#the published scripts are pretty old and i have been meaning to change the descriptions to reflect that they are no longer | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kmclaude · 3 years ago

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Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.

#writing #making a graphic novel #writing a graphic novel #tutorial #writing tutorial

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starbuckie · 4 years ago

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Some Quarantine Lovin’ Chapter Five: Love is a Many Splendored Thing

Marvel Highschool! AU

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: Obscene amounts of fluff, kissing, swearing, kinda a lot of angst

Description: Bucky Barnes is absolutely, no doubt about it, in love with Y/N L/N. He’s loved her since the day he laid eyes on her in the third grade. He loved her when he had his own girlfriend, and when he was barely friends with her for a whole summer. And of course, in his freshman year, they are now stuck together. In a house. During a worldwide quarantine. This should be fun.

**WARNING: MENTIONS OF DEATH, CAR CRASH, MENTIONS OF ABUSE, AND INJURY IN THIS CHAPTER**

Words: 5,207 words

A/N: Hey guys! We’re almost at the end of this series, and I’m a little sad. This was my first ever fic, so it’s always gonna be my baby. This chapter deals with death, mentions of abuse, and a car crash, so if you didn’t see my warning above, and you are triggered by any of these things, please do not read because I don’t want to upset any of you. However, if you do read and find something offensive, please please contact me and I will do my best to fix it, and I don’t mean any harm at all, and am sorry in advance. Also, I listened to this “howlos” playlist while writing this and it is an absolute masterpiece. Moving on from that, thank you so much to my beta @transparentfestivaltiger as always, and thank you for reading!

(also seb looks like a freakin’ baby here)

Things didn’t change as much as Bucky thought they would after he and Y/N confessed to each other. They still had the same sweet friendship from before, but now they could sneak in a kiss or two, and there were a lot more heated glances and affection.

As soon as Y/N’s parents had come home that evening, they knew exactly what had happened. Of course, Mary and Charlie L/N had known that the pair of best friends liked each other: it had been obvious since the third grade. Though Y/N and Bucky may have not realized it that early, they had practically been an old married couple since the beginning of their friendship. Now that they were in a “relationship”(or as much of one as they could be in while quarantined together), they weren’t allowed to sleep in the same room together, and they were watched a lot closer. While Bucky blushed and apologized every time Y/N’s parents caught them kissing, Y/N laughed. She knew her parents were happy for her, and frankly, it was adorable to see Bucky turn into a bumbling mess.

It had only been two weeks into quarantine when they had kissed, so they unfortunately still had to go to classes. Of course, no one else knew about it but their friends, but Bucky wanted to yell it to the world, thus having him proclaim, “I kissed Y/N L/N!” in their physics class, which disturbed Mr. Fury, but he congratulated them nonetheless. Yeah, there was non stop teasing from their classmates after that.

The weeks kept rolling by, and soon enough, they had a week off of school for spring break, when Bucky took his best girl on a date. The two claimed to be in a relationship, but after Sam pointed out that Bucky had never actually asked Y/N out on a first date, he panicked. With the help of her parents, he managed to pull off a date at Prospect Park, right by the big lake. Bucky had insisted on being a “proper gentleman” like his mama has taught him, and went so far as to pick Y/N up from the front door, which her parents swore was the cutest thing they had ever seen. He made his mom’s old pumpkin pancake recipe, and they had breakfast for lunch, sitting in the grass, just talking for hours, and trying to refrain from removing their masks so they could make out with each other. Once it had finally hit evening, they walked hand in hand on the way back to her house and spent the rest of the night watching movies and cuddling.

After that, the duo wanted to spend the rest of spring break catching up on sleep that they had missed, but Y/N’s mom forced them to wake up at eight in the morning every day that week to get exercise. Neither of them were pleased. However, as much as they disliked the exercise, it gave them a chance to be alone. Y/N and Bucky went on tons of walks around Brooklyn, strolling down memory lane as they found someplace that they had forgotten about from when they were younger. It was nice for the two of them to just talk about their futures and how much the virus would affect it.

Spring break was unwillingly coming to an end, but Mr. L/N refused to let either one of the students be seen in online classes until they had cut their hair. Sure, it was only mid-April, but Bucky’s hair had turned into a messy flop of brown hair that fell just past his ears. While Y/N opted to cut her hair herself(which resulted in a choppy, uneven cut that Bucky and her family made fun of), Bucky asked Y/N to cut it for him.

“Are you sure, Buck?” She chided. “You saw how mine came out, and you make fun of it, yet you still ask me to do it?”

The messy-haired boy sat in a chair in the bathtub, in just his boxers, holding a spray bottle of water. “Y/N, your hair may look like shit,” he grinned at her face of mock offense, “But I trust you completely with mine. Plus, you’ll actually be looking at it while you cut.”

“I was looking when I did my hair!” Y/N argued.

Bucky laughed at her exasperation. “If you were looking in the mirror while cutting that, it makes it so much more sad.” She scoffed at his witty comeback and snipped off a piece of his hair. “Hey, give me a warning!”

“Sorry, baby,” she giggled. “Are you ready now?” With a deep exhale and nod of his head, Y/N took the spray bottle from his hands and began to dampen his hair. It didn’t take too long, just a few quick snips by the base of his neck, and she considered it done, and a hell of a lot less scruffy looking. She had spent her last day of break looking at styles and instructions on how to cut hair on Pinterest, and while she knew she wasn’t a professional, she thought she did pretty damn well.

“Okay, Buck, you can look now.” Y/N handed him a small compact mirror, and he dramatically squeezed his eyes shut. Rolling her eyes at his reaction, she said, “Come on, quit being a drama queen. I think you look very handsome.”

Finally, Bucky opened his eyes and looked at his shorter cut. She was right, it didn’t look too bad, and he looked less “homeless” as her father had called it. Running a hand through his freshly cut hair, he grinned, but stopped after taking in her words. “Was I not handsome before, doll?” He wore a small frown on his face, which Y/N kissed off.

“Buck, you’re always handsome, don’t be silly.”

He smirked and pulled her onto his lap. “I know.”

She leaned her head down on his shoulder and whispered, “Cocky bastard.” He delivered a pinch to her hip, which made her yelp. Grinning, he kissed her and she turned in his lap to straddle him. Her hands slipped into his freshly cut hair and tugged, making him moan a little into her parted lips. During their make out, however, they didn’t hear the footsteps of Mrs. L/N, and only looked up when they heard her groan.

“Good lord, can you two not keep your hands off of each other for five goddamn seconds?” Y/N quickly got up from Bucky’s lap under her mom’s careful watch. “Ria is on the phone, right now, but I’ll tell her to call back.”

At the mention of her older sister, Y/N jumped out of the bathtub. “No! No, I'm here, let me talk to her!” She scrambled to get to the phone, but slipped on the bath mat and landed on the tile with an “oof”. Bucky, being the protective boyfriend he was, immediately got up and ran to her.

“Are you okay, doll?” Her nose was a little red from bumping it on the ground, but she grinned nonetheless. Ria’s laughter could be heard over the phone, and her mom was trying very hard to stifle her laughter. With a quick nod, she took Bucky’s hand and got up.

“I’m great! Ria, you’re a little shit.” The girl stalked over to the phone and started talking and squabbling animatedly with her sister on the call.

Bucky and Mrs. L/N took one look at each other and started cracking up together. She pulled him into a hug, and whispered, “You make her so happy, Bucky. Thank you so much.”

He looked up to this mother figure of his and shook his head. “No. Thank you, Mrs. L/N, for being so happy for us. To be honest, I didn’t think you or Mr. L/N would be too happy ‘cuz of my father.”

The older woman frowned at Bucky and looked at him dead in the eyes. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, Bucky. Your father doesn’t define you as a person and trust me, James, you are the best kid that I know. You take good care of your little sister and all who you love, and every day I think about how lucky your mother was that she got to have a kid like you.”

Bucky’s eyes started to fill with tears, but he managed to whisper out a “thank you” with a croaky voice. Dropping a kiss to his forehead, Mrs. L/N walked away, leaving him with a sad smile on his face until Y/N popped her head back into the bathroom.

“Buck! Ria wants to talk to us both! She misses you a ton.” He wiped the tears from his eyes, which Y/N noticed, but didn’t mention, and went to grab his hand to walk to her bedroom and talk to Ria.

School started again the next day, leaving the six students in their friend group complaining and nearly on the verge of crying within the first two classes. They didn’t have finals this year, but teachers still assigned them “tests”, which really were the same thing with a different name.

As it grew closer and closer to the end of the year, it became hotter and hotter, Y/N and Bucky becoming sweaty messes in their study rooms. One particular early May afternoon, Y/N sat in her bedroom, waiting for her play rehearsal to start. This year, they were (going) to put on a production of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile. She was cast as Freddy, the local Parisian bartender, so she was working on her accent with her lines from her script.

“Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.” Y/N spoke loudly. From behind her, she heard a booming laugh.

Bucky stood in her doorway, grinning, no shirt on due to the blaring hot weather. “If that was your French accent, then you definitely need to keep working on it.”

He walked into the room, swooping down to place a kiss on Y/N’s awaiting lips. His arms would’ve wrapped themselves around her shoulders, but she quickly pushed him back. Chucking at his frowning expression, she said, “It is way too hot to be hugging me right now, but we can settle for a romantic high five.”

“A what?”

She sighed like it was the most obvious thing. “Well, as much as I would love to, I cannot hug you right now because it’s too hot. What I can offer you, however, is a romantic high five. A high five that says, we’re not just friends, but we’ve been dating for about a month and it’s not just platonic.”

Amused expression on his face, he plopped himself down on her bed. “And how would one share a ‘romantic high five’ with their ridiculously beautiful girlfriend?” Grinning, she walked over to him and gave him a high five while kissing him. He smiled against her lips, and asked, “Like that?”

With one more peck, she sat back in her seat and picked up her phone. “Exactly like that.” They were fools who were completely, and utterly in love with each other, though neither of them had said it to the other yet. Lovesick smiles painted on their faces, they both sat staring at each other until Mrs. L/N suddenly broke into the room, wide eyes teary and a frown on her face. Both of the kids looked to each other, then at the mom.

“Mom, what is it?” It was concerning for Y/N to see her mom in this panicked state, considering that her mom was well put together, and she had only seen her break down on a few occasions.

She turned to Bucky, and with a small voice, said, “It's your father, Bucky. He’s gotten into a crash.”

Silence.

That was all that was left in the room. When Bucky’s heartbeat stopped pounding, he could hear his harsh breathing and see Y/N in front of him, her hand covering his heart. “James, can you hear me? You passed out.” Her hand moved to his cheek to wipe off tears he hadn’t even known were falling. “My mom’s getting Becca into the car so we can go to the hospital, though I told her you might not want to go right now. He’s going to be in surgery for the next few hours, but it’s whatever you need, okay, James? Whatever you need.”

He sat up, grabbing Y/N’s hands and squeezing on to them tight. “I want to go.” Though Bucky was worried, he pulled himself together on the outside. Goddamn it, Barnes, he thought, pull yourself the fuck together. He knew he was being too harsh on himself, but it was part of his nature, and he couldn’t get rid of the nagging voice in his head telling him to do better. “I’ll go put a shirt on and meet you guys in the car. Do your parents have masks?” Y/N nodded, tears in her eyes, and placed a featherlight kiss to his forehead before he left.

He grabbed a hoodie from the guest room, and turned to leave, but saw Becca’s baby animal book. It had been his before, something his mom would read to him to calm him down, and he saw it as his comfort object. Snagging it from the bedside table, he ran through the halls and out the door, where he saw Mr. and Mrs. L/N sitting in the front, and Y/N waiting for him with the car door open on the left side. He and Y/N climbed into the back seat and strapped themselves in, trapping Becca in her car seat in between the two teens.

Becca’s pretty blue eyes were teary, and she whimpered quietly, almost as if she knew what was going on around her. She was just one year old, still so innocent, and wasn’t even aware that her father never looked after her, or beat her mother before she had died giving birth to her. Bucky grabbed onto her foot softly, an action that consoled Becca’s quiet cries.

The car rumbled beneath them, and Y/N looked over to Bucky on the other side of the car. His face was stoic, staring out of the window with a sheen of calm surrounding him. His eyes weren’t teary anymore, but she could see the storm that was brewing beneath them. She knew that he was worrying a lot, his thoughts probably a jumbled mess of negativity, and underlying guilt. It wasn’t his fault, not even close, but she knew for a fact he was blaming himself anyway. She reached over to lay her palm over the hand that was holding Becca’s foot, and Bucky looked over to Y/N’s eyes, and gave her a small, sad smile.

The rest of the car ride was silent, Y/N’s parents choosing to say nothing, knowing that Bucky didn’t want to talk. He would always get closed off with his emotions during hard times, and it took him a very long time to open up about his feelings. When the New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital came into view, Bucky’s heart started to beat at an alarming rate.

“Y/N, Bucky, how about we drop you off at the front, okay? Tell them that you are his son, they’ll help you.” Y/N’s mom was facing them, trying to remain calm. Bucky nodded, and when they pulled up to the front, the two students worked together to get Becca out of her seat and jump out of the car. Y/N hoisted the small baby up onto her hip as Bucky grabbed her hand and led them inside the doors.

The light was an unnatural blinding white, and people surrounded the waiting room with masks on. There were people sleeping, people tapping their feet nervously, and people looking like they would love nothing more than to get out of the room. Briskly, the two marched up to the reception desk. Surprisingly, it was Bucky who spoke up.

“Excuse me, ma’am, my name is James Barnes, I’m the son of George Barnes, and I believe he’s in surgery right now. His contacts are the same for all of us, and I think you called a Mary L/N to inform us of the accident.”

The pretty blonde at the desk looked surprised at the straightforward greeting from the young boy, but she just adjusted her mask over her nose a bit more and nodded. After a few seconds of typing, she turned to the side and grabbed a file of paperwork. “Hi James, my name is Tina, and I’m a nurse here. Your dad is going to be in surgery for about an hour more I believe, but here’s the paperwork that you or Mrs. L/N are going to need to fill out. If you have any questions, you can come ask me.”

With a quick thank you to Tina, the three children went to go sit in the back of the waiting room, where a small cluster of seats stood. Y/N texted her mom to let her parents know that they had made it inside quickly while Bucky started filling out the forms. “Wait, Y/N, can you ask your mom to bring the book that’s sitting in the backseat?”

He knew it was trivial, but he really needed that book. Y/N could see the pleading in his eyes, and nodded without question. She would have to ask him later. “Of course, James.” She always called him James during serious moments, knowing that it was what his mom called him, and it soothed him a lot. He continued to fill out the information he knew on the papers. About ten minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. L/N came in, masks on and book in hand from the parking lot. There was only one seat left, so Mr. L/N let his wife sit as he stood and looked around the area.

It was surprisingly very quiet for the next hour and a half. Bucky had finished the paperwork with the help of Mrs. L/N within thirty minutes, but he spent the rest of his time assuring Steve’s family he was okay on a phone call and reading the baby book to Becca over and over again.

“Not a hot dog; my hot dog.” Bucky spoke in a higher pitched voice than normal. He was always gentle with his little sister, wanting her to know that he was a calming, caring presence in comparison to his loud father. Becca pointed to the pigeon holding a hot dog on the page, giggling and spouting nonsensical baby gurgles.

