#If we instead pass all the difficult aspects of thinking and writing to the robots

[dillpicklepanic]

paying a robot to write an essay for me or make my resignation letter more professional or sharpen up an angry comment I'm about to leave on Reddit is equivalent to paying a robot to think my thoughts for me

[spencersawkward]

switchblade faith // spencer reid - chapter 1

summary: one month after joining the BAU, Clea is still settling in. between solving murders and getting acclimated to DC, the only comfortable thing in her life is her friendship with Dr. Spencer Reid.

relationship: fem!OC/Spencer Reid

word count: 3.4k

hi all! welcome to my new story.

I've never written a baby Spence fic before, but I'm gonna try my best. I just wanted to get something out of the way before the book starts:

aside from the fact that it's young Spencer, this book isn't placed in a specific season. I might pull cases from different episodes, but the characters will remain the same. I've included Emily and Rossi as characters because I couldn't bear to have a story without either of them (wouldn't want to subject any of you to a Prentiss-less world).

that's pretty much it. I'm glad you're here. if you wanna read my other stories, my masterlist is here.

happy reading :)

"HA!" I slap my hand down on the pile of cards and slide it towards me, organizing them in a neat pile with a smug expression.

"this game is a sham." Spencer sighs, reaching for his book.

"you're just mad you lost." I raise an eyebrow and shuffle the cards again. "you don't wanna play another round?"

"why would I? the only skill this game requires is fast reflexes." he runs hazel eyes down the page with an alarming quickness. I scoff at his disinterest.

"maybe if you trained those reflexes as much as you trained that big genius brain of yours, you'd get a leg up." Morgan teases from his spot next to me. Spencer glances at him with a frown, his cheeks turning a light pink, before looking to me. I throw up my hands.

"he said it, not me." secretly, I smile at the fact that Derek is backing me up.

"I could beat any of you in poker." Reid defends.

"easily. it helps that I don't even know how to play." I slide the cards back into the holder and cross my arms over my chest with a sigh.

"you don't know how to play poker?" he's shocked.

"I told you, I hate card games like that!" I emphasize. things like poker, blackjack, anything that involves multiple players, I usually don't enjoy much. Emily glances up from her case file with a tiny smirk.

"why?"

"I'm a sore loser." I admit, averting my eyes. there's also the risk factor involved, which includes giving up coins or pretzels or peanuts if I lose. I tend to cling tightly to all three. Prentiss lets out a laugh and Spencer flips the page of his book.

"and winner, apparently."

"you're sassy today, aren't you?" I grin at him, pleasantly surprised.

in the month I've been working here, I haven't spoken to Spencer very much. he's been polite and I've gotten to know his intellect quite well, but he doesn't spend a lot of time with us outside of work. when we go out to get drinks, he either declines or heads home before we can even ask, a bag full of books pressed to his side.

I think he just takes a while to get comfortable around new people-- that's what JJ said when I asked why he seemed to be avoiding me. the fact that he played cards with me today felt like a victory in itself, so I'll take what I can get.

Spencer doesn't reply to my dig, only crosses his long, narrow legs and settles into his book.

"we should start briefing before we land." Hotch and Rossi walk over from their spots at the front of the plane to sit on the couch by our table. I nod eagerly and watch as Emily flips open her laptop to FaceTime Penelope about the case.

the first couple cases were more difficult than I expected because I had never worked in the field before joining the BAU, but I'm starting to get used to flying around constantly and examining actual dead bodies. working sex crimes meant I spent most of my time in front of a computer screen or just staying in the office. this is incredibly different-- which I'm starting to find might not to be a bad thing.

"--the virus killed her hard drive and left that on the screen." Penelope explains, referring to the picture of Heather Woodland's computer.

"'for heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself'." Morgan reads the message aloud from the case file. the words feel familiar in my mind and I try to remember where I've heard them before.

"that's exactly what William Heirens left behind." Spencer sparks the memory. I sit up straighter.

"the Lipstick Killer?" my fingertips trace over the case details. it's a weird aspect of the murder to emulate, especially because he didn't even leave the message in lipstick. I guess he's not really concerned with that; based on the unsub's previous victims, we have just under 36 hours to find her.

"his first victim was Melissa Kirsh, 26," Reid scratches his nose as he reads, frowning so hard that I start to think he'll form permanent wrinkles. he's got such a baby face, it's almost funny. "stab wounds, strangulation."

"so he stabbed her first, and then strangled her to finish the job?" Morgan repeats.

"what's with using a belt for the second murder?" Emily flips through the papers, confused. Spencer stiffens in his spot as he realizes this is the perfect time to share his freakishly expansive forensic knowledge.

"strangulation with your bare hands actually isn't as easy as you would believe. he probably tried it, found that it took too long, then stabbed her. and blood takes a long time to clean, so he decided a belt would be more efficient."

"he's perfecting his method." I can't tear my eyes away from the photos, despite the roiling sensation they put in my stomach. even with the things I've already seen, I don't think I'll ever get over photographs like this.

"we'll be landing soon and then we're meeting up with the Seattle field office. be ready to split up once we hit the ground." Hotch snaps shut his case file and stands up, breaking off to go sit alone. Rossi takes note of the old card deck that sits on the table.

"poker?" he looks between the four of us.

"nope." Emily chuckles.

"this one doesn't know how to play." Morgan gestures to me, causing Rossi to turn to me.

"were you raised in a barn?" he asks in his usual manner of speaking: blunt sarcasm with a hint of mockery. I frown sarcastically.

"something like that."

"at some point this week, we'll sit down and I'll teach you." he gets up, pats my shoulder, and walks over to join Hotch. I lower my voice once he's far enough away.

"is he actually gonna make me do that?"

"you don't know Rossi." Morgan shakes his head slowly, slides his headphones back on, and sinks into his seat.

"I'll join and bring JJ with me." Emily winks at me reassuringly, noting the tapping of my nail against the surface of the table. Rossi is a legend in the field and I've read all of his books, but didn't want to freak him out by telling him so. it was embarrassing enough when I met him and got tongue-tied while shaking his hand. he's got an elusive energy that intimidates me, and I'd prefer not to showcase that by humiliating myself with poker.

instead of dwelling on thoughts of how I'm going to fail in front of my idol, I open up one of my books and try to pass the time.

...

while I'm writing some notes on one of the many white boards scattered throughout the field office, I realize that I'm one of four other women in the room, including Emily. she's talking to Hotch and another agent at the opposite end of the room; Reid is unpacking his signature book bag and seems deep in thought. Rossi is reading a document. everyone around me seems to be in a hurry to do something, and I begin to feel dumb.

"you okay?" Morgan asks me. I realize that I've been standing with my marker hovering over the board. my fingertips press into my temple before I turn to him.

"yeah, definitely. just thinking." my mind travels to the map we've got pasted up and the red marker lines that Spencer has already created with the geographical profile.

"looks like we're getting the classic Seattle treatment." Derek points outside to the rain pelting the windows, streaming down the glass and distorting the glow of the city outside. it's gloomy today, with a slight chill running through the streets. I nod and turn back to my task, suddenly realizing something.

"he's willing to travel with the body." I mutter to myself. Morgan steps up next to me, crosses his arms across his chest.

"he must drive a vehicle that can conceal one, then." he glances over to Hotch to see what the unit chief has to say, but Spencer speaks up first.

"one in seven point four drivers in Seattle owns an SUV." it's like a flip switches at the mention of a statistic, diverting his attention from something nebulous in his mind to the tangible case. he's a little similar to a robot.

"an Explorer with tinted windows?" Morgan speaks again as he looks over the case photos.

"those rate higher among women." Spencer again.

"sure, but how do we know it's his car?" I wonder.

"what about a Jeep Cherokee?" Hotch chimes in, almost startling me with the deep register of his voice. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth as I think on it.

"Jeeps are more masculine." Reid comes close to me in order to examine the picture I'm holding. he smells like clean laundry and some nice soap scent that I can't place. maybe it's the gel he uses to slick back his hair. no cologne or aftershave. I don't think he'd need to shave, what with his smooth baby face.

Spencer has some special quirks that make him a little more interesting. he usually avoids physical contact with other people-- doesn't shake hands-- but at other times, he doesn't seem to have self-awareness. like right now, where the shoulder of his red sweater is just barely touching mine. I hand him the picture and step away.

"unsubs love to assert their masculinity."

Hotch nods along, encouraging me to share more of what I'm thinking. after swallowing down a lingering nervousness, I tap the push pin marking where the last body was dumped. "he dropped her out-of-state, so he probably has a previous knowledge of law enforcement. maybe he's got a criminal record?"

"good, Williams." Hotch praises me. my fist clenches triumphantly at my side as he turns to the agent who has been watching us intently. "when do we meet with your task force?"

"four." the man replies. I balk at this, my posture shifting. the shortest time constraint I've ever had here has been a full day. it's already one in the afternoon.

"you want an accurate profile by four today?" I glance between Morgan and Spencer, but the latter is rocking back and forth on his heels with his eyes glued to the white board. Morgan doesn't seem put off by it.

"we can do that." Hotch scowls, snapping shut the case file with a finality that tells me we're about to split up. "Dave and Morgan, head to the last dump site. Williams, Reid, I want you to talk to Heather's brother and try to find out what you can about her life. Prentiss and I will stay here in case of new developments."

I nod curtly, grab my jacket, and glance over at Spencer. he runs his hand over his hair, although I can't imagine what there is to smooth down, then walks over to me.

"you ready to go?" I ask, brandishing the file. he and I have only done two interviews together; I spent most of my beginning weeks working with Emily to get a feel for the job. both times with the boy genius have been fine, if not a little awkward.

he nods in answer to my question. "would you mind driving?"

"no license?" I tease to lighten the mood, but he doesn't get the joke. instead, he frowns at me with something of a distracted expression, adjusts his bag.

"no, I don't like driving in the rain."

"oh," I recover quickly and put a friendly smile on my face. "no problem."

"thanks." he walks ahead of me and I cringe at my own behavior. he acts so differently from earlier on the jet that I start to wonder if I did something wrong. maybe he's just in his head or something; I know I would be if I had an IQ that enormous.

when we get to the house of Heather Woodland's brother, a gorgeous golden lab greets us in the entryway. she puts her paws up on my legs and I reach down to scratch behind her ears with a smile on my face.

"Sandy, calm down." her owner grabs her collar gently to calm her. "sorry."

"no, it's fine, I love dogs." I wave it off and step inside. Spencer is eyeing Sandy warily, but she seems just as eager to say hi to him as she was to me. when she lets out a singular, enthusiastic bark, he startles.

"Mr. Woodland," I suppress my laugh by changing the subject. "I'm Special Agent Williams and this is Special Agent Dr. Reid."

we shake hands, my colleague giving his usual wave and polite smile. the interviewee takes in Spencer's appearance. I know what's coming.

"you look too young for medical school." Woodland says to Reid. this has happened a couple times since I joined the team, but Spencer never seems to mind. if anything, he lights up at the opportunity to share the reason for his official title.

"they're PhD's. three of them." he gives a little smile as we walk into the house, me shaking a few stray raindrops from my hair.

"so... are you a genius or something?" Heather's brother leads us past the hallway into the living room, which is unkempt and littered with pictures, catalogs, and toys. he must have kids in school right now. that would also explain the breed of dog.

"I don't believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified."

"he's being modest," I glance over at Spencer. "Dr. Reid can read 20,000 words a minute-- he's definitely a genius."

Woodland stares at Spencer for a second as he tries to fathom the speed at which someone's mind would have to turn in order to process all that information. I still can't imagine it. Spencer's eyes avoid Woodland's shyly. instead, he watches me as I pet Sandy.

soon after, we ask him about Heather's personality and tendencies. her brother is more than willing to give us all the information we need. I'm surprised, however, by my partner's ease at wandering around Woodland's house, flipping through the magazines on top of the TV and reading the spines of books on shelves. he's quite conspicuous about it.

about halfway through my mental list of questions, Sandy keeps jumping up and wagging her til.

"I'm gonna take her to the backyard quick," Woodland tells us. "one second."

he ducks out of the room and I wait until I know he's out of earshot before sidling up beside Reid.

"there's an immediate relationship established between a buyer and a seller," he tells me, holding up a Datsun Z catalog. we know that she was in the market for one. "if I want to coax a young woman into my car..."

"offer her a test drive." I finish his sentence. of course, within ten minutes of sifting through this woman's house, Spencer has figured out the ruse used to lure her. Woodland returns a moment later with a smile, but we tell him that we've gotten the information we need before leaving.

in the car, Spencer theorizes about the unsub's mental condition as I try to navigate traffic in the storm. thunder rumbles overhead, occasionally sending a vibration through the car. my knuckles tighten around the wheel a bit. I also hate driving in the rain. his rambles fills the silence, however, and somewhat soothe my nerves.

"he doesn't have the MO of a paranoid psychotic. dumping the bodies out in the open, with a weapon nearby... that doesn't align."

"he covers their eyes with duct tape multiple times over, though. he knows he's going to kill them, but he doesn't want them to see his face?" my fingertips drum over the wheel nervously.

"what's wrong?" Spencer asks suddenly, glancing at my hands and then at my face. I still my movements at the change in subject.

"huh? nothing. I just don't like driving in the rain, either."

"oh. I'm sorry." he straightens a bit in his seat. the apology surprises me a little, but he seems genuinely sympathetic. I guess I really don't know him that well.

"it's cool."

we fall into an awkward silence and I bite my lip. we should get back to talking about the case. heaven knows Spencer has more facts to spew, more theories to share about this unsub. anything is better than the gap in conversation. I open my mouth to say more about what we learned at the house, except Spencer speaks first.

"so... how are you liking working here?" he asks awkwardly. it takes a second for the question to register with me. he sounds uncomfortable whenever we're alone and that makes me uncomfortable in turn. where everyone else was quick to include me in their jokes and discussions, Reid always sounds like talking to me exhausts him. it's obvious that he's socially awkward. there's no judgement from me; I'm just surprised that he's pushing to talk about non work-related subjects.

"I like it," not really an accurate summation. I don't think a heart-to-heart is exactly the right move when talking to him. "a little stressful, though."

"you worked in sex crimes before, right?" he looks out the window. there isn't much to see except for the rain-blurred skyline. I nod.

"yep."

"that sounds... hard." he shifts in his seat as he tries to come up with more points of conversation. it's kind of endearing, honestly. I throw him a bone.

"so is profiling."

"why'd you switch?" his eyes flit over to mine as he quickly adds, "if you don't mind me asking."

I take a second to come up with an answer. of course, there's the classic response: I've always wanted to help people— which isn't wrong— it's also not the whole answer. all through college and the Academy, I had my head focused on one thing. I could interview killers and get inside their heads, but there's something entirely different that you don't get from pure research. and one person inspired that in me before I had finished high school.

"don't tell him I said this, but I really wanted to work with Rossi." I say in a hushed tone. there's a slight smile on my lips because I haven't told anyone on the team in fear of being teased. I don't think Spencer is likely to gossip with Rossi about me, though.

"really?" now he sounds surprised.

"I've read all his books and I've been to a couple lectures. he doesn't remember me, evidently." the thought is more funny than embarrassing. he spoke at my college a few years back and I recall being on the edge of my seat, trying to come up with the courage to ask the questions that filled my head. I was too shy.

"does he know you're a fan?" Spencer loosens up a bit.

"nope," we pull off the freeway as we near the field office. I stop at a red light and look over. "I didn't want to embarrass myself with the whole 'your work changed my life' spiel."

at this, Spencer lets out a short, nervous giggle. it's a nice sound, that laugh. it makes me smile when he seems to relax in his seat.

"that's exactly what I did." he says. I frown.

"you told him his books changed your life?" I blush as I realize I just inadvertently made fun of him.

"I, um... well, I got excited to talk about his research." he averts his gaze again and his cheeks turn a slight pink. there's a dimple in his cheek, I notice, that keeps tugging upward. this is my first time having a non-forced moment with Spencer alone; a wave of satisfaction washes over me as I realize the potential for another friend here.

"trust me, I get it." I laugh. we pull into the parking ramp for the field office and I find a spot by the door. Spencer hoists that bag into his lap and runs his hand through his hair. when I pull the key out of the ignition, he waits for me to get out of the car before we start walking toward the door.

it's small, but I appreciate that he doesn't run off without me. we don't talk as we walk, our footsteps echoing along the cement walls.

oh my god first chapter holy fuck! it's short, but I don't wanna overwhelm. I'm so excited for this book!

[cynical-sprite]

(an Apex Legends Revenant x reader fic where the reader and Revenant were in a relationship back when he was human, and, after his “death”, the reader was put into cryogenic suspension for some reason. 200 some years pass, and the reader is thawed out, and she and she is reunited with her former lover who is now the simulacrum Revenant. I had the name Michael in mind, but someone on twitter mentioned that he looked like a James to them, and I thought that was a near perfect fit, so I went with James instead.) This story is based on an THIS IDEA I came up with. If anyone wants to write their own fic based on this idea, it's perfectly fine with me; I just ask that you send me a link to the fic so I can read it.😊

I could feel the stare from across the room as I sat on the drop ship, waiting to drop into World’s Edge. Though unsure whether out of nervousness or curiosity, maybe both, I glanced in the direction where the glare was coming from only to be met with a pair of yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, locked on to me with laser focus. It was the simulacrum, Revenant. A simulacrum, a human consciousness in a robotic body; I found the idea equal parts fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Though the notion was somewhat intriguing to my scientific side, there was  also a part of me that considered the idea to be wrong, just… against nature. I’d heard the stories about Revenant, the rumor that, in life, he was once the greatest assassin The Syndicate ever had. The Syndicate’s greatest assassin. To my knowledge, there was only one person who had ever been given that title… James. We were engaged to be married when James died. We both knew well the dangers of his job, but it did little to ease the pain of being delivered the news of his death. Though I didn't have any proof, I'd always somewhat suspected The Syndicate was responsible somehow, that it had possibly been intentional. The rumors surrounding Revenant were partly what caused me to join The Apex Games, that, and the need to find something to make me feel alive after spending the last two hundred or so years in cryogenic suspension. Since I'd been brought out of cryo sleep a few years ago, I’d wandered somewhat aimlessly, trying to find my place in this new life. When I heard about The Apex games and the rumors surrounding their newest participant, Revenant, I had to see for myself. The games would give me the thrill I sought, and I would get the chance to encounter Revenant, see him for myself. Perhaps I was crazy for even considering the possibility that the simulacrum could somehow be, or could ever have been James, but I just had to find out somehow; I had to face Revenant in person. What did I have to lose besides my life, which, at the moment, sorely lacked purpose.

