#this isn’t one of those instances where they’re talking 18 half episodes is it?

[kdramanewbie]

I have no idea how this is going to work. It says he’ll start appearing in episode 9, which is pretty soon. Although we know that they’ve finished filming Ji Soo’s scenes through to episode 18.

Edited to add: the official KBS release makes it clear they really are refilming everything from do 9 onwards.

The reruns starring actor Ji Soo scheduled for this weekend will not be broadcast

The upcoming episodes 7 and 8 will be broadcast with scenes featuring actor Ji Soo removed as much as possible

Starting from episode 9, the footage will be replaced with newly filmed footage starring a different actor in his place

[im-the-punk-who]

Hi! I’m new to the fandom and I’m simply curious (not trying to start a feud or anything), why don’t you like Steinberg?

Hello dear anon! And welcome to the fandom! 

Oof. That’s a question. xD 

I’m going to try and stay as uh. neutral as possible. Because I’ve already written the post I know I failed but, the intent in answering this is also not to start a feud or hurt anyone’s feelings. 

Okay, so I got fairly negative in this chilis tonight, so I want to start by saying that even in light of the opinions I’m about to express, Black Sails is one of, if not my number one, favorite TV shows of all time. Certainly in recent memory - I’ve been hyperfixating on this show for 18 months with no sign of stopping, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone who worked on the show - even Steinberg. (The one exclusion is Michael Bay, he can go twist.)

AND I think Stienberg is an incredibly talented writer. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows because it does such a wonderful job of weaving stories, creating characters, and melding things in a way that is both unexpected and makes sense narratively. I have changed as a person because of the show, and they will have to pry James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton from my cold dead knives-attached-to-them hands. None of what I’m going to say is meant to detract from that.

I will also say that a lot of these issues are not particular to Steinberg and are in fact a systemic problem with American TV + Film. And I’m not leaving Robert Levine out of my criticism, it’s just that Steinberg had the biggest hand in the pot(he wrote a full half the episodes) and a lot of what I’ve heard as far as talking about the show comes from Steinberg. So, he gets the brunt. But it isn’t that I think Steinberg was the only problematic element of the show. 

Also, these are all my opinions and are colored by how I interact with my fandoms. I am not only a fandom veteran, but I work and pretty much live in the entertainment industry. I work in indie film and theatre and am surrounded by artists and creators of all walks of life, like, constantly. I know what is possible, and when I see something that can be improved, I want to note it because it is important to me to always be striving forward. Like Miranda says about Thomas, this isn’t out of malice, or out of hate. It’s because I genuinely love this show, and I love entertainment as a whole, and I think in order to get to a better, more inclusive industry we have to have hard conversations and look critically at the media we consume, and it is frustrating to me to time and again see the same faces in the room. 

But if that isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine! Fandom isn’t meant to be stressful and if all you want to do is watch a show about gay pirates that is your tomato and I applaud you. Have at it you funky motherfucker.

OH! One more. At some point I’m going to talk about Silverflint. When I do, it is NOT meant as a ‘you shouldn’t/cant ship this’ or ��this pairing is bad’ or any negative attack on the people who ship that pairing. My criticisms in this post are exclusively about what it means for Steinberg as a writer and Black Sails’ representation of gay and mlm men. While it’s not my cuppa, this is a sail your own ship blog. 

OKAY! SO! 

My main criticisms of Steinberg & Co boil down to:

The homozygosity of the writers and directors shows a complete lack of desire to include marginalized people in the writing of a show that is about them. Which leads to:

The centering of white men while choosing a historical setting and time period that was in fact dominated by people of color and specifically a black woman, 

The gratuitous inclusion of violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and again, that the female characters are often sidelined for the central male characters. 

SO.

Black Sails is a show centered around queer, female, and black leads, and yet there were only two non white-male directors (one bi-racial man and one white woman) and only 7 female writers - one of whom was Latina. The entire rest of the major creative staff was white men. I’m not going to comment on sexualities but none of the writers or directors are out as queer according to a quick google search. 

Let me reiterate the important bit there. 

In Black Sails, where the last two seasons specifically feature around a real, actually-happened-in-history event that shaped black history in the Caribbean, there was not a single black writer on the entire show. 

This is the main difference between inclusion for inclusion’s sake, and actually centering marginalized voices. Black Sails has a ton of gay, POC, and female rep in front of the camera but practically zero representation behind it, which leads to storylines and implications that Steinberg and his writers, as white men, simply would never realize.

It’s like why Silver and Miranda never realized the true reasons James was waging war on England. They just did not have the life experiences to realize they were missing a piece of the puzzle, and so they filled in their own without even realizing they’d done so. 

Because no one in the room of Black Sails was a part of these marginalized identities, nuances get lost or mistranslated, motivations get muddled through a white man’s gaze(or a straight person’s) and implications that someone within those communities might think is obvious won’t even come up.

And again, because there were no writers or directors of color in the last two seasons (the biracial man directed episodes 2x02 and 2x04 - WHICH MAKES SENSE IMO) the entirety of the historical lore that the show bases itself on in its latter half is filtered through a white man’s lens. And so there is no discussion of how changing something changes the meaning, how leaving someone out or changing their role to be more minor might affect people for whom that is their heritage. How the entire story they’re telling might change with one simple exclusion or addition.

So, how does this relate directly to Steinberg, you ask? Well, simply, because it was his show. 

Steinberg(and Levine) were involved in every major decision about the show, from its conception, to the script, to choosing the writers and directors. They chose how they wanted the show to look, to think, what stories to tell and how they wanted to tell them. Their decisions(and the biases that formed those decisions) are woven into the show.

And look. I don’t for a second believe any of this was willful or malicious. I don’t think that John Steinberg and Robert Levine sat down one day and said ‘you know what would make the gays really angry? If we locked the only two canonically gay men up in a prison camp.’

But the decisions that were made in the show were based in ignorance in a way that shows more than just simple negligence or laziness(especially given the attention to detail in everything else). The things they leave out or change in the Maroon War plotline for instance are not small details easily missed. They are big, giant waving flags. They are things that are irreplaceable to still have the same events and stories and tell them respectfully. 

It shows an insane amount of privilege to, for instance, write a show airing during a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront of the American conscience, include black characters and black storylines, and yet not include a single black voice on their creative team. 

In a show that centers a gay man’s love and his journey in attempting to process the horrible things done to him and his lover because of it, we are given just forty minutes of the entire show dedicated to their relationship - and just fifteen of those minutes actually feature the lover! 

(Relatedly, the entirety of the gay romantic rep is two kisses, and a forehead touch. That’s the entirety of your gay intimacy representation. And yet there are in the first two seasons alone - because that’s all I’ve clocked so far - something like twenty seven minutes of scenes involving a naked or half naked woman. Five minutes of that is explicitly wlw sex.

Again, I just want to reiterate this because it’s important in recognizing bias. 

There is fully twice as much female nudity in the first two seasons, as the entirety of the time the two gay characters have together on screen. )

Steinberg is a perfect example of how a lack of understanding why the diversity you are representing is important, matters. I dislike Steinberg because he, just like every other straight white cis man I have known, profited off of marginalized voices without including them or creating with them in mind.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot create something - especially something as back breakingly, intensely a labor of love as Black Sails - without putting several pieces of yourself into it. But those pieces color your narrative. They will expose things about you that you don’t even realize. And it’s in these places we are weakest, and why a diverse group of writers with a diverse group of experiences can help a piece be stronger. But for whatever reason, John Steinberg thought that he could make art with only people who looked and thought and experienced like him. 

The lack of representation behind the camera in Black Sails was evident in front of it and yet Steinberg is out here getting to pretend like he created the most inclusive groundbreaking show that ever existed. It is important to me, personally, to acknowledge that. And that it kind of makes my skin crawl in the way all media made by straight white (cis)men makes my skin crawl. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way about my favorite tv show just because it was created by a man of privilege, but here we are.

SO. I hope that helped? Feel free to take what you want and leave what you don’t! 

Below the cut is a more in depth look at things that I think show what I’m talking about, but that up there ^^ is the gist. <3 |D

SURPRISE!

The Maroons and the Maroon War

So the first thing I want to point out is that the Maroon War was a real thing that happened. It lasted ten years, and resulted in the most substantial victory the Maroons ever achieved against the British. Not only that, there was in fact a KICKIN’ badass female leader of the maroons named Queen Nanny, who is to this day honored as a national hero in Jamaica. While they weren’t able to drive the British out, the outcome of this war led to a mostly self-governing Maroon population in Jamaica from the mid 1700s on. This was a long term fight that had a very tangible and real outcome, even if it didn’t end in the destruction of colonialism. 

And what is this war turned into in Black Sails? A white ‘madman’s revenge’  that is doomed to failure after six months.

That, my dear pirates, is a problem for me. (And those familiar with my brand of spiceyness know that I do not ascribe to the ‘Flint is a Madman’ trope, but that IS what Steinberg ascribes to, what he seems to have written the show thinking.) 

There was no narrative reason to include the Maroon War in the narrative of Black Sails. The Maroon War didn’t happen until a decade after the Golden Age of Piracy, and aside from Silver’s wife being a black woman there is no mention of Silver ever having contact with them. To me, this feels like the choice of a showrunner who found a cool historical event and saw a chance to up the stakes of their white male heroes while getting in some sweet sweet POC rep. 

Except that they then took the major events of the Maroon War and gave them to their white characters, Flint and Silver. 

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take a piece of culturally important history and use it for your show, you NEED to have sensitivity writers. You need to have people who are at least familiar with those events and who care about them to do them justice. Have an expert come in and read your script or go over your ideas. Or just like. Hire a black writer. Hire ONE black writer. As a treat.

The important Maroon figures, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Quao, all get sidelined or ‘sexified’ and then used as plot points for the white characters. Nanny gets split into two women - the older mother queen and Madi, the young naive warbent visionary. Quao(Mr. Scott is the closest, or Kofi possibly) gets killed off because the writers realized they didn’t exactly have a place for him in their writing. Cudjoe(Julius) gets a few scenes and one good speech but his entire role in the war gets given to Silver. And THEN. That sexy Queen Madi figure gets used as emotional bait for Silver and then has to learn he has betrayed her and destroyed the hope and freedom she had wanted to bring to her people. 

Gross, pirates. Gross.

Anne Bonny/Max/Mary Read - a heads up, this section includes a semi in-depth discussion of both Max and Anne’s sexual assaults. If that bothers you, the paragraphs talking about that begin with a ***

COOL NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT LESBIANS. Words my 20 year old self would never have imagined coming out of my mouth. 

Specifically, I want to talk about Max, and Anne, and their backstories both involving extreme sexual trauma at the hands of men. And then Mary Read and the once again sexification of female characters.

(Actually while I’m here another criticism I have of Steinberg is that his writing does not seem to recognize how queer people existed in the past - again, likely because he didn’t have any gay historians to be like ‘actually buddy that doesn’t make sense also why is Anne not dressing as a man? If you want to fuck with anything and insert modern day terminology and ideas into this show, make her non binary and REALLY piss off the hetties.’)

(This same ficitonal gay dramaturg who is definitely not me has also questioned John Steinberg repeatedly about where Mary Read is, unsatisfied with the answer ‘well we wanted her to be hot so we made her a sex worker and then had Anne have to rescue her but then we realized it would be weird not to include her actual character so we gave her a five second cameo at the very end of the series and also made her like 13.’)

Anyway! So my main point in bringing up Anne and Max is the sexual trauma they are exposed to in the show, particularly being that they are the two primary wlw in the show, who Steinberg has said he views as being completely gay, and what THAT whole unexamined idea looks like. 

***Max. My dear Max. There was literally no reason to have her be repeatedly r*ped(and for the love of god there was even less reason to make it that gratuitous and graphic). Max being assaulted like that did not add anything to the gravity of Eleanor’s betrayal. The traumatic event was being tossed aside by Eleanor, and that could have been just as emotionally damaging without the sexual assault. And the only reason for her to be continually assaulted was to bring her and Anne together. 

***The reason imo that Max’s r*pe plot was added was because it was the only thing these white straight men could come up with that felt emotionally damaging enough to them. The act of betrayal itself wasn’t enough, the act of being thrown away, of having a lover put your life in danger because of her own ambitions wasn’t enough, they needed her to be r*ped to really drive home the point. 

***Anne, on the other hand, is never shown being sexually abused, but we are given an explicit account of her own traumatic history and how Jack saved her from this vile beast who was passing her around to his friends.

But here’s the thing pirates - that never happened. According to every account we have of Anne Bonny, she chose her husband, and married him against her father’s wishes. They were probably relatively happy until her husband started being a pirate spy and Anne started cheating on him with Jack. 

And yes, when they were found out. Her husband had her beat. That’s not fucking cool, and if they really wanted to go the damsel in distress route they still could have had Jack ‘save’ her from that. But at no point was she sexually abused by her husband(at least not in any accounts I’ve read.) 

You know who did likely sexually abuse her or at least manipulate her and Mary for his own benefit? If you guessed our Rat man Jack Rackham, you would be correct, because when he found out about Mary and Anne’s (supposed, but probably real) relationship, it’s implied he extorted both of them into fucking him to keep their secret from the crew. 

The addition of sexual abuse to Anne’s past isn’t done to be true to her character and was in fact explicitly untrue. Now of course I don’t know the reasons why they chose to do this, but I can guess. Just as with Max, the most traumatic thing a male writer can think of for a female character is for them to be sexually abused.

And the most disturbing part of this to me? The parallels it has to the real world of why straight men think lesbians exist. These characters who would be called man haters in present day are given these incredibly traumatic man-centered histories. It brings up something very uncomfortable in me about particularly wlw sexuality being viewed as a reaction to trauma at the hands of men. It’s just gross, I dont like it, and honestly there is no fucking excuse for it besides a room full of white straight men writing this bullshit. A room that Steinberg chose, because they fit his ideas.

In Fact heck, the women of Black Sails in general

***I honestly struggle to think of a single female character who I think was treated fairly in Black Sails. Miranda and Eleanor are killed for taking sides and not understanding their partners, Madi is betrayed in the worst way possible, Max is given a pseudo empowering ending but has that fucking terrible start. Idelle ends off fairly well, but tied to a man she may or may not have any actual feelings for, in what is essentially a political marriage. And Anne has her entire identity tied to a man who will be dead in two years as she is robbed of any agency whatsoever without him. (Oh, and the whole r*pe thing. And also her support for Max’s r*pe or death until she started having fee-fees. Who wrote this stuff. >_>)

Even though the characterization of each and every one of these women is PHENOMENAL - and again I will repeat that I absolutely LOVE these characters as they exist in a vacuum. I think they are well rounded, real, feeling people given motivations and drives and FEELINGS and they SHOW THEIR ANGER and i LOVE THEM. 

But the show punishes them for it. Miranda is essentially fridged to move Flint’s storyline along, and to make room for Silver. Eleanor is killed for the emotional damage it will cause Rogers. Madi is placed at the center of a conflict she explicitly says she is willing to die for and then not only is her entire cause taken from her, but when she tells Silver to fuck off he - in possibly the most predictable white man move ever - says ‘no i will stay until you change your mind. I will never leave you. I don’t care about your choice in this matter, I will wait forever for you. I’m your biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me. papa, - paparazzi.’ 

And I touched on this before, but I want to talk in more detail about what is possibly my hottest take to date, the sexification of Mary Read and Queen Nanny, as they are presented in the show. 

Max is to Anne what Mary Read is, historically. She is the lover that Jack Rackham discovers with Anne, and then he joins them in their bed. They form a triumvirate that upholds Jack at the expense of the women. But for some reason, Steinberg didn’t want to just include Mary Read as an actual character. For some reason he needed to make Anne’s love interest a sex worker who was in need of saving (and who, coincidentally, we never see working the brothel after she becomes lovers with Anne, because she is now a madam. :) Gross.)

And Madi. My dear sweet fucking Madi who didn’t fucking deserve any of this bullshit send tweet. 

So, historically, Queen Nanny was the Queen, spiritual advisor, and the military tactician of the Windward Maroons. She would have filled both Madi and the Queen’s character roles(and Flint’s, but who’s counting. A BLACK GAY LEAD? Inconceivable. I digress.) But, I guess, because they were wishy-washing with Silver’s sexuality or felt they needed to give him a female love interest because of Treasure Island, or because they were leaning a bit too hard into the gay shit and needed to backpedal, they took Queen Nanny and split her into a character who is for all intents and purposes powerless in the war and Madi, who is young and naive and does not have any real world experience outside of the Maroon camp.

Because that’s sexy, or something. They could have had the Maroon Queen be a fucking badass lady who works and fights alongside Flint and Silver and one ups them and teaches them shit and has her own ideas about where the British can stick it, but instead they made her into the perfect caricature of a female monarch, letting the big strong men handle the dirty work or something. Because white male power fantasies. 

Just let women be powerful and not nubile and let them have character arcs over fucking thirty and let them be CENTERED in their own. fucking. narratives. 

God damnit Steinberg.

James Flint, mlm extraordinaire

Oh, my love. My most amazing child. The light of my life. My purest cinnamon roll. 

~~And now we’ve come to the dreaded Silverflint criticism part of our programming. Please please know and remember this isn’t a criticism of people who ship Silverflint. As I said up top, Your Tomato Is Not My Tomato and that’s cool. Please don’t take this next part as an attack on Silverflint as a fandom ship.~~

My criticism of Steinberg as it relates to Flint is related to:

What a romantic/sexual relationship with Silver being the basis of the tension and plot means for Flint in particular as a gay or mostly mlm man. 

Refusing to confirm Thomas and James being alive at the end and honestly the whole finale in general but like I’ll try and focus.

The major problem I have with Silver and Flint being coded as in love with each other is the implications there in terms of gay men’s relationships to other men. 

