#Revolving Lantern Corporation

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed - Alien: Romulus

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

For an otherwise typical summer blockbuster, Alien: Romulus has developed a surprisingly controversial reputation in a relatively short amount of time. The consensus among “serious” critics is that it cannibalizes a bit too liberally from the preceding installments in the franchise—and honestly, I find it difficult to disagree with that sentiment. Such classic lines as “Get away from her, you bitch!” and “I won’t lie about your chances, but you have my sympathies,” are regurgitated verbatim, awkwardly twisted out of shape and jammed into a new narrative context like incorrectly placed puzzle pieces.

[FINAL WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!]

The inclusion of these “callbacks” is undeniably gratuitous, but ultimately inoffensive. Less justifiable is the resurrection of Ian Holm as a ghoulish CGI simulacrum—and not just for a brief posthumous cameo, either; his character plays a major role in the plot. I’ve been pretty lenient about the increasingly common practice of digital corpse puppetry (previously glimpsed in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Ghostbusters: Afterlife) in the past, but in this case—especially following the recent SAG strike—I must concur with the chorus of objections: this was an extremely misguided creative decision, the epitome of “poor taste.”

Despite these rather glaring blemishes, however, the argument that the film offers nothing of substance beyond shallow fan service is, quite frankly, totally absurd. The central themes around which the series has always revolved—the cold indifference of space, the casual cruelty of corporate greed, the question of whether compassion and morality impede humanity's survival (androids admire the “purity” of the eponymous extraterrestrials, considering them more “perfect" life forms due to their comparatively basic, primal instincts: hunt, multiply, defend the hive)—remain consistent, and are even elaborated upon. The mining colony that our protagonists inhabit is a nihilistic nightmare of capitalism and industrialization gone awry: drenched with rain, coated in grease and grime, devoured by rust and decay. The sun never shines (literally and figuratively) on Weyland-Yutani's "employees"; the terms of the workers’ contracts are continuously extended at The Company’s discretion, trapping them in a state of perpetual indentured servitude.

Conditions don't exactly improve after our heroine manages to escape the oppressive atmosphere of her hellish home world; while the spectacular interstellar imagery—planetary rings roiling beneath cargo vessels like turbulent oceans of cosmic dust, galaxies glittering in the distance like infinitesimal lanterns adrift in a sea of spilled ink—is certainly impressive, it also emphasizes mankind's utter insignificance. The universe is an unfathomably vast, silent, frigid, lonely void that can’t even be described as “hostile” to living organisms—because there is no grand design, no greater intelligence capable of acknowledging the petty struggles of mere mortals. Pray, plead, despair—the void doesn't care; it swallows your anguish, responding with neither an answer nor an echo. In other words (please forgive the cliché):

In space, no one can hear you scream.

At the end of the day, Alien: Romulus is flawed, but still serviceable, competently crafted, and adequately entertaining. At the very least, it features a cohesive artistic vision… unlike Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant, which attempted to combine the cerebral tone introduced in Prometheus with the original movie’s visceral thrills—to the detriment of both approaches; the existential philosophy was simply incompatible with the surrounding framework of a conventional horror formula. Director Fede Álvarez, on the other hand, knows precisely what kind of story he wants to tell (safe, familiar, and predictable though it may be) and delivers the goods with confidence, style, and panache.

[drogba-prospect]

Dōrifutoshīn (The Drift Scene) Aesthetics

Subjective

Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions

Precarious Balance

Precariously: If something is happening or positioned precariously, it's in danger. A glass could be precariously balanced on the edge of a table. If something is on the verge of danger, then the word precariously fits.

Semblance

Semblance is generally used to suggest a contrast between outward appearance and inner reality.

Phantasmagorical

Having a fantastic or deceptive appearance

adjective. having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination. having the appearance of an optical illusion, especially one produced by a magic lantern.

Law of Polarity in Relationships

In any successful relationship that has an intimate connection and sexual attraction, there is polarity. What does this mean exactly? Polarity in relationships is the spark that occurs between two opposing energies: masculine and feminine. Gender does not affect whether you have masculine or feminine energy.

Second Reflection

Burden Aesthetics with Intentions

The Second Reflection lays hold of the Technical Procedures

Urbancore

Urbancore is an aesthetic based on imagery of urban cities and street life. Urbancore is associated to real-life, modern-day society and almost always is based in recent decades. It can revolve around city streets, graffiti, skate parks at night, and picnics.

Shibuya Punk

Shibuya Punk is an aesthetic based on various media that surrounds inline-skating, graffiti, street gangs, or all of the following in an urban setting.

Trillwave

Trillwave, sometimes known as simply Trill, is an internet aesthetic revolving around both music, clothing, and visual art. Trillwave can be defined as "wavy trap beats/rapping, with vaporwave-esque digital art, with a more gun, drugs, hype-branding, overall hip-hop influence on subjects of the photo and music."

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk, as a genre, includes a wide variety of visual aesthetics but is recognized by its encompassing theme of "high tech, low life." This became prominent in the 1980s. thanks to the works of authors like Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, J. G. Ballard, Philip Jose Farmer, William Gibson and Harlan Ellison as they examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.

Themes used in cyberpunk media involve artificial intelligence, class uprising, governmental and corporate corruption, anarchy, gang warfare, and transhumanism. The range is broad but the cyberpunk aesthetic is often used to convey deeper meanings and commentate on modern society and sometimes predictions of our future society.

Playboy

The Playboy aesthetic revolves around the aesthetics of the jet-setting playboy lifestyle. Living life to the fullest in the most flashy ways possible, fast cars, tailored suits, traveling the world, the list goes on. At it's core the Playboy aesthetic is very hedonistic

Playboy aesthetic features luxury goods such as yachts, sports cars, mansions, private jets, beautiful women, and - in very rare instances where the Playboy aesthetic can get a little dark - copious amounts of drugs, shared between himself, his friends, and his company for the evening.

Dark Paradise

The Dark Paradise aesthetic focuses on images of serenity with a veil of darkness laid over it to rouse a sense of dark calmness. Dark Paradise revolves around visually dark photos, as if taken in the dark or in the late evening. This aesthetic is very versatile and can apply to other aesthetics due to the dark nature of common photos. The difference between this aesthetic and others is the feeling of inner peace and calmness.