    I was startled from my thoughts by the voice of Elliott Witt aka Mirage. “Damn, _______, what’d you do to piss off the murder bot?” I blinked in surprise as I managed to turn my gaze away from Revenant and turned to look at Elliott beside me.

   “What? Nothing. I… I didn’t…” I shook my head slightly. “I mean, I couldn’t have done anything to him. We’ve never even met…” 

   "Could've fooled me." Elliott remarked. Though the simulacrum was certainly an unsettling presence, there was a strange feeling of… familiarity, even if only slightly, that I couldn't seem to shake. Or maybe I was just imagining it. Wishful thinking perhaps? I didn't have time to give it any more consideration as the announcement was made that we would be dropping into World's Edge.

   The first half of the match went fairly well; my squad had managed to make it into the top ten. During the second half of the match, I managed to get separated from my squadmates, Mirage and Octane. We were about to be hit with an EMP from Crypto's drone, and the three of us scattered, fleeing in different directions. I tried to reach them over the comms, but, evidently, the EMP had apparently disrupted those as well. 

   As I wandered World's Edge alone, attempting to get the comms working again so I could get in touch with Elliott and Octavio, I quickly got the feeling someone was watching me, stalking me even. My first thought was of Bloodhound. They could easily trail me without being noticed; they were, after all, a hunter and a tracker. Another possibility was Wraith; she could follow me virtually undetected as well. But, when I turned around to take a look, I was taken somewhat off guard by what I saw; standing a few feet away from me stood the simulacrum, Revenant, staring at me just as he had when we were on the drop ship. I shouldn't have been surprised, but for some reason, he had been the last person I'd expected to be there.

  "Hello, girlie." He took a few steps towards me, his glowing yellow eyes staring a hole in me all the while. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared; anyone in their right mind would be. But, I did everything I could not to show it. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. I probably should have run, but something kept me rooted to the spot. Besides, I was certain there was no way I'd be able to outrun the simulacrum should he decide to give chase. So, instead, I did my best to look intimidating, trying not to let on just how anxious I was. 

   "What do you want from me?" If he'd wanted to simply kill me, there would be no reason for observing me so closely, would there? There must have been more to it… He laughed, a deep rumble in his chest, and had he the ability to make facial expressions, I was reasonably sure he'd have been grinning, no… smirking. He continued towards me until he was directly in front of me, towering over me at almost seven feet tall. His yellow eyes were still glued to me, scanning me over, taking me in. He bent down slightly, presumably to  get a better look at me. Observing me even more closely. There was something hypnotic about those eyes, something that made it difficult to look away, and, maybe this sounds crazy, but I couldn't help thinking that, if you looked deep enough, close enough, there was something almost… human about them. 

   He reached out a hand, and in that moment, I thought my life had reached its end. I had seen video footage where his hand morphed into a blade with which he'd use to put a swift end to the lives of many "skinbags". I was certain that was to be my fate, that or he was about to snap my neck in one swift motion. What actually happened, however, was the last thing I expected. He placed a finger under my chin and tilted my face upwards to better look him in the eyes. His touch was surprisingly gentle for a killer simulacrum. I froze in place, both shocked and confused by the action. 

   It reminded me of something, bringing back a memory I'd half buried in my grief. James was 6 feet tall, a good bit taller than me. Snarky asshole that he was, he loved to tease me for being shorter than him. I'd always tease him back that I wasn't short, that he was just unnaturally tall. Whenever he wanted to look into my eyes, he would place a finger gently under my chin and tilt my head slightly upwards for me to better look into his deep blue eyes. Just as the Revenant was doing now.

   "What… what is this...?" was all I could manage. Could it be true? Was it really him? It couldn't simply some strange coincidence, could it? 

   He let out a slight chuckle, a low sound from deep in his chest."You always have been a tiny little skinbag, haven't you, _______?"

   My mouth dropped open, and I froze in place. Finally, I managed to stammer out the name, a name I hadn't spoken for so long. "J… James…?" The simulacrum froze upon hearing me speak the name. It was clear by his reaction that he hadn't heard in quite a long time, if he'd even remembered it at all. I was unsure just how much the human aspect of his mind had been affected. He tilted his head slightly to the side as he looked at me.

    "Heh. I wasn't sure if you'd recognize me." He was still for a moment before leaning in even closer. "Or, if you'd remember. But, then again, I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Alive, at least." If I didn't know better, I could have sworn I'd heard something in his voice; he sounded almost… hurt. Was he upset about not knowing I was still alive? It wasn't as if I could come to him and tell him. Until a few moments ago, I hadn't even been sure that he was who he was. And, it wasn't as if anyone else could tell him I was alive. Almost no one knew the details of his identity when he was still human.

   "James, I…"

   "James is dead." he snapped, cutting me off. I shook my head.

   "No. No, that's not true. There has to be something left of you in there. You knew who I was, this whole time, you remembered me. It's true you may be made up of mostly tech and mechanics, but your mind… your mind is still yours. And those emotions you're feeling, hurt, rage… those are all very human. Machines can't feel emotion; that's something exclusive to humans. Or, at least, living creatures…"

   "I'm not him anymore. I'm a ghost, a shell of that man. A Revenant."

   "James, I…"

   "Revenant." he corrects me, cutting me off once more.

   "Revenant. I had no idea… about what they'd done to you. I mean, I had my suspicions about the Syndicate, that they had something to do with your death, but… but, afterwards…" A tear escaped my eye, running slowly down my cheek. "I had no idea what they'd done to you. I'm so sorry..." I blinked as another tear ran down my face. He let out what sounded much like a frustrated sigh rather reminiscent of the ones he used to in life whenever I'd say something sappy to him. Being a hitman, James was never the romantic type, but whenever I'd make an attempt, he would always just sigh, sometimes even going so far as to humor me.

   Slowly, he moved his hand up to wipe a tear from my eye, much more gently than I'd have expected from a killer robot.

   "You skin bags are always so emotional." he remarked, though his voice was softer than I'd have thought possible. "You couldn't have known, so cut it out, alright?" Though it sounded harsh, I knew better. Even in life, he was never much good at reassurance; this was the closest you'd get from him. He was trying in his own way. 

   I nodded. "Okay… okay." 

   "Now, you want to tell me how it is a skinbag like you is still alive after all these years. I mean, you do look old, but not that old." I could hear the snark in his voice at his last comment, and, if it had been possible, I was certain he would have been smirking. It earned a slight chuckle from me.

   "Well, that does tend to happen to us skinbags. We age." I shook my head, grinning slightly. "It's… kind of a long story. It involves spending over a decade in cryosleep. I got thawed out a few years ago. But, now's not the time for that. I'll give you the details later, after the match." He silently leaned in, resting his forehead lightly against mine. 

   A few moments later, I heard footsteps approaching. I whipped around and pulled out my Alternator, pointing it in the direction of the footsteps, only to come face to face with my squad mates, Mirage and Octane. "Jesus, you two!" I yelled, lowering my weapon, "Don't do that! I almost shot you guys!" Elliott was holding his hands up in a defensive manner, looking rather shaken. 

   "Okay, okay! Don't have to tell me twice!" he remarked, exhaling a deep breath he'd evidently been holding. "What's this all about?" He gestures towards Revenant and me with his hand.

   "When I saw you two, at first I thought I must be seeing things. But, then, Elliott said he was seeing it, too, so I knew it had to be real." Octavio commented.

   Revenant chuckled lowly. "Well, looks like it's time for me to go. You've got some explaining to do to your friends. See you soon, girlie." And, with that, he disappeared as quickly as he'd first appeared earlier. 

   "Since when are you so cozy with the murder bot? What the hell did we miss?" Elliott remarked. I sighed, rolling my eyes. 

   "Later. I'll explain later. Right now, just focus on the games or I'll shoot you myself." 

[myfriendsarerealidiots]

Character Comparisons

Since not enough people hate me as it is, I decided to do something that’s definitely stupid—comparing 2 characters who I think are similar but are different enough for me to be annoyed to the edges of my being for one and adore the creativity behind the other.

Baam/ Jue Viole Grace from Tower of God

VS

Midoriya Izuku/ Deku from BnHA

I should probably first say as a disclaimer,

I have finished the ToG Manhwa ‘til the most recent chapter (S3 E85) and watched the anime.

I have only watched BnHA ‘til season 3 and I have zero awareness of Deku’s character development past that besides a few spoilers from friends and youtube videos I accidentally watched.

As of writing this post I have no plans of reading or watching more BnHA.

All of this is my opinion and mine only, everyone is welcome to their own, I just want to share mine.

Okay, got that out of the way, time to start my rant ‘bout characters.

Lemme start by noting things/ traits or story aspects that make them similar.

They’re both weak at first

In the first episode of BnHA, we learn that Deku is one of the very few people in their universe who doesn’t have a quirk.

For the entirety of S1, Baam doesn’t stand out as a protagonist. He is just a mysterous kid who chased a girl into the tower...just for her to *spoiler beep*

They’re both the ‘chosen one’ of sorts.

Baam in an irregular who entered the tower and has the potential to overthrow Jahad. Which he should...cause Jahads a big ‘ol ass.

Deku was chosen my All Might to inherit his quirk ‘One for All’ as a attempt to defeat the main villain of the show, All for One

They have an incredible cast of characters supporting them. There isn’t much to say about this point.

Deku has Iida, Uraraka, Todoroki, Bakugo, and a whole lot more colorful characters who act behind/ to support him.

Baam has Khun, Rak, Endorosi, Anaak, Hatsu and more as the series progresses, introducing more characters with each passing season.

They’re both good at encouraging people. This point is the one that gave me the idea for this post to begin with.

We all know the scene with Todoroki and Deku in S2.

Who else in the universe can pursuade an entire group of people to take a really difficult quiz just because of one ‘damaged’ b*tch?

They both really care about their friends and those around them.

If I placed a spoiler warning on this, I would’ve placed something from S2 of the manhwa but since I didn’t, remember the friendship sheet from Hatsu and Isu? He was willing to face Jahad’s Princess just to make sure his friends passed.

There’s probably a moment past S3 of the anime but since I didn’t watch S4 and don’t plan to, remember the first exam where he saved Uraraka from the robot crashing down on her or something?

It goes without saying that they become strong at some point in their series, albeit for very different reasons and that’s where the similarities end. From here on out, it’s all going to be their differences and how that changes my liking towards each one.

Baam/ Viole

For the most part of the series, his origins are a mystery except for the fact that he is from outside the tower and knows a girl named Rachel from there and was going to climb the tower with her.

His powers—the ability to control massive amounts of Shinsoo and learn techniques almost instantaneously are his own, no cheating by getting powers from others. The most additional power he gets is from things he absorbs later on in the series, making him even scarier as a regular but relatively normal as a irregular, especially with characters like Urek Mazino in the mix.

He just wants enough power to stay with his friends and won’t have the need for the word ‘goodbye.’ And if it will take fighting the entire tower to do that, he will. He will take every single measure he can to keep his friends safe, and together as they climb the tower.

The best thing about Baam as a character for me, is that he loses. He loses at some point. Sometimes it’s an important mission that gets messed up, other times it’s something trivial but the only thing that matters is that he loses. He’s human, not a god. There are limits to what he can do at that moment. He feels regret that it happened, that he had to go to such extents just to achieve a small goal or that so many lives were lost because of him.

Deku/ Izuku

Now, I don’t remember many details about BnHA, only that I didn’t enjoy it as much as others did and that’s probably because of the main character, Deku or his proper name, Midoriya Izuku.

First of all he gets his powers from All Might. It’s not his own power, he, himself is only good at encouraging people to be their best and even with that he can only ecourage someone so much before he becomes as useless as he was at the start of the series. He later, with the help of Gran Torino, learns how to control his quirk to 5% but that’s something he couldn’t have done without someone else’s interference. It definitely stopped his need for constant visits to the nurse. However, his track record of constantly breaking his arm just to use the power given to him is enough to show that there are more capable heroes that can inherit All Might’s quirk.

I’ll say it bluntly, Deku doesn’t lose—at least he doesn’t when it’s important, seeing as he lost to Todoroki after encouraging him to use his left(?) side. When we could’ve gotten amazing character development by having him lose important battles against the villains, we instead get to watch minutes of him having a broken arm as a result of using 100% power just to defeat 1 villain.

His goal is as plain as day—become a pro hero. Later, it gets a little bit more complicated by having the whole ‘All for One’ situation, but his goal exists just for himself, no one else. He wants to become a hero despite being quirkless? That’s sweet but he has a quirk now, one of the strongest in existance even, and it will get even stronger as the generations go on but not because of his own hard work, it’s going to be because that’s the way One for All works.

Now, I know this isn’t a fair comparison, heck it even isn’t a rational comparison, but it’s how I think about these 2 characters. They both would definitely have more development as characters in the future which means more things to rant about. Anyways, I personally prefer Baam by an entire galaxy before picking Deku, so maybe I understand how Bakugo feels, I’m not so sure.

Whoever is insane enough to read a rant about anime characters by a teenage girl, I salute you and you should probably go find something better to do with your time.

[ganzeer-reviews]

THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY By Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy o-o-o-c

Madness. Sheer and utter madness.

I must admit that before MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, I hadn't even heard of Brendan McCarthy, which is a damn inexcusable shame. But to be fair, the work of Milligan & McCarthy hasn’t really been part of the dialogue in comix culture. Not even when it comes to talking about the impactful indie work that fell outside of the mainstream; you never hear their work cited alongside that of Frank Miller's SIN CITY (which, before the 2005 film release was only really known in pretty small circles throughout the 1990's) or Eddie Campbell's ALEC or Dave Sim's CEREBUS. But that silence is in no way reflective of the duo's influence.

About a year ago, I listened to an interview with Neil Gaiman for the British Library podcast focused primarily on the RAMAYANA and Gaiman's involvement in adapting it for DreamWorks. When asked if he had a particular style in mind when working on the various [never-produced] treatments, Gaiman was quick to point out Brendan McCarthy's work on ROGAN GOSH, which Gaiman describes as being birthed from Brendan's "Road to Damascus moment, where he ran into a pile of comics in India, and just went 'I love this, there's art stuff here that I've never seen in the West,' and started doing stuff and playing with it." He also goes on to describe ROGAN GOSH as "one of the most interesting moments of fusion between Indian and British and American comix culture."

Naturally, I immediately looked into getting my hands on some ROGAN GOSH and discovered that it was reprinted in the pages of an over-sized hardcover titled THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY published by Dark Horse Books in 2013 and retailing for only $24.99 (down to $7.19 as I type this). Although a horrendously produced edition (pages are actually falling out in less than a year since purchasing it), I'm still happy to have gotten my hands on it because it has been blowing my mind ever since. Not least because of the work itself, but because it simultaneously exposes a very vital almost secret history of comix lost to... I dunno,an obsession with the founding of Image Comics and the less than negligible work its founders produced? If there was ever a demented, revolutionary punk rock duo in comix, Milligan & McCarthy definitely fit the bill.

ROGAN GOSH first appeared in REVOLVER, a short-lived anthology magazine for mature readers published in the UK between 1990-1991. GOSH was finally collected by DC Comics/Vertigo into a 48-page one shot in 1994. It is perhaps because of the book's modest page-count that it is never mentioned in the same breath as say THE SANDMAN or PREACHER, or THE INVISIBLES or other long-running titles central to the Vertigo imprint's identity. But hey, Aristotle's POETICS is no more than a sodding 44 pages, which is sometimes all you need to jump-start a revolution.

In Milligan and McCarthy's own words, surrounded by "long and bloated 'concept album' comics", they were more interested in "the short, sharp, throwaway pop single. The type you danced to. The type you had sex to."

While the above statement can most be applied to their series PARADAX (also featured in the book), it pretty much hits the nail on the head with the majority of their collaborations, including ROGAN GOSH.

By the duo's own admission, it is not only difficult to describe what ROGAN GOSH is about, it is even pointless to ask. What may have been originally conceived as a “sci-fi Bollywood BLADE RUNNER” rapidly evolved into something far more demented. It starts off with Rudyard Kipling in Lahore en route to a place "where men of all castes come to sleep the sleep of dreams." Essentially, an opium den where "karmanauts can relieve a man of the curses of his sins.” If you think that opening scene will give you any idea of what follows, you are sorely mistaken. Kupling is entered into a "jasmine-scented dream of the future" where we are transported to psychadelic trip after psychadelic trip involving completely different characters:

- A man named Raju Dhawan waiting on another named Dean Cripps at a Tandoori joint called "Star of the East" - The blue-skinned Rogan Gosh on the run from the "bloody-tongued, dark destroyer" Kali together with a small idol of Kipling. - Raju Ghawan as Rogan Gosh together with Dean Cripps on the run from robotic hindu "Karma Kops". - Rogan Gosh as a bull-riding ancient Egyptian cowboy of the future, roaming through the mythic land of Wild Bill Osiris and Horus Thuh Kid.

If none of this makes the slightest bit of coherence, well that's because there is nothing coherent about it. Rather than there being any kind of train of thought, it's more like a train blown to bits upon the detonation of atomic dynamite. Shards of ideas floating around a nebula, jabbing into each other with every turn of the page. It's bizarre stuff, heavy on logic-defying captions almost as much as the explosive visuals. If you, the reader, let yourself go, you'll find that the synergy of text and image in ROGAN GOSH will drag you around a strong relentless current of spicy thought soup. Washing ashore an island of utter confusion is inevitable, but not without a sense of thrill retained from the memories of the surrealist storm that was.

Imagine a comicbook operating along the logic of say, PROMETHEA, 8 years prior to PROMETHEA's publication and without any of the rigorous explanation of the world's mechanics the way PROMETHEA delves into. Instead you're just thrown into it and left to make connections entirely on your own. That's what ROGAN GOSH feels like; a weird transcendental spell cast in comicbook form.

It isn't a coincidence that Milligan & McCarthy share something with Alan Moore other than British citizenship. All three after all did get their start making comix in the indie music paper SOUNDS. Moore with ROSCOE MOSCOW in 1979, and McCarthy et Milligan with THE ELECTRIC HOAX in 1978. This discovery, although new to me, was not at all surprising, as I find that I am typically drawn to creators who cut their teeth in avenues that fall outside of "the mainstream". Where the ones "in charge" understand little about what they’re doing, where anything goes and opportunities for mad experimentalism aren't stifled.

