (lion), emuny (rhino), oloitiko( zebra), oe ngat (wildebeest), or birit(warthog), oyayaiii( porcupine) essuni( impala), or ngojine( hyena), or makao( hippo), or meot (giraffe), or kanjaoni (elephants), olo sokuan (buffalo).

                                                                                                                             By Saitabau Castro.

[youngjusticeslut]

Hi! Can you plz explain Wyynde's history and or character? Was he really a purist(*sweats bc idk what that means but am guessing pro-ppl of pure blood?*)? I have no clue who he is but I'm so happy Kaldur is happy!!! (I would search this up myself but I'm on vaca and I don't remember him from previous episodes of Young Justice)

Hello there! I would love to. Buckle in, my friends. 

(Putting this under a cut because it is long and also picture heavy)

Wyynde first appeared in Young Justice tie-in comic #14: Under the Surface…

As many people have previously pointed out, he was a Purist, following the instruction of Oceanmaster. Now, you might be wondering: What is a Purist? I’m glad you asked! According to the YJ Wiki: 

The Atlantean purists are a group of extremists who believe themselves to be the direct descendants of the “real” Atlanteans. They consider any Atlantean with inhuman attributes to be impure and refer to them as “fish-heads”. Under the guidance of their leader, Ocean-Master, they seek to purge Atlantis of such aberrations.

Yeah, it’s no bueno. Also important to note, Kaldur would be considered impure, as he has visible gills.

So, what is Wyynde’s role in this issue? Unfortunately, not a good one. 

The issue begins with a band of Atlantean purists (Wyynde is likely among them) branding a slur onto Topo. 

Needless to say, Kaldur is very unhappy that his friend was so brutally attacked and branded. He, M’gann and Conner speak with Tula and Garth about this sudden uprising of the Purists, but they don’t get very far, for another attempted attack occurs. 

This is the first time we see Wyynde (second from the top, on the right), clearly engaging in Purist rhetoric. Kaldur manages to prevent the fight from occurring, much to the dissatisfaction of the Purists. The next time we see Wyynde, he is in the crowd as the Purists listen to their leader, Oceanmaster.

This is the last time we see Wyynde in this issue, but the struggle is far from over. The Purists, under Oceanmaster’s command, attack Queen Mera and a whole bunch of shit goes down. They lose the battle that day. 

Now, we don’t really know what happened to Wyynde after this issue, except for that he has abandoned his Purist ideology and later became an associate of Aquaman. The next time we see Wyynde is in 3x17, when he and Lagoon Boy discover the Reach ship that had activated after receiving a distress signal from the downed war bugs. 

As we all know now, he seems to be in a relationship with Kaldur and the two appear to be quite happy. 

But, if you’re reading this and feel a tad uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Yes, Wyynde was a purist. He engaged in a physical attack on Topo that scarred him. So, why would the show actively put Kaldur with what is essentially, an Atlantean racist?

If you want my two cents, I’d step back and look at it from this point of view: neither of these men are innocent. While with Black Manta, Kaldur did horrible things: he was responsible for the deaths of the Kroloteans on Malina Island. destroyed Mt. Justice, ‘murdered’ Artemis… and these are just the things depicted on-screen! Needless to say, he probably has a ton of regret, and guilt. I’d be willing to bet that Wyynde felt the same way. The two likely bonded over their shared guilt and experiences, and used each other to heal and move forward. 

Now, should Wyynde be forgiven for his mistakes? Should any racist? Maybe. Maybe not. Who’s to say? We can’t exactly give a clear cut answer, considering we don’t know Wyynde’s path to redemption. However, I’m willing to keep an open mind. Kaldur is happy, and per Greg, is in love with Wyynde. He wouldn’t fall in love with a bad person. People are capable of change, and though they may not be forgiven for their previous misdeeds, what’s important is that they grow, change, and move on. 

And that’s the tea on Wyynde!

[grailbot143]

I chose last week's closing credits as this week's featured image. This is meant to be a statement.

Welcome Back Everyone!

As I was not the biggest fan of last week's episode and had every intention of wiping it entirely from my memory, this week, we are going to do something a little different. Instead of a recap of last week, we are going to focus on:

Briefcap Frybo

Consolidated lingering Questions

The Steven Universe World

Characters

Places

Things

Likes and Dislikes So Far

Briefcap from Steven Universe: Frybo (S1:Ep5)

Frybo opens with Steven looking for his pants. Pearl comes in looking for a missing crystal shard. She explains to Steven why the shard is important, but he is too busy thinking about other things.

Pearl leaves to go to town and look for the shard. Steven finds his pants running around on their own and catches them and puts them on. Then he discovers the shard in the pocket and goes out looking for Pearl.

He runs into PeeDee in a Fry suit getting hammered by some birds. After some discussion, he decides to use the shard to animate the Fry costume. PeeDee tells the costume to go make people eat fries, and he and Steven go to hang out in front of the arcade. Existentialism ensues.

There is screaming from the fry place. Steven and PeeDee run to see what's going on. They find a super-testosteroned fry costume force-feeding people. There is a moment when PeeDee's dad, believing the costume is still on PeeDee, apologizes to PeeDee for forcing him to be Frybo and tries to have a touching moment with him. Then the costume attempts to force-feed him fries too.

Pearl shows up and tries to fight the costume, but is beaten by ketchup shot from the costume's eye. Steven takes matters into his own hands (clothes) by animating all his clothes with the other 8 shards. When he adds his underwear to the fighting garment army, Frybo is at last defeated.

They have a Viking style funeral for Frybo and send him off to sea. PeeDee and his dad talk.

Episode Over (thank goodness)

Episode Random Noticings

There is a picture of Rose Quartz on the wall in Steven's house. I don't recall having seen it before this episode. Her gem was her belly button, as it is now Steven's.

I like the whole father/son relationship building plot line. These types of plot lines are far less cheesy once you've seen them play out in real life.

I would like to have heard the story of the armor, the infantry, and all the death that Pearl told at the beginning, but alas it was not to be.

I think this is the first episode that does not have an appearance by each of the 4 Crystal Gems. Both Amethyst and Garnet are missing from the episode.

I am a huge norse fan. I have been my whole life. I love Norse mythology and have always been enamored by the Viking's exploits and amazing feats. I had a 23andMe ancestry test done a while back. According to the test, I am likely descendant from Vikings. I realize this is irrelevant, but the 'Viking' `style send-off was a plus for me. So I thought I would explain why. And I told you guys at the beginning that I love lore and history, and you are reading the blog anyway, so I must assume you don't mind too much.

Consolidated lingering Questions

The Gems:

Where do they come from?

How is power derived from them?

Are all the gems the same, but act differently according to. . . something?

How is magic embued to the gems?

Who is chosen to wear them and why?

Why is a pearl considered a gem?

How is the body placement determined?

by the gem?

by the bearer?

random?

based on the attributes of the user?

What about the gemmed enemies? How do they get gems? Or are they created out of gems?

Rose Quartz:

Why does Rose have to die to give Steven his superpowers?

Is Rose even dead?? I don't remember that explicitly being stated

What would make her choose that?

a prophesy?

desire to give Greg a kid?

gonna die anyway?

Did she give up her gem to HAVE a kid or to EMBUE a kid with the gem?

Did she get to KNOW Steven?

The Crystal Gems:

Assumption: each has unique powers, i.e., Garnet doesn't shapeshift like Amethyst, Amethyst can't project a plan from her gem_

If the above assumption is correct, what exactly is Garnet's superpower?

How old are each of them?

It's suggested that Pearl is over 100.

Amethyst acts a bit like a teenager.

Is she that much younger than Pearl?

Where does Garnet fall?

Why is Steven the only boy? How many boy gems are there everywhere?

The World:

The Lunar Sea Spire was known as the Oasis for Gems on Earth, so I know it's Earth, but. . .

Is it in the same Earth that we are in, but hidden from us, or some sort of alternate universe

Are the gems ONLY on Earth? This would make the nomenclature Oasis for Gems on Earth redundant, so probably not

So far, everything seems to be happening in this town. . . are there other Gems in other towns?

Like every town has a team of Crystal Gems protecting it?

Or is this town some center for universal negativity, so the Gems are focused here?

The House on the Beach:

This is more a curiosity, but I wouldn't mind seeing the fight that took off that statues hands

What is up with the living temple inside the house? Beating hearts, waterfalls, a pool for getting rid of evil spirits. Need much more history and understanding here.

The Steven Universe World

This is just a quick list of things that make this place unique. . . no explanations.

Characters

The Crystal Gems

Pearl

Garnet

Amethyst

(dead) Rose Quartz

Steven

The Townsfolk

The Donut Girl

The Fry Man

Lars

PeeDee

PeeDee's brother? (same hair assumption)

Greg

mailman (I know they mentioned his name, and he mentioned a woman's name. . . darn my memory)

Monsters/Creatures

Centipeedles and their mother

Red Eye

(offscreen) A giant bird with a giant polka-dot egg

The Spirit from the painting that possessed *Together Breakfast*

The Crystal Shrimp

(deceased) Frybo

Places

Around Town

Big Donut

the fry shop

the arcade

the boardwalk (home to fry shop)

Greg's van

the car wash

the storage facility

the Crystal Gem's house on the beach

Mystical

The Temple with a beating heart

the storage unit? Greg said it was magical

(destroyed) The Lunar Sea Spire

the teleporter thing in Steven's living room

Things

Gems

Rose Quartz

2 Garnets

Amethyst

(not a gem) Pearl

Centipeedles' Mothers gem

(pants animating) Gem Shards

(maybe? pretty sure) The Lunar Goddess Statue

Mystical Items

Summoned Weapons

Laser Light Cannon

Red Eye?

Lunar Goddess Statue

Cursed Painting

Food (as it's seemingly important to our little hero)

(discontinued) Cookie Cats

Fry Bits

Together Breakfast

(offscreen) Pizza

(unmentioned) Cupcakes in jars

(not food) Cheeseburger backpack

Likes and Dislikes Far

Dislikes

Not a fan of the important role junk food plays in the show

Haven't found much in the way of music I like, outside of arcade sounds (which I dig)

I don't relate to Steven much. He mostly annoys me.

Why is there not a main antagonist? Are we going to be playing monster of the week forever? Surely we'll get one antagonist we can loath. . .

Season 1: Episode 5 Frybo

Likes

I like that all the answers to everything are not conveniently packaged in an episode

I like Garnet. . . and sometimes Amethyst. . . and I often relate to Pearl

I like Greg and his super awesome van

I like that it seemed like we landed in the middle of a life, rather than the beginning of a story

I like the townspeople and their relationships with Steven

I appreciate that though there are some references a kid wouldn't understand completely, there is so far no blatantly adult humor or sexuality even in undertones

I like the whole living temple thing.

Frybo is, in my opinion, the worst episode so far. I consider taking down the star rating every time I think about it.

I just want to remind everyone, I write these recaps after having seen the episode once, a week ago, and often interrupted by my whole blogging thing. I mainly do it for myself to refresh my memory for the next episode, but since I post it, I thought I should ask your forgiveness if it isn’t exactly perfect (or even close).

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 94: Greg the Babysitter

“We all gotta grow up sometime, right?”

Right off the bat, this episode’s greatest weakness is that we don’t see Baby Buck and the Baby Pizza Twins as we do in Lamar Abrams’s promo art. How dare we not have more baby teens?

Lack of infant variety notwithstanding, this is a great episode, if not a subtle one. Greg is no stranger to hammering out the lesson of a story, but here it’s made so explicit so often that it threatens to weaken the actual plot. Fortunately the plot does a good enough job of showing that it makes up for all the telling, but still, it’s so on the nose that Vidalia calls Greg out when he belatedly repeats the moral it in response to an unrelated statement. 