Dark Paradise visuals are mostly photos that are with a dark overlay or filter that bring a sense of calmness or stillness. The idea that makes the aesthetic what it is the capturing of a heavenly state with the absence of light. Subject matter can be anything that sparks a sense of inner peace, this can include:

Cars, trains,

Old, modern buildings

Statues

Books

Quiet mood settings

Friends and people

Hands

Cliffsides

Beaches and oceans

Horizons

After Hours

After Hours is an aesthetic inspired by the feelings and impressions of seeing a usually populated setting empty at night. After Hours isn’t defined in terms of media, but instead, the feelings that can emit from being at these places in person. Places that can come under this aesthetic are not limited to physical places. Places online such as abandoned blogs, empty game servers, and inactive websites can elicit similar feelings.

One important aspect of After Hours is the always present tranquility, sometimes with a concomitant mystery or suspiciousness.

To people that participate in this aesthetic they are supposed to invoke a feeling of rebelliousness and tranquility.

Some activities related to After Hours are illegal or dangerous and will vary according to the urban area where it takes place, please be aware of this as you read the following list:

Nightwalking

Nightdriving

Studying

Smoking

Illegal stuff: drug trafficking, alcohol, prostitution (depending on your area)

Working on the night shift

Avoiding the public eye

Watching TV

Drugcore

Drugcore is an aesthetic centered completely around the underground realm of drug usage and what some people will do to chase that specific high. This particular aesthetic can face some backlash due to its seeming-glorification of abusing dangerous substances and getting high by any means necessary, but it is most usually not meant for the general populace to come across, as its mostly for addicts to share with other addicts.

Raver

A raver is a person who regularly goes to raves. Raves are an organized dance party at a nightclub, outdoor festival, warehouse, private property, or illegally on public property. These parties typically feature performances by DJs, playing a seamless flow of electronic dance music. DJs at rave events play electronic dance music on vinyl, CDs, and digital audio from a wide variety of genres, including techno, hardcore, house, bassline, dubstep, New Beat, and industrial. Ravers commonly wear clothing that is bright and/or neon coloured.

Stripcore

Stripcore is an aesthetic inspired by a romanticized vision of strip clubs and other such establishments. It is based around the idea of strip clubs and glow in the dark undergarments. The aesthetic glorifies the neon signage and back alley advertisements, as well as the glamorous interiors of these sorts of establishments.

This aesthetic is often associated with a wide variety of musical styles, but in the modern era, Rap, R&B, Hip-Hop and Trap are most commonly associated with this aesthetic.

Hustlewave

Hustlewave is an aesthetic that is rooted in capitalist and opportunist thought. It's an amalgamation of Futurism and right wing Objectivist philosophy. Think of the classic rags to riches success story, kid makes cool tech in his garage, fast forward 15 years and he's a techbro blamed for the increase of housing prices in the San Francisco/Bay Area. Hustlewave in its purest form is gaining power and succeeding in life through money rather than politics. Though Hustlewave is also about managing to bring the future to today, and making a profit off of it.

Piratecore

Piratecore is an aesthetic based around the themes of pirates, a person who attacks and robs ships at sea. It usually involves boats, the sea, and treasure rather than actual crime. Some may even take pride in their weaponry, mainly consisting of swords and daggers.

Casino

Casino is an aesthetic that is based around the theme of casinos, gambling and coin games.

Casinos are designed to create a pleasant atmosphere to reduce stress and convey a "playground" environment, thus encouraging patrons to spend more money.

New Money

New Money is heavily influenced by consumerism and striving to look wealthy. True New Money is earned through salary, business profits, and/or investments. Because of this, people with New Money can actually be much wealthier than those with Old Money, even as far as being billionaires!

Unlike Old Money, it does not have an easily definable style, as New Money follows trends and is constantly changing. The youngest generation of an Old Money family (usually teenagers or young adults) might be closer to New Money due to conditions of inheritance and their desire to follow trends or rebel against their older relatives.

Grifes

Grifes is an aesthetic related to designer brands and pricey materials, such as clothing, perfume, jewelry and other pricy accessories. Grifes as an aesthetic is more focused on the material aesthetic of luxury rather than the lifestyle aesthetic of it.

Luxury

Luxury is an aesthetic related to the material lifestyle of wealth and luxury shown through pricey materials such as; exotic cars, luxury reps, wealth, jewelry and expensive minerals. Luxury is shown in media and society as the top of the hierarchy and respect. The term is used with both positive and negative connotations, as it can be a goal for many yet offensive to many more, as people who are overwhelmingly wealthy are often blind to the struggles of those without such wealth and opportunity.

Decadence

Moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.

Ichiro

[velvetineblue]

To Taiyang Theodore Tseng.

Good evening. Ten minutes, the Minister of Justice, Kang Sungwoon, will have the news interrupted for a last minute press conference. Will be displayed on TV shocking images of an ongoing riot in Seogyo-dong. I for a fact do know this information is not in your possession : nothing has been exchanged by the authorities nor the force, they do know you are listening which makes a statement about your influence. It is a stage. Kang orchestred the operation in order to arrest a gang of kids he paid for the mercenary work of harming citizens for the glory of his government. I believe your organization stands against such masquerades. I do, too. I offer you the intel to prove my good faith and will to collaborate. With your strength and our resources, we should work hand in hand. If interested, do not hesitate to contact us back. Playing God stands as the ultimate act of human hubris.

      Mr. Han. Revolving Lantern Corporation.

" 'playing God stands as the ultimate act of human hubris' . . . " he reads the final line aloud, a thoughtful yet almost mocking tone in his voice. " deep, " he comments, subtly sarcastic. hm . . . his fingers move quickly against the glowing screen of his telephone;

I disagree. every man with a corporation thinks they're special. every one of you thinks you're smart enough to rule the world, like gods. you want to talk about the ultimate human hubris? it's how they fall for your crap. they worship other humans like they're god I don't.

