#I’m seeing it at a local ‘independent’ theater

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

(Hi there! If you saw/voted in this poll, why don’t you check out Swiftlit, my new Taylor Swift podcast. It would mean a lot to me :) 🩷)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Happy Independent Bookstore Day!

Tomorrow (Apr 25) I’ll be in San Diego for the launch of my new novel, Red Team Blues, at 7PM at Mysterious Galaxy Books, hosted by Sarah Gailey. Please come and say hi!

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It’s Independent Bookstore Day! I love bookstores, especially indies. I’m a recovering bookseller (love you, BakkaPhoenix!) and an inveterate and absurdly optimistic buyer of books — just this weekend, I bought three books at the LA Times Festival of Books, from Pages and Octavia’s Bookshelf!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#ibd

Supporting indie bookstores doesn’t mean foregoing the convenience of buying online. Libro.fm pioneered a model that lets you nominate your favorite local bookstore, which receives part of the proceeds from every audiobook you buy at Libro (where all the audiobooks are DRM-free).

Libro is celebrating indie bookstores all week with stellar deals on an incredible lineup of audiobooks, from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower to Chokepoint Capitalism, the book Rebecca Giblin and I wrote about how monopolies (including bookstore monopolies like Amazon) destroy the livelihoods of creative workers, and how to fight back:

https://libro.fm/ibd

You can also back your favorite indie bookstore when you shop online at Bookshop.org, who — like Libro — donate a portion of the cost of every book you buy to a nominated local bookseller:

https://bookshop.org/

Of course, nothing beats actually visiting your local bookstore, browsing the books, reading the shelf-reviews, and talking to knowledgeable, intelligent, passionate booksellers in person. I’m about to embark on a tour for my next novel, Red Team Blues, and I’ll be stopping at many great indie stores on the way.

Tomorrow, I’ll be in San Diego at Mysterious Galaxy Books for a launch with Sarah Gailey. On Wednesday, I’ll be in Burbank at Dark Delicacies. On May 5, I’ll be in Mountain View with Mitch Kapor at Books, Inc. There are plenty more stops, in PDX, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, DC, Gaithersburg, and all over the UK, finishing in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#red-team-blues-tour

I hope to see you there! Also, my family has asked that you stage an intervention if you see me buying more books while I’m on tour!

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Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in San Diego, Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

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[Image ID: A shot of the legendary El Ateneo bookstore, 'the world's most beautiful bookstore,' housed in a former grand theater in Buenos Aires, Argentina.]

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Image: Liam Quinn https://www.flickr.com/photos/liamq/5459406835/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

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[astriiformes]

16 for the writing meme?

16 - How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

If this is ideas + existing WIPs I haven't published yet, then I can come up with a solid 11 or 12 easily, because I just live like this.

One of the ones I've been thinking about again after getting to see a friend perform Shakespeare a few weeks ago is the Locked Tomb community theater AU, aka Gideon and Harrow both independently get roped into the most chaotic local production of Hamlet ever, with plenty of modern and college AU-type woes and side-plots for the characters to tackle at the same time. I still really want to write this one -- a fun opportunity to mess around with a big ensemble cast of characters I'd love to try my hand at writing, a love letter to Shakespeare's work, and a great opportunity to toy with weaving together themes from two different works of fiction in interesting ways, all bundled into one.

I will grace you all with a very short excerpt from the draft I have for that one, since I actually don't think I've posted any Locked Tomb fic snippets before:

“Pal,” Gideoen said, shoving her recently-returned exam in the TA’s face and shaking it around a little for good measure.“Friend, buddy, pa-- my guy. I’m gonna fucking fail.” Palamedes sighed – with far more world-weariness than he should have been allowed, as both someone barely older than she was and the person whose grade wasn’t on the fucking line at the moment -- and pushed his glasses up his nose, looking a little out of sorts from all the yanking. “I did try to persuade him to at least give you partial credit on question nine,” he said. “While it isn’t strictly accurate to say Galileo ‘gave the middle finger’ to the Roman Inquisition, it’s got something approximating the right spirit, and on account of having seen it, I’ll admit thought it was rather funn--” “—Hang on, back up. Seen what?” “His middle finger,” Palamedes replied – simply, as if that wasn’t a totally insane thing to say. “They’ve got it on display in the Museo Galileo, in, ironically enough, something a bit like a reliquary.” “That is fucked-up,” Gideon said, momentarily distracted from her own agonies by something much better – someone else’s agonies. “Is it just like bones now? Dead scientist bones?” “You know, if you care so much about scientist bones you could have treated mine a little kinder. I think I’ve got a bruise forming.”

[asparrowonthewind-blog]

Family Dinner

Family Dinner

Please bring tums… the main course is ANXIETY…

               My partner has decided to prospect into a local MC and since one of my side hustles in being a professional backpack I’m part of the packaged deal.  Now, as I’m currently on a journey to embrace my own interests and take back my sense of self, this opportunity for him also affords me a sense of freedom as it involves a lot of devotion on his part.  So, imagine my shock when he strode through the door and besmirched the purity of my month at a glance white bored with the emboldened words “Family Dinner” on every Tuesday.  

               “We eat dinner together every night…” I questioned trying to find the answer in the murky bog that was my pre-late afternoon snack haze swimming from assumption to assumption as I waded through junk food bucket.

               “Right, this is going to be with club family…” and when I tell you that it was like in the movies when the words slip out slowly, the voice deepening.  Well, you are going to have to remember I imagine most of my life through the lens of a Tex Avery cartoon.  Club family… CLUB family… CLUB FAMILY.  This means he was going to subject his little introverted pixie-goblin-nerd to… PEOPLE.

               Of course, I’m being dramatic, don’t worry I will peel myself from my fainting bench, but it did open an interesting thought pathway when it comes to relationships.  What is the healthy amount that one can expect a partner to integrate themselves when it comes to our own interests and independent hobbies?