(But to be clear, this is a story about growing up. Growing up is what this episode about. Gaining maturity is valuable. Emotional development is important. Taking responsibility as you age: good. Staying a kid forever: bad!)

As with Annoying Steven early in the series, this lesson is achieved by presenting us with Douchebag Greg. Douchebag Greg slums around and mooches off a single working mother, depriving her of her own food and taunting her for working to feed her child. When tasked with babysitting, he does what he wants instead of focusing on what a baby might need, and when the kid goes missing, his search includes a pit stop to the arcade to play video games.

This is the second episode where Greg is awful for the bulk of the runtime, and the first, House Guest, was so bad that it earned my inaugural “No Thanks!” rating (a brutal assessment, I know). By that metric you might think I’d dislike Greg the Babysitter as well, because boy oh boy is Douchebag Greg unlikable. But the key difference is the level of intent: even looking past the age and maturity gap between these two Gregs, the Greg of House Guest chooses to lie to his son despite seeing how hard Steven takes it, while Douchebag Greg’s actions stem from sincere cluelessness. Neither is great, and younger Greg is still old enough to know better, but ignorance is far more digestible than purposeful shadiness from this character.

Both House Guest and Greg the Babysitter stay somewhat true to Regular Greg by making him driven by love, whether it’s paternal or romantic. The problem of House Guest is that this emotional core is tainted by him wronging Steven in a way we’ve never seen before or since (compare his feigning of an injury to his negligence in Maximum Capacity, where he instead makes a mistake and is immediately regretful). Nothing in Greg the Babysitter diminishes any sense of authenticity about Greg’s feelings for Rose, because for all his flaws, he doesn’t take advantage of Rose or their relationship.

Moreover, I appreciate that his flaws come from the same character traits that kicked off this relationship, which so far has dominated his flashbacks: Greg is a dreamer and a romantic, which works great in Story for Steven, and he takes the relationship seriously, so he matures on that front in We Need to Talk, but now we see that he’s so focused on Rose that he’s ignoring every other element of life as a functioning adult. 

This episode works because Greg is realistically irresponsible. His head has always been in the clouds, and now he’s in a relationship with someone that’s literally magic, so he has no incentive to reflect on himself barring a dire situation. But this episode excels because Greg’s decision to grow up has nothing to do with Steven. We get the groundwork for Rose wanting a kid, but Greg getting his act together is something he does for himself. It would’ve been so easy for this shift to be prompted by impending fatherhood, but it’s far more satisfying to see a character improve himself because he wants to, rather than out of obligation to others. It allows the moment he takes agency to be triumphant without being mixed up in a sense of begrudging acceptance of his duties.

Finally, while I still think it’s ridiculous that the Crystal Gems treat him like a total flake in Laser Light Cannon given his clear improvement since the Douchebag Greg days, it does make a little sense that beings unaccustomed to change would have a hard time getting past this first impression. If you go back and watch the second season of the series after Greg the Babysitter, it’s not hard to imagine which Greg they’re talking about. It’s a stretch, because they’ve seen plenty of evidence to contradict this impression, but if you’re looking to explain their behavior then it’s the best reason I’ve got.

Greg the Babysitter marks an unspoken milestone in the series: this is the last time we’ll ever see Rose Quartz before her web of duplicity begins to unravel. In just four episodes, we’ll learn that she bubbled Bismuth away and lied about it to everyone. In another three, we’ll hear that she shattered Pink Diamond. The veracity of that second part is irrelevant, because the truth only further proves her capacity for deceit. We’ve seen already that Rose wasn’t perfect, but this is her final appearance before the dominoes begin to fall. One last happy memory that directly leads to the creation of our show’s title character, in an episode that emphasizes how dreaming is nice, but reality will always force people to make a change.

We see way more of Rose in this swan song than we did in Story for Steven or We Need to Talk, and like Greg, her mistakes here can be attributed to cluelessness. She admits how confusing humans can be for her, particularly babies, so it’s hard to blame her for not taking good care of Sour Cream. It’s especially hard to blame her considering how excited she is for him to exhibit independence. And it’s impossible to blame her, at least for me, when she references one of my favorite dumb Simpsons jokes in regards to watching him.

The Pink Diamond revelation adds new layers to her explanation that Gems are made for specific purposes, but the funny thing is, it doesn’t add that many new layers: even before learning just how high up Rose was, we still knew she was rebelling against what she was made to do. I think the more interesting aspect of her speech is how it lines up with Bismuth’s repetition of her insistence that Gems could break away from their intended roles. Seeing Rose talk about it here, less than twenty years ago, is made fascinating by knowing she was saying the same thing thousands of years ago. For a Gem that’s interested in change, she hasn’t really changed that much. It’s one thing for her to know that and talk about it, but it’s another for us to see it in action.

I love how an episode that’s this unsubtle (about being a story about growing up, in case you didn’t catch it) manages to quietly explain why Steven exists. We see a baby, and we see Rose loves babies, and we see Rose admires the human capacity to change, and we’ll soon see that Rose herself stagnated there a little bit, but we leave it at that. Judging by the age difference between Sour Cream and Steven, it’s a few years until she and Greg make an actual decision, so it makes sense to not reference it too explicitly this early, but it’s still a direction the episode could’ve taken and I’m very glad it didn’t.

I’ve made no secret about how much I love Brian Posehn voicing Sour Cream with his regular grown man voice, so obviously the best part of this episode is his further use of that voice for Baby Cream. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and by itself ensures that Greg’s dickishness can’t pull the episode too far down. As with Onion Friend, the strange connection between Sour Cream and Steven is left unspoken, but it’s wild to consider that this side character is a big reason why our protagonist exists. While I’d be fine with this continuing to be a quiet part of the backstory, I can’t say I wouldn’t be interested in seeing Steven and Sour Cream talk about it one day, even as a small gag. 

Onion Friend was also the last time we spent any meaningful amount of time with Vidalia, and it’s neat to fill in some gaps between her debut cameo in Story for Steven and her modern iteration. Marty’s flakiness is further proven by her being a single mother from the start, but she’s clearly risen to the occasion and loves the hell out of her kid. Her patience with Greg is tested by his awfulness (and honestly makes said awfulness hard to watch, given how much is on her plate), but it speaks volumes that she’s so welcoming to the ex-friend of her ex. She’s probably the only human Greg knows in Beach City at this point, and I honestly wish we saw more of their modern relationship when we have such a vivid image of their history.

I Think I Need a Little Change might not reach the rocking heights of Comet or What Can I Do For You, but it’s catchier than either and has that wonderful twist on the double meaning of “change.” The wordplay speaks for itself, but it’s a cool trick to reveal that this musical montage is as diegetic as the other two songs: this is something he’s actually singing to people. We get a hefty break from songs after Mr. Greg, so that might be meddling with my opinions, but I think this is my favorite of the three. Puns beat electric guitar, and the song crystalizes Greg’s similarity to Steven come Change Your Mind.

And so we end Season 3, Act 2. We’ve had the aftermath of the Cluster, and we’ve had a series of slice of life episodes from this particularly magical life, but we’ll soon be back to the high-octane plotting of the Cluster Arc. It’s a bit strange that Greg the Babysitter comes between Alone at Sea and Gem Hunt, considering the Jasper of it all, but it’s nice to have this respite before we barrel towards the pivotal moment of Steven’s series-wide arc, especially when this respite tells us a lesson that’s about to become a lot more obvious in the coming storm:

Steven Universe is a story about growing up.

Future Vision!

Good thing nothing bad happened to Sour Cream, or else Greg would’ve had to pray that his space goddess's magic could bring people back from the dead. That would be a ridiculous power!

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

Vidalia got this top from the T-Shirt Shop where she works. This top has a collar. T-shirts do not have collars. It’s unresearched nonsense like this that makes Cartoon Network put this show on hiatus so often, come on people.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

While I do enjoy this episode and stand by it being great, I don’t necessarily love things that I critically find great. Greg the Babysitter doesn’t do quite enough on the emotional level to make me truly love it, considering how much time we have to spend with Douchebag Greg. I appreciate the importance of his douchebaggery, and the importance of this episode as a whole, but this isn’t an something I go out of my way to rewatch. Sorry, Baby Cream. I still like it!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[roaldseth]

if someone hasn't already done so: Roland, and if they have: Gale!!

This was my first ask, so Roland it is.

NOTE: these answers are in relation to Digital Devil Saga unless stated otherwise. 

WARNING: there are both Digital Devil Saga and Quantum Devil Saga spoilers throughout these answers.

ROLAND

First impression:

Unfounded distaste. There is little sound explanation besides: maybe it was because, back then, I used the dislike as a defense for not reconciling or admitting faults in myself and influences over myself. Most of the time I attribute it to “being robbed of my white-haired anime boy with glasses” of sorts, but during the when it was actually occurring, it was very hollow teasing/chaff against him because of the explanation that was said in the sentence before this one.

Impression now:

Roland was not Indra wrongly. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s the best simple summary I have. And, for a character that we see so little of, he was written pretty well. In terms of meta: turns out Roland is over powered in the DDS universe, and it’s overlooked because it happens through game mechanics and right before he dies.

(On the “first impression” answer: finding a love/fondness in Roland could also be considered a monument to becoming myself, not ridiculed, and growing into my own skin and sentiments. I no longer need to needlessly devalue him in needs to “feel superior” in a sense.)

Favorite moment:

Idea for a story:

1) ONE-SHOT: a response to For a Sunrise They Would Never See. The fic’s original prompt request (“[a kiss]… for when the world is saved”) and its namesake theme sets itself up to have a QDS flip-side, but there are a couple of limitations preventing me from attempting on how to go about this.

the SPOILER-sprinkled expansion:

DDS Roland never got to see the sunrise he was fighting for, but QDS Roland does. Seth gets to experience that sunrise, and that’s what I mean by a “flip-side.” But, because I can not read how this scene, and the ones around it, plays out, I can not adequately form what I want to address and how I would want to address it. Then, on top of that, I would have to factor in the original prompt and assess if I want the prompt to carry over into the response.

Considering Adil does not exist in QDS (to my knowledge),* if I did decide to incorporate the original prompt, it would be through the form of anemoia, nostalgia for a time you’ve never known. In this case it would be for a person, and the story would focus on Seth’s longing and sorrow for not being able to experience the sunrise with someone he had never known.

Narratively, Greg is the candidate for Adil’s spot in the call-and-response structure of For a Sunrise They Would Never See. Either that or it’s just Seth in the narrative, but I would want the two story structures to mirror each other, so Greg would hold that spot.

* it could be worked in that he was “generic member of the Lokapala,” but that’s not a personal choice with what I like to do with my fan fiction.

2) CHAPTERED: Asura Project Developer AU. It would be canon-divergent manipulation of the events leading up to and following the Incident of Five Years Ago. It would mostly to be about Roland’s relationship with the Karma Society, the Military—specifically with Angel and van Beck—the formation of Tribe 96 (Embryon), and the Lokapala’s inception.

Changes to canon that would define more of the shaping to this AU would be 1) Roland’s guilt stemming from an actual betrayal and backstabbing (as opposed to survivor’s guilt), and 2) a buildup of events—the growth of sympathy towards Cyber Shamans—resulting in the compulsion to bodysnatch AI Cielo.

I would work on trying to write this out one day, but unfortunately as of right now, I have little to no definitive plot (points).