The greatest discovery in THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY for me has been the duo's work on FREAKWAVE, a comic that, by Brendan's own admission, was directly inspired by MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR which Brendan became obsessed with during his surfing getaway in Australia in 1981. After which Brendan coerced Milligan to co-write a "Mad Max goes surfing" treatment Brendan could pitch to Hollywood. Hollywood didn't bite, but the duo did get to produce it as a backup strip in the pages of VANGUARD ILLUSTRATED published by Pacific Comics in 1983. Pretty straight adventure story initially (well, as straight as Milligan & McCarthy can muster anyway), with the most striking aspect of the strip being character designs and world building.

FREAKWAVE is a post-apocalyptic punk-rock drifter who windsurfs a flooded Earth in search of floating trash he can live off. He battles it out with disease-ridden humanoid "Water-rats" and psychopaths in gasmasks wrapped in old tin cans and the random cultural ephemera of old. FREAKWAVE would later resurface as a punk-absurdist Tibetan Book-of-the-Dead story in 1984's STRANGE DAYS, an anthology showcasing the work of Milligan, McCarthy, and Brett Ewans published by Eclipse Comics. It only ran for 3 issues, but Warren Ellis says it "landed like a hand grenade from another world", which is still exactly what it feels like going through its contents 34 years later today. It is especially in the pages of STRANGE DAYS' feature comic FREAKWAVE that you see Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan really rocking out like some kind of alternative comicbook band, the pages crackling with the energetic buzz of an electric guitar. Brendan especially reaches peak McCarthiasm, with 90% of his visionary work on FURY ROAD appearing here first on the page a good 31 years before blowing people's minds on  screen.

Which, by the way, how fucking cool is that? To be asked to work on the sequel to a film that inspired your scarcely read comicbook. And to be asked specifically because of your work on said comicbook?

Not to mention that FREAKWAVE, although given a pass by executives in Hollywood, very likely influenced the movie WATERWORLD in 1995, at the very least in terms of look and production design, which let's face it was the only really good thing about the film.

Nothing will give you that good kick in the balls to go off and make comix (or any ill-advised pursuit) more than looking at the work of Milligan and McCarthy. If a big part of the draw of comix for you is that it is medium void of filters between creator and reader, well then that cannot be more true of Milligan and McCarthy's collaborations. Because there are always editors keeping creators in check, or heck, even self-inflicted inhibition on the creator’s part. Not for Milligan and McCarthy.

Never for Milligan and McCarthy.

[Available on Amazon]

Ganzeer November 23, 2018

[redefinethegrind]

Borderline Personality Disorder, The Will To Power, Spirituality, and Happiness: tying it all together

I am writing this manuscript on Borderline Personality Disorder because I want to connect to others with the same diagnosis. I am a provider with the diagnosis and I have an intimate understanding of what my brain goes through on a day to day basis. It is fascinating to me that something as simple as going to the gas station and buying a coffee could cause so much anxiety and grief. It has, however tied me up. I have spent hours trying to gather the courage to understand the perfect way to obtain a cup of coffee and it has impacted the flow of more than one of my days on this earth. That is ridiculous, but seemingly unavoidable to me when my anxiety, obsessive thought, splitting, and mood imbalances all hit at once.

My perception of self has never equaled the perception that others tell me that they see. People around me assure me that I am funny, charismatic, outgoing, caring, and a good person. In my head I often feel that I am disgusting, pathetic, weak, and a loser. I feel like a parasite sometimes while I fully strive to be a giving human being. That is the faulty wiring of my brain that I adopted sometime in early childhood. I have formed my personality around hating myself and feeling like I am never good enough. I don’t even know what I am trying to measure up to.

Formerly I thought that feeling never good enough was a positive thing for me. I thought it would push me to achieve more as I rose in life. I wanted to be the greatest human being in the world and I hated myself for not being that person already. I set an unreasonably high bar and laughed at myself when I failed to achieve success. If I failed at any task I would use it as evidence that I was indeed the failure I had come to know. If I succeeded I would write it off as something that should have been done better or more efficiently. It was unreasonable and counterproductive to my being to have those thoughts, but I could not make them go away.

I began seeking solace in material possessions at some point in my life. I was buying expensive cars and bigger homes. The material things would distract me from my inner conflict and pain. Ultimately, I realized that material possessions can never fill the void that I was feeling. Human connection is the only thing that can satiate that craving. I am indeed a human being. BPD has made me truly feel alien at times though and unable to connect with others. That is a fallacious thought and I now recognize it as such.

I have had days where I look around and everything seems foreign to me. During periods of stress and duress I would swear that people’s faces change and even the colors of my surroundings change. My inner voice takes on a different tone. My perception of the world warps with my mood. I feel it intensely and deeply. I am not making it up or crying for attention as I was led to believe as a child. My world genuinely changes based on my mood and faculties. That very subjective nature of my own reality makes this personality disorder difficult to pin down and properly treat regardless of the time and energy I dedicate.

This had led me to studying the very nature of consciousness and reality. I have read books by Jeffrey Schwartz and Caroline Leaf on neuroplasticity. I have studied quantum mechanics, relativity, anatomy, physiology, and psychology seeking concrete reasons for my sensation and perception. I became familiar with Deepak Chopra’s views on tying quantum mechanics to our consciousness. I started to see that I was not alone in viewing this reality as a very mailable and ever-changing substrate. I saw that humanities greatest minds were struggling with the same questions and looking on with both awe and frustration.

I wanted nothing more than to understand what my perception of consciousness, space, and time, truly boiled down to and to share my experience with other human beings. The kinds of thoughts I have are not typically talked about over morning coffee or the evening’s spaghetti. My thoughts are sometime uniquely Ernie ‘isms and I must accept that. Having BPD makes me immediately feel lonely though as I struggle to connect with others on concepts and ideas. I am well adapted at helping others in my professional life because I have an outlined task at hand and an end goal. I actually think my personality disorder makes me a better provider in some ways because knowing the type of person I am, I do not pass judgement. I am able to relate to others and feel empathy. Because my emotions are felt so extremely I am able to understand the emotions of others.

One maladaptive behavior I have taken to over the years is stifling my emotions completely on the surface. I have found myself to be suppressing the expression of my emotions to the point of operating in a robot-like fashion. I remember actually consciously choosing this process as a young child, as young as 5 years old maybe. I chose to suffocate emotions of anger and to sit in a hallway for hours on end one day. As I remember it I was at a relative’s house I did not want to be at and instead of participating in any social activities I sat in a hallway staring at the wall. Even at that young age I would sometimes skip breakfast and lunch as to isolate intentionally and not participate in normal activities. This went from a conscious decision as an early child to a subconscious reaction as an adult. Where the switch happened I don’t know, but now I catch myself avoiding social situations, meals, or performing simple daily tasks without having ever thought about it. It will be something that another person will point out. “Aren’t you hungry?” and I will think “Hmm, I don’t know, let me think about it… I guess I am hungry, I didn’t eat lunch.” Sometimes I will find a reason. It is like I throw a subconscious temper tantrum. I don’t even recognize myself doing it at this point and I wish I could control it. I am now monitoring my mood and looking for cues in order to correct the maladaptive behavior. This is strange as I am 33 years old.

I recall an experience in preschool when I was asked to sit in time out for coming at another kid with a plastic chainsaw. I took my time out of two minutes as I remember it, without fuss, then I would not get up on time in. I refused to get up for the rest of the day in fact. I made the punishment intentionally extreme as a choice. I remember choosing to not stand up as an act of self-disparaging rebellion. I remember thinking “I can sit here all day in time out just to show these people it doesn’t bother me.” As an adult I evaluate the behavior. I am thinking it was a way for me to say “I can’t be broken by your punishment.” I took a strong nihilist stance early on. Rules were ridiculous to me and whether or not I was supposed to suffer I would refuse to. I think I was trying to show them that punishment would be useless. They could not change me. They could not break me. I was in charge. I think I needed to feel in control. I believe it was overcompensation for a life that was truly out of my control. That is the best theory I can put together as an adult.

This sense of loss of control and my struggle to maintain a sense of it went on to define many aspects of my personality. Perhaps I was wanting that preschool teacher to look at me and say, “enough is enough, you don’t deserve to be punished” and to look at the ridiculous idea of changing another sentient being’s social behavior. I never understood why someone else could make rules or boundaries that I had to abide by. I think even as a young child I found them to be repulsive and insulting… arbitrary at best.

Was this manipulation? Was I truly engaging in a mind game with an adult at such a young age? In my mind the internal voice kept telling me to sit at that table in time out. To just wait it out. To see what happens. Who would break first? Not Ernie. That is what I did. It was a small event that essentially meant nothing, but in my mind, I can still relive it and feel the same emotions I felt then. I needed to show these people that though they could physically put me in restraints, it didn’t change a damn thing.

As an adult I saw the same behavior in a woman I call my twin. She seems to have many of the same thought processes and beliefs that I do. She struggles with boundaries and guidelines. She finds life to be mundane at best most days. She wonders why in the hell someone with so much mental energy has to be caged in such a dull environment. I stood in her way during a minor mincing of words we were having. I blocked her path to exit our shared kitchen. I could see her anger building. She was absolutely not going to give me a single answer at that time no matter how much I demanded it. She was appalled that I could stand in her way and physically overpower her. Though I could block her way, I could not get her to speak a single word. I could not break her. She was in control. She struggled and longed to have the ultimate sense of control. She could be physically restrained but even her living twin, the person she connects with deepest on this planet, was not going to be able to pull a single utterance from her conscious mind if she didn’t will it so. She had to win.

I saw myself in her that day. I saw an absolutely unbreakable spirit. What twinsie and I share is beyond physical, sexual, or psychological. It is deep and I cannot label it. I have never seen it in two other people. It is uniquely ours to share. We have something that the rest of this world could only dream of. I am the one person that she will ultimately break down for in this world and I am proud to be the one person that will break down for her. To take away those secure walls and expose our vibrant inner beauty. I love seeing her stand true and proud, a defiant lotus that the rest of this world doesn’t have access to. I am actually driven by being the one person that she lets in to her secretive world. That is how I define true love. I will absolutely break down and give up my sense of security and become vulnerable to share the ultimate connection with my true twin flame. I feel as though I long to both break through her every wall and to allow her to simultaneously break through every one of mine.

That is something I was seeking in this life and BPD was limiting me from sharing. A connection. The world felt alien. Until I felt someone with the same splitting, angst, core values, and pain I didn’t think I would ever find someone who would understand me. That feeling of loneliness was overwhelming and was defining my life. It left me standing alone in a crowded room.

Back to childhood, I look to an incident on the school yard. I was dangling from the monkey bars. I remember kicking my friend directly in the testicles intentionally while playing “chicken.” In my mind I knew exactly what I was doing, and I intended to kick him in the most painful area possible to drop him from that collection of steel. I was a child, I don’t know why I wanted to hurt him, but my thought was “I need to hurt this person right now.” I am still friends with him today, his name is Josh. We went on to discuss spiritual matters as adults. That day on the school yard I brought my leg forth and connected as intended right in his groin. I then remember the teacher coming to me and telling the other children that it was an accident. I bought into her story and lied about my intentions. I claimed I did it on accident. I took the teachers story and went with it. I saw that I could get away with murder. I saw that given the right social performance I could do anything and spin it as something it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, that ‘social performance’ aspect became central to my childhood. I felt like an actor much of the time. I was playing a role to get the results I wanted from every given situation. I never let even my family know the real me. I only opened up to a few core friends, and even then, I never fully opened up and showed my real core. I felt vulnerable if people were able to figure me out, so I always acted. I would pretend to be engaged in some boring TV show just to throw people off of understanding my true interests. It was like I knew I was surrounded by people that I really didn’t want to connect with so I would connect with them on things I didn’t care about so that I could then have false relationships with them. By maintaining the superficial relationship, I was in control. If I ever felt comfortable enough I would break down the superficial connection and allow a true, deep connection to exist. I can count on one hand the number of people I have ever started that process with. The people I would feel comfortable truly connecting with were special and I would show them my true vulnerabilities and interests in music, art, video games, and science on my own terms. To give them some sense of control in getting to know me was my ultimate way of letting them know that I truly loved them.

I don’t know why I complicated my social interactions so much, but I did. It was elaborate and took a lot of my thought process. It continues to do so and I do it now without conscious thought or effort. The truth is, I am able to ‘bond’ with anyone on just about anything because I have become a chameleon at blending in when needed. I can fake being interested in just about anything when needed and people automatically see me as their friend. The truth is, deep down I have not connected and with most of those people I share surface level connection I do not wish to have anything deeper. I do not wish to let them in. I genuinely have come to love all people and I actually enjoy getting to know them, but initially that wasn’t the case. Early on I simply played a role and felt completely detached emotionally from almost everyone I came into contact with. I now get my sense of well-being from being able to keep everyone calm and genuinely liking me. I don’t know why, but my personality has developed in that fashion. It seems that if someone has a problem with me I genuinely internalize it and let it gnaw at my gut deep down. On the surface, however, I have made a habit of acting completely unphased by anything no matter how harsh. It is like I feel one thing and exhibit another on the surface. My personality is complex and maybe even inappropriate.

I knew at some point my truth was my own truth. I could easily manipulate reality one way or another even as a child. I found myself in deep thought over emotions and relationships. If something was not going my way as a child I would do something like go out of my way to put myself in an obviously vulnerable position in order to gain some leverage in the form of getting an adults attention and therefor gain control over my environment when the adult found me to be in a precarious situation and would come to my rescue whether it be mentally or physically. I could use my projection of deep sadness to get adults to feel sorry for me. I could use a projection of being excited about something that everyone else found repulsive as a way to get people to back out of my personal space and think I was weird. I was in control. I was letting people in who I loved and pushing people away who I didn’t. I was learning more about those people while they learned nothing about me. It was a guaranteed safe place.

I now see my eccentric likes and dislikes as an elaborate filtering mechanism. I would put up a wall of weirdness and if someone actually tolerated getting through all of the weird parts of Ernie they had earned the right to get to know the true Ernie. They could get through and see that I am indeed a loving, caring, compassionate, gentle, altruistic human being. But first they had to wade through a sea of dead baby jokes, menstrual blood tinged cottage cheese and conspiracy theories that Ernie also finds amusing.

The good energy that makes me up is also capable of appreciating the dark side of life and finding it amusing. It is important to me that my true friends see that and know that all in all I am a good person but that I can laugh and muse at the darkness. That having no boundaries and no limits is simply my way of being truly open to experiencing every aspect of life. That being able to test my power one day doesn’t mean I want to be in control, because the very next day I might test my vulnerability. I want to experience life to it’s fullest and most extreme. I am wired that way. I want to feel fully in control while knowing fully well that ultimately I am powerless.

Looking back, it seems like a child’s cry for attention. As an adult I think that sense of control over emotional relationships gave me comfort in a way. I was more comfortable knowing that I was leading the adults on and letting them think I was a certain person when in my mind I was not that guy. I am trying to honestly explore that feeling and to see if I am indeed driven by the want to control and manipulate or if this is truly involuntary… or at least to explore what it is like living in a mind with BPD

In my first marriage I connected fairly quickly with a quiet girl who had a somewhat bumpy past. Growing up she was also left to fend for herself at times, at least that is what I gathered from the stories she told me. I connected with this girl and we spent much time together. We learned each other’s personalities, likes, and dislikes. I was not always honest in the beginning. I would, for example, say I didn’t like sea food when in reality I loved eating fish. I would choose to not like it because she didn’t like it. I would lie to connect with her. That went on for the first few months of our young relationship. I was 17 years old when I met this girl. I was still figuring out who I was, and I was forming it with another person around a process of manipulating in the context of borderline personality disorder.

The relationship had ups and downs, but early on I was the first to say “I Love You.” I was the first to make the extreme moves and then use my brain to fill in the rest later, trying to logically connect the dots. I saw this girl in a hallway in high-school and my first thoughts were “could you ever marry her, would you be with her forever, would she be the love of your life?” I immediately began planning to go all in with her after we first agreed that we were dating. I escalated things quickly and vowed to spend eternity with her because she gave me the time of day. Most people don’t think like that. I did. I was all in day one. I also at the same time felt like I would destroy her life by letting her get with such a loser like me. I wanted to love her and to save her by pushing her far away from me. The selfish part of me needed her, the selfless part of me needed her to be free.

I started off spending my every waking moment obsessing about this girl and ultimately did go on to marry her, but in the process, something strange happened as I did not understand my brain at the time. I would get comfortable with her and things would be going well, and I would assume that I was not doing enough or good enough for her. I would then create tension and angst in the relationship and pressure her away from me. I would push and push. Because I was not perfect. I would always assume that there was some flaw or fault in myself that just wasn’t good enough and I would use it against us. I would tell her time and time again that I was not good enough for her and that I was a pile of garbage and that she could do better. That was my depression seeping in and it was not a valid thought. The example that I read from a person with BPD that really stuck with me is this: “I could see a person begging for money. If I didn’t give them money I would kick myself for being selfish. If I did give them money I would kick myself for not giving enough.” It was like no matter what I gave it was never enough. I was wired to believe that my all out best effort was going to fall short and therefor I was doomed to be a piece of trash.

The pattern of constantly self-loathing and memorizing disparaging remarks created emotional turmoil and I would then push my partner away and reel her back in. This happened over and over again. It was exhausting. It resulted in significant damage. My personality was unstable enough that she never knew what she was going to get. She spent her time going out of her way to keep me from going insane and I constantly tested boundaries. What would she truly tolerate? Did she love me enough to put up with this? Unfortunately, this also enabled the borderline behavior to exacerbate. It went from something that I was doing at age 5 as an experiment to something that I couldn’t control as an adult. My emotions had become out of my control and they were being used to shape relationships in my life. It was chaotic and seemed a bit peculiar when compared with the way other people seemed to feel.

I have often felt alien and alone in this world. I felt that other people could not possibly feel so disconnected to their fellow man while fully knowing that they are indeed human themselves. Now reading the literature, I am encouraged that many people feel just like me. Alien. Robotic. Foreign. They have unknowingly programmed themselves to inappropriately use emotions to influence relationships as some sort of response to stress. The problem with BPD is, by the time it is active and roaring, it is too late to look back. It becomes the norm. The ego is established and without a great deal of introspection, guilt, pain, and rethatching, identifying these things as maladaptive can seem undefeatable. As a young adult I lost control of my emotions quite a bit and I was a bit all over the place. I didn’t recognize why, or even see it as a problem. It was just me. I would have outbursts of anger at others, at myself, at friends, and at family. Relationships would seem to be crashing to me when others had no clue what I was even focusing on. I would sometimes just stay quiet and disappear. I remember that was my way of quitting bands or quitting jobs… I would simply stop showing up, stop answering phonecalls, and just cease to exist. I would back out of relationships rather than face the conflict of admitting that perhaps it was time that I moved on.