               The gut reaction is that you don’t owe anyone your time, energy, or engagement, but hear me out.  When you enter a partnership, you make an agreement that the two of you are going to provide support to each other.  An exchange of encouragement, care and support is where most of us claim our relationships are birthed, but where is the line?  What happens if I really hate their hobbies?  What if I want nothing to do with their musical theater addiction?  What if they go to, and pause to clutch the pearls, conventions?  Ren faires? Sporting events? Am I expected to go to all these things?!

               No, but you do have to let them have their interests and be willing to be as flexible as you want them to be.  You are also responsible for boundaries and compromise.  Hey, you wanted this right?  Sure, it looked great at the time, you know when you were starting out before you knew all the things they did.  So, what do you do know that you guys are so very different?

               Well, if you’re me you abandon all your stuff and basically just do what they want to do until you resent them for it, cause that’s healthy and mature.  This is exactly the mindset that got me into the pickle I’m in now.  I want to show up and be supportive but also, I want a cheering section sometimes too.  I get told to go out and do what I need to do, but why does it always have to be alone? I go through life showing up, cheering on, moving planets all so the people I love have what they need to be content, but my bleachers are always empty.  I can’t make people care about things they don’t see value in, I can’t make them enjoy an event that makes them uncomfortable, so do I expect me to suck it up in the name of being a good partner…

               I know I need to say no, I know I need to do me, what I don’t know is how…

 *- I’m stressed, I’m a mess, and I’m doing my best -*

[vavandeveresfan]

Cleaning out the toy collection.

Hi.  I’m R.T.  I’m a recovering Toy Collector.  As in, I once had a large bedroom literally filled from floor to ceiling with bins of toys. When I moved I sold them all at auction.  With the exception of a few I wasn’t ready to part with yet.

Now I’ve hauled those out and I’m pulling out ones I’m ready to donate to my local independent vintage shop.

Since I’m a cartoonist and I love animation, a lot of my collection was/is Disney related.

So many Little Mermaids (1990).

Robin Hood was a huge influence on my drawing when it first opened.  This toy’s from around 2000.

Remember him?  (What was his name??)  From the early 1990s.

Remember this guy?  Hint: His show was on PBS and he loved books.

I collected A LOT of Happy Meal toys.  Happy Meal Frozone.

Happy Meal Violet.

If Happy Meal Mr. Incredible isn’t nightmare inducing enough for you . . .

. . .  how about Happy Meal Mrs. Incredible?

I can’t bring myself to sell these two yet.  They look so happy.  1995.

The unfocused stare of Love.

The Jungle Book was one of the biggest influences in my life when I saw it in theaters in 1967.  I wanted a Jungle Book lunchbox so badly, but Mom couldn’t afford it.  About 30 years later I bought one from a toy dealer for $60, which was a lot back then.  Now I look at it and just see how ugly it is.  Still, not ready to sell it yet.

When I was a kid I loved Kaa. Disney Store toy circa late 90s/early 2000s or so on the left, Happy Meal toy circa 1990 on the right.

Now Kaa gives off a p*do vibe.  Circa 1990.

The baby elephant, from 1967.

A J. Book bobble-head toy that came in cereal (don’t remember which one).  1967.

Three I’m keeping.

Bagheera was my favorite J. Book character.   This is my most loved toy of all time.  I got him when I was 7, which was 56 years ago.  This guy’s over half a century old.  I carried him around all the time.  He even went on carnival rides with me.

Someday I’ll repair his poor felt nose.

These are only a small portion of the toys I still own.

[princesshelicopter]

@uncleagonist told me about a fun little exhibit, Beautiful Monsters, coming up at a local independent theater, the Frida Cinema; so I figured I’d enter. Not sure I’ll be accepted, but in the least, it gave me another art prompt for the week. I’m a fan of Guillermo del Toro so how could I not enter. I had this idea of doing a stretching portrait similar to those in the haunted mansion at Disneyland. So, here’s what I’m entering on Friday. I’m also attempting to make a mock up of the portrait action, just to show how the artwork would be displayed in a stretching frame. The frame would start with just Eliza eating her bag lunch. Then as the portrait stretches, you’d see the creature’s hand reaching for the egg until it’s fully extended and reveals the whole creature. I’ve also had it printed so that if you shine a blacklight on the creature, his stripes glow blue, kind of like in the movie. The artwork will be for sale with profits going to the theater. Whether I make it in or not, I can’t wait to see what others are doing. Regardless, Pick me, pick me, pick me!!! . . . #disney+ #disneyland #hauntedmansion #theshapeofwater #hellboy #creaturefromtheblacklagoon #stretchingportraits #paulfreis #halloween @thefridacinema #guillermodeltoro #beautyandthebeast #forbiddenlove #moviefan #moviefanart #theshapeofwatermovie #theshapeofwaterfanart #crimsonpeak #panslabyrinth #pacificrim #nightmarealley #characterart #characterillustration #amphibianman #horror #horrormovies @realgdt https://www.instagram.com/p/CixPA6IL432/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ehgood-enough]

We’re very lucky and actually a local independent theater in town. We went today to go see the Mario movie. It was a 7p showing and as is normal there wasn’t a ton of people going. There were a couple families with younger kids who were SUPER excited.

One little boy (5-ish) was asking everyone who came in if they were excited to see the movie too. Most people shared his excitement. That little guy was hyping everyone up he was just so excited.

So again, nice local theater the owner runs the ticket booth so he knows who going into each show. In the lobby after they bought their tickets and we’re getting snacks that little boy was talking to his dad about if the movie was going to be really loud and the dad was like yeah going to be loud but I’m sure we’ll have fun. I heard the little boy ask his dad about how loud it was going to be a few time.

The movie started and it was a little quieter than the normal blow your ears out movie volume. Still plenty loud to get the full movie effect.

It just made me love my local theater so much more. My daughter said that he normal does lower the volume a little when there is a lot of kids in the theater.