Taiyang scoffed at the message, seeing this man as no different from the other God-Pretenders, an exact example: flaunting his money, because he thought Taiyang would covet it; offering his 'resources' to gain favor with someone he had deemed a powerful ally. he'd use whatever Black Fang could give him, to claw his way to the top, expecting the same god-like worship as every other power-obsessed creep before him. he disparaged the Minister of Justice, but would gladly switch places with them. well, he'd misjudged Taiyang if he thought the leader would bend the knee in reverence of the 'power' this man could bring to him. no, Taiyang didn't care for being GIVEN respect he didn't earn, and he didn't bow down to anyone; not for all the resources in the world. the word of God doesn't interest Taiyang Tseng. he does what he wishes; worships only what he deems sacred. still, he stares at the strange message illuminating the screen of his phone, filling the dark car with blue light. it had peaked his curiosity. . . but what does he care, if some kids paid to work for the minister of justice were betrayed by the very institution they were were STUPID enough to trust ? they should have picked better allies; been on the right side . . . Mr. Han was right about one thing, though; he hates the masquerades of the so-called 'righteous'. from their position of power, they lock up the unlawful, but turn a blind eye to their own misdoings. revealing people like that for the twisted, corrupt CROOKS that they were; true, that was what Black Fang lived for . . . of course, this message could very well be some sort of set-up; a trap . . . but a trap was only successful if it ensnared you. hunters often underestimated their prey: they laid their traps, not realizing the animal was too agile and quick to be caught in between the mechanical jaws. confident in his ability to evade, the leader penned a second round of replies:

i'll be at the riot. if you mean what you said about standing with us, you should be there too i don't trust ceos who work from the shadows and are too afraid to show their real faces

TEN MINUTES , though . that left him no time to plan an effective counterattack against the ministry . . . on a time-crunch like that, there was only one thing to do: call in the professionals. a team of two who thrived in the spontaneity and chaos, who didn't need a plan to succeed in the battlegrounds of the streets. who didn't need anything, only each other . . . he quickly dialed Quinn's number, a smirk on his face, voice warm and rich with a fiery eagerness to see her; and see her in action against their enemies— ( with him fighting by her side, of course ! ) " hey, you up for an impromptu date at the Hongdae art museum? I got a surprise for you. I promise it'll be fun ~

[kojakus]

[weeniebuttinc]

[ufonaut]

You seriously are judgemental of people for not liking soulless corporate shit that turned Great Darkness from Swamp Thing into Crisis Big Bad and is a way for new gen to have their big moment before fully putting them to sidelines? Come on.

that's my fucking point, it's not soulless corporate shit any more than the original crisis on infinite earths or zero hour: crisis in time were. you think those were made with no concern whatsoever for the books they might sell or the way they might rejuvenate a stagnant universe?

an indescribable boom of miniseries followed crisis, look at the ridiculous amount of new titles between '86 - '88 (longbow hunters, the demon, doctor fate, the phantom stranger, the crimson avenger, underworld, slash maraud, wild dog, blackhawk, power girl, peacemaker, etc etc without naming even half of them) and that's not even counting things like batman: year one that existed solely to establish the post-crisis origins of dc's bestsellers or any of the ongoings affected by the crisis or started as a result of it.

similarly, and take it from someone who owns every piece of zero hour promo material and has spent weeks painstakingly going through every solicitation of 1994, zero hour: crisis in time had quite literally over 80 (eighty!) tie-ins and an entire month after its finale dedicated to promoting the seven entirely new titles born from it.

and they're both generally acknowledged as some of dc's absolute heights! it's a formula that works with varying amounts of success, that's true, but you can't possibly compare stuff like dark nights: metal that's created solely for the purpose of selling merch while still framing the jl trinity as its main characters (how about bruce's entire black lantern arc for no reason whatsoever? diana using the helmet of fate? because they're mr scott snyder's specialest little perfect soldiers, right?) and playing around with violence & gore for the sake of violence & gore... to dark crisis' meticulous set up starting with infinite frontier (2021) #0-6 and slowly making its way through justice league incarnate #1-5 and beyond. you just can't.

it's idiotic to claim dark crisis is a platform for the next gen to have their big moment and nothing afterwards when it's bringing back legacy characters who haven't had the spotlight in decades -- oh, excuse me, did you forget alan scott & todd rice were main characters in infinite frontier? did you forget the jsa will be main characters in dark crisis starting with #3? how about cameron chase or cameos from forgotten 90s heroes like jared stevens/fate? or villains like hank henshaw? -- and that's counting pariah and the great darkness, who seem to be mutually poisoning each other towards this ultimate end in what's frankly some utterly compelling writing. hell, even joshua williamson talking about how he brought kyle rayner back because there were no other plans for him post-seemingly-dying-in-space in green lantern 2021 says a whole lot about the care dark crisis is handling its cast with and the genuine love for the medium going into this. you know that whole recent debate about writers who don't read or whatever it was? you can tell every single person involved in this latest crisis does read and does love comics as an art form. it's exciting! it's legitimately going back and looking at the original crisis and at zero hour in ways no modern event has dared! it's a book about legacy that actually understands its subject matter!

and you know what? even if it was all about the next gen getting their big moment, i would still welcome it because i'm sick to death of batman, superman and wonder woman and i'm sick to death of the universe revolving around them. why don't you want to see levi kamei deal with the great darkness like alec holland once had before him? why wouldn't this generation be given the same chance previous ones had?

i can see you've never once bothered to look at any of the behind the scenes discussions that have gone into dark crisis, and that's fine, but it doesn't make you any less of an idiot to come here with empty talking points everyone's passing around like a game of telephone because they saw a meme on twitter. i think dark crisis (on infinite earths) is one of the best things that could've ever happened to modern dc and disliking the fact that it approaches comics the way they had in the eighties and nineties simply means you don't understand comics or have no real love for them.

(x)

[liquid-luck-00]

