#they obviously have no idea how to communicate and it’s both devastating and fascinating

[aroace-in-a-clowncar]

Charlie and Lucifer. Cause more than anything is my favourite hazbin hotel song and their father daughter dynamic is so tragically sweet

[evolutionsvoid]

The Yale is a creature I am sure many are familiar with. A striking figure, impressive antlers and a gorgeous hide makes them impossible to ignore! They are also found in quite a few places, as they prefer grassy habitats in temperate climates. They have close relations to the cervid family, so they tend to be in environments where such creatures roam! They seek out places rich with ground level vegetation, as they are herbivorous. Grasses, leaves, fallen fruits and above ground vegetables are their preferred food, and they spend a lot of their time grazing. This plant based diet is occasionally supplemented by eating clay or even gnawing on old bones, as there are some nutrients you just can't get anywhere else! Yales tend to travel in groups, herding together for extra safety and to better secure ideal grazing lands. Young bachelor males may travel on their own, trying to find new lands and herds that they may take over. While they may gather in numbers, this does not mean that they are cowering creatures huddling together in fear! In fact, Yales are rather powerful members of their ecosystems, beasts that very few dare challenge!   The most noticeable and famous part of the Yale is obviously its fascinating antlers. These long curved blades with their sharp tines make for sleek weapons, but that is not all! Unlike other species, these bony protrusions are not rooted to a single spot! They are actually jointed and have musculature to them! Just a little ways up from the skull, you will see a joint that allows the rest of the antler to bend up and down. With this joint and a little rotational flexibility, the Yale can shift its antlers into different positions for certain instances. In their usual upright state, they serve as symbols of strength and prowess, intimidating predators and competitors. If a foe chooses to attack, they will drop these antlers into a lower position and turn them into thrusting swords! With both antlers slung below, it can stab and slash at enemies with its tines, capable of puncturing flesh and slicing skin! To make these weapons even stronger is the Yale's flexible neck and agile movements. By twisting its neck at the right time, it can swing its blades in from different angles and perform some crazy moves. They essentially become swordsmen, with all sorts of different approaches and strategies! You honestly have to see them fight to truly understand their skill, as it is wild to think such a creature can pull off such elegant attacks! It is no surprise that a full grown healthy bull has very little to challenge it! Only a starving predator would dare attack such a skilled adversary, and they may be eating a sharp antler for this desperate gamble! Not only are they great for fighting off predators and squaring off with competitors, the antlers can be used for communication. By altering their position or moving them in certain intervals, they can signal their fellow brethren. Movements of their antlers and ears can combine to create some complex messages from one member to the other, like indicating where a hidden threat is lurking or conveying the status of certain members of the herd. Females also possess these jointed appendages, but they are much smaller than the males. Instead of the long branching blade, their bony limbs end in short spikes. These growths are not good for attacking, but they can still be used for signaling. Though males possess these impressive antlers, they are not permanent. For a short part of the year, the ends of these weapons fall off and the Yale must regrow them. If you look closely at the antler past the joint, you will note a bulbous part of the antler. This is actually a pedestal, from where the rest of the sharp antler grows from. This is the spot where the old growths will break away and fall off, and where the new bone will begin to form. A film of velvety fur will grow around the pedestal, and it will stretch out to slowly create the new antler. Underneath this fur is where the bone forms, and it will shed this coating once it is ready. This allows them to slough off broken antlers and regrow new ones each year, ensuring that they have top shape weaponry every time! 

Mating season is when the prowess and skill of the Yale really enters the spotlight. This time of the year is what the males of this species prepare for! As rut begins, their fuzzy antlers stop growing and their velvet falls off, revealing their famous bony blades! Once their antlers are ready, the bulls will seek out grassy fields and other open areas to set up shop. These locations make it easier for both males and females to spot each other, and it makes for a good stage to show off your moves! Once a suitable place is found, the male will let out a long, sharp bugle to call in nearby females. They will continue to do these vocalizations for hours on end, hoping that the ladies hear it and are enticed by it. Apparently female Yales can determine a lot from these calls, and they use them to locate the biggest and beefiest bull! Interested cows will seek out the caller and move in for a closer inspection. If they like what they hear AND see, then they will remain with the male. As time passes, a big healthy bull will start to build up a harem of viable females and this is when things get a bit tougher. Younger males will have a hard time securing an open area and their calls pale in comparison to the bigger bulls', so they instead roam during these ruts. They are looking for any viable female, and this usually means they target another bull's harem. They will try to sneak in and steal a cow from the larger male, which means the intruder must be scared off! When another male comes to steal or challenge, the two will ready their antlers and fight! These duels are quite incredible to watch, as they don't just ram heads, they have a whole sparring match! They slash, stab and swipe at their opponent, frequently moving their antlers to block attacks, confuse their foe or target an open spot! Though these battles may seem intense and fierce, their goal is not to kill their enemy. Rather, they are targeting a specific spot on their neck. During the rut, a special sac located on their neck and chest will inflate to aid their vocalizations. This is how they create such loud, piercing calls, as they are forcing air through this finely tuned organ. While it is made of tough skin, it is vulnerable to the sharp tines of an opposing male! Sparring males seek to puncture this inflated organ, though it isn't nearly as painful as it sounds. Such an injury hardly affects the health of the male and the hole will heal itself back up within a few weeks. There is very little physical danger to come from such a wound but, during the rut, it is devastating. When the organ is punctured, it cannot function properly, much like how a drum cannot play right when you put a knife through its membrane. They will not be able to call out to females with the power and pitch that they like to hear, causing them to lose suitors. The pathetic yelps of a defeated bull is not at all attractive to a female, so the harem will look elsewhere if their potential mate is conquered. With this end result on the table, many bulls will bail out of a fight if they feel that they are starting to lose. Better to run and try again later than have your chances reduced to nil! So that is why you may see a bigger heftier bull run away during a scrap with a younger male, as they are sensing that they will be deflated and prefer to stay in the game!     Due to its elegant nature, skillful fighting style and impressive weaponry, the Yale is known quite well throughout the land and has become a respected symbol for many. In truth, I imagine more people have seen a Yale in family crests and heraldic symbols than those who have spotted a live one! In these sigils, the Yale is meant to symbolize both elegance and a fighting spirit. Such families that bear the likeness of the Yale are often into fencing, dueling and any hobby that involves weapons and finesse. When depicted in these crests, the Yale will often have one antler upright and the other slung down in attack mode, as it shows both sides of this noble beast. Yales are also big in the fencing community, for obvious reasons. They are used a lot in logos and competition names, and a few moves are actually named after them! For high up nobles and fancy aristocrats who take on this sport, they tend to use Yale antlers to craft the handle of their favorite foil, saber or epee. These specially made weapons are said to have the power and skill of the Yale infused into them, making them valuable and widely sought after. Those who wield them are masters of this art and are some of the finest swordsmen around, or so they say. I have seen some of these folk who own these weapons, and I can't say I am impressed. Pretty sure those fancy fools didn't even kill the beast themselves to make their expensive toy, just had their servants do it for them. I bet I could take them down with just a hefty stick, and maybe whack some humbleness into them. Going with the subject of fencing and finesse, Yales are sometimes associated with romantic adventurers, chivalrous swordsmen and swashbucklers. These creatures are said to capture the spirit of honor and chivalry that comes from such folk, especially with their famous duels. There is definitely some romantic literature out with such references, as I recall some stories starring the "Cerulean Yale" and his incredible adventures of dueling pompous aristocrats and winning over the swooning maidens. There are a chunk of young gentlemen who try to replicate such deeds in real life, an act I certainly don't recommend. They like the idea of fighting for the love of a woman, which is just like the noble Yale (though they tend to leave out the whole "harem" part of Yale courtship, and I don't think it is because they disagree with such a notion. You are going to want to avoid these wannabe swashbucklers, ladies. Something tells me all that chivalry and sweet-talking only lasts for so long). Another obvious thing that folks admire about the Yale is their impressive antlers, which make for breathtaking trophies and decoration. Pretty much any recreational hunter that walks the surface world has a Yale on their hit list, as every one of them want a pair of those long antlers on their mantle. This has led to over-hunting of certain Yale populations, and their massive range has diminished a bit due to this. Thankfully, the Yale is such a revered symbol that some regions and lands have put the species under protection and have placed restrictions to their hunting. One can still bag one of these beasts, but only during certain seasons and through the right channels. This has helped some populations recover, so I am grateful for that! The other thing that helped protect their populations a bit is the fact that Yales do not go down without a fight! The young and old may flee from hunters, but full grown bulls are quick to stand their ground. With their wicked antlers, they will charge a hunter and try to cut them down. Sharp bone, powerful legs and a hefty weight makes them a formidable adversary that can gore the foolish and unprepared. Those who hunt Yale should do so on foot, as many who hunt by horseback have wound up with their trusty steed being gutted by a swiveling blade. Being a smaller target makes it easier to dodge their attacks or, better yet, allows you to climb a tree and fire from above. Tree stands are the recommended method of hunting Yale, as it keeps you out of antler range. However, you will have to be sure to bring the beast down fast, because once it realizes you are out of range, it will turn tail and run off! Well, some times it will run off. Yales can be tricky creatures, and a bull may feign a retreat to lure you out of the tree. There are some poor souls who have left the safety of their stand to pursue their quarry only to have it burst from the foliage and drive an antler right through their gut! Yowch! On an interesting note, some folk have sought to benefit from this restricted hunting out in the wild and have tried to set up game ranches for Yale hunters. By raising them on personal property, there were no rules to how or when to hunt these creatures. For the right price any one could come in and hunt a big bull any time. It would be quite the lucrative business, until an interesting flaw showed up. As time went on and Yales grew, the antlers began to change. With each shedding and regrowth, the sleek curves and sharp tines started to warp and twist. The beautiful weapons everyone wanted were now gnarled and unattractive, and they were coming out stunted too! No one wanted a nasty looking trophy like that, so business quickly sank. Turns out that captive Yales are missing a special component to their diet or lifestyle that affects their antler growth. With the owners providing them with endless food and safety to ensure big trophies, the Yales had very little competition or danger to deal with. So perhaps the lack of stressors causes the antlers to lose their purpose, and thus they do not grow properly. Further study has to go into this subject, and it is a rather fascinating one! Well, to me it is. To the folks who invested in these big game ranches and lost a whole lot of money to these faulty Yales, it isn't so interesting. Maybe you guys should get more into research before dumping big money into such things! Understanding the animals you are trying to keep and care for seems kind of crucial to me! Perhaps then you would come to the conclusion that keeping a giant armored territorial pig monster that is famous for being insanely aggressive and destructive is an incredibly bad idea BEFORE it tears through your fence and devours the ecosystem! IDIOTS!           Chlora Myron Dryad Natural Historian ---------------------------------------------------------- Was looking to make some more mammals and was running through ideas. I liked the design of a deer/elk creature that had jointed antlers that could move like limbs. Further research found that the mythical Yale was a beast that could rotate its horns, so I decided to use that, but added some extra stuff to it. Something tells me that this family is going to get some additions over time, as I can already think of some fun variants! Also this has taken way more time to write than I imagined! Every time I thought I was done I recalled another fact! Goodness it has been hours! (And I probably still missed stuff)

[d-criss-news]

Three months after launch, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s short-form service Quibi is entering its first awards season.

As the nascent platform, which is still finding its feet with subscribers, kicks off its debut FYC campaign, Deadline has assembled a virtual roundtable of creators and stars to explore how it lured Hollywood A-listers to the second screen, what they really thought of it when they first heard about it, the creative process, the importance of owning their own rights and how they see things going forward.

Joining us were Darren Criss, co-creator, songwriter and star of musical comedy Royalties, Nicole Richie, creator and star of irreverent comedy Nikki Fre$h, Cody Heller, creator of Anna Kendrick sex doll comedy Dummy, Veena Sud, creator of dark thriller The Stranger and Nick Santora, creator of Liam Hemsworth action drama Most Dangerous Game.

DEADLINE: What did you think of Quibi when you first heard about it?

Nicole Richie: I went in there and I had a general with them, not really knowing what I was going to make. Separately, I was kind of preparing to do this comedy album without the show around it and I sat with [Jeffrey Katzenberg] and talked to him about the platform and the idea that it was for these in between moments, and that it’s quick bites, it’s ten minutes or less, and it was something that, I found it very smart and pretty exciting. I’ve done short-form before so I definitely felt like I could do it. There’s a lot of young creative people there and I was very excited to work with them.

Darren Criss: Just like everybody else in the industry I’d heard about Quibi. Obviously, anything that you know, Jeffrey Katzenberg attaches himself, my ears kind of perk up. So, I’d been aware of the concept. I think the specific idea of short form was never something that I thought ‘I have to make short form, nor was it, oh my God, that’s the worst thing ever’. For me, what excited me about Quibi, much like Nicole said, was the fact that it was this new thing. I always gravitate towards the renegade kind of out-of-box thinkers and I always think it’s an exciting opportunity to try something.

In many respects, it is the Wild West. So, when you’re shooting stuff you go, man is this going to fly, do we do it in this aspect ratio, how do we edit this, what is the precedent here, and in the lack of precedent I think for a lot of people that is actually kind of a scary thing where you say ‘We don’t know what works and what doesn’t work’, but for me I actually look at it as a really cool thing because you’re like, ‘Wow, fuck it, shoot it, ask questions later’. We get to decide what the thing is or not. I really was excited by that, it’s a really kind of fresh kind of community of people that are with the company that just got me excited about doing something in a new way.

Cody Heller: I had a weird evolution of Dummy (left) becoming a real thing, it was kind of a twisty journey. I had just written it as a script to get me staffed on other shows years ago and then I had a general meeting with Colin Davis who used to work at TBS and I actually had it set up to be a short form show at TBS, when they were attempting something like 15-minute late night programming thing with edgy stuff. So, I had written seven 15 minute episodes and then the whole block at TBS died. I was devastated but I was already working on this other show on Showtime, so that’s the way it is and I moved on.

Then like a year later you know, I kept in touch with Colin because he’s just a cool dude, and he gave me a call and he said ‘I left TBS, I’m at this new place, you never heard of it before because it doesn’t exist yet. It’s called Quibi. I hope you don’t mind, I gave all your scripts to Jeffrey Katzenberg and he loves them and he wants to meet with you next week’. It was just like the most surreal experience, like I went in and met with Jeffrey and he was quoting lines from these insane, very raunchy scripts, and he just got the show. It was so exciting and cool to have this older Jewish gentleman totally grasp and get what I was going for. That was just so exciting.

Veena Sud: I felt when I met with Jeffrey that what he was talking about was nothing short of potentially revolutionary in how we look at content, from the vertical screen obviously, but also how people would look at our storytelling, and what device they would watch it on. I thought about how radically different our relationship is with these things we walk around with in our hands than it is with the screens that we watched you know, in our homes or in the theaters. The device itself allowed for potentially a very different experience in content, which was really, really interesting to me.

