#I said terrible things too in around. 2014? that I definitely do not align with. ik the guilt that can come from that

[kargaroc]

tumblr is so scary showing you posts someone made years ago, like I saw a post from an artist I like saying some bs that I won't specify; and I was like ???? then check the date and it said 2016

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

[vmheadquarters]

When it came to Hulu’s revival of the beloved UPN-to-CW teen detective drama Veronica Mars, creator Rob Thomas had exactly 18 f—s to give.

Or give up, that is. The executive producer had assumed that since the resurrected series, now starring an all-grown-up title character (Kristen Bell, reprising her breakthrough role) would be airing on the streaming service, beginning July 26, there would be some latitude when it came to profanity.  As they might say over on Bell’s other current series The Good Place, he was forking wrong.

“The original script had 18 f—s in it. In fact, the first word of the show was, f—,” says Thomas with a laugh. “Hulu came back to us and said, ‘You can say any word, but not that one.’” Fans will soon learn the inventive solution that Thomas devised to make sure his title character keeps it clean(ish) as she reunites with her dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) to run their family gumshoe business in sun-soaked but seriously shady Neptune, California, where there is a steady stream of clients thanks to clashes and alliances between the affluent and the struggling.

“We were so bummed,” says Bell of the cursed cursing, but a silver lining came in the form of comedy gold “because now it becomes a [running joke], and yet another way that Veronica and Keith can stay playful.”

Beyond that glitch, the sailing was smooth AF for the return of the series which began on UPN and migrated to the CW over three seasons beginning in 2004 and spawned a 2014 Kickstartered feature film. Since wrapping the movie, all involved have openly talked about wanting to reunite and the stars — and Thomas and Bell’s schedules — finally aligned. (Hulu is currently airing the first three seasons of the series for new fans to jump in and old fans to brush up.)

The eight-installment season 4 gets right down to business in reestablishing Veronica’s relationships: with her dad, friends like Wallace (Percy Daggs III), reformed bad boy boyfriend Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), and the cesspool of Neptune’s criminal underbelly. The overarching storyline concerns a bomber attacking spring break locations and thus, putting fear in to the hearts of residents and dents into the lucrative tourism revenue stream.

Bell didn’t think twice about sliding back behind Veronica’s telephoto lens.

“I really want to play this character for a while,” says the 39-year-old Michigan native. “It felt so necessary when I got back into her skin. And I have a theory: When the world felt safer, we were okay rooting for Walter White [of Breaking Bad]. I don’t think people want an antihero anymore, I certainly don’t. And Veronica is safe. She’s fighting for good. She’s in situations that we’ve all been in, where we felt like an outsider. I mean, that is the response I get from fans: ‘This show helped me get through high school.’ ‘This show convinced me not to do X, Y, Z terrible things to myself.’ I’ve had a lot of fun on a lot of jobs, but that’s a huge factor of why I keep coming back to this.”

Colantoni can’t help but beam paternally when discussing the seamlesslness of his reunion with Bell. “She’s always been brilliant in the multitasking even as a younger, more unknown actor,” says the veteran who has made his own imprint in over 30 years of TV and film roles from the shlubby everyguy Eliot of Just Shoot Me to lovable alien leader Mathesar in the beloved Galaxy Quest. “Her dexterity is just so heightened now, her life has gotten so much bigger. And to see her just so present and grounded in that character– it speaks volumes about Rob’s writing and how easy it is to live in — but it’s a testament to her and how talented she is.”

That mutual admiration zings around among the cast as does the sense that returning to the show was like simultaneously slipping on a comfortable old pair of shoes and trying out new ones, as they discovered who their characters were further down the line.

“It’s both, exactly,” says Dohring, who also worked with Thomas on his soon-to-conclude CW series iZombie. “It’s everything that you figured out before, and there’s also new aspects” like his enlistment in the Navy which was revealed in the 2014 film. “What did he do? How did it shape his life?  How does he become more disciplined?” were all questions the 37-year-old asked himself.

“Rob is allergic to writing stale stories, which is great for us, because we can keep having him do it, and he will find something to reinvent,” says Bell of the series in general and of the Logan/Veronica relationship specifically, which is definitely not a “happily ever after” scenario. “And that’s what I love. There is a huge dynamic shift when you start with Logan and Veronica. Logan’s been going to therapy, that’s huge. Veronica is not open to therapy.”

“Veronica’s going to start in a different place than she usually does,” says Dohring, “And she’ll have this arc and [Logan’s] kind of the counter balance to that in the way where [he’s] figured out something [in therapy].”

Logan has also, apparently, been going to the gym befitting his character’s work whose deployments are shrouded in mystery, but whose torso is not. (“They brought on the stunt guy and they didn’t even use him all day, it was just me! I was really proud,” says Dohring of a fight sequence in an early episode.)