Y/N smiled at the two, and closed her eyes while listening to Bucky read the children’s book. Though he had read it numerous times in their time in the waiting room, his soothing voice just lulled her to sleep even more. She hummed a song under her breath, and let sleep take over her.

“Mary L/N! Is there a Mary L/N in here?” A nurse dressed in baby blue scrubs and a mask entered the waiting room and Bucky shot out of his chair. Y/N rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and brought Becca closer to her chest. As Y/N’s mom raised her hand, the nurse walked towards them. “Can I talk to you alone please?”

Bucky and Y/N looked at each other with confusion written on their faces, but Mrs. L/N answered the kind nurse before Bucky could open his mouth. “Of course, lead the way.”

He knew what this meant. There was no other reason that the nurse would ask to speak to the parent alone, and his heartbeat started speeding up again. A lump rose in his throat, and he was barely able to say, “Can I hold my sister please?” Y/N nodded, knowing what the nurse and her mom were talking about as well. She handed the now quiet baby over to his shaking hands, and looked into his eyes.

They didn’t even shed a tear.

Bucky could barely remember walking down the white hallways, turning the corner, taking deep breaths and holding onto Mrs. L/N’s hand. Y/N and her dad weren’t allowed in, as they were trying to keep as low of a number as possible inside the room, so he didn’t have the comfort of his girlfriend being there with him as he faced one of his greatest fears.

The room was quiet when they entered, another nurse and a doctor standing at the foot of the bed where George Barnes lay. His eyes were shut from what Bucky could see, but his head was bruised and covered in a bandage, most likely covering a shaved head and gaudy scars. “He was drunk, James, he didn’t have control, and the other car didn’t see him either. He had serious trauma to the head, and a broken wrist when he entered surgery. George was in critical condition when he was brought in, but he died in surgery. I’m sorry.”

Bucky managed to nod numbly and look down at his dad. He didn’t know what to say to him. “We’ll give you a few minutes alone.” The nurses and doctor shuffled out of the room and Mrs. L/N placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Do you want me to leave, James?” Again, he softly nodded without a word and didn’t look up as her footsteps echoed away in the empty room. Bucky secured his arms around Becca better as he walked over to take his father’s cold hand.

Bucky could only hear his heartbeat, as all the monitors were off. Even his little sister was quiet, her small squirms nonexistent. He took a few deep breaths through his mouth,and let them out through his nose. His blue eyes focused on his father’s hands, ones that used to bring him so much pain and suffering, that now laid limp and still. Finally, Bucky let out the three words that he had never heard back from his father.

“I love you.” Pause. Becca started moving around again, but he shushed her gently. “I think that’s all that needs to be said. Goodbye.”

He placed a soft kiss on his dad’s temple, and left quickly. As soon as he opened the door, he pushed past all the people waiting for them to be done and made his way back to Y/N in the waiting room. He could hear the doctor calling his name after, but Mrs. L/N must have stopped him because he stopped hearing it after a while. Y/N stood up when she saw Bucky, but he silently grabbed her hand and led them outside. Glancing over her shoulder, she shooed her dad away, and followed him outside.

She didn’t speak until they were back in the car. They had walked around for a while, realizing they didn’t know where it was. Settling into their seats, Y/N took the bottle of hand sanitizer from the front seat cup holder and squeezed some into both of their hands. “Are you okay, James?”

He looked at her with a straight face. “Yeah.” She frowned with his short answer, but she knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“Bucky, you know it’s okay to cry, it’s just me here. It’s okay to let your emotions out sometimes. You can talk to me, like always.” She reached over to take his hand, but he moved it away. She knew it was just part of what he was feeling, but she couldn’t help but to feel hurt either way.

“I don’t need to let my emotions out, I’m fine,” he responded in a clipped voice. Y/N nodded softly and placed her hand on Becca’s foot, wondering what had happened. Sure, Bucky had had times where he wouldn’t talk to anyone, but eventually she would always be able to get to the bottom of it and support him. This new, closed off feeling from him was different for her, and she didn’t know what had gone wrong. It was quiet for the next twenty minutes as they waited for Y/N’s parents, and even then they barely spoke. As soon as they got back to the house in Brooklyn Heights, Bucky took Becca and immediately went to their room. Y/N let out a dejected sigh and started to head to her room to email the director of her play, when her mom stopped her.

“Honey, give him some time, okay? He’s just lost his father, and I know that he doesn’t like to talk about his feelings, but it’s different now. Both of his parents have passed, and it’s a really big change for him.” She brought her daughter into a hug and dropped a kiss on her cheek before retiring to her room. Y/N walked into her room, flopping on her bed, quiet tears for her boyfriend rolling down her face.

Bucky didn’t attend dinner that night, which was okay with the rest of them. Y/N was still having a hard time not going to his room and smothering him in sweet nothings and hugs, but she understood that he needed time to process the past few hours. Her mom was right: it was a huge change. He was now orphaned, and only fifteen. Eventually, he’d need new guardians, and none of his close family was alive, and his other relatives from Romania probably had no clue he existed.

At around one in the morning, when Y/N’s parents had fallen asleep, Y/N crept out of her room quietly to check on Bucky. The door creaked a bit when it opened, giving her a view of her boyfriend sitting cross-legged on the bed, shoulders shaking from his silent sobs. He looked up upon hearing the door open, and wiped his tears off as fast as he could. “Hey, doll.”

She didn’t say anything but simply pushed him back down onto the bed gently and wrapped her arms around him. It took a few seconds, but the tears started falling again, his crying quiet. Y/N just held him for a few minutes, as he let out his tears, and rubbed his chest soothingly. When he was done, he kissed her gently and said, “Thank you.” It took another few moments, but he started talking soon enough. “I shouldn’t be sad. Right? I mean, he’s the man who hit me and my ma relentlessly, and all my life has been nothing but hell because of him. I should be fucking celebrating right now. Right?”

His watery blue eyes stared into hers, and she sighed, taking Bucky’s hands and bringing them to a sitting position. “I think it makes sense.” Y/N whispered.

Makes sense? It made no sense to him. “How can you say that?” He questioned incredulously. “This man treated us like shit, he blamed Becca for my mom’s death, he would hit me, tell me I’m not good enough,and I still worked my ass off for him. He didn’t love us! And after all the shit he put us through, put me through, why do I still care? Why do I still love him? It doesn't make sense.” Hot tears slipped down his face again, as he whispered, “It doesn’t make sense.”

He started to cry again, and Y/N pulled his head into the crook of her neck as his arms latched like vices around her torso. Running her fingers through his short brown hair, she said, “It may not make sense to you, but no matter what, as horrible as he was, that man is still your father. What he did to you was evil, pure evil, it truly was, but I can understand why after everything you’ve been through, you still love him. It doesn’t make you less of a man or weak. It makes you stronger, and I can’t be more proud of the person you’ve become since I met you. You have nothing to feel sorry for, James Buchanan Barnes. This is not your fault. None of this is.”

She moved her lips to his, and they moved against each other languidly. “I love you, James.”

His eyes opened, and hers watered up at her confession. “I love you too, Y/N.” They brought their lips together again, her thumbs rubbing small circles onto his cheekbones as they breathed each other in. When they finally pulled away, Bucky had the smallest of smiles playing across his lips. “Thank you, Y/N.”

Y/N made sure Bucky was staring at her directly, and she spoke with a firm voice. “Whatever comes next, we’ll get through it together. I promise, James.” Pressing his lips against hers one more time, he grabbed his phone off the stand and started to swipe through it. “Are you okay, Buck? You need anything? We can talk more if you need.”

Opening Spotify, he opened his “Slow Dance with Y/N” playlist. “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me” by Billie Holiday started playing, and Y/N knew exactly what he was doing. Bucky had had the playlist since the sixth grade, when he first bought his phone with the money he earned from babysitting, and the pair had danced to it numerous times before he had started dating Dot. But he didn’t even play that with her. No, this one was for his best girl, no matter what. Y/N was too special to share with anyone. Offering her his left hand with a shy grin, Y/N smiled big with an eye roll and graciously accepted it.

“Oldies music again, Bucky?” She was teasing him, and he knew it as well. Y/N absolutely adored this playlist, that he made just for the two of them, with her entire heart. Pulling her flush against his chest, his right hand coming to rest on her waist, he kissed her hair lightly.

“Well, you have always called me old fashioned, sweetheart.” He twirled her around, her giggling as they danced around the room. Becca slept soundly in the crib and the moonlight illuminated their faces. “I think this song fits in well right now.”

Y/N sighed, letting her eyes close. “It really does.” After a few seconds, she remembered her previous question that had gone unanswered and asked again. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about anything else, Buck?”

“I think I’m done, doll. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Just wanna dance with you.”

And he did, softly dancing barefoot, with the occasional twirl, until falling asleep hours later. When Y/N’s parents came to check in on them the next morning, they smiled seeing their daughter and the boy she loved so dearly wrapped around each other, quiet snores escaping the both of them.

TAGLIST

@transparentfestivaltiger @barnesjamcs @kitkatd7 @adorkably

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bookenders · 5 years ago

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11/11/11 Tag Game: Rounds 24, 25, 26, and 27

Tagged by the wonderful @corsairesque, the lovely @azawrites, the stellar @sunlight-and-starskies, and the incomparable @inexorableblob - thanks!

And @inexorableblob, thank you for letting me rewrite the end of The Great Gatsby. It was very cathartic.

Rules: Answer 11 questions, write 11 questions, tag 11 people!

Bilbo Taggins: @aurumni-writes @quilloftheclouds @aslanwrites @starlitesymphony @writingonesdreams @waterfallwritings @cataclysmic-writer @ren-c-leyn @timefirewrites @minusfractions @ink-flavored - and if you like the questions and aren’t tagged, feel free to answer them! And tag me so I can see!

My Questions:

How many licks would it take for your OCs to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

What are your favorite smells?

What’s the book you’ve read most recently? What did you think of it? What impressed you? What would you have done differently?

What are your thoughts on mugs?

If your OCs had a comic book series/graphic novel about them, what would it be called? What would be on the cover? What would the art style be?

Can you draw a bear?

Do you do any other kinds of art? Are you ever influenced by other kinds of art? What about other areas like science or mathematics/other disciplines?

Have you read any craft books or writing advice books? If yes, how have the helped or hindered you? Which would you recommend? If no, would you ever consider reading them?

What are your favorite kinds of narratives? What narrative structures do you prefer to write and what do you prefer to read?

What’s your favorite recipe?

What are some signs that make you consider setting a project aside vs continuing with it?

As always, answers under the cut!

@corsairesque‘s Questions:

1. Do you create playlists for your stories or characters?

I do!

Here’s a detailed post about how I make them.

This is Mel’s from H2H.

This is Gemma’s from H2H.

This is one for the story I recently posted.

And I have one for each WIP on my WIP page! (Mostly, I’m still working on Fish Food’s.)

I actually have folders in Spotify for my characters and stories. Each one gets a playlist.

2. What is your stance on endings that don’t end with some hope?

Sometimes a story needs to have a certain ending to have an emotionally satisfying conclusion. I don’t think hope is absolutely required for an ending. I’ve ended stories without hope because that’s how the story ends. If I wrote it to conclude with an upturn, it would’ve been disloyal to the narrative. Like life, not everything ends happily, or with a positive outlook.

If you want it from a more technical perspective, there are three sorts of endings: positive, negative, and neutral. They can mix and match, but these are the three base ones. I tend toward neutral or positive-neutral endings. The best story I’ve written so far has a negative-leaning neutral ending because it concludes with a loss that does not promise hope. Positive endings are not necessary for a narrative, or for a conclusion.

Sometimes you need to write a hopeful ending. Sometimes you need to read a hopeful ending. And sometimes you need to read or write something that ends on a down-note. I know I have.

So, TL;DR, there is no ending hierarchy. It all depends on the reader and the writer, what they need, and what the story demands.

3. What author would you love to hear feedback from on your WIP?

Of literally anyone? Dead or alive? I mean. I’d love to hear what Flannery O’Connor would have to say about my short stories. I try to do a remix-version of her moments of grace in each of them.

4. What is the genre of your WIP(s)?

I mention these on my WIP page!

Most of my short stories are literary and contemporary fiction. My longer projects tend toward low fantasy.

5. How do you come up with new ideas for your WIP(s)?

I don’t have a method or anything for idea generation. My brain works in the background while I’m doing other things, so I’ll be washing dishes, or brushing my teeth, or writing something else, and an idea goes HI HELLO WHAT ABOUT THIS HUH? and I scramble to write it down.

Most of the time, my story ideas come from cool sentences I think of while observing. That sounds super weird and nerdy, but it’s true! When I’m bored or need to occupy my brain or just sorta feel like creating something spontaneous, I’ll look around and figure out how I’d write about a certain thing in the vicinity.

Some examples of this from my phone notes:

“Laughter echoing through a cave, bouncing off the walls, the gift of hearing it over and over until it fades like gentle waking”

“Cheeks baked pink from the flush of her modesty”

“The last remnants of home, the dirt hidden beneath their fingernails”

“Headlights flicker between the gaps in the barrier like a slipstream of stars”

Ya know, stuff like that.

Sometimes, if I’m stuck while writing and need a thought, I look at the plot and think up complications for my characters to face. That’s how I figured out how to make Lithium 100% more plot relevant. I thought, okay, so she has this role right now, what can I add to make her stand in the way of X plan while also being an asset to Y? And boom, idea generated and problem solved.

6. What do you use to keep all your writing on? (Scrivener, Google Docs, good old pen and paper…)

I use Scrivener for all my main writing. I have a ton of phone memo notes for ideas on the go. I have a notebook full of random stuff for when I’m blocked and need to hand write something.

I also answered this further down!

7. What gave you initial inspiration for your WIP(s)?

H2H: There was a publisher who had a call for shapeshifter stories, and then I missed the deadline so I decided to try for a zine instead, then I got rejected, so I made it into my own thing.

AOPC: I needed to flesh out a piece of my homebrew DnD world, so I started worldbuilding, then it was my turn to turn in a story to be workshopped in my writing class, so I wrote a thing set in the village about the tribe and it all spiraled out from there.

FF: I had an errant thought about the script that hero and villain stories follow and wrote a thing about what would happen if one of them decided to deviate from it and BOOM the plot hit me like a semi truck.

Almost all of my short stories start with a sentence I think sounds really cool, a tone I want to try to capture (ex. the feeling of standing inside an old cathedral), or the ending moment of a character arc (I tend to work backwards).

8. How long have you been working on your WIP(s)?

I’ve been working with Heart to Heart since November 2018. I started thinking about Fish Food like 3 months ago I think? And I got the idea for All Our Painted Colors 3ish years ago, but it started as a short story that I thought about expanding about 8 months ago.

My writing process starts with a long period of thought percolation before I write anything definitive down.

9. What was the first thing you came up with for your WIP(s)?

H2H: The fact that the main character is an apothecary who uses recipes from historical documents to brew things and lives in a small town, and that their love interest changes shapes in some way.

AOPC: That the tribe is a society based around body paint, art, preserving their personal history, and stories. But mostly paint.

FF: The hero danging over a pit of hungry piranhas and asking the villain a question that throws off the whole “death threat” vibe.

10. Have you considered Hogwarts houses for your characters? If so, what are they?

Answered this for the H2H cast here.