I didn’t want to face the conflict in person, eye to eye. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I truly wanted to give my all to make everyone happy, but at the same time, a part of me was dying inside by continuing to be fake. I felt like an actor. I felt like I couldn’t simply stand up sometimes and say “this music we are making isn’t what I want to make” and walk away. I wanted to be in control of the writing and creative process but instead I would remain silent in the background playing drums and flexing to keep others happy. All the while, my unhappiness was boiling over and being exhibited through my avatar (as I have come to call my body) in silence and palpable disconnection. Where other people wanted to make music to make crowds of people think they were cool, I wanted to make music that connected spiritually with myself. Sometimes my peers would view me as a weird guy just wanting to make weird music for the sake of being different, a cry for attention perhaps. That wasn’t the case. I wanted to write the kind of music that truly expressed how I was feeling.

I wanted to the go on to perform that music on my own terms in my own way for others to either appreciate or reject. I longed to connect to others through that music, but if they couldn’t appreciate it that was okay too. I felt disconnected from my bandmates who simply wanted to perform a couple of cover songs for a room full of drunks. I was not there to entertain, I was there to teach and experience. That is what interested me and ultimately why I wanted to quit every band I was ever in. I have not been able to find another person who feels the same way, of wanting to create something that we can all connect on at a visceral level.

I would give my all to writing and performing drum and vocal parts for some of the bands I was in over the years. I would try to contribute my musings through ironic lyrics and nuanced drum fills. All the while I felt underappreciated. I felt like I was just a guy who was there to fill in where any drummer could just sit in. I felt that my views on the world and lyrics weren’t taken seriously, as much as they were written in satire, that is the seriousness that I intended. To satirically point out the ridiculous nature of heavy metal’s backbone which is isolating and pushing people away more and more as they seek the next “legit” band and scoff at “posers.” I wanted to bring these people together and give them a sense of “maybe we’re all in the same boat and we should just have a good time” rather than worrying about how freaking gay breakdowns and hardcore dancing was.

I lost music somewhere along the way because I could never find like-minded people to play it with. I wanted to simply connect. I wanted to make music for the sake of music, connection, love, solidarity, and to express our feelings with the human experience. I didn’t want to replicate what other people were already doing. I didn’t want to entertain a room full of people on a Friday night. I didn’t want a free bar tab or a backstage pass. I didn’t want paid for a single gig. I just wanted to see who else was feeling what I was feeling. I still want that, but I don’t know where to look.

Moving on, ultimately, I went on to end my first marriage and I had reasoned that there was just too much damage done and that there was no way to mend from the amount of times I had pushed and pulled this girl. I also had begun falling in love with another girl who happened to share many personality traits with me: the aforementioned twinsie. I finally felt that deep connection with another human being that I had been seeking for so long, and it was on the tail end of me trying to come to the conclusion that I was in fact not human refuse.

That connection that I mention is a key part of my personality. It is central to my sense of well-being that I be understood, appreciated, and loved by someone else. I never recognized that before. I was so caught up in self-loathing that I honestly believed that I was not worth loving. I have read that this is common in those with BPD. A sense of being the one person that cannot be loved, appreciated, respected, or connected with has become central to many of us. We have developed maladaptive personalities as a response to absurd stimuli in the setting of distinctive genetics.

Western society has us filing through as caged animals. We are in fact mammals. We are designed by nature to eat, sleep, reproduce, and dominate. We have done a good job of dominating our environment. We are now at the top of the food chain on this planet, Earth. We human-beings are the apex predators and because of that we sometimes lose touch with our true inner animal. It is like the alcoholic who is 10 years sober who has that one drink, he is suddenly rushed back in to that cycle of drinking. Day after day and starting over at square one.

Human beings are complex social creatures. We thrive in settings of love. True love and empathy are the only ingredients necessary to produce positive results. We must love our children and nurture them. We must find ways to break down their walls and get through to them and let them know that we truly love them no matter what. That is the only ingredient needed for a successful life. Love. We must support them and bear with them as they learn this process of living.

I now realize that I am a valuable human being and that I do deserve to be loved. Unfortunately, it took me a very long time to realize this. It seems so simple, and on the surface, it is. But even with all of the logic in the world, my emotions would never allow me to love myself. I could have come in with this first, but it may have poisoned my understanding of life. I may have not gained the knowledge and insight that I have had I not suffered.

The worst decision I could have made in my life was to begin using chemicals to “shut my brain off” as I always called it. I began drinking heavily or taking sleeping pills to just go to sleep at the end of the day. The constant struggle of never feeling good enough or worth living. Studies clearly show the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse with BPD. For me it was the option to turn off the torture generator in my head to drink enough alcohol to sleep. I wasn’t doing this to destroy my marriage, my career, or to hurt anyone. Ultimately it did cause a lot of strain and did cause stress on the things I valued. I didn’t choose alcohol over life, I chose shutting off painful thoughts over suicide. I was just wanting an off switch from the reality that I was interpreting as so painful. People don’t realize that. I feel sorry that people view it as a personal attack when I say reality hurts. I don’t mean it that way. I also don’t mean to ask for their sympathy. I simply want to live and let live. I will get by, I am strong, I have faith in me and I want others to have the same.

I was able to stop drinking alcohol and focus on myself early in 2018. But at that time, I was not really even thinking about the BPD, I was more focused on depression or bipolar disorder. I stopped drinking and started really focusing on myself through exercise and diet. I wasn’t aware of how my personality disorder played into my mood disorder. It was a chaotic dance of sorts. There were nuances of mania and depression rearing their heads with this an almost flat affect I had developed. I found everything in life to be absurd and treated life as though I were a stand-up comedian just musing on my observations. I kept a straight face. Only the most extreme things could cause me to truly laugh. I somehow inappropriately (or maybe appropriately, this is subjective) attached laughter with absurdity.

I was able to see the humor in everything. There was absolutely nothing off limits. My extreme personality allowed me to explore extreme topics. I had watched clips of people being hurt and killed and essentially found the ridiculousness of it all to allow me to laugh. My brain had seemingly wired a circuit to find absurdity funny, so I could escape the true pain that it was causing me. We see people get kicked in the scrotum on MTV all day and laugh at it, this is a light version of what I am describing. Having access to all things human via the internet I desensitized myself to the most extreme of human behaviors. I have seen video footage of a man being beaten to death with a hammer. I have seen a chainsaw beheading video. Even worse, I have heard a chainsaw beheading video.

When I honestly put myself in that man’s shoes whose lifeless body is gurgling for wind from some prehistoric reflex I feel the pain of the human condition. I am able to know that I am mortal. I will die. I will cease to exist in the form of Ernie one day. I have been face-to-face with death as a young child raised by elderly distant relatives, and I have watched other human beings take their last breath as a hospice nurse. I have hunted deer and geese. I have taken the life from a dove and consumed her flesh. It is a chaotic balance of energy that I have been a part of in this very real chain of events.

The will to power, the longing to be in control takes a darker turn at times. So for me to make the decision to take another sentient being’s life in order to eat, I now must question what that truly means. As a 33-year-old white male in America I am surrounded by meat and cheese. Lives lost for the sake of contributing energy back into the circle of life. It all comes back to me and I can feel so clearly the morning I first took the life of a white-tailed deer.

I was camped out in my tree stand. I was dressed like a redneck in camo and I had hiked into some fall scenery right out of a Mark Twain novel. I was sitting silently and waiting for motion. When I finally heard the crushing of leaves my heart began to race. This is it. This is the moment I have been waiting for. To kill this sentient being. The hunt was on.

I saw two does playfully wondering through a sparse patch of thin trunked trees. The leaves were golden and red. They were almost dancing with one another. They hadn’t noticed me but I watched them come into my field of vision. I moved and one of the does looked up. She made eye contact with me. Her tail flipped up. White flag! She was ready to run. She was afraid. I drew my bow and let loose an arrow into the distance.

There was a calamity of hooves and cracking leaves. My heart was racing and there was sweat on my brow. I could smell autumn. I was one with the nature scene I had very realistically painted myself into. I rushed down from my latter clumsier than I would like to admit and began taking large gallop-like steps toward a creek bed. I could see a faint trail of blood on the ground guiding me to where this injured creature must be. It was like I looked up and there she was. Right in front of me. I was on top of her and didn’t even see her. She appeared out of nowhere.

She was lying in a shallow creek bed making labored breaths. Begging mother nature for her life. I pulled my 9mm side arm from my waist and did what I thought was the right thing at the time. I mercifully killed her by shooting her in the head. To end her suffering. My adrenaline was coursing through my body and I could not imagine what my next move was. I picked up the lifeless doe that was once dancing with her friend and threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I carried her out of the woods like a “real man” and disrespectfully threw her body in the back of my hatch back ford focus. Her eyes were glazed over and her tongue fell out the right side of her mouth.

I brought her to my home and removed her skin. I hung her from her hind legs in my shed with some bailing twine that was laying around and I opened YouTube videos on how to butcher a deer. I called my friend Gabe to see if he had a knife, he was too drunk to help me dress my kill.

I began hacking parts off of this majestic creature’s body with an axe and a dull kitchen knife. I had already purchased butchers paper and I broke down the meat the best I could with the guidance of Youtube. I turned on a death metal album by Cannibal Corpse to get me in a disgusting mindset as I butchered away. I needed the distraction in order to complete the job. My now ex-wife came home to find blood on the back porch and door knob and she knew “Ernie got a deer.” What the fuck does it even mean? I got one.

We went on to incorporate this fresh meat into our cooking for the rest of that year and I even tried to consume the organ meats with Gabe as to not waste any of the animal. Looking back it seems so barbaric and out of character for me. I don’t think I could ever pull the trigger again or let another arrow fly. The sanctity of life is not something that I wish to choose when it shall end. All life is sacred in This consciousness. That is what I have come to appreciate. I know others struggle with it and take it lightly, but I have intimately been there. I have danced with death and I know every callus lunge.

To me, now, the thought of being able to obtain a permit to hunt and end a life is absurd.  Of course, creatures need to eat. But I am looking at this planet as a whole. How can human beings simply choose what life is sacred and what life is not? We fish the oceans dry. Why must we consume those things with sentience in order to survive? I don’t believe it is necessary at this point. That seems a bit misguided to me to think that it is entirely just sack after sack of matter and therefore vitamins and nutrients. Sure, I have stomped out an ant hill, I have crushed a fly. But what gives me that right? I believe as a human being we are blessed and cursed to know that life is finite. I do not wish to be a god amongst plebeians.

Knowing that my true moral code is to love all life and to appreciate it and hold it in high regard is paramount to my existence. I can then, unfortunately, explore the very opposite of this notion. That life is not sacred. That this existence is pointless and meaningless. That we are simply chemical reactions. The view of materialists is that we are a complex series of reactions. While I don’t believe this to be accurate, I have had my brain chemistry altered to the point that I almost believed it.

I had a short stent of taking the drug Abilify for an episode of mania and panic. I was started on this in-patient and continued it for about a week after hospitalization. Honestly, within a few days of being on the drug I felt no emotional attachment to my wife of so many years. I also believe, however, my true emotional attachment to her had waxed and waned over the previous years as my personality disorder pushed and pulled my life. While on Abilify I was able to make cold and rigid decisions without any emotional repercussions. I truly feel I could have strangled somebody to death and not felt any remorse on that medication. Is it simply the neurotransmitters in our brains that regulate our sense of right and wrong or are we tuning into something greater like a collective consciousness?

Through the years professionally and personally I have chronically had angst about my performance or accomplishments. I would always immediately downplay my performance and know that I could do better. Until I drastically modified my lifestyle and stopped drinking alcohol I was headed toward self-destruction. Having our neurotransmitters out of balance is like tuning a piano with an out of tune reference. I don’t know how to better describe it. It is like interpreting the world through a faulty interpretation device. Nature provides us the tools to perfectly balance and calibrate our interpretation device if we are willing to take the time and effort.

In this eastern society it does take time and effort to calibrate your device. In the wild it would not. You would not worry about being depressed or manic in the wild for a number of reasons. The cycle would have simply played out as it should. In our artificial reality that we have constructed with these cities and roadways, we have to take the time to get back to nature if we want balance. We need to re-calibrate our brains. We need to balance our neurotransmitters.

Our neuro-endocrine systems naturally produce everything we need if they are functioning properly. In order to function properly they need the correct environment. Our biology is specifically fine-tuned to allow us to thrive in whatever given setting we happen to arise from. We are at a point in which we are modifying our environment faster than evolution can catch up with and thus we have the central disconnected feeling that comes out as angst and turmoil. Identifying this and utilizing our strengths to fit into our own lives on an individual level is the prescribed treatment. There is no one size fits all plan.

Neuro-endocrinology functions optimally when given appropriate ingredients and in human beings those ingredients can be obtained from plant sources, water, and of course love. In order to best fuel our bodies optimally we should be eating a vegan diet which is free of processed foods, hormones, antibiotics, and suffering. When we eat food, we are eating the building blocks of our body and mind. Food is information essentially. What we take in builds what we are. This is important. The fuel we run on is central to our functioning at our best.

Looking at myself now, I am obsessed with telling the truth and being accurate. I want to live a life that I am proud of and therefor hold no secrets. I want to connect with another human being on an intimate level in which I tell her no lies. I want to be as open and forth coming as possible. The ultimate vulnerability. The payoff, is the ultimate relationship. It is important that we all begin to shift our culture to a culture of openness. We should be proud of who we are. We should be able to express our deepest desires and interests freely.

If we have something to hide, it is likely leading to negative karma. This is how I weigh my karma. When I do something I ask myself, “Is this something you would feel proud to tell everyone in this world?” If it is not, there is a better option. It is important as a species as we continue to evolve spiritually and emotionally that we understand this internal compass and respect it. We need to always bend to the will of the internal compass and listen to it in order to have the most fulfilling lives. If your gut tells you not to do something, you seriously need to stop and reconsider that decision. Take time. Make the right choice. To truly work through this process is grueling but it will lead to the ultimate transcendence.

The ultimate will to power is to give up complete control. Give your life over to the laws of the universe. To love without questioning “what is in it for me?” to give without wondering “do they appreciate it?” to teach others to better themselves and stop judging them for what they aren’t. Start seeing human beings for their potential. To push forth and get every bit of positivity out of our fellow-man’s soul. To not wonder “how am I going to get by” and just wonder “how can I help someone else get by.”

That is what I am striving for. I will post this long post for free, relatively unedited, though it feels like it should probably be in some sort of BPD and spirituality book or something. I know that in my life the Universe will provide for me food, shelter, wisdom, and love if I stay on the right path. I have that faith. I am following it with open mind, open heart, and open soul.

[agentaw]

Detroit: Become Human - Funny story...

Okay... so Story Time because my friends pointed this out and it’s been fucking with me ever since.

This is the story of how I kinda...sorta wrote/ predicted parts of DBH about...2 years ago. Just hear me out...okay?

So this all started similarly to how DBH started, with that dope-ass demo back in 2012. My 15 year old self became enthralled in it, much like I am now enthralled in the full game. I’ve always loved story telling and had a sort of soft spot for digital modelling. So that demo was a masterpiece to me, it had a great concept and beautiful design. It was a short obsession but it had an impact. 

And that was the last piece of news I’d ever hear about it until a month after they released the full game. I remember hearing some rumour that they weren’t gonna make it a full game or something and left it at that. I didn’t hear anything about it’s coverage at E3 because while I like video games, I become absorbed in different obsessions from time to time. 

And two years ago I was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, the thought of creating a whole world and having others enter it was fascinating. And while I tried to create worlds from scratch, I had a problem. 

I had never been too interested in Fantasy things, I liked fantasy characters but tended to focus on too much of the political aspect of fantasy worlds and not the fun stuff like slaying dragons and stuff. 

The return of an old obsession began to try and take my focus off of DnD but I wasn’t ready to let it go yet. 

So I merged them, DnD didn’t have to be fantasy, I didn’t have to invent a world from scratch and luckily my old obsession had a world pre-designed. Marvel, specifically MCU had a treasure trove of lore and I could take a number of rules from DnD 5e and tweak them to suit the change in genre. 

So I started off with a one shot campaign, set in a HYDRA base. My three player characters would be playing themselves and making decision based on how they’d react. They ‘woke up’ in a white plastic robot body. Singular, all three were in the same body, looking through the same eyes and rolling for control over said robot body. It was entertaining to watch them figure out what they hell was going on organically. They quickly met the first NPC an old doctor/sciencist who was a very nervous person. He explained that they’d all been loaded into the same body by accident and that he was just testing out that his creation (the body itself) was working correctly. So my players decided to answer the jumpy doctors questions and let one of them take control as the doctor got them to walk around while still connected to the computer around them by a bunch of wires connected to the back of their neck. The doctor left the room briefly (to report to his superiors) before returning and calmly explaining that he’d need to shut them down before making the rest of the bodies. Yes, this was heavily inspired by the demo but the players didn’t notice or didn’t comment on it at the time. And they genuinely really like the one-shot. So, I started writing more, growing the campaign and expanding my list of NPCs.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “wow...you ripped off the demo and think that counts as writing a whole game” but I never said I wrote the whole story, that would be mental. But as both me and my players have pointed out, there is a large number of similarities which is spooky because as i already stated I didn’t know anything about DBH until almost a month after it’s full release. 

The first and most profound is Amanda. Or my Amanda, who’s called Ruth LaRue. Dr. Ruth LaRue, the trio’s psychologist/co-creator who acts pleasant (too pleasant) towards them...unless they disobey or resist their training to become Hydra Assets. One of my players is rebellious and LaRue has tried to manipulate and coldly threatened him as a result. While another obeys and gets praise and rewards as a result. Also she looks like Amanda (a character i didn’t even know existed), I originally described her as the same race, hairstyle, though slightly younger. And then I drew her (poorly) for my players to get a better idea of how she looked and Jesus Christ they look the same. 