Nick Santora: Well, my initial reaction was ’What the hell is this?’ I went to meet with Jeffrey, like it seems everyone else on the call did and he’s a very impressive guy, and he’s full of energy, and full of enthusiasm. It was coming off this Most Dangerous Game being a pilot for NBC that didn’t go, and he said, ‘Listen, can you basically add a hundred pages to this and blow it up?’ When he was talking about the ten minute segments I just had a feeling what I wanted to write would work really well for that because you just needed a cliffhanger or a twist or a turn about every nine or ten minutes. I worked on Prison Break and that show was bananas, and every commercial break was a massive cliffhanger and every episode out was an even bigger cliffhanger so I said, ‘I’m going to have to do this 15 times and I thought I could I don’t know if it would have worked better anywhere else. I think it really worked well in the Quibi format because, I call it Pringles entertainment, you just pop one in your mouth every nine minutes.

DEADLINE: How was the actual process of writing, producing and editing in this way?

Nick Santora: The writing for me was the same, I just needed to make sure that organically that every nine to ten pages there was an oh shit moment that would make people want to watch the next episode. The prep was very different because I had to work very closely with my director to make sure that in addition to filming it the way we would normally film something for network television or any television that didn’t have a turnstyle device, we had to have three cameras rolling at all time and we had to make sure and prep for the shot based on the location, based on the actors, based on what was going on in the scene, that the vertical and the horizontal would both have something very interesting to fill the frame. We always had a third camera running to catch the vertical, especially when you’re doing action and we have guys you know, jumping off of boats onto bridges and stupid shit or crazy shit like that, you want to make sure you’re getting it in the frame if people are turning their phones in either direction.

That was challenging and really fun though, and then editing was effectively the same if I’m being honest, it’s just that you had to do a vertical pass and edit the entire thing for you know, for a vertical turnstyle watch. But that wasn’t that big of a deal because it all comes down to making sure you’re editing it in a way that’s visually interesting and tells a good story. The prep was where it was most different for me, where we had to basically say, this is going to basically be two different movies, one vertical and one horizontal.

Veena Sud: What was so fascinating for me with The Stranger, directing it as well, was having to think really radically in terms of not thinking about vertical and horizontal as separate entities. I really wanted to have one monitor. Looking at two monitors or three monitors is really just kind of out of my wheelhouse. I like to look at one thing when I’m directing and focus on performance mostly. So, I had to have something baked in that would allow me to have that freedom to be looking at the actors versus, ‘Are we getting the shot?’. One thing we talked about extensively in prep, which was radically different because of this is, how do you service this story and allow the audience to feel what they would feel on a bigger screen and not feel less? What I mean by this is, if you hold a phone vertically you’re automatically losing east and west, right?

We looked at other shows that had tried to do vertical framing and very quickly started to think this is going to be a disaster unless we come up with a whole other aesthetic approach to this. So, really quickly, instead of thinking east and west in terms of the screen, think of north and south, and think of A to Z. Think of infinities, think of the depth of what you’re looking at. Think of going as deep into the screen as you possibly can in a way that maybe traditionally you wouldn’t think of when you have a landscape you know, when you have that aspect ratio. So, that’s why we had people moving, that’s why we’re always leading and following for the most part, that’s why all the environments were constantly changing, and we were looking for infinity lines constantly when we’re shooting and prepping. So, pushing the aisles of a grocery store closer together so that as the actor moves through them you would see left and right in a way that you know, traditionally you would not see if you were shooting that type of aspect ratio.

Darren Criss: Obviously for the three comedy weirdos here, the medium services our genres in very, very different ways than to Nick and Veena. I was really impressed with the way that they utilized what might seem a limitation in storytelling. I noticed it consciously. I wondered how they were going to fill all of the big action stuff in here. Yes, there is this aspect ratio thing, there’s the short form, you’re still applying the same rules that you would apply to if Katzenberg told all of us ‘I want a three-hour movie’ but if it was just that, if your idea is good enough, if you’re dexterous enough as a storyteller, you can kind of kneed the dough to fill in the space that you’re given. People have thought of really cool ways to maximize their narrative within this very specific box and that variety of nuance is such an exciting thing and the fact that that’s possible in such a fresh way is like something not to be ignored.

Cody Heller: We’re all just so fucking talented [laughs]. With [The Stranger and Most Dangerous Game], I did find myself wanting to experience both versions, so I want to rewatch in the vertical just to see the difference and experience it both ways. That is different than my experience because for me I really did just kind of center frame everything, like I shot everything in one big square and then just had demarcations on the video village screen. Because I had this show where literally it’s mostly one character and then a sex doll, most of the time they’re close enough together that it’s not really an issue, but the only times I would really notice it would be establishing shots. It was such a fun challenge to rise to and I loved the experience.

DEADLINE: Do you think these shows could be made anywhere else and if not, were you aware of that while you were making them?

Cody Heller: I don’t think I could have made this show anywhere else. I think my show, in particular, blends itself so well to ten minutes because I think if you made it a half hour you’d have to really go into [B] stories, which I think for my show it just works better as a smaller piece about Cody and Barbara. Quibi was so supportive and gave me so much artistic freedom that I just cannot speak highly enough of their whole team. They give really good notes that makes it so much better.

I really loved the challenge of taking on something new and the turnstyle thing was exciting. One thing that was super cool that I didn’t think of while I was shooting but noticed during the editing process, was because Quibi has to be ten minutes, it can’t be more than ten minutes but it can be less than ten minutes, and the episodes don’t have to be uniform in length, that was very liberating in the edit stage because then I was able to say this scene that I thought was so funny on the page, it didn’t really play as I thought and it’s not necessary to the story, let’s just cut the whole scene.

Nicole Richie: Cody mentioned having the A story and the B story on a television show and just having it be the A story, it does feel very intimate. I do feel like a B story on your phone doesn’t really work because when you are watching on a phone, you really do want to be locked in to that story, and from a comedy perspective, I love the jokes, but I’m very conscious of the breath after the joke, letting people digest that. With a show like Nikki Fre$h you know, only focusing on two people and then the music video, I was able to shoot that and give the jokes a moment. I can’t see this show living anywhere else.

Darren Criss: I think ideally anything that you make is so good in that particular mode of communication that you simply cannot imagine it anywhere else because the meal has been cooked so well. But I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot if somebody would like to make a five-movie franchise deal with Royalties [laughs].

I don’t think this could have existed anywhere else in any other format simply because I don’t think anybody else would have taken a chance on what we were doing. That is one of the valuable parts that I kind of glazed over about Quibi is that they’re really creator forward and really empowering a lot of the creators. It sounds like we all had a date with the Great Oz [Jeffrey Katzenberg]. I’d like to think it could exist in other places because I’d like to think our idea is malleable enough to fit in other places, but it comes down to the belief system and the support from someone in Jeffrey Katzenberg’s shoes.

DEADLINE: Have you had any feedback in terms of whether people watched in one go or in short bursts?

Veena Sud: It’s been anecdotal and it’s been both. Some waited for the whole thing to drop so they could watch it all in one go, because that’s the muscle that we’re used to as Americans now, with all the streaming devices. The most fascinating feedback were people who watched it day by day and feeling their growing anxiety and their growing desperation for the next hit. That was fascinating because while I was cutting and shooting simultaneously, you could feel that growing kind of addictive nature of something that’s less than ten minutes long and that does have cliffhangers built into it. It’s pretty fascinating to see how the need for the next, and the next, and then next grows over time.

Cody Heller: I binged The Stranger and I think if I had to wait each day I’d probably would have had many panic attacks every day. It would have been such a different experience, and now I am curious and kind of wish that I had experienced it that way because that’s so fascinating.

Can I just circle back to one thing that we were talking about before… Nicole, you made a really smart interesting point about the phone and it being this personal thing. For me I was one of the early ones to shoot and I didn’t know at the time that it was only for your phone. I thought that you were going to be able to also watch it on your TV, so I wasn’t really aware of that and then when I found out later during post-production I was kind of bummed since I thought that especially for comedy and especially during corona, like people love to laugh together. I was happy when they decided to add the possibility to your TV feature because I love nothing more than going to the theater and laughing with people. You can’t do that during Corona but at least you can be with family members or whoever we’re quarantined with and watch something together.

Also, I just want to say one other thing, Nicole Richie, you seriously, like could be in a Christopher Guest movie.

DEADLINE: Quibi’s rights position is that you can retain the IP and after two years repackage these shows into long form versions if you want to. How important was that for you and have you thought about that since you made these shows?

Nick Santora: I’m in the process of dealing with that right now. We have a potential buyer very interested in doing Most Dangerous Game as a feature film, and it was a big selling point to me because I just intuitively thought I could take those ten-minute segments and work with the composer to smooth out some of the musical cues, get the establishing shots that we would need to act as bridges and in just a matter of weeks with some minimal effort, turn it into a nice hour and fifty-minute movie that would play really well. There’s a fair amount of interest and I think we’re going to be successful in selling it. It was a selling point to me because you know, you want as many people to see your work as possible, and I think it’s great that Quibi gives you the opportunity to just turn it into another platform and see if it can be successful there. I’m interested to see how it plays out.

Darren Criss: I think for everybody it’s sort of a no-brainer deal. If anything, it’s sort of a brilliant way to incentivize the creator to deliver the best shit humanly possible because it’s a money back guarantee. Having this deal, I kept asking what’s the catch here, like this simply cannot be the case. I was so grateful frankly for the set up that was given behind our deal that, aside from just personally wanting to make something great, I was incentivized to make this really as kickass as humanly possible for the hand the fed me.

Veena Sud: What I found so fascinating about the idea of retaining the rights to what I create, even in its modified form, is this discussion has not been around since the 70s and United Artists. It’s the radical idea that we, as creators, get to own the thing that we create, which is revolutionary and beautiful. Katzenberg introducing it into the ecosystem of our industry is something that needs to be talked about and will be resisted being talked about certainly, but let’s talk about it. Let’s use this wonderful incentive that he provided us as artists to come and play in a sandbox that hasn’t been tested as a way for we, as artists, to start talking about that we should own the rights to what we create.

Darren Criss: One of the things that Jeffrey said on the first rollout of introducing Quibi, like maybe two years ago, was saying up top that this is the single handedly most disruptive time in the entertainment industry’s history, and so structures like Veena’s talking about are being kind of thrown out the window and everyone’s kind going, wait a second, things don’t need to be like this.

I mean, right now people are considering this with the very nature of how Coronavirus is making cooperate structures reconsider their rent on buildings. We are reconsidering a lot of old things that we say, ‘Wait a second, this was maybe not the best thing’. I think we all know what I’m talking about on a much more social scale. There are a lot of things that are happening where, I think the renegades again are stepping forward and saying ‘This is fucked, why don’t we think of a different way that can empower us in a way that can really service the things we’re making in a more fruitful way.

The very question of you asking ‘Was it a good thing that you get your thing back in two years?’, that’s crazy that that gets to be a causal question. It’s an amazing thing and of all the things I think are really great about Quibi I would hope that it starts this conversation and this precedent for fueling creative in this way, and not just for the selfish sort of economic notions that I get out of it, but empowering creators can only be a good thing. I’m very careful with that because I don’t want to sound like a maniacal egotist, but there’s so many things that really incentivize positive things about content when it’s done in this structure.

Cody Heller: I mean I just can’t wait to own it again so that I can sell it to Disney+ [laughs].

—

DEADLINE: Darren, you were making Royalties at the same time as Hollywood. Would you want to do more Royalties?

Darren Criss: Yeah [but] hopefully I don’t have to do them all at the same time. I certainly echo what Cody was saying and I feel like anybody in a creative position is definitely hypercognitive of following those same principals. Having an opportunity to look at systems in different ways, in a way that can benefit so many people, is an exciting thing. It’s not, ‘Oh crap, how am I going to pull this off?. It’s like, okay, cool, let’s get all the people involved that we can to make this something really special and more beneficial for everybody involved. I mean look, we’re a whacky, zany comedy about writers that write goofy songs. That is sort of an ever-green game. There is a big pile of funny little puppies in the pen that I really want to give a home. That if there is a second season it’s giving them a place to go because we had to earn those ideas.

The hardest thing about a first season is establishing an audience’s trust, knowing your way around your actors and how the things going to look. It’s not until the second go that you kind of get to roll up your sleeves and go, alright, so here’s what we can really do, now I know what I’m working with. I really look forward in getting to do anything in a second season simply because now I’ve watched other people’s shows, I’ve seen how my show functions on this thing, I’ve seen how people react to my character’s and my jokes, and the songs, I now want to see if I can make those things that I threw out the first go, but hey, that is not up to me, that’s up to Katzenberg.

[desert-dyke]

the things I’ve read in 2020 and some thoughts...

hey blacklist this now because it’s gonna get long from here. I spent NYE home alone and reading and it has really set the tone for this year. Fortunately, I’ve been reading way more for the first time in...I literally don’t even know? Maybe forever? Which is really dope! Books are fucking fantastic and I hope this trend continues for the rest of the year. So I’m gonna use this post (and continue to add to it as I finish books) to talk about the things I’ve read. It could be annoying. I could give up on it really soon. People might not read this at all. It’s okay! It’s my blog I’ll use it how I want and I want to talk about books I otherwise don’t really have a place to talk about them. 

The Shape of Water - Guillermo Del Toro & Daniel Kraus

If you know me irl you’ll know that I love this movie. Like, it’s probably my favorite movie as an adult. I love watching a movie and then going back and reading the book to compare and vice versa, but knowing that the book came out after the movie did discourage me at first, making me think it was nothing more than a cash grab. Though I was talking to (my boss) who also loves this movie and is a huge bibliophile and she highly recommended the book, so I figured I’d give it a stab.

The writing style is beautiful and enticing and overall I was impressed with the quality of it. It’s fast paced and switches perspective between characters frequently, though remains easy to follow. The book focuses a little less on Elisa and more on the other characters and stories around her, including, surprisingly, Elaine Strickland, who despite never wondering much about during the movie, I enjoyed being included in the book. There’s a deeper exploration into pretty much everyone’s backstories, and more prominent character development. It’s excellent as a standalone piece, and supplementary to readers who have seen the movie. There’s also some alternative takes on certain scenes, which I don’t necessarily like better or worse than the choices made in the movie, but it makes for an interesting read. 

The book explores themes of alienation and being othered, with a main cast that breaks the stereotype of straight white fully-abled male. Elisa is a mute woman, Zelda, a black woman, and Giles a gay man. With the political climate of the 1950′s, all of them are outsiders and all of them find solidarity in each other, despite their unique struggles, and also with the creature.

The only thing I didn’t quite like was the portrayal of the creature. I think greater efforts were put into making him more godlike and otherworldly, but also, simultaneously, he comes off as much more like a wild animal in the book, and the latter came off as strange to me, and not in the way I like it. Overall, even if the movie didn’t exist and I only read this, I’d still think it was a really good story.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers

If I depended on the synopsis on the back of the book to decide whether or not I wanted to read this, I don’t know if I would have bothered. To be honest, I only wanted to read this because Becky Chambers is my current favorite author and all other of her works I’ve read I’ve absolutely adored, so naturally, I wanted to give this one a chance, even if the concept wasn’t as riveting as I would have hoped.

She didn’t disappoint. 