Lantern!Marinette 2

Ao3 *** Part 1 *** Here *** Part 3

~~~~~~~~~~

Okay so I didn't touch Mari's parents before so here it is.

Simple explanation the magic that flows from Adana erased Mari's existence because she was so young. However those that loved her, that she loved, or who were impactful our Mari's life will remember her as a dream or imaginary friend respectively. If or when they meet her again it would be 'I know you from some where, but I don't know from where.'

In all intense and purposes Mari is a ghost.

So with that said here we go.

---

So here she was starting middle school in Coast City. It was actually not half bad. same there was nothing about the intergalactic wars, the policies that set the Green Lanterns as the Galactic Police force or any history she learned from the Blues. This actually made her dangerously behind in Earth history, but Marinette was always a quick study. Her English, math, science, and art were amazing and her physical capabilities made her a star athlete. Only downside was making friends, like seriously everyone stayed in groups of two. Add to the fact she knew little of Earth culture and customs, made it hard to interact with others outside of class work. All in all she was shy.

Whenever a villain would attack and she was able to assist she would, but she made sure she was not seen and only boosted her dad's powers while healing injuries before they could be noticed. This only lasted about a little over a year.

She knew better than to call dad when she knew that he was in a meeting with the JLA, but it was kinda hard to ignore the yellow blur running through the city causing havoc.

"What's wrong?" He answered on the second call, murmurs were heard in the background.

"There's a speedster in yellow tearing up and down the city." she responded simply.

"Can you see..."

"Crap!" was shouted on the other end "Got to go. Reverse got out." Someone yelled but she didn't recognize the voice.

"I'll go with you," dad sighed. "He is in Coast." was the last thing she heard before dad ended the call. She took that to mean she should transform and help minimize the damage and keep an eye out.

Not even 10 minutes later she saw a red blur followed by her dad's green one. (They were held up by a nosy Bat who couldn’t help himself because someone cough*Superman*cough decided to eavesdrop on the call.) She updated him, and he repeated it, to who she now recognizes as the Flash, and they got to work.

It didn't take them long to defeat the Reverse Flash, but here is where they ran into a problem. Coast was equipped to deal with most metas but speedsters that got their power from the speed force were different, and by that they meant difficult.

"I have an idea." She piped up through to her dad’s comms.

"Come on over and share with the group." She landed not even a minute later spooking the Flash. "What's the idea."

"Am I not supposed to ask who this is?" Was asked by Flash, but he was completely ignored.

"So you know how the speed force allows speedsters to vibrate which allows them to pass trough matter, which is why transporting and containing speedsters are so difficult." She began to explain.

"Um..." Dad seemed completely lost. This was something she learned with the Blues in order to understand for when she would eventually come back to Earth.

"How do you..?" Flash seemed to look at her as if she just grew a second head and was suddenly very dangerous.

"Well if we create a double construct that infuses both frequencies of the spectrum" Marinette continued.

"It'll stop him from escaping since it would be two simultaneous frequencies working in tandem occupying the same space and speedsters can only vibrate at one at a given time." Flash caught onto her idea.

"Exactly!" she beamed.

"Alright let's try." Dad agreed once he fully understood.

They tested a small square and tightly wove several strands of energy until a swatch was big enough and tightly worn enough was created. They continued to expand it until Reverse Flash was in a bubble, which they proceeded to fly to Star City. After dropping off Reverse Flash, the actual Flash practically dragged the two lanterns to his home.

"Okay Jordan spill." Flash was now in civilian clothes, dad crossed his arms and huffed dropping his transformation and she followed suit, slightly hiding behind him.

"Hey Barry dinners just about ready." A woman came out of the other room. "Hey Hal want to join us?" she asked smiling and then spotted her. "Who's this?"

"Dinner would be lovely Iris," Dad replied smiling. "And this is Marinette," he pushed her forward and she gave a light wave and smile.

"Hello," was barely audible.

The woman, Iris, turned to Flash, Barry, "Dad and Wally should be here soon." As the words left her mouth the door opened and revealed a man and a teenager.

"Heya Auntie Iris, Uncle Barry, what's up Hal,” and he froze seeing her, "Um... Hi."

He was a blur until that, so speedster.

"Wally why don't you and Marinette get the table set." Iris suggested breaking the awkward silence between the two teens.

Wally led her to the kitchen, "I'll get the plates, can you do the table?"

"Sure." she answered and used the constructs of the ring to expand the table and bring over two more chairs.

"What?!" the plates began to fall from his hands, so she reacted since he didn’t seem to, catching them in another construct moving them over to the table. "Your a blue lantern!"

"Yeah, and you're a speedster." she shot him a smile. After that dinner was significantly less awkward, seeing as everyone knew or was a hero, and was filled with questions and lots of laughter, mainly getting to know her.

"In all seriousness you might want to keep her away from the Bat." Barry joked.

"Bats isn't getting Bluebell. Hell if today hadn't happened you wouldn't have known about her." Dad grumbled.

"Why should I stay away from a bat, I thought they were harmless to humans, or are you talking about a bat used for sports?" She was genuinely confused.

"Bats is a nickname for Batman a vigilante from Gotham. He a few years ago took in a ward." A soft ‘Oh’ was heard from her, but Barry continued "So, when are you going to introduce her to the rest of the League."

"I won’t if I can help it."

"But we knew this would happen sooner or later." she piped in.

"Yes but you've only been on Earth a year."

"You kept her from us for a year. Good job Jordan." Barry complimented.

"Year and a half actually, but better now than during something cataclysmic." she rationalized.

"That's true." Dad paused a moment before exclaiming, "I see what your doing little lady." A mock scowl on his face.

---

That was her first friendship she made. Wally would randomly come over for the week end. She found out about a month later that it was whenever he needed a breather from his teammates.

That in turn meant that she would know quite well the inner workings of the team as he knew she could keep it a secret. When in private he would use (in the beginning at least) Robin, Artemis, Aqualad, Superboy, and Miss Martian otherwise he he ended up using pokemon names to describe them while in public. He had taken it upon himself to help her understand Earth culture and that mainly revolved around playing a lot of video games,watching movies or tv, or going out to various locations. Riolu, Chikorita, Croconaw, Machamp, Ditto and of late, a new teammate called Zatanna, nicknamed Kirlia. In all honesty she heard the nicknames so often that that was how she knew his teammates. It got to the point that he would call her Togetic, so in retaliation she calls him Pikachu.

Part 3

~~~~~~~~~~

Permanent Taglist: @itsmeevie01 @miraculouspenta

Taglist: @anjuschiffer @michaelshadow7779 @maskedpainter @corporeal-terrestrial @slytherinhquinn

[shogikappa]

Twilight Zone for manga fans

“You're travelling to another medium. A medium not only of sight, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose conception is possible through imagination. You've just crossed over... into the Manga Zone.”

Now I’m a big fan of the Twilight Zone and anime/manga, so at some point I wondered if there’s any weeb stuff like Twilight Zone. After being completely disappointed with the anime The Laughing Salesman and Twilight Q, I looked further, and found 4 manga. Everyone, presented for your perusal, 4 horror anthology manga hostesses: Misery (the Outer Zone), Yomi (Zekkyou Gakkyuu [Ja: 絶叫学級, “Screaming Lesson”]), Kaminuma from the Soumatoh Kabushikigaisha [走馬灯株式会社, “Revolving Lantern Corporation”], and Misa from Eko Eko Azarak. Below are my thoughts so far on these series, in the order that I enjoy them, from best to least good.

1. The Outer Zone

“Hello, everyone. I’m Misery, your guide through the Outer Zone.” - Misery

The Outer Zone is probably the closest out of the 4 manga to the Twilight Zone and it seriously excels at itself. Every chapter is its own story where we meet a character or two and we witness them as they encounter whatever strange happening the Outer Zone presents them with, ending each story with a twist and a moral lesson/message. Like the Twilight Zone, each story is bookended also with an opening and closing narration from Misery herself.