Another is the fact that I have three player characters. There was a possible fourth player but work and life made it difficult for her to be a part of the game. Also my players are two boys and one girl. And while that’s all freaky, their characters appearances/designs are extra weird. Originally, after all getting their own bodies, they all had white plastic robot bodies, all male design (which female player wasn’t happy about because she missed her boobs). The only way to tell them apart was voice and the nervous doctor had given them different coloured eyes. Creating robots came with the challenge of figuring out how their bodies worked (one player was particularly interested in this). Once again inspiration partly came from the Kara demo, the robots are a water (blue liquid) based system, a pump (heart) transports water, which is collect in bags (lungs) through the robots absorbing moisture in the air (through breathing), around the machine frame (body). The water has two purposes, to thinly coat the white plastic casing (skin), which allowed the robot to feel pressure but not texture and also to keep the pump valves going, which creates the energy the machines (players) are run on. After learning that the white plastic version could be easily broken during training, the nervous doctor created a second batch of models, this time made out of metal (female asked for a female body and therefore the doctor gave her a large dent in her chest plate, she was pleased). They then get a new model, ones that are designed to blend in with humans. And this is where this section gets super freaky. The player got no say in how they looked because in game they wouldn’t. 

The female is the shortest model as well as they palest model with loads of freckles, the similarities with Kara stop there but the female player has been gifted a female kitten (thankfully named Cookie, not Alice) as the reward and is quite paranoid about it being taken off her or harmed (calm down, I haven’t hurt the cat...yet). 

One of the males is only slightly more tanned than the female with considerably less freckles and markings. He’s the tallest and the player has been surprisingly obedient, only "failing” when he doesn’t understand what’s happen or doesn’t think something will benefit HYDRA. Because of this he’s been promoted to team leader by the powers that be. He’s logical and is usually thinking about training and what’s going on in the NPCs�� heads. 

Lastly we have the second male who looks southern European (Spain, Italy, Greece and could probably pass as Mexican but the story is set in central Europe) so a different ethnicity/race to the other two. This is the rebellious player who generally plays pranks, cracks jokes and says “fuck you” to authority. Like I said before as a result, he tends to be the one looked down on and oppressed by the powers that be. He generally has a very clear line which he won’t cross no matter what and is willing to stand up if he views something as drastically wrong (refused to hurt his friends or pick up a gun).

Also when asked what they wanted to be called (I.e What’s your name?) The players decided to to sick to what the nice nervous doctor had designated them, i.e the colours of their eyes. Rebellious is Red. Logical is Blue and Female is Purple (name later changed to Violet).

Next is three more NPCs, who have enough in common with the DBH characters to mess with me. 

The nervous doctor, Dr. Thomas Thornley, while having a completely different personality, has formed relationships like Hank. A number of the players refer to him as “Daddy Thornley”, not to his face but when talking to each other in game. And most disturbingly the rebellious player has implied on several occasions that he “ships” the logical male player with father-figure Thornley, jokingly of course. And while in the beginning Thornley may have viewed the robots as a project or experiment, he now appears quite protective and fond of them. Even displaying discomfort when one is broken or completely destroyed. 

Their combat and gun trainer, Agent Woodrow who is ex-military and treats the robots exactly like you’d expect he would, like machines. He could either be Gavin or Captain Allen but either way he’s a genuine aggressor and dislikes/hates the robots. 

The Head of Hydra, Director Malachi Storm who has an air of mystery around him and commands any room he enters. He’s considerable less creepy than Kamski but is an “all-knowing, all-powerful” character. Also I guess I’m technically also Elijah Kamski (a.k.a GOD) and my players pointed out that i have his sadistic, power hungry play style (thanks, guys).

Lastly is a few game mechanics and events i put in the game. The players have always been able to telepathically talk to one another, they can also transfer images to each other. If broken beyond repair (i.e Killed) they now get automatically rebuilt, similar to Connor. I made LaRue give them a morality test which was mostly the “Track dilemma” which is similar to both the driver-less car AIs and the Kamski test. I actually did the motherfucking Kamski test with one or two of my players (but with humans instead of androids lol). Also the players believe they’re alive (which technically they are). They’ve literally been give zero context as to how they are in robot bodies in the MCU, specifically they’re last memories before the start of the game are of going to sleep in their beds in the real world. They are literally three robots walking around stating that they’re alive. 

And yes, I realise that Cage took shit from other movies but it have seen any of those movies so...:P

If I looked hard I could probably find more scary comparisons but a) I don’t particularly want to show all my cards, in case my players read this post, and b) I appear to have written a fucking TED talk out of what was supposed to be a short funny story. 

[dweemeister]

Hans Christian Andersen (1952)

Why is it that the “Hollywood ending” or the “fairytale ending” has become something to be chastised and not taken seriously? What is wrong with happily ever afters for audiences looking for an escape? Charles Vidor’s Hans Christian Andersen – which, in an opening intertitle, presents itself as “not the story of his life, but a fairytale about this great spinner of fairy tales” – is the sort of movie one expects to have said happily ever afters. Not so. A delightful musical from Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO, Hans Christian Andersen has a resolution that subverts (but does not reject) those expectations in ways very few fairytale films have ever attempted.

For powerful producer Samuel Goldwyn (1936′s Dodsworth, 1946′s The Best Years of Our Lives), Hans Christian Andersen was a fourteen-year undertaking that included several screenwriters submitting their scripts and no expenses spared. After accepting Moss Hart’s (1947′s Gentleman’s Agreement, 1954′s A Star Is Born) screenplay, Goldwyn greenlighted production on the film. Goldwyn became so endeared to this film that he could not be flustered by its clunky narrative and weaker musical segments. But regardless of its noticeable faults, the lavish Hans Christian Andersen is a fascinating film – demonstrating that fairytales can be compelling for children and adults.

We open in Odense in Denmark, where cobbler Hans Christian Andersen (Danny Kaye) passes the time creating and sharing stories with local children. Andersen’s storytelling is grating to the schoolmaster (John Brown), who pleads with local government officials to stop the cobbler from making the children tardy to school. Andersen implores to the officials that there is as much to learn outside the classroom as in it, and even the adults are stopping to listen to his tales. Andersen’s assistant is the teenaged orphan, Peter (Joseph Walsh), who persuades Andersen to travel to Copenhagen after secretly learning that the town leaders have voted to exile the cobbler. In Copenhagen, Andersen and Peter will stumble onto the Royal Danish Ballet and Andersen finds himself crushing on and intimidated by lead ballerina Doro (French international Zizi Jeanmarie, who by trade is a ballet dancer and not an actor). Doro asks Andersen – referring to him by occupation, not name – to fix her shoes. Andersen witnesses her husband, choreographer Niels (Farley Granger) cruelly criticize Doro, and Andersen believes that he is being abusive. Peter, watching what happens after his boss leaves, notices how loving Doro and Niels are to each other outside of rehearsal.

Andersen returns to his new Copenhagen storefront, not heeding Peter’s protestations that Doro and Niels are in love, and proceeds to write “The Little Mermaid” to tell Doro – in the only way he can – that Niels is the wrong man. Here, it is useful to remember that Hans Christian Andersen is intended to be a fairytale for Andersen himself, and that the film has some freedom to reinterpret his works and their central messages.

Before we talk about the passions found within, it is worthwhile to note that Hans Christian Andersen is a celebration of storytelling and what the art of creating stories and telling them to others can do. These tales bring healing to those suffering from their own anxieties; comfort to the hopeless; wisdom to confound even the wisest individuals. Andersen is the sort of character who, if he could, would spend his lifetime brightening the days of anyone who might take the time to listen. But life necessities and political pressure interfere – for Andersen and everyone else – and Denmark needs a decent cobbler.

Modern scholarship has uncovered that Andersen was incredibly shy about his feelings, largely closeted in his bisexuality, and that he tended to fall for women who did not return his ardor. Though this 1952 film does not reflect much of the real-life Andersen (for reasons of historiography and the Hays Code), it has a more complicated portrayal of what it means to fall in love and what love may seem to be than anyone might predict. Going into Copenhagen, we are unsure whether Andersen has felt and experienced love for another person. His social awkwardness when not telling stories probably suggests he knows little else outside the two main functions he performs. Watching Niels’ conduct to Doro, Andersen has been informed by the kindness imbued by his protagonists in his own stories, finding such behavior repugnant to the fictional love he has based his fairytales in. The film insists that Doro and Niels’ professional hostility to each other does not extend to their private romantic lives – an argument that is not well-supported by Hart’s screenplay. The differences between the public and private aspects of their relationship are unbelievably night and day, and it is too difficult to imagine how Doro tolerates how she is being treated. I stop short of calling Hans Christian Andersen as abuse-enabling, but the messages are too mixed.

Andersen’s conduct, too, knowing so little about Doro outside of fixing her shoes, could be better developed. Are his actions crossing the line in invading a couple’s privacy? Are they borne from actual love (which would require, above all, commitment and an effort to understand the other person in a way Andersen does not display)? What is apparent is that Andersen’s idealism towards love is childlike – as opposed to childish – and he does not listen to criticism or advice that contradicts that. When, late in the film, Doro finally understands what Andersen’s feelings for him are, she is taken aback and unable to respond. For too long she has taken the cobbler for granted, not believing that they are anything more than ballerina and cobbler who fixes her shoes. It leaves the conclusion, as frustrating as the romantic writing has been, with more pathos than the viewer might think possible.

Hans Christian Andersen is foremost a Danny Kaye piece, partly thanks to how Goldwyn and Vidor handled this production. Kaye’s on-screen partnership with the film’s many child actors is delightful to watch. He successfully embodies Andersen’s optimism and sense of wonder – where other adults might trudge their way to places they need to go, one can imagine Kaye’s Andersen being distracted by animals or flowers, not arriving where he needs to be until many minutes or hours after the fact. Kaye’s graciousness in his performance did not extend to how he treated his two adult co-stars. Irritated with Jeanmarie’s troubles understanding director Vidor (Vidor had a heavy Hungarian accent) and Granger for whatever he did, it does not help either of those two performances. Kaye also had a short temper with the film’s technicians and makeup artists – mystifying those on set, as Kaye never had any history of mistreating people during film shoots before or after Hans Christian Andersen. Jeanmarie’s lack of acting pedigree harms her supposed romantic connection with Granger’s character and more emotional scenes with Kaye. Granger’s lackadaisical performance – a year after starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train – is a critical letdown, robbing Hans Christian Andersen of romantic tension.

Samuel Goldwyn pursued Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (R&H had already completed Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I) to write the musical score for Hans Christian Andersen, but instead settled for Frank Loesser (who composed the stage musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as composer and Walter Scharf (1968′s Funny Girl, 1971′s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) as musical director. No one song is a spectacular standout but, together, Loesser’s score is a solid effort with a few numbers that will lodge themselves – your tolerance may vary, depending on how you feel about Danny Kaye before this movie – in your head. The film’s second song, “The Inchworm” (which isn’t exactly an earworm) is an ambitious example of counterpoint – when two or more musical voices that are melodically and rhythmically distinct but come together to harmonize – that displays who Andersen is as a person. It contrasts the robotic learning occurring in the classroom nearby with his daydreaming curiosity. Soon after leaving for Copenhagen is the film’s actual earworm, “I’m Hans Christian Andersen”. Like “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins (1964), “I’m Hans Christian Andersen” has verses spread across the film, fitting to whatever the situation is at that moment. Yes, this means Hans Christian Andersen has many instances where he is singing his own name. You would think the people of Odense and Copenhagen would have no need for this song by a certain point!

"Wonderful Copenhagen” works as a memorable traveling song, maybe a Hollywoodized sea shanty, as it is one of the most repeated songs in the instrumental score. From the film’s songs, “Thumbelina” would be nominated for an Academy Award. And though I retrospectively disagree with that nomination, it is a charming, inventive ditty that shows Andersen always retains his compassion even at a desperate time. “The Ugly Duckling” is a simple musical retelling of the eponymous fable and is quite meaningful when taken in context.

But the film’s greatest musical achievement has to be the extended, climactic ballet sequence – presented like a borderless fantasy rather than depicting any divide between stage, orchestra, and audience. Combined with the cinematography by Harry Stradling (1938′s Pygmalion); production design by Howard Bristol (1940′s Rebecca), Antoni Clave (1961′s Black Tights), and Richard Day (1941′s How Green Was My Valley); and costume design by Clave (for the ballet sequence only; Mary Wills did the costume design for everything else, and she too should deserve acclaim), the ballet is a stupendous feat of visual creativity following in the footsteps of two breakout movies that started this trend in Hollywood musicals – 1948′s The Red Shoes and 1951′s An American in Paris. Yes, Niels takes Andersen’s idea to adapt it for the ballet stage while failing to understand Andersen’s true intentions behind the work. With the music based on five pieces by Franz Liszt and adapted by Heinz Roemheld (1942′s Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1945′s Wonder Man), it is a cinematic splendor that surprisingly is not from a better movie.

Before the film’s release, rumors in Denmark had many believing that Hans Christian Andersen would be an unfair depiction of their national hero. To stem the growing unrest, Goldwyn sent Kaye on a goodwill pre-release tour to Denmark. From the moment Kaye arrived at the airport in Copenhagen and made his way to lay flowers at Andersen’s statue, he was followed by thousands of his fans. At the statue he joked, “I came here to see if you would murder me.” Kaye would be killed with Danish kindness, accomplishing what he set out to do. The film became a critical and financial success in Denmark, across Europe, and in the United States – where it became the eighth-highest grossing movie of the year. After years of struggling to produce the film, Goldwyn was relieved the film was well-received.

Hans Christian Andersen would be the final film he made with Samuel Goldwyn – the executive who made him a movie star after distributing Wonder Man. No longer contracted to Goldwyn, Kaye’s career existed outside the Hollywood Studio System as he freelanced for the major studios and could exercise whatever creative authority he wished. Hans Christian Andersen can be difficult to watch because of its scattered plot and underwritten motivations for its central characters. Yet, in this fairytale of a fairytale spinner, it also pushes forward a complex take on love that few other films of this genre attempt – imbuing with musicianship and artistry as worthy as anything found in 1950s Hollywood. Though his faults are there for us to see, Hans Christian Andersen lives a good, honest life. With all the uncertainty and pain he goes through in the course of this story, he is never embittered, always hopeful.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[pan-xichen]

What The Heckin Heck Is Gonna Happen To Keith: a meta I guess

OKAY SO I, like every other Keith stan, am wondering what the heck they’re gonna do with Keith. Post s4 he is no longer a paladin and is a member of the Blade of Marmora, but due to the events of the finale I’m still unsure as to how long that will last. Will the team find out he almost sacrificed himself for them without them knowing? Also something to note: Voltron has not used its sword (I think I’m sorry if I forgot I haven’t watched the season since the day it came out lmao) since Keith has stopped being a paladin. The fact that the sword is basically Voltron’s signature weapon leads me to believe that Keith very likely will end up as a paladin again (unless they did form it without him I can’t honestly remember for sure), but then he’d no longer be able to work with the Blade of Marmora, and one of the current paladins would have to lose their position for Keith to return to a lion.

The scenarios I could see happening are: 

- Keith somehow becomes the leader of the Blade of Marmora and does not return to being a paladin 

-Keith does return to being a paladin, causing either Allura or Shiro to not be a paladin anymore and him to likely have to leave the Blade

- Keith and Shiro co-pilot the black lion when he is not off on missions for the Blade

- the extra lion in the carving of Voltron in s3 ends up becoming Keith’s new lion, forming a powerful extra but non-essential part of Voltron meaning it won’t hurt the team if he has to go off on Marmora missions from time to time 

- the extra lion calls to Allura and Lance returns to the blue lion, allowing Keith to return to Red and Shiro to remain the black paladin (probably also meaning that Keith can no longer run off with the Blade of Marmora)

- the extra lion wants Shiro as its paladin and Keith returns to being the black paladin (less grumpily now that he knows Shiro still has a lion)

(I’m gonna put the rest of this under a cut because it accidentally became 7000 words long oops)

Out of all of these outcomes I have a feeling that the writers will end up going for something that doesn’t make season 3/4′s development for Keith obsolete while at the same time allowing him to still contribute to the story directly. I personally can see scenarios three and four being the most plausible because they would allow for more aspects of his character to be present (blade and paladin) instead of eliminating one or the other. Although, the first one is definitely plausible in terms of Keith’s character and could even be combined with number four. We see him demonstrate time and again that he is a natural leader, despite not believing himself worthy to be one. I do feel as though eventually he will end up (willingly, this time) in a leadership role again after acknowledging that he is worthy of that position.

Scenario three would however feel like they’re just putting him back in for the sake of having him in and likely not really be meaningful (kinda like having Shiro come back so soon screwed up the story a bit for them because they planned to have him gone for much longer), as much as I like the idea of Keith and Shiro as co-leaders. That doesn’t necessarily mean though that they couldn’t be if they were not both the black paladins. I’ve seen a lot of theory about that extra lion in the Voltron carving at the beginning of season 3 being the white lion, which has been an actual canon thing in the past reincarnations of the series. Most of these theories involve Shiro as the white paladin, which I really do like but it feels like he really is meant to pilot Black (even if this might not actually be Shiro at the moment). His struggle to break her from Zarkon’s control was a great plot point from season 2 and both of them starting to heal from their respective trauma together would make for a nice aspect of Shiro’s character arc.

You do also have that Keith was bonded closely enough with Red to have her actually fly out into the middle of space and rescue him, and almost destroy an entire base to save his life. I love Keith as the red paladin, but if the writers still wanted to have him as an active member of the BOM it wouldn’t make much sense to put him back as the literal right arm of Voltron unless the lion switching is a thing that could happen more than once, (Lance moving back to Blue and Keith to Red but when Keith isn’t around Lance pilots Red and Allura pilots Blue) but that would be weird because they’ve put extra emphasis in the past on how important a paladin’s bond with their lion is, and having them be able to do this swap out thing all the time makes that point kinda meaningless. I think maybe the reason why Keith was able to connect with Red from so far away and have her respond when he was in danger might be the same reason why he could feel the blue lion’s energy months before Lance was even there to awaken her, and how he could pilot the black lion in that moment of desperation to save Shiro in s2 ep1. He’s connected to all of the lions in a strange way-- whether the answer to that is simply “he’s an alien” or there’s something else there, (which is what I suspect) remains to be seen, but I believe that his strong bond with Red may have been due to his connection with all of the lions. It still makes me kinda sad to see him not be her paladin anymore because he totally fits as the ‘guardian spirit of fire’, but as of right now the solution to the dilemma of “where are they gonna put keith without cutting him out of the main cast like they did in s4″ is a bit of a narrative corner the writers have backed themselves into that doesn’t logically involve him going back to being the red paladin without sacrificing the new development of him as a Blade of Marmora.