As for the Fish Food cast:

Iron Will - Hufflepuff

Overseer - Ravenclaw

Nightmare - A Hufflepuff who asked to be in Slytherin and the hat said “yeah okay”

Lithium - Gryffindor

Babylon - Slytherin

Sparkplug - Gryffindor

11. What do you find easiest to write? (Description, dialogue, etc.)

Interiority! Free indirect discourse! Unvoiced character brain thoughts! Which I guess means description?

Writing dialogue sucks old car tires!

@azawrites‘ Questions:

what’s the best part about your writing style? I like how I build up to emotional punches. It’s like walking up a ramp, but in a literary way. And at the top of the ramp you either get a gut punch of feels or an ice cream cone.

do you write on the computer or on paper? I do most of my writing on my laptop because my hands can’t write fast enough to keep up with my brain. My typing is way faster. If I’m having trouble getting an idea down, or the tone of the writing lends itself to being handwritten (idk how to describe this, but sometimes words just gotta be scribbled, ya know?), I’ll hand write it in pen. I don’t use pencils anymore because I wasn’t allowed to in college and it kinda stuck.

what are your favourite books and why? Oh, no, there are too many. So I’ll just say my top book: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien because of how it deals with stories and grief and remembering, the fact that it’s a story cycle (which is very cool), and the way he writes - it’s beautiful and sad and messed up and poignant. I love it.

why did you start writing? I’ve answered this before, but there was never really starting point for me. It’s just something I’ve always done.

why did you continue writing? Because I had too much fun to stop! I also get creatively constipated, I guess is how I would phrase it, and need to have some sort of narrative outlet or my brain gets really mad at me.

where do you usually write? Pretty much anywhere, but most often at my desk. I think I need a taller chair, though...

can you describe your favourite piece (written by you) in one sentence? Let’s get authory with this one: The teacher hands out the tests, multiple choice this time, but when the stapled packet slides across your desk, there’s something odd about it, something that brings the war to life inside your head, a long-forgotten voice that speaks the souls of the soldiers and tells their stories from the annals of history. Or: A multiple choice test about WWII that tells the story of 4 men from Company B from enlistment to the end of their campaign.

what’s one cliche/trope you overuse, but still like anyway? It’s a trope when it comes to my own writing, actually. Person Sits Alone in the Dark and Contemplates. I love it, I abuse the hell out of it, and I will never stop.

what music do you listen to when working on a WIP? Depends. I have a go-to Writing Flow State song, playlists to help me get in the right head space when writing certain characters, and playlists that help guide the tone of a story. I can never listen to movie or video game scores because the association of song and cinematic moment is too strong for me.

have you ever dreamed of a fictional character? Uh, I have the occasional nightmare about Kokopelli? Does that count?

what’s one thing that makes you automatically dislike a book? Overly pretentious first person POV prose (and I don’t mean purple. I mean a character who - honestly and without a hint of satire - thinks like a writer from the 1920s who just discovered what “paid by the word” means and believes they’re the wisest human being in the universe and everyone who doesn’t agree with them is the basest of idiots - barf). Gratuitous female violence. The use of the word “loins” outside of an animal context. Everything about The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff.

@inexorableblob‘s Questions:

Which of your characters could you write as twice their current age? Oh, man, I think writing Iron Will in his forties or fifties would be really cool. It’d certainly give the story a new commentary twist.

Which of your characters could you write as half their current age? (I’m not gonna cheat and say Mel, I promise.) I think writing a 30yo Treena would be very cool. However, writing a 13 or 14yo Lithium who is just learning how to use her super powers would be WILD.

What big city would your characters do best in? London? New York? Tokyo? Mexico City? Rio? The Fish Food characters would all do best in New York or London, since they’re very close to Conover. Lithium would prefer Rio, though, and Babylon would lobby for everyone to move to Tokyo. The H2H characters would do best in Mexico City or London, depending on who decides to take charge and teach everyone the local customs.

What would your characters do if they were in a small rural community that was attacked by underground worms? This is giving me too many ideas for H2H. Gemma would be a little bit furious, since she hates having to get rid of animals, especially when they’re invasive. If the worms just minded their own gosh dang business then everyone could live in peace. If we’re talkin’ normal sized worms, like worm-sized worms, then Gemma would develop a pesticide that wouldn’t kill them, but force them to the surface where they would then be stunned by whatever weird solution Mel comes up with. Then the town would have a Worm-Off, where the person who collects the most worms wins free pie for a year, courtesy of Harry’s. If we’re talkin’ DnD-style Purple Worms, like Beetlejuice worms, then Mel would take over. She’d help organize an evacuation and steal Oz’s gun, just in case. Then she’d do some spoilery things with Gemma assisting.

What is the worst place where you’ve ever wanted to write? Probably while I was taking the math section of the SATs. Kinda inconvenient, brain, thanks for that. Other terrible places: mid job interview, in the middle of an empty street at midnight, anywhere I’m sitting where I have terrible posture, watching a slam poetry event in a very crowded bar, etc.

What’s the most uncomfortable subject you’ve ever written about? I’ve written a little bit about hate crimes and loathed every second. I’ve written a character actively contemplating suicide (he was a WWII soldier) and that was not fun at all. I mean, I also wrote a paper about sexy (somewhat graphic) wlw poetry for my Sexuality class, which a lot of people would be uncomfortable with, but I thought it was a very good collection. Go read Marilyn Hacker’s stuff, it’s good.

If you had to change the ending of any famous novel, which would you pick? The Great Gatsby. We don’t end with the green light, screw the green light. Gatsby wills all of his possessions and wealth to Nick and Nick becomes the next James Gatz. But this time around, he pines for the man who was killed in the pool just below his balcony while pretending to love Jordan, who finds out and amicably marries him because 1920s. She then uses Nick/Gatsby’s money to purchase an automobile manufacturing company and makes cars in every color but yellow. (Gotta maintain that color symbolism for F. Scott, I guess.) Nick discovers Gatz’ old bootlegging and illegal activities buddies and starts up a criminal empire. He and Jordan become the biggest, queerest, most spiteful and angsty crime bosses in New York. Nick makes it his life’s mission to take down false accusers, vigilante style. The car manufacturing company is what they use to launder money. Daisy divorces Tom because they’re both terrible people. Daisy takes her daughter and moves to California. Jordan sends Daisy’s daughter money secretly, about a hundred dollars a month. The last line is something about how Gatz was always reaching out and chasing green, but because of him, Nick is steeped in dark, bloody red. I would then write a sequel about Nick and Jordan and their crime empire that spans the East Coast. God, I hate this book.

If you had to change your life, what would you change without regret? Start therapy way earlier, 100%. That would have saved me a lot of nonsense.

If the end of the world where scheduled a week from tomorrow, what would you do? Would you tell anybody? Everybody? Keep it a secret? Assuming this was legit and the end of the world was actually happening, I’d probably try to tell some big-shot geologist or something, hoping they spread the word. Other than that, since debt won’t be a thing, I’d take the people I love on a killer trip around the world.

What would you do if a wizard offered to cast one spell for you, but your worst enemy got the same spell? Hmmm. I’d ask them to cast the Self-Realization spell, so they would instantly become aware of the effect their actions have on others and know exactly how terrible they’ve been to other people their whole life. Maybe then they can be a better person. My anxiety makes this spell ineffective on me, since it’s already there! Thanks, brain!

Which would you choose, never eating in the same place, always eating the same meal, always eating with the same people, or never eating with the same people? I’d choose always eating with the same people. I like frequenting restaurants I like and eating different things. I don’t think I could deal with only eating the same thing/off the same menu forever. And I have bad social anxiety, so constantly eating with new people would probably short-circuit my brain eventually. A good meal in good company is pretty great, though.

@sunlight-and-starskies‘ Questions:

What is your favorite genre of music? I’ll always be a rock fan at heart. Right now, I really like folk rock and any kind of music that sounds like it has history behind it.

What are your favorite words? Illustrious, shimmer, soliloquy, incarnate, bound, and many more. Also most Yiddish curses.

Describe your ideal vacation. Somewhere cozy where I can explore and chill at my leisure. A week of artsy events in the city. Exploring landscapes in the country.

If you could have any fictional creature for a pet, what would it be? Why? Pegasus! I can ride and they can fly. We’d make an excellent team, and where we’d go, we wouldn’t need roads.

Which fictional universe would you live in if you had to live there for the rest of your life? Logic dictates the Star Trek universe, since I’d probably be an average civilian. Post-scarcity society? Sign me the hell up. My heart, however, is screaming ROHAN.

Favorite childhood toy? Uh... I honestly can’t remember.

What is your aesthetic? Good smelling old books with doodles and notes in the margins, a pile of unfolded clean clothes on a chair, a stack of handwritten papers perched on the corner of a desk, the smell of breakfast cooking when you wake up, the immediate “woops” shock the moment you trip over something you should’ve moved earlier.

Tell me a random fact about your current project or you. About me: I have a birthmark that kinda sorta looks like an elephant. About Fish Food: The Coalition knows what happened to Hydrophase. So does Sparkplug.

Are you an early bird or a night owl? Night owl, all the way. I like the idea of being a morning person, though.

What is your favorite food? Pasta! Or any kind of Asian food.

What is your happiest memory? Oh, geez. Ummm. When I was little, I would curl up in my grandpa’s armchair and eat Burger King breakfast sandwiches on Saturday mornings.

#about me #writeblr #my process #tag game #11/11/11 tag #11/11/11 tag game #writer tag

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figjelly · 6 years ago

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Comics, Pornography, and Communication: also, a discussion of why *Men* suck.

First, notice how I typed out *Men* up there. It is capitalized. There are asterisks around the word. I don’t describe myself as a “social justice warrior” because the label, to me, signifies lip service, mob mentality, and a lack of critical thinking. Second, notice how I qualified that definition with “to me.” It’s subjective. It’s about my experience with the term and the people who’ve I encountered who use it as an identity. Do I think social justice is bad? No. Do I think wanting social justice, equity, and all those buzz words is wrong? Nope. But do I think the world is mostly grey areas? Heck golly gosh, I do.

*Men* (to me) is meant to signify major societal trends, norms, and expectations that are grounded in patriarchal, misogynistic, and ableist rules, environments, and scripts that are written for *Men,* by *Men,* between *Men,* and with *Men.* *Men* are those who think the world works a certain way, so suck it up because that’s just the way the world is. *Men* (In. My. Experience.) have zero interest in critical thinking unless it is done so in a way that benefits them and other Men. Often times, *Men* engage in the lowest threshold of critical thinking or want to employ rhetorical techniques/classical logic to whatever is being discussed. *Men* is not limited to cis-men. This is important but not relevant to the following discussion. I’M ONLY GOING TO BE DISCUSSING AMERICAN COMICS. YES, I KNOW THE FIRST RECORDED SUPERHERO COMIC WAS MADE IN THE 1800s SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE. So, let me tell you that this entire position that I’m about to present is NOT about:

1. The history, merit, or discussion of why Comix (different from comics, for historical reasons) is important. Underground Comix is important for many reasons. There have been dissertations written on the subject. I’m not about to do that here. 2. Whether or not the goal of satire was/is achieved with Underground Comix. 3. Whether Underground Comix is “problematic.” I.e. was/is it sexist, ableist, racist, bigoted, and whatever other problems they could have. Again, another dissertation topic. Again, again, aaaagain: this is about my individual experience working in a comic book shop. Don’t act like I’m drafting a treatise on some objective truth that’s floating aimlessly around in a vacuum. Go watch Netflix. Eat pizza. This isn’t that deep. It’s me griping about things from a particular point of view. Some background: I’ve worked at a comic book shop in a small, midwestern city for almost five years now. The shop has been here going on over 20+ years. It’s the only game in town when it comes to comic books. Historically, this wasn’t the case but other shops didn’t adapt so, uh, they died off. Comics is a strange business to be in because while it is technically a bookshop, the industry came from a place of fun and general absurdity that was meant to be throwaway material for kids (especially the target market, young boys) to waste money on (hence, why Golden Age stuff, any of it really, is usually worth a little something--the newsprint wasn’t meant to be durable, so kids would throw them away, use it for drawing paper, etc.). Comics had been around before the Golden Age, but yanno, it’s called a Golden Age for a reason--it is the era in which comics became introduced as “suitable” for mainstream consumer consumption. I mean, we could argue on other reasons but that’s neither here nor there. Comic books, graphic novels, and comic strip utilize sequential art. Sequential art is a specialized term. Within the definition itself, the requirement of narrative is implicitly built into the term. There is no room for debate here. If a story is not being told, a body of work can be classified as art but it is not sequential. Art can tell a story, sure, but a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn’t a square. I run into a wide variety of people because of the strangeness of the product we sell. We’ve got readers (like myself), we’ve got collectors, we’ve got beginner readers, we’ve got artists (like me), we’ve got writers (like me), and we’ve got people who “haven’t been to a comic store in ages and, boy!, is it sure different than when I was young!” And, yes, we have the certified perverts. Once, I found out one of our customers was a registered child sex offender. I politely told my boss that if the person in question wasn’t banned from the store, I was quitting. As with all stores, as times change, so does business practice. One must adapt to the changes that are happening around them or they have to have a big enough, steady clientele to support them. This comic book shop, in particular, did not and does not have a large enough, regular clientele base that spends enough money for us to keep doing things the way it always had been. These are just facts. In the past, this store was ran in such a way that it was a dying business but the current owner would put their own money into it in order to keep it afloat. At that time, the store allowed some subscribers (note: to my knowledge, all cis-gender men) to order exclusively from publishers like Boundless Comics (publisher who specializes in “sexy, cool comics for adults”) with no advance payment. Which means if they never came to pick up their stuff, we were stuck with the responsibility to sell it because, well, we already paid for it. I don’t think I have to make a Venn diagram to convince anyone that the overlap between deadbeats (for our subscription service--basically, we never heard from someone ever again) and these men was pretty much two circles just a bit off-center from one another. These were not comics we could put out to be sold because they never would be. In over 20 years, our numbers have shown that Adult/XXX/Mature comics don’t sell well off the rack regularly. We do have one or two customers back from Ye Olden Days who still have subscriptions to mature comics, but they never look around. They never try out something new. They buy the comics they ordered because they wouldn’t get them any other way. Both of them are strongly against buying things on the internet, so my guess is we’re they’re only option. I wasn’t around during the time in which “boxes were kept under the counter” for “special comics.” Today: About a month ago, an older man (because all of the customers who ask for the “boxes under the counter” are older) came into the store. He looked around. He came up to the counter and asked me where the Underground Comix were. I showed him where we kept our collection of Underground Comix. He said that wasn’t what he was looking for. Did we have the “boxes under the counter.” Now, understand, I’ve been told about all of this because we don’t have it anymore but I needed to know the store’s history. Fair. I told him that we do not and have not in many years. But, when people ask me for Those Boxes, I know what they’re asking for. Not all of it was satirical Underground Comix. So, they usually stumble when I tell them that, no we don’t. This guy stumbled. I could assume a number of reasons as to why he did so, but it really doesn’t do any good. So, I try to ask a number of questions to find something else they might like to try. The conversation goes like this: Me: Are you looking for a comic or graphic novel with explicit sexual content? Him: Yes. Me: Okay, I can definitely suggest Saga and Sex Criminals.