Whereas her other books take place in a vast space civilization where humanity is integrated with aliens and there’s technology beyond our dreams, this book took place in a different creative universe, a little more closer to our timeline. The book is about space exploration for the sake of learning and taking care to be as least intrusive on the explored worlds as possible. It’s a nice break from what I usually see in sci fi, with colonization and owning space and wanting to use knowledge in order to hurt others. It follows a research crew of four, sent to research four planets in a far solar system. There’s a lag in travel time, since FTL travel had not been discovered yet, so a common device is communication with Earth is off by years. Eventually, the crew realizes they have lost contact with Earth and Earth had likely suffered some sort of devastation. It wonders if Earth has forgotten them or if it’s even worth it to return since they might be the last astronauts of their time. 

The worlds they visit and research are unique and vivid and fill me with wonder. They’re realistic to the point where I found myself questioning if the book was prophetic. Chambers makes effort to incorporate science into her novels, but in a way that does not estrange a reader like me who only has a basic knowledge in science. It’s one of the things I find most attractive about her work, because it has this added realism and this feeling of “wow, this really could happen” and yet remains easy to follow. 

I found the crew to be likeable and diverse. Three of them are in a relationship with each other, and while polyamory isn’t usually an interest of mine, it’s in the background as well as it’s never used as a point to cause drama. It’s a healthy functional relationship. Also, one of the crew is a trans man and another is asexual, both details that exist within a single line, but yet important to be included to flesh out the characters. 

What I didn’t like was the almost rush to the end of the book. It’s a short book, roughly 100 pages, but it seems to me as if it reaches it’s climax and then the book just ends and it kind of feels like it’s still in the middle of things. I’ve had time to think about it, though, and I’ve considered that maybe anything else written would have been redundant or just filler and therefore not needed. So in that case, that’s fair. It still felt a little abrupt to me, but that’s what fic is for. 

Overall, if you haven’t read anything by Becky Chambers you need to change that immediately. Please don’t leave me alone and fanning over this incredible author!!

All Systems Red - Martha Wells

This was another short one, and in fact, I read it entirely in one sitting. The concept of the book was really intriguing, and actually I selected it because I liked the opening line so much. I have a lot of feelings about AI and robots, so this was a naturally alluring story to me. Mixed with the fact that the beefed out security robot, who calls themselves “Murderbot”,  was absolutely obsessed with soap opera tv just absolutely gets me!

The story is told through Murderbot’s perspective, who is assigned to guard a research team. They had recently hacked their government module, which now allows them full autonomy and no longer having to obey orders from their assigned humans. It’s interesting to see Murderbot actively choose to help the humans. Also, needing to maintain an illusion that they aren’t unshackled, since what they did was forbidden. 

The research team is full of interesting characters, who I find tragically under explored. The only couple in the story is wlw, which I vastly appreciated, along with they obviously cared and loved each other and their relationship was not used for drama purposes. In favor of the lack of development with the cast of characters, since the narrator is Murderbot and part of Murderbot’s personality is they are actively trying not to care about these humans, it does make sense. Still, I would have loved to see more of the crew and more development between Murderbot and them. 

I like the dark lore that is hinted behind Murderbot’s existence. There’s organic counterparts to their machine made from cloned humans. It’s creepy and morbid, but a lot is with the lore of the universe that the story takes place in. There’s hints towards a heavy capitalist society in space where the humans and Murderbot came from, where the right price will get you anything, regardless of morals. The overall tone of the story is very quirky, but it needs to be to offset just how dark everything that happens actually is. The book explores the concept of corporate greed, from the existence of Murderbot to the deaths that come to humans on the planet the crew is studying.

This book was deeply fascinating, but I didn’t love the way it was written. I love every concept and choice made, but I didn’t love the execution. It left me wanting without satisfaction. It’s not a bad book and I still over all enjoyed it. It is part of a series, which I did not realize at the time of reading it, but the ending leaves room for more to be written, so maybe in the following books there will be the development I desired. However, the ending of the book leaves it apparent that Murderbot will not be interacting with the same characters of the first, but that is just an assumption and I could be wrong. I’m not sure yet if I will read more in the series but I’m not entirely opposed to it.

All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders

This is another one that I definitely would not have read if I had to choose based on the synopsis alone. The synopsis made it sound so run-of-the-mill star-crossed-lovers, which, hey, maybe that actually helps sell the book because its a pretty well loved trope, but for me it was off-putting, as well as isn’t fair to what the book actually turned out to be. But that’s what reviews are for, and I found this book from some sort of list, I think it was best sci-fi books written by women.

The general idea of the book is a witch and a techie fall in love while the world is falling apart due to a conflict between magic and technology. The book is lauded for bending genre and honestly, it fucking has. It’s as equally a sci-fi novel as it is a fantasy novel. There’s advanced technology, such as robots, two second time machines, rocket ships, and ultimately, a portal leading to a different universe in hopes of escaping the destruction of earth. On the magic side, there’s a connection to nature, rules that have to be abided, quirky witches and magicians and mystique. Both Laurence and Patricia are outsiders that have seemingly found these secret niches in the world that becomes their own.

Both plots are interesting in their own, and could possibly exist as two separate books, but what ties the entire story together is the connection Laurence and Patricia have, and their ultimate romance.

The romance is a wonderful slow burn, from childhood friends, to adult friends to lovers. By the time Patricia and Laurence finally get together, you really fucking want them to. They weave in and out of each other’s lives throughout their own personal plots. There’s tensions and there’s release. And most importantly, they have lives outside of each other. Their romance compliments the story, rather than the story being entirely about romance. 

Similar to the former review, there’s a lot of quirkiness in the story, that ultimately offsets how dark the story can be. The story doesn’t shy away from complicated relationships with parents and siblings and friends and other people, people of mixed ages and backgrounds. It explores abuse, bullying, natural disaster and loss. The story would have been miserable and a drag to read without the whimsical qualities of it. Plus it’s a fantasy/sci-fi, so it should have some quirkiness to it! And it made for a very enjoyable read!

My criticism for this one is, yet again, the ending. The conflict resolves and the story comes to an end. In favor of how it was written, the way things resolve, I believe the world is about to go through a grand change. While the story is quirky, I think it would have been too corny to have had a glittery magical wave drag across the land, altering the world as it went. So, it’s fair, I guess, that the author chose to end it where she did. Still, it left me craving more. Maybe because the story was so good and I wasn’t yet ready to let it go.

Also, as a side note, the author is a trans woman. So if you’re looking for books written by trans authors to support, put this at the top of your list.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

i preserved in him what he needed to believe about you.

i wrote yesterday that this episode had a lot riding on it. for the most part, it delivered--mostly in anchoring both dick and slade’s arcs, expanding on the themes introduced in s2, and in firmly establishing jericho as My Favourite Forever And Ever. it was also very flawed, but in (mostly) interesting ways. let’s talk about it!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. jericho has my whole heart and then some. i think it would’ve been very easy to paint him with broad strokes--my fear was they would drag the innocence all the way to the edge of infantilisation, which, good god NO--but while he is enthusiastic and ready to believe the best of both his friends and family, there’s a sharpness to him, a kind of reckless guile, and quite a lot of unresolved and complicated feelings about father figures. 

1.25. he is obviously very proud of his father having served in the military--he’s even tangentially aware that he was experimented on, given his nonchalant attribution of his own powers to “drugs” that his father took while serving. (this awareness has to include the fact that his father definitely took a number of lives as a soldier.) even the awful assault that took away his voice and eventually his father from his life tracks with a single, knowable truth. knowing this helped him ground his own identity--the problem comes when he realises that what he’d used to build himself on was itself built on a lie. 

there is a tension, then, between his loyalty to these friends who used him but ultimately revealed the truth to him, and his desire to have that cornerstone of his life back. his compromise is to talk to his father, but only with dick’s permission; in it, he would know if his father was finally ready to be completely honest with him, and if there was more to dick’s friendship than merely using jericho to get to his father.

1.3. of course, it doesn’t exactly work that way: in the final fight at the church, there are two men who insist on their truth while pushing him to the side. in it, he sees one of them ruthlessly cut down the other, and he sees the other using his own body and life to protect him. jericho makes his choice in the end.

1.45. dick i think was absolutely right and justified in bringing jericho to a safe place where he can explore and learn to control his powers, even if dick was surprisingly blase about the potential ethical tangles of being able to possess other people’s bodies without them being aware of it. it was honestly a bit disturbing to see that hank was chosen to demonstrate jericho’s powers, given his history and the fact that he describes the experience as a “blackout”. i’m just going to assume that he would’ve come around to it eventually.

given the relative paucity of Big Bads and grand superhero battles, i’m kind of taken with the idea of the titans essentially being a support group for young troubled superheroes who need help and training and ways to ground themselves before heading back to their corners of the world. 

1.5. ultimately this episode once again drives home what should be the essential question in a show that revolves around a team of superhero sidekicks: are we destined to be what we were moulded to be? is the point of their existence to perpetuate what their mentors/fathers did? slade and jericho both struggle with this; so do dick and donna in this episode. so do rose, and jason, and rachel, and conner, and kory in the broader context of the series. the answers they find are complicated and at the cost of a great deal of pain, but the process is always interesting.

1.8. obviously jericho isn’t actually dead. i wonder what that initial dreamscape sequence was all about? is it some secret pocket dimension that jericho jumped into at the last minute when slade killed his body? is that where he’s been for the last five years?

2. dick grayson is lost. he is utterly buried under artifice and armour. i mentioned in a previous post (i think the one for 2.07) that he performs quite a bit of emotional labour for the team on top of being their leader in a tactical sense. here, he’s trying to hold it together for the team after a devastating death; he’s spearheading an effort for revenge he thought they all supported. he pulls on batman-goggles, trying to look at what he’s doing from a logical, emotionally-removed perspective, even while burying his bleeding heart as deep as he possibly can. no wonder he’s acting “like a ghost” and “burning at both ends”--it’s a terrible burden to bear. 

then the team turns around--once they’ve already gotten the info they needed, mind!--and tells him to cut jericho out of this operation; that it’s wrong and awful to have involved him at all. when he tries to do just that, he sees that he can actually help jericho as a friend and teammate, and at the urging of dawn, comes clean to him. meanwhile garth’s death and donna’s grief is still an unrelenting pressure on the back of his neck, driving him to find deathstroke at any cost--except when that cost is betraying jericho’s trust. ultimately slade nearly murdering donna is what breaks him--and he decides to follow jericho to slade anyway.

at every point he is so desperately trying to do good by everybody that he loses himself in the process. that his reward for this is being beaten up, a truckload of survivor’s guilt, and being abandoned by his closest friends is just so fucking awful. his friends are so used to his artifice and he is so used to absorbing all the blame that they think nothing of both praising him for being someone that saves people and believing he would sacrifice innocent lives for the sake of a mission in the same day.

(but this makes dick/kory so beautiful and refreshing--she has no time for his artifice and he doesn’t have to Be Someone around her. their relationship is defined by being undefined, and in that sense--at least for now--both of them find peace in the other.)

2.5. slade commenting coldly on dick’s fighting skills and the way he uses dick’s feelings for jericho to distract and defeat him makes me think that slade’s been playing this game with dick for far longer than he was aware: slade used both jericho and donna as bait to lure dick to that church, fought him in a cold, critical way undoubtedly reminiscent of a thousand sparring sessions with batman, and drove him utterly to the ground not just to prove a point to the titans and the superhero community at large but to jericho as well: this man is weak, manipulative, and ultimately a poor substitute for slade. 

2.75. who knows for how long dick wallowed in his failure, still seeing jericho take the blade that was meant for him, utterly alone? did he go back to the batcave, utterly defeated, and did he listen to bruce call him out on his mistakes? how much do you think he internalised all the terrible things he’d been told he was until he believed it all to be true? until he couldn’t live with himself and spiralled and spiralled until his self-hatred lead to outright self-destruction?

like--no wonder he completely fell apart in the present day when deathstroke showed up again. he’d just started to trust--he’d just started to build a family again. and here it is, a reminder of his biggest failure threatening to have him fail spectacularly once again. 

... this boy needs so much therapy. or at least a long nap and a series of hugs.

2.8. (that fight between him and slade tho... goddamn. even my shitty quality stream couldn’t take away from how thrilling it was to watch.)

3. dawn is... well. i know it’s been frustrating to follow dawn this season, as she’s been either non-existent or, uh, flat, but there was something interesting in the way her dynamic with dick moved and shifted in this episode. she thrills to ideals without considering the consequences of actually following those ideals. in the space of a few months, she can implore dick to act like batman, then tell him no, she was wrong to have asked him to do that, then say that she loved him for saving people and then barely days later abandon him for being a reckless sociopath who exploited innocent lives. in the present day, she can support hank in his retirement and rehabilitative process, yet still think it’s perfectly ok to go behind his back and continue being a vigilante. she supported protecting rose in the tower but still piled on dick for going off on his reckless suicide mission to try and save both jason and rose. she endorsed (and once praised) dick taking on troubled young superhero charges, yet turned around and berated him for daring to open up titans tower and “put them in the firing line”. 

i mean, for all that she takes the considerate, sensitive line in conversations, it’s almost always in contradiction to a position she’d taken earlier. it’s too consistent to be a coincidence, and i think it’s fascinating.

4. i didn’t realise amazons could be defeated and killed so easily?? who issued the contract to kill jillian in the first place and what was the “important work” they were doing in san francisco in the first place? a mystery within a mystery...

5. if this season were the draft of a story, i would go right in with a red pen and start moving around all the parts to make it flow better; excise entire passages and rewrite a few others. the pacing has been terrible, and this has meant that the younger titans--and the team we came to know and love through the first season--have gotten almost nothing to do, either plot-wise or emotionally. even if kory and gar and rachel become absolutely vital to the story in the last 4-5 episodes, it would still be a fairly significant failure, storytelling-wise.

that’s a pity because this show is packed with a stellar cast, always looks gorgeous, and is filled with genuinely insightful human relationships that are allowed to unfold in ways you just don’t see in other superhero media. just--*vibrates* a little more love and care from the people making and producing the show please!

[mobius-prime]

209. Sonic the Hedgehog #141

Return to Angel Island (Part 4): Ultimate Hero

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Jon Gray Colors: Jason Jensen

So things are… bad. Hunter is back and has a shiny new weapon to boot, which appears to vaporize anyone in his path. Sonic gives Knuckles a ride back to the echidna refugee camp at high speed, with Knuckles still doubting his ability to even be able to help without his Chaos powers, while the refugees flee Hunter's attacks. Remington tries to insist that he wants to remain behind to protect the Master Emerald at all costs, but Archimedes tries to dissuade him, instead trying to convince everyone to fall back to the emerald's chamber to defend it more directly. Finitevus isn't interested in Archimedes' pleas, but they're interrupted by the approach of Hunter.