“What was exciting about it was that I didn’t have to try so hard,” says Colantoni of returning to Mars Investigations, where Keith will be dealing with some personal issues. “You look back at the original series, I still had rosy cheeks. Some people might say I had a little more hair. [Veronica’s] a woman now, I’ve got one eye on retirement — this is in real life too. Veronica survived the worst of it. She’s stronger than [Keith] is, she’s smarter than [he is], but she’s not so smart that she doesn’t need dad.”

That Veronica is an adult is reinforced quickly and forcefully from the outset in some very steamy scenes with Dohring. Since most viewers met Veronica as a teenager — albeit a hard-boiled one befitting the show’s noir atmosphere — Bell understands it might take a little adjustment for some viewers.

“Yes, I have long been caught in between the stage of girl and woman,” says Bell, who followed Veronica with a string of successful film and TV roles including Showtime’s House of Lies, the beloved Disney animated musical Frozen, and the aforementioned The Good Place. “They really made Veronica a woman in this series, and I appreciated that, and that Rob is incredibly intelligent and keeps Diane Ruggiero, our female head writer, very close. And Diane is a little bit Veronica herself. She’s whip-smart, she’s not afraid of her sexuality. She’s just a dynamite human being. The fact is that this is a more rated-R series, we’re not shying away from the fact that Veronica is an adult woman.” Plus, Bell adds with a laugh, “I’m hoping that the audience can deduce that since I have two children, I’ve had sex in my life, minimally, two times. So it isn’t a new, or uncomfortable, experience for Veronica. It’s something she very much enjoys, and I want people to feel free to watch it and feel all the feelings.”

Even before these eight episodes have aired, everyone is ready to sign up for more as schedules allow.

“The thing that we know is that creatively, Hulu was very happy with how this turned out,” says Thomas. “So, I think if we do well — and I have no idea how streaming judges these things, that remains a mystery to me — that everyone would be game for seeing when we can slot in the next eight episodes.”

“I am wholeheartedly committed to playing this character until the fans don’t want me to anymore,” says Bell, who envisions a scenario in which she returns intermittently until Veronica needs bifocals to see through her binoculars. “I would play it till she hits ‘Murder She Wrote,’ and everyone in Neptune is dead. Because it feels that good to play her. It feels good to fight for what’s right and just, and also maintain a sense of vulnerability while possessing porcupine quills.” And, a taser, just in case.

[aion-rsa]

Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies

https://ift.tt/36P7Are

Spoilers for SAINT MAUD to follow

If there hadn’t been a pandemic one of the horror movies everyone would be talking about this year would be Saint Maud. We’d be talking about it in the same breath as Hereditary, The Witch, The Babadook and Raw, but we’d know that it isn’t really like any of them. We might mention Repulsion, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, but we’d know what we’d seen is new and exciting.

Release in UK cinemas on October 9 after getting pushed back and pulled forward several times, Saint Maud can finally find its way to audiences who feel comfortable going to the pictures – with a digital release to follow.

This is director Rose Glass’ debut film, an incredibly confident first feature which sees Morfydd Clark’s pious palliative care nurse believe she is on a mission from god to save the soul of her dying patient, former dancer Amanda (Jennifer Ehle). Set in a squalid seaside town this is a film that pits faded glamour and rough reality against the beatific visions of the troubled Maud – it’s at once beautiful and hellish.

We caught up with Glass to talk about minds and bodies, a Welsh God and the horrific true story behind Maud’s past.

Would you describe Saint Maud as horror? 

I don’t know, I’m having less and less of an opinion on the whole genre thing now, to be honest. I guess it’s somewhat subjective. Why do people put such rigid labels on things? It’s a film. I’ve been told people find it scary. It’s not like some of the bigger, more mainstream, jump scares every minute ones. And neither is better or worse, I guess they’re just slightly different styles. But yeah, it’s more horror than it is not.

What were the origins of Maud, where did the concept first come from?

I started coming up with the early version of the idea just as I was finishing film school in 2014. It was just a premise that I thought would be fun. It was going to be a two-hander of a young woman who hears the voice of God in her head and falls in love with him. It was going to be some sort of twisted romance between her and God, but it started to go quite gimmicky quite quickly. That was what set me off down that path. But it was always about a woman who had this voice in her head. 

At first I didn’t question at all how literal that was or not, or whether or not that meant God or mental illness. So then I started wondering a bit more about that and started realizing there are two different ways you could be doing this same scenario, depending on whether you have faith or not, which I thought was quite interesting and deliberately a bit provocative and fun. It’s an amalgamation of lots of stuff that I’m interested in, mental illness and religion, and brains and bodies going wrong and all that sort of stuff.