From every corner, men are inundated with the idea that any close relationship between them must be gay. That intimacy cannot exist unless there are sexual feelings involved. That a relationship cannot be close, deep and soul shattering and life altering, unless one guy secretly(or not so secretly) wants to bone the other dude. That two men cannot value each other as partners or friends or truly know each other unless they are gay.

Seeing both of the meaningful relationships Flint forms with other men be sexually coded feels a bit the same way as Anne and Max’s sexual assault plotlines does vis-a-vis being wlw. (Even with Gates, Flint never spoke about Thomas or his plans - Silver is absolutely the closest person to Flint besides Thomas and Miranda.) And this is just as true for Silver. Having both Flint and Madi - the two people he trusts - both be people he’s in love with also just feels. I don’t know. 

It feels like a confusion between male intimacy and male love that is so so familiar to me as a gay man I could choke on it. Where they wanted these men to have a deep and really lasting connection, but could only figure out how to do it if they were in love. Friendship wouldn’t have been enough - only romantic and sexual love is enough for the gay man(or men, at all).

Just because it isn’t queerbaiting doesn’t mean it’s good rep, and I would have liked to see truly deep male friendships that did not center on sexual attraction - particularly for Flint as a confirmed mlm(and Silver too, if you’re counting him. The same arguments for why I dislike Flint being paired with Silver are also true in the reverse.) 

Even if both Flint and Silver were confirmed mlm I still would have LOVED to see a platonic relationship between them. In fact I would have loved that EVEN MORE. Men! Who fuck men! Not needing to fuck each other to be important to one another! Who made this. Very delicious. 

But because there weren’t any queer writers on the show, writers who understand this kind of struggle that gay and mlm men face, they thought ‘oh, let’s also have them be in love with each other. More gay rep is better gay rep, right?’ False. THOUGHTFUL gay rep is better gay rep.

Okay and here’s my last thing. The fact that Steinberg refuses to say whether or not the explicitly mlm men are alive at the end of the show - that the words he specifically uses are ‘up for interpretation’ is. Fuck, it’s gross, okay? It’s fucking gross. 

I have been around enough men, enough people in power, enough people with leverage who also know how to play the field, to know that when someone wants a group’s support but does not agree with them, their go to phrasing is that it is ‘up for debate’ or ‘up for interpretation.’

Say the gays are alive. Steinberg refusing to acknowledge the reality of the ending of his show to maintain his own sense of artistic integrity is what, honestly, really sets me off about him and I don’t care if this is a nuanced take.

Like yes, death of the author. I honestly don’t care if he thinks they’re dead or alive. What I care about is that he thinks he can get away with being clever and leaning hard into a story is true/untrue’ - doesn’t realize what the implications of that are, and didn’t when he was writing, and didn’t have anyone else in the room who would think about it either. 

ANYWAY. So this is....my long drawn out explanation for why I do not like Steinberg. Uhhhhh tune in next week for more of my totally unpopular opinions!

[a-mellowtea]

Sarah’s Soundtrack Corner | RWBY Volume 8

Today: Episode 1 // Divide 22/11/2020: Episode 2 // Refuge

Hello everyone!

This year, I’ve decided to do something new. Rather than waiting for the Volume to end or the soundtrack to drop to talk about RWBY’s music, I’m starting this little side project: cataloguing and somewhat analyzing the show’s score and songs as they’re released.

This is also a way for me to keep myself engaged in something other than academics (’cause quarantine be gettin’ to me), as well as pointing out some details folks might overlook: there’s always a lot to talk about with the music, and it plays a pivotal role in the series.

A mini-disclaimer beforehand: I am in no way well-versed in music theory. I can’t really tell you how things are composed so much as how they more generally sound, and what the intentions behind certain choices might have been.

So, without further ado, let’s begin!

The first cue of the Volume, coming in gently against the slow fade-in from black of a young Cinder scrubbing the floor, is on piano and sparse strings. I’m hesitant to label this as anything in particular with any degree of confidence, but the progression of notes makes me believe it could be an abstract variation on Cinder’s core “theme” - specifically, the haunting choir we tend to hear around her. It would make sense: bridging the visuals with something just familiar enough to catch the ear, but also distinct.

There’s a brief pause as Cinder and Neo approach the storm, with only a small bit of ambient, tense strings; then it’s into a development of the new melody we got accompanying Salem’s arrival in Volume 7 under the usual first-episode credits. This section has a wonderful female choral element added: I’m actually half-convinced that it’s a specific “theme” for Monstra (the whale Grimm; apparently that’s her official name), rather than Salem herself. The bass percussion makes the cue feel almost literally alive, giving it a slow, steady heartbeat.

The piece crescendos as Neo catches sight of Salem, then fades away into more tense strings when Cinder kneels. A small quote of what I believe is “One Thing” kicks in when Cinder takes Neo’s credit for stealing the Relic of Knowledge.

The next quote is equally small, coming and going in the span of about 5 seconds between the 03:25 and 03:30 timestamps, and references the strings from “Party Crashers”/the Volume 7 Mantle massacre. 

I can’t quite peg the following string melody - under Cinder’s declaration that she’ll return to Atlas and take the Maiden’s power from Penny - as anything specific, though it sounds similar to the opening piano.

What I’ll tentatively label as Monstra’s “theme” takes over again as Salem communicates with her, and the cue ends on a tense crescendo along with the scene.

On our heroes’ end, this is quite the episode for abstract little melodies, because I can’t seem to nail down what plays under Oscar’s respite in the slums either. What I do recognize, however, is a small section of Mantle’s melody at around 05:42, continuing until 05:52 where it’s briefly interrupted by a vague handful of notes from the Grimm “theme”.

Everything in Mantle is quite bleak, including the instrumentation: it’s soft and somber, even the gentler moments. Oscar’s melody kicks in at 07:06 on slow strings after Weiss asks how he ended up in the crater, which transitions into a despairing little quote of Penny’s established “theme” from Volume 7. This “theme” is of particular note this time around - Alex Abraham (composer) switched up the sound of her melody to a more subdued, lost quality, and it’s quite something whenever it pops up.

“Bad Luck Charm” makes a brief appearance at 07:30, and it’s interesting to me just how darkly the quote drifts off - the final note sounds almost distorted, lending it not only an air of uncertainty, but also danger (totally not hinting at things to come - no way).

Mantle’s theme makes a reappearance at 09:03, following a lead-in on strings as Yang argues that they need to help the people. The “theme” for Amity follows at 9:18 when Pietro begins talking about the titular colisseum, then drifts into Ironwood’s once he’s brought up, and then into one of the “Atlas tension” motifs from Volume 7. The orchestration of this entire section is notably quiet; almost not there, and all with a sense of unease. As the idea for the plan begins to come together, the Atlas Military “theme” (introduced at the end of Volume 6) plays, but fades out largely unresolved with Pietro’s uncertainty about it.

Once the small argument begins in earnest and the group divides, what sounds like a gentle quote of the as-yet untitled opening plays, easing into simple strings once Jaune interjects.

A sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it soft interruption of Penny’s melody plays again, almost lost in the strings, then a third time when she volunteers to go with Ruby’s group.

And now for the fun part.

I’m not horrendously biased, I swear.

The tense silence of this scene once Penny’s Scroll begins to ring is perfect; as are the dark, sparse, ambient strings and the fourth instance of Penny’s “theme” - played on piano, with an almost music-box-like quality. The juxtaposition is horribly fitting for the moment - James is playing on Penny’s role as a guardian, her desire to protect people, her uncertainty about a situation in which she has had very little control, and that’s all beautifully reinforced in the music.

Speaking of juxtaposition.

Upstairs, we get a gorgeous rendition of “Hero” on brass; played slow, full and in earnest, with a small bit of Winter’s melody thrown in the middle once the camera briefly shifts focus to her. The way this section is orchestrated piques my interest as well - it’s not dark, it’s not particularly somber. It’s gentle. It still has that, for lack of a better term, heroic quality to it.

And that becomes such a twisted thing by the end of the scene.

Before that, however, there’s an instance of the Grimm “theme” clearly at 14:56, and it continues to be a personal favorite. 

Another intriguing little reference hits at about 15:12, when the Council members show up - if you have an ear for it, you might pick up on it as coming from the scene in the office from Volume 7 Chapter 11 “Gravity”, complete with Ironwood’s “theme” at 15:33 (this cue might actually be directly taken from “Are You With Me?”) and to say it’s appropriate for a moment where James slips even further would be putting it mildly.

Closing out the episode proper is a freaky new melody for the Grimm hound that I can honestly say I cannot wait to hear more of.

Overall, the score for the premiere isn’t quite as bombastic as the last two years, but that’s fitting - it’s largely understated, with lots of tension and somber takes on the leitmotifs that crop up. This is actually one of the things about the episode that left me feeling like it was more of a firm and simple continuation from last year than the start of a brand new chapter, and that’s certainly not bad.

And now you stand alone, opening!

I don’t think it needs saying that every RWBY OP will split the fandom to some degree, and this one has a very different style. It doesn’t have a name yet - I personally labelled it as “The End” on YouTube, unfortunately confusing a few people - which is odd, but Jeff professed that he just couldn’t settle on one yet.

The standard guitar and heavy percussion are present, kicking off in the usual instrument-focused intro, and are mixed with layers of different instruments, synth and backing vocals throughout the song once Casey’s vocals start. Speaking of, our leading lady delivers with her usual grace, and her matured voice lends a lot to the tone of the song (the growl on “Some roses will never bloom” is amazing). Almost every line on the verse and pre-chorus has an echo behind it - either as an effect or as part of the backing - giving it a forlorn yet powerful quality.

In the lyrics department, it reminds me quite a bit of the second opening - “Time To Say Goodbye” - save with a darker undertone. I’d be hardpressed to believe that the line “We said goodbye / To all the things we loved” isn’t, in fact, a direct reference to “Now it’s time to say goodbye / To the things we loved and the innocence of youth”. In a Volume where a lot of people were clamboring for a “When It Falls 2.0″ - yours truly included - this was a surprise, but a welcome one.

Second opening is the best opening. That is a hill I will die on.

Come to think of it, this might become a trend. If I remember correctly, several lyrics in “Trust Love” harkened back to “This Will Be The Day”; what springs to mind immediately is the contrast of “When the day you waited for won’t come” with “This will be the day we waited for”, and “Always hoping that a lightning bolt / Is going to save you from this gravity” with “We are lightning / Straying from the thunder”.

If this is the case and Volume 8 goes as I believe it will - setting up for another Volume in Atlas where the huge fight happens as everyone struggles to hold the line until help arrives - then we could be due for some “When It Falls” references then.

I’ve heard some say that this opening sounds a little too crowded, that it doesn’t hit quite as hard as they expected/compared to “When It Falls”, that the darker tone relies on the lyrics rather than anything in the instrumentation, and those are valid critiques. Personally, this one’s an ear-worm - I love the sound of it; Jeff made a lot of interesting choices - but the melody itself isn’t as discernable as previous years and is going to take a while to grow on me.

I’m not going to rank these or anything because that feels a little arbitrary, but I really enjoyed what we got this first Chapter. Knowing the team, they find ways to step it up every year, so I’m seriously looking forward to what’s in store.

Until next week!

[blaster-aichi]

Cardfight!! Vanguard Extra Story IF 17—19 things

feat some overdue screaming

IF 17

said overdue screaming

Without the context of epi 19, Kourin’s reference to original memories stands out as incredibly peculiar. Miwa’s response, while fitting for anyone else, could have an entirely new meaning after the revelation at 19′s conclusion, we’ll get there in theoryland.

Never knew needed Kai-kun working part-time jobs but it has become a huge need, thanks writers.

That’s gay. But it does suggest that the possible ruptures in IF’s reality aren’t isolated to Shin and Kamui in the previous episode. It would be nice to see any other instances from the possible ripple effect.

pre-19: “oh this face is a mood”. post-19: “different character but hmmmmm”

With all the Legion Mate comparisons floating around from the get-go, Naoki’s method in tackling his regret is an intriguing choice against his past efforts. In Link Joker, Legion Mate and the second half of the manga/Reboot, Naoki’s objective was to make for his inaction going forward and earn Aichi’s forgiveness. If given the opportunity to go back and redo things, he may have taken it, though having heard from Aichi personally that he’s thankful for everything and everyone that he’s connected with as a result of how events played out, Naoki may not have had the heart to do so. Without that talk, it’s natural that, instead of looking ahead and atoning, Naoki’s turning backwards, it’s a neat contrast.

The series has always built up the relationship between Aichi and Blaster Blade but the relationship between Kai-kun and Dragonic Overlord is so precious, it’s a shame that it wasn’t delved into prior to the past couple of years. The notion of evolving circling the both of them is incredibly fitting, with the history they’ve had in both continuities and the duality of their approaches. (It might have been occupying thoughts a lot since, the scene was so poignant).

Between his soldiers attacking during their first (onscreen) attempt to reach the root of the problem and Emi’s subsequent admission, props to Aichi for isolating it and cutting it off to anyone that tries to interfere, hoping it’s a part of any explanation to his reality warping (assuming it was him, until today, it seemed the only viable reason).

The comparison between Naoki and Kai-kun had me believe the former might join up with the main party as a nod to being there by the latter from beginning to end of Legion Mate, being both characters harbouring regrets (if Kai-kun were to regret that his IF life takes away from the happiness of the Outside World characters).

I just really, really, really love this scene. That is all.

Bless for highlighting the irony in the KaiAi units being adversaries.

Did I mention this is joint-favourite IF epi with epi 7? It’s not, it is and here’s one of many reasons why.

Reason #57 why: the battle choreography.

“Aichi Sendou isn’t the one you want to save”. Makes you wonder who was out to save the object of their regret and who was out to save themselves.

For a moment, had believed Naoki was not-dying (Retiring?) and being returned to the Outside World, somewhat surprised it hasn’t been utilized more beyond the Ultra Rare teams diving into the Akashic Book from.

Very Soft Cardfight. That is all.

Somewhere, original continity Naoki is screaming.

Tell this to your Link Joker self, please.

IF 18

On the one hand, Kai-kun walking around in Miyaji (with or without the context of IF), on the other hand, Bushi Eats.

Probably due to cracks coming from him getting a glimpse of the original reality, but Shingo cares an enormous amount for someone who, just a couple of episodes ago, said all the products in Card Capital were going to make him lose his mind.

“Awful big brother”. Laughs with shovel. (Comparatively, he’s brother of the year.)

PEDAL FASTER.

Love how Masaki and Shinji are named to overlap with their brothers’.

He’s going to fucking murder you.

[Kourin voice] Aichi is tired. [Me voice] As am I of your bullshit.

Wingal took so much time to train that it was only on his third appearance that he didn’t attack anyone. Also soft? So very soft.

NO THAT’S SO CUTE DAMN IT.

I have so much to say about Aichi missing Emi but also she’s barged in twice and you blasted out our of the castle on both occasions. Bullshit.

Do not pull the Legion Mate with me, boy.

Is he super dissociated because how do you even in the face of this?

It’s not just that he shouted her name, but the tone of his voice shouting at her. Thinking about just how extreme it is in comparison to the Aichi she knows and has kept company is pretty chilling.

Just how aggressive Aichi has become within the IF World is alarming; on only two occasions has he let anger get the better of him and one of those two wasn’t so bad. If this is to play on how warped he was going into the fight with Ibuki, good play on the writers’ part.

Semi-related to the above; with exception of three characters (Emi, Rati and Voidkuto), Aichi’s always used honorifics, and attached one to Kourin’s name, so to hear him address her without one is jarring, for lack of a better word.

THE BIG RED FLAG: Aichi’s expression in seeing Kourin having acted of her own accord (and potentially disobey him) smacks of two things:    — his perceived crumbling control over the Sanctuary Knights, coupled with Naoki and Shingo’s desertion (his lack of reaction to the latter is bizarre, as it lends itself to and could bolster his hatred of Vanguard)    — insinuates he never had control, but was allowed to think that he did. There’ll be a section beneath 19, which itself does a lot to fuel the flames of this suspicion, that will consolidate thoughts and the theory that’s been brewing since this episode last week.

On the subject of 19, Miwa being so nonchalant and passive about everything makes a lot more sense.

Let the girls fight physically more.

UBW Archer Class Meme-y Dialogue tingles.

Naoki and Shingo holding down the fort is very sweet, particularly when Shingo was alone in that task last time.

IF 19

Alarm bells rings first thing in the morning.

The irony in past Ibuki preventing Kai-kun going to Aichi after the past dozen episodes, there are no words.

Odd that the caveat of meeting yourself from another point in time presents itself when it didn’t occur in the first two episodes, unless, at least in this case, it applies only to past events.

There’s trying not to yell FGO at things and then there’s brain yelling “Lostbelt!” at Ibuki.

Rekka and Ren’s appearances gives me hope they’ll resurface; the main characters and audience know where their target is, so would like to think word will somehow get to them. (Speaking of. Nome? Where the fuck are you during all this?)

Episode loves playing with unsettling sights, very fitting for messing Ibuki’s head around, but simultaneously, making it apparent just how much of a threat Kourin specifically is.   — On a related note: Kourin beats out Ren, Leon, Sera, Voidkuto and IF Aichi to have the most nightmarish face and I Am Afraid. Give Aichi a face like that al you’ll irreparably wound my psyche.

Intense Vibrating. They’re setting up Ibuki’s Deleting Aichi is relevant, it was the only one Kourin didn’t touch on in the episode and I am burning.

How dare you montage their time together with that music and then cut to this!

Did everyone else forget Jammers were a thing or was it just me being dumb?

Everyday I relate to Kai Toshiki.

Just going to appreciate Kai-kun gushing over giant robots in the middle of battle.