At this point, I pull out the first trades of both and show the explicit sexual content in both. I mention the art, the story, and the writing. Sequential art is divided into four elements: design, drawing, caricature, and writing. Design, drawing, and writing are usually the most salient elements to a lay reader. Caricature has a lot to do with symbolic representation--how does one exaggerate an element of X in order to represent X? But some people lay people are interested in this element because of the comical effect it can play in a comic story. Him: No. Not like that. Me: What is missing from this then? Him: Something more adult. Me: Would you like explicit sexual content with more graphic violence? Him: Yeah, that sounds about right. Me: Okay, I’ve got Crossed.

!WARNING WARNING WARNING! THE LINK I’VE PROVIDED IS TO THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE WHICH IS ABOUT THE TAMEST RESOURCE FOR WHAT CROSSED IS THAT I KNOW OF. DO NOT LOOK INTO THIS COMIC IF EXTREME VIOLENCE, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF DEATH AND DISMEMBERMENT, INCEST, BESTIALITY, RAPE, BLASPHEMY OF RELIGIONS, AND A WHOLE HOST OF OTHER THINGS REMOTELY BOTHER YOU. NOT EVEN TRIGGER--REMOTELY. BOTHER. So, yeah, I feel like I’d picked out a good contender considering. Him: No. Not like this. But, hey, wanna know something about Crossed? Everybody is a target for wanton humiliation, suffering, and all sorts of horrible things! Is this something I’m praising? No. It’s just a fact of the comic. And an important fact to know when guy says to me: Him: Well, the old Underground Comix I used to read were more sophisticated with the satire, like the sex in it was about humor with having sex with women. Me: So, you’re looking for comics about humorous sexual encounters that are also explicit? And as I start suggesting comics, he interrupted. Him: No, not like that. More like... *he pulls out a Robert Crumb collection we have and thumbs through it* that. The funny stuff, yanno? The picture in question (I won’t link it, because it is upsetting, as will be my description of it) is just in Crumb’s style--pretty distinctive--and it’s one panel of a skinny, naked man with a sizeable erection. He’s bent over backwards, his hips bent such that his back is practically parallel with the floor of the drawing and his erection (which, if I recall correctly is something like 1/5-1/6 of the height of the page) is pretty close to perpendicular with the floor. One of his hands is wrapped around a nude woman’s throat, the drawing exaggerating the woman’s body parts as if she were being squeezed through tube--the head is ballooned and her neck stretches out to her shoulders. her arms are ramrod straight leading down to outstretched hands. Her legs are equally straightened, bent ninety degrees at the hips. There are motion lines to indicate that the man is forcibly shoving the woman onto his dick over and over again. By her throat. He’s got a pretty happy expression. She does not. Please, read the part where I explain what this thing I’m writing is NOT. Because it is a grey area if you know enough about history and context. Divorced of context, it’s pretty disgusting. I’ll just say that outright. So, if we use the four elements of sequential art to think about what story is being told and how it’s being told, there are things I can understand. The design is good (lots of sharp angles). The caricature is good (Crumb is great with exaggerated forms, whether I like his style or not is irrelevant). The drawing is in Crumb’s style which I can understand why people like his art. So, that leaves the writing. It is wordless but there’s still a story being told. Me and this guy were have a disconnect about what kind of story he wanted to read. Cut to today, about a month after this. It seemed like he hadn’t internalized anything we’d gone over because he had similar questions. At one point, he finally picked up a book and bought it. Which led me to writing this humongous post for the last four hours (it’s been busy today!). Because the guy wasn’t asking for pornography. I’ve definitely straight up told people before we don’t sell pornographic material here. Besides, how we define porn depends on the era. To me, I define it as material that was created with the intention to arouse, stimulate, and to be used as an aid for sexual activity AND someone wants to consume it for said purposes. But, that’s not a definition that would fit all pornographic material. The guy was (again, my perspective. Why I have to keep saying that is important here in a moment) asking for satirical material where misogyny was humorous. Now, if you were to ask him to communicate what he wanted, I guess good luck on getting that answer. I’ve tried. I don’t think he could, to be quite honest because that’s how *Men* are (hey! I used it again). This guy is a *Man* and his answers to me when I probe are, “How it used to be, just how things are,” and the like. The comic book industry is usually fraught with the same problems regular prose books are, the big topics being censorship and purity politics. It’s not as bad as, let’s say, the 1960s and 1970s but there are still problems. Even books for readers of all ages come under scrutiny and are banned from some libraries and schools (Raina Telgemeier’s Drama, for example). To censor any material is a very murky grey area for me. To say that someone cannot create material because it contains material that I am not comfortable with is even murkier because, usually, I’m presented with these hypotheticals in the form of loaded questions (”So, have you stopped bad habit X?” which doesn’t allow me to engage in how I qualify my own habits); complex questions (”What is the legal age of consent to sexual activity?” assumes a LOT of things about legality, age of consent, consent, and sexual activity without consideration to context, to say the least); false dilemmas, suggestive questions, leading questions, and... *takes a deep breath* *exhales* Listen, there’s just a lot of things that make a lot of issues super murky and grey for me. That’s not to say I don’t have opinions and personal/societal biases that sway me toward one end or the other of a polemic (I’m human. We all do it).

When I say, “I hate *Men,*” it is hatred directed towards the skewed power dynamics and socialization that I’m cemented into (through no consent or fault of my own), that allows a *Man* to think (without a second thought) about showing someone the picture I described and not worrying about what he’s communicating. About what the comic is communicating. Let’s pretend that he knows the historical context and importance of Underground Comix. How does he know that I know those things? I mean, I do, but this guy doesn’t know that. “But, Ash!” you argue. “You literally asked him to show you an example!” My friend, there’s no shortage of Underground Comix either from Crumb himself or in similar style that showcases supposedly satirical humor where “battle of the sexes” comes into play. To show someone that image with no knowledge of what the other person knows is a little dicey imho But it sucks! I have to be okay with him showing me that! I asked for an example and I got it. In his mind, it was a smooth communicative exchange. Request for information? Information given! Because of *Men,* I have to watch the way I approach wanting to talk about this subject because I might become “emotional” or I might be accused of, gasp, showing bias! (Newsflash: we’re humans. WE ALL HAVE BIASES. If you aren’t willing to talk about and challenge them then THAT’S a problem. Another story for another day, I digress). And it’s a shame because I know this *Man* isn’t wanting to consume stories where rape is funny because he’s interested in engaging with content that is historically important but because it was created in the context of some socially-acceptable horrible crap there’s some interesting discussion to be had. No, my bet is the thought process looks like: “Heh. Yeah, I know that feeling. Sometimes you just want to have a girl ride you but she just doesn’t know how to slam that pussy down right, so you gotta help her!” “lol yeah sometimes you just wish pussy would magically work your dick into oblivion without you having to worry about the woman that’s attached to it! am I right, y’all?” laugh out loud satire right there someone give me my own netflix show (watch someone take this section out of context sigh) And, honestly, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I didn’t have a thesis or anything. Just me rambling. RIP moblrs

#long post #rip those of you on mobile #ash talks comics #it gets graphic #trigger warnings all around #in abundance #I mention #rape cw #violence cw #basically

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ayearofpike · 6 years ago

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Remember Me 3: The Last Story

Pocket Books, 1995 244 pages, 20 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-87267-2 LOC: PZ7.P626 Rg 1995 OCLC: 31863011 Released February 1, 1995 (per B&N)

In her second go at life, Shari Cooper has become a best-selling young adult author, and her success is confusing her mission to help make things better. They're about to start shooting the movie of her first novel, and as involved as she is in picking the actors she starts to get too involved with her male lead. This starts to drive a wedge between Shari and her life/afterlife partner, who wants her to listen to the words of a wise teacher and how they might resonate with the teacher they had between lives. By the time she finally starts to listen, will it be too late?

Huh, my blurb makes this book seem readable. In real life, it's more of a patchwork crazy quilt of ideas (and whole scenes!) we've already seen, which doesn't take long to get frustrating. This is even worse in retrospect, with the knowledge that Pike never really wanted to write this book and mostly did it out of obligation to his publisher. It's pretty slapdash and sort of lazy, and even where it wants to be deep it's more like stomping in the kiddie pool than diving in (certainly compared to these other stories he's already done).

Remember my white-savior complaint about Remember Me 2? It's back here, and worse because Shari, in the beginning, seems to have totally abandoned her mission to help. Like ... a year of learning from a master in the afterlife, and your strategy for bettering Jean's home culture and community is to write teen thriller novels? And also to adopt as your pen name "Shari Cooper," the most saltine cracker of names, thus totally obscuring your assumed ethnicity when a best-seller by a visible Latina could raise the water level for all of us? When we start, she’s signing her most recent book, the story about herself that she ghost-wrote inside her brother Jimmy's body, which she submitted (against his wishes) because she "needed another best-seller." Again, this is printed under her pen name. Which is SHARI COOPER. Do you really not foresee any problem with this?

Let's be real: there is nothing here that is remotely in service of leveling the playing field or raising up the inner-city Latinx community that Jean Rodrigues came from. In fact, Shari has totally distanced herself from being Jean, aside from using the name when it's convenient. She barely mentions Jean's mother, she doesn’t even think about her siblings at home, she briefly talks about her old friend Carol who is sick in the hospital, and don't even get me started on how Lenny is not Lenny even a little bit anymore, but now totally Peter. He even goes by Peter now; I think they only identify him as Lenny once, again for convenience's sake. (To his credit, Peter appears to have taken on the service bit of his return to a body much more readily: he coaches disabled baseball teams, and later invites one of his homeless blind players to live with them.)

Shari pisses me off so much that I almost quit reading this book twice. But I'd be annoyed with myself if this blog was "reading all of Pike's books except one," so I finished it. Still, I'm going to skip ahead on the summary and probably leave a lot of things out.

The movie they're making is a sinking-boat thriller, where a nerdy kid invites seven bullies out on a pleasure cruise and then sinks it in shark-infested waters, leaving only one lifeboat. The star they've got lined up is a drug addict, but the producer has found someone else who knows all Shari's work and blew him away on a chance audition, so even though they're going to start shooting in just a few days he wants to switch actors. And sure enough, this guy makes Shari feel like he belongs in the role, even though he's cocky enough to suggest script changes before he has it and to kiss her during the reading. Or maybe it's because of that last part. She's very confused.

So Shari gets in a fight with her nerd villain actor not long after, and this dude both stands up for her and takes her away, out for a romantic dinner. Did I mention that Shari lives with a dude that she's been in love with across TWO lifespans? But she still goes with this guy, and he kisses her again, but she does have the good grace to back away and go inside, where Peter tells her all about a meeting she missed with a yogi who teaches meditation for unity.

They fall asleep, and Shari wakes up outside her body, feeling just like she did in the first book when she died only she knows she's not dead yet. She jumps into Peter's dreams, where the yogi is hanging out, and they talk about their feelings and their actions and Shari's headaches, which she still gets, naturally, because Jean fell on her head off a balcony. Then Shari suddenly appears in her brother's bedroom, where he's naked in bed with her best friend. Not Carol — the half-sister from her previous life. It doesn't matter, because even this friend isn't that important in this story. Shari's suddenly whisked to her mom's bedside — but not her birth mom, her switched-at-birth mom, her brother's mom, her murderer's mom — who is crying herself to sleep next to a copy of Remember Me by Shari Cooper. (This doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Wasn’t this the lady who suddenly jumped to Amanda’s side and hired her a lawyer when she realized she was her birth child? Maybe I'm making this more confusing than it needs to be, but after all, Pike put all the strings into this crazy quilt. I'm just unraveling them.)

Then she hops to the fancy hotel room where her star is sleeping, and she jumps into his dream and sees a creepy space battle where purple ships are blowing up white ones. What does it mean? Shari isn't sure, but she wakes up (confusing her dreams and jumbling them together) and is inspired to start a new story: “The Starlight Crystal,” about a fleet of white ships returning to Earth after centuries of travel, having found golden enlightenment and been told to bring it home, only to be driven away by a vicious attack from a fleet of purple ships. As far as I can tell, this Starlight Crystal has nothing in common with the computer game from See You Later except the name and the fact that there is interstellar travel, and likewise with the novel that'll show up later.

(And let me just take a second to be annoyed that she remembered the dream sequence enough to write it all down for THIS fuckin’ book but acts like it was slipping away from her as she’s writing “The Starlight Crystal.” Like Pike forgot how to acknowledge the present-tense narrator describing the past between the first book and now. It really doesn’t hold up by comparison.)

In the morning, Shari goes to the set they’re constructing for the exterior boat scenes. They’re excavating a pit somewhere in the desert, which they’re going to fill with water and surround with matte paintings of the Caribbean and deposit their rental sharks. Yeah, rental sharks, four of them, and apparently it’s OK to just stick them in a dredged hole with trucked-in pumped water without raising any eyebrows. The new star shows up and asks to take her to lunch, which, sure, he’s supposed to be rehearsing a movie and she’s supposed to be finalizing the script and also she’s WITH SOMEONE, but they can go have a two-hour lunch in a fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills. He tells her that he’s read all her books, including Magic Fire, a shoutout to a Pike novel that hasn’t come out yet. While they’re flirting, he reads her palm and is taken aback by the break in the lifeline that indicates she should have died three years ago. He also calls her both Jean and Shari, which ... fuckin’ sloppy, Pike.

I didn’t mention that Lenny’s body is impotent, right? He’s paralyzed from the waist down, and so Peter can’t get up to much in the bedroom. Plus he couldn’t help fucking around with the chest-burster alien thing in the afterlife when all Shari wanted was to get laid after the prom in their imaginations. Like the one thing she’s constantly wanted is to have sex with Peter, and all she has are memories of the premature ejaculator of her Shari life and of Jean getting pregnant. She’s been celibate for four years, even while she’s been with the one dude she constantly dreamed about. So I get why she’s horny for New Star, even if I still reserve the right to be a little judgemental. It isn’t helping Shari that he has some kind of undefineable it-factor that at least she’s learned to attune to in her afterlife training.

But now Shari wants to know just who this dude is and why he has these compelling effects on her. So naturally she decides to hire a private detective. Specifically, she goes to the detective that solved her murder. She’s pretty vague about why she wants New Star checked out, which makes the detective uneasy, but when she offers to double his rate he takes the case. Then they all go to the yogi’s lecture. Well, not the detective, but New Star tags along with Shari and Peter and her brother, and he’s pretty much a total asshole while the yogi is explaining how to share and communicate and love and help and find unity. Also, the lecture starts and ends with unguided meditation, and Shari finds that her headache is gone without drugs for the first time in months. Basically, it’s the same scene from Sati, except Peter and Shari and New Star don’t let anyone else talk.

She wakes up again in the middle of the night to write, this time adding a description of the pursuit by the purple ship and attempted escape of the white ship. She stops when she runs out of words, and finds that she has startled awake the blind baseball player sleeping on her couch. He tells her all about what a great guy Peter is and how he hopes that Peter’s spine will heal someday so he can walk with her on the beach like he’s always wanted. Shari never knew this was something Peter wanted to do, because she’s a self-centered asshole.

The movie starts shooting early the next day, and Shari and her producer have to immediately fire one of the actors because she can’t handle being in water over her knees. This is a movie about a SINKING BOAT and nobody thought to make sure the actors could deal with water. New Star has a ballsy solution: have Shari play the role. She’s not an actor! The villain points this out! She flubs half the takes! But it’s a low-budget picture, apparently, despite being based on a New York Times best-seller, so they have to go with it.