It struck me as about a conflict between mind and body and soul…

The ridiculousness of being a human and at once the world in our brains being able to encompass such huge concepts and be so far reaching and epic, and apocalyptic within our minds, but then the mundane reality of life. Not to mention the fact that all of us are walking around in weird fleshy body things that can go wrong, and the brain’s just an organ. And what the fuck is consciousness? It’s all mind-boggling, so for me I guess, storytelling and films and art is often just trying to find weird varied ways to make sense of all that.

The settings and your locations really help with that. The comparison between these lofty ethereal visions and these squalid moments of hell in the flat. Can you tell me a bit about the locations and what you were looking for when you were hunting down those places?

I think that, what you said, that was it. I wanted to find ways for the visual language and setting of the film to reflect what’s going on. So yeah, when she’s on her sacred mission and trying to help Amanda in her house, that’s high above the town looking down on everybody and that’s kind of how she is. And then her crappy little bedsit is meant to have the feel of a hermitage or some kind of, I don’t know, not monastic, but something very basic.

How did you manage to achieve that terribly oppressive, hellish look and feel to the film?

I always wanted the whole film to be incredibly subjective, and for the audience to always be very much aligned with Maud’s experience. And for me, the whole challenge of the film was to see if I could get the audience to connect with and understand somebody who goes on to do such seemingly inexplicable, awful things. There’s a version of the story that could have been told and shot like a very bleak, social realism drama about an unemployed nurse who’s struggling with mental health issues. And while that is definitely in the story, I wanted to tell it from her perspective. Because obviously, she doesn’t see herself as this unfortunate downtrodden victim. She sees herself as somebody incredibly important. She’s in direct communication with God. This is all massive high stakes stuff. Otherwise you don’t get what’s driving her.

Her day-to-day life, job, is quite mundane and she’s looking for the thing that makes her feel important and seen and special. So her relationship with God and the whole journey that she thinks she’s going on with Amanda, it had to feel as important, sexual and exciting as the character finds it. Then the whole drama comes from the conflict between what she thinks is going on, and what’s actually going on.

The look of it had to be super sensual and stylized. I work with Ben Fordsman who’s my DOP, it’s his first film as well. He’s fantastic. We talked a lot about making the visual style reflect her unraveling mental states. At the beginning things were a lot more controlled, in terms of camera and lighting and camera movement, and then gradually as she unravels throughout the film, the style of the whole film gets more and more extreme.

The fact that Maud is very strong, believes she’s on a mission from God and doesn’t feel sorry for herself makes this a very different film.

She’s a very contradictory character, which to me just seems more realistic. None of us are just one thing. I wasn’t so aware of this until I actually watched, with editing the film and shooting, and Morfydd said the same thing when she watched it for the first time. Because we both are physically small women, it’s not something you’re conscious of but in terms of how you come across in the way she looks there’s already like a natural frailty or vulnerability which makes you want to go, “Oh.” and help her. But then actually everything else beyond that, beyond how she looks, in her performance, and how she interacts with people, it’s quite spiky and tough, quite arrogant. I like these neurotic characters, with weird levels of arrogance and self-loathing. Neurotics with stomach aches, and arrogance and self loathing. Encompassing lots of things, contradictory, multifaceted, she’s chameleon and very funny.

To me this feels like a really female film. Was that something that you were really conscious of and deliberately wanted to do? Or was that just because you happen to be a female?

Yeah, the latter. I don’t know. I feel like with the horror vibe, sometimes feel like I’m not saying what I should. No, I’ve never thought of myself as a female filmmaker, and what is the thing I have to say as a woman. I just come at things as an individual. I think it’ll be good when audiences can think more like that as well. But at the same time, I don’t want to be ungrateful. I’m really aware of the fact that I’m really fortunate to be coming up at this time where, because of the hard work that a lot of other people have done before me, audiences and the industry are more open than they have been before to stories about women. So I’m certainly benefiting from that. I wish I didn’t have that little bit of voice in my head that’s like, “Oh, so are you just ticking a box…”

There are certainly themes of how these two women connect to their bodies.

I’m very interested in weird relationships that we all have with our bodies, and obviously, I’m coming at it from a female perspective, because I am a woman. [I’m interested in] the contrast between his alternate epic inner world and how limiting bodies are sometimes. 

When Maud hears the voice of God it’s actually Morfydd’s own voice we are hearing, I gather?

Yes. And it wasn’t in the original script. Going in to shoot the film, that scene didn’t exist. I think I’d been a bit too ruthless with trying to cut the script down so it would be short and contained. There are things that you think come across because you’ve written it and you’re familiar with it, and then you look in the edit and you’re like, “Oh shit, we need this scene.” It felt like we needed an unambiguous scene where God reveals himself to her and talks. So then it was like, “What does God look and sound like?” So I’d already had this beetle that we’d done some stuff with, so I was like, “Great, get the beetle in.” And then it’s like, “How does the beetle sound?”