Kai-kun!Blaster Blade vs Greion giving me intense flashbacks to Aichi watching Kai-kun’s image in Blaster Blade sacrificing himself to try and fend off Greion just before he got Deleted and SCREAMS.  — Once that fight is brought up directly, if you listen, you’ll hear Rena screaming in the distance.

If there’s anyone who has no room to talk it’s Miss This Thirsty For Aichi. Also when did you two switch places of tease and teased?

“Oh shit, he’s going to Delete Kai-kun”. “Oh okay, false alarm, thank G—” “OH NO SHIT HE’S ACTUALLY GOING TO DO IT!”  — On an actual note, seeing the three regrets prominent in this season all take separate routes is interesting; Shuka working to correct her wrongs in the present and moving ahead, Naoki trying to travel back and alter things from the point of origin and Ibuki being twisted to no longer feel regret, seek repentence and rather to repeat his actions.  — Ibuki vs Aichi flashbacks intensify.  — Also, mid-fall dab.

Double Agent Miwa is a blessing, who knew his acting skills were so good? Although the begs the question (if he was flat-out planted as a mole) how he earned Kourin and/or Aichi’s trust to become a Sanctuary Knight in the first place

IF 20 preview: HYPE! HYPE! HYPE!

Theoryland (Screaming):

Miwa being Takuto or Nome’s Outside World partner:

In both Rekka and Suiko’s cases, there was a companion venturing in alongside them, both of whom are friends of Kai-kun and the same age. Perhaps, Miwa may have been in league with one of the Tatsunagi brothers (having determined Aichi’s motivation and Kai-kun’s position in all this, calling on his closest friend to match the girls’ partners) through whom he gained insight into the situation and moved in order to protect Kai-kun; working from the inside to weasel information out of the others, understand how they operate, monitor their activities to keep Kai-kun out of their sights, (find Takuto, if with Nome) and maybe (find a means to or actively make an effort himself to) drag Aichi out of his current state. It may be that, instead of Sanctuary, his abduction of Kai-kun had the destination of a rendezvous with Nome until the girls’ interference and the entire incident went off the rails.

Aichi as a puppet king and Kourin the true human antagonist:

Since his expression in seeing Kourin on the offensive without his say-so, it’s been on my mind that Aichi hasn’t actually been in a position of power whatsoever throughout IF, but he’s been led to believe he is, and the act might be withering. As "original" memories factor into it and Ultra Rare’s were lost at the end of the main Reboot continuity plot, it’s possible they may be on the line as they were in Link Joker/Legion Mate.  — As she’s aware there are such memories, it’s possible that they were triggered into resurfacing when Takuto appeared within IF World and encountered her and Aichi, leading to his capture and confinement, so as not to cause any further damage to the world fabricated.  — Alternatively, she might be acting in order to keep the force (a Brandt remnant remains my personal suspicion) that has Aichi in his current state at bay. Her unease in seeing him hanging above the scene outside Sanctuary as she attacked the others might suggest that she was worried it could break loose, as she’s never been one to be rattled. This is why “human” was specified above, because whatever the case, any corruption in Aichi is evidently the overarching antagonist force.

Additionally, throughout the season, Kourin has been fiercely territorial around Aichi, speaking and acting on his behalf, while keeping the other Sanctuary Knights at an arm’s distance. She alone enters his private quarters, sees him in pain, and (no, haven’t given up entirely on the right eye thing, there have been other people around when he’s outside his Alfred form and it was visible) privy to any secret circulating him (as well as IF’s true nature), while keeping the others in teh dark. Her reasoning may be wanting to keep him under he thumb or prevent whatever’s inside/in control of him from running rampant.

And in regards to Ibuki, Aichi made the declaration about casting him elsewhere, but Kourin was the one who enacted it, and the sole player in manipulating him to switch sides. There’s no certainty that Aichi is even aware, much like he might not be conscious of Naoki’s betrayal.  — Her being responsible for recruiting might also explain why Misaki was never a Sanctuary Knight: Kourin desired she have an ordinary, happy life, not unlike Aichi’s wish for Kai-kun.

In a truly ironic turnabout, it looks to be that Kourin is IF’s Sera.

[tegoshigeftw]

Tegoshige Top 25

“More Tegoshige, please!” - said absolutely noone and I delivered. Well, this isn’t for 5 likes, this is for me. I’ve had this blog for 6,5 years now and I decided to look back on the best it had to offer. This is my rating of top Tegoshige moments, excluding those that tightly involved other members (so the making out had to be left out ;;). The things that made my heart doki doki... It was originally a top 10 but it was getting hard to pick so I decided there literally was no reason to hold back so here we are.

#25 4x9

That one time Tegoshige went on location together (which is already a blessing) and Tegoshi got freaked out because of insects running about and nearly got into Shige’s lap. Nearly. So it heads the list.

# 24 Halloween 2017

Tegoshi was Oiran - an elite courtesan - and Shige was Alex from Clockwork Orange. This was but a short moment but is lasted forever in my mind.

#23 Dropped earring

This was during White final. After the boisterous MC scene where Shige was the couch and Tegoshi was the girlfriend, Shige noticed Tegoshi dropped his earring, picked it up and gave it back to him. Just a minor moment, but Tegoshi was still in girlfriend mode and it was incredibly soft. Video here.

#22 Neverland in Tokyo encore 2017/06/11

Tegoshi got very emotional after he went backstage but the fans kept cheering so they went back on stage again and Tegoshi wouldn’t stop crying so Shige led him softly.

#21 As long as Tegoshi is happy...

Before a live performance, they were interviewed and as it was just after Tegoshi’s birthday, they were asked what they wanted to give so...

S: … (in his best ikemen voice) As long as Tegoshi is happy, that is enough! T: Ahhh! ♥ I am loved! Thank you, Shige-chan! I wanna hug you!~

Video here.

#20 The Spa

It was a photoshoot for Biteki. They were originally in different sandboxes but Tegoshi got lonely very soon.

#19 Hairstylist Shige

Shige has been Tegoshi’s stylist for years, since the early days. You can see it in photos and several DVDs, most notably Live Diamond. Video cut here.

#18 “Shige, thank you!”

The night after the Neverland Tokyo concert, 2017 Shige got a call...

S: After the concert ended, Tegoshi had a party with his friends. And so late at night he suddenly called me saying “Could you come for a bit?” S: He seemed to be serious and he cried so much at the concert. (laugh) I got worried and came over but this guy… he just fell asleep! (laugh) K&M: That’s terrible. S: He woke up once, looked at me saying “Shige, thank you!” and went back to sleep. T: Moreover, I was sleeping in Shige’s lap. [S]

Tegoshi: After the last concert in Tokyo Dome I invited several members of staff and Juniors and we basically did a wrapping up party. I called Shige at 3 AM and he came but I ended up falling asleep in Shige’s lap though I don’t remember that at all. I heard it afterwards but apparently I sang “I’m coming” and Shige sang “Ayame” but I don’t remember a bit… [S]

#17 Neverland in Tokyo 2017/06/10

According to a fan report: At the intro of some song, Shige grabbed Tegoshi by the waist tightly. At first, Tegoshi was playing along but Shige didn’t let go and Tegoshi, not used to being attacked, got embarrassed.

#16 Umeboshi

Shige’s been making umeboshi for years now and his #1 fan is none other than Tegoshi.

S: I’ve been doing it for 10 years. It’s not that I like them, I hardly eat them myself. During the tour our Tegoshi eats quite a lot of them. I leave it (in the dressing room) so after the concert he opens it and eats it. About half of them I make for Tegoshi. [2017.02.08 Moshimono Futari]

Q: If you were to give Christmas presents to the members what would it be?

A: …Well, umeboshi! Umeboshi! Eat my umeboshi and get healthy! I give it to Tegoshi every year though. Ah, but that’s showing “Love”. I give it all the time but it’s a deep love that has a special depth! (laugh) [2018.12.05 TVガイド]

#15 Blue making

This is perfect for several reasons, how naturally this fells, how there’s a perfectly empty chair next to them, and how at the end Tegoshi stumbled and Shige is cautioning him.

#14 That 2013 photoshoot

You know the one. That is all. No comment needed.

#13 Tegoshige Kabe-don and confession

During k-chan news, they played the Prince game and Koyama wanted a kabe-don. So Tegoshi kabe-don’d Shige and told him “I love you!”

The audio available here.

#12 Tegoshi’s kirakira eyes

Back in 2009, Shige had a diary and I’m really sorry he does not anymore because one day after a photoshoot he wrote this:

At that time he had seemed to be already smiling and looking at me Looking at me at such a close distance Is this an effect from DREAM BOYS As compared to before, the distance was so much more closer Tegoshi Yuya Indeed is a prince………….. Oh please won’t you be even a little embarrassed. Just how strong is your heart? Don’t look at me like that………… Being looked at with those shiny eyes…………… The atmosphere will become weird (oдO) ………………………………….. Tegoshi Yuya who has ended the photoshoot using those shiny eyes, had walked towards DREAM BOYS with that pair of eyes Ah~ shiny shiny Tegoshi eyes~ I’ll be waiting for that photoshoot~ I wonder… for which magazine would it be Oh the kira kira eyes

Full text here.

#11 That Taiwan hotel video 

We all remember that one. Tegoshi in his bathrobe going out to visit ‘other members’’ rooms but he only goes to Shige’s and gets comfortable on his bed, and gets pounced, and the next thing they show, it’s morning.

#10 Soukon thigh stroking

That time the camerman got very fascinated with Tegoshi’s legs and the other members teased him about it and called him a pervert. Then, Shige decided to stroke those thighs because... well, he can. 

#9 Taking a bath together!

- An unforgettable episode that happened on stage.

Kato: Because of a thunderstorm we had to stop the concert. We moved it to a later date. After a break the 4 of us got into tiny bathtubs, 2 in each and it felt sort of like a field trip, (laugh) the bath was warm. [Duet 2015.04]

They also talked about it during an MC at the time.

Shige pretended to climb into the “tub” with Tegoshi. “We were Team… What was it again?” T: Team “We haven’t done our solos yet”. S: And Tegoshi was sliding all over the place and smacking into me. He was such a naughty guy. T: It couldn’t be helped. It’s slippery. K: But baths are nice, aren’t they? Shige answered in a chill voice, “Yeah, they’re great.” [S]

#8 Worldista routine

I think this was during Weeek where they make up different letters with their bodies. Every concert it went differently but several times Tegoshi left his place and went over to Shige. This fancam pictured the time he got on top of him. Or tried to.

Also here’s a report from Nagano, May 25:

Tegoshi goes to Shige and captures him in a hug and Shige hugs him back. Then Shige picks Tegoshi up and carries him like a sleeping child to his original position. [Fanart here]

#7 Showers

Tegoshi is long known to invade other people’s privacy and during the tour, other people’s shower stalls are no exception. There are many recent episodes but here’s one account:

Q2: Shige-chan said in Nagoya when he took a shower Tegoshi appeared right before his eyes but does he do it always?

S: Not… always but he did it quite a lot on this tour. He trespassed about 3-4 times I think. He would enter the shower room I went to really quietly. That’s why I got really startled. He’d get happy he made me surprised and start grinning. (laugh) I would counterattack by pouring water over him.  

[Tour Stories from Popolo 2016.09 FUN’S QUESTION - SHIGEAKI]

Then, there’s an important MC from 2008. One time, during the tour Massu wanted to take a shower but as he entered the stalls, he met a naked Shige standing proudly. Shige explained he was only waiting on Tegoshi who earlier danced for him naked. Massu was like “Cool, I’ll leave you to it.”

The full account is here. There used to be an audio of this but I didn’t manage to get it.

#6 DTF ‘ago-kui’

There were many instances during two whole tours and also a SCP performance. Each time seems a little closer and more intimate, but each time looks equally fun on both sides.

#5 Accessible Emma outfit

Now we know that Shige, unlike Tegoshi, is not a touchy kind of guy. So him doing something like this, especially on air, is pretty unusual. Tegoshi said Shige did it a lot backstage too.

#4 “I wanna stir you up”

This line from ‘S’ was a real hit and Tegoshi basically admitted it got him horny. Twice. Detailed posts here and here.

#3 Tegoshi saying they’re basically married

Here’s the video.

#2 Tegoshi knows what’s up

Who do you think has the most sex appeal?

Tegoshi: Shige. His face is handsome like a nobility but he’s also manly. Rather than a shining sexuality his sexuality is monochrome… a deep sexuality. It’s the kind that slowly unravels as you get to know him.  [Wink Up, 2013.12]

Who would be a perfect boyfriend in NEWS?

Tegoshi: Wouldn’t that be Shige? It seems like he wouldn’t be clingy but all the while even when he’s silent, in his heart he’d be like “I’m thinking about you properly ♥” keeping a good distance. [Ane Can 2015]

Look with a “female gaze” and say who’s the most handsome member Tegoshi: Alright, I’m switching to female… click! …Hello, I’m Yuko! (laugh) So… for me it’s Shige. The reason is his face and his way of life. His face is up to my taste (laugh) and he doesn’t hesitate in words or in actions. His open-minded way of thinking is similar to mine. It’s refreshing and feels good. [Potato 2016.10]

To name but a few.

#1 Shige radio confession

During k-chan news, they played the Prince game and Koyama wanted one person to say what they liked about the other person and this is how Shige confessed.

K: Do it properly! Seriously. Connect hands “lover style”, look at each other. *giggle* S: Tegoshi has a really cute face. Really cute face and a good voice… K: That’s not it. S: A nice voice and beautiful eyes… K: Something you really like, really like.  S: But I really do like it. K: Something more about his personality. S: If it’s about his personality then… even when he complains he still does his job properly.

Sorry, but that’s just... yeah. You have to hear it though. Full transcript and audio here.

[useless-catalanfacts]

I’ve posted before about the situation of the young Catalans arrested in the recent protests. Like the horrifying mistreatment by the police to 28 young Catalan people arrested, Andrea’s case, how the police are planting fake proofs and threatening those arrested, the immigrants who were arrested for demonstrating and deported, random Catalan people suspected of being pro-independence who are kept in solitary confinement for over a month (when the UN considers more than 14 days a torture because of the irreparable damage it causes), how the Spanish police beats up random people walking in the streets of Catalonia doing nothing while they let naonazis walk freely chanting they’re going to “hunt Catalan independentist”, set fire to houses that hang a Catalan independence flag in their balcony, and beat up random Catalan people...

And all of this while Spain arrests journalists who report on the Catalan protests, at least 58 journalists reported being attacked by the Spanish police who especially targeted their cameras and laptops, closes down the websites of pro-Catalan-independence civil organizations, the Spanish government passes a new law that allows them to take down any website or social media account that they want without having to give any explanation (as they have already closed many Twitter accounts for “damaging the image of Spain”)...

Now there’s a new report, made by SIRECOVI (System for Recording and Communication of Institutional Violence), part of the Observatory of the Criminal System and Human Rights at the University of Barcelona.

:

The circumstances of the arrests that took place during October's protests in Catalonia after the sentencing of pro-independence leaders show, according to a report produced by eight observers, "the existence of an environment of institutional violence" from the moment they were arrested until they arrived in prison. The report, based on interviews with 22 of those arrested, talks about mistreatment, humiliation and violated rights.

Besides being hit, in some cases by agents not wearing identification or with their faces covered, the interviewees report specific instances of threats and intimidation from comments like "you're looking for a death and it won't be on our side" and "we'll put the baton up your arse"), to one officer playing with a knife. The document also reveals a young migrant arrested made a suicide attempt. The majority of those interviewed are between 18 and 23 years of age; only four are older than 25.

"From practically the entirety of the accounts, an environment of violence is attested which isn't limited to situations experienced in public or in police custody (where episodes of direct, physical and/or psychological abuse and aggressions against the people interviewed have been related), but also extends, according to the accounts obtained, to the courts," the text says.

[...]

"There exist aspects and stories of grave concern for the fundamental rights of the people arrested, in particular their rights to liberty, physical and moral integrity, to medical checks in accordance with the stipulations of international norms and standards, and also their rights to defence and to speak in their own language," the text says. 

[...]

The report says that whilst some were arrested whilst taking part in the demonstrations, others say they "were simply in the streets" or were going home. There's also one individual who says they were collecting scrap but the police interpreted this as carried objects to throw at them.

Among the specific allegations against police during the arrests, 11 said they were hit by police batons, 11 said they were thrown to the ground and 12 mentioned being kicked. It is also reported that officers would keep them still with a knee in their faces or on their necks and that they suffered, for example, very tight handcuffs, hits to the face, punches, twisted limbs, being dragged along the floor and being hit by foam or rubber bullets. Some female interviewees also report having their breasts touched.

"Kill him"

As for psychological violence, threats are reported, comments like "kill him" and "we'll put the baton up your arse", as well as insults and jokes. This continued whilst they were being taken into custody, with half of those arrested saying they were handcuffed behind their backs and were without safety belts in the vans, meaning they were very unstable, something they described as a "hell", given the acceleration and braking. Two people say they were thrown to the floor in the van, one of whom split her lip.

Once in custody, one goes as far as to say they were treated "like true animals". They complain of cold and a lack of blankets and two people said they had to sleep on the floor whilst urine spread across it from an overflowing toilet. One person said they were "thrown food through the bars of the cell 'as if to dogs'” and five said the cells were dirty and the blankets had mites.

One individual says he wasn't given food, but that he couldn't have eaten anyway due to the "great pain" in his face "as a result of the punches and kicks"; two say they weren't given water but had full bottles placed in front of them they couldn't drink from.

Within the police stations, they talk of being hit in the face, being trampled on and punches. One person said that despite having a sprain, he was forced to remain kneeling, facing a wall, being slapped when he tried to turn round.