[fancoloredglasses]

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (making it cool to talk over the movie since 1988)

[All images are owned by Factory. Seeing as you got your material from public domain, I hope you would find it hypocritical to sue]

(Thanks to jumpsuitjoel)

I’m going to apologize ahead of time. The start of this review is gonna seem a bit dry and rambling, but I promise there’s a point.

In the days before cable, there were two types of stations on TVs:

Channels 2-13 (for whatever reason, there was no Channel 1) were VHF (or “Very High Frequency”) stations and had better reception on these things called “antennas” that were either large enough to need to be mounted to the top of houses or small enough to be on top of the TV (the good old-fashioned “rabbit ears”) These were usually the stations that were the local affiliates for the major networks (at the time those were ABC, NBC, PBS, and CBS) due to the signal being more expensive to maintain.

Channels 14 and up (83 until the 80s, then it was cut back to 69) were UHF (or “Ultra-High Frequency”) were cheaper to operate but often were difficult to receive depending on where the antenna was located, what was around it and its alignment (you either had to adjust the rabbit ears or install a device that would rotate the antenna on your house) The majority of these were unaffiliated (or “independent”) stations that mostly aired reruns and local-interest programming (like sporting events involving the Home Team) When cable took over and every production company wanted their own network (Fox, UPN, WB, CW, etc.), most of these were gobbled up as affiliates.

You may be asking what the history of broadcast TV has to do with Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or “MST3K”) Trust me, I’m getting to that.

One of the mainstays of independent stations is the afternoon movies. Most stations on weekends from noon until prime time would have a steady stream of older movies. They tended to have the same hundred or so movies on rotation (did you miss The Ghost and Mr. Chicken on the afternoon movie? No sweat, it’ll be back in about 3 months!) The reason the movies were older was they were cheaper to purchase. In fact, some were so old they were in the public domain and could be bought by the station for next to nothing!

Now, a lot of these movies were, shall we say, less than fresh if Rotten Tomatoes had existed when they came out (why do you think they were so cheap?) Which brings us to our review.

A comedian named Joel Hodgson approached an independent station in Minneapolis about a way to “spice up” the stinkers the station had acquired: he and his friends would crack jokes at the movie. The backstory was that he’s forced to watch them after being imprisoned on a spacecraft known as the Satellite of Love. The show was enough of a hit that the idea was bought by the Comedy Channel (later Comedy Central)

The premise stayed pretty much the same, but Joel was an employee of a company known as the Gizmonics Institute.

His supervisor Dr. Clayton Forrester and his minion assistant who went by the name “TV’s Frank” were the ones who kidnapped Joel and shipped him off to the Satellite of Love. The plan was that they would see how long it would take a steady diet of bad movies to drive Joel insane.

Joel might’ve succumbed to madness had he not scavenged parts of the satellites to build robotic companions (though given their personalities, it may have already been too late for poor Joel)

Tom Servo is one of the bots that Joel watches the films with along with...

...Crow T. Robot.

Gypsy controls the major functions of the Satellite of Love. Since that takes up much of her processing power, she can sometimes seem a bit slow-witted.

Cambot is the primary means of communication between Forrester and the Satellite of Love.

After 6 seasons (including Minnesota), Joel decided to leave the show. However, Dr. Forrester needed a new guinea pig for their experiment so...

(Thanks to Xander Lars Knight)

Other than the change in guinea pigs, nothing much changed.

Two seasons later, TV’s Frank was killed off leaving Dr. Forrester alone in his lab, so he brought in...

...his mother Pearl. This lasted one season before Comedy Central cancelled the show. However, the show got life as a feature film (so...a movie about guys talking over a movie?) before being picked up by the Sci-Fi Network (what is now known as SyFy)

Due to lack of funding. Dr. Forrester cut his losses (literally; he sent the Satellite of Love into deep space!), but 500 years in the future, a cyrogenically frozen Pearl (don’t ask) is thawed and she drags the Satellite of Love back to Earth to continue the experiment (and Mike hasn’t aged much in the meantime) until the series was finally ended with season 10 (until it was revived on Netflix in 2017 with a new guinea pig named Jonah. I haven’t seen the new series but I can’t imagine the format has changed much)

These days, Foundry (the production company that owns MST3K has started a streaming service where you can watch the first 10 seasons for free.

As always, if you would like to see any episodes reviewed (how exactly would I do that? I mean, the cast is already telling better jokes than I could...), let me know.

And now for the sign off...

(Thanks to DovahBudgie100)

[logicalstansadvice]

Same person who asked the question about sharper.

Yes I am in the US. But when I went to fandango it says that it’s in theaters on the 17th. I have Apple TV so it’s not a problem if I don’t get to watch early, but I was hoping that I would be able to.

I’m located in DC so it’s not like I’m in the middle of nowhere. I figured that there was a pretty strong chance that I could see it the week before. But I can’t find any information for any locations. I’m gonna sign up anyways. Hopefully I can get some answers from that. Im sure we’ll at least have some news by the time February comes around.

Lady Danger - Since it’s limited release in theaters (and for NYC, I know the indie theaters that will probably show it like they did for The Bronze/I, Tonya/Fresh) so maybe check your local independent movie theatre - they might know if they’re getting it already.

[concerthopperblog]

Two Decades of Destruction Descends on Knoxville

A steamy night just outside the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains belied the incredible evening that was in store for the city of Knoxville, Tennessee. The Two Decades of Destruction tour featuring As I Lay Dying, Whitechapel, Shadow of Intent and Ov Sulfur had a massive line of fans outside The Concourse abuzz with excitement, even as the show start time got pushed back by 30 minutes, twice. Once fans got inside, if they were hoping for a ton of relief from the blistering heat, they were going to be disappointed as it was almost equally as hot inside.