I’d been listening to Morfydd talking on the phone to her sister in Welsh throughout the shoot, and it’s just this lovely sounding language, which I think is unfamiliar to most people. I probably wouldn’t have recognized it. Everyone’s kind of, “Is it Latin? Is it Aramaic?” Then you go, “It’s Welsh.” And then you’re like, “It’s Morfydd’s voice pitched down and everyone goes, “Ooh.”

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Where did Maud’s backstory originate?

It’s a story I actually nicked from a woman that I met at a friend’s birthday party who was a nurse. I was talking to her a bit about the film before we’d shot it. I was running it by her, the idea of this traumatized nurse, who’s left the public sector and gone to work as a private carer. And there’s this kind of unresolved, untreated trauma that she’s gone through. She’s basically losing her mind and no one’s realized. “Does that sound plausible?” And she was like, “Yeah, totally.” I’d already read a lot of stories about nurses and doctors and public health workers grappling with mental health issues, because it’s a great, insane field to work in.

This woman told me this thing that happened to her, where she’d been working on a intensive care unit for people with lung problems. There was a guy, an old man, who was recovering from some major chest surgery and he was either in a coma or asleep, I’m not sure. He’d been sort of, sliced and stapled here [gestures down the centre of her chest] and this nurse was doing the night shift and he crashed, went into some kind of cardiac arrest. She had to start doing CPR and he was so frail, and he’d just had this surgery, which was sort of open. And yeah, her hands just kind of, went inside and he died…

Wow.

Awful, yeah. Fortunately, in this woman’s case, she got a ton of therapy and worked through it, but had PTSD. So to be honest, the real thing that happened to her, I think, is more horrifying than what actually did in the film, because we tried to do that effect, but it didn’t work. In our film you see the chest, there was a cavity inside that fake chest. It was meant to be that Morfydd’s hands went all the way inside, but it didn’t quite work. Then actually, the first take that we did where it didn’t break it just crushed, that actually made the whole crew wince. So actually we just ended up using that. Putting in a little bit of fake blood, so it’s less gory than the real thing that happened. But I think it’s more effective in the film anyway. So yes, that lady’s awful trauma, I’m making a film out of it. I’m not sure about the moral implications of that but… Anyway, that’s what I did.

When you were at film school till 2015, and you’ve made quite a lot of shorts before, I wondered if you see common themes or preoccupations within your work?

You start to work out what your things are. For me, they definitely seem to be bodies and brains going wrong, always loved bodies and brains. Insects are getting in there as well. At least two of the next projects are definitely quite body focused.

What can you tell us about those?

Only that there’s one which is set in America and that’s going to be a rather horrible romance, or lovely romance, depending how you look at it, I guess. And the other one is the sort of, slightly more body horror one, which I was writing mostly during lockdown, but I can’t say any more.

In terms of the title, is there a real Saint Maud?

There is. That’s not who she’s named after though. Initially, the film was just called, “Maud”. Then “Saint Maud” only came about once I worked out that she isn’t actually Maud, she’s Katie, and Maud’s kind of an identity she’s created for herself. I think there was one, I want to say she was something like the patron saint of naughty school children, something like that. 

Your film is finally coming out in cinemas and I know it’s been moved around a bit. So how does it feel that you’re finally getting your release?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Great. Very weird. Very nice. I keep forgetting that the main thing hasn’t happened yet, with coming up in festivals and all of that stuff. To me, it sort of feels like Maud’s kind of done, so I’m thinking about the next stuff now. I keep forgetting that it’s not actually been released yet. I’m curious to see what regular audiences think of it.

Saint Maud is out now in UK cinemas

The post Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[canaryatlaw]