No, Remington! I was honestly so upset by this, as Remington is one of my favorite recurring characters of the comic. Finitevus doesn't look too concerned, though… Archimedes meets Lara-Le, Wynmacher, and Saffron in the Master Emerald's chamber, informing them of the fate of the two outside, and they get ready to defend the emerald with their lives - but just as Hunter breaches the door, Sonic and Knuckles show up to help with the defense. Hunter throws some kind of fast-moving mechanical ball towards Sonic to keep him occupied and out of the way, and Knuckles charges in only to be once more overcome with agony from his proximity to the Master Emerald. Outside in the main cavern, the other heroes return from Dingo City only to be horrified at the devastation they see in the camp. Lien-Da becomes enraged, blaming Locke for "foisting the emerald" upon the Dark Legion, but Julie-Su has finally had enough and gets in her half-sister's face, yelling that she willingly chose to accept the emerald because she wanted the power it would bring her. You go, Julie-Su!

And right there we have the true reason behind all her hatred and vitriol. Of course these things always come down to daddy issues. Still, it's the first time we've ever really seen any true emotion from Lien-Da, apart from her usual scheming and power grabs, and it adds a depth to her character that she's been lacking thus far. Back in the Hidden Palace, Lara-Le rushes to Knuckles' side as he slumps to the ground, and Hunter approaches gleefully, raising his weapon for a death blow. However, a sudden pink light engulfs Knuckles, who rises into the air and begins to crackle with energy. He's overjoyed, announcing himself to the room not as Knuckles, but as… Super Knuckles! That's right, his Chaos powers have returned, and he's ready to stop Hunter's rampage, grabbing him and bursting through the roof of the palace.

Oh yeah - Knuckles straight up kills Hunter. It's one of the very few times we actually see one of the heroes of this comic intentionally end someone's life - but I think in this case, considering what kind of person he is and what he's done, killing Hunter is entirely justified for the greater good. As he descends back down to earth, the surviving echidnas all begin chanting "Avatar!" while the remaining dingoes retreat in a blind panic. Lien-Da is furious to see her hold over the refugees slipping, but Knuckles and his friends are clearly excited to see his Chaos powers return, with Archimedes revealing that he was certain that all Knuckles needed to reawaken them was to remain in close proximity to the Master Emerald long enough for it to power him back up. However, I'm actually not so on board with him regaining his powers. I really liked the dynamic of Knuckles losing the very thing that made him so special, and having to start from basics once again, learning how to fight without a superpowered edge. We've seen several different stories where Sonic lost his own super speed, but always got it back in the end - how interesting would it be to see a story where the hero never recovered their powers? And Knuckles, given his backstory, is the perfect candidate for such a plot - he never asked for his abilities, and they clearly brought him great pain and trauma as they developed. This would be an amazing direction to take his character arc, with Knuckles torn between the life he's always known, and the chance to start anew. After all, while he developed his latent Chaos powers without having a say in the matter, and despite the pain they often brought him, he did become accustomed to the effect they had on his life in a way, learning to control them to some degree and finding out more and more about why he had them. But the circumstances of his birth also ensured that he wouldn't have any real say in his own destiny, and this was always clearly troubling to him. Removing his powers for good would have put him in a fascinating position where on the one hand he would obviously be upset at losing such a great source of power, one which he's been told is his birthright, but on the other the loss of this power would leave him much freer to decide his own path from here, rejecting the path others have set out for him and discovering who "Knuckles" could be without others trying to define who he was for him. I don't know, I just think there's a huge missed opportunity here to explore more in depth who Knuckles could ultimately end up being without his Chaos powers being his most defining feature.

But alas, Knuckles has his powers back once more, and he's fulfilled the prophecy of the Ancient Walkers to boot. Eggman contacts the heroes via hologram once more, claiming that now that he knows where the Master Emerald is hidden he'll be there straightaway to steal it, but Sonic merely crushes the communicator and Locke enlists the help of the Legion once more to move the Master Emerald someplace else. Knuckles asks after Remington, but Archimedes sadly informs him that he and Finitevus were both casualties of Hunter's rampage. Lien-Da curtly tells Knuckles there's no time to mourn friends right now… and then quietly, when no one can hear her, adds "…or family." Wait, what? So, this is something that has actually been hinted at here and there for a while now, but so vaguely that one might not pick up on the hints unless they were already in the know. Remington's father is actually Kragok, which would make Lien-Da his aunt! This was never outright confirmed in any canon material until the Sonic Comic Encyclopedia many years from now, but I figured I'd go ahead and explain it right here, since, well, Remington ain't around these parts anymore. But yeah, that's why Lien-Da has always acted slightly weird around Remington. Anyway, Knuckles begins to say goodbye to his father, but Locke sharply asks him what he's intending now, seeming very upset at the idea of Knuckles leaving.

I love this. It's about freaking time we finally saw some serious conflict between Knuckles and Locke. For too long Knuckles has always dutifully followed whatever his father told him to do, but now, with a year away from the island under his belt to give him some real perspective, for the first time he's standing up for what he believes in instead of just doing whatever the Brotherhood wants, and Locke is clearly feeling threatened by this display of independence. To be fair, I can see Locke's point, as the island is clearly still quite devastated by Eggman's occupation and they could use someone like Knuckles to help them clean up, but still, I do think Knuckles has the right idea, as taking down Eggman for good seems like a better idea than just cleaning up after him - pulling up the weed by the roots, you know? Knuckles does seem quite sad as his father stalks away and vanishes through a warp ring, but he merely says his goodbyes to his mother and Wynmacher before joining Sonic and the others to head back to Knothole. For now, the day is saved, and everything seems fine and dandy - but what's this? It seems something quite disturbing is happening in Eggman's main base…

This. Is. Horrific. Say hello to the Egg Grapes, everybody, because this isn't the last time we'll be seeing them! We can see that apparently, these things have three functions: "Energy Drain," "Mind Eraser," and "Toxic Infusion," none of which are explained but all of which sound terrifying. We also get to look at some of the poor unfortunate souls trapped inside the pods. A few are just background characters from previous issues, but others are far more heartwrenching. We can see the three other surviving fire ants, minus Archimedes, meaning Archimedes is likely the last of the council now. We can also see, of course, Remington in front there, which again just makes me sad as I love Remington. However, perhaps the worst one is hidden in the back: Simon. As in, Simon, Julie-Su's adoptive father. Floren-Ca is also in there somewhere, just not shown on panel, which means that without even being aware of it, Julie-Su has now become a true orphan. It's incredibly tragic, as she'd just begun to get to know her own family after being separated from them for so long, but the island was invaded shortly afterward, and a year later, they're just… gone, being tortured to death inside one of Eggman's awful experimental devices without Julie-Su ever getting a chance to say goodbye. This is, I think, the moment where I realized just how truly terrifying comic Eggman is. Anime Eggman is hardly a threat at all, very much the type of villain who's more invested in their fights with their heroic nemesis than in actually taking over the world. And Eggman from the games, while he is genuine about his plans for world domination, has never actually committed mass murder, at least that we've seen. Sure, he's used small innocent animals as living batteries, but never actually mass tortured half the populace of an entire island just for the hell of it. This is where the comic begins to get truly dark, as we realize just what a terrifying megalomaniac we're facing here. No more silly jokes, no more half-assed villainy - Eggman is a monster, and the Freedom Fighters have to take him down for good lest he destroy the entire world.

Mobius 25 Years Later: Scenario

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jason Jensen

Oh, but, y'know, we could also just jump forward into a boring future where everything is fine apart from reality beginning to tear itself apart. Granted, this issue's story actually has more real plot than the rest of the entries put together, though also granted, that isn't much. We're finally going to address that whole "collapse of spacetime" thing, as Knuckles leads Sonic to Rotor and Cobar's hidden laboratory to discuss the issue. Cobar is shocked that Knuckles knew the location of his lab, and Knuckles casually mentions that he likes keeping tabs on Lien-Da's favorite scientist wait excuse me what?! So all this time, Cobar has been in Lien-Da's employ, and we just never heard about it until now? Why are you so mistrustful of Lien-Da and yet totally trust the word of her favorite scientist when it comes to all this world-ending stuff? Ugh, I feel like I've spent far too much time and energy pointing out the many, many plot holes of this arc, so we're just going to move on like everything is fine. Rotor and Cobar explain the whole shebang to Sonic, while we get a short and useless scene of Julie-Su and Sally being unable to sleep and reiterating once again their worries for their husbands, and when we flip back to Sonic he's shocked to hear that he's the cause behind the acceleration of entropy on Mobius!

He tries to argue that it might have been the Dark Legion or someone else who had done a lot of zone-hopping in the past, but the two scientists insist that their experiments show that it was his fault. I really don't see how arguing over fault is going to help, especially when Sonic had literally no idea that actions he took when he was fifteen were going to someday contribute to the end of the world twenty-five years after the fact, but eh, again, we never claimed this story made any sense. Knuckles and Sonic leave, with Knuckles telling Rotor and Cobar to find a solution and fast, and as soon as they're gone a panel slides open in the wall to reveal who else but Lien-Da, who has listened in on the whole thing and is very curious about why exactly Cobar has been hiding all of this from her. Hmm, suspicious! Do you think we're finally about to get an answer about what treacherous deeds Lien-Da has been planning this whole time? Ah, c'mon, this is a Penders story, of course not!

[lesbiangenkai]

i kick a hornets nest, or: some kurahi thoughts

kurahi is one of those ships i have sort of drifted around and sort of avoided partially through no fault of its own and mostly due to some really bad takes and lots of bad content relating to it but there’s still something about this ship thats kind of interesting to me because its actually really fascinating in how the characters are very similar, can relate to each other and do have chemistry but also there is a very weird disconnect between them throughout the series where they feel like they are simultaneously two people who’ve known each other for a while but actually don’t seem to know each other very well at all, or are for some reason unwilling to know each other deeply.

the two shots story where they first meet is really telling because they become friends based on their emotional connections - not because of power or convenience. hiei only asks kurama his name after he makes maya forget him, because despite wanting emotional connection he feels it’s better if he remains unknown to her. and hiei obviously sees a parallel of himself and how he feels about telling yukina who he is - he cares but also thinks himself unworthy of emotional connection. i think both characters understand this about each other (with kurama maybe being more emotionally aware than hiei at the start, obviously). however this makes his betrayal of hiei at the start of the series seem even more callous. after knowing hiei for a year, and even knowing hiei has someone he cares for, kurama ditches him without much thought and later actively sabotages his plans for yusuke without even trying to vouch for him. i think his decision makes sense - yusuke helped save his mother, hiei is being an ass, and this is still a kurama not fully down with the idea of teamwork or trusting people, but it does suggest a distance you wouldn’t expect from two people who have known each other for that long. and i think it’s that kind of interaction that continues throughout the series that always throws me off about these two. i’m actually never really sure what i’m supposed to feel about their relationship.

in chapter black there’s a specific scene that always stands out to me, the scene where they’re trying to get hiei to come to the mansion to save yusuke. hiei is throwing out his usual attitude of ‘whats in it for me’ even though at this point, the audience has caught on that it’s mostly transparent and he does care to help. however instead of just letting hiei have his tantrum and trusting him to do the right thing (it is yusuke after all, as if hiei would let anything happen to him) kurama tries to (unsuccessfully) manipulate him into going. it’s not malicious, and again, his choice here makes sense, but this interaction doesn’t speak of two people who intimately trust each other. kurama comes off as cold, even. it’s just really jarring especially when the anime adds a bunch of light hearted banter between them, im assuming to let the pair ride along on subtext but it just makes moments like this really awkward.

& honestly i think leaning into the awkwardness of them actually dating would be kinda funny but ultimately pretty boring and unsatisfying because it’s sorta like a staring contest where neither person wants to blink first. i think i’ve said before i imagine a date between these two to be them in a room where they are each just doing their own thing and not speaking to each other which can be fine to a point but eventually i just have a million questions like does hiei, who is known to communicate emotionally through physicality/violence (see: the fights w yusuke and mukuro) have the patience to deal with kurama wanting to talk about his guilt for 6 hours or would he be like ‘well let’s just fight in the woods for 20 minutes and you’ll feel better, idiot’. at some point hiei would have to relent and be vulnerable despite fearing rejection and kurama’s going to have to submit to the mortifying idea of Being Known but it’s hard when one person is hiding under layers of pride and ego to avoid that rejection and the other is too busy also hiding under several carefully constructed masks because they think they don’t deserve affection. either one of them could be capable of making the first step but that can only happen if one person is open to receiving the olive branch and...neither comes off as willing to do that, at least during the series. i think it’s actually more interesting as a complete mess like this, where they both make missteps and the relationship ultimately doesn’t work out but the first steps towards actively trying to be in one are explored. i’d actually say it fits in better with the narrative like this given how the series ends rather than the ship just sort of. being there and existing without examining all this stuff.    

really that’s the most frustrating thing to me about this pairing because, despite a lot of this pairing gaining popularity on its subtext, i think it ultimately works against it when there’s so many things that you’d like to see addressed in...actual text. how would they work through their emotional issues? the closest we see is when kurama kills amanuma, hiei basically tells yusuke to leave kurama be and he’ll sort himself out - although its revealed not five minutes later kurama is actually not sorted out, he’s devastated, and is just sitting on layers of guilt he needs to talk about. you don’t get to see if hiei’s just trying to help kurama save face, if he buys into kurama’s stoic facade, or if he realizes how kurama feels but just prefers not to pry. (ffs itsuki of all people gets a monologue about kurama’s emotional state after all that and not hiei. ITSUKI.) how would they deal with their living situations? these are two characters not even willing to live in the same world as each other, and even a situation where hiei is frequenting the human world there’s a very big difference between hanging around when he feels like it and being committed to playing house the way kurama wants to. and i'm ngl, it doesnt seem very likely that hiei would be ready or willing to do that.

at the end of the day i know its all just very lackluster because togashi doesn’t seem to give a shit about actually writing romance and his reaction to this pairing when someone brought it up was just as lackluster “oh yeah i guess i could’ve done that oh well”. and the anime threw everyone a bone but didn’t really commit but it’s still interesting to think about and fic exploring these hurdles could be interesting for sure (and i mean like...actually dealing with them not ‘well kurama’s waiting for his mom to die to bounce this solves everything’) but i also sort of just think of them just being okay as like...two dummies who maybe tried to make this happen and it just didn’t, and now hiei’s just the ex that shows up at kurama’s occasionally to sneer at his choice in neckties. 

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Lieutenant Philippa Georgiou!

- [SHORT TREKS SPOILERS]

- okay let’s discuss

- I watched it this morning and my primary emotion is still just !!!!!

- PHILIPPA PILOTING THE SHN-03 SHUTTLE DOWN FROM THE SHENZHOU

- Before I really get into in-universe Philippa meta, I admit my overall out-of-universe feelings on the episode aren’t very good.

- Portraying a colonized people as ‘not questioning the way of things’ and going willingly to be killed by their oppressors reminded me of a lot of deeply awful racist and colonial tropes.

- While it might be possible for Star Trek to create a story that included some of the elements that were used in The Brightest Star and still tell it in a nuanced and respectful way, there wasn’t enough time for much nuance here, nor much effort made to include nuance and respect in the time they had.

- Overall I was not very comfortable with the story, and I think it would require a lot more nuance and care to tell a meaningful and respectful story about colonization and oppression. I won't be able to address those issues with the nuance they deserve this one quick post-ep characterization chatter post, either, but I wanted to at least touch on them.