When reports, later dispelled, reached the police station on Barcelona's Via Laietana that an officer had died, some of the people arrested started to be hit, "which caused the walls to start to be covered in blood", they say. "Although all of them had parts of their bodies uncovered, with visible and bleeding wounds, they indicate that the police didn't stop until they saw that one of the young men was really in a bad state," the report says.

As for psychological violence, three say they were threatened with being taken to Madrid, as well as jeering and taunting. "Following a protest from one of them about the mistreatment of a person in custody, they say that a lot of officers came up to her, highlighting that one of them was carrying a knife and that, as he was opening and closing it, he said: 'you're looking for a death and that death won't be from our side'".

Two of those arrested in Tarragona say that early in the morning they were awoken by the Spanish anthem and that they were forced to speak Spanish [and forbidden their native language Catalan], even when calling their families. The document denounces various flaws in terms of communicating their rights to the detainees and in them being allowed to contact their families.

In court

Many of the interviewees state the mistreatment didn't end during their first appearances in court and the journeys there and back. Long waits, up to a full day, without food or water. One of those arrested, a young migrant, says that when told by a judge in Girona he would be kept in custody, he tried to end his life "hanging himself with his jumper".

In court, they report the presence of police officers whilst they testified, two of the 22 mentioning members of Spain's National Police Corps with their faces covered. Four testified in handcuffs, one says he wasn't given a chance to explain himself and another that his judge was wearing something on her top "with bands in the colours of the Spanish flag, ostentatiously displayed". Some of them say they were mocked by the judge and were not asked about visible injuries.

The cells in the courts in Lleida are described as "dirty, precarious and small" whilst the ones in Tarragona reportedly had a stone bench and police and others present. As for medical checks, the 11 who were attended to whilst in custody said it took place with police present.

Once they were in prison, they are far more positive about the treatment, even describing it as a relief.

[merinnan]

DMBJ Explore with the Note Ep 3

Okay! Recap post for DMBJ season 2 (Explore with the Note), Ep 3!

Current counts:

Season 2 Xiaoge Rescue Count: 2 for Wu Xie, 2 for protagonists, 3 for everyone

Season 2 Wu Xie Swoon Count: 0 

Season 2 Evil Hair Count: 2 

 Cumulative Xiaoge Rescue Count: 12 for Wu Xie, 17 for protagonists, 18 for everyone 

Cumulative Wu Xie Swoon Count: 6

- Hopefully this ep has less snorkelling scenes 

- But to be honest 

- It would be hard to have MORE snorkelling scenes than ep 2 and still have plot

- Oh yeah, they've just had the first switcheroo of the side chambers and Wu Xie is Very Confused

- And Xiaoge just realised he's been here before, and is admitting he has memory problems 

- You are still such a bad liar at this point, Wu Xie. 

- Oh my god, Pangzi, you can't just ask people if they inject Botox or have a radiation-caused genetic mutation

- Also, yes, I am already on my bullshit with the soft looks Xiaoge gives Wu Xie 

- Well. The looks. Because this Xiaoge looks at people who are not Wu Xie about the same amount as Yang Yang's Xiaoge did

- It is very convenient how the flashbacks in this one are colour coded with that soft yellow lighting 

- It's taken these guys from 20 years ago a lot longer to get out here than it's taken Wu Xie and co. in the present time

- Like. I'm kinda wondering if this past Xiaoge was just straight up watching the idiot Xie accidentally kill himself. 

- I mean, I wouldn't blame him, tbh

- Going out diving by yourself without telling anyone is borderline suicidal without adding sneaking into an underwater tomb without adequate preparation to it 

- It's nice to have better lighting in the flashbacks, though 

- There's a snek-browed fishy, and past!Xiaoge is shook

- Also, that Xie guy looks like he was boiled or roasted down there 

- Oh, is past!Xiaoge remembering something about snek-fishies?

- Wu Xie coming in with some epic side-eye as Xiaoge tells the story

- Why does the flashback get a much more clear and visible snorkelling scene?! 

- You can actually see things! - Are they trying to make a low-key accidental statement about water pollution?

- Okay, this episode's snorkelling scene starts 6 minutes in 

- Let's see how long it goes for 

- Hopefully it will end before the 17 minute mark 

- That's the bar it has to beat here 

- Surely it can't be that hard 

- Oh, I spoke too soon on the water clarity

- Hey, if Sanshu and Wenjin could properly communicate underwater without arm notepads and without pulling out their fucking snorkles to try to literally talk underwater, WU XIE AND PANGZI, then why couldn't people in the present timeline do the same?

- Not looking at anyone in particular 

- At all 

- Especially not ones named Wu Xie and Pangzi

- The sea monkey that Sanshu chased off looks like baby compared to the one on the ghost ship

- Wow. Snorkelling took less than a minute and a half, with almost twice the number of people 

- Obviously A-Ning needed more people on her expedition 

- Then they wouldn't have had to swim around aimlessly for eleven fucking minutes before getting into the tomb

- Hahah, a perfume tomb 

- Sure it is 

- Don't you think that should make you suspicious, Sanshu? 

- There's always gotta be a big, interesting mural. Let's see what exposition this one will trigger.

- Ofc Pangzi goes sniffing for perfume after hearing about it being there 20 years ago 

- In a different room in the tomb 

- After people had traipsed through it with their stinky diving equipment

- And ofc he doesn't smell it and then complains that it can't have been there in the first place 

- Xiaoge's expression just says everything

- See, Wu Xie is the smart boy with the logical suggestions of why that might be, Pangzi 

- This guy who wants to leave is like the only genre-savvy one of the lot of them 

- Smart suggestions from past!Sanshu that yes, everyone should listen to 

- They're not gonna listen to him

- Yep, taking a nap is never a good idea in these situations 

- Which is why he's gonna do it 

- After DMBJ 1 Pangzi, it's so nice to have a Pangzi who's smart and competent straight off the bat, instead of having to take like 4/5 of the season to get to that point

- And ofc you were a hooligan as a kid, Pangzi. I am totally unsurprised by this news 

- I'd wondered why he jumped straight to aroma hypnosis, but him having come across it before when he was younger explains it

- This Wu Xie has some fantastic facial expressions 

- For instance, this one is wondering if Pangzi is bullshitting him 

- He doesn't even need to say it. It's right there on his face

- Oh yeah, Xiaoge recognises that

- And I was wondering how they'd intro that in without Wu Xie's disreputable antique store contacts telling him about it 

- Pangzi is ofc the logical choice for it 

- Hahah, yes, Wu Xie, you're right and you should say it

- Wu Xie: There's no such thing as ghosts 

- Xiaoge's expression: You might want to reconsider that 

- Oooh, Wu Xie has heard about it, too.

- Like almost 20 years ago, judging by how young he is in these flashbacks. And that this one looks like it takes place not long after Sanshu got into trouble from Grandpa Wu 

- But like, Sanshu, why are you telling a five year old about this? Or maybe he's six. BUT STILL

- Sanshu, do not recommend evil, possibly-ghosty, nightmare-inducing perfumed bone to your baby nephew as a sleep aid 

- Who tf let you near children?

- Ah, now time for the Sanshu-POV flashback. Which is happening within Wu Xie's flashback 

- Flashback-ception! 

- See, Sanshu, told you sleeping was a bad idea 

- None of them listened to you 

- Because you fell asleep and couldn't tell them no

- He can see surprisingly well for a man left in a sideroom of an underwater tomb with no light sources 

- It looks like they took all his diving gear as well as their own 

- How rude of them 

- OH GOOD, it's not just me who was thinking that this room looked really empty

- I thought I was imagining things, or mixing up the room they were in earlier with the room that Wu Xie and the rest were in last ep 

- Are those...claw marks where the mural used to be?

- OH WAIT NOW I REMEMBER WHAT'S HAPPENED TO HIM 

- If this is following the book as closely as it seems for this bit, anyway 

- I am less confused now

- Weird flash of light and sudden coffin appears 

- Which Sanshu can still see without a light source 

- Remember, kids, eat all your carrots like Sanshu obviously does!

- Do they just paint the same mural in every side chamber that has a mural? Because that looks just like the one from the other room. 

- Oh no, I can see some differences in it now 

- Yeah, that's not a good sign

- WTF Sanshu don't touch the creepy coffin that's suddenly pouring dark liquid out of it 

- Is that another sea monkey?

- Apparently diving equipment is only necessary to get down to the tomb, not to get back up. You won't even swallow much water, you'll get back perfectly safely, just a bit out of breath 

- And tired enough to pass out on the beach, but that might be from fighting a sea monkey first

- JFC, Sanshu, why are you telling all this to a five year old? 

- You really think this is gonna dissuade him from this when he grows up? No. You are planting the early seeds of encouragement. 

- Also the early seeds of lifelong nightmares

- You know, I still haven't worked out how Sanshu didn't recognise Xiaoge in DMBJ 1 - both drama and book. I mean, drama can be explained by them only adapting the first book that time, but book? Unless it gets explained later on

- Or I somehow skipped the explanation, which is also possible - I'll go back and reread them another time 

- lol, Pangzi 

- And look, more spiderwebs 

- The undersea spider colony here really works hard 

- Aaaah, Wu Xie's figuring it out already

- Pangzi seems to be serving the purpose of giving all the hints and little plot points that book Wu Xie already had before he stepped foot in the tomb 

- Hahahah, 'can you please speak human'

- Pangzi with the major concerns. Who cares about running out of oxygen if the food is gone?! Not Pangzi! 

- lol, looking at each other when they think Pangzi's being silly or unreasonable is already their go-to response

- lol, and Xiaoge doesn't agree until Wu Xie nods 

- Ah, first thing they come across is the coffin from one of the other rooms, and Pangzi is showing off that this time around he actually knows things! Yay!

- Okay, this little smile and nod from Xiaoge to Wu Xie is just too adorable for words

- And in they go to investigate the coffin 

- I do have to say that it's a very pretty coffin, though 

- Yes, Xiaoge, that look is the appropriate look to give to Pangzi for saying that XD

- WTF is that 

- lol, I like this troll Wu Xie 

- Well. That was dramatic. 

- IDK how the coffin lid when flying off like that though, there doesn't seem to be a sea monkey hiding in there this time 

- Ew, that's a little gruesome 

- Wu Xie is appropriately horrified by this

- It does still amuse me how Pangzi isn't even pretending not to be a tomb robber this time. He's so refreshingly honest about it. 

- Hahaha. "Are you a Virgo? You're so picky" because Wu Xie is more interested in looking at the vases than in just grabbing a few to bail water with

- But hey, Wu Xie is a Pisces, nice to know 

- You're just gonna walk over the top of that coffin lid like that, huh, Pangzi? Weren't you the one talking about how valuable the coffin was? And how you needed to do the proper rituals to show respect before opening it?

- And Wu Xie is back in the other room happily playing with vases and looking at the stories painted on them 

- Alone 

- Nothing bad could possibly come of this 

- It's not like Wu Xie has a tendency to get into danger without even realising it 

- Not at all

- But he's so happy! Like a cute little puppy 

- lol, you really were so wrapped up in the vases that you didn't notice him leaving, huh, Wu Xie? 

- Oops, looks like you stayed there a bit too long, Wu Xie. The entrance to the other room isn't there anymore

- Hahah, Xiaoge is so delicately scooping out water with the bowl compared to Pangzi just fucking going for it with that huge vase 

- Aww, Xiaoge is worried about Wu Xie. 

- But, y'know, guys, maybe you should turn around and realise that there's no entrance anymore

- Although that body is pretty creepy and attention-grabbing 

- Yeah, I don't think that's gonna help, Wu Xie 

- You're so adorable, though 

- WTF how is there a live cat there 

- Yeah, I don't blame you for pulling a gun, Pangzi

- Now back to poor, worried Wu Xie 

- WTF does the theory of relativity have to do with the current situation? 

- Awww, he's talking himself down from panic again. And it seems to be working. 

- ...or not

- Ooh, the cat corpse is gone 

- Xiaoge doesn't seem that concerned. More interested in the human corpse 

- And they STILL haven't noticed that the entrance is gone I thought you had better situational awareness than this, Xiaoge 

- Oh, that's not a good sign

- Ah, finally, NOW you notice 

- As always, Xiaoge takes this the most calmly out of all of them 

- I think it's a little late for not getting anxious, Wu Xie, when you were practically panicking earlier 

- Uh-oh

- Here's the sea monkey, and Xiaoge is trapped in another room with no way of knowing 

- Even though he does seem to have a sixth sense solely dedicated to Wu Xie being in trouble

- Run, Wu Xie, run! 

- Lose your balance on those arrows! Throw those priceless vases as ineffective weapons! 

- Ah, a side chamber which conveniently as a door that closes and locks

- GDI, Wu Xie, don't taunt the monster that's chasing you 

- lol, his, 'wait, did that actually work' face

- Oh, so it's just gonna...dig through those stones. Fantastic. 

- Why is there no blood on his knife? There really should be blood on his knife after stabbing that deeply. 

- Hahah, Pangzi says that Wu Xie's guess was wrong, and Xiaoge just gives this lovely 'bitch please' look

- That's a hairy hairy hand right there 

- I don't think Xiaoge so much as flinched 

- Even when Pangzi's dart almost hit him 

- Oh, okay, he seems vaguely concerned about the mark on his wrist now

- Oh, and now he's worried 

- Yeah, when Xiaoge is worried and yells at you to run, it's time to fucking book it 

- Guess he's a bit too distracted for his Wu Xie Is In Danger sense to be tingling right now

- That's a weird looking coffin 

- And on Wu Xie considering anachronistic elements of this tomb that he's now noticing, Ep 3 comes to an end. 

- And with no updates to the Rescue Count, the Swoon Count, or the Evil Hair Count. 

[doocentral]

“SCOOBY-DOO! AND THE CURSE OF THE 13TH GHOST” - MY SPOILER REVIEW

SPOILERS AHEAD -- I was so so SO excited for the "Scooby-Doo! And the Curse of the 13th Ghost" movie that came out on DVD and digital yesterday. I picked it up after work and went home to watch it almost immediately. My excitement and nostalgia for this movie was something I hadn't felt for a Scooby-Doo movie in a while. And...I finished it disappointed on a few levels... The entire concept for this movie was phenomenal: Let's take a 34-year old plot hole created from an obscure era of Scooby-Doo and resolve it with an awesome DTV movie in the 50th year of the franchise's life. But instead what we got was: Let's take a 34-year old plot hole created from an obscure era of Scooby-Doo and attempt to resolve it by writing out characters, rationalizing the supernatural aspects of the story, and creating even MORE plot holes. 

The movie had a great set-up and was going well for probably the first half of the movie. I'll discuss real quick what I personally like about this movie before going into what I didn't: 1) I thoroughly enjoyed the backstory of the Chest of Demons (COD) and learning about how Vincent VanGhoul himself had to capture the 13 ghosts (I'm going to refer to them as The 13 from this point forward) before Scooby and Shaggy ever released them in the original series. I think that's great character development, storytelling, and additional information that was lacking in the original series. I always had a hunch that Vincent was responsible for creating the COD and capturing The 13 in the first place, when really he didn't actually create the COD but rather discovered it and made the same mistake Scooby and Shaggy made. 2) I think that the design of Asmodeus (the 13th ghost that was never captured) was fantastic. His head shape is reminiscent of the COD itself as well as the collective entity of The 13 that we see escape in the first episode of "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo". I *think* Asmodeus is supposed to be considered the first being to ever enter the COD, and him supposedly being the most powerful of The 13 makes him an interesting antagonist for the group. Especially when it's learned that he is actually Vincent VanGhoul's ancestor, adding to the world-building and justifying further Vincent's self-appointed responsibility to recapture The 13. His name is also interesting since “Asmodeus” is actually a being believed to be the “king of demons” as he is also stated to be in this movie. Just an interesting tie-in to real mythology that the other twelve ghosts of the chest lack. 

3) Based on elements of the original series, I enjoyed the movie's occasional call-backs. I think bringing Flim-Flam back was a good choice and having him grow up a little but maintain the same personality was delightful (despite him not being a favorite character of mine AT ALL). The return of the Red Mystery Machine was great too. The COD was modernized in style (as was the Red Mystery Machine) but it still looked menacing. 4) The humor was for the most-part great. I think the joke of older people being scared of teenagers was great, especially when it suddenly and unexpectedly was said again by a different character. Other instances of humor I enjoyed were when Scooby and Shaggy were roleplaying as flight attendants/plane pilots or when Flim-Flam commented on Daphne's hair and Shaggy's green shirt (for those who don't know, Shaggy wore a red shirt in the original series).

Now for the things I took issues with... 1) I DESPISE how the lore and threat of Asmodeus was undone by the character we see throughout the movie just being a man in a costume. The whole point of this movie was to revive the supernatural storyline of "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" and finally finish the gang's quest. The ghost turning out to be a man in a mask ruined the story and I think this should be borderline false-advertising (not really but still!). I really wanted to see the characters struggle to face off with the most powerful ghost among The 13, who again are the most powerful supernatural entities the world has ever known! I would have LOVED to see them be brutally scared and terrified of this ghost because of who he is, and I also wanted to see someone maybe be forced or hypnotized or tricked into opening the COD again. If the real COD had been opened again it could've made the whole situation more dire. This would've made the ending of the movie really dramatic; watching the gang and Vincent and Flim-Flam work together to recapture the twelve ghosts inside the COD as well as the most powerful of The 13 as a whole would have been fantastic. I can only imagine the explosive scene and visuals we would've gotten if this were the case. I know I can't fault the movie for not going this route too much, but the fact it didn't and further downplayed the supernatural characteristics of the original show and Asmodeus left a bad taste in my mouth. 2) The absence of Scrappy-Doo was a debated topic for this movie since it was initially announced. Everyone speculated if he would make an appearance, be referenced to, or the movie just not acknowledge his existence at all. I'll admit, the "What's a Scrappy?" joke from Velma did get a laugh out of me but I almost would've rather had the movie ignore the problem altogether. My IDEAL outcome of this dilemma would just be for Warner Bros. to swallow their pride and include Scrappy in the movie. He was a prominent and regular character of "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" so reviving the storyline for a movie doesn't make sense without him there. I don't know if the joke was supposed to satirize the franchise's willingness to ignore the existence of this character but it just doesn't make sense story-wise. It skews continuity (which is my next point) and confuses fans of the series. Scrappy isn't an entirely untouchable or irredeemable character either; he has become a prominent and likable character in the "Scooby Apocalypse" comic book series. In fact he's one of the better characters in that comic series because of his character development and instilled morals. Why couldn't Warner Bros. just put in the work and make the character a functional and non-detrimental element of this movie? People hated Flim-Flam a lot more than they hated Scrappy, and even he got to come back. (But I also acknowledge they didn’t bring back Weerd and Bogel either). 