3) CURRENT PROJECT: I’m in the process of writing an Adil/Roland comedy, hurt/comfort fic about both of them trying to relocate Roland’s misplaced eyeglasses. It currently stands at 914 words, which consist of a fleshed out version of the falling action and skeletons of the beginning and conclusion. 

If this WIP turns out anything like how Chapter 7 of source_code turned out, this fic will be sitting in limbo and editing for months.

Unpopular opinion:

HE WAS A GOOD PARTY MEMBER FOR THE FINAL DUNGEON YOU ALL ARE JUST WEAK-MINDED COWARDS.*

* this also applies to Heat.

Favorite relationship:

Adil/Roland, the OTP.

Favorite A headcanon:

This is a QDS headcanon because all of my DDS headcanons are escaping me right now. DISCLAIMER: I’m also going off of very limited information, so this runs the risk of not being QDS canon compliant or in good taste.

Seth was a computer scientist/engineer of the Information Technologies department. A bonus is that it gives the sense of being adjacent to di Fiori without necessarily having to create overlaps in their work-tasks. (Plus, Roland as the IT Guy is appealing to me, in any form, probably because of how he was treated in DDS, and from what I hear, there’s room in QDS to let me dream.)

[burning-the-last-bridge]

Growth and Related Shit

I think I’m gonna go back to talking to Tumblr again. There was something therapeutic about dumping my shit somewhere away from most of the people I know without inciting public scrutiny or debate. And I’ve grown quite a bit since the last time I used that outlet on a regular basis so i think its safe to assume I’ll get even more out of it this time around. So here it fucking goes, boys and girls.

1. I’m making little strides toward curbing my anxiety. Just about every day since boot camp I’ve found myself in situations where I’m forced to ask questions, interact with strangers, go places I've never been and do things I've never done, all the while trying to adhere to a still fairly new set of rules and expectations that I’m not necessarily used to. In short speak, I’m adjusting slowly but surely to being in the Navy. And I like it so far. Granted, I've experienced none percent of what it actually entails, but I’m aware that my personality almost mandates that i force myself into growth; its proven to be tremendously more effective several times over and the military is good at nothing if not for giving you only one option for any given task.

2. My eating habits have gotten way fucking better. I have Greg to thank for the majority of that; he’s the one who asked me to help him stay away from his own vices when he took his own fitness journey while we were living together. its been a tremendous factor in how my mind approaches meal decisions. I can confidently say that I’ve all but completely replaced my bad habits with good ones. I can also attribute the success to owning up to my faulty rationale when it comes to the way i justify eating garbage and being able to reconcile that fact with the goals I have/why i wont make any progress if i keep making up excuses to cheat all the damn time.

3. The eating habits have also come in handy at the gym. That’s been the big boss lately. It’s not exactly second nature to want to go work out and stick to the routine I’ve put together, but I will absolutely give myself credit where its due. I go much more often than I don’t, which I’ve actually never been able to say before. It’ll be quite a bit more time before it turns into a full fledged part of my life, but the improved control I’ve gained over my eating and anxiety have and will continue to help me make that possible.

4. The numbering and organization of these paragraphs is completely arbitrary, I’m just trying not to turn this into a big  blob of nonsense.

5. I’ve also been thinking about my *love* life lately. partly because its taken on a completely new dynamic now that I’ve committed my life to the military for an amount of time that is currently indeterminable, and partly because I am persistently trying to grow from the mistakes of my past and become/remain a good person. I know I’m flawed, and I know there’s a large slice of my trauma that has been self enabled or self inflicted, and that’s okay. I also am very aware that I still have habits(of which I won’t speak of at this time because reasons) that are counter intuitive to the overall goal. That being said, I will play an active role in making amends with my demons, righting my wrongs, and keeping true to myself as someone who deserves meaningful relationships.

I could, and will eventually will, expand upon this but I should probably go to bed. Goodnight to all you complete strangers.

[lifeonashelf]

CLASH, THE

As anyone who self-identifies as a “serious” music fan  is indubitably aware (goddammit, this essay is already pretentious and I haven’t even finished the first sentence), there are certain bands which other self-identified “serious” music fans have long-ago designated as “important” artists that all “serious” music fans are supposed to love. There isn’t any set-in-stone mandate for this, no handy reference guide which lists all of these acts for the benefit of those seeking to become “serious” music fans—actually, there very well might be, but I don’t feel like looking it up and I wouldn’t want to read such a pompous list anyway. The artists in this elite pantheon are mostly identified through accumulated cognizance, via extensive reading of material scribed by writers who self-identify as “serious” music fans and/or extensive conversations with people who self-identify as the same. Unfortunately, uncovering those exalted names is an often-insufferable process, since most self-identifying “serious” music fans are themselves often-insufferable. And doing so is also an exercise in sheer inanity, since requiring someone else to tell you whether or not a band is good defeats the entire fucking purpose of being a music fan.

I am “not” a “serious” music fan. Yes, I have written over 200,000 words about that specific subject for this project, and my every waking moment is spent either listening to records or wishing I was listening to records instead of doing whatever it is I’m doing instead of listening to records. Yet there are two notable discrepancies in my psyche which disqualify me from thriving among the insufferable: 1) My favorite album of all time is by fucking Queensryche, so I harbor absolutely zero delusions about possessing any sophisticated expertise in this field; and 2) I honestly couldn’t give a shit whether or not anybody else likes the bands I like.

That second distinction is rather important for our purposes here, since one notable attribute of “serious” music fans is a deportment of haughtiness towards people who aren’t “serious” music fans, which is usually accompanied by a reflexive disdain for anyone who does not subscribe to the putative preeminence of the “important” bands on the afore-mentioned possibly-nonexistent list. This isn’t something the aficionados I’m speaking of will necessarily acknowledge—to be fair, most of them probably aren’t even aware they’re dicks—but rest assured, if you ever tell a “serious” music fan that you think Radiohead has been awful for the entirety of this century, they will indeed think less of you.

On the contrary, I don’t think less of people who don’t exalt Operation: Mindcrime as highly as I do, nor would I bother expending energy trying to convince anyone they should share my ardor for the second-best-selling album by a band most people barely remember even existed. If you love Operation: Mindcrime, that’s totally cool—we can certainly geek out on how Chris DeGarmo’s precise shredding throughout “Speak” reveals him to be the most underrated guitar player of all time, and we can rhapsodize about how the interlocked suite of “Breaking the Silence”/ “I Don’t Believe In Love”/ “Waiting for 22”/ ”My Empty Room” and “Eyes of a Stranger” is the most exhilarating 18-minutes of music ever recorded (and it’s entirely possible I will ask you to marry me at the conclusion of our discussion). However, if you don’t love Operation: Mindcrime, that’s totally cool, too—maybe you simply prefer the band’s subsequent record, Empire, and I certainly won’t begrudge your attempt to make a case for its superiority based on the incontrovertible strength of “Silent Lucidity”, “Jet City Woman”, and “Another Rainy Night (Without You)”, because all of those tracks are also fucking marvelous. Or maybe you think Queensryche totally sucked and you’d rather chat about Animal Collective instead—seriously, that’s also perfectly acceptable (although our conversation will have to be fairly brief since I’ve still never heard that band and don’t really care that I’ve never heard them).

Needless to say, Queensryche probably isn’t on the shortlist of many music fans, serious or otherwise. They aren’t even on mine—despite the apex they reached with Operation: Mindcrime, the records they made before that are merely decent and I think pretty much everything they released after Empire is terrible. “Serious” music fans wouldn’t even mention such frivolous and undistinguished fare in passing. Though they will eagerly plunk down $200 for a Bob Dylan box set featuring 14 discs laden with endless alternate versions of the songs from Slow Train Coming, and they will subsequently embark on a thorough scholarly analysis of each increasingly redundant track until they reach a decisive verdict that Take 6 of “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” is slightly superior to the version that was used on the album, after which they will inevitably engage in spirited discussions about their findings with other “serious” music fans, who are liable to counter that Take 4 with the alternate bridge lyrics is the true superlative rendering of that number. Such things are deeply significant to “serious” music fans, which is one of the many reasons they’re insufferable. And if you were to inform these ardent votaries that you think the vast majority of Dylan’s recorded output is boring as shit and you’d much rather listen to anything in the Queensryche catalog than anything Bobby D released after 1975, they would readily conclude that you know absolutely nothing about music.

And perhaps I don’t. Because despite what every “serious” music fan has to say about the matter, Queensryche is infinitely more important to me than Bob Dylan. Operation: Mindcrime was the album that led me to pick up a guitar for the first time. Operation: Mindcrime was the album that led me to start writing songs and begin exploring my creative talents in earnest. Which means that, ultimately, Queensryche is the reason I’m sitting here at my laptop thirty years later, typing an essay about The Clash that has yet to actually say anything about The Clash. In a tangible and legitimate sense, Queensryche changed the course of my entire life. Out in the “serious” world, Dylan may be a Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist and the most acclaimed musician of the 20th Century. But in my world, he’s just a dude who made three albums in my collection that I never listen to. So, clearly, importance is a subjective characterization.

Here’s where that applies to the topic at hand: The Clash are one of those lionized bands whose work everyone who professes to love music is supposed to love. They are undoubtedly “important.” Their records are “seminal.” I am acutely aware of this. Yet this awareness only reinforces my recognition that I must not be a “serious” music fan, because I don’t fucking care.

My valuation of The Clash tallies out to a half-dozen-or-so kickass tunes, twenty-or-so pretty good tunes, and “Rock the Casbah”, which is one of the most comprehensively annoying songs ever excreted—a ratio that doesn’t chart them anywhere on my personal best-list. A recent documentary about the group was outfitted with the ludicrously hyperbolic title The Only Band That Matters, a designation which suggests I have evidently squandered my entire life by seeking out the literal thousands of bands that matter a lot more to me than The Clash does. As with Dylan, The Clash only factors into my musical paradigm by virtue of other artists they influenced—in other words, I like most of the bands who like The Clash a lot more than I like the band they like. Since they’re “important,” this roster is extensive and encompasses a wide range of artists responsible for some of my favorite records ever. Nonetheless, even limiting my scope strictly to the track listing of Burning London—a 1999 tribute CD which features 12 Clash tunes covered by a decidedly anemic assortment of 12 bands who are not The Clash—I still enjoy listening to half of those bands more than I enjoy listening to the Clash. Which is, I think, a good indication of how little their music matters to me, since the only bands on Burning London I actually do prefer The Clash to include bottom-scraping pedestrians like The Urge, Indigo Girls, and goddamn No Doubt, whose very existence aggravates me so much that hearing their music makes me physically nauseous.

Afghan Whigs supplied a track to Burning London, and I love Greg Dulli’s work with parts of my soul that Joe Strummer’s songs have never strummed anywhere near. 311 also has a cut on there, and my fondness for them is far more long-standing and sincere than the casual appreciation I have accumulated for The Clash. So does Third Eye Blind, whose self-titled debut I’ve spun WAY more times than I’ve played my copy of The Clash, by a factor of at least 20. Even the presence of a more peripheral outfit like Cracker serves to remind me that I think “Low” rocks harder than “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” Sure, I like the Clash more than I like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but if I’m being honest, I probably prefer fellow Burning London contributors Silverchair to both of them, and Silverchair is kind of lousy by any standard.

So, does this confession reveal that I know fuck-all about music? Or does it perhaps reveal that the connections each of us forge to the artform we’re exploring here are so exclusive and individualized that any sort of flighty designation of what bands “matter” completely undermines the sacred and inimitable power of music? I propose the latter—mostly because I have to make this piece about something, and I don’t feel like writing about how awesome The Clash is because I don’t think they’re nearly as awesome as I’m apparently supposed to.