Afterwards he takes her out to dinner again, while Peter’s at the yogi’s meditation class. Then they go back to her place so he can give her a full-body massage. Then they get naked and make out. (Shades of Chain Letter 2!) But before his ... uh ... purple spaceship can enter the wormhole to hyperspace, the blind baseball player comes home and walks in on them. He’s blind, so he assumes he’s caught Shari with Peter, and he’s contrite and apologetic and hides in the bathroom. So Shari sneaks New Star out of her house and then asks if the kid wants to go to Disneyland so he doesn’t hear when Peter actually comes in. After nine at night. Yeah, nothing weird about that. But he’s a kid, so he’s excited, and when they get home he asks Peter why he didn’t get out of bed and go with them if he’s awake now. So Shari confesses, and Peter cries, and Shari leaves.

She goes to the same hotel where New Star is staying, but doesn’t seek him out. I guess that’s one good thing I can give Shari: given enough guilt, she won’t immediately go climb on some dude’s jock. Instead, she writes more, about how the white ship jumps through hyperspace but the purple ship follows, and their ship is crippled from the pursuit so all they can do is send the crew off on the emergency escape pods and hope for the best while the captain and first mate hang behind to be boarded by the purple invaders and hopefully set off one last bomb and ruin the attackers’ plans.

During a break in shooting the next day, Shari goes to the detective, who has turned up some information on New Star. Specifically, he is a creep and an abuser who has beaten up his last two co-stars but because they didn’t press charges he’s walked. Shari doesn’t want to believe it, and the detective quickly susses out that she’s got more involvement with New Star than just being his boss. You came to a detective with good instincts, you idiot, what did you expect? At the end of the day, she calls Peter and apologizes again and says that there’s something she has to face, but that she loves him and hopes he’ll forgive her. And then in the middle of the night, her phone rings and it’s the movie’s villain, saying that someone is planning to feed someone to the sharks during the next day’s shoot and that she needs to meet him on the set to talk about it.

So who does Shari call to help her out with this situation, given what she just learned about New Star from the detective that day? That’s right — she’s a stupid idiot! They drive out to the set and find the villain waiting for them with a gun in his hand. He says that a real murderer’s only motivation is wanting to kill, and now he wants to kill. But first they’re going to rehearse. Shari and New Star must each paddle a lifeboat across the shark pond and back, and if they can both make it and come back and neither one bolts, they’ll both live. So Shari gets in the boat, which feels like it’s leaking, and quickly (through/around the panic) does her lap. But New Star refuses, and instead throws the villain to the sharks directly. Uh, no shit.

So the police come, and after hours in the clink Shari finally thinks to call the producer, who comes and gets her out immediately. She goes back to the hotel and sleeps for a whole day, dreaming about a golden being floating to Earth and living a life and dying and being reincarnated, each time hoping to impart a little more knowledge and love into humanity. When she wakes up, she remembers that Peter had wanted her to see the yogi one last time, but by the time she gets there he’s already left for the airport. She and Peter reconcile, but on the way home she gets a call from the detective, who must talk urgently. They pick him up, and he directs them to a certain address. A certain condo near the beach, where on the ground outside there’s a faint bloodstain that has never washed out.

It seems that the detective has read Remember Me by Shari Cooper. Also, he’s a GODDAMN DETECTIVE who was ON THE CASE it was about. Also, his daughter read it, the only one who would actually remember an angel and a devil showing up to scare her straight. He’s pretty freaked out at how this Latina from the barrio could possibly know what happened with saltine-cracker Shari in Huntington Beach, but she’s able to calm him down without actually answering his questions. I guess we have to accept that there are more than just knowable facts in this story, because the detective does and remembers that he’s called Shari because he learned some gruesome details about New Star. Which, so has Shari, first-hand. And they’re about to get some more, because New Star is at the door with a gun.

He pushes the detective off the balcony, I guess because nobody had gone off a balcony in this book yet. Then they drive to Shari’s grave, which he’s already dug up and is going to bury her alive with her old body. He throws her in the hole, and as she tries to climb out he nails her in the head with the shovel right where her headaches start. Like he knew. It seems that New Star is from the other side too, but his mission is to thwart the drive toward peace and unity. You know that dream he was having, the one that inspired Shari’s story? It’s all true, three hundred thousand years in the past, and Roger is one of the purple-ship aliens in a human body. And their grand mission is to ... kill a YA thriller writer because she’s getting too close to home. I don’t know why she has to be buried with her previous body, other than it happened in “Collect Call.”

So Shari looks to Peter for enlightenment and love to be the last thing she sees as she’s buried alive. Only he’s not in his wheelchair. The pain of his love being buried has magically healed his spine, and now he’s behind New Star with the shovel. Obviously they kill him, and then whisk Shari to a hospital, where she knows her brain only has limited time left but wants to get out to finish her story. Which she does: the captain blows up her ship and the aliens’, but only after remembering a fable her grandmother used to tell about a dragon stealing a heart and then being tormented to kill itself because the heart retained the love and desires of its body and wouldn’t stop beating. I don’t know, this seems like a pretty shitty story to kill someone over.

But then she realizes she has to apologize to someone. No, not Peter; that’s done and he’s still walking. No, not Carol, still sick in the hospital as far as we know — why would we be concerned with a bisexual Latina drug addict just because she’s Jean’s best friend and Jean’s body is dying? It’s her mom. NO, not her birth mom. NO, not her Latina mom. Switched-at-Birth Mom. Jimmy’s mom. The one who raised her. Which, OK, that counts for something. But anyway, she drives to her house and tells her that the story is true and that she can’t say why. Then she’s obviously in pain, so Switched-at-Birth Mom invites her to lie down in ... Shari’s bed. Where she dies.

The epilogue is literally Peter handing Jimmy the floppy disk that this story is written on and Jimmy finishing it. Which is maybe why the last little bit is about his mommy. But then again, Shari forced his body to write the first one, so maybe she guided him here too.

This shit is a hot mess, you guys. Let’s leave aside the fact that Pike didn’t really want to write it, and let’s leave aside the fact that all these pieces BARELY line up to form a coherent story, and let’s leave aside how the problems mentioned in the second book TOTALLY WENT AWAY for this one. Let’s even jump over how my Latino heart was stepped on and kicked aside along with the roots of these characters for the ENTIRE BOOK. Here’s the big issue: Christopher Pike wrote a story about an angel (I guess) returning to human form, with a mission to make humanity better ... and the BEST THING he could come up with, the DEEPEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION to our woes that crossed his sexy lizard brain, was that she needed to be a best-selling YA thriller author. Talk about an inflated sense of self-importance.

And with that, I am finally done with Remember Me 3: The Last Story. Which I am not ashamed to admit that I did NOT remember. Hopefully I will remember to NOT read it again.

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salarta · 7 years ago

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My Attitude/Pessimism Toward Marvel

I’m tired but can’t sleep. That means writing a post about Polaris and my general pessimism toward Marvel.

I’m putting this behind a cut because I know some people out there don’t want to see it, and I won’t push it on them when they search. Others have probably seen it over and over and are sick to death of seeing it. Here I go.

I’m extremely pessimistic about Marvel these days. I expect a mix of nothing, backhanded/sabotaged use, and empty gestures that function in the most technical sense possible but don’t actually amount to anything.

Preface: when I note a specific person, do not harass them. I am not just saying this. I mean it. Harassment is bad. It sucks. Don’t do it.

Introduction to Marvel

I learned about Polaris in 2009. I’ve been putting up with Marvel’s behavior for the past 8 years. I’m jaded and pissed off.

When I discovered her, it was at the precise moment when Marvel was shutting down the good things going for her and trying to discard her in space. I loved Jeff Parker’s Exiles run. They abruptly shut it down after six issues; Jeff Parker even had most of a script for issue #7 done when they did it. I loved Lorna’s presence in the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon. They abruptly canceled it after one season, despite the team having plans as far out as season 3.

My introduction to Marvel’s attitude toward her was already on a sour note. In spite of it, I entered into Marvel with optimism. I naively thought that perhaps with enough positivity and shows of support, things would change.

But then I got to Tom Brevoort. Presently Senior Vice President of Publishing.

Introduction to Editorial/Executive Individuals

Back around 2012, Brevoort was very openly negative toward Polaris. When the matter of Lorna’s parentage came out, he was more than happy to try to claim Lorna couldn’t possibly be Magneto’s daughter, yet somehow Siryn could be Banshee’s daughter, with some convoluted excuse about “genetics breeding true.” When someone asked about Polaris possibly being in the Avengers vs X-Men event, his response was to say that Lorna couldn’t be part of it because “events are only for A-listers and B-listers.” Meaning he blew off any potential value she could have to the story, and looked down on her as a “lesser” character.

This is in addition to Brevoort bending over backwards to exclude her from family events in things like Children’s Crusade.

My first experience with someone at Marvel in an editorial/executive role was someone who had nothing but contempt for my favorite character and looked for any excuses he could find to devalue her and exclude her from anything he could.

Handling Lorna’s Return From Space

At the time I got into her, Marvel comics had Lorna shoved into space, same with Rachel Summers and Havok. You know how important they seemed to see her? They kept her in space limbo for a year. A full year lost, because according to what I’ve read, the X-Men and space offices didn’t know who had control of the characters.

Think about that. If this was someone like Wolverine or Storm, they would’ve been on top of making sure who could use them. Instead, they cared so little that they spent a year just letting her hang with no writers able to use her.

When they did finally bring her back? They shoved her back onto X-Factor.

X-Factor

Now, a lot of people love X-Factor, and they love Peter David. I understand that. I had a volatile start here, and if I’m completely honest, I didn’t give Peter David a fair shot before judging at the time. But I need to explain why I was volatile over this.

Polaris was in X-Factor in the 90s. She had a lot of major development afterward. She joined her father Magneto and her step-siblings on Genosha, developing her powers, gaining vital skills, building a reputation. She survived the genocide and dealt with trauma afterward. She lost her powers from Scarlet Witch stripping them from her. Got them back when Apocalypse forced her to become Pestilence. She went through Hell.

... Then Marvel decided to kick her back down to where she was before all of that development. They shoved her back on her old 90s team. Forced her to remain Havok’s supporting girlfriend. The reveal cover even had her standing behind Havok to drive this point home.

To me, it felt like a symbolic “fuck you” to everything Lorna suffered through, all the growth she had, all the ways she established her own character.

This was my first experience with, in my eyes, Marvel technically fulfilling something I and other fans wanted while undermining it. Fans wanted her back from space. They brought her back from space... then put her on a book that at first glance turned back the clock on all her development, and with a writer who is deeply opposed to characters he’s writing being involved in crossovers and broader Marvel events if he can help it.

Marvel traded exile in space for exile on X-Factor. They didn’t solve the problem. They just changed where the problem existed.

But like I said. I don’t think I gave Peter David a fair shot at the time. He did do some good things.

Sabotaged Milestones

I want to note going into this that I had some major problems with some of Peter David’s writing. I was very upset when he wrote Lorna saying he could do without seeing her father for the rest of her life; giving Marvel an excuse to never use that relationship. All-New X-Factor #3-6 also treated Lorna very, very poorly. It lacked empathy in writing her “rage” moments, and undermined her leadership to make Gambit look better.

I wanted to get that out of the way for context.

X-Factor #243 told Lorna’s origin story. She’d gone over 40 years without it being told. And it was good! Much better than I expected.

All-New X-Factor let Lorna lead a team in her own right! It also took over 40 years to happen. Until then, she only got to be “replacement leader” for other characters’ absences.

All-New X-Factor in general let her interact with Quicksilver, and #14 let her interact with Scarlet Witch! It was the first time she got to spend time with her siblings in around 10 years.

... And Marvel refused to promote any of it.

Marvel did nothing to promote Lorna’s origin story getting told after 40 years of Marvel never telling it. They didn’t promote ANXF at all. When ANXF #14 was coming out, they went so far in trying to keep people from knowing about it that they withheld its cover until a week before release. Too late for most people to order it. Not to mention it was the second issue of a double shipping month.

But wait. It doesn’t just stop there. It also goes into Marvel trying to use attributes of Lorna while refusing to actually use Lorna herself.

“Replacing” Lorna, Not Using Her

At the same time as ANXF #14′s release, Marvel had promoted Axis with a cover months in advance of Scarlet Witch paired with Enchantress, with Wanda’s hair tinted red and Enchantress’ hair tinted green. So basically? While Marvel tried to bury ANXF #14 happening, they tried to exploit the visual of Lorna and Wanda to sell more copies of Axis.

Then, after Axis forced a retcon that made Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver suddenly not Magneto’s kids anymore, Marvel decided to do something else dickish. They created a character called Luminous, to be a “sister” to Wanda and Pietro.

That’s not one, but two times Marvel - mainly the Avengers side, meaning most likely Brevoort - tried to replace Lorna instead of actually using her. One, a character they saw as “more worthy,” and another brand new character they created for the sole purpose of occupying the role she had. That’s how much Marvel looked down on Lorna: they decided they’d rather create a character than use her.

Forced Limbo

Marvel canceled All-New X-Factor “due to low sales.” Notably, when they put out the Scarlet Witch solo, they let that book last for a year despite having sales just as low starting with issue #2.

The last time we saw Lorna in anything before her return this year was Secret Wars in 2015. At the time, I was excited. She was going to be able to interact with her father. Her broad family ties were acknowledged with Secret Wars: House of M. Various alternate reality versions of her had cameos.

I started dreading that Marvel doing so much for her all at once was a sign they planned to throw her into limbo afterward, and this was just to smooth things over before they did. I kept it to myself though because I wanted to believe Marvel intended to do better by her from that point onward.

Except I was right.

For two years, Marvel kept her in forced limbo. No appearances. No cameos. Nothing. The absolute most she got in that time was Sabretooth talking about how she smelled. Marvel looked at interest in Lorna, and for two years said “Fuck her, let’s use literally anyone else.”

Oh, but she’s back now, so it’s all fine! Right?

No. It’s not.

Beneath Men On Return (X-Men Blue)

Her first appearance this year was an alternate future in Deadpool and the Mercs for Money. There, she wore an all green costume with Magneto’s helmet and Magneto’s chest element. At the time, I made the mistake of supporting it. I should have seen and treated it as a bad omen of things to come.

When she finally got re-introduced with X-Men Blue #8 and #9, I was pretty damned jaded by Marvel. After everything I explained above, after two years of forced limbo, I expected she would briefly appear and then get thrown back into forced limbo. It turns out, how she’s been written and still being written makes me wish Bunn would stop writing her.

X-Men Blue #8 spends a ton of time building up Havok. He gets to be a threat to the teen X-Men. He gets to lead a brand new team of his own. He gets to interact with Briar Raleigh and get introduced as working with Emma Frost. He gets to establish connections. He gets all of this.

Then Polaris gets introduced. And how is she introduced? With dialogue exclusively emphasizing that Havok is her ex. And a description text box that describes as only one thing: “Daughter of Magneto.”

Think about that. Imagine Havok bursts into a room Polaris is in and all he says is “I know you were my girlfriend, but I won’t let my feelings for you hold me back.” Imagine Magneto shows up, and the only thing Marvel thinks you should know about him is “Father of Polaris.” Nothing else.