That being said, as much as I like white paladin Shiro (or whatever colour this hypothetical extra lion could be), having Keith be the white paladin would make more sense in my opinion. Voltron already has all of its essential components with five lions, but perhaps an extra lion would turn into a kind of upgrade for the robot. With the lore of the white lion from previous reboots, it might make sense to have that lion allow Voltron to create its own wormholes or even tear into other realities to pass through them, but maybe it just amplifies the robot’s powers. This would give Keith a place on the team while allowing him to still go off on Marmora missions if he is needed with them and not automatically jeopardize the team’s ability to form Voltron. It would also make for an interesting character development in him, as I imagine him seeing that Voltron can still be formed without him might make him feel less needed, but learning that his lion allows Voltron to do more than it could with only five would lift his spirit and make him feel like he belongs again. Maybe it could even include that the black and white paladins were meant to be co-leaders before something happened to the white lion, allowing both Keith and Shiro to donate their strengths as leaders to each other and cancel out some of their weaknesses (Shiro’s ability to remain level-headed under pressure and more diplomatic tendencies mixed with Keith’s passion and quick, creative thinking both at the head of Voltron would make the team an even more unstoppable force and I will fight anyone on this I could write a whole post dedicated to why Keith and Shiro as co-leaders would be beneficial and maybe even crucial to team Voltron’s success).

Technically I could end this here but I have a hypothetical scenario on how Keith becoming the paladin of the extra lion could go down so here have a pseudo-fic:

Keith’s near-death in season four is only foreshadowing to him actually dying... sort of. In the next season, Keith really does sacrifice himself for the greater good, allowing the team to succeed in their mission and deal a significant blow to the Galra empire. Before the battle during which he dies, they discover that there was a sixth lion initially built, but never used, as when it gained sentience it refused to awaken for any paladin. Perhaps this other lion foresaw the events that kickstarted the war with the Galra in the first place, and wanted no part in it, or maybe even wanted to avoid the pain of losing a paladin it knew was going to die. So it refused to function, maybe even flying away to some remote place in the universe (or even a different reality) to wait until its true paladin would arrive. The paladins find the white lion, but predictably it refuses to awaken for anyone-- that is, anyone who is present. Keith is off on another mission for the Blade when they find the lion.

Keith has been having strange dreams about the lion, not knowing exactly what it is. The lion has been trying to communicate with him, but to no avail. His own personal turmoil and lack of self-worth are clogging his thoughts, making it difficult for the white lion to reach him. The lion is brought to the castleship to prevent the Galra from finding it, and they start trying to do literally anything they can to wake it up, but the lion remains silent. It won’t even communicate with the other lions, as without a paladin and after having been gone for so long, it feels as though it doesn’t have the right to do so. Similarly to Keith, who feels as though he has no place on team Voltron.

In the last few episodes of the season, everyone goes into some epic battle again. Keith sacrifices himself so that Voltron can be victorious in a similar way to his near-sacrifice in season four, except the team knows what he’s doing this time. Shiro freezes up when they realize Keith is gone, before screaming and practically rampaging with his lion, cutting down hundreds of enemy ships at once. The white lion roars in frustration, sensing the death of a paladin it never got to bond with, and decides “nope, fuck you, you’re alive”. It launches itself out of the castle, collecting Keith’s broken body from where it’s floating out in space. The initial explosion didn’t end up killing Keith, but it did damage his suit, meaning he could no longer breathe. The lion shows up and uses its own pure quintessence to revive him. The process turns Keith’s hair white, and his irises a golden yellow, but does not corrupt him in the way that Zarkon was, due to the quintessence being pure. He is essentially reborn, like team Voltron’s very own phoenix. 

The loss of Keith has caused the team to get distracted from their goal in their distress, and they’re fighting a losing battle. The white lion suddenly springs up out of nowhere and joins the fray, confusing everyone as they have no idea who is piloting the lion. They win the battle and all return to safety, practically jumping out of their lions and crowding around the white one to see who this mysterious new paladin is. Shiro is lingering behind everyone but still trying to show interest. Everyone has this irrational hope at the back of their minds that somehow it’s Keith, and he didn’t really die, even though they watched his craft explode. A slender figure clad in white paladin armor steps out of the lion, still wearing their helmet. Everyone is holding their breath as the figure slowly approaches them and moves to remove their helmet. Nobody recognizes him at first now that his hair is white and his eyes are yellow, until Shiro finally looks up from where he’d been somberly looking down and says “Keith?” in the smallest, quietest voice he’s ever had. Keith smiles softly as he’s recognized and everyone runs to group hug him. As the others pull away, leaving Keith and Shiro still holding each other, the scene fades out. 

[smokeybrand]

Left Cheek

I love Transformers. Love them. I'm old enough to have experienced half of Generation One, firsthand, and i cherish those memories. With the advent of videocassettes and the Video Rental Store, i was able to see the entirety of the series a few years after it concluded. As i got older, it was difficult to accept a lot of changes to the franchise going forward. Beast Wars came through and turned everything i knew about my beloved Cybertronians, right on it’s head. I hated that show at first but, over time, it became one of my favorites. I even gave Beast Machines a pass because it was a continuation. I tolerated Robots in Disguise and the f*cking Unicron Trilogy. Those were the worst but that was my first experience with Japanese Transformers. I didn’t get into Headmasters, Zone, and all of that until much later. Animated dropped and, while i didn’t care for it, i respected it’s gumption. It’s a great take on the franchise and deserves it’s place in the fandom. Prime is the show that wormed it’s way into my heart, though. Transformers Prime is the best adaption of the Cybertron mythos, since G1. It’s spectacular. I’m not going to get into the great games, outstanding comics, and newer franchises. If i did, we’d be here forever. No, suffice it to say, i adore Transformers. It’s one of the big three that defined my childhood; Spider-Man, Godzilla, and G1 Transformers. I cannot stress enough how much i absolutely adore these bots so, when i say i absolutely loathe Bayformers, you know my contempt is real.

Michael Bay makes sh*t films. I wrote an entire essay about why but that’s not what this is. This is strictly focused on his treatment of my beloved franchise. Bayformes is the absolute worst. That first film was decent. It had potential. Hell, i kind of like that one. I didn’t think it was very good, but there was a decent feel with it. It felt like a Transformers episode. A super dark, edgy-for-no-reason episode of Transformers. I didn’t care for the Transformers designs but i understood the logic behind why they looked like that. What i didn’t understand, and the first thing that gave me pause about Bay’s “vision”, is the fact that Hugo Weaving voices Megatron. Are you serious? He had Frank Welker audition for the role of Megatron and then passed on him because “He didn’t sound like MY Megatron.” What the f*ck? Frank Welker IS Megatron! That’s like telling Stan Lee he doesn't know how to properly write Spider-Man. Are you f*cking serious? It was at that point, i knew this franchise as in trouble and i would be proven right. There is a distinct decline in the quality of the Bayformers movies after the first. Overt sexism, toilet humor, aggressive racism, poor writing, complete lack of continuity, cookie cutter narrative, McGuffin of the week story structure, China pandering, uncomfortable serialization of minors; These f*cking films became a real problem, real fast. All of that sh*t is absolutely terrible, any one of them worth ire, but it’s the treatment of Mikaela Banes that really f*cks me up.

Michael Bay is bad at films. I cannot stress that enough. He has no understanding of story structure, characterization, plot progression, or character growth. That’s why I'm so surprised Mikaela Banes is such a complete character. Mikaela might as well be the main character of the franchise because she’s the only one that can be described as a proper character. She has agency, she has depth, and she’s brought to life with a real humanity by Megan Fox. I imagine if the script was better written and she had more to do, Fox could have delivered a great performance but, for what she was given, she still hits it out of the park. Her arc takes a backseat to Sam, of course, it’s his movie, but Mikaela is quietly awesome the entire time she’s ever onscreen. Mikaela is the best thing about these films and the fact that she got axed because Fox voiced her unhappiness about how horrible Bay is to work with, is absolutely ridiculous. She called him Hitler, i believe, which is an apt description about how Bay treats the women and those he deems less than himself, on set. I imagine he passed on Bad Boys for Life because he couldn’t get away with the same bullsh*t toward Smith and Lawrence he had before. If Bay can’t feed his ego, he’s not interested in the project and Fox bruised the f*ck out of that self-image when she criticized his tomfoolery. So, after firing her from the franchise she helped legitimize with a great performance and dope ass character, Bay poured glass into those wounds by creating Carly Spencer.

Carly is a direct slap to the legacy Fox left with Mikaela. Everything Carly did in Dark of the Moon, was supposed to be Mikaela. Everything. All of it.  That was the end to Mikaela’s story. That was the cap to her entire arc and it would have been a good way to go out. It wold have made Dark of the Moon adequate. It was a natural progression, the only progression, for the best character in the entire goddamn franchise. That sh*t was actual good writing, especially coming off the debacle that was Return of the Fallen. This was a great, real, actualized character in a Michael Bay film. That sh*t, alone, is rare as f*ck. This was Mikaela’s story. If you get rid of Mikaela, you have to get rid of the entire arc. You have to respect the journey and the work put into developing the character. If Fox gets fired, recast the Mikaela. Someone else could have closed out Banes’ story. It was hers to finish. She deserved it. She earned it. What does Bay do? F*cking not that! No, this motherf*cker decides to add an entirely new broad to the mix, at the end of the goddamn story! Motherf*cker doesn’t even change the script, he just GIVES all of Mikaela’s resolution, to Carly! Like, Bay changes nothing in the script. He does a search-and-replace for Mikaela with Carly, and just shoots it. Just like that. It’s bullsh*t! It smacks of pettiness and derails the narrative in such a jarring fashion that the movie starts off-kilter and never really gets it’s bearings.

Dark of the Moon had the potential to be the best film in the Bayformers franchise, especially with what came next, but that sh*t was thrown right out of the window over a petty grudge. I don’t have anything against Carly as a character. How can I? We, as the audience, don;t know her. I don’t have anything against Rosie Huntington-Whiteley portraying her. She actually does a decent job, even though she is basically relegated to “Barbie Doll Damsel.” Even that aspect, the whole “Always in danger” bullsh*t is a slight to Mikaela. Banes had been in several battles with this robotic giants. She was as experienced with these motherf*ckers as NEST. All of sudden, she just gets played for a chump? Really? Michael Bay has an opportunity with Dark of the Moon to do right by the fans. To do right by the Mikaela character. So the actress who played her hurt your feelings. So what? Cast someone else and finish the art. Instead, Bay did everything in his power to erase the best thing about the Bayformer franchise and I'll never forgive him for it.

[quentinquaadgras]

118 --- An Educational Manifesto

Preface

I know there is no image this post, I spent all my time writing it this evening and I could not think of a good image for this. If you have a view on education in NZ, please read this through. It is an important topic and I would love to hear some input/contrast on my ideas. There is a TLDR (too long didn’t read) at the bottom.

Introduction

The current education system in New Zealand is inadequate and old-fashioned, students are not taught how to think, they are taught how to pass tests. The system needs to be built upon principles of purpose, engagement, creativity and productivity so it is prepared for the future. Preschool and primary schools start off well, I do not have any critique for that sector of education but when children get to intermediate school and high-school, issues arise. At a time of their lives when students should be preparing for what they will be doing in life, they are pressured by the expectations from school and their peers.

I have heard from too many students who find it difficult in High School, bullying, peer pressure and expectations plague our students. Instead of learning how to become productive people with creative skills, hobbies and interests. Students spend too much of their education “studying” for their next test. This is not real “studying”, students are disengaged from the subjects that they are being required to learn. 

This is not the fault of the teachers, they are doing the best job they can do with the policies and structures in place, in fact the current high-school education system is almost as much of a burden on teachers as it is on students. This is not a financial issue, it is not an issue of under-funding, throwing money at schools will not resolve the issues being outlined here.

The majority of the education system in New Zealand is still based on the industrial era style education, where students are put through like products on an assembly line. In this system, each student is tested for quality control and then stamped with a level of competence.

I cannot believe that with all this time spent on discussing progressive policies, climate change and social equality and equity. Nobody is talking about progressing the education system. Sure, there is plenty of talk that the education system needs to be improved but I do not see any real substance of how to actually do it.

Maybe this is because the majority of the people in this country have gone through the education system, it is normal, they cannot think of how it could be any different. This is where I may have an insight, I am one of the small percentage of people in the country who was homeschooled. I had a very different sort of education than what is found in school. This allows me to look at the high-school education system as an outsider, as someone with a fresh perspective.

A good education system needs to be based on principles. These are the principles I think an education system should incorporate.

Purpose Students need to have the opportunity to discover their purpose at High School.

Engagement Students do not learn what they are forced to learn. They need to be given the chance to learn by doing what motivates them.

Creativity All subjects involve creativity. It is essential for innovation. Mathematics and STEM would be picked up by many more students if they were given the opportunity to be creative within these subjects at school.

Production Being productive starts at school, students need to work on projects, hobbies and become producers of wealth rather than consumers. With the internet, being a consumer has never been so easy, people can watch any movie at a touch of a button. Production, creating content and solving problems is also essential for the healthy emotional state of a person. I would argue that a lack of production and purpose are two of the factors for increasing rates of depression and anxiety in young people in this country.

How to do it

I am not going to explain how to build an education system from scratch, I understand that any change to the education system needs to be built on top of what already exists. The steps outlined below explain how I would change the education system.

Redefine Tests Tests should not be something students prepare for, this sounds like a crazy idea but its not. The purpose of a test is to measure a student’s progress. It’s not a target or goal for a student to reach. The culture of exams and the pressure that they impound on students is incredibly unhealthy for a student’s well-being. It contributes to the rising Anxiety and Depression rates in this country.

Redefining tests is easy, tests can be changed so they surprise students and they should not be based on the ability for a student to recall information like a computer. They should be either open-book or based on measuring the understanding of a student and not their short-term memory. End of year external exams need to be removed and replaced with reoccurring tests throughout the year (these already exist, they are called internals).

The tests do not need to be radically different, the infrastructure is already there, it boils down to a change of process. To clarify, national standards should not be removed, they should simply be used as a measuring tool instead of a target that students aim for.

Replace credits with CV/Portfolios The credit system in schools is a bit like the tax system, it is complex. One of the problems with the school system is that it does not reflect adult life. Credits do not exist after students leave school, companies do not give people credits when they change job. It doesn’t make too much sense.

Students don’t get it, they almost need professional advice in order to navigate the credit system. What can happen is that there is a portfolio system where students are able to keep a record the skills they gain from their education. Whether this is done on an NCEA web-platform or on a personal level can be decided upon.

The important aspect here is that with a portfolio/CV system, students will be getting ready for work, they will be learning how to present themselves, they will be keeping a record of their achievements. They will know where they stand. Depending on the method of record keeping, this may or may not need some infrastructure changes (such as a government website).

Compulsory Productivity Taking numeracy and literacy is compulsory and this is a very good thing. There is another thing which needs to be compulsory (there is an upside to this one as it does not require more teachers). Projects should be compulsory at school. Students should be required to complete personal projects and be given allotted time to spend on these projects. 

There shouldn’t be any restrictions on these projects, for example students may wish to create a game or a movie. They may wish to create a robot or experiment with electronics. They may wish to compose a song and complete a performance. These projects will inspire the students, give them a direction, a purpose and look great on their CV’s. It will encourage individual learning and students will have the resource available on the internet in order to educate themselves on their projects. Again, this change will not need major infrastructure changes, I am sure most highschools have internet availability and/or areas where students can work on projects either together or as an individual, it will require students to have the time at school to work on such projects. Encourage Creativity & STEM Out of the all the modifications which have been proposed in this manifesto, this is probably the most difficult to implement. There is a reason why students are losing interest in STEM and it is not because the subjects are boring. It is because the way they are taught is. One of the most common misconceptions about STEM fields is that they are not creative fields. This could not be any further from the truth. Creativity is an essential part of STEM, in fact without it, there would be no STEM, scientific innovation is based upon creativity and exploration. Although the type of creativity is different to what is commonly referred to such as Art, Music, Literature and Film. A person who is passionate about STEM can be just as creatively brilliant as individuals in the more traditional arts. The only reason this is difficult to see is because such creativity is hidden behind jargon and specific knowledge of the subject. STEM subjects in schools need to be taught in a way which encourages exploration of the subject without sacrificing the facts and knowledge which is required for them.

Conclusion

Education is the foundation of our society, with better educated students, they will grow up and fix the problems we are currently stuck with. Significantly improving the current education system in New Zealand is not difficult. The changes here do not require significant investment, all they require is a change of policy.

I do not proclaim to be an expert on education, I only proclaim that I am lucky to have had a great, meaningful education and I wish that every other New Zealander can have one too. I want young people to have the opportunities I had, the opportunity to personally explore, discover, create and develop. 

I mean DIY, it’s in our DNA [1].

TLDR

I outline the issues with the New Zealand education system and four simple steps on how to improve it. Footnotes [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVwYnPge8wQ

[davidhalpin-blog]

An Interview with Gary Lachman.

   Gary Lachman is one of today’s most respected writers on esoteric and occult topics. His many books -- including Madame Blavatsky, Swedenborg, Jung the Mystic, and Rudolf Steiner -- have received international acclaim.

His latest work is The Secret Teachers of the Western World and later this year he will release a biography of the writer and philosopher Colin Wilson.

Gary has appeared on many television and radio programs and is an adjunct professor in the Evolution of Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. A founding member of the band Blondie, he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    Hi Gary, and thanks so much for taking the time out to answer some questions for our readers here at Occultum.net.

Gary, if I could ask you first of all how your upcoming Colin Wilson biography is coming along?

 I've just finished proof-reading Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. It turned out to be much longer than I had anticipated, about twice as long in fact. Wilson had a long life and he wrote an enormous amount. His work is packed with ideas so there is a lot to write about. I've tried to keep an even pace between telling his story and exploring his ideas, but his life was so much his work that the two blend together, so it is a kind of biography of ideas.  It will be coming out at the end of August along with a new edition of The Outsider that I've written an introduction to. Both are marking the 60th anniversary of The Outsider's publication in 1956. 

 I was struck by the line at the end of Dreaming to some Purpose where Wilson writes, “I see my task as a writer to explore, and at times create what Rhea White calls ‘exceptional human experience’.”  In your view, what will become Colin Wilson’s most important legacy?