- SO

- PHILIPPA

- First, what I wasn’t a fan of: Given the above, I really didn’t like the emphasis in Philippa’s lines about Saru being special and different and (though she didn’t put it this way) ‘more advanced’ than the rest of his people; it was gross and played into really awful tropes.

- Moving on to things I did like!

- Philippa piloting (or co-piloting; I’m dying to know whether there was another servicemember in the shuttle with her) a Shenzhou shuttle! <3

- Actual portrayal of the universal translator in use, a la Star Trek Beyond!

- The amount of nuance and emotion that Michelle Yeoh can communicate in any given facial expression, as always, absolutely floored me. There’s so much going on in her face and eyes as she’s first talking to Saru; she starts with a a mix of professionalism/efficiency, sympathy, pain on his behalf, and wonder/delight to be talking with him; then, when she delivers the terrible news, and he turns away to make his decision, there’s a moment of quiet but absolute devastation—I feel like this is a time when it isn’t an assumption to say ‘this good-aligned fictional character clearly does feel terrible for the awful thing they’re participating in’—for a moment before she watches tensely to see what his decision will be. Then, when he chooses, her smile is so genuinely delighted and relieved while also still showing sympathy, solemnity and pain.

- I love the confirmation of the impression I think a lot of us had that Philippa is a principled person working within a flawed organization. The Starfleet we see in Discovery is strongly suggestive of an organization that was quietly at war with itself long before the Klingon war began, with a mixture of the people like Georgiou and Connor and presumably many other personnel like them, who believe in upholding a certain set of Starfleet principles, and then the Section 31 officers we see on the Discovery, admirals who made Burnham a fall girl for a war she didn’t start, supercilious leaders like Admiral Anderson, etc. It lends fascinating weight to Burnham’s assertions at the end of the series about how “this is who we are”—was Starfleet already building toward the kind of reckoning with itself that the war then forced? And it raises so many questions about what Philippa’s Starfleet backstory is like. We already knew she was a war veteran; a soldier and a diplomat who had fought in space battles. Now we have confirmation that she fought diplomatic battles within her own organization as well.

- I love that she fought for Saru—there’s obviously a hell of a story there.

- And that it was Philippa specifically who was the one space IMing with him the whole time!

- Philippa having a science badge was a little ??? to me. Novel canon says she used to be a field medic, and imo, the onscreen lines about her being a diplomat and a soldier at least somewhat suggested that she’d started out as security track or something similar (in addition to the MICHELLE YEOH, PROFESSIONAL BADASS factor).

- (I admit I may be a little biased here since Philippa starting as a security officer is a beloved headcanon of mine, and I’m also always a little salty over the trend within sci-fi of “women = scientists,” rather than pilots, engineers, fighters, etc. (Of course, criticizing those trends can also be a double-edged sword, as it is also not great to imply that women in very (very) slightly more traditionally feminine professions can’t be tough badasses too.) Anyway, it’s certainly not my hill to die on, plus if I’m not a fan of the idea of Georgiou in science division I can always headcanon that she was only wearing a science uniform as part of a step in a convoluted scheme to convince her superiors to let her reach Saru. ;)

- the Entirely New Piece of Canon Information that I found most fascinating was that Philippa was stationed on the Shenzhou before she became captain! It was clearly a very deliberate choice to show a “SHN” shuttle.

- And not only do we now know she served on on the Shenzhou prior to reaching the captaincy, we know she was there for a number of years; when Michael joins the crew seven years before the beginning of DSC, Philippa is captain and Saru is on the bridge crew, and here she’s a Lieutenant and he’s joining Starfleet, so I think we can safely assume this takes place somewhere in the vicinity of 2-10 years before that.

- Also, if she became a captain 2-10 years before she met Michael (and personally I’m erring on the side of ‘this episode takes place longer rather than sooner before he show, so she’s a lieutenant in her late thirties/early forties and becomes a captain not long after that’), and she still comes up in Saru’s space google search of the most decorated captains, that means that either

a) Saru’s space google search terms pulled up the captains who were ‘most successful’ over the course of their careers, and so Philippa was a fucking badass throughout her career before making captain

b) In the space of just 9-17 years as a captain she was so ridiculously badass and heroic that she made the ‘all time best captains’ list

...or both.

- Which DELIGHTS me.

- The parallel between Philippa spreading her arm to invite Saru into the shuttle and into Starfleet and spreading her arm to invite Michael onto the bridge and into Starfleet: poetic cinema

- HER HAIR

- Philippa having an elaborate updo: definitely evidence that was Janeway inspired by the DSC characters and wanted to emulate Captain Georgiou with her own elaborate updo ;)

- I’ve only scratched the surface here and only really touched on meta on stuff we actually saw and barely got into HEADCANONS HEADCANONS HEADCANONS building off of said stuff and I would give anything to hear everyone’s thoughts!

[ibythetidepromotions]

An interview with Wormhole

Thank you for your time, Could you introduce yourselves to the readers?

Noni: Thank you so much for having us! I am Sanil Kumar, but everyone calls me Noni. I play guitar in Wormhole. 

Ansh : Hello, you FILTHY readers, I'm Ansh, I've been the vocalist for Wormhole for about two years now, as well as guitar for Noisays, Codex Orhova and Perihelion.

Sanjay : I am Sanjay, I play guitar in Wormhole as well as Equipoise and Greylotus

How did Wormhole come to be?

Noni : Wormhole started sometime in 2015 between Sanjay and I, but really this band has been together for a lot longer than that. We’d known each other and been playing music together for a while but stopped for a bit in 2015. At that time Sanjay and I just write and release some music of our own. We saw how other slam bands at the time were making music in their homes and were able to cultivate a cult following through social media and Slam Worldwide and we thought if we could get a small following like that it would have been really cool if we could manage to get a couple people into our music.

So Sanjay and I had some doodles from our old band(s) that we more or less put together for an album and released it under the name Wormhole. Since it was just the two of us at that time, we needed to find a vocalist. We ended up having Duncan Bentley from Vulvodynia do most of the vocals. This must have been right after he finished recording his parts for their album Psychosadistic Design. That resulted in Genesis which was released in 2016.

Ansh: Back in the day we had a comedy slam band called Rotting Phallus that we all left except the vocalist. Later, Sanjay and Sanil used some of their Rotting Phallus tracks, wrote some new tracks, and released Genesis under the name Wormhole. Matt and I joined the band again and we started to really find our sound. New and improved, now with ugly-ol' BASIL, all has been smooth sailing!

Sanjay: Technically Wormhole was originally a ‘comedy slam band’ in 2014 called Rotting Phallus.  Noni, Ansh, Matt and I were all a part of this.  The band kind of died and we stopped being a band because we had a toxic asshole vocalist who we all hate now.  When the band died noni and I got duncan and recorded all the OG Rotting Phallus tunes under the name Wormhole.

On the start of 2020 you guys released ‘The Weakest Among Us’ the cover art reminds me of a boss fight about to happen in some Doom/Halo-esque battle, what is the story behind the cover art?

Noni: You’re kinda close haha. The cover was inspired by the Metroid Prime series. We are super inspired by those games in more ways than one. There is a cut scene before a boss battle in one of the games that we based the cover art off of. We’ve been really inspired by the soundtrack too. It sets such a cool vibe.Sanjay and I grew up playing those games, and we’ve played them over and over. The universe, atmosphere, character design, everything about those games is so cool to us. Pretty metal. If it weren’t for those games I don’t know what I would make this band about.

Ansh: Sanjay and Sanil are BIG and STUPID nerds who like SPACE and other SILLY THINGS like METROID PRIME and ANIME.

Sanjay: Metroid Prime is the main source of visual and lyrical inspiration, but I love Doom (especially Doom 3) and you can tell I think Mancubus looks brutal as fuck.

Since the world is at a standstill for the foreseeable future and you released  ‘The Weakest Among Us’ on the top of 2020 how hard has it been to get the word out about the album since no one can tour currently?

Noni: It has been really shitty having tours cancelled and not being able to promote the album properly, but we also know that we are not the only ones in this boat so there is no sense in complaining I feel. Social media is our friend though and people still seem to be pretty responsive to the album anyway.  

It seems like going forward, bands are going to have to figure out how to do this anyway. So, if Wormhole (or any band) isn’t really working out because we can’t tour, then we have to figure something out.

Ansh: In general I've been happy with the online support but not being able to tour is beyond frustrating. As tough as it can be at times, touring is kinda like the celebration of your music and all the hard work you put into it, so not being able to get that live show release is truly devastating. Compounded with the potential fans we could have made and merch we could have sold, it's more than a bummer. But all the love and support the record has gotten online has also been one of the only things keeping me sane whilst I'm stuck in my house.

Sanjay: It’s definitely not as easy since touring is one of the main ways to reach new audiences but it’s not as hard when you have some dedicated fans who genuinely love spreading some Wormhole gospel.  Those fans are the realest MVPs in these trying times.

I always find it fascinating when the band's cover art describes what the album is going to sound like, when talking to the artist how do you project your ideas out of your head coherent enough to be understood?

Sanjay: We kind of got lucky with Lordigan (the artist of both covers) on Genesis.  We were kind of winging it and knew we just wanted a slam monster album cover.  We had some help from my bud Ryan Wolanski on getting the colors we wanted as well.  With TWAU I had a general idea of the color scheme and setting we wanted.  Lordigan was very aware of the Doom/Space Marine aesthetic so it was not hard to communicate.  Our album cover is not really a reflection of the music I would say because we kind of just pick what we want because it’s cool and we’ve seen similar things work for other bands.

Ansh: I usually just get an artist I really love and ask them to listen to the music and draw whatever comes to them, but maybe that's why I'm not allowed to do merch for Wormhole. 

Noni: We just tried to be specific and nit-picky. The most important thing for our artwork was to have a center focus, the classic slam monster, with a few other things to look at in the background/foreground. The album’s production wasn’t going to be super futuristic and modern, so the color scheme kind of reflected that. We wanted more browns to dominate the image, to give a bleak and miserable vibe. We went to Lordigan Pedro Sana for both of our albums and he was super responsive to every change we wanted to make. The best thing for them is a reference in my experience, especially if you can find something in artwork they made to use as a reference.

I see the album artwork as just as big a part of the album as any of the songs or riffs. The way I see it, both the music and the artwork and song titles all work together to create a vibe and atmosphere. They need to feed into each other. Not only that, they need to somehow stand out from the other million extreme metal records being released everywhere. It’s really important and one of the places I see newer/local bands cutting corners or not going all in, and maybe settling for something that isn’t stellar.

Crowdkill Apparel has some of the most unique merch options I've seen from car seat cover to a shower curtain, when given the opportunity what would be the weirdest merch you guys would like to release?

Noni: I would love to see the Wormhole logo on a cereal box. I imagine our cereal would have marshmallows.

Ansh: A bong??? A worm shaped bong??? Like from the first album??? Or maybe a big spikey worm dildo/butt plug??? Done tastefully OBVIOUSLY.

Sanjay: Wormhole weed called “The Dankest Among Us”.  Any weed paraphernalia honestly like rolling papers and some Wormhole glass.  We did a small run of grinders before which was cool.

With the state of the world that it is currently, touring as you would of guessed is a no go, Suicide Silence they have the right idea about having a virtual “world tour” where the show is streamed has the touring bug been bad enough to where you’ve considered this?

Noni: I think rather than trying to make “touring” work, we are going to try to put out content that is a little more practical for people to enjoy. Music analysis, lessons, playthroughs, stuff like that. Comedic or podcasty type stuff where people get to know the band members and develop some kind of a personal relationship with them despite not being able to meet with any of our fans in person. Not everyone who listens to this stuff plays an instrument or makes music, so we want to put something out that engages with that group as well.I’m sure we’ll do some full band stuff too, but not everything will just be us playing the songs. I think in this current era, and consequently the future, bands will have to do much more than just play their music to get out there. It was already kind of like that but now I think the big emphasis isn’t really on the music anymore. I think it will be kind of analogous to how gaming consoles used to be all about gaming. But now your Xbox or Playstation has to be able to have Netflix and YouTube and still regularly release and develop games over time.

Ansh: My other band Noisays was recently part of Mathcore Index Fest, the fest raised a reasonably sizeable donation for the Justice for George Floyed and Breonna Taylor Relief Fund, and it was sick to hang in a chatroom with a bunch of homies that i would be chilling with at the show. It was sick to do something good, share music and connect with friends and fans but virtual life is never going to be the same as real life to me. Whether it's teaching online, hanging out with people on video chat, or attending a virtual show, it's always just gonna be virtual and it'll never be a replacement for real life, to me at least. So please do everything you possibly can to make sure WE CAN COME PLAY FOR YOU ASAP.

Sanjay: I don’t think we can compare ourselves to Suicide Silence because our fanbases are vastly different.  I would hope we could do something like that but i definitely don’t think we are at a point where it would make sense.  Would be fun though.

Dream tour with Wormhole on the bill?

Noni: For the band obviously we just want to go out with the big boys like Obscura or The Black Dahlia Murder or Thy Art for our egos. But for my satisfaction I would want Wormhole to play with Dethklok just because Sanjay and I worship Brendon Small. Dude is a fucking genius and clearly has something figured out that neither of us do. Defeated Sanity would be on there too. If we’re talking defunct bands as well, I would want Necrophagist and/or Death in there somewhere too. But the real dream would for us to tour with Metallica and just play in Metallica and it’s also 1991.

Ansh: Warped Tour and we play right before All Time Low or some shit like that, Old Town Road guy opens right before us and does all the remixes. Miles Davis joins Limp Bizkit for the headlining set.

Sanjay: I would want to be direct support for Gojira.  That’s all really.  I think a bunch of bands (including Wormhole) have a lot to learn about the energy they project live and I would love to be a part of their show.

Anything else you would like to tell the readers before we go?

Noni: If there is some crazy guitar player or musician out there that you really admire and put on a pedestal you should understand that you are capable of literally anything that person is. That guy may have some special X factor but that is really only like 10% of it. The other 90% is the hardwork. Also thanks for reading and supporting and all that. It is really sick and cool and makes us feel good.

Ansh: Play and listen to lots of music, work stupid hard, and do whatever the fuck you want, the only people that'll say you can't do it are lazy as FUCK. Fuck'em.-ANSH OUT.

Sanjay: tech-slam

Wormhole Social Media:

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[aion-rsa]

How Looking For Alaska Channels (and Doesn't) The O.C.

https://ift.tt/2oK259X

We talked to Looking For Alaska creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage about the connections between Looking For Alaska & The O.C.

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Tonally and structurally, Hulu's new teen drama Looking For Alaska and that mainstay of teen television The O.C. have little in common. One is a more grounded coming-of-age drama, the other is a (very good) teen soap. One is an eight-episode limited series, the other ran for four seasons on Fox. One is set in the woods of Alabama, the other takes place on the sunny beaches of Southern California.

But these two projects—one set in 2005 but made in 2019, and the other set in 2003-2007 and made during that same time period—have some fascinating connections that can give the Looking For Alaska viewing experience a meta layer for anyone who was also a contemporary fan of that teen drama classic The O.C. 