Despite the heat, the fans packed inside the venue, now set in a new location in a building that is part of a strip mall. The first band to stride across the stage in the sweltering room was Las Vegas’ Ov Sulfur. Fronted by former Suffokate frontman Ricky Hoover, the band exuded power and force. Looking around the crowd in between snapping photos, the faces of the fans told the stories as many had facial expressions ranging from pleasant surprise to the proverbial metal “stank face.” It seems that the guitar pedalboard, set to a program mode called “Big Dick Energy” set the theme for the evening as the band dominated the stage.

Next to take on the crowd and the steamy atmosphere were Shadow of Intent from Connecticut. For those unfamiliar with the band, they formed in 2013 as, of all things, a Halo-themed studio project……. yes, THAT Halo, the popular Xbox Game Studios franchise shooting game. Impressively, the band has grown completely on their own as independents without the support of any record label. Much like the other bands on the billing, they exuded absolute power. All of the members controlled the stage as if they’d been on it for decades, particularly entertaining for me as a photographer was drummer Bryce Butler.

Of all of the places to see the next band on the lineup, Knoxville might be the most ideal of them all. Whitechapel hails from the city and has done their best to give back continuously. Every year they perform a charity show for local residents for Christmas (the band made sure to tell everyone they’d see them again for the annual show this year as well.) Surrounded by family, friends and masses of fans who have been there for the band’s entire rise to heavy metal legends, the group tore into a set that contained many of their fan-favorite tracks. Spanning the entire discography of the band, the group treated everyone to a monumental show, even throwing in tracks with almost entirely clean vocals like Hickory Creek to show off vocalist Phil Bozeman’s diversity. By the end, the instruments and the fans were coated in sweat and happy to be present.

Finally, it was time for the headliner, As I Lay Dying to stride in to the light of the Knoxville stage. Of course, you can’t talk about As I Lay Dying without addressing the massive elephant in the room that is the criminal case surrounding vocalist Tim Lambesis. I’m not going into it at length here in this article, there’s plenty of information about the trial and everything to do with it online. The band now consists of just two original members, Lambesis and Phil Sgrosso. The rest of the band is filled out with members of other powerful metal bands like bassist Ryan Neff from Miss May I. The band carried on without a hiccup as they played through the discography, dating back almost two decades (hence the tour name) to the delight of the fans. The members all played to the crowd, obviously enjoying being on the stage. At one point a gentleman in a wheelchair crowd surged his way to the front, garnering a high five from Lambesis. The evening was great fun and was a treat for heavy music fans.

This tour is only just beginning so there’s still plenty of time to check them out if you live in a state the tour is coming to. Additionally, Brand of Sacrifice will be joining the tour which only bolsters the already stacked lineup. Check out the remaining tour dates below:

06/23 – Stroudsburg, PA @ The Sherman Theater ^ 06/24 – Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom * 06/25 – Hartford, CT @ Webster Theater * 06/26 – Elmira, NY @ The L * 06/27 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxian * 06/29 – Louisville, KY @ Paristown Hall * 06/30 – Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live * 07/01 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Intersection * 07/02 – Ft. Wayne, IN @ Pierre’s * 07/05 – Moline, IL @ The Rust Belt * 07/06 – Green Bay, WI @ EPIC Event Center * 07/07 – Omaha, NE @ Admiral * 07/08 – Des Moines, IA @ Val Air * 07/10 – Billings, MT @ Zoo Montana * 07/11 – Great Falls, MT @ The Newburry * 07/12 – Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory * 07/14 – Grand Junction, CO @ Mesa Theater * 07/15 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Sunshine Studios * 07/16 – Wichita, KS @ The Wave * 07/17 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom *

^ = no Brand of Sacrifice * = no Ov Sulfur

 As always, please feel free to browse around ConcertHopper’s website further and to check out our articles covering a wide variety of topics. Please also check us out on social media on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Life is a beautiful thing and music only adds to that beauty, take some time to get out and celebrate beauty and life with a community of like-minded individuals at a concert soon, it’s always worth the price of admission.

[selinakyls]

Lexi’s play: who approved it? who paid for it? A speculative text

There’s been a lot of speculation going around about Lexi’s play: how was the drama club able to afford such high production value? who approved it? was there any supervision whatsoever? I am here to give my (entirely uneducated*) opinion and personal theories on the subject.

Who approved it?

First things first, who on their right mind approved and supervised this play?

You might not like the answer but the truth is: no one did. We all saw Lexi go and ask the principal if she could ‘‘put on’’ her play, but we also know Oklahoma is the Drama Club’s play. Which leads me to the conclusion that Our Life is an independent production that is only using the school’s theater (and maybe some props?) as a venue. 

How on earth did a play put on by two high school girls achieve such high production value?

Now this is the most interesting part, and unfortunately the one with less information so at this point I’m only making shit up.

First theory: Miss Lexi is **very close** with local drug dealer Fezco who has a soft spot for her and is on record being very supportive of the play an so he paid for it to support his woman.

I love this theory and it´s entirely self indulgent. Unfortunately canon does show they’re still very nervous with each other so I can’t see them yet on ‘‘let me give u money to put on a play’’ stage of their relationship. Maybe Fezco can get production credits on her next one though.

Second theory: Bobbi and Lexi (Ethan too, why not) have more money than we thought and they’re paying for it out of pocket.

Now I’ll go on record and say this is my favorite theory and personal headcanon and it’s based entirely on speculation and very flimsy ‘‘evidence’’. The idea that the Howard family is more well off than we might think rests entirely on Suze being tipsy every single time we see her, and the fact that she always seems to be at home. Leading me to believe that woman does not work for a living. And you know the type of people who don’t have to work for a living? That’s right: rich people.

Now, why do I think Bobbi is rich as well? Honestly? Just because. Bobbi declaring she thinks Lexi is brilliant was, not only very endearing, but it also lead me to think Bobbi believes 100% on Lexi’s vision, so yeah if she was rich I could see her putting money on it. Same thing with Ethan.