X-Men Blue #9 proceeds to reinforce this. It takes great pains to re-frame Lorna’s long-held “Mistress of Magnetism” title into looking like something she’s only allowed to have because Magneto is her father. When Lorna uses her powers to make two team members leave, one of them says it’s a sign she’s definitely Magneto’s daughter.

Because, y’know, a silly woman like Polaris couldn’t possibly want to do that of her own accord. It must be because of her daddy. Right?

Then, in a future issue (I think the next one), Bunn writes Lorna acting surprised by an attack on the team’s base - just so he can write Magneto “correcting” her about how attacks can come at any moment.

This is Polaris. A woman who’s been attacked out of nowhere repeatedly for decades. She survived a genocidal massacre that came out of nowhere and killed millions, for fuck’s sake. There’s no way in hell she’s going to not expect an attack while in a base of operations. She wasn’t safe in the heart of Genosha, she’s not going to think a piddling mansion will somehow be safer. I found this very insulting as a whole.

In the latest event, Lorna is put in the Malice costume at one point. Her reaction can be summarized as “Oh wow, this is one weird costume alright! How strange. Oh well.” While the scene is designed to heavily emphasize Mutant Massacre, the horror of dead mutants in the sewers, and Magneto’s outright about it.

Here’s the thing. Malice possessed Lorna and used her body to hurt and kill people, including those she loved. She was a passenger in her own body, forced to witness the horror of it all. For Lorna to have no kind of real reaction at all is insulting. The book plays it like it’s just for fun and thrills and doesn’t care at all about how Lorna would actually behave.

And something that doesn’t help is occasionally forcing dialogue where Lorna says ‘father’ or ‘dad’ in spots that are completely unnatural, just to remind everyone that he’s above her in that fashion. As I write this, I’m trying to remember if I saw Magneto refer to Lorna as “daughter” like this at any point.

The consistent pattern in everything Bunn’s done with Lorna so far is this: “Magneto and Havok are great, Lorna is beneath them and that’s the only value she has as a character.”

Odds and Ends

I’ve said a lot here, but there’s some pieces throughout the years that didn’t fit above.

The X-Men franchise had its anniversary in 2013. Marvel made covers meant to combine into one big image. Polaris was on none of them. Yet, Marvel included Havok alongside four of the original five X-Men on one cover.

In general, Marvel has been forcing Havok into every major development for Lorna while never raising her profile when things happen for Havok. When he went to Uncanny Avengers, the most she came up was unnamed as a “crazy girlfriend” he’s glad to be away from.

Yet, when Lorna’s origin story was told, Havok got to be involved. When Lorna led a team of her own, Havok got to be forced in as spying on her via Quicksilver with the reason being that Havok in sum thinks she’s not smart enough to avoid being taken advantage of by Harrison Snow. And then X-Men Blue, where he got to be the primary focus of what was being played up and promoted as Lorna’s big return after 2 years of forced limbo.

With regard to Avengers vs X-Men, Brevoort did technically relent to include her... as a nameless cameo. Who gets mind-controlled into submission by Emma Frost. And who Magneto completely ignores being treated that way after having gone into space to help rescue Lorna just a month prior.

When Occasional Good Isn’t Enough

As you may be picking up here, Marvel did allow some good things for Lorna during these past 8 years.

She returned from space. Magneto is her father. She got to interact with Wanda and Pietro. She got her origin story told. She got to lead a team of her own. She got her first playable appearances in video games. She got a figurine after a decade without one and lots of fan demand in top 10 lists. Arguably (cause Nix took the initiative to ask to use her), Marvel allowed her to be a star on Gifted, which is the best writing she’s had in a long time.

A person might look at the good stuff she’s managed to get in the past 8 years and think: what’s the deal? Why be pessimistic and negative about Marvel when they’ve done good things for her in that time?

Here’s the thing. Doing the occasional good thing does not undo massive heapings of bad that happen at the same time. If you burn down my house, giving me a brand new car isn’t going to bring my house back, nor is it anything close to a replacement for what I lost.

I’m not “ungrateful,” I just don’t let the rare nice thing from Marvel blind me to all the times they’ve screwed over the character I care about and keep doing it. I don’t let the occasional nice thing make me forget that Marvel’s spent most of her nearly 50 years of existence cheating her out of everything she can be.

My attitude toward Marvel is a reflection of Marvel’s attitude toward what I care about.

Some people are quick to play nice over that occasional good. I see doing so as a mistake. It’s giving Marvel permission to keep treating Lorna poorly as long as they throw a tiny breadcrumb over every so often. I think it’s part of what’s allowed Marvel to hold her back for literal decades. They don’t have to do anything more than the bare minimum if the bare minimum looks like it’s enough for Polaris fans.

Some people are afraid Marvel will at some point “punish” demanding more from Marvel after the occasional good. My stance is this: if Marvel is genuine, if they really want to do right by Lorna, then they’ll try to do right by her no matter what I say. If they try to tear down Lorna for things I’ve said, then they were lying any time they said they support her or that they said they try to be a good writer/editor. At which point they require more criticism and complaint, not less.

This post was long, but necessary for me. I needed to say all this.

#polaris #lorna dane #x-men #marvel #personal

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kennethherrerablog · 5 years ago

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Should you wear shoes indoors? (No, and here’s why)

The New York Times wrote an entire piece called Should You Take Your Shoes Off at Home?

They consulted several experts to discuss this great philosophical question.

There’s just one problem. They forgot to ask one person: Ramit Sethi.

Like all Indian people, I can give you the correct answer to the question.

YES, YOU TAKE YOUR DISGUSTING SHOES OFF. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Who leaves their shoes on? Your sweaty feet remain constricted for hours and hours. You track disgusting dirt into your house and onto your floors. You ruin your floors and rugs faster, requiring more frequent vacuuming. (Oh, wait, let me guess — you don’t use a vacuum, do you? You use a fucking swiffer and spend your Sunday brunches telling friends, “It’s awesome! It’s just like vacuuming!”) No, it is not.

But if you’ve grown up walking into your house with shoes, the entire concept of taking them off can seem totally foreign to you. As the saying goes, “If you want to know what water is, don’t ask the fish.”

I call these assumptions “invisible scripts,” or beliefs so deeply embedded, we don’t even realize they affect our attitudes and behaviors.

For example, when you think of an outdoor market with thousands of people, smells assaulting your senses, yelling and noises…what’s the first word that goes through your mind?

Was it…

“Ugh”

“No thanks”

“Too crowded”

To BILLIONS of people, that’s completely normal.

To you and me — shopping in our air-conditioned stores (and more likely, Amazon) — it seems overwhelming.

The more and more I experience different parts of the world, the more I see how many cultural assumptions we take for granted. And I see an opportunity to pick and choose from the best to create OUR Rich Lives. (I’ve been sharing my travel experiences on my Instagram account. Follow me there.)

Not the Rich Life that society tells us, or our parents or friends. The one WE want.

Do we really want to get a mortgage, buy a suburban house, and move away from our friends and family because “we need more space?” Maybe. Maybe not.

Do we really want to work all day, check email on weekends, and take 7 days of vacation a year to “get away”…and then tell our friends that we “need a vacation from our vacation?”

I feel fortunate to have grown up in two cultures — born in America, yet raised by immigrant parents — so I’ve had the opportunity to see how completely different people think.

I’ve seen the amazing parts of American culture…but also the beliefs we unknowingly pursue, not realizing they directly lead to us being unhappy.

Recently, I talked to a couple friends about this. Two friends at the gym were talking about arranged marriages when I walked up. One of them joked, “Hey man, you guys have a lot of weird customs in India.” I said, “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like arranged marriages…and the caste system. What the fuck, man?”

(These are my friends. They meant it in good fun.)

I loved it.

Because I then got to say, “Yeah, I can see how you would think those are pretty weird. Kind of like the weird stuff people do in this country.”

They looked at me blankly. What? Americans do weird stuff? How can that be?

Oh, how about complaining about having no friends, yet the minute we have kids, we move away to suburbia, distancing themselves by literally miles from the nearest person, then we complain about their commute and being placed in an old folks’ home?

Or how about normalizing our gargantuan food portions, seeing the predictable results, and then saying, “No — it can’t be food portions. It’s genetics!”

Or, finally, feet. Our puritanical hatred of feet (“eww, you touched my foot, gross”) is matched only by how this country sexualizes feet (I don’t get it, but you do you). This inexplicable puritanical/sexual mix might be the perfect description for America.

Back to my friends at the gym. My favorite part of this story is the completely blank looks on their faces — BOTH of them. They literally could not comprehend how Americans do anything weird. To them, all of this is completely normal.

Imagine growing up in America, watching American movies, thinking everything we do is normal. To us, it is. But there are a whole set of invisible cultural scripts we assume are universal…and they’re not.

Moving out at 18

Distrusting our government

That you should be able to buy a perfect basket of strawberries 365 days/year

That you must be “evil” to be rich

Having lawns

Asking for the check and getting it immediately

That being busy means we’re important

That life should have a “happy ending”

That it’s better to let 10 guilty people go free than to imprison one innocent person

That our goal should be to be “happy” (and to teach our kids the same)

Believing our role as parents is to teach our kids “independence”

Dating multiple people before getting married

(More invisible scripts here.)

I agree with some of those — but disagree with others.

What are the assumptions you make? (How would you even discover them?) And if you decide to change one to create YOUR Rich Life, what would it be?

Please reply here. I read every response.

Should you wear shoes indoors? (No, and here’s why) is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Should you wear shoes indoors? (No, and here’s why) published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

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airoasis · 5 years ago

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Everything Wrong With Captain Marvel In 16 Minutes Or Less

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/everything-wrong-with-captain-marvel-in-16-minutes-or-less/

Everything Wrong With Captain Marvel In 16 Minutes Or Less

never much like the Stanley cameos and definitely don’t like logos but this is goddamn touching but while we’re on the subject of opening logos for movies let’s frame it this way imagine buying the new Taylor Swift album but before you can hear me you have to first listen to 20 seconds of a universal music group audio jingle it would probably be rocking and full of tight harmonies but it would still forever be 20 seconds of norway’s standing between you and your music that’s what opening studio logos do for movies place my hands so angry oh my god they give us the name of the city the description of that city’s importance and then a third line with an utterly incomprehensible series of letter and number characters do you know what time it is Jesus Marvel movies young Dumbledore young Pope Sherlock Holmes is there any beloved institution that Jude Law hasn’t infiltrated anything you know funny how I was thinking the same thing about this chatty friendly fight scene which happens in every movie there’s nothing dangerous warrior an emotion not even a nuclear weapon a landmine sharp sword sniper’s bullet jagged rocks meat from a plant that once had an e.coli outbreak control your impulses so easy miss start using this there’s so much goddamn pedantic mansplaining in the beginning of this movie that I fast forwarded to the end where Carol blasts the Balrog and watched it three times in a row future VR requires artificial tendrils that get to know you better than your spouse just because it looks kind of cool doesn’t make it practical so the burrito supreme searches your thoughts and becomes the person that you’re closest to before communicating I mean contact got murdered for doing that at the end of the movie so long the scrolls have invaded yet another border planet this time Topher already lost me dude if you think for one minute I’m getting all this down plus the three or four other names organizations planets he mentions in this briefing you sadly overestimate my ability to give it well marvel do you read me anybody copy as technologically advanced as they are at a Cree or apparently still reliant on 1990s cellphone reception this is some dusty furry dust things suspense I’m no expert but maybe if you spent less time screaming you’d be able to do more scrolling no one will be seated during the bunch of old portion of the movie some stuff is happening just try and keep track of the purple in the green they’re on different sides I think movie does a great job advertising the Air Force you don’t now the movie does pile on a bit heavy with this stuff about her constantly being told she’s not good enough I get that people are told that but in movie form maybe we don’t need to see it a dozen times to get the point okay fine we need some back story on why Carroll’s so driven to be the best but this exposition brain probe really feels more like a Nike commercial than an MCU film okay wait can you change the way the camera of your memory tilts so that you can pick up fine details let’s just like the zoom and enhance cliche but for your brain dr.

Wendy Lawson that’s her so Carol can hear the scrolls that are digging around in her memories and she in memory reacts to it you can’t change an event by remembering it right fright she got knocked out cold and captured on that planet with a single blast of one of these space Tasers now she’s impervious to them that’s not exactly full-sized so I guess we can call this a little helm scream in case you thought this movie’s 90s references we’re gonna be subtle she crashed lands into a king blockbuster huh movies playing this is a visual gag but was Carol seriously gonna immediately shoot any non-threatening presents in this environment what if this were the janitor doing a late-night cleaning this top shelf here goes hudsucker proxy hook something else that I’m pretty sure is hamburger hill then first night then jumping jack flash jr.