For fans of TZ and anime/manga, I think this is a must read. Now unlike TZ, Misery tends to insert herself as part of the story. At first I thought this was something the author had done to shy away from making it a fully anthology series, but as the series goes, I find that the insertion of Misery is actually a good one for some stories. There is quite a noticeable dip in quality in volumes 3 and 4, but it managed to pick itself back up in vol 5. Misery is sorta an omnipotent-ish deity who “takes an interest in the dark side of life” and isn’t evil. If anything, she presents opportunities for the good to pull themselves out of the trouble and opportunities for the bad to be punished, much like how fate leads the characters in TZ. One of my favourite chapters is the one where a couple comes across a lucky shrunken head that porports to be able to predict what to bet on, potentially allowing the owner to win and endless amount of money. But is there really no catch to this?

2. Zekkyou Gakkyuu [絶叫学級]

"Good evening. It is time for yet another Screaming Lesson.” - Yomi

I first watched Twilight Zone as a kid, and I was certainly not old enough to really understand the themes about the US-Soviet arms race and other topics like this that were contemporary issues in the 1960s when TZ aired (I’m not even American or Russian). Also, generally, TZ is really an adult show, dealing with primarily problems concerning adults, with themes such as gambling, working, nostalgia, etc. Perhaps for that reason, I dropped the Twilight Zone for a good number of years before returning to it as an adult. Personally I was more intrigued by stories about a child who kept telling lies and finding out his lies came true, and my teachers in middle school really dug a TZ-esque story I wrote about helping a granny across the road, even though I didn’t really think that story was special at all.

This brings me to the point: I wish that there was Twilight Zone, but for a younger audience. And Zekkyou Gakkyuu is exactly that. It deals with situations that are perhaps more at home if you’re still a student, and most characters go to school. Now reading this as an adult, the final messages may make you feel like you aren’t part of the targeted demographic, with final messages like “remember to treat your friends well” and “don’t be picky with food”. But hear me out, despite the messages that are aimed at a younger audience, the stories themselves are actually very solid and compelling even reading it as an adult, so besides the final message in the end, there doesn’t seem to be compromises in the story department, so I would definitely say even as an adult, this is worth checking out. After all, even the classic TZ episode “To Serve Man” is basically like a sci-fi version of Little Red Riding Hood in any case. It’s the same message you might tell children, but the story is an enjoyable one. Like Outer Zone, each chapter begins and ends with a narration from the ghost girl host herself. And while we’re at that, I certainly am a fan of the design of the host character, who’s a ghost with only her torso...

3. Soumatoh Kabushikigaisha [走馬灯���式会社]

“Welcome to the Revolving Lantern Corporation. Look back on your life to your heart’s content!” - Kaminuma

Right off the bat, I should probably warn you that this is definitely an adult, 18+ manga.

Soumatoh (or “Soumatou”) Kabushikigaisha is said to be based on one specific Twilight Zone episode (which I have not yet watched) called “What’s in the box”, where a man finds a TV that could predict his future.

The SK is a kind of supernatural company that offers a service of allowing you to watch back on someone’s life if you provide the company with that person’s name and details. And you watch their life on a set of DVDs. Clumsy for a supernatural power, but it does come into play into the plot sometimes.

Anyway, I’m actually surprised how much they were able to milk this simple concept (and I mean this in the good way). At first, I wasn’t terribly fond of this premise, because you know the current state of the individuals, so I figured there couldn’t be anything too shocking going on, but it proves me wrong time and again. The twists usually come when you peek into the life of someone close to you and how they experience the same events. So despite the predictable setting, it still manages to deliver a TZ experience, though I would say it does so in a weaker manner than say, the Outer Zone, and there tends not to be anything supernatural going on in SK.

A word of warning if you decide to pick this up. There’s basically a sex scene in every story (each story usually spans 2 chapters), but it’s not hentai. It often feels that it contributes to the plot point, but there is quite the abundance of it, so just be warned.

4. Eko Eko Azarak

“Eko, eko, azarak. Eko, eko, zomelak.” - Misa

Eko Eko Azarak is a line from a Wiccan chant, and this manga deals with a little witch who practices black magic and goes around different schools to “serve justice”, as the manga summary puts it.

Like Zekkyou Gakkyuu, this takes place in a school setting, so some of the issues addressed feel more at home if you’re in that age range, such as wanting to get good grades and school gangs.

Now while I did find the first chapter to be a very worthy TZ-for-teens episode, I wasn’t quite as thrilled with chapters 2 and 3, and for that reason, I’ve decided to put this manga on hold for a bit. The reason? Our protagonist Misa isn’t really what I’d call a good person, and the punishments the MCs of each story (I’m distinguishing here the protagonist Misa from the MC of each story) receive don’t really feel deserved. These are in stark contrast to Misery, who tends to punish the bad. Now don’t get me wrong, TZ has its fair share of episodes where even the good get into a terrible fate, and not always as a warning either (in Time Enough at Last, I don’t think Henry Bemis has really done anything to deserve his fate, and unlike To Serve Man, it doesn’t serve [pun not intended] to warn us about trusting strangers). But I think if you’re going to put “people suffering from terrible fates without good reason” stories in, I don’t think these should be the manga starter. Many times, Misa seems to tempt the MC without good reason or just outright messes with them (this is also one of my complaints for the Laughing Salesman). Overall, with Misa not really being a good person and the undeserved punishments, this manga sits at the bottom of my list. But I still think it is nice in that it’s TZ for school-goers, and I have hope that people will face karma for bad deeds they’ve done further into the chapters.

Closing narration

Overall, I’m happy that there are a handful of enjoyable manga based off of the Twilight Zone. OZ is definitely the strongest in my opinion, and ZG and SK are also good reads. They deliver the suspense, the twist ending, and the lesson (though perhaps less so in SK). I hope you could give the first 3 a read too, and if there’s any anime/manga that give TZ vibes, please do let me know, and I’d be happy to check them out! (And I don’t just mean episodic manga, I do mean the whole TZ package as I described). I’m also doing a little Touhou/Twilight Zone crossover Youtube series, and I hope you could also check it out if you like this sorta thing. Regardless, just don’t get too engrossed into the books... or you may find yourself sucked into, with no way out... of the Manga Zone.