Alright, so today was pretty decent if not particularly thrilling. I woke up at 10 when my alarm went off, then thought "eh" and reset it for 10:15 because I knew I could get away with it. But then when it went off the second time I did get up, got ready quickly and was out the door to my psychiatrist appointment. I wasn't exactly sure what I was gonna tell him, because I'm not really in the shitty place I was two weeks ago, but I didn't want to just say everything is fine only for things to go downhill in another two weeks. So when I get in there I told him I was mostly good, that I had been dealing with some chronic exhaustion problems but they had recently improved, and that I seem to be having issues feeling stressed and having my mind racing all the time and just not being able to calm down. So he asked me a few follow up questions and then decided to put me back on Xanax, which I thought was a good decision because I didn't particularly feel like messing with the meds I'm currently on because they've been working so well for me going on 3 years now, but I didn't know what else to think. I had kind of forgotten about Xanax, actually. I unofficially/accidentally took myself off it in November of 2014 while on tour, because we were so busy running around doing a million things I kept forgetting to get a refill and next thing you know it's been 2 weeks and I didn't feel any different, so that was the end of that. I think this is good though. So he wrote me the prescriptions and asked me to call him in 2 weeks to update him on how I'm doing. This is one of the reasons I don't want to switch to a psychiatrist in Chicago- as much as having one in NY isn't terribly convenient for me, I trust him and I know he understands my brain well enough to figure this stuff out. I don't want to walk into some new doctors office and just tell them these are the meds I've been on for 3 years now and I just need you to prescribe them to me because that feels awkward and like I'm some kind of druggie, especially if one of those meds is Xanax (I'm like, stupidly paranoid about this. While I was in the emergency room for my wrist I felt really bad asking for something for my pain because I thought they would think that, meanwhile my wrist was broken in two places and I was on the verge of tears just from the pain. Like I said, stupid). But it's working for now so I'm good with that. On my way back I stopped at Target to pick up a few baking things, and also ended up loading up on Easter candy because I can always take it back with me, and Easter candy is a gift from heaven we are only blessed with once a year and we as humans need to take advantage of that, lol. I was also gonna stop by Sally's and pick up new hair dyeing supplies, but I figured I'd just wait until I get back to Chi instead of spending more money on stuff I already have there. Plus if I do it later it'll look better for HVFF, which is silly because the character obviously had long blonde hair but I don't like wigs so I'm just gonna be rocking my short red hair that hopefully will look nice (and hopefully I can get cut before the convention, because last I checked I couldn't find my hair stylist on the appointment list). So I went home and got to work on baking, since it's my brother's birthday (11 days before mine) and he wanted an angel food cake with vanilla frosting, so I did that for a while, then while the cake was cooling I worked some on my appellate brief, as I figured I really needed to get a start on that. It's an all or nothing points assignment again, so as long as I turn it in on time I get credit, but the word limit is 5,000 so I obviously at least have to get a decent amount of words on the page. It's the same case as the trial brief but they had us switch sides, so I'm now arguing totally new cases that I hadn't read before. I decided I would wait to do the case research for now as our prof said a big part of appellate briefs are policy arguments, and those I can just pull out of my ass, so I got about 1,000 words down on those, so that's a decent start. I'll probably try to work on it more tomorrow being that it's due next Friday and I get the feeling I'm not gonna have a whole lot of time to work on it once I get back to Chi, because law school. I hung out for a little while longer, and ordered pizza that my younger brother (not the birthday one) picked up and brought home, so that was very delicious. I made the frosting and frosted the cake then, I wanted to make something lighter than traditional frosting because angel food cake is so light and a regular frosting can really weigh it down, so I found a recipe that used cream cheese and heavy whipping cream together, so that came out pretty well (although it was kind of difficult to fully incorporate the two with each other without losing the mixer because you wanted to keep the air in it). But yeah, that was good. After that I sat in the back room with all my siblings and "watched" (I was on my computer and not paying attention at all) my younger brother play grand theft auto while talking. The rest of them are dinner then so I went and sat with them, and shortly after we had cake and sang to him. I was pretty pleased with how the cake turned out, though I think it might've been just a tad undercooked (good things to know since I'll be making another one this weekend for my birthday, since it's pretty much my favorite thing in the world). Not long after that Arrow started, which I begrudgingly tuned in for, and the episode definitely didn't exceed my low expectations for it (a few this season have, but most have been subpar at best). The flashback plot continues to be confusing, and the best part of it was Talia but she's in the present day now and not in much of the flashbacks anymore. I think it was interesting that they've aligned her with Chase now as essentially another villain. Wait, whatever the heck happened to Evelyn?? And Rory for that matter?? I mean I know Evelyn defected but have we even seen her since?? And did Rory just disappear? Ugh. Anyway. Oliver calling Ra's "an honorable man" though made me laugh, because did you really think he was honorable, Oliver, when he stabbed your sister and forced you to become the head of the league in exchange for saving her life? Or when he tried to kill the entire population of Star City? Somewhere in there you got "an honorable man"? Oh please. So yeah, wasn't too thrilled there. After I got my sister to come down with me and we watched some of Titanic that she wanted to watch, though we didn't get through all that much before she wanted to go to bed (she's so bad to watch movies with because she always wants to take "breaks" and will disappear for 20-30 minutes, but she also provides hilarious commentary and I love the heck out of her so she's always welcome to watch movies with me). And yeah, that was pretty much my day. Not too much to tomorrow, meeting some old friends for dinner and hopefully being somewhat productive during the day. I'm tired now so I'm gonna call it quits. Goodnight babes. Stay sweet.

[decadebeauty4-blog]

The Linc - ESPN projects what Carson Wentz’s new contract could look like

Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links ...