And that’s it folks, hope you liked my entirely unfounded and uneducated attempt to make Euphoria make sense.

*When I said it was uneducated I meant it, I’m not even from the US so I have no idea how the high school system there actually works.

[csykora]

Yeah, so, that’s been going on.

I am going to try to summarize what’s been up with Pasha. Thanks to @immoveableobject, the Moscow Times, and the Independent. This is going to be Drunk History in the sense that you should have a stiff drink or another coffee before reading. There’s…context.

After Nikolai II abdicated as emperor in 1917, the Romanov family were sent to live under summer-cabin-arrest in Tobolsk, in Tyumen region (western Siberia). Nikolai spent the summer reading books and chopping firewood to take his mind off things, which he wrote was his favorite activity.

Disagreements between Omsk (the capital of Tyumen) and an acquisitive Yekaterinburg (in the Ural region which neighbors Tyumen to the west), led Moscow to order they move the Romanovs back west. The guards transporting them contacted Moscow to say they had to take a route that passed closer to Omsk, which made Yekaterinburg think Omsk was going to keep them, so they called Moscow too and insisted the convoy stop in Yekaterinburg instead, where the Romanovs were stored in a local merchant’s house.

At that unrelated but unfortunate point, the Czechoslovak Legion came into it. This wasn’t a unit named for the country, which didn’t even exist yet: it consisted of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks who had been volunteered to fight with the Russian army back in 1914. Leaders in the Czech and Slovak homelands of the Austro-Hungarian empire thought this would improve their name recognition in the international community, and build credit toward their own independence after the war. Czech history is actually just dramatic irony.

They were highly effective against the Germans, and then sent east. By 1918 the Czechoslovaks were stationed all along the railroad into Siberia. They were not jazzed about the Bolsheviks. They turned around toward Yekaterinburg to express this.

The guards in Yekaterinburg, who thought the Czechs were coming to take the Romanovs, took them down into the cellar and executed them.

Time passed and so did the Soviet Union. The site of the executions became a church. That church has a shrine in the cellar. It’s not the same cellar, but an exact replica; the church was shifted a bit for a better foundation, so the actual site is now an outside wall. It’s called The Temple on the Blood, although, again, it isn’t on it. 

In 1981 the Romanovs were named martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church that isn’t outside Russia recognized them as passion-bearers. A passion-bearer is believed to have ‘faced their death in a Christ-like manner.’ A martyr is believed to have died defending their faith in Christ. So all martyrs are passion-bearers, but not all passion-bearers are martyrs.

The entire story is going to be like this.

Sometime around 1980, a different man who wasn’t named Nikolai Romanov originally but is now killed someone. He was, of course, a cop. He was sent to a prison camp in Tyumen region for thirteen years. When he was released, he says he walked the length of the Romanov’s last journey to Yekaterinburg.

At some point along the way he changed his legal name from whatever it used to be, became a priest, and took the religious name Father Sergei. 

He found a decrepit old monastery and rebuilt it, becoming the confessor for the nuns that live there. He found the pit outside the city where the Romanovs’ bodies were dissolved in acid, called Ganina Yama, and built a complex around Tsar Nikolai’s final resting place.

Except, again, he didn’t. The bones that had been found in Ganina Yama in 1919 weren’t even human. The Yekaterinburg guards didn’t manage to destroy the Romanovs’ bodies (they apparently didn’t bring enough acid with them, because this was all a fuck up), so they buried them in the forest a few kilometers away. The actual burial place was found in 1978 (with the last two children found a little ways away in 2007), and the Romanovs were finally given a funeral in St. Petersburg in 1998. The Orthodox Church did not attend, and still maintains this did not happen and the Romanovs are nowhere but Ganina Yama.

His new next door neighbor told the Independent she was doing the dishes one evening and looked out to see a bunch of strange nuns performing exorcisms.

 “They circled around the house; devil this, devil that. And then they put a cross outside our toilet.”

The monastery continued on, annoying their neighbors and growing steadily weirder, for years. Nikolai went from passion-bearer to martyr to a direct analogue of Christ, dying for Russia’s sins. Everything superficially connected to him became, at least to some Russians, holy. The monastery and pilgrimage site became one of the most popular in Russia. Father Sergei came to international attention for:

1. his writing desk, which is a coffin

2. getting big mad about the 2017 film Matilda, which is about young Nikolai fucking ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, which he very much did do. 

Politician Natalia Pokolnskaya, who attends Father Sergei’s services, had the film pulled and audited for its “anti-Russian” Tsar-sex scenes. Another follower of Father Sergei drove his car into a movie theater and then tried to set it (the car, although also the theater I guess) on fire with a Molotov cocktail after attending services at the Temple on the Blood. Another made his own film in response to the film, saying, 

“Imagine someone makes a film showing your mother as a prostitute and your father as a German gay porn actor. Go inside the church, look at the lord tsar’s blue eyes and you will see how moral he is.”

Everyone forgets the longer verses of John Lennon’s Imagine.

At some point in the mid 2000s, hockey player Pavel Datsyuk started going to Father Sergei as his confessor. He very much did do that, and stuck by him through the movie thing. When he won gold at the World Championships he gave the medal to the monastery, saying, “we won it together.”

This summer he told Championat, “Father Sergei has been my spiritual father for more than 10 years. [He] has a burning, loving heart, he sees me through and through." Maybe not a great choice of adjective, given the arson.  

Then coronavirus. 

This spring, Patriach Kirill of Moscow issued a decree to suspend church services. As in most things, though, the rest of Russia runs on the words, “Moscow is far away.” Whether or not the Patriarch has power to tell churches outside Moscow to do anything without a full Synod is its own debate: it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t listen.

Russian Orthodox churches held Pasha like usual, and a lot of people got sick, with at least one bishop dying and the virus spreading dangerously in monasteries. Patriarch Kirill repeated himself, threatening that any priest who conducts services with members of his congregation present may be penalized by an ecclesiastical court.