Both The O.C. and Looking For Alaska were created by Josh Schwartz (his producing partner, Stephanie Savage co-created the latter). Schwartz was showrunning The O.C. when he optioned the film rights for first-time author John Green's Looking For Alaska, and it's not hard to understand why the manuscript might have piqued 2005 Schwartz's interest: Both The O.C. and Looking For Alaska are stories about (teen white boy) outsiders coming into a tight-knit, privileged community.

Schwartz said that it was Green's writing that initially drew him to the book all those years ago, and the ways in which it allowed him to connect to the characters of Looking For Alaska, which is told from protagonist Miles "Pudge" Halter's point-of-view in the novel. 

read more: Den of Geek's Best Fiction Books of 2017

"Miles aka Pudge, was the guy I definitely identified with," said Schwartz of that initial reading experience. "And I think that idea of everyone has had in Alaska who's come into their life, whether it's been the exact same, it's played out in exactly the same way it did for Miles, but somebody who teaches you... let's just say growth through pain."

The book (and series) follow Miles as he begins his junior year at private boarding school Culver Creek Academy in rural Alabama. In the series, Miles is played by Charlie Plummer (Boardwalk Empire, All the Money in the World). Unlike the novel, the adaptation is more of an ensemble drama, giving just as much narrative space to Miles' roommate Chip "The Colonel" Martin (Denny Love) and object of Miles' affections Alaska Young (The Society's Kristine Froseth), both scholarship kids from working class backgrounds. Miles, Chip, and Alaska's found family dynamic is the basis for the joy, humor, and heartbreak of the story.

"I also thought the book was just really, really funny," said Schwartz, elaborating on what initially drew him to this world. "The relationships that all these kids had with each other. Their nicknames and their codewords and their smoking holes and their ambrosia. It was a whole world that, even though it was loosely inspired by John's experience and obviously by his imagination, I felt like it had happened to me."

Schwartz has evolved professionally since he first optioned the rights to Looking For Alaska 15 years ago. In 2010, Schwartz and Savage formed Fake Empire, a production company for the development of TV and feature films. Fake Empire has made series like Gossip Girl, Chuck, Hart of Dixie, The Carrie Diaries, Dynasty, Marvel's Runaways, and now Looking For Alaska. (They are also behind new CW show Nancy Drew, and are developing a Gossip Girl sequel series for HBO Max.)

read more: Nancy Drew Pilot Review (Spoiler-Free)

Speaking about the difference between making a show about 2005 in 2005 and making a show about 2005 now, Schwartz said: "The O.C. was very much of the time when we made it. It was very contemporary and all of the fashion and the music was of the moment. What the kids were talking about or dealing with... it was very deliberately a show designed to reflect the times that we were living in."

Looking For Alaska, on the otherhand, says Schwartz, is not meant to reflect the interests or anxieties of 2005 specifically, even if it may have some of the aesthetics of 2005.

"We want to looking for Alaska to feel timeless," said Schwartz. "So part of setting it in 2005 [was] because that's when the book was first published. [For] the first generation of readers who read the book, that was the context that they were experiencing it. And the same for us. But [that setting] also allowed the show to have a certain timeless quality. It's not an obvious period piece, but it's the last moment before people got smartphones. There is an innocence and a timelessness to it."

read more: Marvel's Runaways — What Sets This Superhero Show Apart

Fake Empire gets its name comes from a The National song that was featured in Season 2 of Chuck, a nod to how important indie music has been to their success and brand of the company. Looking For Alaska includes many songs that originally appeared on The O.C. or other Fake Empire shows. Savage and Schwartz have brought in frequent collaborator Music Supervisor Alexandra Patsavas (The O.C., Chuck, Gossip Girl) once again for Looking For Alaska.

"Selfishly, it allowed us to go back and pull out our old O.C. playlist," said Schwartz of Alaska's 2005 setting, "and revisit with old friends and listen to some of this music, use some of the music, but then also get these new covers from contemporary artists of those songs."

Not all references are intentional or even objective: When Miles first sees Alaska in the Looking For Alaska pilot, it is through a car window, as he is driving by on his way to Culver Creek. The music swells and time seems to slow down, the rest of the world fading away for Miles, as the two characters see each other for the first time.

read more: Fleabag Season 2 Review

The moment is reminscent of a similar shot in The O.C. pilot, which sees Ryan making eye contact with Marissa through a car window to the dreamy strums of Joseph Arthur's "Honey and the Moon" as Sandy drives him away. (When asked about this shot construction, Savage brings up Serena's introduction in the Gossip Girl pilot, which sees Blake Lively staring forlornly out of the train window to Pete Bjorn's "Young Folks" as she returns to NYC.)

"We like shows where people look out the window," Schwartz jokes before adding more seriously: "When you're a teenager, a lot of the ways you see the world is out the window, when somebody else is taking you somewhere."

In addition to all of these meta moments, The O.C. gets a more explicit shout-out in Looking For Alaska. In Episode 6, Miles and Lara (Sofia Vassilieva) are watching the show on a laptop (they must have the DVD?). It's a tangible connection between the worlds of these two shows: the show that defined—at least pop culturally—what it meant to be a teen in the mid-aughts and the show that is loosely using that setting to wonder what it means to be a teen coming-of-age now, when, perhaps, teenagers are asked to grow up sooner and faster.

While the moment may be an explicit The O.C. reference, it has its own meta element because cast members Froseth and Plummer were watching The O.C. while filming Looking For Alaska.

read more: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell Review & Discussion

"Kristine Froseth is like, hardcore, the biggest fan of the original show," said Schwartz. "I thought she was joking when we first started talking about it. She watched the show four times in a row, from beginning to end, and then she gave Charlie the show and so he started watching it and then they would come to set with questions. And then Kristine is like, 'Charlie, we just have to watch up until the point where Marissa dies,' and Charlie goes, 'Marissa dies?' She basically spoiled it for him."

Schwartz said that inherent in these conversations was the curiosity from the young stars of Looking For Alaska about what it was like to be a teenager or adult during this just-past time period. (Froseth was born in 1996, and Plummer was born in 1999.) 

"We were being asked a lot 'What were the aughts like like?'" said Schwartz, "which also made us feel very old." It's an interesting question to ponder, though not one that Looking For Alaska spends a lot, if any, time on. This isn't a series about then or maybe even now; it's a story hoping to be about always, about the ways in which those first, unfathomable encounters with devastating loss and grief change us. How they always have and they always will.

All eight episodes of Looking For Alaska are now available on Hulu.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Books

Kayti Burt

Oct 18, 2019

Looking For Alaska

Hulu

Josh Schwartz

Stephanie Savage

from Books https://ift.tt/2MSdCvJ

[yoyo-inspace]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Madi recently. 

There’s quite a few ideas floating around in my head, but I didn’t seem to be able to find the right words to express them (though I made some attempts), and then I read jaune-clair’s fantastic meta over here and it’s expressed perfectly. (Really, you should read it, it’s great.)

The thing is, anyone who’s followed me for a certain amount of time, or anyone who remembers me persistently posting in the Black Sails tag over the years (in very sporadic bursts), know I love Treasure Island. I’m that meme, basically. Long John Silver is one of my favorite literary characters of all time. And while his wife is only mentioned three times in the entire book, their relationship has always fascinated me to no end. So I’m always disappointed that she’s never included in any adaptions. Sure, I have a very specific set of headcanons for the two that no show would ever be able to fulfill, but still. She’s never in anything (except for that Eddie Izzard version which I have a liveblog of that continues once every century), which is such a shame.

When Black Sails’ first season came around, those who knew TI already went full out speculating. Max was the most popular one back then, because while Black Sails has a great deal of diveristy in many departments, there weren’t really that many options. Besides, she had a fitting relationship with Silver and it seemed like it could work. That theory has gone a bit up and down over the years though.

Enter season 3 and Madi. I think that those familiar with Treasure Island, me included, took one look at her and her budding relationship with Silver and said “Yep, it’s her”. And I’ve kind of remained in that position, and 4x01 didn’t really lessen my conviction. Their relationship is played out very beautifully, and I really felt for Madi when she hugged him in s3 as well as when she cried out for him after he fell in the water in the most recent episode. Their post-sex scene was beautifully filmed. 

And yet something keeps bugging me. 

I really want all the best for Madi. She’s a wonderful addition to the show and her relationship with Silver is really cool, as is her relationship with power and the other characters on the show. 

I think a lot of us have been too stuck in immediately going “Oh, obviously she’s the wife” to think of what that would mean. I’m not saying she won’t be, I’d still say I am about 75 % sure that she is. Maybe higher. But what exactly would it mean if she is, indeed, Mrs Silver?

I have a post in my draft waiting to be edited about how Black Sails deals with stories, both in the show and outside of it. I’m just going to briefly reference concepts I talk about that here. The core of it is, they see Treasure Island not as a definitive source, but as a tale created for children based on the actual events but far from factual (which I mean, it technically is). I think that’s a brilliant way of relating to a text. But even if they took liberties with it, there’s not much liberties to be taken with Silver’s wife. 

What we know of her, is that she and Silver run their inn together. They’re married, which is very unconventional. We know that Silver leaves the inn as well as all his savings in her safe-keeping while he goes off looking for the treasure. We know he has decided to meet up with her at a secret spot after they return and that he (and through him, Jim Hawkins) firmly believes that she’ll be there waiting for him. Jim even finishes by saying that he wishes Silver is indeed living happily with his wife somewhere. 

As I pondered this, I was trying to merge this image with that of Madi. 

Madi is a Queen. She’s a queen and a leader of her people, a co-leader of the entire rebellion against England. She’s fierce and knows that even if she cares for Silver, her people needs to come first. And I asked myself “What would make her leave them?”

And thus, as is also brilliantly described in the most I linked at first (but I also felt the need to ramble about it so here we are), we are faced with a number of options, and I honestly can’t say which one I prefer. 

1) Madi leaves her people after the failure of the war against England to go with Silver to England. While this would technically mean a happy outcome for her (she’s alive), I still can’t reconcile her willingly leaving her people behind, if they’re still standing. And then she’d just sit around and wait while Silver risks his life on some fool’s quest to maybe, maybe get some more of the treasure Flint left behind? Maybe as the season goes on I can see it. Is she dethroned? Does she think they’re better off with someone else? Is her love for Silver that strong? If any of you have any meta or thoughts about this outcome, I’d love to read it. 

2) The entire Maroon community gets killed. I really don’t want this. I mean, I know that most characters probably wont’ survive this season, and when you have a diverse yet small cast like Black Sails does, this will most likely end up in characters you’d rather see alive for representation getting killed. I know that happens, and that’s not necessarily always a fault as long as done right (and as long as they’re not the only ones dying). But for the majority of that community to be completely wiped out? I’d hate to see that happen, on just an emotional level. And it would devastating for Madi. 

3) Madi isn’t actually Silver’s TI wife. She either doesn’t go with him and chooses to stay with her people, or she dies. It would break my heart, and depending on how they do it it would tip closely to fridging. I mean, it really does depend on how she’d die. If she dies for her own cause, for her people, through her own decisions, it would be less so, true. It would work thematically. Silver is taking over Flint’s position and learning that when you’re essentially Flint everyone you love will die. The great love for Flint that put it all in motion was Thomas, and he lost him (and then Gates and Miranda too, of course), and it would be fitting if tragic if Silver’s great love Madi would suffer the same fate, and this would somehow cause the falling out between Flint and Silver.  In this case, I’d probably revert back to the Max theory, which would in some ways also be thematically fitting, given how Silver made plans for them to escape together already in episode 2.

I still think that overall, no.1 is the most likely. But the possibility that the creators are totally aware of that we (at least the people who know of TI) would assume Madi is safe was an idea that hit me. And I can’t shake it. It’s making me nervous, but I’m still completely open to all of these ideas (well, maybe less open to number 2 tbh.) if done in a way that stays true to the characters. 

I’ve mostly just rambled here, but if you have any thoughts on the matter, I’d love to hear them. I know in the end we want all of our favorite characters to survive, even though in a show like Black Sails that is unlikely. And if they do, we still want them to stay true to who they are. 

So what do you make of my dilemma? Do you just not see it as I do, or do you have another solution to the whole conundrum? 

[nellie-elizabeth]

Supernatural: First Blood (12x09)

This is one of those episodes where the objective quality of the content does not match my actual enjoyment level. In many real ways, this episode was not that great. It had some serious problems. But I, personally, with my brain turned off, really loved it. Let's talk.

Cons:

The reason this episode isn't actually that good, despite some hella awesome acting, action, and one-liners, is because all of the bells and whistles are resting on an extremely weak foundation. We all know it's stupid that Sam and Dean got taken in the first place. Why did they hang around with an unconscious POTUS, again? And then there's the fact that these top-secret government guys take these two men who they believe to have attempted the assassination of the President, and there's no urgency to figure out how they got to the president? They aren't at all concerned with how their security was breached? Their method is to just wait Sam and Dean out. They think the worst torture of all is loneliness.

This is another problem with the episode. We see Sam and Dean being left alone in tiny little rooms for six weeks, but we're not really shown what was so torturous about this to them. Did they start to lose their grip on reality? Did either of them try and talk to the guy who brought them their food? No. But apparently, in Dean's words, the torture of solitary is worse than Hell itself. Is it, though? Is it really? I find it hard to believe that these two would be broken by six weeks alone. If the show wanted to sell me on that, they needed to show, more explicitly, why it was difficult for them. Maybe being left alone with their own thoughts about their mistakes starts to make them unravel? Or maybe instead of being left completely alone, they are given glimpses of authority figures, and hints and suggestions that the other brother is being tortured as they sit there? Anything more than just a terminal case of boredom, which is what it seemed like.

And did Dean not try and pray to Cas? It should have been fairly easy for him to find them, you would think. There was no attempt to explain why it was so difficult for all of these magical beings to track them down. There's even a scene where Cas goes to Crowley for help, and Crowley basically shrugs his shoulders and says that because his police officer contacts aren't important enough, he hasn't heard where Sam and Dean are. I mean... he's a demon. His mother is a witch. A tracking spell? Something? There wasn't even a discussion of using supernatural means to track down the boys, and that seems like a serious oversight.

All of the flaws listed above are with the premise of the episode itself. There is one flaw that I need to mention that goes a little deeper: Billie the Reaper is dead. Now, don't get me wrong, the scene where Cas kills Billie to save the Winchesters is really emotionally affecting. It brought new depth and understanding to Cas' character, something that's definitely sorely needed. But... come on. Have we not learned our lesson about killing off our very few female characters? Not to mention our only living named character of color (unless I'm forgetting somebody... but if I am, it's not somebody with as much screen time even as Billie). I'm about damn tired of this! And from a story perspective, Billie simply never played enough of a role! There were so many cool things you could have done with this whole Death 2.0 thing, but... no. Another fascinating character wasted.

Pros:

You would think after four long paragraphs of flaws, I'd come down pretty hard on this episode. But the fact is, I really loved it.