[fuzziekins]

i work in a supermarket. It can get...pretty bad a lotta the time. And since Covid hit it’s definitely been at its worst. For the past year and a half, two years?, my now-outgoing manager has asked me to make posters for some occasions. Most of them i was fortunate enough to do most if not all of the work on the clock. It’s been a challenge to get some of these done let alone even come up with ideas but i thought, but to see my coworkers’ reactions to the posters and even some customers just knowing that it’s one small thing that can make this hell hole we live in a tiny bit better? It’s been totally worth it. Since it’s not guaranteed for certain i can continue doing these with my store’s new management, i’d share the fruits of my labor with you guys and i hope you like them.

September 2020: My store was in a competition with other stores under the corporation to see which could sell the most donuts. My manager, recognizing my habit of doodling in between customers on register when it was slow, asked me to create a sign promoting the sale. i wanted to make something simple and recognizable. It was between Olaf from Frozen and Applejack from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Manager opted for the more recognizable of the two, Olaf. With the time constraint i kept it simple with only outlining in marker and finished this in about 4 hours. i have no idea how well my store did in the competition.

October 2020: The manager enjoyed the first poster so much he asked me to make one for Halloween. i approached him with a couple of ideas, i believe a design with Stitch from Lilo and Stitch and one of Mickey Mouse. He loved Stitch dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. i’ll admit, despite Stitch being all circles there are certain poses of him i’m not at all adept in drawing. This was one of them. To help fill the empty space around him, i paired Stitch with a jack-o-lantern and a few spiders dressed for the holiday in Mickey Mouse ears (who i selfishly and secretly coded in purple and green for ace and aro reasons). Lettering by hand has been the bane of my existence even when i was an art student and it was definitely challenging towards the end trying to keep it all as even and neat as possible. This was probably done over the course of 8 hours, in two separate 4-hour shifts so needless to say since i’m not at all used to working on such a large scale my hand was tired!

Winter 2020: As a Jewish person, understandable for winter times i did not wanna make a poster focusing only on Christmas. Fortunately for me this was the first poster my manager gave me total creative freedom on. There was no doubt in my mind for a winter poster that i had to go the Frozen route. It was my first time drawing Anna and Elsa as kids and aside from the fact it’s one of the rare few times i think i got Olaf right it’s amazing i was able to draw Elsa facing right when i primarily draw people facing the opposite and that Anna’s hand remotely looks like a hand. i kept Elsa’s dress accurate to her with shades of blue and incorporating her snowflake while also the blues allude to Hanukkah colors while Anna’s dress was kept in classic red and green. Once again, though, lettering got the better of me since i probably didn’t leave as much room as i should. That being said i made it work in my favor by trying to design it like snow. Overall i was happy with the outcome of this poster (and the 10 hours i put into it) and fortunately for me it was the first poster i was able to take down myself before a different manager took it down and disposed of it. i was able to hang the poster up again for Winter 2021 as well. With any luck, even if i can’t make any more posters i’ll still be able to bring this one back for Winter 2022.

February 2021: When my manager asked, “can you make a poster for Valentines Day” my one condition was that i don’t make it about VDay and can have it revolve around chocolate instead. He said sure and said i could do whatever i want with it. Once again i brought my Frozen obsession into the fold and since Anna and Elsa are known to love chocolate i think it was justified. i can’t tell you how hard this was to make. Between trying to put so many characters into one sign, finding the right colors, trying to actually draw everyone.... Needless to say it was a good thing i didn’t do this whole thing on the clock. The store manager probably wouldn’t have liked that i spent 12 hours creating this (albeit not a consecutive 12 hours). As much as i wanted to show Anna and Elsa giving a giant chocolate bar to their valentines Kristoff and Honeymaren (yes i will go down with that ship) i was also aware that some people could look at that and get pissed because how dare i put something like that in the store. Throwing Olaf into the mix opened the interpretation a little bit and, to my knowledge, no one complained at all about any implications of the poster. My manager’s favorite part was the disclaimer; he got a good laugh outta that. Sadly for me, as much as i would have at least liked to save the bottom half, about half way through its time being displayed the sign fell over and slit a hole through part of the poster. It made it being hung up until mid-February but it’s safe to say that the poster was thrown out afterwards.

June 2020: So there’s a long story behind this one. The shortest possible version is, during Pride Month someone left a homophobic and transphobic message on the community board. When i brought it up to one of my managers she said unfortunately because it’s the community board we can’t do anything about it and told me if i see a sign like that again not to touch it. The next day a different manager, the one that asked me to do these posters, said he saw the sign the night before and asked if i could make a happier sign and put it up the next day. i went home and, over the course of the next 24 hours, proceeded to spend 12 hours putting this together to have it done in time to put up before my shift. i wanted to incorporate as many pride flags as i could and my inspiration for the ability to do that came from the Pride Pokéball pins and buttons people sell on Etsy which are AMAZING. It was much easier to do the lettering on Pikachu’s sign, the words being a nod to the original theme song as well as the desire to show people that no matter how you identify, who you like and how you love or don’t love is perfectly you. i also coded Pikachu as trans through the use of her tail, having the shape of a female Pikachu’s taped over what’s presumably an AMAB Pikachu. The queer chevron flag is also indicated on Pikachu’s sign, which was my way of saying that even if i didn’t get your specific flag, you are still here on this flag. Any way i could think of to include Pride in this sign i did and, ultimately, i wanted it to be a big “f you’ to whoever put the phobic sign up in the first place and let everyone in the LGBTQ+ community who came into the store know that i see them and Pikachu sees them, that they’re amazing and they’re exactly who they’re meant to be.    

October 2021: For some reason i didn’t expect to be asked to do a poster for Halloween again...also the fact that my manager did ask pretty much confirms that if i don’t take my posters down the day after or ASAP they get pulled down and thrown out because obviously the first Halloween poster wasn’t saved. Anyway he asked me mid-September to make a Halloween poster. Me wanting to do this on the clock, i knew i had to keep it simple and not go overboard on how many hours this should take because the store managers usually have a thing about us staying late. But it’s for the store so i should technically do these on the clock and get paid, right? Anyway i came up with the first thing i could: combining my love of Pokémon and my obsession of Frozen. i thought it would be cute if Pikachu and Olaf went trick-or-treating as each other. This particular Pikachu decided to go all-out in his cosplay and create an Olaf onesie; meanwhile Olaf, who finds clothes restricting, kept it simple with a headband of Pikachu ears and a detachable tail. The hand lettering on this poster, while still very much a work in progress, i think in general worked much better using bones to create the outline instead of struggling to make the lines as straight as i could. We all know how that works out. My best estimate was that this took 10ish hours. According to one of my coworkers, on one of my nights off there was a little kid who was repeating “pika” over and over again because he was so excited to see Pikachu. As much as i wish i could’ve seen it for myself, hearing that made it worth it to do another sign and little comments or stories like that have been the best part of creating these signs.