Father Sergei thinks coronavirus tests are an excuse for Putin to inject people with tracking devices, so back in June—you remember June, right?—he and a bunch of armed Cossacks holed up in the monastery, saying, “I’m not going anywhere... they’ll have to chase me out with police and the National Guard.”

Remember he is writing that statement on his coffin.

The ostensible head of the monastery, Mother Superior Varvara, did not appreciate Cossack boots on her carpets, and quit “to avoid unnecessary infighting, to which Father Sergei is prone, and give him a chance to come to his senses.”

Patriach Kirill and the ecclesiastical courts booted him from the church, although not the monastery, which he is very much still inside.

At that point we got reports that Pavel was holed up in the monastery with him to avoid coronavirus testing. There was a brief flurry on certain (old) parts of hockey twitter that Pasha was off his rocker.

His agent, Dan Milstein, responded by posting a video on twitter, accompanied by the comment, “Pavel Datsyuk’s morning workout and family breakfast at the cottage. Have a good summer everyone!”

It’s short, showing, for some reason, a man from behind against a generic wall. We don’t need to get into whether or not it is Pavel, and if so where and when. I’d hope no one but a hockey player hikes his socks up like that. But whatever Pavel’s role in creating it, in context there’s something unsettling about the choice of subject: like Nikolai Romanov, he’s chopping firewood.

[b1tchplanet]

how to pirate shows and movies: a dumb bitch’s guide

I've been getting some notes on this post about how to pirate shows & movies, so I figured I’d make a better, text reader-friendly version. 

drink up me hearties yo ho

ye olde megacorporations got ye down? want to see the yoda baby without havin’ ta sell yer soul to The Mouse? i got space for ya on deck. join me hardwerkin’ crew, and we’ll sail the seas of entertainment, free from the ir’n fetters of brand loyalty!

Welcome to my pirating tutorial! You should be able to follow this if you have basic computer knowledge. Fair warning, I’m not an expert on anything, but in fact, a dumb bitch.

1. Buy a VPN service. VPNs basically temporarily change your IP address. You need a VPN so you don’t get cease and desist letters from your internet provider. Idk actually what happens if you don’t “cease and desist” but probably better not to find out. There are free ones out there, but they’re all shady. I paid for 16 months of Express VPN for like a hundred something.

2. Buy an external hard drive. Unless you’re planning on keeping only what you’re currently or soon to be watching on your hard drive, you need more space because video files are big. I bought a 5 TB external hard drive for a hundred something and named her Big Terra. That’s hopefully more space than I’ll ever need.

2a. Quick word on external hard drives. They come in HDDs (hard disc drives) and SDDs (soft disk drives). HDDs have little spinning disks in them and it makes them way easier to break, so if it’s knocked off a table while it’s running it’ll probably be toast. SSDs are way more stable and usually slimmer, and dropping them isn’t a death sentence, so they’re better. BUT HDDs can hold more shite, and for some reason SSDs skyrocketed in price in January 2020, and they were more expensive to begin with. Big Terra is an HDD and I just have to be very careful with her.

3. Download a torrent client. A torrent client is a program that can open and use torrent files, I guess?? The one I downloaded was qBittorrent.

3a. Megan, what’s a torrent? I barely know lol. Torrents let you download files faster, because other people have pieces of that file and they’re sharing them on the torrent client -- that’s called “seeding.” 

3b. Why do torrents exist? Can’t we just download MP4 files of movies and shows? Yeah, but 1) it’s a lot slower and 2) most sites that host those files (aside from being saturated with malware porn ads) get taken down by the Internet Police.

3c. Why are sites that host torrent files not taken down by Internet Police? Idk. Maybe I’ll get back to you.

4. Find the stuff! PirateBay is the most popular and the only one I’ve tried to use, but there are other sites like it. Not everything you look for will be on there. IDK how to host torrents yet but maybe I’ll pay it forward when I learn how and host files on Pirate Bay or something. 

5. Is this morally bad? Fam I love a good analysis. I majored in English. Maybe I’ll write a paper analyzing this question. The short answer is not really. Like refilling your cup with soda when you paid for water at McDonald’s. It’s not honest and maybe don’t do it because people will look at you weird, but you’re costing some rich asshole like .00007 cents so don’t worry about confessing it to your priest. 

6. What is the long answer? I told you I’m not an expert. The money you spend buying DVDs doesn’t go to any of the actors or people who created the movie/show, it goes to the distribution company. And money you spend on a streaming service goes to the streaming service, who then decides how much they want to pay a distribution company for the rights to their movie/show, and same with cable TV. [I’m actually just assuming by the way, that this is how the flow of money works. Someone fact check me, but this is logically probably how it works.] The distribution company is who pays for all of the hard workers who make shows and movies. So logically the distribution company needs to make a shitton of money in order to support these projects. That’s where your money comes in, and it jumps through lots of hoops and eventually makes it to the distribution company. However distribution companies are giant corporations and they do much, much, much better than just break even. They make a shitton of profit that ends up in some billionaire asshole’s pocket. That’s the person you deprive of money. 

7. But Megan, that’s how all capitalism works! Sure is. 

8. But Megan, if we don’t line the pockets of rich assholes who own streaming services who in turn line the pockets of rich assholes who own distribution companies, how will those companies be motivated to make movies and shows? That’s capitalism, baby. Movie profits are complicated but a big portion of it comes from the box office/movie theaters and merchandising. And I’m a bitch that loves a movie theater. I collect the ticket stubs. Go to the movie theater sometimes to support the rich assholes who support hard-working cast & crew of a film. Shows are a different animal and I don’t really know shit about how their profits are made, except it’s probably mainly advertising, streaming rights, and merchandising. In that case, since you’re not paying for ads or a streaming service, line the pockets of the rich assholes who support the show by buying merchandise.