3) This movie presents so many issues in terms of continuity. It's not the movie's sole fault; I don't think Scooby-Doo and continuity are compatible to begin with. But here's a couple issues with continuity I think need to be addressed if this movie is supposed to be a continuation of the original series:   a) The Sheriff at the beginning of the movie says that the gang "is almost 18 now" which means that they are still teenagers. I'm pretty sure that Daphne and Shaggy were supposed to be portrayed as older versions of themselves (maybe early 20's) in "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo”. They were flying planes and traveling all over the world. And if time has truly passed between "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" and this movie, that would mean Daphne and Shaggy were probably like, 15 or 16, when they went in search of The 13 in the first place. I wish they would stop calling them teenagers in stories where it doesn't make sense AT ALL for them to be teenagers. Kids are able to enjoy Scooby-Doo just as much regardless of the gang's age because they just want to watch a talking dog be scared by ghosts and monsters. They're not watching because they personally identify with the gang since the gang are teenagers. The only time their age was maybe at all important was in "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" because the very premise was that the gang were kids. Why do they have to be teenagers in this movie? The answer is, there is no reason. WB just insists they're still teenagers.   b) Before I say this, I just want to acknowledge that "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated" is supposed to be an alternate universe to the "main continuity" (if that even exists) of Scooby-Doo. So it's interesting to see that both that series and this movie make reference to "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo", yet "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated" actually acknowledged the existence of Scrappy along with Flim-Flam. The same excuse was used that Fred wasn't in the original cartoon because he was at summer camp, however Flim-Flam in the "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated" timeline is apparently serving 25 years to life for his con-artistry. This isn't something I'm mad about for this movie, just thought it was something that should be said since the movie decided to write-out Scrappy. 

    c) Just...don’t get me started on the continuity dumpster-fire that is the garage sale scene...it’s nostalgic but just...please don’t...

   d) After the gang discovers the crystal ball in the garage sale, Daphne explains a lot of the backstory to Fred and Velma in her bedroom. At one point, she throws an outfit on Fred, and when we see it land on Fred we can ALSO see a picture frame on her nightstand showing the whole gang unmasking the Moat Monster. For those who may not remember, the Moat Monster is the green villain in the flashback at the beginning of "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island". I'm not saying that this case couldn't have been solved between the events of "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" and this movie; the case was a flashback in "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island". But if this movie is trying to say that it takes place in the same continuity as "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island", how can the gang be so baffled by the existence of real zombies and cat creatures when they, or at least Scooby, Shaggy, and Daphne, have encountered THE 13 MOST TERRIFYING GHOSTS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH??? You could say that the events of "Zombie Island" don't ultimately happen in this timeline, which is fine, but then why reference that movie at all? 

4) Velma and Fred are very frustrating characters in this movie. I'll start with Fred here though. While I like the group-dynamic shifting with Daphne taking on leadership in their mission and making Fred step-aside, I don't like that they focused Fred's story-arc on him trying to find his place in the group. It's like the movie is trying to make us feel sorry for a man because a woman is stepping up for once. I liked watching Daphne take charge and show Fred that she, as well as Scooby and Shaggy, are able to handle things without his leadership. I have no sympathy for Fred in this movie, and when he reveals he actually went to cheerleading camp when he was gone in the original series? He instantly becomes 100% more frustrating than he already has been, Velma on the other hand becomes exhausting. After the crystal ball is discovered, EVERY SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE she has is devoted to her denial or skepticism in the supernatural. Yes, Velma would be the one to question the existence of real ghosts between her and Fred (this was central to her story-arc in "Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy"). But when that's literally the only thing she has going on, Velma just becomes a flat, uninteresting, and annoying character. Especially when we, the viewer, know for a fact that the ghosts in the original show were real. And then her rationalization of the other twelve ghosts being hallucinations that Shaggy, Scooby, and Daphne experienced at the high-altitude of the Himalayas was maddening. I don't know if Warner Bros. was trying to undo the existence of the supernatural in this timeline of Scooby-Doo or not, but it doesn't make sense anyway because in the show, the gang wasn't in the Himalayas the whole time. They opened the COD in the temple and then traveled all over the world to pursue them. So Velma's explanation of this is ultimately as weak as wet toilet paper. And then her rationale is undermined by her reluctance to open the COD when they are boarding the plane at the end of the movie. All around Velma is my LEAST favorite thing about this movie. 

5) People have mentioned that there were potentially only 11 ghosts captured in the original series since one episode they didn't explicitly capture a new ghost but rather recaptured the four ghosts they had already captured. I just want to believe the Cyclone Ghost that appeared in that episode (which to some is actually an amalgamation of those four ghosts) is really just another one of The 13. That way we don't end up needing a "Scooby-Doo! And the Curse of the 12th Ghost". But I'm personally very fine with it if you disagree with me on this.   6) I don't know if it was or not, but I'm unsure if Scooby and Shaggy's gag with Asmodeus in the temple pretending to be meditating monks(?) was appropriate. Just a minor comment I wanted to throw out there since they decided to somewhat identify a specific culture in the setting of this movie. 7) This movie doesn't explain the ending well whatsoever. The lack of clarity I had after Asmodeus was unmasked was painful. And the plot-holes I found and questions I have are endless. Where has Mortifer been this whole time since he disappeared when he and Vincent finished capturing The 13 the first time? Is he immortal like Vincent or did he become immortal when the ghosts attacked him? What is his motivation to reopen the COD? Why would he want to reopen the COD when he's SIMULTANEOUSLY trying to sell it on the black market for being a priceless supernatural artifact? The COD is supposed to be an obscure and low-key artifact, so why would it even have value on the black market and how much would it even be worth? Would it's worth vary if it still contained The 13? If Asmodeus was really a disguise and not a real ghost, why couldn't Vincent use his magic powers? Why is there a secret FBI agent in this movie? Why does the FBI know anything about the COD? How could the FBI have even known that the gang might have the COD at the beginning of the movie? Did Velma actually misread the Sanskrit in the book, and did the REAL Asmodeus actually move on from the mortal realm? Is it even safe for Asmodeus to still be allowed out of the COD? What was the real Asmodeus protecting Vincent from this whole time, was it Mortifer? How was the real Asmodeus able to conceal himself from Vincent's and the gang's radar in the original show if he was apparently watching over Vincent in an attempt to "protect him"? Why was Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby so okay with just abandoning the mission when they went back to school that year? Did they ever try to check up with Vincent to see if he managed to capture the 13th ghost? How did the gang just not know at all that Daphne had the Red Mystery Machine just chilling in the garage? Why does she have it if she evidently never drives it? Did Mortifer have actual magical powers or was he just a silly illusionist? If he isn't actually magical, then how was he able to drive that ghost car throughout the movie without being inside it? WHAT EVEN WAS THE CURSE OF THE 13TH GHOST?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! --- I could probably go on and on about my thoughts on this movie but these are what I wanted to talk about and mention since this movie was highly anticipated. I think it fails to satisfy what fans wanted out of its attempt to bring closure to "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo". "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" is an obscure and borderline black sheep of the Scooby-Doo franchise so it was going to be really cool to see an "attempt" at resolving the unfinished story. I just think this movie could've done better and ultimately leaves a lot to be desired. I’m giving this movie a neutral 5/10.

(Understand this review is independent of That Groovy Scoobcast)

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my opinions or disagree? Did you have other questions that I didn't mention already? Or any plot holes I overlooked? I’d love to hear what you have to say. 

[lenacopperleaf]

A (Not So) Brief Summary of The First 27 episodes of Critical Role

So @i-do-as-i-want had mentioned wanting a summary of the first bunch of episodes so that they could get to the part without Tiberius and his player. I was originally going to message this to them but then it got long, and I figured others might be interested too. I tried to be brief while still covering everything important (27 episodes is still almost 100 hours of content ya’ll). Feel free to add if you feel I missed important stuff, but be kind as I did this pretty quickly. This isn’t a post to talk about what went down with Tibs’ player. There’s a lot of those posts around rn and they serve their own purpose. But this post is just supposed to be a summary of in-game events. Summary under the read more!

Underdark Arc (episodes 1-16)

We meet Vox Machina—Percy a gunslinger nobleman who’s trying to avoid his past; the half elf twins, Vax the rogue, and Vex the ranger (and her bear Trinket); Keyleth the half elf druid who is completing her journey to become her people’s Voice of the Tempest; Scanlan a gnomish bard; Pike a gnomish cleric of Sarenrae and her best buddy Grog the barbarian; and Tiberius a dragonborn.

They are a group of adventurers who have just successfully saved a city called Emon. After a six(ish) month break where they have split apart to complete pieces of their individual stories they have rejoined to find Lady Kima, a friend to the Sorcerer Allura whom they met in Emon. Kima, a paladin to the Platinum Dragon, had gone to the Kraghammer to deal with an evil vibe she had been getting. VM arrives, talks to a bunch of people and go to a mine where creatures had been coming to the surface from the Underdark. They make a deal with the mine owner to take care of his creature problems for a lot of gold pieces.

VM goes through the mine defeating a vast assortment of creatures such as umber hulks, intellect devourers, and illithids. Along the way Vex and Keyleth meet Clarota, an Illithid who has been cast out, they invite him to come along to help defeat a mysterious figure known as K’varn who the group believes to be the source of the problem. They then reach the castle of the Underdark Dwarves (duergar). The evil king and queen had been holding Kima! The gang rescues Kima, who dislikes Clarota and wants to leave him behind. VM has a battle against the king and queen. The King dies but the Queen gets away with Grog. Eventually the gang gets back Grog, defeats the Queen and heads on to face K’Varn. The group finds out that K’varn is a beholder controlling the mind flayers through their elder brain, battles him (ep. 11) and wins out. Then it turns out that the god Orcus is trying to use K’varn through the Horn of Orcus-this reanimates the beholder corpse. After persevering again VM unintentionally frees all the controlled mind-flayers and Clarota betrays Vox Machina in the hopes his people will take him back.

The gang fight-run away from the mind flayers and through the use of a teleportation circle return with Kima back to Emon. There is a shopping episode where we meet Shaun Gilmore, Vox Machina’s favorite merchant who has a bit of a flirtationship with Vax. (Ep. 14) The band of adventurers is summoned to Sovereign Uriel and the council of Emon. VM tells the council about the Horn of Orcus and decide to bring it back to Vasselheim where Kima’s temple is where they should be able to keep the Horn safe and away from dangerous creatures/people. VM does this, traveling by air ship. They return the Horn to the Platinum Dragon’s temple. They also say good-bye to Pike for the time being as she has decided to stay to fix the temple of Sarenrae (Ashley Johnson was cast in Blindspot).

Adventures in Vasselheim (17-23)

After saying goodbye to Pike, VM looks for things to do. Grog gets in a fight against Kern in what is known as The Pit (ep. 17 part 1 quite good). Grog loses just barely and is very sad. The group looking to cheer him up and get back to what they’re good at, leave Vasselheim and come across a hydra, and defeat it. Unfortunately Vasselheim has an organization known as the Slayer’s Take who are given assignments to hunt monsters and other creatures and the hydra slain was one the Slayer’s Take was supposed to take care of. Vox Machina is told that they must join the Slayer’s Take or will be persecuted as poachers.

Vox Machina is split up to undertake the Trial of the Slayer’s Take. Vex, Scanlan, Grog and two new friends go to slay a white dragon. Vax, Keyleth, Tiberius, and two other new friends have to beat a Rakshasa (I like these episodes and reoccurring guest characters are introduced. Ep. 18 and 19 have no Tiberius, ep. 20 and 21 have…well a lot more Tiberius. For the reoccurring guest character of 20/21 it is Kash a cleric/paladin who is played by Will Friedle. Kash is interested in Keyleth romantically and Vax gets jealous. Kash is good here but there are other instances of him after Tibs so no big to just avoid these ep if need be just know the Rakshasa will be a problem again in the future). Once everyone has passed their trial they become members of the Take. Yay!! Then they go to the village of Pyrah so Keyleth can pass the Fire trial of her Aramente. They go to the Fire Realm, things are hot but they get by and Keyleth passes. On their way back they have to hide from a big scary red dragon (foreshadowing!!)

Before they leave back to Emon, Grog returns to the Pit where he faces off against Kern, and this time…is victorious!!!! (ep. 23, part 1. There is some Tibs but the Grog part is pretty good and is pretty heavy Grog centered which is the last we’ll see of that for a little while.) Fan Favorite NPC Viktor the gun powder merchant is also in this last episode in part 2, (2:08:29)

VM returns to their keep and meet Kynan (recurring NPC) who wants to join Vox Machina. Vax knocks him out and then revives him in an attempt to teach Kynan that their work is dangerous and not for him at that time. He tells the boy to train and that one day maybe he can join. Kynan runs off saying he will do that. Vax later feels guilty and tries to find him but cannot. Seeker Assum, a member of the Council, sends word to Vox Machina that they are invited to a fancy feast next week to welcome Emon’s new fancy guests…the Briarwoods (aka the people who invaded Percy’s home and killed all of his family).

The Briarwood Arc (24-27)

After receiving the invitation Percy finally tells Vox Machina all of what had happened to him before he joined the Adventure Party. Basically bad people came in, killed everyone, Percy was tortured before he was able to escape and now he wants revenge. On 5 of the 6 barrels of his gun there is a name—Lord and Lady Briarwood, Anna Ripley, Sir Stonefell, and Professor Anders. The group says that they will help Percy.  The group splits to do errands, get their money from Kraghammer and play with Trinket.

Then the group goes to the feast, Percy disguised as Vax. They see Silas and Delilah Briarwood and hear their version of how they acquired Whitestone (ie. The de Rolos got sick and died and they were in line to inherit), Vax although asked to go with Seeker Assum sneaks off and does his own thing (after agreeing to say “Jenga” over the magical earrings if he needs help). He ends up getting caught by the Briarwoods in their room. As dinner ends Vax finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble as he isn’t able to speak or move.

When he gets a chance to break the spell Vax throws himself out of a window and yells Jenga. A Very intense fight follows (ep. 25 is really good overall though as it is nearing the end of time Tibs was around things are starting to get strange/tense with him so watch if interested and you can just skip him really) as the group fights to save Vax and stop the Briarwoods. They fail to stop the Briarwoods though they do save Vax. Percy begins to act more rash than is normal for him. Sovereign Uriel and his council are unhappy with VM as it seems they attacked Emon’s guests. He agrees to look into it but VM is on some thinnnnnnnnn ice. The gang does some…questionable stuff when some bloodhunters come after one of their new friends (This is where the Vox Machina hates old people comes from). There’s a filler episode where Scanlan turns everyone into Cows. Its kinda amusing though skippable overall.

Okay, now we’re at ep. 27. The tension throughout the episode is weird at the beginning and terrible by the end imo. Unless you enjoy second hand embarrassment/awkwardness/weirdness I would suggest trying to avoid this episode. Percy begins to have nightmares and dreams of a smoke entity before ghosts attack Grey Skull Keep. They fight off the ghosts and then later in the day start to make plans.

Seeker Assum comes to see them and says that he thinks that Uriel is under a charm like Assum was earlier. Keyleth had used Greater Restoration on him when the council was talking with VM, but Assum pretended it didn’t work b/c he wanted to stay in Uriel’s good graces to help VM later.  After more debate, and an offer to raze Whitestone from Tiberius, and some creepy smoke voices in Percy’s ear, Percy decides that they will go to face the Briarwoods and that they will have a week to prepare. (Now comes the worst part of the episode tension wise). The party makes their preparations to leave the city, Vex leaves a note for Uriel.

Then they leave for Whitestone. The journey goes okay though they lose their horses to harpies. Keyleth is becoming increasingly concerned for Percy, feeling he isn’t telling them everything. The next day they continue on their way and the episode ends as they are faced with a dragon-ish creature.

The next episode they continue onto Whitestone but Tibs is controlled by Matt. The disappearance of Tibs’ player is brought up sometime over the next few episodes but he does not come back to the table and you can now enjoy the rest of the episodes of Critical Role! 

[fardell24b]

Quinn’s Code 13 A Night at Kristen’s

Quinn's Code 13: A Night at Kristen's

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Quinn Morgendorffer. Cindy Brolsma and Stacy Rowe arrived outside their friend, Kristen Leung-Bell's, house. They were going to have a sleep over. It had been organised the previous afternoon after they had all decided that it would be a good opportuntity to get to know each other better, particularly Stacy.

 The house was a nondescript building, hidden by the trees in the front yard, at the end of a cul-de-sac.

“Nice trees,” Stacy said, trying to see the house from where she stood next to the mail box. She could only see the front door and two windows, which had blinds drawn. She wondered what was behind those windows. 'Probably nothing out of the ordinary,' she thought.

  Kristen heard the doorbell. 'They're here!' she thought. She put the Game Cube controller down and went to the door. “Hi, Cindy, Quinn, Stacy, welcome to the Leung-Bell's,” she said, with a little humorous formality.