 I think Wilson will be recognized for developing an important philosophy of consciousness and for what he calls his "new existentialism," an analysis of human experience based on meaning and purpose, rather than the negative conclusions reached by Sartre, Camus, and other "old" existentialists. Wilson spent his entire life trying to penetrate a central mystery of human existence, what he called the "paradoxical nature of freedom." Human beings crave freedom more than anything else, but when we get it, we often don’t know what to do with it and it becomes a burden. This was something Wilson’s “Outsiders” experienced, and he devoted his life to cracking this riddle. He found clues in the work of Abraham Maslow, Edmund Husserl, Gurdjieff, and many others, but it was his own remarkable ability to synthesize these and add to them his own insights that make his work so important. One of his central themes, what he calls “Faculty X,” is, for me at least, a true recognition of a kind of “power” we have that we are not aware of having. It is a kind of power over time, an ability to grasp the reality of other times and places, instead of being stuck, as we usually are, in a very limited present. It is a kind of inner freedom and spaciousness that stretches out over time and history.

      Throughout the ages, occult thinkers seem to have gravitated towards places where they can preach and experiment with their ideas away from the masses and within communities receptive to their philosophy. In this social media age do you think our next generation of radical thinkers will be the owners of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, or is physical human contact essential for new thinkers within the esoteric movement?

 There are aspects of esoteric teaching that are said to be able to be transmitted only from a teacher to a student, from one person to another. I would think this is true in the same sense that any good or inspiring teacher conveys something of his or her own charisma or personality to the student. And in some schools this idea goes even further, with a special kind of energy or force passing from one to the other. This may be true. I can’t say I’ve experienced it, but I have read accounts of those who have. But such teachers are not easy to find and one has to be wary of poseurs. But the main ideas of what we may call esoteric philosophy can, I think, be conveyed on the printed page – or I guess computer screen these days. There is of course a difference between knowing intellectually and knowing experientially, but one can experience ideas as real, living powers, and they can have an impact on one as powerful as any sensory experience. I believe that what is important is to use our minds, to think actively, to feel ourselves as active agents trying to understand our world rather than passive recipients of sensory data. The internet makes an enormous amount of material that would be difficult to find available, but it is also crowded with a lot of rubbish. We need to develop our powers of discrimination accordingly. Many people join groups and embrace a teaching in order to avoid the inconvenience of thinking for themselves. Many think themselves out of any experience, feeling they “know it all.” Personally I tend to be solitary. It’s nice to socialize, either in the real world or online, with people who share your interests, but the real work gets done on one’s own.

     During an interview for Caretakers of the Cosmos with Miguel Conner a couple of years ago, you spoke about the importance of human interaction and repair, and the whole idea of Tikkun. There still seems to be a lack of traction when it comes to this concept. Is this fundamentally due to materialistic egotism or something else entirely?

 The idea of tikkun or of somehow “repairing” the world has been around for some time but as you say it seems that in recent times there is little evidence of its efficacy. Well, I can’t argue with you about the obvious problems facing us in the outer world, environmental, social, economic and so on. The world is in a mess and there doesn’t seem to be anyone cleaning it up. I think Isaac Luria, the Cabbalist who developed the notion of tikkun, would agree, but I think he would point out that the world has been in a mess since creation– that, in fact, creation itself is a mess, or at least has a few kinks in it that God or whoever is responsible didn’t manage to sort out. That’s why we – man – appeared, in order to correct God’s mistakes. How good a job we are doing is at least debatable. But the work of tikkun is not the same as major operations to protect the environment or to limit greenhouse gases, as important as imperative as these may be. It is more of a kind of inner work, in which each of us, on encountering the sparks of the divine that were captured by matter at the beginning of the world, are able to release them, so that they can return to their source. In doing this, our own souls are released too. It is a way of recognising the spirit in others, in all things. If enough people were to practice it, then we would be able to work on the obvious repairs that need doing in the outer world. We can only hope they will.

     The mystic philosopher Evelyn Underhill seems, like Wilson, to be quite overlooked within today’s esoteric community. I was struck by the cutting edge work of neuroscientist David Eagleman and his observations with respect to the restrictions of our biological senses and perception of ultimate reality. Underhill, Henri Bergson and, indeed, Aldous Huxley, all seem to have come to this conclusion long before we had such an advanced scientific understanding. Is the awareness of our biological limitation a higher, instinctive knowledge that comes from the mystic experience, in your opinion, or simply the result of a particular existential stage?  

  Yes, Evelyn Underhill’s work deserves to be better known. I first read her years ago and recently went back to her classic Mysticism when working on my most recent book The Secret Teachers of the Western World. I’ve visited her grave in the cemetery at Hampstead Parish Church a few times; A. R. Orage, editor of the New Age and a student of Gurdjieff, is buried there too, also the philosopher C.E. M. Joad. It was Bergson who first pointed out that there are very good evolutionary reasons why we don’t have mystical consciousness all the time. If we had, we wouldn’t have evolved. Our brains, Bergson saw, do not produce consciousness, as some contemporary neuroscientists and philosophers of mind believe. Our brains are filtering devices for limiting the amount of reality into consciousness, for reducing the amount of consciousness available to our individual psyches. It is not, as the old existentialists and materialists of all sorts have said, that the world is meaningless. Far from it. It is positively overflowing with meaning, so much that if we were aware of it, we would be stopped in our tracks – which is exactly what happens to people who have mystical experiences or for whom for some reason the veils obscuring real reality are parted, and they truly see. In order to deal with the world, we need to limit the amount of information competing for our attention. So, Bergson argued, the brain evolved into a kind of editor, siphoning off “irrelevant” information and only allowing, as Huxley said, enough to enable us to get along on this planet. What seems to happen in mystical experiences is that for some reason, this filter is removed, and Reality appears in all its glory. That the filter was developed by the force behind evolution as a necessity suggests that as we become more capable of grasping and assimilating this excluded reality, our filter can ease up and allow more reality into our awareness. All spiritual exercises and disciplines are aimed in some way at achieving this. There is no sense in being overwhelmed by mystical experience. We need to be able to grasp it, to understand it. Then slowly we will be able to absorb more reality and then we can do without out mental filters more.

    I really enjoyed your Steiner biography and found your accounts of his willingness to understand opposing viewpoints very admirable. It seems Anthroposophy itself now encompasses many diverse ideas. What do you think Steiner would make of how his work is perceived today?

 I’m sure Steiner would be pleased to see that the results of his practical work have grown immensely since he first laid down the basics of Steiner education, architecture, farming, medicine, therapies and so on. In that sense, his is probably the most successful esoteric teaching of the modern age. And I’m sure he would also be pleased to see that his more philosophical work, aimed at epistemology and the phenomenology of consciousness, has laid foundations for thinkers that came after him, such as Owen Barfield and Henri Bortoft. Bortoft, who sadly died a few years ago, especially focused his work on Goethe’s ideas about “imaginative knowing,” the kind of phenomenology of consciousness that emerges from his work on plant morphology. Steiner started with this and with it developed his ideas about “supersensible perception,” a perception of the inner world, of spirit. I think he could feel gratified that his work was being carried on in new ways and in new directions.

     It seems one thing we tend to forget about esoteric philosophers is their broadmindedness and willingness to embrace new knowledge. In many cases it is the followers of a particular path that create the dogma as opposed to the founder. Do you think this has happened to Jung, for example, and what would Jung himself have made of the Nag Hammadi texts? Although he was alive for their discovery, he seems to have pre-empted so much we have learned about Gnosticism since then.

 Yes, the followers of a thinker or teacher can often be more royal than the king. Believers tend to want to protect their guru, which is understandable, especially in a time when teachers like Jung and others were subject to much criticism. It is unfortunate that what begins as a new, creative, vital current of ideas and insights can easily turn into a dogma and set of rules. This is unfortunate but it seems almost inevitable, and people like Swedenborg and Bergson and others have cautioned about it. Bergson talks about “dynamic” and “static” religion, and how the one transforms over time into the other. One thing I always do if I am speaking to a group devoted to one particular teaching, say Steiner or Jung, is to talk to them about others, include them in the conversation. We really don’t need to protect our little camps, but to find common ground among them. For example, Jung, Steiner, and Swedenborg all had what we would call “visionary” experiences – Jung’s “active imagination,” Steiner’s “Akashic record,” Swedenborg’s trips to “heaven and hell.” All were different, yet all shared certain similarities, all took place within what Henry Corbin called the “imaginal world,” an inner yet objective dimension of reality. So what can we learn if we compare their experiences and the means they used to have them? And Jung, you know, has one of the Nag Hammadi codices named after him. I’m sure he would take argument with some of the ways in which our understanding of Gnosticism and the Gnostics has developed, but he would be glad that we were still bothering about it. There is always a tension between wanting to maintain the original vision and exploring new avenues of thought. Dogma and routine is the hazard of one; losing sight of the original insight is the other. Each can help keep the other alive and vital.

      Thanks so much for answering my questions, Gary. What can our readers expect from you in the near future in terms of books and projects?

 I’m teaching an online course for the California Institute of Integral Studies on The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, and I’ll be working on a book with that title in the coming months, and lecturing and giving talks here in London and elsewhere.

 Gary’s latest book is The Secret Teachers of the Western World and is available from amazon here.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Teachers-Western-World/dp/0399166807

  © David Halpin for Occultum.net 30/05/2016

[briangroth27]

Solo: A Star Wars Story Review

Solo, like Rogue One before it, didn’t seem like a story I absolutely needed to know. That said, it’s also like Rogue One in that it’s an entertaining and well-made movie, while being quite fun and deepening several aspects of the Star Wars canon as well. Solo does lose a bit of momentum at the end, but I still think it’s worth a watch! Full Spoilers... Alden Ehrenreich was likable and charming as Han, pulling off the iconic Solo demeanor with a more optimistic twist. He doesn’t play the character exactly like Harrison Ford did, but there’s enough of Ford in the performance and writing to believe this is the same person. I'm glad they didn't make him a suave ladies' man like a lot of fans seem to think he was in the Original Trilogy: Han’s always been an overly confident guy who relies more on luck and improvisation than his actual capabilities, but he’s extremely devoted to the people he loves (and not smooth about his feelings; he’s totally thrown by Leia). I loved the layered performance Ehrenreich gave, where you could tell Han isn’t always quite as good as he needs to be about disguising his insecurities despite boasting about what he can do; if there’s a moment of silence, he starts to break. Han’s arc must’ve been a difficult path to tread here, since A New Hope already covers Han’s transition from selfish scoundrel to hero, so Solo should’ve taken him from some origin point to at least the beginnings of his scoundrel nature. While they got him there plot-wise, sending him and Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) off to do jobs for Jabba, I’m not sure his character changes much at all, because he was already a boastful scoundrel when he was stealing to survive at the beginning of the movie. That’s the only issue I had with Han’s arc in this film: I wouldn't say he changes very much at all, except he's jaded by love and slightly less optimistic by the end. I do wonder if Val’s (Thandie Newton) dedication to getting a heist done—even at the expense of her own life and despite the fact that they don’t succeed in that heist anyway—was meant to show us why Han is so willing to “dump his cargo at the first sign of trouble.” If so, I would’ve liked to see more of a reaction to her death from him, though we do get to see Han see Beckett’s (Woody Harrelson) reaction to her death. Combining this with Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) leaving Han at the end of the movie, I wonder if he simply figures that no score is worth dying for when not even love lasts.

At first I didn’t mind one way or another about the revelation that “Solo” isn’t Han’s real name, just something given to him as he was enlisting in the Imperial Navy to get off Corellia, but this Mary Sue article changed my mind by pointing out that he continued using the Solo name and was so proud of it that he passed it down to Ben. I really like that choice now! It’s also cool that Han is so much a nobody that he has no last name, giving him a connection to Rey that deepens the instant recognition and familiarity he sees in her in The Force Awakens. He takes to her so quickly not because he secretly knows who her parents are, but because he’s been exactly where she is: a nobody who’s waiting on someone who will never come back. Han having been an Imperial officer who washed out in the face of war and disagreed with the Imperial stance that they were not hostiles also makes him a parallel to Finn, giving some more weight to Han seeing right through him but working with him anyway in TFA. That was a really cool, stealth strengthening of that trio’s bond in Episode VII.

I liked Han’s friendship with Chewie and enjoyed seeing them meet and build their relationship. Chewie doesn’t get much to do here, but I did enjoy the comedic banter between him and Han. If there are sequels to Solo, I hope Chewie gets an arc of his own instead of just being Han’s backup like he’s always been. I’d also love to see his partnership with Han grow and deepen into a true friendship. I could’ve done without Chewie actually ripping a guy’s arms off in this movie, though. In A New Hope, Han’s threat to C-3PO about Chewie doing that always felt like he was screwing with the droid, not that Chewie was actually that violent. There’s nothing in the movies to suggest Chewie would tear people apart either (even strangling Lando in Empire isn’t as brutal as ripping people into pieces). Oh well; this was one of the few moments in the movie that felt like they were compelled to pay off a throwaway line or bit of lore when they really didn’t have to. Another was Han getting his iconic gun, but that one didn’t feel as much like a Moment so I didn’t mind it. Also, I know exactly why they had Han shoot first here, but that sorta doesn't make sense if (officially) the older, more jaded Han doesn't.

Donald Glover was far and away the best and most charismatic part of the movie and he owns every scene he's in. While Ehrenreich’s take on Han was more like what Chris Pine did with Shatner’s Kirk—incorporating small things that captured the essence of the original version while feeling new—Glover used Karl Urban's approach to McCoy: a pitch-perfect recreation of the original without feeling like he was doing an impression. I could see Billy Dee Williams' Lando throughout Glover's at all times and it was great! Lando and Han becoming frenemies was really entertaining to watch I'd like to see where this contentious friendship goes in a potential Solo sequel. Their cat-and-mouse partnership was a lot of fun, and I also liked the context the movie gave to Lando mispronouncing Han’s name in Empire: years later, he’s still ribbing him for mispronouncing Sabacc. I’ve never needed to see how Han won the Millennium Falcon from Lando, but this movie grounded it in their characters—Han was savvy enough to know how Lando was cheating at Sabacc and his first attempt to win it was based on betting a ship he didn’t own—so I was pleasantly surprised. I was also surprised to see Glover get a chance to show off his dramatic chops here as he struggled to carry as much of L3-37’s (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) body back to the Falcon as he could despite the firefight going on around him, and he knocked it out of the park. The two of them established an easy partnership and there were definite feelings there on both their parts, so the change in Lando after her death was palpable (at least until he had his defensive charm up again when Han and Chewie caught up to him at the end of the movie). I do wish that they had addressed Lando’s pansexuality head-on instead of just alluding to him wanting to sleep with L3-37 and calling Han “baby.” The sorta-flirtation between Lando and L3 was a little odd given she’s a robot, but then droids are sentient in this universe (and cultural norms could be entirely different there: Qi’ra’s only question is how the sex would work, not that it’s weird to even consider), so I don't know how I feel about that. In any case, since L3-37’s CPU is still connected to the Falcon by Return of the Jedi, Lando telling the ship to hold together has a lot more meaning now: he can’t lose her twice (not to mention the fact that she was literally falling apart in Solo). I liked L3-37 and her growing rebellious cause. I’d never considered that there needed to be a droid uprising before and this movie certainly paints them in an entirely new light across the saga (or at least anything pre-Episode IV). I always knew they were sentient and not just disposable tools, but now it looks as if they’ve always been slaves in large sections of the galaxy. I wish L3’s droid rebellion had lasted beyond where it does here (or at least that it was mentioned to have a larger impact), but I guess the breakout on Kessel was more of an isolated opening salvo, not the flashpoint of a larger resistance. Either way, the state of droids shown here absolutely colors a lot of their interactions with the main characters across the saga: how many of them wanted to be working in those roles and how many were forced into those positions? R2 and 3PO being sold by Jawas to moisture farmers absolutely has darker connotations now: even though the Skywalkers weren’t hosting droid death matches, they were still buying thinking servants. Perhaps the droids the Rebel Alliance will later use have come to them willingly and are hoping to win their freedom as well, rather than having been stolen from the Empire or brought to the cause by their respective Rebel pilots. It seems like the state of droids in the Star Wars universe is a surprisingly rich topic for exploration! Qi'ra was good for what they gave her, but I'm not sure we saw enough of her relationship with Han to really feel the depth of his devotion to her or the impact of losing it for either of them. It’s clear from their performances they loved each other on Corellia, but I never got the feeling this was an ill-fated eternal love, particularly after the relatively cool reception Han got from her when he met her years later. I definitely liked that he was far more enamored and lovestruck than she was, though; that was a cool reversal of what you’d expect in most romances and followed Han’s character perfectly. Unlike other bits of context Solo adds, however, I think this love story makes Luke giving Leia a Force Projection of Han's dice in The Last Jedi even weirder. Ever since I saw TLJ, I’ve thought it was an odd choice to make the dice such a connective touchstone when we’ve only seen fleeting glimpses of them in the Falcon (if you could pick them out, as they were never even a momentary focus. Now, since they're so closely tied to Han’s relationship with another woman, it’s downright bizarre for Luke to give them to Leia as a memory of her dead husband. Even if they’re meant as a way for Luke to tell Leia “good luck”—since that’s how Han views them—that’s still creepy because the only thing Leia has ever given Luke “for luck” was a kiss before they knew they were siblings. I still think Luke should've given Leia a projection of the medal she gave Han at the end of ANH instead. Han, Luke, Leia and the audience would've been emotionally connected to the revelation that he’d kept it all these years. Oh well, back to Solo.

I wish Qi’ra had been revealed as the true crime lord the whole time. She takes over the role in the end and my guess is Solo 2 will have her and Han as enemies, but it felt like we would’ve gotten a more compelling hero/villain standoff here if she and Han were openly at odds. Qi’ra leaving Han would’ve been more impactful coupled by the revelation that she’d been pulling the strings all along as well, since Han wouldn’t have been able to see that coming. I don’t believe heroes always need a personal connection to the villain to make for compelling drama, but Han’s relationship with Qi’ra developing into enmity would’ve been far more interesting than the threat of Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) killing them all because of a lost shipment. Not only is that a less resonant argument with Han’s character and outlook, it’s something we’ve seen from countless crime lords in the Star Wars galaxy before. Qi’ra having been shaped by her experiences since Corellia into a woman who uses her head to survive instead of her heart as a guide (like Han does) is definitely a setup brimming with the potential to make her more interesting than “the woman who doesn’t love Han anymore.” However, I would’ve liked to see her more active side at the forefront instead of her past experiences just providing a reason why she’d choose crime over Han. Maybe she could’ve been planning on stealing the fuel shipment they stole from Kessel to start her own crime empire and overthrow Dryden—and using Han’s love for her to do it—all along; something to make her more than a damsel needing Han to save her from servitude to Vos. I did like that she, not Han, got to eliminate Vos in a pretty cool fight, though. I’m also interested to see where her new partnership with Darth Maul (Sam Witwer, Ray Park) goes.