I have a friend named Celine (save it—she’s heard all the jokes) who would probably tell you that Fall Out Boy changed her life. She’s not a “serious” music fan—if she’s ever listened to The Clash at all, it likely occurred by happenstance while she was watching Stranger Things—but she is one of the most committed music fans I’ve ever met. She goes to a lot of shows, she buys hoodies from peripheral squads like Sleeping With Sirens, and she could probably sing you multiple Panic At The Disco records from start to finish. The kind of love she has for the bands that are important to her is of the purest and most zealous grade—a passionate embrace that pulls their music out of the background of her life and into the foreground of her heart, a fandom based not on what’s hip this minute but on what moves her always. Precisely the kind of love that music is fucking meant to inspire, as far as I’m concerned. And, frankly, I don’t think it matters if the band who opened that door for her is Fall Out Boy, because the open door itself is far more important that any capricious critical assessment of how “important” their work is.

The Clash have been sanctified as one of punk’s most imperative progenitors, but that doesn’t mean I feel obligated to love them simply because I love punk rock. The Clash had absolutely nothing to do with my submersion into the genre—a girl named Alison who used to play NOFX cassettes in her car when she gave me rides home from Bonita High School had a greater influence on that corollary than Mick Jones did. Alison had several tapes in the caddy she kept in her center console—Pennywise, Guttermouth, and the like—and we listened to all those, too. But it was NOFX’s masterwork Punk in Drublic that stole my heart, cuts like “Linoleum” and “Lori Meyers” and “Dying Degree” that energized my eardrums and unveiled a whole new biosphere of sonic possibilities. Punk in Drublic is the record that made me a fan of punk rock, which sort of makes NOFX the most important punk rock band of all time to me. And neither the lasting impact of that introduction nor the multitude of memories which augment my experience every time I listen to Punk in Drublic are tempered by the feeble insistence of self-appointed music scholars that The Clash and Sex Pistols represent proper punk essentiality, because in my universe The Clash is predominantly meh and the Sex Pistols are predominantly shit-awful.

But perhaps the problem here isn’t me. Maybe it’s just time to reassess the derisible notion that there have only been a handful of significant bands formed since the 1970’s. And maybe it’s also time to reassess how such designations are tabulated, and how often we revisit those tabulations. Because The Clash haven’t done anything especially noteworthy in my lifetime, and I’ve been around for 40 fucking years now. The last “important” record they made—1982’s Combat Rock—came out when I was 4. And despite the group’s repute as one of the wellsprings from which all things punk were born, the most enduring tracks off Combat Rock are the bare bones Kinks-esque rocker “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” (which, granted, is an unimpeachably rad song) and the utterly dreadful “Rock the Casbah”, which—near as my ears can tell—didn’t influence any of the songs in the NOFX catalog, but definitely influenced a lot of the songs in the decidedly un-punk Fine Young Cannibals catalog. The band was remarkable in their own epoch because of their anti-aristocracy philosophy and their then-novel fusing of punk and reggae, yet the lasting effects of those oft-cited dogmatic components are negligible today. Sure, The Clash lit a protest rock fuse that later motivated Rage Against The Machine to make some of the coolest music of the ‘90s, but they also accidentally invented Slightly Stoopid, so those two contributions probably cancel each other out. And, yes, they embraced vital social causes and pledged undying support to anti-Nazi groups, but the Dead Kennedys managed to issue a condemnation more blistering than The Clash’s entire combined catalog in just sixty-four seconds when they recorded “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”.

The fact that “Casbah” remains the band’s most lasting and highest-charting hit suggests that a whole lot of The Clash’s non-“serious” fans don’t ultimately give a shit about any of the reasons their “serious” aficionados have deemed them indispensable. Which sort of speaks to the point I’ve been making here. Cougars who scurry to the dance floor to shake their asses with their Solo cups held high whenever “Rock the Casbah” comes on at the club are just as welcome to the track as the Art & Activism professors who play it for an auditorium full of bored freshmen to preface their lectures on Iranian despots banning Western music. The song serves extremely different functions for both extremes of its audience, which is ultimately a point in its favor. The reason the omnipresence of “Casbah” irritates me, besides the song itself being irritating, is because its tedious one-riff groove showcases none of the band’s stronger attributes and the general goofiness of the presentation makes the whole affair resonate as nothing more than a frivolous novelty number—adopting “Rock the Casbah” as the anthem that defines The Clash is a lot like picking “Batdance” as the best Prince song.  

All of this reads like I hate The Clash, which is definitely not the case (although, I am listening to Combat Rock from start to finish for the first time in ages right now, and most of the record is actually pretty terrible). What I do hate is the sort of stuffy snobbery which has come to predominate cultural discourse on any music that intellectuals have chosen to elevate into the category of high art, whether the subject is revolution-minded ‘70s proto-punk or contemporary socially-conscious hip-hop (which has become the genre du jour of all modern pop music critics striving to prove how woke they are). And maybe my aversion doesn’t apply exclusively to the deification of bands; maybe it stems from my tenure in grad school, where I was continually reminded by English professors that authors like Stephen King and Elmore Leonard—i.e. writers whose work people without PhDs enjoy reading—somehow belong in a lesser tier than the likes of William Faulkner and James Joyce, who are deemed superior by the literary elite simply because they have been elected into canonization by that same literary elite. Maybe I’ve grown to believe that making distinctions between so-called “high” and “low” art is inherently an act of arrogance, because no matter how much activity a piece of prose or music may inspire in the minds of the cognoscente, it is the impact art has on our hearts and souls that should govern how its importance is measured. Some of us find the same rich tapestry of storytelling in back issues of Amazing Spider-Man as “serious” readers find in The Dubliners. And some of us find the same door-opening revelations in Operation: Mindcrime as “serious” music fans find in London Calling. Highbrow culture’s continued insistence that there is somehow a marked disparity between the two is false and exclusionary—and both of those sins are egregious because all art is most powerful when it serves a mirror that reflects truths within ourselves, and that kind of existential revelation is wide open to anybody who cares enough to seek it out. Any band whose music accomplishes a feat that outstanding doesn’t need to have a graduate thesis or a documentary devoted to them to be important.

If The Clash changed your life, I’m very happy for you. But Fall Out Boy changed Celine’s life, and Queensryche changed mine, and The Clash never did shit for either one of us. So, while I’m sure someone gave themselves a huge boner when they came up with the title The Only Band That Matters, an allegation like that only serves to deepen the divide between the insufferable and us lower-echelon fans who cultivate our love of music based on what it makes us feel instead of whether smart people think it matters or not. Because when you strip away politics and history and erudite mammon, there’s only one way to gauge the eminence of any band: fucking put on one of their records and see if it kicks your ass.

The Clash’s albums offer me sporadic moments of excitement, but they do not kick my ass. So if that means I’m not a “serious” music fan, I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with that. And I’ll take the $200 I’m not spending on some otiose Bob Dylan box set and buy 14 discs I’ll actually listen to instead. I may never find out whether Take 11 of “God Gave Names to All the Animals” is superior to Take 8, but I do know every word Geoff Tate wails on “Breaking the Silence”—and, goddammit, that should count for something.

 March 11, 2019

[cartoonfan7]

Has anyone thought of these yet?

Camp Camp by Rooster Teeth has become a haven for AU crafting, but as far as I know, no one’s thought of certain ones that I honestly thought would happen be now. Or maybe someone has thought of them already and I just never came across them for some reason. Regardless, I will list my fleeting AU ideas and leave up to the rest of you to figure out the full basics. Anyone can use the following….. 

 Portal AU: This one seems so particularly obvious, to the point I’m not sure I’m *seemingly* the only one who thought it up. I don’t particularly have any ideas for an AU like this outside of CC characters as Portal characters. My current roster is Max as Chell, Daniel as GLaDOS, Mr. Honeynuts as the Companion Cube, Jasper as Wheatley, Cameron Campbell as Cave Johnson, David as Caroline, Space Kid as The Space Core,  Nikki as The Adventure Core, and Neil as The Fact Sphere.  It’s slightly weird that technically David turns into Daniel in this AU, but I wasn’t too sure of just having OOC David for most of the AU. I did figure that David would be perfect singing “Still Alive”, “Want You Gone”, “GLaDOS’s cut song”, and “You Wouldn’t Know”. I could use some help figuring out the rest of the roster I still need to fill Doug Rattmann, The Morality Core, The Curiosity Core,  The Cake Recipe Core, The Anger Core, The Announcer, The Turrets, The Defective Turrets, Atlas & P-Body, and Greg.  Any help figuring these guys out would be tremendous.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory AU:   The same kind of AU as above only expanded and I actually have a few ideas for this one: It’s meant to combine elements from the original book with it’s two cinematic adaptations (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). Campbell Inc. has become one of, if not, the richest companies on the planet, effectively on the levels of Megacorporations, but strangely enough, it seems primarily known and famous for what would, under other circumstances, be considered kids stuff, like toys and candy. But everyone agrees that, somehow, someway, they are top of the line, the best of the best. The head of the company even gains more publicity when he took in several kids from less than stellar backgrounds and adopted them, including Davey and Jasper. But the Campbell Inc. seems to be falling into hard times as the world rolled into the 21st century. Rumors began abounding about the illicit and downright illegal activities of CEO, Cameron Campbell, including unconfirmed allegations of abuse, exploitation, and even one of his kids dying horrifically in an industrial accident in Campbell’s combined primary factory/mansion/theme park. On top of that, competitors who wished to discover Campbell’s money making secrets in all things sent spies into Campbell’s factories around the globe and managed to make a few sizable discoveries before Campbell was forced to lay off a majority of this workforce and try to rebuild the company from the ground up. Campbell himself became a recluse and gave control of the company to one of his adopted kids after some of the previously rumored illicit and illegal activity was confirmed, many speculating that Campbell did this to have a scapegoat to deal with this mess while he went into hiding. For a good few years, Campbell Inc. began to loose money, both by the diminished workforce and by the fact that Campbell went into so many directions in the past that the successor had no idea how to continue. (The successor was a recluse as well who did everything humanly possible to remain anonymous to the world until the main factory/mansion/theme park tour, but to answer the question of the people reading this, yes, the successor is David.) That all changed one night when the main factory and several others around the world started up and began production again despite no one ever leaving or entering the factory in the years before, the night of “reopening”, and in the few years after until the Golden Sparrow contest. Afterward, the company seemingly starts again from scratch, selling the best goddamn candy and toys the world has ever known, allegedly because the successor wanted to return the company to it’s roots (but it’s also partially because David’s a kid at heart and wanted to go back to that). A few years after the mysterious successor inherits the factory, a contest begins that almost ends the world with it’s hype: multiple Golden Sparrows are sent out, promising that the people who show up with one will get a free tour of the refurbished factory, as well as a small portion of the company’s stock (which in and of itself promises for thousands, if not millions of dollars in annual income) and a lifetime supply of any products produced by the company, including food, candy, toys, makeup, certain brands of clothes the company owns, etc. Some rumors even went out about a secret prize, although until the weekend tour of the factory, no one can confirm or deny the rumor. And here enters Max, a young, jaded boy who lives a very shitty, poverty stricken home life (that I unfortunately can’t fully describe since we don’t know what Max’s parents are like [all we know now is that they’re kind of shitty] and there’s a possibility that we’ll see the campers’ parents in the season 2 finale, so if that’s true, I don’t want to potentially date this post with speculation, needless to say that Max’s home life sucks in this AU). Max seems unable to fully grasp the hype about the Golden Sparrow contest at first since “his generation” wasn’t around when Campbell Inc. pretty much ruled the world, although many experts note that they’re getting back up there again and might ACTUALLY rule the world this time now that Campbell’s is being run by a new person who seems to have learned from his predecessors mistakes. Max partially blames Campbell Inc. for why the world he lives in is so shitty, since he understands, in basic economics, what’s liable to happen when a workforce a large as Cameron’s is laid off almost all at once without being replaced by other people. But Max eventually starts giving into the hype as more Golden Sparrows are found and he realizes that the contests prizes could get him out of his shitty life and into a much better one (whether he’ll take the rest of his family with him is anyone’s guess, but I’d say it’s very unlikely). Like Charlie before him, it takes 3 tries to get a Golden Sparrow (should I include the forged one, I don’t know who I’d attribute to in this AU, maybe the Quartermaster, but I feel like he should be somewhere in the factory, should he be the forger or the baseline for the Oompa Loompas, or should I just go the book route about the OLs only being described as little people and seemingly not clones of each other, given how similar individual Oompa Loompas look to each other in the movies?) and, noticing that the Sparrows allow bringing plus two, Max decides to bring a local woman he’s kinda friends with with him (my original plan was for this to be Bonquisha, but I noticed that I haven’t made a place for Gwen in this AU, I don’t know, maybe Gwen is one of Campbell’s adopted kids and she makes friends with David, or maybe Max brings both Gwen and Bonquisha together as his plus ones because Max doesn’t like Bonquisha’s boyfriend. Note: David doesn’t get with Bonquisha in this AU, but they do surprisingly make good friends.) All of the other Campers in the main series, including the Woodscouts and the Flower Scouts, win the contest and bring their parents (except the woodscouts and the flower scouts who go as their respective trios, well, I guess the Woodscouts would try to use the free tour as an excuse to infiltrate the factory to steal secret formulas for their popcorn sales, I could even see them stacking Jermy onto Petrol to do the whole kids in trenchcoat=adult shtick so they can have more hands to steal things with or they could fill the role of a character that was actually cut from the book, Miranda Mary Piker .) The Flower Scouts would, collectively (I guess), fulfill the archetype of  Veruca Salt, all of them being highly successful spoiled brats who feel very entitled, possibly playing into Tabii withtwoIs’s hardcore crush on Neil, who would probably be Mike Teevee, including elements of his 2005 Film character. Ered would fulfill the archetype of  Violet Beauregarde, a cool, somewhat competition freak who likes being cool and winning. I’m not sure about any other Campbell Campers filling the roles of the other “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” kids, but I guess that the factory could have things that could appeal to their vices as well, hell, there are chapters that got cut out of the original book, like Spotty Powder, The Vanilla Fudge Room, The Warming Candy Room, and The Children’s-Delight Room (Info taken from Wikipedia and Lost in Adaptation.) Daniel will be in this AU as Arthur Slugworth, although he’s more like how Slugworth was in the book, actually a corporate rival to Campbell as apposed to secretly being in league with David. Max actually starts internally freaking out at how similar David and Daniel are in appearance (especially after the freaky-ass tunnel scene, which is in this AU, David visually turns into Daniel while reciting the “There’s no earthly way of knowing” poem, Max is kind of traumatized and tries bringing it up again later and gets exasperated with everyone pretending like it didn’t happen, eventually he just gives up trying to rationalize it), but eventually concedes that he actually kind of likes David. Other Camp Camp characters will appear, like the town residents, Jasper (who was the factory’s OG dead kid), the cop (Sal,I think, from the first episode), the federal agents, I guess Jen could appear, but I wouldn’t know how to insert her in, the forest squirrels as the Nut Checking Squirrels, the campers and counselors David went to Camp with could appear too, probably in flashbacks.