The plot is really just about Sam and Dean escaping, and Mary and Cas doing everything in their power to find them. It's a simple story, in a lot of ways. It goes back to the promise we got at the beginning of this season that we would be focusing on smaller stories. I mean, a secret government bunker seems like it would be big stakes, but there's no all-powerful being trying to destroy the universe, here. It's just Sam and Dean being trapped, and finding a way to get back to their family. I liked the basic story.

Sam and Dean communicating silently and being on the same page is one of my favorite elements of this show. Since Supernatural is built, naturally, on the conflicts between these two, it's always a special treat when we see how cohesive and competent they are. They trust each other, and they don't need to talk much to know exactly what to do. These soldiers don't stand a chance against them, and it shows in their brutal efficiency. What with all the crazy Big Bads that the Winchesters have had to face, it's sometimes difficult to remember just how bad ass they truly are. This episode is a good reminder of that.

Dean is the one who comes up with a plan to get them out of their prison: Billie will kill them, and when they're taken from their cells, they get to come back to life one more time. The catch? At midnight, one Winchester dies permanently. It's a simple conceit, and it's not as if the boys haven't been in similar situations in the past. The thing that makes it so powerful this time is that Dean doesn't sacrifice himself to save Sam, or vice versa. They both make the deal, knowing full well that they might be giving up their brother to gain their own freedom. Dean knows that Sam would never agree to the deal if he phrased it in such a way that insisted he be the one to die. And since they spend all their time working on a way to escape their pursuers, when the moment of truth arrives, they still haven't discussed who is to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Of course, Mary jumps in and offers to be the one to die, so we never get to see how that conversation would have played out. But I just love the trust that Sam and Dean showed in one another. They were both feeling such dread about this moment, both obviously wanting to take the sacrifice for the other. But they weren't insisting, weren't shutting each other down, weren't falling on their swords without talking it out first. Character development!

On the other side of things, you have Mary and Cas, both looking for Sam and Dean while also trying to continue to hunt, filling the void of the Winchesters' absence. Cas was just... wrecked during this whole episode. Misha really brought his A-game. He was stressed, and tired, and so, so scared. He felt like he had let down his family, and it was so sad to seem him struggling with that. Mary is back to hunting, as she's not sure what else to do with herself while she and Cas both wait for information. I think my favorite moment was when Cas expresses his own inadequacy and failures as a hunter. He tells Mary that he tried to investigate a string of mysterious deaths, but he didn't know who to talk to, or what questions to ask. Mary later takes care of it for him, proving that she still knows how this whole hunting game works. It was a great scene, because it showcased how helpless Cas still is, sometimes, when he's dealing with the human world around him. It also parallels him with Mary, who, despite still feeling a bit like an outsider, is starting to get her head back in the game.

The British Men of Letters are brutal as ever, here. Cas enlists their help in finding Sam and Dean in the woods, and they use satellite imaging technology to pinpoint their location. Mick isn't having much luck in recruiting American hunters, since none of them are happy at the idea of taking orders from bureaucrats. I like that the British MOL is maintaining its presence, and upping the creepy factor. See, Sam and Dean managed to escape without killing anybody. Later, Mick and Mr. Ketch go back and kill everybody who knew about Sam and Dean, leaving a whole wake of ruthlessly murdered bodies in their wake. We're upping their threat factor without making them too much the focus. It's infinitely preferable to all that stuff with the torture-happy chicks from the first few episodes of the season.

And... let's talk about that ending. Holy mother of Chuck. Sam and Dean are facing a terrible decision: who should die? Mary offers herself - she is a Winchester, after all. She holds her gun to her own head, but just as she's about to pull the trigger... Cas stabs Billie with an Angel blade, killing her. And then. Cas gives a speech that makes this whole episode worth it, even if there hadn't been anything else to praise. He talks about how he won't let any of them die, because this sad little world needs every Winchester it can get. "You mean too much to me. To everything." He looks like he's about to burst into tears, and the looks that Sam, Dean, and Mary give him are just devastating. This is obviously going to have ramifications down the road, but from the look on Cas' face, he doesn't care. He'd risk anything to avoid losing a Winchester.

There you have it. This episode can get away with quite a bit, in my eyes, for the simple fact that it focuses on the subtle interplay between Sam and Dean, and it shines a big spotlight on Cas, giving him really meaty material and emotional scenes. That's all too rare in Supernatural, and it's enormously satisfying when it does come around. This damn never-ending show seems as impossible to kill as a Winchester. We've got a Season Thirteen waiting for us after this season wraps up... and I for one will definitely be tuning in.

7/10

[the-record-columns]

Dec. 11, 2019

My Aunt Lucy's Textile Christmas

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

It's Christmastime and I, like most folks, find myself remembering childhood Christmases and the like.

Christmas was never a big deal with presents as such, as my daddy the preacher, Carley, very much emphasized the religious aspects of the holiday. Nonetheless, we always had a Christmas tree and we always got something for Christmas.

But I was a kid.  I thought like a kid and wanted toys and games.

Enter my Aunt Lucy.  My dad's oldest sister—one of my dad's 12 siblings.  As sweet a lady as you would ever want to meet, but life wasn't as kind to her as she deserved.  As I understand the story, as a young woman, my Aunt Lucy had a wonderful man who she loved dearly and planned to marry.  As fate would have it, he got "the fever," became sicker and sicker and literally died in Aunt Lucy's arms.

Some time later she had met, and came to care about, another man.  This young man joined the armed services soon after the start of World War II and I'm sure you are thinking that I am going to tell you that he got killed in the war.  Actually, in its own way, it was worse than that for my sweet Aunt Lucy—she picked up a copy of the Mount Airy News one day, and, as she thumbed through it, she saw a wedding announcement—for her boyfriend and another woman.

Aunt Lucy was devastated and basically gave up.  She then literally spent the rest of her life being the kind soul she was to everyone in her very large extended family.  This included taking care of her daddy, Arthur Herbert, who died in 1947, and then her mother, Laura Peele, who died in 1959.

Aunt Lucy never had any children of her own, but raised more children than anyone I know.  You might remember me telling of the summer I spent as a 6-year-old kid with my Grandma Welborn.  My mother, Cary, was sick and I got stuck with the sternest woman God had ever let live, and one who felt as though if you were eating at her table, you had earned a seat.  Never mind that I missed my mother and cried myself to sleep every night.  My Grandma Welborn even criticized Aunt Lucy for petting me so much, and trying to console me.  I will never forget that sweet soul holding me close and rocking me when I would cry for my mother.

And, she was that way to everyone.

In addition to caring for every stray dog and child in the Banner Town section of Mount Airy, my Aunt Lucy held a full time job in a textile plant.

When Christmas rolled around each year, the biggest package I received was from her.  Invariably, it was full of T-shirts, underpants, and socks.  Now, many a kid would turn up their nose at that kind of gift at Christmas—but not Kenny.  I was the baby in our family with three older brothers—one of which was only four years older than me. I was so tired of wearing someone else's hand-me-down clothes, that I was positively thrilled to see my own personal underwear and socks from Aunt Lucy.

I heard some grumbling from my cousins about Aunt Lucy's textile Christmas treats, but I always stuck up for her.  As long as she lived, she put her family and friends ahead of herself and seemed always content to see others smile.

I have often said that Aunt Lucy, who dearly loved my mother, Cary, was natured very much like her—and that is as kind a comment as I could ever make about her.

My Aunt Lucy was one for the books.

Merry Christmas; made in Israel!

By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

Special to The Record

Radical hate groups from both the left and the right have interjected their anti-Semitic philosophies and teachings into America’s culture and education system but the problem does not stop at our borders and it is nothing new. This is a global epidemic ancient in nature but coming to us today in modern packaging and, just as in the past, many eyes seem blinded. 

Throughout history the very people who held the power to effectively put an end to anti-Semitism either became complicit or lacked the will to stand up against this evil. I’m referring to the Christian church.  It seems we are again failing to recognize and combat anti-Semitism even when it comes knocking at our doors preferring instead to embrace ideas of political correctness and social sensitivities even when they collide with our Biblical teachings.  

Earlier this month the mayor of a small town in Norway approached the local Pentecostal church demanding that it remove the Star of David from its Christmas decorations which are on public display in the town square.  The reason, the mayor said, is that the Star of David is too closely associated with Israel and the Jews which makes it an inappropriate image for a public venue.  What?  Mayor Irene Heng Lauvsnes of Strand, Norway has obviously forgotten the reason for the season. Christmas is a time for celebrating the birth of the Messiah - the Jewish Messiah. Jesus the Christ was born to a Jewish virgin "in a Jewish town in a Jewish stable in a Jewish country" where he lived a fully Jewish life.  No one is forced to celebrate Christmas or participate in any of its associated festivities.  Those who find Christmas offensive are free to simply "opt out.” Sadly, proponents of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel and the Jews, have pitched their tents squarely in the camp of anti-Semitism and many who are numbered in this group faithfully occupy church pews every week.  

More astounding than the mayor's petition to remove the Star of David from the church's Christmas display is the fact that the church agreed to the demand saying, “We do not want to provoke in any way."  Well, in the Bible I read, standing up for what is right is often offensive to some, and provoking to others.  The Christian church failed to speak out in force during World War II and that silence resulted in the death of six million Jews.  The social and political climate that paved the way for such an atrocity did not crystallize overnight.  Step by step the Jew was demonized, mistreated and reviled in ever-increasing degrees until it became socially acceptable to openly proclaim the Jews as worthy to be hated.  The Bible instructs us to stand firm against evil and to be wrapped in truth; and the truth is Jesus is a Jew, and Christmas is a time for celebrating His birth on earth.  For those who want to cleanse the Jews and Israel from everything associated with Christmas, this is an infringement upon the rights of those who want to celebrate in full truth.  There is no denying that without the Jews, there would be no Jesus and without Jesus, there is no reason to celebrate.  Anti-Semitism is an ailment that threatens not only the Jewish people but every country and society in which it rears its ugly head.  Eradicating this evil is both a moral duty and a spiritual necessity.  Killing the root will kill the plant and the roots of the Christian faith are very Jewish indeed.  

As Christians around the world gather to celebrate the birth of Jewish Jesus, let us remember and embrace the fact that it was God Himself who chose the Jewish people through whom to bring Salvation to the world.

Christmas Trees and the Big Question  

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

One thing is certain; we sure do love our Christmas Trees; it’s like it’s in our emotional DNA.

Well as it turns out it just may be, or at the very least it’s part of our multigenerational tradition that spans hundreds of years and seems to bring about a feeling of happiness for many.  

Our friends at the National Christmas Tree Association tell me that there are between 25 and 30 million fresh/real Christmas trees sold every year in the United States.

In North Carolina alone five to six million trees are sold every year and South  Carolina sells a good number as well. This production translates to more than $250 million in retail business every year. We also have more than 1,500 Christmas tree growers in the Carolinas.

Farmers are well known for doing good for their communities, tree growers are no different. The South Carolina Christmas Tree Association has adopted the Trees for Troops program, where growers donate new trees for our troops.

For many the quest for the perfect Christmas Tree starts near Thanksgiving. Family traditions vary on the timing; some people enjoy having the tree up the entire month of December or even before and some families put their trees up just a few days before December 25 and leave them up for 12 days after Christmas.  I have even met some folks who leave them up for months. It all depends on what you want to do.

I love seeing cars, vans and SUV’s driving back from the mountains with Christmas trees tied on top. I know their homes are going to smell of the fresh cut trees and everyone is going to have an excellent time trimming the tree with their favorite ornaments.

Have you ever wondered how this tradition got its start? Curiosity got the best of me, so I traveled back in history for a lesson.

Going way back, we know that the ancient Egyptians, Chinese and Hebrews used evergreen trees, wreaths, and garland to symbolize eternal life.

However, as it turns out, we mostly have our German and British heritage to thank for the modern aspects of this most joyous of holiday activities. While it has changed over the years, the essence of the experience remains remarkably unchanged.

In the early 18th century the custom of Christmas trees had made its way to parts or Germany, and in the 19th century, it was a regular part of the German culture.

Britain’s King George III married the German Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and it was she that first displayed the Christmas Tree at a party for Children in Britain. At the time, Princess Victoria was 13, and on Christmas Eve 1832 she entered into her journal: “After dinner…we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room…There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed around the tree…”

There are two fascinating points to this charming story. The first being that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are both named after Queen Charlotte.

The second being that Princess Victoria became Queen Victoria in 1837 when she was 18, which was only five years after her journal post. She would marry her German first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotham in 1840, and it would be him that would import the fresh green Christmas trees from his homeland to decorate Windsor Castle.

It did not take long for this amazing display of Christmas merriment to be documented and shared with the world.

It was an image of a beautifully decorated tree surrounded by loving family members, not so different than what we hope for today.

So now we know how it all got started. We are all aware what happened next, just look around.

Yes, of course, there is more, much more, but that’s all we have room for this time.

[how2to18]

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE that Sahm Venter, the editor of The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela, did not have a crystal ball when planning the book’s publication date. Despite beginning to assemble this compilation nearly a decade ago, the letters feel eerily resonant in 2018. Mandela’s concerns about free speech, the treatment of protesters by the police, and the humanity of the incarcerated, as well as racial divisions and those who stoke them for political gain, would fit seamlessly on the pages of any leading publication today. But perhaps what feels most timely is Mandela’s struggle to reconcile the ideal — the hope — that most people are good at heart, with the horrifying realities of the day-to-day treatment he and his fellow prisoners endured.

It is a struggle many readers of this collection will relate to — though not perhaps to the extent Mandela did, having faced immense physical and psychological torture during his imprisonment. But as extreme language about race and gender becomes the norm — even among world leaders — trying to assess which direction the moral compass of our society points has become harder, and so does hanging on to hope. The greatest strength of this collection is its ability to renew hope at a time when many of us sorely need it.

The letters, addressed to a diverse list that includes family members, friends, and prison officials, are filled with illuminating insights into Mandela’s life, in and out of prison; among them his friendship with the late US Senator Paul Tsongas, his surprising note to boxer Mike Tyson (following Tyson being awarded an honorary doctorate), as well as his immense appreciation for great artists and great authors. In one letter, he requests that a bookstore send works by Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck to his children. In another to his daughter, he hails the importance of classical greats Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, alongside modern artists turned activists Paul Robeson and Miriam Makeba.

But there are also many letters that, frankly, do little to enlighten the reader on Nelson Mandela the activist, or even Nelson Mandela the person. (Just imagine if every single note you wrote in a single month, from birthday cards to letters to a cousin about family matters, were published. You’re probably cringing at the idea of how mundane some of the correspondence would seem to others. Now stretch that week into years.) But even the most mundane letters of Nelson Mandela are worth reading, if only to find your way to those that are extraordinary. The collection affirms that Mandela was not only a brilliant political tactician and legal mind, but also an exquisite writer. However, what ultimately makes this collection unforgettable is not the language he uses, but the ideals that emerge as central to his worldview and his fight for survival in circumstances that would have broken many of us.