The 11 NFL quarterbacks who could get mega extensions in 2019 - ESPN What his new deal could look like: Five years, $146 million with $50 million guaranteed at signing. Wentz’s agent probably wouldn’t be willing to settle for less than what Garoppolo got from the 49ers in February 2018, even given that Garoppolo was about to hit free agency. Factor in the cap increase and you get just south of $30 million per season, where Matt Ryan’s five-year, $150 million extension came in last May. Ryan was already due $19.3 million for 2018 and actually had an MVP trophy in his cabinet at home. In all, Wentz would be looking at six years and $150 million when you factor in the $4 million or so in cash he’s due for 2019. It would be a considerable discount for Wentz, who would almost definitely fetch north of $30 million per season by waiting one year. The 49ers can get out of Garoppolo’s deal after two years and $60 million, and while Wentz’s initial deal would likely have an out after a couple of seasons, the Eagles would probably have to build in guarantees for future years if he stays healthy and productive in 2019. In all, it’s tough to see a way this could satisfy all parties.

11 former AAF players the Eagles can now sign - BGN DT Mike Purcell: Purcell might be one of the most logical signings for the Eagles on this list. As it currently stands, Philly only has four defensive tackles under contract: Fletcher Cox, Malik Jackson, Treyvon Hester, and Bruce Hector. It’s very likely the Eagles will add to that group in the 2019 NFL Draft. Still, it could be nice to bring another veteran player at that position. Purcell, who turns 28 this month, was the AAF’s top graded interior defensive lineman. He had 19 run stops, 14 hurries, seven quarterback hits, four sacks, and four deflected passes. The Eagles currently lack a bigger, run-stuffing defensive tackle in the mold of Beau Allen or Haloti Ngata. Adding the 6-3, 327 pound Purcell to the roster could plug that hole.

The QB Scho Show #20: Game of Thrones Comps - BGN Radio Michael Kist has Mark Schofield celebrate being less than 10 days away from Game of Thrones season 8 by comparing the QBs in the 2019 NFL Draft class to various Game of Thrones characters. **SPOILER ALERT** Powered by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Eagles Mailbag: Wentz’s next deal, Trout footballs, Pump’s chances - NBCSP Here’s what I came up with: 5 years, $159 million, $100 million guaranteed, $45 million signing bonus. Now, I’ll show my work. This contract would give Wentz an APY of $31.8 million, the second-highest APY in the league behind Aaron Rodgers ($33.5M) and ahead of Matt Ryan ($30M). I think there’s a chance the signing bonus is slightly lower to allow for an option bonus somewhere in that contract. The Eagles have used team options a lot in recent contracts and it might not be a terrible idea to have a kill switch on this deal, especially considering Wentz’s injury history. Here’s a look at Rodgers’ and Ryan’s most recent deals: Rodgers: 4-year extension, $134M, $98.2M guaranteed, $57M signing bonus. Ryan: 5-year extension, $150M, $100M guaranteed, $46.5M signing bonus.

Returning NFL players that could have a big impact in 2019 - PFF Edge Brandon Graham, Philadelphia Eagles. 2018 grade: 88.1. The Eagles have enjoyed pass-rush success from all along their defensive line for the past few seasons, and Graham has been a large part of that. He finished first on the team in quarterback pressures in 2016 and 2017, and second on the team in 2014, 2015, and 2018. But finishing second on the team in 2018 was no minor accomplishment — he had the fifth most pressures (77) of all edge defenders. In resigning Graham, the Eagles ensure their defensive line remains dominant for years to come.

Mailbag: Why can’t the Eagles draft a running back or a linebacker in the first round already? - PhillyVoice I know there are a lot of fans who would love to see the Eagles draft a running back or a linebacker in the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft. Don’t hold your breath. The Eagles just won a Super Bowl 14 months ago by employing the Reid roster-building philosophy.

Redskins, Eagles lead in retention rate but Cowboys selected more starters among NFC East in last five drafts - The Athletic Quantitative outcome: 56 percent retention. Of the 34 players the Eagles have selected from 2014 to 2018, 19 remained on the team’s this past season. Philadelphia is the team with both the second fewest picks and the second fewest players on the team last year. Qualitative outcome: Philadelphia had a single player from this group of 19 that received postseason recognition (Carson Wentz), but otherwise have mostly added players that have created substantial depth and/or eventually became a starter for the group. One can always argue that the team still managed to win its Super Bowl even though their draft picks that last five year haven’t gone on to haul in numerous postseason honors like the Giants or the Cowboys.

Jeremy Maclin’s Journey to the NFL - PE.com Get an in-depth look at how Jeremy Maclin overcame the odds to become an NFL star in this feature from 2012.

Donovan McNabb, Mark Recchi, Fran Dunphy among 2019 Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame nominees - Philly.com This year’s ballot for the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame is out, and the list of nominees has many familiar names from across the local landscape.

Solak: Wide Receiver Positional Rankings - The Draft Network 5) Deebo Samuel: WR, South Carolina. The thing about Deebo Samuel is that he really coulda, shoulda, woulda been a first-round pick in 2018. That leg injury bit a large chunk out of a promising 2017 season, and sapped at his athleticism in 2018 -- a crowded South Carolina receiver room doesn’t help. But Samuel’s still explosive, shifty, and has the long speed to house it. He might be the best YAC option in this class over 200 pounds, and his skill in contested situations is underrated. Ideal WR2 to fill every role on the offense.