January-February 2022: How painfully ironic for me that the last poster my outgoing manager ‘commissioned’ for me was for VDay of all occasions. i actually ended up asking him while i was creating the Halloween poster if, he wanted another sign, if i could work on it during one of my vacation weeks since i was technically getting some money anyway and that way i wouldn’t have to stay late after any shifts. (Also i literally had to take that vacation time before the end of 2021 or i would’ve lost it forever.) This was a decision that worked out for the best because you’d think with less characters that it would take less time than my first Chocolate Day poster. Nope! Over the course of a week i spend a total of 14 hours on this sucker. The idea was to make it simpler; as tempting as it was to revisit a similar idea of the year before i did’t think i could pull it off a second time. But i still couldn’t resist the disclaimer. i thought it would be cute to have Elsa magic up a frozen chocolate Olaf for her snowman son. Not to mention, hard pass focusing on the love part of the damn day for me. (But if i’m stuck coming into existence on this day then i should probably get a say on what i’m creating for it...right?) Between trying to get Elsa’s hair as accurate as i could, my struggles with Olaf, the lettering of the headline and disclaimer, and the m’s on the m&m’s (because uh CHOCOLATE? Kinda the only point of the holiday?) it’s no wonder it took so long to put this sucker together.  

i have no idea if i’ll be able to continue doing these posters. While some of my coworkers were happy to see a new one and the one manager that remains was pleasantly surprised to see me come up with a new one, save for the Winter Wonderland and Pride Months signs i saved there’s no guarantee i’ll be able to make more let alone get paid to do more. Whether that’ll happen or not, i’ll always have my Frozen Retail Fanfics to fall back on! But all things considered i did enjoy doing these. And i hope anyone who sees these enjoyed them as well.  

[agrawalmoorti]

Different Types of Marble Handicrafts From Jaipur

The products are exported and some of the intricate work fetches great prices in the International markets as well.Each of the items from here speaks as though, about the thousands of years of Indian history. The traditions, customs, as well as heritage of this state provides India world across recognition, for being a hub of culture and art.

Marble handicrafts from Jaipur have a wide variety. Some are mere show pieces while others utilitarian, such as pen stands and clocks. They are of primarily the following types:

There are many types of gift items which are made especially for corporate. These gifts are customised or personalised to suit the specific occasion or objective of the customer's needs. They help strengthen relationships conveying a special message during occasions like Diwali and new-year. They can be for instance a marble vase, marble god statues and even a marble painting.

Marble handicrafts have come of age in recent times. One can get mobile table stands made from good quality marble adorned with beautiful pictures depicting Indian culture. While it may simply have a picture some have a floral design which enhances the look further. Lady designed tea coasters have also become quite the tasteful gift item choice.

Ganesh statues on "chowkis" or a base made out of marble are also quite popular. The chowki is usually hand painted with eclectic designs and this statue is a gift item for all occasions. There is another option where the statue is atop a lotus designed marble plate. The bases come in various designs with different kinds of designs and embellishments. One may even opt for a little "diya" beside the statue on the plate base. There are options where the stand on which the statue is placed, is capable of revolving. Similar statues with Hanuman or Krishna are also there.

Marble paintings are famous from this part of the country and they make any room light up. It not only adds a touch of class but also depicts a part of the culture which Rajasthan is known for world wide. Marble handicraft manufacturers in Jaipur ensure that the quality of marble used is of "A" grade, one which can withstand travel and export conditions. They, however, need extremely careful handling due to the delicate nature of marble. Marble paintings from the region depict primarily animal, god or religious motifs. Animal motifs are mostly dominated by camel and elephant paintings.

Marble chess sets, fruit bowls as well as Puja plates are also very popular. Tourists also opt for slightly expensive yet classy items such as the "Surahi". These items come in good packages and can be travelled with easily.

There are many other types of handicrafts such as an ethnic mirror, which have a very old school yet chic look. Marble items which have "Meena" work done are also popular. This kind of artistry is indigenous to the region and is famous for its vibrant depiction of the Rajasthani tradition and culture. Marble "chopra" items depicting either Lord Ganesh, the Hindu god of success or even a peacock are quite the rage.

Marble incense stick holders depicting gods and animals are also popular purchases. Marble lanterns or aroma lamps with beautiful carvings and markings can also be veritable purchases for a home. They are not very expensive but still extremely classy.

Marble pots made from "Makarana" showing beautiful designs. Many of these pots lovely paintings as well as are embellished with stones. Marble "matki" pots of various designs are also available as options.

Buy wide range of Marble Moortis [Marble Statues] from Agrawal Moorti Bhandar :-

Marble Durga Statues

Marble Ganesh Statues

Marble Gauri Shankar Statues

Marble Handicraft Wall Hanging Plates

Marble Hanuman Statues

Marble Jain Mahaveer Statues

Marble Radha Krishna Statues

Marble Ram Darbar Statues

Marble Sai Baba Statues

Marble Saraswati Statues

[dreamer434]

Skyscraper by Carl Sandburg

BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul.

Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys.

It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories.

(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman the way to it?)

Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and sewage out.

Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words, and tell terrors and profits and loves--curses of men grappling plans of business and questions of women in plots of love.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.

Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors.

Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape an architect voted.

Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust, and the press of time running into centuries, play on the building inside and out and use it.

Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the wind whistles a wild song without words

And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor.

Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick- layer who went to state's prison for shooting another man while drunk.

(One man fell from a girder and broke his neck at the end of a straight plunge--he is here--his soul has gone into the stones of the building.)

On the office doors from tier to tier--hundreds of names and each name standing for a face written across with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving ambition for a million dollar business or a lobster's ease of life.

Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls tell nothing from room to room.

Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all ends of the earth.

Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building.

Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor empties its men and women who go away and eat and come back to work.

Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on them.

One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit, and machine grime of the day.

Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for money. The sign speaks till midnight.

Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence holds. . . Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip pockets. . . Steel safes stand in corners. Money is stacked in them.

A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of crosses and clusters over the sleeping city.

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul

.

[frothlad]

Yesterday, Neal Adams died.