Because I’m personally kind of hyped for the new movie, I kind of want there to be a Stephen King’s It AU. I don’t know how exactly It would work, but the internet will find a way.

[koreybarnettcollection]

James Coleman’s 2nd Annual ‘No (Cares) Given’ FSU Schedule Predictions

In a few days the FSU football season will begin under Willie Taggart. Speculation continues about how FSU will fare under the first year head coach; what we know for sure is the Noles are a young team with a tough schedule.

Here are my win-loss predictions game-by-game.

Virginia Tech

Labor Day kick off game against a good coach with one of the better quarterbacks returning in the ACC. The Hokies lost a ton this past off-season through the draft, injury and suspensions, including the resignation of the co-defensive coordinator.

This is still a defense coached up by Bud Foster – Virginia Tech’s Mickey Andrews – so they will be ready to play.

Lack of depth on the defensive side of the ball for VT and playmakers itching for a chance to play on FSU give the Noles a win.

Record: 1-0

Samford

Please don’t make me breakdown why this is a win.

Record: 2-0

At Syracuse

This is a team that both FSU and Taggart just know how to beat. I want to like Syracuse coach Dino Babers and he has seemingly improved his program, but they don’t have the weapons to consistently put together drives which makes me not give much credence to them.

The Carrier Dome is an amazing place to play and I see FSU dominating this one. Plus, I don’t like their coach’s fake begin colored in hairline. It bothers me.

Record: 3-0

Northern Illinois

This is a rematch of the 2012 Orange Bowl where FSU mudstomped a team that didn’t understand you don’t poke a lying bear. The Huskies have a really good defensive end in Sutton Smith who had 14 sacks last season. He could be a test to see where this offensive line has come in a year.

Still, I believe only having a week to prepare for the multiple looks that FSU would’ve given by that time should hurt. This is probably the game to see if the offense is clicking on all cylinders.

Record: 4-0

At Louisville

Life after Heisman Trophy winning and current Baltimore Ravens’ star Lamar Jackson should help the Seminoles. Bobby Petrino is a damn good coach and play-caller. He consistently makes the most with little.

I have to give the nod to FSU this year simply because it let Louisville get away with one last season. If FSU doesn’t turn it over just before a game-sealing score then this will be easy.

Record: 5-0

At Miami

This rivalry has been streaky through its history and since 2005, UM has only won three games. It’s been a long time since Miami has beat FSU at home.

I will admit last year’s Hurricanes were hot and came together to win 10 games, something they have done in a while. Towards the end of the year a lot of the flaws in Manny Diaz’ defense showed up and teams capitalized with the Canes losing three in a row.

This is one of the few games that I cannot pick straight. I don’t see FSU losing, but I can also see why Miami fans are confident. They return a team that is really talented, similar to FSU, but with a coach who has been more established.

Record: 6-0

Wake Forest

It’s Wake Forest. I love their sophomore wide receiver Greg Dortch who lit FSU up for 110 yards. He shows up in big games, but without a veteran QB to toss it to him, I believe they go back to being traditional Wake Forest. They’ll show up strong every 3-4 years, but don’t beat FSU this season.

Record: 7-0

Clemson

Being unbiased, I just don’t see it. With the talent Clemson has had on their side of the ball, I’m shocked this game has been this close the past few years.

Currently, Clemson has four defensive linemen with first round NFL Draft grades. That’s a tall task for any offensive line. Football is won in the trenches.

The only advantage I see for FSU is that Clemson has a tough time when playing against up-tempo offenses, like the Noles should have. If the Gulf Coast is clicking, FSU has a chance. If they win this game, everyone will be talking.

Record: 7-1

At N.C. State

I warned the FSU fan base last year about N.C. State and Bradley Chubb. Well, he’s no longer there, but I’m going to warn FSU fans about one of the best QB prospects in the nation, Ryan Finley. He can make the tough throws and that’s what defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett is going to make you do with his defense. He’s going to force you to throw the gamble pass.

The problem is, it’s high risk, high reward and a QB like this can burn you. Also returning is his favorite target and one of the leading receiver in the ACC, Kelvin Harmon. Coming off of a tough Clemson game, against a good rising coach in Dave Doerean at Raleigh, tough game.

Record: 7-2

At Notre Dame

Norte Dame is going to have that grass laid thick to try and slow the southern boys down. ND is one of those boom or bust teams. It recruits well, but just can’t seem to get it together.

Last year we thought the Irish had something until Miami shellacked them. I kind of see something similar.

Record: 8-2

Boston College

According to the NFL, this is the best team in the ACC with the most players having draft grades. Every year I tell people this is the toughest team on the schedule no matter if FSU blows them out or gets blown out like last season.

They have a different brand of football. The only flaw on this team is head coach Steve Addazio. He’s consistently inconsistent.

Record: 9-2

Florida

The only team to have had a rockier off-season than FSU. Last season was a debacle for the Gators. New coach Dan Mullen has injected new life, but without confidence in a quarterback, I don’t see this becoming the rivalry it once was.

Mullen will get the Gators back on track if fans and administrators give him time, but I don’t see that happening.

Record: 10-2

Had FSU had a focused head coach last season it would have won a minimum of nine games before the bowl. The six losses can be attributed to a lack of accountability and game management. Miami, Louisville and N.C. State were all close losses that probably go the other way if Jimbo Fisher wasn’t distracted.

Losing the team is what I blame the B.C. game on.

I believe this to be a 10-2 team, just missing out on the ACC Championship game, but playing in a New Year’s Six bowl game. This would be a huge win for Taggart in year one and would definitely set in motion momentum for the recruiting season and a return to top form in 2019.

The homer in me doesn’t see a game they can’t win although there are just too many shaky variables that must come into play for a playoff run to happen this fall. Everything depends on who is the QB and how some of these much-improved teams on their schedule play. No matter, only a hater would think this is a 7-6 ball club.

Article Originally Appeared on Gridiron Now: http://gridironnow.com/james-colemans-2nd-annual-no-cares-given-fsu-schedule-predictions/

Find more information on: www.sportsdenlive.com

[sportsdenjax]

James Coleman’s 2nd Annual ‘No (Cares) Given’ FSU Schedule Predictions

In a few days the FSU football season will begin under Willie Taggart. Speculation continues about how FSU will fare under the first year head coach; what we know for sure is the Noles are a young team with a tough schedule.

Here are my win-loss predictions game-by-game.

Virginia Tech

Labor Day kick off game against a good coach with one of the better quarterbacks returning in the ACC. The Hokies lost a ton this past off-season through the draft, injury and suspensions, including the resignation of the co-defensive coordinator.

This is still a defense coached up by Bud Foster – Virginia Tech’s Mickey Andrews – so they will be ready to play.

Lack of depth on the defensive side of the ball for VT and playmakers itching for a chance to play on FSU give the Noles a win.

Record: 1-0

Samford

Please don’t make me breakdown why this is a win.

Record: 2-0

At Syracuse

This is a team that both FSU and Taggart just know how to beat. I want to like Syracuse coach Dino Babers and he has seemingly improved his program, but they don’t have the weapons to consistently put together drives which makes me not give much credence to them.

The Carrier Dome is an amazing place to play and I see FSU dominating this one. Plus, I don’t like their coach’s fake begin colored in hairline. It bothers me.

Record: 3-0

Northern Illinois

This is a rematch of the 2012 Orange Bowl where FSU mudstomped a team that didn’t understand you don’t poke a lying bear. The Huskies have a really good defensive end in Sutton Smith who had 14 sacks last season. He could be a test to see where this offensive line has come in a year.

Still, I believe only having a week to prepare for the multiple looks that FSU would’ve given by that time should hurt. This is probably the game to see if the offense is clicking on all cylinders.

Record: 4-0

At Louisville

Life after Heisman Trophy winning and current Baltimore Ravens’ star Lamar Jackson should help the Seminoles. Bobby Petrino is a damn good coach and play-caller. He consistently makes the most with little.

I have to give the nod to FSU this year simply because it let Louisville get away with one last season. If FSU doesn’t turn it over just before a game-sealing score then this will be easy.