And just cause I worked at three different blockbusters in my lifetime and you could fire four there you have one job and I think half these movies on the Shelf star Sean Connery and Arnold Schwarzenegger how likely in 1995 is it that a blockbuster would be advertising babe with a giant poster and standee when that was only released in August of that year the church wasn’t coming out on video at this point honestly we take care of those dirty looks is quite simply the worst dry-cleaning advertising slogan I could even fathom why does a dry-cleaning service even need a slogan look at you be better off just writing your hours of operation talk about some nuclear yadda yadda how the hell does outdated 90s tech and a payphone and turn into a communicator with the ability to send signals to her people millions of miles away in space all did it book work sure she could make a space phone out of that but she couldn’t bypass Ma Bell in the ill communication once it’s real aliens find the earth to be way less than acceptable cliche okay if this call is urgent enough to use the sirens why not take the cops and shield until after daybreak to respond why was shield alerted at all it’s a broken window in a fucking blockbuster okay this d aging technology has officially gotten creepy as hell I’ll be honest Jana fired Sam Jackson looks pretty awesome here and I am terrified of how that technology will definitely be used in the future this is the most convenient Road near a train situation any city planner ever cooked up in pursuit and she should be easy to track considering she’ll be the only person in Los Angeles to take the train sure Stanley could have been reading Kevin Smith’s mole rat script in 1995 the movie came out on October 20th 1995 so this could be early in the year when it was about to get shot or something the problem is the record story just left Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness being advertised here is coming soon or already out came out October 23rd 1995 and while it’s insane that those two things were only three days apart Stan Lee would not have been reading the script in October unless he was just getting nostalgic about his cameo for the residents of LA to jump to an old lady’s needs and all but how is this even possible you’re telling me that after all the kicking Carol’s done three regular ask commuters could temporarily restrain her fight chase on top of a moving train I feel like I’ve never seen that before except always of course it is tunnels the only logical choice once you’ve opted for fight on top of a train what I’m still here at the blockbuster Coulson saw fury take off forever ago so why is he just calling it also look I think the young ending effect they’re using on Sam Jackson is amazing but they must have used all the resources on that because Clark Craig’s face makes Jeff Bridges and Tron Legacy look like fine art look movie no one in a major city subway terminal would look this hard and long and a girl in a weird costume subway terminals are beacons for folks in weird costumes I rode a train once with spider-man and Marilyn Monroe and a guy that look exactly like Richard Grieco only I don’t think that was a costume I think that was just Richard Grieco there you go now that no one can tell that’s an alien no one will ask questions about the body with a jacket thrown over its face inside the wrecked car ah cool the doohickey that the scroll dropped on the train gets inserted into the whatchamacallit and immediately displays plot convenient footage perfectly edited for maximum exposition alta vista internet cafes modems big computer monitors wasn’t 1995 hilarious but seriously how would carol have the first goddamn clue how to work this fad and sure the motorcycle guy was an asshole and probably deserved it but what did this vintage boutique ever do to anyone hey how’s your eye that’s a fine yeah they’re not gonna hem handedly try and shoehorn a reason for Fury’s eye patch into this movie I got word on a motorcycle thief that fits her description but instead of immediately following up on that lead I’m gonna waste valuable time at shield espousing this clunky dialogue might even drink a tear wine and stop by Sam Goody’s to pick up a jagged little pill CD before I act on any of this information toggling Scrolls can only some recent memories of their host bodies that is literally the definition of a stupid restriction to put on an ability just for plot or hero reasons why should they even be able to access any memories if all they’re doing is copycatting where are you born Huntsville Alabama does this do Carroll except to provide a little more backstory for fury is she able to verify this bolt in any way Ruth you’re not a scroll Carol is a dick – what if this is a jukebox from the 90s has to be 30% ac/dc CDs 40% Tom Petty CDs 29% journey CDs and 1% Van Morrison CD is that a communicator yeah state of the art – wig agent which would in no way and work in a bunker like this but I’m gonna keep making these nostalgic references as long as Marvel pays me to do so Oh how did this cat get into this official government covert facility and did they know he was a flirt come if so why is he out roaming the halls hey that’s exactly how Eminem writes his lyrics I’ll assume Lawson was writing the follow-up to Stan I want to question her along that sounds well evil and/or dirty all I know is we take them in to dead or alive dead or alive yeah agreed that’s excessive it makes no sense unless your bosses bosses a scroll poly these are the loudest lights I’ve ever heard can you imagine the constant jump scares you’d have to endure if you were collating these records the CGI cat is a king abomination and yes the actress is allergic and they had to do a CGI cat in some places but just take twenty thousand dollars of the money you’re spending on unifying Sam Jackson and put it into realistic in the cat god damn also they ran into that cat on level five in the storage room and somehow it ran several floors away from that position and got into the hangar and onto a prototype aircraft that they would eventually use Maria Rambo so how do we get to Louisiana I’m sorry but the amount of information they’ve gleaned from a few seconds of glancing through the records like Maria’s exact address is such bull that this movie is actively starting to stink what is Ronan looked like a character from mist here Carol appeared almost lifelike on the hologram earlier and even in full color his accuser tech still using dial-up or something she flashes little moments but I can’t tell what’s real I’ll tell you what’s real someone on this movie set design team thinks this single mother living alone with her daughter keeps a bowl on the table with 16 lemons in it that’s real that happened you’d better come take a look at this cliche that was all that survived the crash well that’s a lie you’re telling me a prototype aircraft crashed and every single piece of it disintegrated into dust including the rest of this dog tag but not this tiny corner of dog tag you know you really should be kinder to your neighbors you never know when you’re gonna need to borrow some sugar this is pretty hilarious but it’s also ridiculous to think that the scrolls stopped off at a fast-food joint to pick up some burgers and shakes on the way to Louisiana and how would you know about the sugar borrowing habits of earthly suburban Knights this soon into your stay on the planet that was before on you you uh before I knew what made you different from me honest Talos had to have gotten this information before the confrontation at the Pegasus base since that’s where he heard the recorder so if he knew that then why did he try to kill Furies ass he knew they were working together and now he’s all peaceful I actually really like this characters turn but given the sequence of events it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense what’s happening it’s loading windows 95 okay so Jude Law shot Lawson before she could blow up the ship but it takes like 15 seconds for him to show up at a distance in all this smoke plus their obstructed somewhat by the crash ship and they’re on the down slope of a hill how did he know where to aim Carol got her powers by being fantastic forward by the warp engine but the energy only hit her despite yon raw and about the same distance away she assumed his power she’s coming with us okay I’d maybe buy that this recording spurred Carol’s memory to recall the crash but she’s being unconscious here so how would she know this part quick question why did they leave the main house and all go to the one day from collapse cabin to listen to the audio it makes a nice shot but it makes no sense from a human being standpoint is this houses only computer out in the decrepit barn why does Talos still have Keller’s jacket on we’ve seen that when they morph into other humans they already have their clothes on but now that he’s turned back into his natural shape that jacket should be gone right she wanted you to help us find the core and why the hell didn’t she tell Carol about the reason for the mission in the first place I know it would have been weird to come out as an alien but they were already in top-secret mode this withholding of information both makes about as much sense as what happened to Poe in the last Jedi did you hear me man this depiction of the friendship between two strong independent women that is emotional but not corny is long overdue and it’s about goddamn time that Marvel showed it so I’m gonna take us in off because I’m totally a social justice warrior or virtue signal or whatever the latest term that’s complimentary but is being used to be derogatory take it off this moonlight shot makes no sense the pole at the bottom right of the shot shows a shadow that matches up with the moon’s location but then the spaceship thing that veers flew here has a shadow that suggests another even stronger light source off-screen to the right when they were handing out kids they gave up a toughest one lieutenant trouble so is everything cool now like KanCare remember everything about her life on earth black box recording was fucking magic what purpose does this function of the spacesuit serve like some cream was almost finished designing it and the supreme intelligence poked its head in and was like don’t forget to add the unnecessary color wheel why did they bring the can captivate this cat will lead her freak out on fury and cut his face but he doesn’t want to do it here in zero gravity which is baffling because I’ve owned a cat before a lawnmower can freak them out a clap of thunder can freak them out suspending in zero gravity but but have them clawing out the eyeballs of all the motherfuckers nearby until they were on solid footing the cloaking activated holy balls is there anything this magical wrist doohickey can’t do can it order takeout purchase ebooks access free porn ah Who am I kidding of course it can access free porn in her note she called us a tesseract you know I’m fine with the timeline of the tesseract the idea that Howard Stark helped found Pegasus in the 80s and handed it over to this project is totally okay I’m just tired of the fucking tesseract it shows up and seemingly every movie being on tesseract and stuff she’s a pinball wizard it’s gotta be a twist a pinball wizard has got such a supple wrist evil dude picked up the cat carried it all the way here and just tosses it casually and that is a ton of wasted effort what did you do to your uniform he got in her head just like we thought when Carol’s been calling with updates constantly since she’s been on earth and there’s no way they would know that the scroll to flipped his jacket it’s killer by the way does the supreme intelligence seriously have the bandwidth and the inclination for pithy one-liners species flirty threat hi so I’ll calmly place a cat’s eyes muzzle over its mouth and I just happen to be carrying on my person without us you’re only human flesh you may be you’re only human to me mistakes this montage of various Carol’s getting up after falling down is excessive and on the nose and over-the-top anjala you were reborn fierce because every sci-fi movie apparently needs an alien race to miss read something and call it something else like Star Trek with Vedra Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes with kolima this goes on for some time I will say this about the movie it waits until the perfect time to unveil Carol’s true powers and this is a goosebumps inducing moment so it absolutely deserves us in off having said that this reveals sets up the same issue as DC has with Superman Carol is all-powerful she hasn’t discovered everything she could do yet but she’s pretty much unkillable now and future movies and game mm we’ll have to do a ton of hand waving and marginalization for her to be included at all into the rest of the MCU okay let playing on just a girl during the climactic scene of this movie that’s more on the nose than anything ever literally the only more on the nose song you could have chosen is Meredith Brooks bitch or maybe Barbie girl or Cyndi Lauper’s well the movie never explains it or even suggests it but jaan raghav errantly has the ability to manipulate metal like magneto and I needs more backstory than anything in this movie that you actually gave a backstory fool god damn huh did that happen the movie is directly contradicting its own previous implications about the power differential here oh they’re dogfighting in the canyons just like an independent Sky Captain and the world of to marvel dude Carroll may be all-powerful but does she also have a GPS built into her headpiece how the hell did she know exactly where yawn Rhonda DUP she didn’t even see him crash poop to me you can beat me this is a great moment but it was also super fucking obvious that it was gonna go down like this this is basically Indy taking out the sword guy with the gun and Raiders of the Lost Ark motherf lurkin I’ll be back before you know it she will not for emergencies only okay and real emergencies too not like of an alien species is invading one of your most populous cities and your shadow government is about to nuke the god of it as a result and really it would take a giant stroke of some luck and some space gravity to avoid total annihilation you could totally handle that you think you can find others like her we found her and we weren’t even looking okay the logic here is stunning and yes they do end up finding more heroes but it’s not because they already existed Carol was a one-in-a-billion fluke banner still hasn’t tested gamma radiation yet Tony has to be kidnapped and build a suit in a cave black widow is just a human badass and Hawkeye is decent too okay with arrows just how amazing with this cat vomit scene be if we didn’t know where the tesseract went during the sequence on lawson’s lab it might have felt worth sitting through the 12 minutes of credits might have there I said it I like a cat ah I’m just a free we have Vincent yeah we happy your father and I were just discussing his day at work why don’t you tell our daughter about it honey Janie today I quit my job and then I told my boss to go himself and then i blackmailed them for almost $60,000 past nice pair your father seems to think this kind of behavior something to be proud of and your mother seems to prefer that I go through life like a king prisoner while she keeps my in a mason jar under the sink tell the supreme intelligence that I’m coming to end it you Tom I’m coming and hell’s coming with me before we get started does anyone want to get out you want to play blind man go walk with the shepherd me my eyes are wide just talk

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years ago

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Everything Wrong With Captain Marvel In 16 Minutes Or Less

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/everything-wrong-with-captain-marvel-in-16-minutes-or-less/

Everything Wrong With Captain Marvel In 16 Minutes Or Less

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thedancemostofall · 6 years ago

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The Art of Finding, by Linda Gregg

I believe that poetry at its best is found rather than written. Traditionally, and for many people even today, poems have been admired chiefly for their craftsmanship and musicality, the handsomeness of language and the abundance of similes, along with the patterning and rhymes. I respect and enjoy all that, but I would not have worked so hard and so long at my poetry if it were primarily the production of well-made objects, just as I would not have sacrificed so much for love if love were mostly about pleasure. What matters to me even more than the shapeliness and the dance of language is what the poem discovers deeper down than gracefulness and pleasures in figures of speech. I respond most to what is found out about the heart and spirit, what we can hear through the language. Best of all, of course, is when the language and other means of poetry combine with the meaning to make us experience what we understand. We are most likely to find this union by starting with the insides of the poem rather than with its surface, with the content rather than with the packaging. Too often in workshops and classrooms there is a concentration on the poem’s garments instead of its life’s blood.

My early life was changed drastically by the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but not primarily because of the poems’ gorgeous words and rhythms. Rather it was because poems like "Pied Beauty" and “The Windhover” gave me a special way of knowing the earth and experiencing God. In the same way, Lorca was important to me when I was very young because of the mystery within the singing. There is a luminosity in those poems of Lorca and Hopkins, and for me ever since when I see such luminosity beginning in a poem, it is a sign that something significant has been found.

It may be that the major art in poetry is the art of finding this shining—this luminosity. It is the difference between a publishable poem and one that matters. Certainly one can make good poems without feeling much or discovering anything new. You can produce fine poems without believing anything, but it corrodes the spirit and eventually rots the seed-corn of the heart. Writing becomes manufacturing instead of giving birth.

I do not have a road map or a neat system to give you to help you find the luminosity in your poems—your art, but I would like to share how it has been for me. At the start, let us agree that the poet must master the elements of his craft: the rhythm, the strategies, the importance of compression, when to use rhyme and when not to use it—all of that. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge that the craft must not become the content of the poem. It must not become an end in itself. The craft must serve primarily to deliver what the poet is trying to say to the reader, and to deliver the feelings or discoveries to him with as little loss as possible. Ezra Pound defined craft as “the means for delivering the content of the poem and to deliver it alive.” However, there is always a danger in making the craft the thing to be delivered. The poet must have craft, but he/she must also locate the substance, the art within the poem, which is at the center of the best poetry, and is upon what the craft works. Akira Kurasawa, the great Japanese filmmaker, said that the script was the crucial thing in making a movie. “If you have a good script and a mediocre director," he said, “you can still end up with a pretty good movie. But if you have a bad script it is hard for a director with even the finest craft to get a good result.”

There are two elements in “finding” a poem: discovering the subject matter and locating the concrete details and images out of which the poems are built. In this instance, I do not mean the subject matter to be the ideas or subjects for poems. Instead, I am referring to finding the resonant sources deep inside you that empower those subjects and ideas when they are put in poems. For example, I am made of the landscape in northern California where I grew up, made of my father’s uninhabited mountain where my twin sister and I spent most of our time as small children with the live oak trees, the stillness, the tall grass, the dry smell of the hot summer air where the red-tailed hawks turned slowly up high, where the two of us alone at ten did the spring roundup of my father’s twenty-six winter-shaggy horses. Down below there were salmon in the stream that ran by our house, the life of that stream and the sound of it as we lay in our bunks at night, our goat and the deer standing silently outside in the mist so many mornings when we awoke. The elements of that bright world are in my poetry now when I write about love or Nicaragua or the old gods in the rocky earth of Greece, just as the Greek islands where I lived for almost five years resonate in the poems I write now about the shelter for abused women in Manhattan or how a marriage failed in New England—but not directly. They are present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts. They function at the generating level of the poems to impregnate and pollinate the present—provoking, instigating, germinating, irradiating—in the way the lake high up in the Sierra mountains waters the roses in far away San Francisco.

Your resonant sources will be different from mine and will differ from those around you. They may be your long family life, your political rage, your love and sexuality, your fears and secrets, your ethnic identity—anything. The point is not what they are but that they are yours. Whatever these sources are, you must hunt out them out and feed your poems with them, not necessarily as topics, subjects or themes, but as the vital force that fuels your poems.

Once you discover this source, you must find the images and concrete details to make your poems visible and effective. These images and details fuel the poem from the outside and also are what help distinguish poetry from prose. It is the way we give a body to the ideas and feelings of the poem, whether the concrete images are literal or only seemingly concrete, as with metaphors and similes. Part of the art of “finding” a poem is choosing those concrete details that have a special energy and vibrancy. The best poets seem to have a gift for finding such details—a genius for choosing the two or three particulars that create a whole landscape, which manifest a city street with its early morning rain, or simply construct a room. These poets can make us see a person better with two details than prose can do with pages of description.

I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically “see” things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become “old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a “giant eye.” The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, “the mirror with nothing reflected in it.” This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking��just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human

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optimisticheartbarbarian-blog · 6 years ago

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Undertale dating. Write only if you are serious! Oksana. Age 25 My new photos and sexy videos here >>>

Name: Oksana Age: 25 Country: Ukraine City: Kiev Marital status: never been married Children: none Height: 5'6" - 168 cm Weight: 117 lb - 53 kg Eye color: blue Hair color: dark brown Body type: slim Religion: Christian Education: university Smoke: no Drink: no English level: basic Occupation: Office Manager

Oksana Undertale dating

Provide your criteria (gender, age, location, sexual orientation, interests, etc.), and search for dates and partners on your own as well as receive them from Match. The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-12-08.. The most appealing kind of email to send is friendly, funny and flattering. Rather than jumping into a new relationship to avoid being alone, give yourself a chance to explore life on your own terms. There’s the terrifying possibility one of your friends or co-workers will stumble upon your profile and see who you present as romantically. (Or if you’re me, the chance your younger sister will stumble upon your profile when you’re home for the holidays.) That’s why you see so many people essentially give up and put “lol I’m not good at writing dating bios” where their witty personal statement should be. Zoosk has a totally free, extremely comprehensive membership that anyone can sign up for and that will give you the opportunity to try out the entire app before whipping out your wallet. Me being 50 I won’t settle for the chase if it isn’t mutual it’s one sided.you not only have to be emotionally ready but time ready as well to make anything work. You. Get out what you put in and if you can’t put in your time it’s toast. The principal modern radiocarbon standard is N.I.S.T (National Institute of Standards and Technology. I gave him a book on a topic he’s expressed interest in several times, he thanked me and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. CONS One of the biggest drawbacks could be that users cannot themselves search and browse for matches.