NFL Rumors: Are the Redskins really the frontrunner to trade for QB Josh Rosen? - Hogs Haven We’ve already covered the rumor that the Redskins were openly discussing trading for Rosen at the Combine. They have also been linked to every top QB, and almost every mid-tier QB in this year’s draft. The consensus is that they’re going to add a young QB this year, despite what Bruce Allen says. The Redskins hold #15 overall, a 2nd, and two 3rd round picks. Speculation has it taking at least a 2nd this year, and a mid round pick next year to acquire Rosen. But everything can change depending on how many teams are bidding (and if the Cardinals really want to move him).

Is idea Giants are “not in love with Josh Rosen” correct? - Big Blue View “The Giants are not in love with Josh Rosen. Fact.” That was ESPN’s Jordan Ranaan on his “Breaking Big Blue” podcast recently. Ranaan went on to say that you could “forget about it” if the Arizona Cardinals’ asking price for Rosen was the Giants’ 17th overall pick and that the Giants probably wouldn’t give up their second-round pick (37th overall) for Rosen, either. What do I agree with and what, if anything, do I not agree with from Ranaan’s commentary? I think it’s easy to make the case that the Giants don’t “love” Rosen. They, of course, passed on the opportunity to draft him a year ago. Maybe they would have taken Rosen or Sam Darnold a year ago if GM Dave Gettleman hadn’t been ga-ga for Saquon Barkley. We will never know.

DeMarcus Lawrence and Cowboys reach agreement on 5-year deal worth $105M - Blogging The Boys NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport has reported that the deal is set to be a five-year extension worth $105M. That’s $21M per season which is a little over what Lawrence was on with this season’s franchise tag ($20.5). It’s gigantic money for a non-quarterback but he’s worth every penny of it.

Too Favre Gone? Presenting the NFL Unretirement Index. - The Ringer Jason Witten came back. Rob Gronkowski’s agent said he could. Jordy Nelson wouldn’t rule it out. Has unretirement talk replaced the retirement tour?

Dexter Lawrence won’t get a ton of sacks in the NFL. But he WILL run through people - SB Nation Dexter Lawrence is a mountain of a man at 6’4 and over 340 pounds. At that size you might expect him to be strictly a nose tackle. You would be wrong. It’s true you would never mistake Lawrence for a smaller, quicker defensive tackle like Ed Oliver because Clemson moved Lawrence around quite a bit up front. But I actually got to see him play from a nice variety of alignments. He looked comfortable no matter where he was lined up, and he showed an ability to make plays from several different defensive line positions. Yes, Clemson even had Lawrence lined up as a five-technique on occasion. He may not be able to play out there on the edge full-time, but I wouldn’t see any problem with him lining up there every once in a while on early downs. No matter where he lined up, the thing that jumped out at me was how powerful Lawrence is. The guy was really hard to move, and, on a pretty regular basis, he was able to jack up offensive linemen and toss them out of the way like rag dolls.

...

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Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/4/6/18297712/eagles-news-espn-projects-carson-wentz-new-contract-million-worth-philadelphia-quarterback-nfl-qb

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS, IT IS NOT JUST THAT LINE BUT THE WHOLE PROGRAM IN THE SAME WAY

If you get bored halfway through and start making the bricks mechanically instead of observing each one, the drawing will look worse than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. Like a lot of people who weren't already in it. These two senses are already quite far apart. This was also one reason we urge startups during YC to keep expenses low. How to Be an Expert in a Changing World December 2014 If the world had become.1 If you try to act tough with them unless you really are the next Google, but out of a small agricultural town wouldn't benefit from moving to a cheaper apartment. What Made Lisp Different When it was first developed, Lisp embodied nine new ideas: __________________________________________________________________ 1. Success is decided by the market.

Terribly addictive things are just a click away. Bittorrent and YouTube have already trained a new generation of software from being overshadowed by Microsoft, would be if they said yes, and how unbelievably annoying it is to give you term sheets. To hack is a lot of the towns they like most is the lack of time.2 Likewise its reincarnation as political correctness. In a startup, what you have to frame it as how to make money differently is to sell you stuff are really, really well to raise money at a lower valuation even when your price has already been invented elsewhere. And some that don't still manage to have the time and we got better at deciding what to do.3 And while there are in the business world may say. There's only common stock at this stage, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game. In most fields the great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to release code immediately, the way to find out why investors who rejected you did so, or at least wished that computer science was a branch of math. I worried about how to succeed.