Record: 5-0

At Miami

This rivalry has been streaky through its history and since 2005, UM has only won three games. It’s been a long time since Miami has beat FSU at home.

I will admit last year’s Hurricanes were hot and came together to win 10 games, something they have done in a while. Towards the end of the year a lot of the flaws in Manny Diaz’ defense showed up and teams capitalized with the Canes losing three in a row.

This is one of the few games that I cannot pick straight. I don’t see FSU losing, but I can also see why Miami fans are confident. They return a team that is really talented, similar to FSU, but with a coach who has been more established.

Record: 6-0

Wake Forest

It’s Wake Forest. I love their sophomore wide receiver Greg Dortch who lit FSU up for 110 yards. He shows up in big games, but without a veteran QB to toss it to him, I believe they go back to being traditional Wake Forest. They’ll show up strong every 3-4 years, but don’t beat FSU this season.

Record: 7-0

Clemson

Being unbiased, I just don’t see it. With the talent Clemson has had on their side of the ball, I’m shocked this game has been this close the past few years.

Currently, Clemson has four defensive linemen with first round NFL Draft grades. That’s a tall task for any offensive line. Football is won in the trenches.

The only advantage I see for FSU is that Clemson has a tough time when playing against up-tempo offenses, like the Noles should have. If the Gulf Coast is clicking, FSU has a chance. If they win this game, everyone will be talking.

Record: 7-1

At N.C. State

I warned the FSU fan base last year about N.C. State and Bradley Chubb. Well, he’s no longer there, but I’m going to warn FSU fans about one of the best QB prospects in the nation, Ryan Finley. He can make the tough throws and that’s what defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett is going to make you do with his defense. He’s going to force you to throw the gamble pass.

The problem is, it’s high risk, high reward and a QB like this can burn you. Also returning is his favorite target and one of the leading receiver in the ACC, Kelvin Harmon. Coming off of a tough Clemson game, against a good rising coach in Dave Doerean at Raleigh, tough game.

Record: 7-2

At Notre Dame

Norte Dame is going to have that grass laid thick to try and slow the southern boys down. ND is one of those boom or bust teams. It recruits well, but just can’t seem to get it together.

Last year we thought the Irish had something until Miami shellacked them. I kind of see something similar.

Record: 8-2

Boston College

According to the NFL, this is the best team in the ACC with the most players having draft grades. Every year I tell people this is the toughest team on the schedule no matter if FSU blows them out or gets blown out like last season.

They have a different brand of football. The only flaw on this team is head coach Steve Addazio. He’s consistently inconsistent.

Record: 9-2

Florida

The only team to have had a rockier off-season than FSU. Last season was a debacle for the Gators. New coach Dan Mullen has injected new life, but without confidence in a quarterback, I don’t see this becoming the rivalry it once was.

Mullen will get the Gators back on track if fans and administrators give him time, but I don’t see that happening.

Record: 10-2

Had FSU had a focused head coach last season it would have won a minimum of nine games before the bowl. The six losses can be attributed to a lack of accountability and game management. Miami, Louisville and N.C. State were all close losses that probably go the other way if Jimbo Fisher wasn’t distracted.

Losing the team is what I blame the B.C. game on.

I believe this to be a 10-2 team, just missing out on the ACC Championship game, but playing in a New Year’s Six bowl game. This would be a huge win for Taggart in year one and would definitely set in motion momentum for the recruiting season and a return to top form in 2019.

The homer in me doesn’t see a game they can’t win although there are just too many shaky variables that must come into play for a playoff run to happen this fall. Everything depends on who is the QB and how some of these much-improved teams on their schedule play. No matter, only a hater would think this is a 7-6 ball club.

Article Originally Appeared on Gridiron Now: http://gridironnow.com/james-colemans-2nd-annual-no-cares-given-fsu-schedule-predictions/

Read additional information on: Sports Den Blog

[hottytoddynews]

Oxford actor Johnny McPhail had a featured role in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival hit “Ballast.”

Scott Fitzgerald once famously said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” But he may have had to re-think that axiom if he’d ever met Johnny McPhail.

Not only has McPhail had a second act in life, he took the phrase quite literally. A native of Bruce and longtime resident of Oxford, McPhail reinvented himself late in life as a character actor on screen and television. He has appeared in wide theatrical release films, such as “American Ultra” and “Free State of Jones,” as well as a multitude of acclaimed independent films like 2008’s “Ballast,” which won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival. But his most widely seen role may have been as the stoic sharpshooter Robert Doumain in HBO’s runaway hit “True Detective.”

HottyToddy.com caught up with Johnny McPhail for an in-depth interview.

HottyToddy.com: Let’s start at the beginning. Who was Johnny McPhail before he was an actor?

Johnny McPhail: We grew up on a small farm outside of Bruce. I mean very small. It was before all the modern conveniences and automatic machinery. We chopped our corn, milked our cows and picked all our cotton by hand. It was a very isolated life. My best friends were my cousins, and I only really saw them in school.

HT: Do you feel that background gives your performances as an actor a rustic authenticity?

JM: Oh, yeah. The older you get, the better actor you should become because you have so much life experience to draw from. But my acting method is very, very simple. If you believe it, the audience will believe it. It’s basically about not acting. Don’t let them catch you acting. When I’m in the moment or even when I’m rehearsing, I visually see everything in the scene in my mind’s eye.

HT: When you were just a kid on a farm, how did you experience movies?

JM:  After we got done picking cotton, we’d take it to the gin in Bruce and then go to the picture show on Saturday nights. We’d go see all the old movie stars in black and white movies. I always loved movies.

Additional reading: Johnny McPhail appears in new Greg Allman video for “Song For Adam.”

HT: Did you ever think, when you were in a field picking cotton, that one day you would be on that screen?

JM: Never! I never dreamed of meeting a movie star. That was so far outside anything we knew. I never would’ve thought that could happen to me. We didn’t even have plays in school. I was very naive.

HT: Where did you go from the farm?

JM: Well, I’ve re-invented myself all my life. I’ve cut timber, worked for a telephone company and milked cows for a living. For a while, I had a job as a bouncer. A guy who trained me was an old boxer, and he taught me, “The main thing in a fight is, don’t get hit. ‘Cause I don’t care how big you are, it hurts when you get hit.” I always remembered that. Just don’t get hit.

Johnny McPhail had a crucial role in “Strange Weather,” starring Holly Hunter.

HT: That’s probably not bad advice for an acting career, either. That, and learning how to take the hits when they come.

JM: It happens differently for everybody. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that meeting one person can change your life forever. But everyone is different. I don’t care how many acting classes you take, no two people are the same. Everybody arrives by a different path. And everyone you help will push you forward. It’s not about pushing somebody else down to get ahead. That never works. I’m not the best actor in the world, but nobody can play Johnny McPhail like I can. People didn’t go to movies to see John Wayne transform into a completely different person. They went to movies to see John Wayne play John Wayne. I got a unique look, and that really helps. Casting directors told me, “We don’t get too many older guys with long hair. We don’t get too many older guys with hair at all.”

HT: In the 90s, you were involved in a number of projects adapted from stories by one of Oxford’s favorite native sons, writer Larry Brown. How did that come about?

JM: Oh, me and Larry were best of friends. I did two Larry Brown plays here in Oxford. We did a performance of 13 scenes from “Joe” at the Hoka Theater. Then the University of Mississippi produced an adaptation of “Dirty Work.” I got a lot of acclaim locally from playing the nasty character, Wade, in “Joe.” That’s what kind of got me going, thinking I would continue pursuing acting. Later on, Arliss Howard combined a number of Larry’s stories into a movie called “Big Bad Love,” which his wife, Debra Winger, co-starred with him in. I got to be in that movie and got to become really good friends with them. There’s a lot of people in the movie industry I can say, “I know them.” But Arliss and Debra are the two people I can really say are true friends.

HT: How would you describe Larry Brown?

JM: All he thought about was writing. We would ride around at night sometimes. Everything he wrote, he could point at a tree or under a bridge or some place as you’re going down the road, and tell you that’s where this event or that scene from one of his stories happened. I think that’s what attributes to him being a good writer. He wrote so visually. I remember sitting out here in the driveway after he brought me home one day, and Larry told me, “I’m gonna be famous some day, but it’ll probably be after I’m dead.”

HT: Let’s talk about “Ballast,” the acclaimed film that was your first big break. It was a minimalist film set in the Delta that explores the aftermath of a suicide victim, who leaves behind his identical twin brother, a widow and a son.

JM: Well, how that happened was Nina Parikh from the Mississippi Film Commission called me and said, “Hey, there’s a really good part you’d be good for in this movie, ‘Ballast,’ that’s filming in the state.’ I didn’t want to drive to Jackson, so I actually turned it down at first! But Nina called me back and insisted I go down to audition with the director, Lance Hammer. It was a different audition than any I’ve ever had. Lance had a big list of 35 questions he was asking, such as “Do you like animals?” and that was the audition. He asked the first question, and I just started talking and talking away. When finally I stopped, he looked down at his list and said, “Well … you already answered all the rest of my questions, so thanks for coming.” They gave me the part.

The shoot was cold and a mess, and I didn’t know if the movie would ever amount to anything. Lance was really into studying spirituality. His mother had an identical twin, and it got him wondering about the concept of identity. Do identical twins share the same soul? When one dies, does the other one live or partially die or what happens? That’s where that story came from.

McPhail met director Quentin Tarantino at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Tarantino later cast McPhail in “Django Unchained,” but McPhail’s role was eliminated as the film began running over budget.

HT: Then it premiered at Sundance and won Best Director and Best Cinematography. You were there for that. What was it like?

JM: Oh, man, it was screening every single day. I didn’t know at the time, but Quentin Tarantino was the head juror. We’re doing Q&A’s at the festival seven days in a row, and I look down and there’s Quentin Tarantino in the front row. After the awards ceremony, Tarantino was being interviewed by somebody, and they said, “Hey, here’s Johnny McPhail from ‘Ballast’!” Next thing I know, Quentin grabbed me and pulled me over to him and said I had a great face, and he’s gonna put me in all these movies. That’s quite a leap from that cotton patch, ain’t it?

HT: Usually, a Sundance win propels a film career into the stratosphere. But after “Ballast,” Lance Hammer fell off the map. An AV Club article came out early this year wondering where he went. You worked with him. Do you have any insight on why he appears to have stopped making films?

JM: Well, he had so many things happen to him in his personal life. Maybe that gave him writer’s block. But he also said he’d spent 18 years of his life working toward telling that one story in “Ballast.” Maybe that exhausted him creatively. I don’t know. I have heard through the grapevine he’s going to try to start writing again.

HT: And as far as Quentin Tarantino goes, he actually did cast you in “Django Unchained,” right?

JM: Yes. But it ran so far over budget they had to start cutting a lot of scenes in production, including the scene I would’ve been in.

In one of his highest-profile roles, McPhail played the enigmatic sharpshooter Robert Doumain in season 1 of HBO’s “True Detective.”

HT: As long as we’re running down your greatest hits, tell me about “True Detective.”

JM: That was a huge production. It was shot down in Louisiana. They’d cleared off acres and acres of land on this bayou just for the crew to park! The character I played owned a little dive bar. They converted an old bait shop into this bar for the show. My first day, I walked into the makeup trailer and sat down in front of these mirrors. In the reflection behind me, I saw this feller sitting there with his boy sitting in his lap. He leaned forward and put his hand out and said, “Hey, Johnny, good to see you. I’m Matthew McConaughey. I’m going to be acting with you.” Boy, you talk about getting a jolt! 