9. But Megan, aren’t you just making excuses? I mean maybe. I never claimed to be a genius or perfect. But honestly torrenting isn’t that different from a public library - someone originally has the files, and people are sharing them with each other and no one is making money. We’re all out here trying to live and make ourselves happy by watching some cool shows. If you’re worried about the moral quandary of not paying for this stuff, make it a point to support local artists and independent filmmakers, because those are the real people who aren’t making any money.

Thanks for reading! Good luck on your pirating journey!

[stylishanachronism]

Classic Aedyran and/or Dyrwoodan love story archetypes (and which gods they do and/or REALLY REALLY DO NOT invoke or involve)?

This went extremely sideways and also has no internally consistent organization, but that’s why it’s a series of bullet points and not an essay.

So Aedyrans are pretty obviously into three things: duty, tragedy, and Drama. Like on the surface it’s all austere dutiful piousness but go like, an inch below that and the dramatics just start pouring out.

-I’m not saying Aloth isn’t like, legit anxious about the very real trouble he’s about to be or currently in, I’m just saying a solid chunk of that is rooted in a culture that takes ancestor worship to really weird places, among other things, and literally none of it is as big a problem as literally anybody is making it out to be.

—the appearance of not even wrongdoing but just.... not enough virtue signaling is *just as bad* as actual wrongdoing. (They blackmail that one kid with his mom’s probably-fictional indiscretions? To the point where it kills him even.) Like ‘I saw Goody Proctor vent’ is actually the name of the game here.(1)

That being said, and given soap operas have not been invented, we’ve probably got three major schools of art:

-high brow morality plays in which either our poor ill fated couple, torn apart by (unscrupulous relatives? That hussy down the street? A wild misunderstanding involving a stolen baby who was swapped for another stolen baby? Somebody’s being tempted away from true love here, to whatever end) fate, dutifully come back to each other and are deliriously respectably happy together, or fall into despair and die over their bad choices. Think extra-overwrought Victorian ‘modernists’(which I heartily don’t recommend.), crossed with the soapiest tellanovellas you can imagine (which if you’re into that style of drama, I do)

-fantasy Shakespeare, where all the dick jokes are so old nobody recognizes them any more, possibly with a moral stapled to the end

-eyebrow raising, too much for today’s delicate stomachs, fucking wild shit presented as ‘educational’, with worse shit underground(2), because the veneer is more important than the reality of the thing.

But the major tropes you’re going to see like.... overall, not just in theater, are probably more community based? Like, you fall in love with your neighbor’s kid, she falls in love with you, so you both go to your mothers and they’ll determine whether it’s a good match or not, you technically don’t really get a say in the matter.(3) There’s also probably a lot of superstition involved? Like, if the omens are bad you’re not getting married, but if they’re just okay you may have to wait six months.

-also there’s a lot of hideously complex contract work over who’s marrying into what, among other things.

—divorce isn’t an option! Better hope your relatives pick wisely!

—- more accurately divorce is even more hideously complex and expensive, so unless your spouse is actively trying to kill you it’s probably not worth it, and even then you’d probably have serious second thoughts.

In terms of like, the Ideal Romantic Partner (not necessarily romantic partner, but given you’ve got to be married if you want to(socially acceptably) have sex or have kids, because Aedyrans are wild), you’re probably looking at someone dutiful, who will put their own comfort second to keeping their word, cultured but not smug about it, efficient but thorough, graceful and always perfectly composed no matter what happens, soft spoken without being servile, and the whole package should come across as effortless.

We’re attempting to ignore all the work I’ve done re: shitty Protestants, so we’ve canonically got nobody actually in charge of marriage anywhere, so probably you’re praying to Woedica (to keep your contract) and Hylea (if you need this marriage to be fruitful), and maybe even Ondra (to ensure everybody remains faithful, because Aedyrans are Dramatic, and the fucking moon bedroom is a thing)

As for the Dyrwodans:

Less repression + more inversion ceremonies mean they’re way less dramatic in general, but obviously that means they’re still Really Dramatic, given they’re into swearing eternal feuds over literally nothing every other day. They place a much stronger importance on soul lineages than blood lineages, but whether you take that into consideration re: romance probably depends on what current feuds your family and/or community is currently embroiled in, and how serious they are. And if you have the cash/local cipher to get said lineage traced.

-Theater tropes are going to tend towards the comedic (think 27 dresses, or some other friendshippy romcom) and bawdy, and also fantasy Shakespeare, now with added dick jokes, because the existing ones are still too old to be recognizable, and probably some of the less overwrought Aedyran and Vailian plays, maybe. Also the whole theater plot, because that is a thing, even if they’ve had to bury it both deeper and shallower than Aedyr.

As a general thing, marriage is still mostly a practical thing, and while your families are definitely involved, they’ve generally got much less of a say in it. Outside of high society weddings, which are obviously more alliances than anything else, there’s generally not a contract so to speak; because children belong to their mothers, and nobody much cares where she got them unless she’s already married, when and if she does get married, it’s socially expected that her new spouse will join her household, and splitting up a household is so socially unacceptable murder is a neater, less fraught solution than divorce(4).

Your Ideal Romantic Partner (who probably is romantic, unless you need an extra pair of hands all the time that badly) is clever without being supercilious, with an easy disposition and a good sense of humor, willing to take life as it comes, but also to defend what they’ve got to their last breath, generous and community minded, but still independent enough not to need looking after, forthright but not unkind, and you should be able to tell how hard they work for whatever it is they want.

As for gods: pre everything, you’re probably looking to Abydon, to build your disparate members into a household, and Eothas, to make that household into a home. Post everything, it’s just Abydon, maybe Magran to ask that whatever trials you face make you stronger together. I don’t know, there isn’t a really good option there re: canon.