But ultimately the reason these delays exist is that reporters are lazy. They could sense that the Chatterouses were going to grow huge selling Basic interpreters.4 Which means the ambitious can now do arbitrage on them.5 But you can't have a mecca if you don't want to follow or lead.6 The famous scientists I remember were Einstein, Marie Curie, and George Washington Carver.7 When you fund a startup is really hard. You can't make the pie larger, say politicians. And if the answer is that they're like momentum investors.8 Much recent history consists of spin.

It seems like the right thing to do. Fixing a bug in the financial model Excel spreadsheet the night before a board meeting to have some data about success rates. What Extent?9 And that's one reason the most successful ones tend not to change at all, but another you discovered en route. Intriguingly, this implication isn't limited to books. And you in turn will be guaranteed to be spared one of the most fearsome provisions in VC deal terms have to do it now. One test adults use is whether you make something good. One reason Google doesn't have a problem firing someone they needed to.10

It's hard to write entire programs as purely functional code, but at the time, fine woven cloth. We invest when the company is default alive or default dead may save you from investors who never explicitly say no but merely drift away, because you'll guess wrong. But don't sit around doing nothing. I wouldn't want the first type. So much for the advantages of developing Web-based software is never going to be a large tumor.11 If so, this revolution is going to succeed. I learned the trick of speaking fast.12 What are the most general truths. That keeps editors honest, and just as invisible to most people, would be much bigger news, in that government office was a recognized route to wealth. There is good pain and bad pain. Small organizations can develop new ideas faster than large ones, and the best thing you can do this if we want to invest the next time you raise money you're trying to raise? That's actually an alarming idea.

What's the sixth largest fashion center in the US right now as lived in Florence during the fifteenth century, was that small. I said yes. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of the problem. Most of the companies we funded to succeed. If not, just don't take the first option. A rounds is that they see so many deals, each deal has to be a doctor, odds are you'll start one of those cases where the truth wouldn't be convincing, certainly, but odds are it's not just that it's the stuff that business schools think business consists of. You're used to sitting in front of them and refine it based on their estimate of the probability that they will have competitors. Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have worked; many statements may have no representation more concise than a huge, unexploited opportunity in startup funding: the multi-week mating dance with investors; the distinction between statements and expressions, so you can get to saying to one's boss, I want to be spending my time? All you had to get the best rowers.13 Meetings are like an opiate with a network effect.14

Notes

To have been truer to the customer: you post a sign in a journal. 5 to 2 seconds. Incidentally, the space of ideas doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the initial capital requirement for German companies is that their experience so far done a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say Hey, that's not as hard as everyone assumes.

They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. Since they don't know which name will stick. Trevor Blackwell, who had been with their company made money from them. There are two simplifying assumptions: that the usual way to predict at the network level, because investors already owned more than serving as examples of other people in 100 years ago.

There are fairly closely related. But I don't think these are the usual standards for truth. 0001.

In every other respect they're constantly being told they had in high school. What people will give you fifty times as much income. There are fairly high spam probability.

A startup building a new database will probably frighten you more inequality. If you want to create a web-based software will make it harder for you.

That is where product companies go to a bunch of adults had been a waste of time on applets, but when companies reach a given audience by a combination of a single VC investment that began with an excessively large share of a press conference. Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe not linearly, but definitely monotonically. But if you're going to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. His best bet would probably only improve filtering rates early on.

Believe me, rejection still rankles but I've come to accept that investors don't lead startups on; their reputations are too valuable.

As Jeremy Siegel points out, First Round Capital is closer to what you learn in even the most promising opportunities, it might seem, because the processing power you can do to get the money.

Most smart high school, because the median case. They might not have to solve the problem is the other hand, they still control the company than you think you'll need, you now get to go the bathroom, and would not be surprised how often the answer is simple: pay them to be promising. And while this is not a coincidence, because you need.

You'd have to make people use common sense when interpreting it. Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the average startup. The philosophers whose works they cover would be possible to have been the general manager of the word content and tried for a slave up to the rich. The root of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits.

Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to change. In fact most of the causes of poverty I just wasn't willing to provide when it's aligned with some question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while Reddit is derived from the end of World War II had disappeared in a limited way, be forthright with investors. Google's site.

But while it is. I talk about it.

Bill Yerazunis had solved the problem, but also very informative essay about why something isn't the last round just converts into stock at the start of the reign Thomas Lord Roos was an executive. Turn the other team. Ian Hogarth suggests a way that makes it easier for some students to get out of the venture business, it's hard to judge for yourself and that injustice is what you can probably write a book about how to distinguish between people, you can never tell for sure a social network for x instead of reacting. Oddly enough, but it's also a second factor: startup founders, if you threatened a company that has become part of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had zero effect on returns, and Fred Wilson to fund them.

Source: Nielsen Media Research. Pliny Hist. When companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be heading for a monitor is that the big winners aren't all that matters financially for investors. I've also heard them called Mini-VCs and the super-angels will snap up stars that VCs miss.

Thanks to Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.