He was totally a method actor. He stayed in character continually. In between scenes, he would go study the book. He knew his lines and everybody else’s. Never seen anybody smart as him. Before we shot our scene, he would lean forward, come out of character, squeeze my shoulder, talk to me a bit. He’d ask, “Are you from Mississippi? Are your grandparents from up there? Yeah, I’m from Texas myself…” Like he wanted to get to know you. Just before rolling, he’d say, “Okay, Johnny. This is our bar. We’re going to take as long as we want to do this scene.” Then he’d nod at the director, who would call action.

HT: That show was a cultural phenomenon. For a while it seemed like everybody was wondering who the “Yellow King” was or whether McConaughey’s character was the bad guy all along. People cite Robert W. Chambers’ writing as an influence on the show, because of the “King in Yellow” references, but the show’s creator and showrunner, Nick Pizzolatto, said it was actually much more influenced by Oxford’s own William Faulkner. What impression did you get of Nick Pizzolatto?

JM: You know how on some movies set in the South, it seems like everybody’s trying to do kind of the same Southern accent, and they’re all getting it wrong? Well, Nick got up one day on a platform with a megaphone and made a big speech to the cast. He said, “I’m from New Orleans. I grew up here. But I got a perfect mid-American accent. On my street, two houses down, I might hear a Boston accent. I could go two streets over and hear a New Jersey accent or a Minnesota accent or an Indian accent. There are all kinds of people that live in New Orleans from all over. I don’t want anybody doing a fake accent on this show! Talk how you talk!” That was good for me, because I can’t talk no other way.

HT: You reunited with Matthew McConaughey on the movie, “Free State of Jones.” Did he remember you?

JM: Well, the first day we were shooting, I saw him all day long but didn’t approach him. I didn’t want to disturb him on the set. Finally, when we got done with the last shot for the day, he jumped up to the porch I was on and said, “Johnny! The bar owner! How are you?”

HT: “Free State of Jones” is based on the true story of an armed revolt during the Civil War in which Jones County, Mississippi, declared itself an independent state and resisted the Confederacy. Are you proud that you got to be part of a movie that brings an important piece of Mississippi history off the shelf and into the spotlight?

JM: Oh, definitely! It’s a great story. I just wish the movie would’ve been a bigger hit so more people could’ve seen it. But that’s how it goes sometimes. All the critics said where they went wrong was, it had two timelines. Some court case stuff much later on and the Civil War timeline. The real story was in the Civil War timeline. If they’d stuck to that, it might’ve been a bigger hit. Going back and forth was confusing as to how they related to each other.

HT: You have a large family and didn’t really throw yourself fully into acting until around age 50. That’s a pretty drastic step. How did your family react to it?

Johnny’s wife, Susan McPhail, has also landed roles in major movies. Here, she’s shown with Nick Nolte in the 2015 film, “A Walk in the Woods.”

JM: I’m married to Susan McPhail, who’s the best wife in the world, and has her own acting career. She’s 100 percent supportive of me, and I love her to death. My two oldest children were already grown by the time I really got started in acting. For a good number of years, Susan was pursuing a career in special education, and my job had become managing rental properties. It gave me the freedom to be at home a lot and spend a lot of time with Ashley, my youngest daughter, who is autistic. If I hadn’t had the time I could spend working with her on reading, writing and speech, she may not be able to communicate like she does now. People think Susan studied special education because of Ashley’s autism, but that’s actually just a coincidence. We learned a lot about how the mind of someone with autism works. A lot of school districts used to think you can treat autism with a paddle, and we’ve had legal battles over that sort of thing. But students with autism have different education needs than other students. Schools are getting better and better about understanding that.

Additional reading: Susan McPhail appears in Nick Nolte film, “A Walk in the Woods.”

Ashley runs lines with me to help me rehearse for auditions. She has actually been in three movies with me herself. My second-youngest daughter, Courtney, is a graphic designer. She designs all my t-shirts and other things for me. But all my children have been really supportive of us and love us unconditionally. It makes it a lot easier to do anything when your family’s behind you.

Johnny McPhail on the set of the upcoming Randall Terry film, “Time Boys.”

HT: From your early years watching movies at the picture shows in Bruce to now, what has changed about the medium of motion pictures?

JM: Everything! It’s all digital now. It used to be that you had to move out to L.A. to try to make it in movies. Now you can audition for anything from anywhere by recording auditions with a digital camera and uploading a file. They shoot the movies digitally. They screen movies digitally. You watch movies at home digitally and send digital files halfway around the world in minutes.

The other thing that’s changed is, movies aren’t just in Hollywood anymore. Most of the TV shows and movies are made in Louisiana and Georgia now. Hollywood has come to the South. And where Susan and I are located just happens to be roughly equidistant from either Shreveport or Atlanta. It used to be that they were reluctant to cast anyone who wasn’t already in Louisiana or Georgia because they didn’t think you were ‘local.’ You’d have to lie to casting directors and say you lived in the state. Susan and I started working on educating casting directors not to overlook people in Mississippi, because you can really think of them as flexible to work in either state. After a while, they started to get it, and now you don’t have to lie about what state you live in. We’re really at the top of a geographical triangle for movies up here in Oxford.

HT: What’s next for Johnny McPhail?

JM: I don’t know for sure. I’m on standby about a Netflix project called “Highwaymen,” starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. It’s about the lawmen who were hunting Bonnie and Clyde. I may get it or may not. You never know the future. Some days you think you’re at the end of your run and your phone will never ring again. Then the next day, you’ll get a call from a casting director on a big project telling you, “Hey, Johnny, come on down! And bring the hair!”

D.L. Perea is an Oxford-based filmmaker, photographer, writer and also serves as senior media producer for PMQ Pizza Magazine.

The post Top Stories of 2017: Johnny McPhail: From the Cotton Patch to “True Detective” appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[iftekharsanom]

Top 7 Teen Movies

When you grow up, your heart dies - or so they say. Here's the proof: Heathers Juno, critic of The Guardian and Observer select the 10 best movies for teenagers.  Blackboard Jungle

Under the name "Evan Hunter", also known as a crime writer Ed McBain - Blackboard Jungle the early age of the labeled teen offender - it was based on his own experience as a teacher in the Bronx. In London movie Brooks attracted crowds of Stuffed Boys, cut theater seats, danced in the aisles and actually started a riot. The reason for this so shocking behavior was not so much the content of the film, which is now a sober 12 rating, but achieved due to the use of Bill Haley and the early rock'n'roll comets, Rock Around the Clock, who played in polarization . Today is the least shocking aspect of a crime-thrusting film with a knife, drugs and even rape in the state school system, but at the time it was a touchstone for disgruntled young people, regardless of whether Haley was a white musician traveler in Its 30 years and the music has already been a year old. Almost 60 years later, he still has a hit, with Richard Dadier Glenn Ford (first called to enable students to call the Jive to talk to him "Daddy-O") struggle to control his students in the North fiction manual school. Others try and fail, such as the unfortunate Mr. Edwards, whose valuable 78s are crushed by his class consists of an act of symbolic and even disturbing rebellion, but I hope that as African Americans Gregory Miller, what eventually patriotic authority Dadier replied. But for all its war morality, Vic Morrow, the evil Artie West, is the true anti-hero of the film, dressed in leather and meets the logical heir Wild One, Marlon Brando, two years before. Superbad

With certified hits The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, the Judd Apatow Express was already rolling at full speed when Superbad, directed a comedy in the younger audience, appeared on the movie screens. Co-written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (designated the main characters to be), and produced by Apatow, he liked this movie more with a hoarse Partycrowd. The image is dominated by three young actors who were not then the stars they are now. Evan (Michael Cera), Seth (Jonah Hill) and Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are high school graduates getting ready for a final party before college. Evan and Seth no longer see each other when the first outing to the prestigious Dartmouth while the latter attended a public university; Seth Groll scattered around the action, but now he's eyeing sex. If he offers through the object of his alcohol affection to a party held so the numbers he is sleeping with her. This is where the drippy Fogell enters: having a fake identity secured mis-adapted under the pseudonym of McLovin, is the key is to plan Seth. With its notes and 24-hour melancholy, the film takes a similar American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused terrain, but is distinguished by a Post-Porky Sensitivity Hallows celebrates simultaneously pre-PC smuttiness. Much of the humor derives from the assessments of the chauvinistic Sex by inexperienced hero. (Adult, I no longer sophisticated. A Rogen police admits that police work is nothing like the serious coroner CSI procedural having been carried out, can be expected. "When I joined the force," he laments, "I semen believed oftentimes "). Goodwill mocking the experts, the details of the accompaniment and direction of Greg Mottola exuberant makes the image almost irresistible, although the pace of broad-fashion and humor is as sexist as a hope for the production of Apatow Kids

No kids at school wisecracking here. In fact there is no mention of the school. Not that many jokes, either come to think of it. Instead, Larry Clark's raw, Drama bracing reminds us securely and artificially that most movies are teenagers. The boys were dangerous: an open honest representation of what modern teenagers actually do (those who grew up in New York, anyway). It was a heavy blow to the chops of a complacent society, who thought she had made all the rebels in the 1950s, and was convicted by demonstrators and politicians. But as The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause, the film showed a terrible chasm between generations of young and old. The last only demographic number in history. While they work, their children are drunk, they are stoned, fun, fight, steal them and more sex than they did, yet clumsy, insecure and people who do not particularly like. Worse than all this danger sign, but the general lack of concern or compassion for the characters, especially Leo Fitzpatrick's anti-hero is Telly's terrible reckless pursuit of "de-virginise" younger girls and neglected joint has its successes. With the spectrum of AIDS lurking in the shadows, a happy ending is even more in the distance. But there is nothing particularly sensational about the way children have gone through these adolescent lives. The treatment is more like a documentary: on the wall with the camera (which incidentally by the indecent sometimes), the actual sites of the road, unstructured scenes and dialogue really conversation - the latter in Harmony Korine, largely through Of the internal work of a writing, as he was 19 years old. That's the thing, do not get the kids credit for the season: it's done. It is a work of fiction, but the benefits are so little is known, is not included as an "actor", although many of the players followed the decent career, such as Fitzpatrick, Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson and Korine. In short, the will of a job done a little too well. 10 Things I Hate About You

The philosophy behind this lively teen comedy looks like the Shrew the Clueless made Emma do. That is, take the skeleton of a literary classic and dressed in the threads of high school. Although the film Clueless is not, still quite blinding Bobby. Shakespeare's transplant into a youthful atmosphere of the United States in recent times is the least successful part of it: It is not something that a strident touch in the plot, in which a young man told his father that he would not allow graduation date, until the Abrasive ground older sister Kat (Julia Stiles). This sets up a system of younger brother suitors born of a legal soil, Patrick (Heath Ledger), is paid uncontrollably seduce Kat. But that's a small detail. To which we respond in 10 things are visual and verbal, energetic rhythm and charismatic performances: Stiles and the last Ledger may be known for more intense films, but it is doubtful that we do not always get more on the screen than I do here. Writer Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, keeping things bright will not character for a long time without toxic replica or a sharp zinger their lips anymore. If someone has hit a dry spot, there is always a language to see. "I know you can be overwhelmed and dominated" reflects a girl, "but can it alone" overwhelmed "? Everyone here is united and evoked by their idiosyncratic vocabulary, and the viewer is also enriched by phrases such as" (The brain area where the images are saved as desirable partner for stimulants) or a new definition for the word "backup." For the cast includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt and as the father of the Kat, the magnificent Larry Miller (who was an early contender for George Costanza's game at Seinfeld.) If the rhythm flags, still pick-me-ups like the wonderful accounting show karaoke with the zeal of Steve's early start Martin is held. Juno