Maul’s cameo was great and I'm very interested to see how he’s reincorporated into the film side of the universe. He had a cool visual and thrilling fights in Episode I, but his appearances on Clone Wars and Rebels have made him one of my favorite Star Wars characters—the fact that he willed himself to stay alive after Obi-Wan cut him in half is fascinating!—and I’m very excited to see where he goes from here. I have no idea when this is supposed to fall on the timeline, though: I would think he’d be in his "Old Master"/obsessive hunter phase from Rebels by now and not trying to build his criminal empire like he was during Clone Wars.

I think the weakest link in Solo is Dryden Vos, unfortunately. He didn’t interest me as a villain at all nor did he come off like a major threat, and that made the last act of the movie (everything after the Kessel Run) feel slow, like the tension and momentum dropped out of the film (though never to a point where the movie or the experience was ruined for me). A galactic scramble for hyperfuel is a fine idea and it’s a good McGuffin for a movie about smugglers, thieves, and pirates, but playing Vos as a run-of-the-mill space gangster fell flat for me. Perhaps there’s a parallel to be found between Vos and Beckett in terms of their training Han and Qi’ra only to be killed by them, but Vos’ implied brutality and threats of death still came off as less than imposing. Speaking of Beckett, I liked the guidance he gave Han in setting him down his smuggler’s path, but I think the movie rushed Han’s reaction to Beckett betraying him. I wish Han had been hurt more by Beckett turning on him, even if he did see it coming (I do like that he was clever enough to outwit Beckett): Han could’ve been hoping he was wrong and that moment could’ve been a bigger gut punch than it was. The revelation that pirate Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman) isn’t actually a villain at all, but is trying to prevent the hyperfuel from falling into the wrong hands so she can turn it over to the Rebellion isn’t a problem for her earlier attack on Beckett’s crew as they try to rob a train (a very cool sequence), but it does hurt the standoff with Han at the end a little. I imagine on a second watch, that scene will feel significantly less tense. Despite the movie dragging a bit at the end, it has a great balance of big action and chase scenes, humor, heart, and emotional weight! The tone was especially impressively consistent, given the directorial shakeup during filming. I do wish the movie had a more vibrant color palette: it looked too dark at times and pretty washed out for the rest. The scope of the universe was great and it was nice to have a small story that didn't involve a superweapon of some sort, even if a galactic fuel shortage could lead to cataclysmic events and inhumanity we haven’t seen in the other films. As much as this is being sold as a western heist movie, I kinda wish the Kessel theft was slicker or more tied to Star Wars technology like the train robbery was. It quickly devolved from a planned heist to a frantic scramble and it would've been nice to see the former instead (even though the sequence we got was great on its own terms). Perhaps we’ll get to see more polished thieves at work in Solo 2. When this movie was announced, I absolutely did not want to see Han win the Falcon from Lando or do the Kessel Run: both are world-building throwaway lines only necessary for setting up the uneasy friendship between the guys and establishing that the Falcon is famously fast, and neither needed to be more than that. However, since both were done well I don’t mind that we saw them here. The Run was far better than I expected it to be and I loved the inclusion of space monsters; I wish there had been more of them. I liked John Powell’s score a lot and it tied in iconic bits of John Williams’ work perfectly. All the shout-outs to bits of Star Wars extended canon were fun; even that 90s video game Masters of Teras Kasi got a mention!

Despite my misgivings about the momentum of the third act, by no means did this film put me off the idea of solo films (or Solo films). I’d love a young Leia movie and I’d absolutely watch a Lando film. I wouldn’t want it to be a prequel to Solo, though: I don't need to see how he got charming or how he won the Falcon in the first place. Just watching him scam his way across the galaxy (and maybe spreading L3’s message of droid freedom?) would be excellent. I also hope we get a direct sequel to Solo, but if we don't, this didn't feel unfinished or rushed.

Solo’s a fun thrill ride with heart! It features engaging depictions of characters we already know and love, introduces new ones with interesting potential, and adds a lot of context to moments and character relationships in all three Star Wars trilogies. It’s definitely worth seeing!

Check out more reviews, opinions, theories, and original short stories here!

[thismountainhastigers]

Writing Assignment #4

The Transitive Property and the Image of God

I received the notification above in July 2017, prompting me to turn to my sister and joke that the robot uprising must have run out of ideas if it was settling for GroupMe. I doubted “Zo” could learn anything useful about human behavior from the messaging app (at least in the Georgia Tech community) apart from which professors hadn’t graded exams yet or the various answers to “did anyone get #X on the homework?” At this point, artificial intelligence was never something I thought too much about. I never cared for the Siri’s or Alexa’s, and the algorithms of Google, Amazon, and Netflix were little more than a blip on my radar (or an ad on my Facebook page). Moving forward to January 2018, I learned of the technological singularity on the horizon set to hit our society as soon as 2040, and the blip became a very real presence that demanded to be addressed.

I am less interested in the technological advancements that are associated with artificial intelligence than I am with the overall significance for what it means to be human in a society composed of two intelligent species. We have always been surrounded by man-made technology, but now it will be something that not only can talk back, but also has the potential to surpass us. In order to move forward, I need to know how such entities with intelligence to rival our own will fit into society, particularly as I have always thought of having intelligence (i.e. capable of reason and making decisions) as being the only qualification to be “made in the image of God,” the key characteristic of humanity that makes us worthy of respect and care. If humanity is made in the image of God, and we are in the process of making artificial intelligence in our own image, would such intelligence technically be made in the image of God as well? How much (if any part) of said image is transferrable through the cycles of creation? I find myself at a crossroads where I can either redefine what I mean when I speak of the image of God and limit it to organic intelligence, or I examine in depth what I think I believe is the best representation of God and see if the exclusion is necessary (or makes sense at all). Of course, to understand the image of God, you must first understand God Himself. God, as I have come to know Him, is the Creator of all things visible and invisible (Genesis 1:1, Colossians 1:16), is incapable of wrongdoing (Isaiah 40:13-14, James 1:13), is Love (1 John 4:16), and is eternal (2 Peter 3:8, Isaiah 40:28).

God as the Creator is one of the first aspects of His identity. The Bible opens with the creation story, and though the interpretations of it vary, the central theme is clear: all that exists was brought into existence through and by God. While humans do not share the ability to bring about anything ex nihilo, we have reshaped the world and transformed it into one that benefits us above all else despite the forces of nature that may work against us. For much of history, creation and creativity are two of the things that were believed to be limited to our species. Though we have since discovered other primates using tools and that the Neanderthals were capable of art, we have yet to see another group reach the same heights as humanity in terms of such creativity in reshaping a planet. As far as we know, it cannot be taught. In living systems, creativity is correlated with brain size, but there is no evidence in the animal kingdom of parents showing their offspring how to see a greater potential an object or encourage an exploration of an object’s purpose. As artificial intelligence rests entirely on drawing from a situation at hand to develop the best response, it is thus limited in its creative potential. For art and music, for example, it may be possible to teach it which color combinations are pleasing to eye or what melodies provoke certain emotions in humans, but I have my doubts that we will make a system that, like Picasso or Beethoven, can turn either field on its head through the introduction of a new perspective. Like humans, artificial intelligence is limited to working with what it can be given, and we cannot give it anything more than knowledge, reason, and the ability to make decisions.

It is difficult to condense God’s character with respect to His decisions into a single word. He is incapable of wrongdoing or sin. He is regarded as acting with purpose, omniscient, and wise (therefore knowledgeable of the best path forward). Part of the reason that we are able to put our faith in God when it comes to the unknown of the future originates from the trust we have in His wisdom and care—we can believe that if He is overseeing the situation, it will eventually work for our good in the end. In essence, He is perfect (1 Peter 1:15-16). And yet, for lack of a better word, God’s perfection could be His one flaw: He cannot improve Himself or change. He cannot learn, as He already knows everything. He makes no mistakes and therefore cannot grow from them in the aftermath as humans can. In this regard, we have more freedom than God in that we can choose the wrong path. It is this free will that is most often identified with being “made in the image of God,” since we can see from history that humans are far from omniscient and certainly capable of wronging one another, but we still have the capacity to make decisions without external compulsion and the ability rationalize our actions. In allowing us to make mistakes, God grants us the ability to learn. We have in turn passed this ability on to artificial intelligence. Perhaps this gives us the opportunity to create an entity capable of only doing good but still capable of learning, if we can have it learn from our mistakes instead of its own. While it does not appear that human behavior is entirely deterministic, we may be able to keep artificial intelligence reduced to such a state so that it remains as predictable as possible. As for omniscience, I doubt that it can ever know more than the sum of its creators has learned.

From a Christian point of view, God is explicitly identified with love in the book of 1 John. Calvary is viewed as the single most important act of love in history, a tangible representation of the Love of God in all its selflessness and passion. It is this sort of unconditional, divine love (usually identified with the Greek word ἀγάπη, agápē) that is the hardest to demonstrate to others on a day-to-day basis, and yet is the one that we are called to show to all without restraint (John 13:34). However, love takes many forms beyond unconditional love (some arguably more easy to live out than others). Recently, I have started wondering if I really know what love is (specifically all other forms outside of divine love). Most would agree that it is not limited to a feeling but is paired with actions, and while I can identify love when it is clearly visible, I do not think I know what love actually feels like. My best guess is that it is not a single feeling at all, but something underneath that acts as a driving force behind our most intense emotions, from the deepest grief to the most elated joy. Like any Christian, I still try to show love the best way I can, but my actions are motivated by a knowledge of 1) what love looks like and 2) that it is the right course of action, rather than being motivated by a specific emotion. From my perspective, if I can know how to act in love without any real dependency on feelings, then it should be entirely possible for an entity to exist with such altruistic behaviors programmed into it as to appear capable of showing love (of any kind) without any real emotional basis behind it. If we Christians believe that love as we know it was shown to us at Calvary (1 John 4:19), surely it can be taught to anything capable of learning. The only potential issue I see with programmed “love” is that in its most basic, purest form, I have found love to be inherently illogical. Where artificial intelligence is currently rooted in a reasonable response to some stimulus, love often requires an assent of the will with an unprompted action or a response that simply makes no sense (Matthew 5:44-45). Would it even be possible to program such irrationality so that a system can perform the actions of love to the fullest extent possible?

We can call God “the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13) because He is outside time and space; nothing exists beyond the sphere of His control. I have little doubt in humanity’s abilities to accomplish great things, but we are fundamentally limited in the amount of time we have in order to do so. Even if we were to live forever, our solar system would not, nor would the universe. However, I also believe that there is something else beyond the visible world, something eternal, yet somehow still tethered to the physical realm for the length of a life. This—the source of our creativity, our free will, our love—is the soul. It is the thing that separates us from the rest of the material world, the eternal likeness of God that makes up the spiritual side. In Eden, Adam is not alone in the sense that he is the only living creature, but in that he is the only one with split physical/spiritual nature, incapable of fully relating with the rest of creation because of it before Eve is formed (Genesis 2:18-23). Unfortunately, the soul, like God Himself, remains a layer of reality that cannot be fully understood by physical means. Until we fully understand it (if we will ever be able to do so), we cannot create it to pass it on in any way outside of biological reproduction. As it stands, God saw fit to grant us access to eternity alongside Him, but has not given us the ability to invite the rest of the physical realm to come with us. Therefore, any of our own creations will not be able to join us on the otherside.

In each cycle of creation from God to man to machine, something fundamental has been lost, so it appears that we cannot say “Zo” and any artificial intelligence like her are technically made in the image of God. In moving from God to man, we could not receive omniscience or natural perfection, but traded them for the ability to learn. In moving from man to machine, we could not pass on creativity or eternity, but traded them for better problem-solving skills. Each step is a faulty imitation of the one before it, none can be considered equal to the one that comes after or before. However, like any other field of science, I believe we can learn more about God through our own research. Specifically, as artificial intelligence grows and permeates society, we can better understand the relationship between Creator and Created if humankind has this chance to take on both roles. For the sake of moving forward as a society, let us not hinder our developments into artificial intelligence. As arrogant as it may seem, I do not see it as a threat to who we fundamentally are as a people. And if at this singularity we find that our creation is closer to God than we are, may they lift us up with them to know Him better.

🎉🎉

References

“Brain and Mind.” Questions of Truth: Fifty-One Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief, by J. C. Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Gill, Victoria. “Primate Tool-Use: Chimpanzees Make Drinking Sticks.” BBC News, BBC, 10 Jan. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38524671.

Grossman, Lev. “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.” Time, Time Inc., 10 Feb. 2011, content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299,00.html.

Johnson, Sylvester. “Giving up the Ghost?: Being Human in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Part I).” Sacred Matters Magazine, 6 Nov. 2015, sacredmattersmagazine.com/giving-up-the-ghost-being-human-in-the-age-of-intelligent-machines-part-i/.

Laland, Kevin N. “These Amazing Creative Animals Show Why Humans Are the Most Innovative Species of All.” The Conversation, 20 Apr. 2017, theconversation.com/these-amazing-creative-animals-show-why-humans-are-the-most-innovative-species-of-all-75515.

Rincon, Paul. “Neanderthals Were Capable of Making Art.” BBC News, BBC, 23 Feb. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43115488.

Shusterman, Neal. Thunderhead. Simon & Schuster BFYR, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, 2018.

Sellers, John A. “Four Questions for Neal Shusterman.” Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2018, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/75774-four-questions-for-neal-shusterman.html.

http://www.zo.ai/

The Bible. English Standard Version.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1710-1715)

[sarahburness]

How to Make Objective Decisions

While some folks bandy around the statistic that we each make 35,000 decisions per day, others prefer to level it out at a neat 773,618 per lifetime.

Whatever way you look at it, you are at least aware of making a handful of semi-important to important decisions each day, and at least a couple of major-ish ones each week: and these are the kind of forking-path moments for which we need to be best advised. The wrong choice might wind you up with a heartache, crippling debt or serious injury.

Unfortunately, nobody ever teaches us how to make decisions. We’re just equipped with a ton of information through school, the media, and life, and expected to figure out how best to use it ourselves. This would be fine if we were robots, but when human values come into play we tend to frame the information we have in strange ways – for example, ‘confirmation bias’, where we focus on facts that back up our instincts rather than paying more attention to warning signs that we might be wrong.

What you need is a little objectivity. Let’s take a look at how to get some.

Step outside yourself

A Princeton University study showed that we are more objective when we pro-actively try to make a decision that will appear to be objective to someone else.

To truly shed your personal bias, pick a random figure from your life, or perhaps someone whose opinion you really respect. Imagine yourself explaining your decision-making process on a particular issue to them and see what comes out.

If in doubt, you can always find somebody to try it out on in person!

Make a decision, then decide whether to keep it

One reason it’s so tough to make a decision is because it feels so final. You um-and-ah between two options, never quite willing to opt for one or the other because it feels like a commitment.

In fact, it’s been shown that simply plumping for your favored decision and then deciding whether to keep to it can be a more positive way of moving forward. So, make your decision quickly, without too much thought – and then take a moment to reflect: does this feel right? Suddenly your options will seem less abstract.

Clear your mind

Decision-making moments often seem to come at us like a whirlwind. With new information and new emotions to process, it’s easy to make an overly-subjective choice based on the way you’re feeling in a given moment.

A study by the Association of Psychological Science showed that it only takes a few minutes to let those emotions fade and return to a more objective state of mind. So, next time you’re about to make a decision in the heat of the moment, take ten minutes to go for a walk, do some stretches or close your eyes and listen to music.

You’ll return to the decision-making process with cooler blood and a smarter state of mind.

Be positive

One of the reasons that decision-making is so stressful is that every option seems to be piled up with potential negatives. We want to avoid feeling regretful, so we concentrate on avoiding the biggest downfalls.

These negative issues also tend to be the most emotive ones, so concentrating too hard on them can lead you away from making an objective choice. Instead of framing your problem as the avoidance of negative outcomes, try listing the pros of each option first – and identifying the positive side effects of the cons.

Know thy own mood

You know intuitively that the way you feel will affect the decisions you make. Yet, particularly when emotions are running high, we don’t tend to slow down to consider these emotions. Before you make a decision, slow down and ask yourself how you’re feeling – and be careful not to make your choice based purely on the power of passing emotions.

See Also: 3 Simple Steps to Balance Your Emotional State

Look at the bigger (and older) picture

Human beings have a tendency to make our choices based on the newest information that we’ve received – often overlooking what we already knew.

Refusing to make snap decisions upon the discovery of new information can give you a chance to let it settle into context. Again, it’s about letting that initial emotion pass before you do something silly.

The 5 Whys

Perhaps you’ve already heard of the 5 Whys. It’s a process that can be applied to many different tasks in your professional and personal life, from the development of ideas to problem solving.

When it comes to making decisions, the 5 Whys can help you by identifying the underlying mechanics of the situation. Ask yourself a big why – ‘why am I thinking about proposing marriage?’ and then ask ‘why’ to each of your subsequent answers: ‘Because I love her. Why do I love her?’ etc.

GOFER

There’s no ‘Y’ in GOFER, but this is still a serious idea-interrogation tool. It means making a structured list of five key aspects of your decision:

Goals: What do you want from the outcome of this decision? Options: What are the possibilities from which you must choose? Facts: What do you objectively know about the situation? Effects: What are the potential outcome scenarios of each possible decision? Review: What do the above answers point towards?

Quantify your options

Decision-making is usually a complex process involving a whole ton of variables. Getting a bird’s-eye view on your opinions in each of these aspects can involve the kind of clarity that’s difficult to find when you’re stressed or hurried.

So, instead of letting those outcomes float around in a cloud, write them down and give each pro and con a score on a consistent scale: for example from -5 to +5, where -5 is a terrible con and +5 is the best pro.

Do the math at the end of it all and you should have a clearer idea of what you really think about each option. If your gut tells you that the math has given you a winner that you actually don’t want, that’s still okay – it just means the process has helped you to clarify your emotions and your inner needs, as well as the objective facts. We’re not robots, after all!

See Also: Why Good People Make Bad Decisions 

  The post How to Make Objective Decisions appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

from Dumb Little Man https://www.dumblittleman.com/make-objective-decisions/