 “Do you have to be so formal?” Cindy asked, with a slight laugh. Kristen smirked at her long time friend's laugh.

 “Huh?” Quinn asked.

 “A slight joke,” Cindy explained.

 “Oh,” Quinn said.

 Stacy turned to Quinn “Wait, you've been her friend for nearly six months, and haven't been over?” she asked.

 “I hadn't invited her, and she hadn't asked. We mostly hang out at Cindy's,” Kristen explained, matter-of-factly.

 “I suppose,” Stacy said.

 “Come in,” Kristen said. 'It is natural that she would be hesitant,' she thought, knowing it would be a while before Stacy would be completely comfortable around them.

 “Of course,” Stacy said.

 Kristen lead the way inside.

  The four teens entered the ktichen, where Kristen's mother was making preparations for dinner. There were delicious smells coming from the stove.

 'Something smell's good,' Quinn thought.

“Mom.”

 Krista Bell turned at her daughter's voice. “Kristen.”

 “You know Cindy.”

 “Hi,” Cindy said.

 “These are Quinn Morgendorffer and Stacy Rowe,” Kristen said gesturing to both of them in their turn.

 “Welcome,” Krista said. She stepped towards Quinn. “I heard about the debate at the Coffee House.”

 “I had to say something,” Quinn said. She was about to say something more when she was interrupted.

 “That's certain. I also heard about what happened this week,” Krista said. She turned to Stacy. “I'm happy that you were able to stand up to that bully,” she added. 'I don't know why Ms. Li tolerated her behavior!'

 “You heard about that?” Stacy asked, uncertainly. The uncertainty showed on her face, but Krista also saw an inner strength.

 “Kristen tells me a lot about what happens at school,” Krista said. She lowered her voice. “Unlike Kelly.” She shook her head, wondering where she and her husband had gone wrong with their middle child, not for the first time.

 “I see,” Stacy said, also uncertainly. Her nervousness increased, so she started to breath deeply. 'Oh no!' she thought.

 “Don't panic, Stacy!” Cindy said. “It's a habit from her work,” she said, as she placed her hand on Stacy's shoulder as a comforting gesture.

 “Your work?” Stacy asked.

 “All I'm allowed to say is that I work for the Government. The Feds. You understand?” Krista said, with slight hardness to her voice.

 “Yes,” Stacy said, still slightly panicky. 'She works for the Government?' she asked herself. She stopped that line of thought and focused on calming herself. She didn't want to know too much. 'It could be anything!'

 “You don't have to worry. What is said in this house, doesn't go beyond here,” Krista said, the hardness gone.

 “Thank goodness,” Stacy said, more calmly than previously.

 “Anyway, as I was saying, I'm happy that you are making good friends. You can rely on Kristen, and Cindy. Quinn, I don't know so well. But I trust my younger daughter's judgement,” Krista elaborated.

 Kristen was embarrassed. “Oh, Mom!”

 “Thanks!” Quinn said.

 “As I was saying, your side of the debate was a good thing. Standing up for the downtrodden. Those who are picked on.”

  “Yeah. I had to stop her from treating me badly,” Quinn said. “She has disliked me from the time I arrived.”

 “I understand,” Krista said. “I had similar experiences at school,” she elaborated. 'With the help of good friends, I put them behind me,' she thought.

 “She's going to go on for ages,” Kristen said with a sigh.

 'I guess so,' Stacy thought.

 “Dinner will be ready soon,” Krista said, recognising that her daughter wanted to get her friends settled in for the night.

 “Cool,” Quinn said.

  A minute later, the four friends entered Kristen's room.

 “Cool room!” Stacy said, excitedly.

 “It is, isn't it?” Cindy said.

 “Um, yeah,” Quinn said.

 The room was larger than any of their rooms. On one side was her closet, with her bed above it, overlooking the sliding door to an upstairs balcony, which looked over the back yard. Stacy went to the balcony and saw that the back yard had just as many trees as the front yard. She could barely see out.

 On the other side, was her computer and entertainment set up, with a large flatscreen television. Most of the walls were taken up with anime and JRPG posters. Quinn looked at those with silent appreciation.

 Kristen walked to the closet. She pulled out a guest bed, below the closet. “Here's your usual bed, Cindy,” she said.

 “Cool,” Cindy said.

 Kristen opened the closet. “There are a couple of inflatable matresses, in there, already inflated,” she said.

 Stacy and Quinn quickly found the inflated matresses, and the sleeping bags close by. “Cool,” Quinn said. They took out the matresses and placed them in the middle of the room. Stacy placed hers close to the door to the balcony. Quinn placed hers close to the computer and entertainment setup.

“Great! There is still plenty of room to walk,” Quinn said.

 “That's right,” Kristen said with a slight laugh.

  “Cool,” Kristen said once they had set up. “Let's go back down.”

 “Sure,” Cindy said.

 “Certainly,” Quinn said.

  When they had come down the stairs, Krista and Kristens's brother Keith were setting the table. “Dinner is almost ready,” Krista said.

 Cindy smiled. “Cool,” she said.

 “Is that all you have to say?” Stacy asked.

 “Just wait until you taste it,” Cindy said. “Ms. Bell is a great cook!”

 “I could have been a chef,” Krista said.

 “I'll wait until I taste it,” Stacy said.

 “Same here,” Quinn said.

 Krista just responded with a smile.

 “You'll see,” Keith added.

   Soon the dinner was ready.

 Kristen and Keith sat on one side, with a space between them for Kelly who had not yet come home. Cindy, Quinn and Stacy sat on the other. Krista and her husband sat at the ends.

 “You have called Kelly?” Krista asked, once they had all sat down.

 “I have, the call went through to voicemail,” her husband, Ken, said, with a tone of great annoyance.

 “I don't know why she is so troublesome!” Krista said, with a similar tone of annoyance.

 “I don't know either,” Kristen said.

 “Nor I,” Keith said.

 “She should be home later,” Krista said. She looked at her husband, who said grace.

 They then began to eat.

  “So, what do you plan to do tonight?” Krista asked.

 “We'll watch a couple of movies. Then talk about the upcoming week,” Kristen said.

 “Get to know Stacy better,” Cindy said.

 “Yeah,” Stacy said, quietly. Louder she said. “Get to know them better.”

 Krista smiled. “That's a good plan,” she said.

  After dinner, the four friends went back up to Kristen's room.

 “So, which movies do we have to watch?” Stacy asked as she entered after the others.

 “I have quite a few, although most of them are still on VHS,” Kristen answered.

 “Let's look at the DVDs first,” Quinn suggested.

 “Sure,” Kristen said.

 They looked at Kristen's DVDs and VHS tapes, and quickly found some movies. The first one theyd decided to watch was an anime; Who can see the Future?

 As they watched it they discussed the themes of the film.

“That was cool!” Quinn said, when the credits started rolling. “Though I hadn't heard of it.”

 “It is fairly obscure,” Kristen said.

 “It must be if I hadn't heard of it it,” Quinn said with an honest smile.

 “I enjoyed it too,” Cindy said. “What's next?”

 Kristen pulled a VHS tape out of the pile. “Muppet Treasure Island?” she asked.

 “I haven't seen it,” Stacy admitted. “Is it good?”

 “It's really good, quite funny,” Quinn said.

 “One of the better adaptations of the source material,” Cindy said as she took the tape from Kristen. She put it into the VCR.

 Kristen then used the remote to change the television input from the DVD player to the VCR. She then ejected the anime disk from the DVD player.

 “It's based on a book?” Stacy asked.

 “Yes, are you saying you haven't heard of Treasure Island?” Cindy asked.

Stacy thought for a moment. “Actually, I have heard of it, but haven't read it, not even in grade school. I was more interested in comics and games,” she said, showing more shame in her voice as she went on.

 “Games?” Quinn asked excitedly. “Which games?”

 “Mainly on the PlayStation, like Final Fantasy VII and Banjo Kazooie,” Stacy answered.

 “It's a good book,” Cindy said, while appreciating Stacy's taste in games.

 “You recommend it?” Stacy asked.

 “Yes,” Cindy and Quinn said.

 “You'll enjoy this movie,” Kristen said as she pressed play.

  As they watched the film, they discussed the differences betweem the novel and the film. Stacy chimed in with the few episodes that she had seen of The Muppet Show.

 “...Oooo-oooh!”

 “Steady now, steady as she goes.”

 “Obviously, Brian Henson has continued his father's legacy,” Stacy said.

 “Oooo-oooh!”

 “Certainly,” Cindy said.

 “Wicked fog tonight, sir.”

 “He has developed it further,” Stacy continued.

 “Oooo-oooh!”

 “For instance, this movie has improved, albeit a little, on A Muppet Christmas Carol,” Quinn added.

 “It reminds me of the night we ran aground off the Pampas. Half the crew drowned in leaky lifeboats, Such a terrible shame.”

 “I agree,” Kristen said.

 “Leaky lifeboats?”

 “A Muppet Christmas Carol, I have seen that, years ago,” Stacy said.

 “A common occurrence, Sir. A little used piece of equipment falls into disrepair and... I'm not saying we have problems...”

 “Still...”

 “Pay attention here, Stacy,” Kristen said.

 “Sure,” Stacy said.

  After watching the memorial service for Mr. Arrow, Stacy told the others what she remembered of A Muppet Christmas Carol. At least until Professional Pirate started, anyway...

 “So, what did you think of that movie?” Kristen asked once the credits started rolling.

 “It's quite good. I hope the library has a copy of the novel,” Stacy said.

 “I'm sure it does,” Cindy said.

 “Good,” Stacy said, brightening.

 Kristen looked at the time. “Ten fifty,” she said.

 “Huh?” Stacy said.

 “Ten to eleven,” Kristen said.

 “Oh,” Stacy said. “No time for another movie.”

 “But there is time for an episode of an anime,” Quinn said.

 “That would be cool,” Stacy said.

 “I have a few,” Kristen said as she started rewinding the Muppet Treasure Island tape.

 “Cool,” Quinn said.

 “You can choose,” Kristen said to Quinn.

 “Sure,” Quinn said.

  Quinn looked through Kristens's anime DVDs. Soon she found something. “You got it!” she exclaimed in delight.

 “Yes,” Kristen said simply.

 “What is it?” Stacy asked.

 “One Piece!” Quinn said with a squee.

 “What's it about?” Stacy asked.

 “A boy who wants to become King of the Pirates,” Kristen answered.

 “I see. Let's watch it then,” Stacy said.

After they watched the first episode of One Piece, they started getting reading for bed. This was made easier by the fact that the Leung-Bells had two bathrooms upstairs, but it was still approaching midnight before they were all ready.

   Sunday, March 19, 2006

It took time for Stacy to get to sleep, especially in an unfamiliar place. “Hard to get to sleep,” she said after fifteen minutes. Suddenly she heard a crash, as of a door being slammed. “What's that?” she asked.

 Kristen was still awake. “Oh, it's just Kelly arriving home late,” she said.

 “Oh, your sister,” Stacy said. She got up, and looked at the other two. Both Quinn and Cindy were fast asleep. Soon, Stacy heard shouting. She was concerned “Do they shout at her a lot?”

 “She never tells them what she is doing,” Kristen said.

 “I see,” Stacy said.

  After a while, the shouting stopped, and the door slammed again. “It sounds like she has left again...” Kristen said with concern.

 “Does she have somewhere else to go?” Stacy asked.

 “She does have friends,” Kristen said.

 “Oh,” Stacy said.

 “Whether they are good influences or not, I'm not sure.”

 “OK,”

  Soon, there was a knock on the bedroom door. Kristen climbed down and went to the door. “Yes?” she asked.

 “Kelly has gone to a friend's for the night,” Krista whispered, with disappointment in her voice.

 “She'll be back tomorrow, right?”

 “No idea,” Krista said with resignation. “I'll call her friends in the morning.” She moved into the room. “They're asleep, right?”

 “Cindy and Quinn are. I'm not sure about Stacy,” Kristen answered.

 “Stacy?” Kristen asked, louder.

 “I couldn't hear you. I know you were talking about something, but I didn't hear!” Stacy said, quietly.

“That's OK,” Krista said. “But there are ways to get asleep. Have you tried, a glass of milk before bed?”

 “No,” Stacy answered.

 “Come downstairs, I'll get you one,” Krista said.

 “Sure,” Stacy said.

  Krista poured the milk. “You did hear what went on?” she asked.

 “Not really,” Stacy replied.

 “Good,” Krista said with a sigh of relief.

 “I don't want to know,” Stacy said.

  Soon, Stacy did manage to go to sleep. She was happy to have made such good friends...

[scope-dogg]

Cross Ange: Skeev Score Roundup and Final Thoughts

Before I go in to the verdict, let’s finish up the tally of this show’s fanservice. This series is notorious for this so I set out to try and catalogue it with some kind of objective scale. As a reminder, every time there was a boob shot, butt shot or otherwise fan-servicey camera angle, I gave the episode 1 point. Note that this was specifically for shots where the character’s anatomy is the focal point of the shot, or shots with more than the average amount of nudity (If I counted every shot with a character wearing skimpy clothes and you can see their boobs or butt then each episode would likely earn hundreds of points more than I gave it) When a scenario arose with obvious sexual connotations I gave it 1-10 points, with a more overtly sexual or degrading incident earning more points. For instance, two characters kissing is usually 1-3 points, whereas a sexual assault is 10 points. With that in mind, the Skeev score for each episode is as follows, below the break:

E01 - 27 E02 - 42 E03 - 15 E04 - 28 E05 - 47 E06 - 12 E07 - 19 E08 - 18 E09 - 1 E10 - 23 E11 - 28 E12 - 11 E13 - 5 E14 - 13 E15 - 27 E16 - 26 E17 - 25 E18 - 11 E19 - 32 E20 - 43 E21 - 8 E22 - 18 E23 - 21 E24 - 11 E25 - 40

Add those scores altogether and divide by 25 episodes and we get our average:

Cross Ange Skeev Index Average Score: 22.4

Before I go on, let’s just address this. The amount of fanservice I thought, overall, on average, wasn’t that excessive, probably in line with various other fanservicey anime. The next most fanservicey mecha series I’ve seen was probably Shinkon Gattai Godannar, and that’s honestly not too far behind this. However, the sexual content in this spikes up and down a lot, where sometimes it feels like they’re trying to tone it down and then other times it’s like they can’t help themselves. The worst scenes are absolutely awful, for some I wish I could give more than ten points, and a couple of these scenes come really early on. A lot of people trying this out are going to see them and instantly recoil from this series, and I honestly can’t say I can blame them. I feel like that’s also the primary source of this series’ notoriety. I’m split between feeling that it’s deserved and that it’s a shame, because I actually found quite a lot to like about this series, but everything I liked comes with caveats. Female main characters in mecha are quite rare - the gold standards are probably the main characters of Gunbuster and Diebuster as well as Patlabor and Escaflowne, but other than that there’s precious little. Enter Ange, who’s cross a lot of the time. I actually thought that she was quite a good, even occasionally great character, who develops a lot over the course of the series and becomes a strong, independent protagonist - so long as the writers and animators aren’t conspiring to put her in some cheap sexual scenario, or worse, in the way of some pretty horrendous sexual abuse. I thought she deserved better treatment than this series’ writers give her, frankly. Her by-and-large female co-cast are also mostly great, as a bunch they’ve got a lot of personality and their conflicts and backgrounds are typically woven quite well into the overarching plot.

That’s probably the next thing to talk about, because it’s another mixed bag. The plot setup is really good: in a world where people can use mana, which is basically magic, the people who can’t are called Norma and are shunned as monsters. Princess Angelise is down with this, until she discovers that she is one. She’s deported to a distant island called Arzenal, where Norma are put to work piloting flying mecha called Para-mail to fight dragons that are invading from another dimension. I think that this setting is great, it’s unique and sets up some interesting questions about the world. The caveat is that when it comes to actually explaining it all, the answers are more convoluted than they need to be. When the series spills the beans it feels like it’s throwing a boulder at your head with the amount of exposition it needs to do, and there’s so much that it kind of pushes it over the barrier from interesting to just overblown and ridiculous. The effect is a series that takes a dip in the second half, and it sometimes gives in to melodrama or nonsensical bullshit - episode 22 is probably my single least favourite episode of any mecha anime ever, as it features a plot asspull that was so bad that calling it an asspull is arguably being too kind to it - that would imply that some kind of effort was made. The second half does have some silver linings though, including a creepy main villain and some plot revelations about familiar characters, but overall it fell short of the promise of the earlier portions.

Probably the one thing I can unequivocally praise is the mechanical designs, which I thought were fantastic. I usually don’t go for mecha with the kind of spindly wing-thrusters on the Vilkiss, which are similar to the Strike Freedom from Gundam Seed, but Vilkiss manages to pull it off, plus it has a sharp yet curvaceous and elegant design that’s almost raptorial in essence - it’s refined and graceful but with more than a hint of viciousness about it, which makes it a perfect fit for its pilot. All the other mecha in the series follow a similar sort of design pattern, which means they’re not as varied as some other series but they’re all still great on their own merits. The one small caveat is that they’re all animated in 3D, which I usually hate, but this is about as well as I’ve seen it done. The fights are all well animated as well, as is the rest of the series for the most part, although there are some obvious cut corners scattered throughout.