1: the Readcerans somehow take this even further but in an even weirder direction, this shit is wild, babes, but we’re not talking about them today

2: I’ve got a specific horrible irl example in mind but we’ll go with the theater quest in PoE, turned up to 11, because that lot hasn’t had nearly as much time to get established as Aedyran equivalents have.

3: congrats this is why Aloth is so hard to romance I guess. Nobody has approached his mother about him/he hasn’t asked his mother to approach anyone. Also I have extensive thoughts on the vagaries of social class re: marriage, so like, who exactly does the approaching is probably equally complex!

4: look I didn’t put that quest in there, what the fuck else am I intended to think? ....I mean Obsidian definitely definitely didn’t expect me to come up with polyamory gone wrong but like I’m not reaching when I say that’s the conclusion I came to. Hooray for weddings?

[oceansgratitude]

Me and the Megamind Fandom

Hey, since I’m recently getting more interaction with the Megamind fandom than I have in a long time, and I’m already overwhelmed by the new discord, I thought I’d share a little of what my experience has been with this fandom, cause I don’t really talk about myself very much.

I first saw the movie in theaters with my family when I was, like, thirteen. I wanted to watch Tangled instead, but Megamind had the majority vote. After words, I had a new favorite movie ever.

I ravenously read fanfictions that came out on fanfiction.net. I know all the old good stuff (as long as I haven’t forgotten a bunch of it... which I’m sure I have.) I was vaguely aware of art being posted on social media, but I wasn’t really on it.(I’m still not, really.) 

During that two-year-ish period, I was being homeschooled because our local Middle School was just awful (Bullies, mean teachers, bad experiences, etc.). I had no friends, my four siblings were always on their computers, and I never got out of the house. During that time I ran myself through self-improvement programs, exercised, and wrote a lot because I didn’t want that time of lame-ness to define me. I fancied myself a future writer. I have a lot of pieces in my Google Drive from that time, and I’ve lost some of it that I’ll never get back.

I learned about the livejournal website for the Megamind fandom from a link in an author’s note, so I’m on there just enough to get emails about new posts, which happens once in a blue moon. Then, either from there or another author’s note,  I learned that a bunch of us are on Tumblr, so I went and made myself a Tumblr account.

At some point in there, my family moved to Texas, and I started high school. I got dang good at writing, as far as I knew. My journalism teacher let me turn in poems instead of the actual assignments and sometimes asked me to read them in front of the class.

I also developed a strong affinity for fish? I’m not sure if they’re may favorite because of Minion, or if Minion is my favorite because of them. My mom and I kept a goldfish pond in the backyard, and I studied their biology. Whenever someone doesn’t know what to get me for a present, anything with a goldfish on it is a safe bet. And I once took a little goldfish in a giant jar to all my classes, and it got loads of attention. Apparently lots of people are afraid of fish? I was thinking about Minion the whole time.

One time in color guard we were doing a dance warm-up, and our instructor was like “yo, let’s switch this up” and we switched songs to Micheal Jackson’s “I’m Bad.” And right after words, one of my best friends said, “At least I can listen to that song without thinking about Megamind.” At the time I hid my face in my hands to hide my blush, but in hindsight, I should have said, “Well, apparently, you CAN’T!”

I thought I’d integrate myself into the Megamind community through sheer power of writing and art skills. But back then, I didn’t really know how human relationships worked. And I wasn’t good at the whole self-discipline thing either (it’s still something I struggle with.)

I got all kinds of mixed feelings about Tumblr. I enjoyed learning about people, finding cool content, and getting feedback for my own content. But there’s also a lot of extremism on here. It makes me nervous about sharing too much of myself because “open-mindedness” on tumblr seems different from its normal definition. I feel like I have to be careful not to step on toes or accidently label myself as an enemy.

Not that I’ve been involved in drama! That’s just an anxiety I had. I was the type to drop into a discord like “hey, here’s this thing I wrote, please read it and tell me what you think, okay, bye!” and the disappear for months and feel bad about the irrational idea that no one liked me.

I found a fandom friend through tumblr, joined a discord, and just chilled there for a few years. I was barely on it. I didn’t know anyone particularly well, but it was cool to get ideas, see the differences in our lives, and get feedback for my fan projects, which were few and far-in-between, but which meant a lot to me.

I graduated high school and moved out to Idaho for college, studying Communication. I like writing and art and music, and I couldn’t pick one so I took a major that would help me use all of those things to make $$$. I really only checked on the fandom once in a while. 

There I learned about some drama that happened in the Megamind fandom a while ago? Well, not learn ABOUT exactly.  I just learned that it existed and it was too terrible to bring up again. Which, okay, cool? I’ll try not to be a meanie, I guess? Can we all just be friends?

I got married in May 2020 (a video news crew showed up so all the world could know that there were only eight people sitting in the spaced-out chairs. Only my family was able to make it) and we finished the whole Ceremony in December up in Idaho with just my hubby’s parents. I graduated and got my degree in December, too. And now I’m living in an apartment with my husband (which is freaking awesome) and filing taxes as an independent, and I have a full-time job while my dude’s still finishing school, and things have changed a lot really fast.

SO IN SHORT: I’ve been here the whole time (this dang 10-year-old movie has been part of my life for the whole second half of my childhood); I’m just not super social online. I’m actually an extravert with a crazy life. Also, please leave comments on my fanfictions and art! That makes me really happy, and that’s most of the social contact I have with ya’ll. That’s about it I guess. Thanks for reading through this whole thing. That’s pretty nice of you.

[justzawe]

And it may be worth checking with your local art house. - I am a big fan of a slightly obscure Australian period mystery series and right before the pandemic hit, the shows film came out and the only place it was showing near me was 200 miles away and I live in a fairly big U.S. city. Hopefully MML is not as art house as that film because that was definitely annoying. And unfortunately, the pandemic closed one of our only 2 independent film theaters so I’m a tad nervous anytime an independent film that I want to see in the theater comes out.

I guess we’ll see what happens