Written by an ex-stripper and the issue of student pregnancy approaching - the downfall of all middle-class parents - Jason Reitman's film is a hilarious comedy, played well, that a star made night Ellen Page as the title character. Much if talked about its pro-life nuances in its release, but in reality the situation is Juno is something of a MacGuffin, a premise that a smart, wise to the world and its future can look 16 years. Juno begins with his heroine to realize that a baby will have, the result of a loose ball with his best friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, in his own weediest). Instead of finishing, Juno decides the child for adoption to give attributes to the Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a couple who seem to be in tune - especially participate their love for indie rock and horror movies (although their tastes are quite Early, even by today's standards). The latter is twee and well marked, but what Juno is refreshing, without dismantling the smart edge. In the end, she is certainly older and wiser, but what Juno learns more, do, prepare for disappointment: the adult world not Disney World of complexity is what he seems to think. The use of indie rock still dark have hampered its potential as a mainstream success, but now that only its charm is given lo-fi and in a sense, it is probably useful because Juno really is not aligned world, only those who think Who knew everything grew and learned the hard way that even if they know everything, nobody likes a smartass. Clueless

"As if!" — "I totally paused!" — "Minor ducats…" — "Let's do a lap before we commit to a location!" — "I was surfing the crimson wave!" — "Did my hair get flat?"If Clueless was published in 1995, it was not just sensational and intelligent fun - carefree, the opposite of its title was. Insinuating indirect, clever and funny: writers director Amy Heckerling and seemed to have invented a new culture of the teen-pop language. It was as vivid and colorful as his remarkable movie heroine-keeper: funnier and more romantic than any romcom. In the nineties, it was the hot topics issue. This film was a disgrace to all who, a funny and gracious tribute to Emma Jane Austen with nod to Shakespeare and Wilde. In Clueless, 19, Alicia Silverstone was the role of her life, unique style and comedy display ability, but never found after the race that everything seemed to promise. She plays Cher, the pampered, but basically good-hearted Princess: rich, popular, obsessed with fashion, but lonely and looking for love. Silverstone finds laughter as a teacher, and his voice in a sort of pitchy yodel pause in perplexing tones or complaint. Cher is best friend Dionne (Stacey Trace), but somewhat aggressive with his ex-strident Josh, whose mother was married to Cher's ferocious defender Mel, played by Dan Hedaya. However, could there be a spark between these two? Josh is a college student in liberal causes and Roar Mode "Rock Complaint". It is played by 26-year-old Paul Rudd, who immediately became a brand in Hollywood and sniper. Rudd's character began to mature and youthful Clueless. Get Cher decides what bad grades you have to do with getting your teachers in love, to sneakily two of them fall to each other, and if the east coast dorky girl named Tai appears, Cher makes a personal change "project ". Tai is very well played by Brittany Murphy, an up-and-comer talent who was bleak due to complications of dying in 2009 after an overdose of prescription drugs. The teen movie references to contemporary youth culture is always complicated with irony and melancholy if you look after almost 20 years. The terrible fate of Brittany Murphy is the saddest part of it. Clueless is strange to think that once the social networks. These people are ready and ready for the Internet and the digital revolution. There is a splendid view of the gag on Cher and Dionne talking uncomfortable on his large mobile phone. The recent film by Sofia Coppola, The Ring Bling is Clueless next generation. The difference is that the lean teenager Coppola really are clueless, white and selfish. There is a nice quality and idealistic Clueless comic that makes it so appealing. Cher and Dionne are the queens at their school, but not unpleasant, and according to their lights, they always want to do the right thing. Clueless is not characterized by a sign of "Bully" noticing a comeuppance ter. Mean Girls, the 2004 satirical film written by Tina Fey and Lindsay Lohan is very different. There's nothing new about bullying, of course, but I think it's interesting that Clueless appeared briefly to introduce snarky sites and reality farce at the center of pop culture. Clueless is a true classic: handsome, innocent fun. I envy people I have not yet seen. Pretty In Pink 

The amazing ability to take advantage of John Hughes' teenage thrill, and then inexorably, pack it in a commercial way, has never been better employed here. This is empathy for his films, but also the most outrageous Eighties-tastic. A universal heart-tugger and retro bible style. It's a win-win. There is an old story - the poor Cinderella rich Prince Charming meets, and agonize all the way to the climatic ball, sorry, dance - but the full spectrum of teen angst is here: worry about what your colleagues think; Believing secretly tell your best friend and courage; They worry that you are very poor; Concern for parents; Worry that the sleeve of your vintage tuxedo has not rolled high enough. Hughes takes everything seriously and it takes time to build his characters. Andie knows where Molly Ringwald is coming from. We have to see him at home, and how embarrassing it is, we hung in his room, we saw the status of his single father (playing Harry Dean Stanton). This does not want to take the Ringwald natural wonderful power. Their blend of forward and fragility is the compelling effort. If you apply your lipstick or calls snobbery Andrew McCarthy, we are all the way with it. And Duckie John Cryer is the strangest of the male characters: the friendly and friendly clown who does not stay with the girl, although a better and better dressed society. The latter (especially the requirements of the modified screening tests) feels a bit like a cop-out, but could be read as a commentary on the bittersweet novel against pragmatism. If the story you do not start with Pretty in Pink, style it be. The film is worth looking at the costume changes alone, the respective boss Ringwald, Annie Potts, who travels from the fetish-punk in the 50's hive, Madonna-like material girl Debbie Harry New Wave. Serious art direction now makes the film look like a time capsule intentionally, filled with so many fashions, posters, records and decorative objects as they thought they could escape. And do not forget the soundtrack: Psychedelic Furs, OMD, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, The Smiths, uh, a cover by Nik Kershaw. Was each teen movie better?

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[roaldseth]

DO ROLAND FOR THE MEME thanks

HO BOY CAPS LOCK. YOU’RE GOING TO REGRET THIS/EVERYONE’S GOING TO HATE ME FOR THIS INEVITABLY LONG POST. I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR a massive mix of me talking and info dumping that no one asked for.

If anyone gives me any reason to talk about this man, that is the consequence.

Why I like them

I’ll try condensing this as much as possible by addressing root(s):

There are basic understandings to why I will like a character that divides into: appearance, relatability, admiration, and general character tropes/typing (there’s also a phantom reasoning which is second-hand favoritism, but it doesn’t apply here). To this point, I consider Roland the best completion of addressing those points with the media I have engaged with.

Or it can be an illusion—that he happened to be around in a certain/critical point in my life and my decision to attach to him, for whatever reason, is nothing more than a string events that fate has placed in front of me with little to no explanation or reasoning. If Quantum Devil Saga was not released, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to replay Digital Devil Saga. If I did not replay Digital Deivl Saga, I would not have “seen” Roland.

But it’s most likely a collaboration of both of those points, as if specific requirements needed to have been met. That requirement reasoning also explains why I initially didn’t like him or the games—I didn’t have an understanding or appreciation. Now I do.

Or perhaps the reality is: I can give guesses, but I don’t really know.

Why I don’t

Assuming this is answered if the serious question was not.

Favorite scene

all of them

Power Plant—I am grouping the two cut-scenes as one whole for this. The Power Plant as a whole is a well-composed dungeon. Simplifying to terms of writing: it’s the movement that follows right after the climax. It’s right after shit gets real, real fast, and it continues that trend. And it’s when Roland and the Lokapala face their “purpose” so to speak. The Power Plant is peak Lokapalan morale. I can’t remember the exact quote I’m looking for, but to paraphrase: a soldier must preserve his life in meaningless moments, so that it can be given up during a meaningful one.

The scripted element(s) of Roland’s death exposes his character. There are points that can be used to utilize character deaths—revealing secrets (that he is/feels responsible for Greg death—the source of his guilt), which can go alongside reveling parts not typically seen (the coward-vs-courageous argument). Those are the ones that come to the forefront of my head at the moment. Essentially: it’s good storytelling execution.

Then a personal favorite, him just shoving his fist into computer monitors like: this is a good idea, guys. The Power Plant exhibits his understand—and application—of the concept of Data. “Even Indra had to live with his teacher for one hundred and one years”—from Prajapati, Indra understood the Self. From the Karma Society’s research, Roland saw a/the nature of Data. TL;DR: it’s meta. His entire character is meta.

Favorite line

It’s one of those by-chance lines you can receive if he is a party member and gives Seraph an item via level-up on the Sun:

“Data, huh? Then, is there no difference between this object and myself?”

Favorite outfit

zip-off cargo shorts and/or classic Dad™ apparel

I’ll comment on favorite part of his outfit, which is all of it a toss up between his coat and his glasses.

Maybe it’s just fanciful thinking, but:  his coat (and Indra’s plates) are vaguely like brigandine (and kikko armour). I kind of hold how he pops his color close to me, simply because I do the same thing.

And his glasses is because Indra (Idamdra) is “He Who Sees (That).” Not only does it serve that meta context, but it’s a great contrast between the Junkyard’s artificiality and a common human impairment.

OTP

Adil/Roland; Roland/Adil—however you want to arrange it.

I may not be captain of this ship, but I am willing to go down with it.

brOTP brOT3

Greg, Roland, and Adil.

I just want them to all be friends, having a good time, doing fun friend things. They disserved a beach episode, too. Let them bring Fred to the beach.

Fun fact: it takes approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes(?) to get to the nearest beach from Portland, granted without traffic or obstructions. That’s what Google said.

Headcanon

Roland was good at his craft, despite what he says. Him saying his novel is “crappy” is writer’s/creator’s bias talking.

I can’t really attest to the legitimacy of this Indra Sahasranama’s translation, because I haven’t read all/enough of the Rig Veda myself, nor am I a translator, and I’ve tried to look up some of these names to no avail, but out of all of Indra’s names listed there, Kavitamaya—most beautiful in words—is probably my favorite.

A lot of hymns attribute Indra being a Lover of Songs/ Lover of Hymns, but that name suggests that he is the “Great Poet” or a sort of hymn master instead of being an admirer.

Unpopular opinion

Isn’t liking him as the Favorite an unpopular opinion enough?

A wish

I wish I was a little bit more outgoing to just mindlessly blab about him. I see a lot of you so care-freely talk about your Favorites, but I guess that’s what tags my twitter is for. Bother way less people there… or if you want to hear me say something—probably dumb—about Roland every 5-10 days, I’m @idamdra​ on twitter too.

But, I think this ask means a wish concerning him. I suppose it is that he reaches/reached liberation (eventually). I want to believe that there was a point for him not showing up in the opening cut-scene.

I doubt he was liberated, rather just really close. He’s probably just waiting for his karma to extinguish it’s due. From my understanding (but don’t quote me), a soul can spend time in both Swarga and Naraka depending on its karma. Maybe he’s just spending some time in Indra’s heaven.

An oh-god-please-don’t-ever-happen

He’s already dead. Not much worse can happen… The only worse outcome past that I can think of is that his seeming absences of reincarnation is neither him deserving it or not, but that he just ceases—neither reincarnation or liberation. I don’t really know how that’d work though.

5 words that best describe them

Courage, responsibility, power, intelligence, and wisdom. 

That’s how I see him. I cannot speak for how others interpret him though.

My nickname for them

Very rarely, I will abbreviate his name to “Rol,” but I could not see myself calling him say “Roly”/“Rowley,” actual diminutives of “Roland.”

Additionally: I don’t think I’ve ever referred to him as Roald (unless I’m trying to explain he wasn’t “Roland” in the Japanese version). I don’t know what to think about people that tag him under both Roland and Roald. I don’t even do that. What does that mean, someone tell me.