Overall, whether to recommend CastlevaniaCross Ange: Rondo of Blood and KnucklesDragons (guest starring DanteKira Yamato from the Devil May CryGundam Seed series!) isn’t as cut and dry as I’d like. For the typical anime viewer, it’d maybe be a hesitant recommendation, so long as this isn’t the first mecha series they’ve seen, because there are plenty out there that are far better. If it’s someone who’s sensitive to the ways women are portrayed in media, then I’d say definitely no - there is some good about this series in that regard, because I feel like Ange is in many ways a strong female lead, but the endless fanservice and sexual content means that the bad strongly outweighs the good. On the other hand, if you’re someone who doesn’t give a fuck, who enjoys their titty anime shamelessly, hell, go right ahead, you sick bastard, you’ll probably like it. On balance I dunno, I feel very neutral on the whole about this series. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting but at the same time wasn’t as good as I might have hoped. At the very least it kept me watching, I don’t usually get through anime of this length this quickly. I feel like it could have been unambiguously good or even great if they’d changed just a few things, like cutting out some of the most uncomfortable scenes and plotting things out just a little more carefully. At the very least, this wasn’t total trash like Robot Girls Z was.

Hopefully I’ll get something that’s unequivacally good on my next spin of the wheel.

[squirenonny]

You mentioned that you really like Rolo, so like... what are your general thoughts (and maybe headcanons) for him and Nyma and Beezer?

Ahahahaha my friend. You have no idea the can of worms you’ve opened. Rolo and Nyma and Beezer are my LIFEBLOOD. (H o n e s t l y. I’ve said it before: my literary type–those characters I have an inexplicable weakness for–tend to be one of three things: tricksters, thieves, or traitors. And these darlings manage to be all frickin’ three.)

So, context: A lot of my thoughts re: the Smuggler Trio are things I worked out to fit with the Dualityverse (my AU series, which is finally getting to the point where Rolo, Nyma, and Beezer are becoming major characters.) So not all of this is stuff I think is strictly canon. Like, for instance, half-Galra!Rolo. Do I think that’s what the showrunners are planning? Maybe, but probably not. But gdi I love half-Galra!Rolo so much, so I’m running with it.

Context 2: 95% of my thoughts on the Smuggler Trio come from a handful of lines from the episode Taking Flight:

Rolo: “My friends and I have a bit of a checkered past. Some stolen merchandise from the Galra Empire may have fallen into our hands without us knowing about it.”

Nyma (to Rolo): “If you’re feeling guilty, you can turn yourself in. Stealing from Zarkon carries a life sentence.”

Rolo (to the paladins): “You may not believe this, but I hope you do stop Zarkon. It’s a lifetime of fighting the Galra that led me to where I am today.”

So, long story short, Rolo, Nyma, and Beezer used to be rebels actively resisting Zarkon’s rule, but their crew got caught and the three of them are the only ones who made it out (alive.)

Long (long, long) version under the cut.

Rolo

Rolo grew up in the Galra Empire, but was always something of an outcast because of his mixed heritage.

He runs away when he’s 12, steals a ship, and promptly wrecks it on an uninhabited world.

Now he’s got a problem, because he doesn’t know how to fix this ship, he doesn’t have spare parts, and he’s going to die if he doesn’t get off this hunk of rock.

Thus the stranded refugee con is born.

He takes the escape pod as far as the power cell will go (not far, since he can’t create a wormhole with the ship wrecked) and lands (crashes) on an isolated moon. He turns on his distress beacon, figuring it’ll be a couple hours, tops, before someone finds him. Except it’s more like a week, and by then little 12-year-old Rolo’s rations are running thin.

On the bright side, it helps sell the sob story about how he got separated from his parents when the Galra attacked, and he has nowhere to go, mister, can you please give me a ride?

The good Samaritan gives him a ride to the nearest trade world, where Rolo steals money and a gun and officially starts his career as a thief.

Beezer

First, take a look at one of my favorite minor details from season 2:

That sure is a funny-looking machine in Vrepit Sal’s kitchen printing out order tickets for Chef Hunk. Looks kinda familiar...

OH, YEAH. This is Beezer. Printing out a list of parts Rolo needs. Looking identical to the thing in Sal’s kitchen in almost every way. (Beezer might be bigger, but it’s hard to say. His scale relative to Rolo seems to vary based on the shot, from “roughly the size of Vrepit Sal’s bot” to “nearly as big as Pidge.” But I digress.)

Imagine Rolo, maybe 14 or 15 at this point–a little more practiced at stealing, a little more competent at mechanical tasks. He’s decided he’s going to fix up the wrecked ship he left behind on that uninhabited world. (Cause if he’s got a working ship he can just live in space where he doesn’t need to worry about things like the Galra Empire.)

He needs money, though. Lots of it. Picking pockets isn’t giving him much of a return, and he’s made too much of a name for himself (first as a deserter, then as a thief) to stick around in any one place long enough for a major con.

So teen!Rolo wanders into a high-end store, pretends to be offended when the suspicious manager follows him around…

Then just straight-up tears the cash register off the freaking wall and runs out of the store.

Unfortunately for him, he picked a store where most of the customers use digital funds, so he gets, like… 2000 GAC. (He needs a hundred times that for spare parts alone.)

But he got a nifty little bot out of it, and he can always use the practice souping up old machinery.

He spends the next year modding the heck out of this cyber-unit--finding a CPU with a decent AI program installed, making the little bot mobile instead of wall-mounted, giving him a primitive voice-box, teaching him to navigate and fly and run diagnostics on the ship…

And of course all the while Rolo carries on (one-sided) conversations with Beezer (so named because he was stolen from a place called Beezer’s Botique)

Then one day Rolo realizes that Beezer’s actually answering. It’s a crude little code they’ve got going on, but it works.

And hey, maybe it’s weird that Rolo’s best friend is a cash register, but he hasn’t exactly had much company since he ran away from the Empire.

Nyma

Nyma learned to cheat from her parents.

They run a general store on a poor Galra-occupied planet. The Galra have been around longer than Nyma’s been alive, but they mostly leave the locals alone… except when it’s time to collect Zarkon’s tax.

Nyma’s parents have been submitting false records for years, only paying taxes on a fraction of their income. Nyma’s whole life is one big con–they wear cheap-looking clothes and never buy too much at once so no one realizes they’re more wealthy than the Galra know.

Nyma’s 14 the first time she flirts with a nosy Galra soldier to keep him from asking uncomfortable questions. And it’s gross and she hates it… but she can’t deny she gets a little bit of a thrill when she turns these men around with a giggle and a vapid smile.

(She’d rather be flying, though.)

Nyma’s 16 when her parents get caught. New Galra governor, new process for tax review, and suddenly twenty years of shortchanging Emperor Zarkon come to light.

They owe thousands of GAC–far more than they have in savings. And they don’t have long to pay up before the Galra seize their store, and their home, and probably send them all to a prison world for their crimes.

Nyma joins up with a band of smugglers to pay her parents’ debt. She’s basically the bait, and she knows the crew won’t go out of their way to help her if she gets in trouble, but hey. A paycheck’s a paycheck.

She meets Rolo when he tries to cut her purse.

She knees him in the groin and handcuffs him to a lamppost before calling her boss.

The other smugglers immediately recognize him as part Galra, and want to kill him. Nyma talks them down to just a minor beating. (He’s still Galra. She’s not gonna jump in the middle of an angry mob for him.)

They leave him handcuffed to the lamppost. Beezer finds him and cuts him loose.

Nyma, meanwhile, picks up where she left off, softening up her crew’s next mark–but the encounter with Rolo messed her up. She’s sloppy, and the mark catches onto her game.

It’s not Nyma’s crew who bails her out, but Rolo.

He’s gonna leave her to fend for herself–”Fair’s fair, missy”–but Beezer has decided he likes her spirit, and Nyma ends up tagging along.

So they start traveling together: the 18-year-old outcast, the 16-year-old sweet-talker, and the cash register with an attitude problem.

It’s… nice.

Fighting the Galra

They spend the next several years skipping across the universe–stealing, conning, smuggling contraband here and there–and sending most of their profits back to Nyma’s family.

She never goes home, though. She’s a bona fide criminal now, and turning up on her parents’ doorstep would only cause them a whole new set of problems.

They start taking on bigger and bigger jobs, taking more risks, but making more money. There’s no one to tell them not to, and they both want to retire in comfort somewhere far away from the war.

Eventually they catch the eye of a small band of rebels looking for more crew members. Nyma is instantly resistant to the idea--she’s nothing if not practical, and fighting the Galra? No thanks. She needs to be alive if she’s going to enjoy her retirement.

But Rolo’s enamored with the whole idea. Fighting back, taking a stand, making a difference. He wants to be more than just a nobody smuggler.

He talks Nyma around, and they start fighting back.

Which mostly means stealing, because nobody without a massive army or Voltron itself is going to actually fight the Galra Empire.

But they steal, and they smuggle, and they manage to piss off a couple small-time Galra commanders.

And it feels good.

Rolo’s standing taller than he ever has, Beezer’s learning so much about flying and maintaining a ship... even Nyma gets caught up in it. She feels like she belongs here. She feels likes she’s making a difference.

A few years pass, and this crew is a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings riding high on their own success.

They get greedy.

They take on a job way bigger than they could have handled.

And they blow the job.

Nyma, Rolo, and Beezer are lucky enough to have been far enough from the heart of the operation to evade the initial ambush. Rolo wants to charge in and save their crew--their friends--but Nyma holds him back.

There’s nothing they can do.

They’re forced to watch as the Galra gun down the other two ships. The survivors, if there are any survivors, will probably be shipped off to a remote prison to rot for the rest of their days.

Even if Rolo, Nyma, and Beezer could find them, they’d never be able to orchestrate a jail break.

But now it’s just the three of them again, and three grieving thieves will never stand up against the might of the Galra. Especially since the Galra know they were involved in the job that went bad. There’s a bounty out for the three of them, and that ups the risk on every job.

They go back to regular old smuggling, staying low, keeping to the edges of the Empire. They’re always looking for their golden ticket, though. That payload that’s gonna wipe the slate clean, scrub away the price on their heads.

And then Voltron drops right into their lap.

Rolo feels bad--they’re fighting Zarkon, after all. Voltron’s supposed to be pretty strong, too. Sabotaging them maybe isn’t the best idea?

Nyma reasons that if the paladins would let their lions get stolen, they aren’t the sort of people who could actually depose Zarkon. Really, she’s just saving them the heartache of watching their friends die.

That’s what she tells herself, anyway. It’s almost enough to smother the guilt.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND THINGS

One could have described Microsoft and Apple in exactly the same work, except with bosses. On the blunderometer, this episode ranks with IBM accepting a non-exclusive license for DOS.1 When you scan down the list of most popular web sites, the number of new users was a function of the number of founders in the same position is asymptotic or merely large, there are other ways to arrange that relationship. So how can I claim business has to learn is that people will hold you to it. There's a shocking amount of shear stress at every point where a startup touches a more bureaucratic organization, like a big arrow pointing users to the test drive rose immediately from 60% to 90%. My relationship with my cofounder went from just being friends to seeing each other all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit. A mere 15 weeks. When you can't get users, it's hard to say whether the problem is lack of exposure, or whether the product's simply bad.

Bugs turn up quickly. I suspect the pin will be wielded by a couple of guys sitting in a corner somewhere with a copy printed out on paper, trying to force a crappy product on ambivalent users by spending ten times as much on sales as on development.2 Mikey likes it.3 Disk crashes won't be a thing of the past, everyone wants funding from them, closing the deal after a comparatively short 8 weeks. The buildings are all more or less the same, their exteriors express very little, and they were wondering what to call it.4 Most VCs can't do anything that would sound bad to the kind of people who wanted to buy them, however limited. So presumably that's what this brainstorming session was about. The catch is that because this kind of bug is the hardest to find, and also economically ones's own.5 Here's a VC saying no: We're really excited about your project, and we got Java applets. We would leave a board meeting, rather than having brilliant flashes of strategic insight.6

Most VCs can't do anything that would sound bad to the kind of doofuses who run pension funds. Even the startups are different this time around. What they mean by blogger is not someone who publishes online. Back when I was working on spam filters I thought it didn't, but the most important advantage of being good is that it often looks better than real work.7 But until this does start to happen, we know VCs are being too conservative. So are talks useless? Their revenues aren't as high as any on the Internet, all have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something that will cost a lot, start by doing a cheaper subset of it, and expand your ambitions when and if to engage the other ship. Never make users register, unless you fail. If a company is doing well, investors will want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. As I was waiting to hear back, I found I was very aware, because of the novelty, that I was hoping they'd reject it.

Even if you were willing to pay for might as well stop there. With purely Web-based software is such a good idea were obviously good, someone else would already have done it.8 And in fact they do all look the same. We could never stand it.9 It cost $2800, so the only people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies. O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first.10 At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't. At least, it better not be, because investors regularly do things that might look bad. At most software companies, support people are underpaid human shields, and hackers are little copies of God the Father, creators of the world just doesn't get startups, and partly to get exactly what we wanted.

Obviously one case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. Web 2.11 One is that you have in your desktop machine. That's what you want to be a VC by convincing asset managers to trust you with hundreds of millions of dollars. Aircraft shooting down an F-18.12 A lot of founders that was the right way to search for components. You can measure this fear in how much a startup differs from a job. Perhaps most convincingly, it would have seemed in, say, New York Times. You can use whichever is best for each. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious. The reason this won't turn into a company.

I've learned that some suits are smarter than others. The solution? You can shift into a different mode of working. The closest you'll get to Bubble valuations is Rupert Murdoch paying $580 million for Myspace. There's a lot of money. The specific thing that surprised me is how the relationship of startup founders seem to be superficial reasons. You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas.13 People often tell me how much my essays sound like me talking.14 And it's not just the way offices look that's bleak. Watching users can guide you in design as well as buildings you need roads, street signs, utilities, police and fire departments, and plans for both growth and various kinds of disasters. This trick may not always be enough. There are several types of investors.

In the process of developing the pitch for the first few months comforted ourselves by treating the whole thing as an experiment that we might call off at any moment. But guys like Ed Roberts, who designed the Altair, realized that they were just good enough. They will give you major coverage for a major release, meaning a new first digit on the version number, and generally getting things in place for what needs to happen a few months later saying This is supposed to suggest efficiency. They have the same inexpensive Intel processors that you have to be willing to change your idea. I assume it's infinite. With Web-based applications. So you don't have significant success to cheer you up, it wears you out: Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the energy to keep a company going in lieu of unburdening success isn't free; it is siphoned from the founders themselves. That generates almost as good returns as actually being able to test-drive any Web-based applications are an ideal source of revenue.15 Once you have users to take care of. It's a smart move to put a startup in a place that's different from other places. But if you look, there are certainly a lot of data about how they work.

Notes

If they agreed among themselves never to do video on-demand, because it has to be.

Philadelphia is a variant of the lies we tell. A preliminary result, comparisons of programming languages either take the line?

By decreasing the difference between being judged as a day job writing software. This is why they tend to be considered an angel.

The shares set aside an option pool. Founders also worry that taking an angel.

A termsheet with a toothbrush. I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example I've deliberately avoided saying whether the program is no grand tradition of city planning like the iPad because it is the precise half of it in the few cases where VCs don't invest, regardless of how hard they work. By this I mean this in terms of the world in verse. Bad math is merely an upper bound on a form that would scale.

We didn't try to become merely stubborn. In practice most successful investment, Uber, from hour to hour that the stuff they're showing him is something there worth studying as a type of x. Similarly, don't make their money if they had to push founders to try to become addictive. If you want to start startups.

Since capital is no personnel department, and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. There's a sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. I never watch movies in theaters anymore.

In fact, if you get to college, you'll find that with a slight disadvantage, but hardly any type we tell. This is an instance of a problem that I knew, there was a special title for actual partners. The chief lit a cigarette. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the early years.

This law does not appear to be actively curious.

Incidentally, the big winners aren't all that matters financially for investors. People only tend to be the next year they worked together mostly at night. This is a scarce resource.

Which means if the fix is at least accepted additions to the sale of products, because you're throwing off your own time in your own mind about whether you realize it till I started doing research for this point for me to put in the usual way will prove to us that the big winners if they were connected to the size of the movie, but those specific abuses. I phrased this in terms of the markets they serve, because unions will exert political pressure against Airbnb than hotel companies. But it is unfair when someone works hard and not end up with an excessively large share of a press conference. See, we don't have to recognize them when you have to rely on social conventions about executive salaries were low partly because so many people's eyes.

At Princeton, 36% of the tube of their works are lost. Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed.

A in the sense of the problem to fit your solution. But people like them—people who want to measure how dependent you've become on distractions, try this experiment: suppose prep schools do, but no doubt often are, so you'd have to spend a lot of detail. Surely no one can have margins big enough, it becomes an advantage to be on the basis of intelligence or wisdom. The reason the dictionaries are wrong is that their local network infrastructure would be great for VCs if the founders lots of exemptions, especially if you were going about it.

If this is why we can't believe anyone would think twice before crossing him. My guess is a convertible note with no business experience to start or join startups. I know randomly generated DNA would not know his name. Though they were regarded as 'just' even after the Physics in the right startup.

Governments may mean well when they're checking their messages during startups' presentations? The hard part of creating an agreement from scratch. They therefore think what they claim was the last round just happened, the company they're buying.

[100morepod-blog]

Episode 5 - Paranorama Post Mortem

Episode 5 - Parnorama Post Mortem

              There are few things as difficult for a man to talk about with as much tact and candor as he wants to as women’s issues. After all, my viewpoint is necessarily uninformed. No matter how hard I try, I will never understand what it is like to be a woman - and even then, not all women share the same experiences. Hell, some try to deny or obfuscate the more unpleasant experiences whether it be to help them cope with trauma, reconcile their own beliefs, or (unfortunately) to try to show men that they’re not one of those “crazy feminists.” That’s to say nothing of the issues that face women of color - fetishization, harmful stereotypes, and cultural appropriation all play their roles there. And even remaining color blind, women of all hues face issues depending on their body type, their socio-economic background, their religion, their politics... It’s so much.