For instance, prison reform has evolved from a fringe issue of the left to a mainstream issue embraced by conservatives and liberals alike. And yet the words “prison reform” tend to focus on foundational issues such as reforming sentencing guidelines, and transitioning from a culture that prizes punishment to one that emphasizes rehabilitation. While these are certainly worthy issues, Mandela’s letters serve as a powerful reminder that in a humane society, ensuring prisoners can maintain ties with the outside world is just as important as ensuring they are fed, clothed, and not physically abused, not only to ensure their survival in prison, but to ensure they have the tools they need to survive, thrive, and contribute to society in a meaningful way when they leave.

While Mandela writes of being deprived adequate food, clothing, shoes, water, and medical care during his imprisonment (as well as deliberate acts by officials to make prisoners ill), he devotes much more of his writing to the “psychological persecution” by prison guards and the resulting devastation. One of the most powerful weapons for psychological torture he cites is the arbitrary withholding, destroying, and excessive censoring of letters between prisoners and their friends and families. Much of this behavior was clearly not arbitrary at all, but a calculated effort to destroy the prisoners by destroying the relationships that gave them the hope they needed to keep going day after day.

“I like you to know,” Mandela wrote to his friend Peter Wellman, “that throughout the many yrs [sic] of incarceration numerous messages of good wishes & hope sent by people from different walks of life, have cut through massive iron doors & grim stone walls, bringing into the cell the splendour & warmth of springtime.” That is precisely why, throughout much of his imprisonment, his efforts to remain in contact with those who loved him were subjected to sabotage. He and other prisoners faced quotas regarding how many letters they could send and receive, and even then, the quota was affected by what kind of correspondence it was and from whom.

Despite this unimaginable obstacle, Mandela found ways to remain an engaged parent and grandparent, bringing a level of detail to his inquiries and feedback regarding his children’s studies, hobbies, and homework that would rival plenty of parents not behind bars. (His engagement was such that in one of the funniest moments in the collection, he addresses his granddaughter’s request for a leather jacket for her 13th birthday. A request that makes it clear that to her, Mandela was not an incarcerated political icon, but merely a doting grandpa.) Though he blames himself, or, more specifically, his incarceration, for some of his children’s missteps, such as when one abandoned his studies, Mandela’s dedication to remaining a present parent emerges as one of the most inspiring and thought-provoking revelations from this book.

While obviously the circumstances are not entirely parallel, the incarceration rates of black men in the United States have proven to be one of the most destructive forces within the black American community, with a particularly debilitating impact on generations of children who have ended up virtually fatherless. But Mandela’s decades of correspondence with his children prove that incarceration does not have to mean that a father must sacrifice a meaningful relationship with his child. It does mean, however, that doing so requires at least two core ingredients — the first being an unquenchable desire by the father to parent (regardless of the obstacles in his way), and the second being a willingness of those outside of prison walls to make maintaining relationships between the imprisoned and their children a priority, something that gets very little attention from any of us who live in societies that prioritize punishment over rehabilitation. In most circumstances, at least one of those individuals needs to be a family member.

Which brings me to Nelson Mandela’s letters to his then-wife, Winnie Mandela, of which there are many. These letters are so lyrically written, spiritually affirming, and intellectually engaging that they cast a large shadow over the rest of the collection. They (along with one specific letter to prison officials I will get to in a moment) are the heart of the collection, and I can’t help but wonder if readers would have been better served had they been published as a separate collection altogether. Every time I read one, I was reminded of the caption the BBC posted to accompany an image from the recent royal wedding between the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Sussex, which read, “Find someone who looks at you the way Harry looks at Meghan.” I think anyone who reads this book will long for someone who writes to them and about them the way Nelson Mandela writes of Winnie Mandela.

In a 1970 letter to her, he describes a vivid dream he’d just had of her doing a Hawaiian dance and notes the joy just thinking of her brings him in such terrible circumstances. Describing “the enchanting smile that I miss so desperately,” he concludes the letter with, “the dream was for me a glorious moment. If I must dream in my sleep, please Hawaii for me. I like to see you merry and full of life.” As the government ramped up its harassment of his family (the Mandela home was broken into more than once and Winnie Mandela was both imprisoned and assaulted) his letters to her become an impressive mix of love, protectiveness, and encouragement, occasionally expressed in a voice resembling a general who clearly believes his best soldier is tougher and more talented than he is, and must lead the troops to victory in his absence.

His letters to her also provide a fascinating window into Mandela’s own evolution politically and personally. A 1979 letter in which he shares his thoughts on various women leaders, during what he dubs “the year of the woman,” sheds light on the transformative sexual politics of the time. Not all of the letters between the couple are brimming with romance and positivity. Some of them provide a heartbreaking window into the toll long separation and political victimization can take on a marriage. In one letter, he alludes to the discord prison officials are clearly trying to sow between the two of them. (They would apparently leave unflattering articles about Winnie for him to see, while simultaneously withholding her correspondence from him at times, and his correspondence from her at others.) Which brings me to what is perhaps the most powerful letter in the book.

In 1976, he wrote to the commissioner of prisons about the inhumane conditions in the prison, citing as one of the key issues efforts to undermine correspondence between family members. He notes that what the commanding officer of the prison is trying to do is

not only to cut us off from the powerful current of goodwill and support that has ceaselessly flown in during the 14 years of my incarceration in the form of visits, letters, cards and telegrams, but also to discredit us to our family and friends by presenting us to them as irresponsible people who neither acknowledge letters written to them nor deal with important matters referred to us by our correspondents.

He also goes on to outline other forms of physical, psychological, and sexual torture prisoners have been subjected to before noting in the conclusion of his letter that “[i]t is futile to think that any form of persecution will ever change our views.”

This letter is just as powerful as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s oft-cited Letter from Birmingham Jail. In fact, Mandela’s letter reads like a blueprint for human rights scholarship, and advocacy, and at over 20 pages long carries enough intellectual heft to stand on its own for publication, like King’s aforementioned letter. Part of me wishes it were published separately, to potentially reach more people, instead of being buried in a larger collection that may end up consumed purely by Mandela superfans. More than any other, this letter captures Mandela’s political philosophy and consciousness. While condemning and conveying indignation toward those who have engaged in horrific abuse, he never wavers in the way he expresses himself — always maintaining a voice of dignity, kindness, and courtesy, even in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

In a separate letter to prison officials confronting them for violating his right to privileged communications with his attorneys, he actually laments that such behavior “make[s] it difficult for us to accord to such officials the respect and courtesy we should like to give to those who are entrusted with our welfare as prisoners.” He describes a prison official, who stands against everything Mandela stands for politically, as someone he “respected” in his role, and who never gave Mandela reason to question his “integrity.” It is hard to fathom what it must have taken for him to consistently try to convey courtesy to those who had done everything in their power to break him physically and spiritually, and yet as the book progresses we see moments where his efforts made a clear difference. In one letter, Mandela pleads to be allowed to contact his daughter to help her with problems related to her studies — not normally the kind of life-or-death matter that would warrant a special review by prison officials. Yet written on the letter by the guard is a recommendation that they honor the request, an unlikely outcome had Mandela not exuded the kind of grace he did for so much of his tenure behind bars.

As I finished writing this review, debates raged regarding the appropriateness of the language choices of comedian Samantha Bee and other critics of President Trump. But after reading The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela, I had more pressing questions about their effectiveness. Mandela’s letters make clear that while he believed in employing aggressive political tactics when necessary (if someone pulls a gun on you, kind words won’t do much to protect you), he also believed you can’t win an argument by simply yelling louder than the other guy. Or using more obscene language. After all, there’s a reason the term “kill them with kindness” exists, as opposed to “kill them with cruelty.”

It’s worth noting that Mandela encouraged a family member to read the late minister Norman Vincent Peale’s best-selling tome, The Power of Positive Thinking. The book has remained culturally relevant for decades because one constant of the human experience is the search for happiness. Mandela’s book emerges as an unexpected companion piece to Peale’s, illustrating one individual’s ability for coping with, and overcoming, adversity.

Ironically, just before the publication of Mandela’s collection, one of Peale’s ideological and spiritual heirs, Dr. Michael B. Brown, published the book Love Is the Way. Reading Brown’s book and Mandela’s so close together I found a surprisingly natural through line that felt particularly resonant given our current social and political landscape. Anger, cruelty, and obscenity may seem to win in the moment, but in the words of the late Dr. King, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It also eventually bends toward humanity’s greatest strengths, like love and kindness, instead of its most destructive qualities. Mandela got to be president. The guards who tortured him did not.

In a letter to a prison official following the censoring of a letter from his beloved Winnie, Mandela writes, “Only a person armed with love for his fellow human beings, who cares about others, will succeed where force and power will be applied in vain.” Mandela’s love for his family, his country, and equality shine through in this collection. But it is his commitment to finding the light in the darkest of circumstances and the dark walls of a prison cell that carries this book.

¤

Keli Goff is a columnist for The Daily Beast, contributor to NPR affiliate KCRW’s Left, Right & Center, and a writer for the television series Black Lightning.

The post A Hope Manifesto for Times of Resistance appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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The media’s war on Trump

Thomas Frank, The Guardian, 21 July 2017

These are the worst of times for the American news media, but they are also the best. The newspaper industry as a whole has been dying slowly for years. But for the handful of well funded journalistic enterprises that survive, the Trump era is turning out to be a “golden age”--a time of high purpose and moral vindication.

The people of the respectable east coast press loathe the president with an amazing unanimity. They are obsessed with documenting his bad taste, with finding faults in his stupid tweets, with nailing him and his associates for this Russian scandal and that one. They outwit the simple-minded billionaire. They find the devastating scoops. The op-ed pages come to resemble Democratic fundraising pitches. The news sections are all Trump all the time. They have gone ballistic so many times the public now yawns when it sees their rockets lifting off.

A recent Alternet article I read was composed of nothing but mean quotes about Trump, some of them literary and high-flown, some of them low-down and cruel, most of them drawn from the mainstream media and all of them hilarious. As I write this, four of the five most-read stories on the Washington Post website are about Trump; indeed (if memory serves), he has dominated this particular metric for at least a year.

And why not? Trump certainly has it coming. He is obviously incompetent, innocent of the most basic knowledge about how government functions. His views are repugnant. His advisers are fools. He appears to be dallying with obviously dangerous forces. And thanks to the wipeout of the Democratic party, there is no really powerful institutional check on the president’s power, which means that the press must step up.

But there’s something wrong with it all.

The news media’s alarms about Trump have been shrieking at high C for more than a year. It was in January of 2016 that the Huffington Post began appending a denunciation of Trump as a “serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully” to every single story about the man. It was last August that the New York Times published an essay approving of the profession’s collective understanding of Trump as a political mutation--an unacceptable deviation from the two-party norm--that journalists must cleanse from the political mainstream.

It hasn’t worked. They correct and denounce; they cluck and deride and Trump seems to bask in it. He reflects this incredible outpouring of disapprobation right back at the press itself. The old “liberal bias” critique, a minor deity in the pantheon of Republican paranoia since the days of Trump’s hero Richard Nixon, has been elevated to first place. Trump and company now use it to explain everything. And the news media’s reputation sinks lower and lower as they advance into their golden age.

What explains this dazzling disconnect? Yes, Trump is unpopular these days, but not nearly as unpopular as he deserves to be (among other amazing things, he is now reported to be more popular than Hillary Clinton). How can our opinion-leaders believe something so unanimously, so emphatically, and yet have so little success persuading their erstwhile opinion-followers to get in line?

One part of the explanation is the structural situation of the news media. As newspapers die off, their place in the American consciousness is taken by social networks of both the formal and informal variety. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, these days we read only that which confirms our biases. Once upon a time, perhaps, the Washington Post could single-handedly bring down a president, but those days have passed.

But there’s also a second reason, one that is even more fundamental. The truth is that the unanimous anti-Trumpness of the respectable press is just one facet of a larger homogeneity. As it happens, the surviving press in this country is unanimous about all sorts of things.

There are their views on trade. Or their views on what they call “populism”. Or their views on what they call “bipartisanship”. Or their views on just about anything having to do with the decline of manufacturing (sad but inevitable) and the rise of the “creative” white-collar professions (the smart ones, so meritorious).

This is one of the factors that explains the many monstrous journalism failures of the last few decades: the dot-com bubble, which was actively cheered on by the business press; the Iraq war, which was abetted by journalism’s greatest sages; the almost complete failure to notice the epidemic of professional misconduct that made possible the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of Donald Trump, which (despite the media’s morbid fascination with the man) caught nearly everyone flatfooted.

Everything they do, they do as a herd--even when it’s running headlong over a cliff.

They still cannot suppress their admiration for bankers. Just the other week, for example, the New York Times’s Dealbook section could be found marveling at how one of the senior officers of Goldman Sachs (“possibly the most powerful investment bank in the world”) likes to DJ in his spare time.

They are endless suckers for credentialing, especially of the foreign policy variety. Last Friday, the Washington Post ran a profile of Hillary Clinton’s former foreign policy adviser, whom they caught up with giving a talk at Yale, his alma mater.

The paper told how the adviser “ran through a list of his early mentors”, including eminent personages from Brookings, the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations, and then turned to the inevitable matter of Clinton’s loss, a subject so bittersweet you could almost see the tears streaming down readers’ faces as they were prompted to recall, yet again, the ingratitude of a nation that had rejected her team of brilliants for the buffoon Trump.

Similar examples could be piled up by the dozens, if not the thousands. The American news media’s respect for tech CEOs and foreign-policy experts are the photographic negative of their overwhelming contempt for Dumb Donald.

These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class--an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, “realism”, credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity.

This is the key to understanding many of their biases--and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

What do I mean? Consider Politico’s famous email tip-sheet, Playbook, which is read religiously every morning by countless members of the DC press corps, including myself. About two-thirds of the publication consists of useful summaries of the day’s news stories.

The rest, however, is a sort of People magazine for the Washington journalist community, in which the reader is invited to celebrate leading journalists’ (and politicians’) birthdays, congratulate leading journalists (and politicians) for their witty phrase-making, learn which leading journalist (and politician) was seen at which party and anticipate which leading journalist (and politician) is going to be on which Sunday program.

Nor is Playbook the only entry in this genre. Before there was Politico there was ABC News and The Note, a similar email newsletter that also celebrated what it called the Gang of 500, the happy and hard-partying political and journalistic insiders who supposedly made Washington tick.

These things seem innocent and fun, of course. But there is an unwritten purpose to these daily honor rolls of journo/political friendship and that is to define the limits of what is acceptable.

Like the guestlist at Lally Weymouth’s party in the Hamptons, which was described so salaciously in Playbook a little while ago, a tiny handful of people and publications and ideas are in; everyone else is out.

It’s about legitimacy, of course, and what’s left of the respectable press is utterly captivated by the theme. It completely defines their war on Trump, for example. They know what a politician is supposed to look like and act like and sound like; they know that Trump does not conform to those rules; and they react to him as a kind of foreign object jammed rudely into their creamy world, a Rodney Dangerfield defiling the fancy country club.

I believe that the news media needs to win its war with Trump, and urgently so. But as long as they understand that war as a crusade to reestablish the old rules of legitimacy, they are going to continue to fail. Until the day they get it right, the world will burn while the in-crowd parties obliviously on.