Greater Manchester News How the church is working with experts to help survivors of sexual abuse Survivors will be able to access funding for specialist therapists and a faith-based support group. If you’re into horseback riding but you’re also into partying on the weekend, include photos of both. Putting false information about yourself is really easy because online dating sites do not verify the information. Ask New Question Anonymous Answered 63w ago Almost all of the dating apps show users from around your area but you may not know if that user is still active. Your answers are an important part of the matchmaking process and being honest gives you the best chance of meeting someone compatible. Increasingly, state licensing boards post online the names and general description of the offense of mental health professionals found guilty of an ethics charge. However, making time for both your romance and your friendships is vital to maintaining balance, happiness and healthiness. These apps may not be super popular yet, but apps like these (ones that use mobile platforms to facilitate in-person connections) could easily end up being the future of online dating. Setting a limit of one or two hours for your date gives the other person some space, doesn't crowd them from the beginning.

The feminists are going to hate me on this one, but I think “I am woman, hear me roar” has done us a disservice in the dating department. That’s because talking on the phone can serve as a gut-check, giving you a blind glimpse into her personality before wasting your time, money, spirit or heart on a date that is bound to go sour. “If you have met someone on a dating app, the usual protocol is to first text and then talk on the phone before asking someone on a date. In addition to the detrimental effects of upholding limited views of relationships and sexual and romantic desires, stereotypes also lead to framing social problems in a problematic way. While Match has reams of cards and thank-you notes hung around its headquarters for every wedding and child it helped create, it also hears from plenty of users who have had bad dates and blame the company. “Part of dating is the up and down,” she says. “We live with all that psychology, and they’ll have to, too. I have thick hair, I usually get it cut very short, then let it grow out for months, then go short again--and he's a master at cutting my hair into different short styles that grow out super well with minimum styling effort on my part. I will be honest I don't get how it's more chillax or cautious to not call himself your boyfriend but what's important is that what you have makes you happy, not how you label it. The goal of an email is to get her to read the whole thing and want to reply with something other than “I’m going to have my big bad bouncer friend come over to your house an smash your face in you piece of crap!”.

Undertale dating

I hope the ending would be more well written because since the beginning of the story everything was great! However, since then, people’s expectations have changed regarding what they expect from products like hair mousse and defining curls has taken precedence. We will not be able to provide support for the functionality of such products or services. 6. TERMINATION WITHOUT PREJUDICE TO ANY OTHER RIGHTS. WP Dating.com may terminate this EULA if you fail to comply with any term or condition of this EULA. Read More Advice John Aiken Letting go of past relationship hurts One of the most important things you can do before jumping into the world of dating is to make sure you've let go of the past. Apparently, these badges are supposed to indicate how active you are on the site and they’re used to decorate your profile, but outside of that, they have no other use. Plus, we offer more features, it's free to respond to emails, we have the Color Code Personality Test, more members with photos, and more.

Men are attracted to confident women who get the concept of “interdependence.” Interdependence requires that you’re both independent and dependent; that means you create sacred space for your relationship as well as sacred space for your work, passions and friends. They met last year in the Celebrity Big Brother house, stared a showmance and left in a relationship. To make the area less cluttered you can sort conversations to first show those that are contain unread messages (the default setting), recent conversations, members nearby, or favorites. If we’re only in love with a list of qualities, well, then our love will drift to anyone who has those qualities. There is no standard time scale to run through these progressions, but the speed at which the situation in the couple wants it to be. Although Facebook imports and uses information derived from your Facebook account, it does not post anything on your feed. That’s game was so hard!” Literally every other message is the standard “hey” “how are you” “how is your week?” messages. But date feels weird at65 i be in november for me If ladys feel and need it more power to theme Its never to late I am ok i had planty in my life beffore I still dress stylist and act young becouse i have yo g brain Every one is defrent I had good looking boyfriends now i dont wan old men next to me Maybe companion friend but not sex.

European dating site

Thoughts of having to make eye contact with my date and being in a public place start to take over and fuel the bully as well. She has been featured in campaigns by a number of major brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors and Chanel. The remaining four girlfriends are Michelle Cannes, Barbara Schternvart, Helena Wankstein and Katie Zhan. Our website matches up singles locally, so it's never a hassle to make the transition from online dating to dating in person. If you would prefer to find singles in your local area, join sports teams, organizations, or any recreational activities you enjoy. Types of military discounts include discounts for active duty military, veterans, retired military personnel, and military spouses or dependents.

Teens dating

The somehow arrives in the form of a contest--the grand prize: a date with Tad Hamilton--and the someday is now. The question is whether these gentlemen will be satisfied to wait for a hypothetical conversation early if the influx of female profiles will be enough to get them to use the application. What's not: Not everyone is super-active on Facebook, so you might not be able to see what your friends are up to. I haven’t had any major problems with the app, but I have met some pretty cool people, so don’t sleep on bumble ya’ll. I worry that if I don’t change how I feel when he does decide to date I won’t be able to stay his friend and I will loose him. To put it in perspective, I’m so quiet and shy I have no one to explain this too other than this thread of replies that someone may or may not read. That night at the bar resembled one of those “roundtable” discussions you see on an American Sunday morning political show such as Meet The Press.

Dating together

Now that they are heading to different colleges, they are going to share a memorable goodbye kiss. Th. Valentine's Day Slacking 2014 Sarah and her handsome husband, Tim, are preparing to enjoy a romantic date at a fancy restaurant to celebrate their love for Valentine's Day. Just 3-4 to put in my purse or in my pocket and refer to when we start looking like that elderly couple in the restaurant that remains in silence throughout the meal. This ties in with the shift towards spending less time on the internet and quickly moving to real world interactions. But Western publishers are still apprehensive because of past failures and the large up-front script translation cost with an unsure audience. Salsa Lessons This happy couple has always wanted to go salsa dancing, but they've never been able to find the time. As others have said the best you could hope for is to get fired and if it cost them the client the firm might even sue you. We are involved in the process of long distance matchmaking and we will use a variety of methods to facilitate that end.

#undertale dating

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lorrainecparker · 7 years ago

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Useful tools for editors: Go Predators edition

It’s been awhile since we’ve visited the Useful Tools for Editors series so in honor of our Nashville Predators making it to the NHL Western Conference Finals here’s a new batch of software, hardware, books, tweets and tips for editors everywhere. Go Preds!

Art of the Cut book

Most people reading this column have probably been following Steve Hullfish’s long running ART OF THE CUT series here on PVC. It is by far the most expansive and in-depth interview series with the biggest names working in editorial in Hollywood today. While Steve’s series has published on PVC for quite some time you may not know that he recently published a printed, paperback version of Art of the Cut:Conversations with Film and TV Editors.

I’m sure the first question asked is: Why would I every buy a dead tree version of this book when I can read them all online for free? For me there is still the pleasure of curling up with a good book and as an editor I learn something every time I read something like Art of the Cut. After a long day of editing I just don’t like to stare at more screens, even a Kindle (though a Kindle isn’t as bad as an iPad.) But the best thing about the book is that the interviews are organized by topic and not just by interview subject. I think this approach takes the linear approach to reading a book out the window as you can browse the table of contents and go to a section that is of interest. Since Steve is an editor first and foremost he does a great job interviewing his subjects and has worked very hard on the curation of hundreds of hours or interviews. Amazon is currently listing the book at $36.26 so click on over and get your own copy.

I really love how the printed version of @stevehullfish ART OF THE CUT book divides the interviews by topic.

A post shared by Scott Simmons (@editblog) on May 15, 2017 at 1:19pm PDT

Avid App Manager Closer

God bless Avid and their attempts at making Media Composer easier to install and work with but one downside of a modern Avid install is that both the background services and the Avid Application Manager seem to run all the time. While you can just quit the background processes the App Manager continues with a helper process that runs even after quitting (this is on a Mac, I’m unsure how this works on a PC). Yes you can force quit via the Activity Monitor or you can download the AvidAppManagerCloser thingy that will do it for you.

This little Automator script comes courtesy of the must-read Avid related blog 24p. Click on over there, give it a read and download it if you need it.

Editing Folders generator freebie

Many of us know and love and use Post Haste from Digital Rebellion to get us setup with a defined folder structure when we go to work on a new editing job. But editor Adam Schoales wanted to customize things a bit more and he created a Mac Automator workflow called Editing Folders that does just that and is available as a free download. It only asks you to name when you launch it and then creates a series of folders where you specify.

This is a pretty good set of folders to cover many different edit jobs.

If you want to customize the folders you can open the Editing Folders script in Automator and dig into the shell script a little bit and change those folder names and maybe even add a few more. I didn’t do this but since you can see those folder names in the script I’m guessing it should be easy. But since there’s not support with this freebie you’re on your own.

Some free custom folder icons

If you just want some new, free custom folder icons then head over to Sam Woodhall’s blog and download his 2017 Post Production Icons. Pretty simple in concept but there is a lot of different categories in the sets Sam has created. The clean, modern design is just nice to look at as well.

Each of those folders you see on the left all contain subfolders of varying types to future organize your projects. They are some specific folders icons for Final Cut Pro X and Adobe CC apps but there is enough in there that any media professional will be able to find some stuff to use.

Sam also includes some blank folder png files so I suppose you could take those and make some of your own. One could also dig through all the folders and remove what you don’t want and create a template set that could be duplicated for each new project. I guess that’s sort of like the Automator script above only you don’t run an Automator script. Thanks to Sam for putting these together and you can thank Sam as well (or leave him a donation for these things) on his blog.

Timing

As a freelancer I always keep an eye out for time tracking apps because freelancers track a lot of time. And as one who works in multiple NLEs tracking between the different applications and projects can become tedious. This app called Timing was recently brought to my attention and I can’t wait to try it. It looks to have a lot of different analytics to track many aspects of what you’re working on. Timing also says it will track documents so my first test will be to see if it can latch onto an NLE project or Library and actually track it per job and not just per NLE.

Timing has three difference cost tiers ranging from $29 – $79. It looks like the $49 option is the sweet spot with a lot of useful looking options at that price.

FindrCat (Pro)

Intelligent Assistance introduced a new app last last year called FindrCat. It’s an interesting little Final Cut Pro X app with a cool idea that kind of reverses that you might think in that it takes your Keywords applied in FCPX and turns them into Finder tags in the Mac OS Finder. Those keywords then travel with the files as metadata meaning they are searchable outside of FCPX. Philip Hodgetts talks a bit more about FindrCat on his blog post after the software’s introduction.

FindrCat is $20 and available on the Mac App Store.

Rampant Design NLE Templates

We all know Rampant Design as a creator of great special effects and overlays but they’ve gotten into creating templates for both Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro X. They create After Effects templates as well but I’m always more interested in cool templates that work directly in the NLE (sorry Avid Media Composer but none for you right now). The PPro templates include things like VHS glitch effects, various promo and lower third designs as well as a slideshow. FCPX templates include some of the same but a few less. And the price is right running at around $20.

Some of these types of things are over the top for most jobs but depending on your need templates like these can save a ton of time if you’re in a pinch or a ton of headaches if you’re not a particularity strong motion graphic designer. And since these are project files you can most likely monkey around with them and do a good bit of customization to fit your need.

FX Factory

It’s always worth catching up with that’s new from FX Factory since the last edition of Useful Tools. There’s a few things I wanted to point out:

Yanobox Mosaic

I’m always by what Yanobox is doing. Their Nodes tools just blows my mind and now they’re released Mosaic for FCPX, Motion, Premiere Pro and After Effects. I can’t explain it so here’s YAnobox’s description: “Mosaic lets you create a wide range of effects based on real time pixel texturing and adaptive tiling. Mosaic includes several procedural recipes but the most exciting use comes with the import of your own motifs to create amazing graphic effects.”

Or better yet watch the video:

Kevin P. McAuliffe wrote up a little review here on PVC so check that out as well.

VideoDenoise and Echo & Noise Remover from CrumplePop.

A new entry into the noise removal category is VideoDenoise. This $99 option is optimized for OpenCL and CUDA which is a good thing as denoising is not for the small computer.

On the audio side both EchoRemover and AudioDenoise have added some new hosts including Logic Pro, GarangeBand, Davinci Resolve and Adobe Audition. I expect we’ll see more and more plug-ins supporting Resolve in the future. All of these CrumplePop tools are $99 and part of the FX Factory ecosystem. Update your FX Factory install and you can get a free demo of most all FX Factory tools as well as purchase the ones you need.

Red Giant Universe

Red Giant’s subscription effects service Universe has gotten an update to version 2.1. And with version 2.1 we get six new effects:

AV Club: Mimic the lo-fi, noisy text found on ancient video tapes, old infomercials and local access cable channel shows.

Luster: The 1980s are back! Give video text the retro treatment with Luster by applying a metal sheen to text – includes a refraction-based bevel for a glassy simulated 3D look.

Title Motion: Create text and shapes and then instantly add dynamic animations that bring them on and off screen. Great for titles, lower thirds, callouts and more.

Ecto: Inspired by the timeless film “Ghostbusters” and Netflix cult-hit “Stranger Things,” Ecto allows artists to create haunting, evolving titles with this glowing, fractal-based effect.

Long Shadow: Apply a colored, long shadow to text, logo or shape, for both classic and modern motion design.

Glow Fi II: Give text an ethereal moody look by instantly adding silky smooth, self-animating, fractal-based glow effects to titles. A simple UI make it easy to apply evolving, organic glows.

Universe is also a package that is supporting beyond the usual FCPX/Motion/Premiere Pro/AE as it also supports Magix Vegas Pro, Hitfilm and Davinci Resolve. Universe costs $99 / year or $20 / month.

Tools, Tips and Tweets from Twitter

Premiere Pro was born 25 years ago. Through film, music videos, and groundbreaking cuts, see how far we've come together. #PremierePro25 pic.twitter.com/OZ6818830f

— Adobe Premiere Pro (@AdobePremiere) April 10, 2017

Interesting read on the effects of social media on our lives. https://t.co/LB7C2r9onv

— Reba Baskett (@RebaBaskett) May 8, 2017

Control + Shift + Eject = Screen Off#MINDBLOWN

— Zeke McGeehon (@zekesauce) April 19, 2017

You can then import that SRT back to your NLE or do whatever you need with it.

— Jiří Fiala (@stooovie) April 18, 2017

At an airport? Need a password for the Wi-Fi? Here you go.https://t.co/dAENL0L3XH

— Mikko Hypponen (@mikko) March 13, 2017

Knot School for filmmakers: https://t.co/YJxmssdtMo #filmmaking

— Filmsourcing (@Filmsourcing) February 20, 2017

Walter Murch on the Difference Between Sound Editing and Mixing https://t.co/9XjNm14YsQ

— lacpug (@lacpug) February 20, 2017

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