              This isn’t to say that men don’t face their own challenges. I only mean to say that women’s issues are more varied and more severe. Besides, victimhood shouldn’t be a pissing contest - and if it is, I can’t imagine why you’d want to win.

              I listen to every one of my episodes roughly four times. Once while I’m going through the sometimes painful process of editing, once before I convert to MP3 to make sure I didn’t miss anything while I can still edit it, once after it’s been converted so I feel confident putting it in the podcast feed, and the final time I listen to it is from iTunes... the last listen is less about quality control and more about the joy of listening to something I created and put work into.

              I have mixed feelings about every episode I put out - we are typically our own harshest critics after all. But this one was particularly difficult to listen to, as every time I heard it again, I heard something I wished I had said differently. I won’t recount every single instance in which I wish I had added clarification to something I said, or felt that another thing I said came off as too insensitive, because frankly, I don’t think I have it in me to give the thing a fifth listen. So I suppose what I want to do here is apologize if I gave any offense and to give my assurance that I strive to be better, and will continue to be an advocate for women’s issues in my own way going forward.

              On the show I also talk about how I felt Lend was a well written, believable teenage boy. There were times when I looked at him and said, “yeah, that’s probably how I would have acted in that scenario.” I’m sure I’m not the first person to think this, so it is hardly a revolutionary statement, but it occurs to me that the mass majority of general media is geared toward making a white male protagonist aged 18-39 immensely relatable. So when Kiersten White, a woman who has never been a teenage boy, probably didn’t understand boys when she was a teenager, and doesn’t hang out with a bunch of teenage boys now writes a believable teenage boy and I say that I’m not sure if Evie is a well depicted teenage girl having all the same hindrances, that’s an issue.

              I said on the show that I didn’t particularly recommend this book, largely because it’s so specifically marketed toward young girls in the maybe 10-15 age range and that you may not get much out of it otherwise. I then proceeded to spend nearly an entire hour telling you how much I got out of it.

              So here’s where I admit it. I expected this to be crap. I expected it to be a silly “chick flick” of a story with no literary value beyond making some pubescent girls feel tingly for the first time. I said I was going in with an open mind. That I was excited to really give a “girl” book a chance and see what it was all about. But even all the way up through the first few minutes of the podcast, I was still refusing to recommend it despite all the glowing things I would say about it. What the hell Geo?

              This is how deep and systemic misogyny and patriarchal thinking runs. I proclaim to be an egalitarian and a feminist. All my life, the majority of my friends have been women. I was raised by my mother and lived with two sisters - the only male in my household. Very nearly all of my romantic relationships have ended amicably, and I’d like to think that both sides grew as people at the end. I know for a fact that I have helped at least one very dear friend of mine recover from an abusive relationship, and helped her reclaim her independence, sexuality, and trust in herself. And yet I still succumbed to the group think that this Twilight clone was just more girly trash.

              These sorts of revelations about how difficult it is to break the status quo and truly think independently of such ingrained patriarchal/misogynistic thinking doesn’t make Paranormalcy book of the year. It doesn’t even make it a great book. But maybe I should be recommending it to my hypothetical sons as well as my hypothetical daughters down the line. Maybe I should take back what I said. I recommend this book to all my male listeners regardless of age or demographic. Not because it’s an important work, not because it’s a great story, not because it has an important message. But because it’s time that we start understanding the other half of the population. We know how to relate to white males aged 18-39, let’s extend females the same courtesy.

 Respectfully and with Love,

Geo

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/19/ny-times-farhads-and-mikes-week-in-tech-a-letter-from-zuckerberg-and-the-fall-of-pewdiepie-13/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Mike’s Week in Tech: A Letter From Zuckerberg and the Fall of PewDiePie

This week was basically another Trump news week, which left very little oxygen in the room for technology. But Mark Zuckerberg, who has essentially declared himself president of the internet, decided to post a near 6,000-word State of the Union-style essay about Facebook, something he apparently worked on during his nights and weekends for some time.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: If I were a billionaire, I would not be spending my free time writing. I would be creating one of those Iron Man suits, but more fashionable. Maybe that’s just me.

Mike: Yeah, when I hear the word “Farhad” the first thing I think of is definitely Tony Stark.

Anyway, his essay was quite a heave to read, so I’ll give everyone the CliffsNotes version: Connecting people is great, Facebook isn’t the government but kind of wants to help create new forms of governance, and also here are a bunch of ideals and half-cemented plans that we may roll out some time in the future. Make sense to you?

Farhad: Kind of? I read the document less for its substance and more for what it signaled. For years, tech leaders have been arguing that social networks could usher in big changes in the world, and they were quite prepared to take credit when those changes looked broadly popular to the Davos set — for instance, the Arab Spring.

I see Zuck’s manifesto as a realization that social networks change things in unpredictable and sometimes manifestly not-so-great ways, and so as a result, Facebook needs to think more deeply about its effects. A C.E.O. trying to tackle the reverberations of his company’s product? I can’t complain about that, even if it’s later than many would have liked.

Mike: Hmm, you’re being more thoughtful than usual. I’m watching you, Mister.

I think it’s worth mentioning that this is as close as we’ve come to seeing Mark give some sort of political statement in a rather charged environment. Even his company’s mission — to connect the world — is now a polarizing idea.

One could argue that deep currents of isolationism have run throughout nations over the history of mankind. And as many Trump supporters would argue, there are reasons for borders, even far before the internet ever existed.

I think a lot of this depends on whether you buy into the idea that Facebook can ultimately be a uniting force for good in the world, or whether you think it will end up further polarizing us.

Farhad: It will never polarize you and me, Mike.

Mike: Good.

Etsy opened what it calls Etsy Studio, where it wants everyone at home with a spool of yarn and a bag of beads to start selling crafts online. This is just in time for your side business, “crocheting with Farhad,” to really take off. Congrats!

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: You forgot to mention that it’s steampunk crochet. This will make me rich.

Mike: Twitter looks as if it will start chopping the advertising products that don’t really work, which is probably a good thing if the company is all about focus and becoming profitable these days. It’s all you hear on every company earnings call.

Farhad: Killing things that aren’t working seems like a good idea. Speaking of which, our editors have been wanting to chat with you.

Mike: Here’s the topic du jour I really wanted to get to: The fall of PewDiePie.

So if you’re over the age of 18, you may not actually know who PewDiePie is. In a nutshell: He is Felix Kjellberg, one of the world’s most popular video game live-streamers on the internet. He’s amassed an enormous following on YouTube, where he essentially films himself playing video games and talking to the camera. I’ve watched him before — for the entire length of him beating a video game — and it’s actually captivating and somewhat intimate, like he’s having an extended discussion with you. He’s made millions of dollars doing it, too.

Well, that happy arc ended this week, when The Wall Street Journal published a series of stories going back into PewDiePie’s history of video streams, highlighting a series of anti-Semitic acts that have occurred over the last year.

Kjellberg maintains they were off-color jokes that went too far. But that didn’t stop Disney and YouTube from severing ties with the guy, cutting short his multimillion-dollar contracts.

So I’m curious. What do you think this episode says about online gamer culture? A ton of folks are coming to Kjellberg’s aid after this whole thing, saying that The Journal has blown the whole thing out of proportion. Do you buy that?

Farhad: Well, if by “blown out of proportion” he means they accurately reported that he’s repeatedly invoked Nazi imagery and recently paid some folks to hold up a sign saying “Death to All Jews,” then I guess that’s right!

But I suspect PewDiePie is not ignorant of online culture. You don’t get to be YouTube’s biggest star without understanding the racist underbelly of the internet. It’s perfectly fine, in some online circles, to say terrible things about others and then to laugh it off as just a meaningless joke that only offends humorless “snowflakes.” It seems obvious that PewDiePie was playing with that.

Continue reading the main story

The bigger question for me is how the big sponsors of these stars of tomorrow — companies like Google and Disney — change how they vet people like PewDiePie. Tomorrow’s celebrities are going to come from the internet culture. To older folks running these media companies, internet celebs are going to look and sound totally off the wall, but the execs are going to feel pressure to sign them based on their huge popularity. It seems clear no one at Disney was actually paying attention to PewDiePie — the Nazi stuff was out there for everyone to see, and Disney responded only once The Journal came calling. So perhaps that will be the first fix here: actually paying attention to the internet celebs you’ve paid so handsomely.

Mike: My guess is that’s a generational shift that will take years. I’m genuinely curious how many folks at Disney and YouTube who are high enough up the chain to make multimillion-dollar deals actually watch gaming streams — I’m guessing not a lot of them. It’s a relatively novel activity, so as ad-buying agencies and the like start hiring people who, um, actually watch the videos they’re selling ads against, perhaps they’ll get smarter about whose videos they choose to sell sodas and sports cars against.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. I’m going to start my own streaming channel starring my dog.

Farhad: O.K., see you next week. Please don’t overdose on bronzer.

Continue reading the main story

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[jordancat]

The flower-filled world of Jeff Leatham

November 17, 2009 Elaine Bergstrom

Jeff Leatham is a busy man. The day we spoke, he’d recently finished doing a floral display around a line of jewelry at Tiffany’s, then scattered 7,000 roses on the streets of New York City for Fashion’s Night Out. After he spoke with me, he was scheduled to fly to Europe to confer on the floral arrangements for the first ever party to be held in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. His clientele includes the Dalai Lama, Tina Turner, Eva Longoria Parker and former President Clinton. But he wasn’t too busy to take a bit of time out to discuss his new series, Flowers Uncut, airing Wednesdays on TLC (HD), and the strange path that has led to his being the florist to the stars.

Tell me a bit about your upbringing and how your passion for flowers began?

Jeff Leatham: I was born and raised on Ogden, Utah. My father was a city boy and my mother was a country girl from a cattle ranch. I grew up in the city but spent summers on a ranch. Both of my parents are in education. My father was a biology professor and high-school principal and won Teacher of the Year in Utah. My mother was a business teacher. School was always really important for them but I was just going to school for the social aspects.

My father always had amazing, beautiful gardens. I think that’s where I got my out-of-the-box thinking. My father cut the flowerbeds into interesting shapes and installed fountains in the middle of the yard.

In Ogden, I wanted nothing to do with flowers; it was a big ordeal to get me to mow the lawn. I started working a lot in design in retail stores when I was 17 and 18. At 18, I worked in management for The Gap. I was very energetic and enthusiastic and I worked my way up the corporate ladder. I was one of their youngest store managers at the ripe age of 19. That’s what brought me to L.A. at 19. The Gap transferred me from Utah to Los Angeles to open one of their most important stores, one on Melrose Avenue.

That’s a lot of responsibility for so young a person, isn’t it?

I’m this crazy double Virgo who has to have everything perfect. Everything had to do with color and design and making the store look great.

Then I turned to modeling at 22. I started traveling back and forth to Europe for two-and-a-half years, doing print and runway shows in Milan. Then I would come back and work retail again. I worked as a men’s manager at Urban Outfitters. Then I was back in Europe and then came back and was a barista at Starbucks. That only lasted one summer because they were screaming at me that I wasn’t steaming the milk fast enough. And one day, I said, “If you can steam milk faster than me, you can do it.” Then I put down my rag and walked out. After the Starbucks incident, I went back to Italy for six months of modeling.

When I came back to L.A., I didn’t have a job. A friend told me about an opening at the flower shop in the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The day before the interview, I walked in that hotel and I was knocked off my feet. I’ve always loved art and design and for the first time I saw that with flowers you can create not just arrangements but installations of art, so to speak.

[I had] an interview with Paige Dixon. She’s this sassy redhead Australian Scorpio, and we kind of hit it off, but she knew I had no idea what I was talking about. … So she told me to come down to her office. She put a vase in front of me and said, “Here, work with these flowers.” And she left. All the girls came over and began helping me and 10 minutes later Paige came back and I had done this beautiful arrangement with the help of all these women. They were lovely, but I think [the girls] just wanted a guy there to pick on.

Paige gave me the job as a part-time employee to do little things like clean the flower shop, but as time went on, I felt like a child again at 23 or 24, because they would be making these beautiful flower arrangements. And I said, “Teach me to do that. I want to learn how to do that. Why are you using these colors?” It expanded my mind and my love affair and passion for flowers started there. I really feel like I started at the right time, because I had done so many other things.

What has it been like working with a camera crew? Has it created any problems with your clients?

There have been a couple of instances where the client has not wanted their face on camera [but] we can shoot around them, because mostly it’s about me working with the flowers and my team and making the client’s dream come true and obviously the beauty reveal of the thing.

I wanted this show to be, first of all, beautiful, and that people would learn from the show and it would be funny. I didn’t want it to be a design show where people are all serious with “this is how it has to be” because I am kind of the anti-Martha Stewart. Even though I know Martha and love her, I am the anti-Martha, because with her everything is so proper. The end result is our flowers are beautiful, but the way we get to our result is not how anyone else would do it. Everyone else would be cutting their flowers properly while we are cutting them and ripping them with our hands. That’s why my nickname is the “rock ‘n’ roll florist,” because we do everything with flowers you are not supposed to do.

I involve people in the episodes that have really helped me along my journey. I’m a true believer that no one gets where they are, especially in design, just because they’re fabulous. You get where you are because people love you and support you and help you on your journey. That’s why it’s important for me to give back to people who have helped me or people who are starting out. You only flourish as an artist if you help others and share your gift. … I love to share what I do with others and hopefully it will make their process easier and make flower arranging a fun process for them.

When the show started, TLC bought two pilots, and we were so excited. We went to Korea then did an episode from Victoria’s Secret for their store on Lexington. So I said to a couple of people from the network, “Why don’t you come on set and see what goes on?” We have such a good time when we work and we involve everyone. And the people left the set thinking, “This guy is out-of-control fun,” and we went right to series.

What do you look for in your staff?

I like having a couple of talented people around now and then, but I love hiring people that have no experience with flowers at all. You’ll find different employees in every episode because I love giving people who love flowers a chance to touch and work with flowers in a different way and it actually works quite well.

Did spending that time as a model in Paris influence you?

Definitely. I remember just looking at these gardens and I think that influenced me a lot because if you look at my work, it’s very architectural, with very clean strong lines. So I was definitely influenced by the architecture in the buildings and in the gardens. … And I would not be where I am today if I had not had that experience at the Four Seasons in Paris (note: he is now the artistic director for the Four Seasons chain, based in the George V hotel in Paris). I’ve been with the Four Seasons for 16 years; it’s one of the longest relationships of my life. It works because we’re honest with each other. I support them and they support me.

What has been your most stressful event to date as well as your favorite ones?

The episode in the Waldorf Astoria was pretty stressful because there were literally five different parties going on at the same time. I had to hire a crew of 35, and we had over 25,000 stems of flowers coming in. … One room was on the sixth floor, one was on the second floor. [The camera crew] got their exercise that day.

Every time I have these huge events, I always say, “I picked the wrong profession. I’m retiring.” And then I’m the first one to show up for a meeting for the next job because I just love the whole process and challenge. You can be as relaxed as you want, but there is always that last 45 minutes before an event where it literally goes through my head, “We are never going to finish on time, it is going to be catastrophic.” But in the end, we always pull it off. That’s why it makes for good TV. Plus the personalities on the show are so funny, and I don’t edit what comes out of my mouth, so it is a circus of my tongue at the same time. I think that’s why it airs after 10pm.

How stressful was it to do Eva Longoria Parker’s wedding?

I met with Eva and we started planning it about eight months prior. I knew it was going to be a well-covered event, press-wise, but I had no idea that [we] would be chased by paparazzi. And we came out of the church all sweaty and panting and there were 400 photographers and we couldn’t get our van through and we were in a rush to get to the castle an hour-and-a-half away.

What will people take home for watching “Flowers Uncut”?

I didn’t want this show to be all centered on the celebrities. The last thing I wanted to do is call my celebrity friends and say, “Hi! Want to do a tea party and be on my show?” I really want people to watch the show, not because we have their favorite pop star arranging flowers, but to watch because, first of all, they can learn new things. Second, they are seeing something they have never seen before and, third, because they think it’s fun to watch. … It really is a show about living your life with flowers and designing with flowers and having fun. … Hopefully people will start to learn that they can do flowers on their own and don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for someone to do it for them.

I’m also really happy that it’s a 30-minute show instead of an hour, because on those hourlong design shows, you start to think, “It’s enough already, let’s get to the reveal.”

When decorating on a budget, what sort of flowers should people choose for their own homes?

You should always make friends with your hometown florist, because you can always make deals. Every florist will have older flowers, and if you ask what kind of deals you can get from florists you can get them to use as petals. That’s the perfect accent for me. You don’t always need a huge arrangement on a table. If there’s a hint of flowers, fine.

I’m an advocate that before you send thousands of dollars on flowers you should spend thousand of dollars, or hundreds of dollars or twenty dollars on vases. The vase is the most important aspect because it creates the structure of the floral design.

Since your series is premiering in November, a lot of people will have Thanksgiving on their minds. What sort of floral hostess gifts would you recommend for the season?

You are putting me on the spot, I love this! A floral hostess gift is hard during the Thanksgiving season because that is a tough time of the year for flowers. A lot of people bring roses, but it’s always nice to bring a mixed arrangement or just some branches or maybe bring a vase instead of a bouquet, because you help someone start their vase collection.

I can’t tell you how many times people have brought flowers to my home and I say “you shouldn’t have.” That’s because flowers are such a personal thing. … I don’t know how many times I’ve received bouquets and the last person who leaves the house leaves with that bouquet.

If the flowers were to suddenly vanish and you could save only four types, what would they be?

Hydrangea, calla lilies, roses and orchids — those are actually my top four flowers.

And when do you take time to smell the roses?

Usually in the morning I have a 45-minute period where I try to sit down and have a cup of coffee and take it all in before 25 people knock on my door. Flowers are my family and now my crew is my family and I have a new family at TLC and that’s OK.