Most of you already know that name. But it's worth talking about him. He had a tremendous impact on comics in, broadly, three ways.

First, when he debuted in the late 60s, his art brought a new style, an increase in realism in rendering and a dynamic eye in page design. Moving freely between the two leaders Marvel and DC (something other artists did not do before him), he helped lead the way to a post-Kirby Marvel art style, and pushed DC out of its moribund house style to compete on even terms with Marvel art. His influence practically defines the Bronze Age of superhero comics and is felt today alongside other foundational artists. His collaborations with Denny O'Neil on Green Lantern/Green Arrow brought sixties turmoil into comics, and his collaborations with O'Neil on Batman include the greatest Joker story as well as the invention of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia.

Second, he was an important collaborator and teacher. Through his studio, Continuity Studio, he worked with contemporaries to their obvious improvement and developed new artists over decades, another way in which his artistic influence is still felt.

Finally, he was an activist. Realizing fairly early on that commercial art -- advertising, book covers, and the like -- paid far better than comics for less work, he switched much of his output in that direction, ensuring that he was independent of comics publishers and not beholden to them to pay his bills or feed his family. As a result of that independence, he used his influence to affect real change, by calling out decades-old injustice and demanding redress and improvement. The most famous example revolves around the Superman film of 1978 and the discovery that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were living in poverty -- Shuster almost blind. Adams used his media savvy and his influence on comics' principals to shame DC Comics and Warner Brothers over their dishonor towards their greatest creators. As a consequence, Siegel and Shuster lived the remainder of their lives in comfort, if not wealth. Adams was also a major factor in the development of royalties in comics -- comics had heretofore always been done as piecework for a page rate, and now comics creators could share in the success of what they created. Similarly, he helped get creators participation rights in the use of their characters outside of comics. There's still work to be done -- Marvel gives $5000 checks to creators when their work is adapted into billion-dollar movies, and Len Wein famously received more from DC for the creation of the minor Batman character Lucius Fox than he did from Marvel for the headline character Wolverine. But Adams was always out there pushing for fairness, and his leadership made it possible for people who would otherwise have feared being blackballed out of work to speak up, as well as for publishers to have the cover they needed with their corporate owners to do the right thing.

Adams was not without flaw. When he wrote his own stories, the results were legendarily incompetent, with such gems as Skateman occupying top spots in "worst comics" lists, and Batman: Odyssey engendering extensive exegeses trying to understand what was happening.

And he believed and attempted to spread a belief so bizarre that it's almost impossible to describe -- that plate tectonics was a lie and that the world was instead expanding.

At conventions, after retiring, he was friendly and gregarious (if mercenary -- he knew the value of his work and charged appropriately), always willing to spend time with fans, to talk comics and art with genuine affection and interest. I have a number of prints from his booth, and I enjoyed my brief experience interacting with him.

Neal Adams was one of the all-time greats, who made great art and who did great things for his fellow artists.

[thebestify]

Congress and Main project receives VEDA loan | Upbeat News | samessenger.com - St. Albans Messenger

ST. ALBANS — Builders of the new commercial building for Congress and Main were among the recipients of $4.2 million in commercial and small business loans announced by the Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA). The loan will help fund a 25,000 square foot building that will house Community College of Vermont, Northwestern Medical Center’s lifestyle medicine and RiseVT programs, and four retail spaces on the first floor. Overall, VEDA has approved more than $25 million in loans between July 1 and Sept. 30. “We’re happy to see the volume of loan approvals growing at a healthy rate compared to the previous quarter, especially in the small business and renewable energy sectors,” said Cassie Polhemus, Chief Executive Officer at VEDA. “It’s actually a great time to apply for financing, and we encourage Vermont businesses to take advantage of low interest rates.” Other loans approved by VEDA include: • Ski Magic, LLC — The owners of Magic Mountain Ski Area in Londonderry secured partial financing from VEDA to help install a new chairlift and purchase equipment to support its growing customer base and need for increased operations. • Black Flannel Brewing Company, LLC & Black Flannel Distilling Company, LLC — VEDA provided partial financing to help two sister companies, a distillery and a brewery, renovate space and begin operating at the Essex Experience Shopping Center in Essex Junction. The two companies will share a building with separate spaces for the brewpub and tasting rooms. • Green Lantern Development, LLC — This full-service solar development company has developed over 60 solar projects in Vermont, generating over 30 MW (AC) of capacity. VEDA has supported five of its solar projects this quarter, with an average project size of 150KW. Green Lantern expects to develop up to twenty additional solar projects across Vermont by the end of 2020. The Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation (VACC), a program of VEDA, also approved loans totaling $4.5 Million in the quarter, distributing financing to sixteen family farms and agricultural businesses around the state. Finally, VEDA also facilitated the approval of $11.8 Million in financing for its affiliate state loan programs, including the Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund and Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Read the full article

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 14: Grimm

They sprinted for the window, praying it was a gateway.

It wasn't.

Emery knew it before they jumped through, when she got close enough to notice that the pressure of the Dream around them didn't let up, when she felt the Dream clawing at her mind for her memories again. She thought of Edgar and Grandpa Al, of sweaters and tea, of cannons and claymores. Even if it wasn't the Sandman's gateway, it was his subconscious, and she needed to be aware enough to find something helpful inside of it.

She hadn't realized how much she'd miss the poppy fields until she and Wes landed on a cobblestone road in the middle of a dense forest. Night slammed down around them. The forest was hung with fog and chirped with the sounds of hidden insects. A wooden fence lined one side of the road, the way marked by yellow lanterns hanging on spindly rods. Through the trees were the lights of a village, and past the village, the turrets of a vicious-looking stone castle perched atop a stone rise in the distance, its silhouette edged in moonlight. A thin layer of green clouds skittered across the sky, avoiding the moon.

"Wow. This is…" Emery looked behind them, where the road tapered off into a smear of nothingness, the edge of the dream they couldn't cross.

"It looks like a fairytale," Wes said.

"I'm not feeling very Disney right now."

"Less Disney, more Grimm."

"What do you think this guy dreams about?"

Wes sighed through his nose and hefted his hammer onto his shoulder, looking weary but determined. "We're going to find out."

~

It occurred to Emery during the walk to the little village through the trees that she could probably start shooting and do some serious psychological damage to the Sandman by ripping his dreams to shreds. She didn't think the appearance of his dream-window meant he was asleep, necessarily--she was pretty sure the dream-windows were there all the time, regardless of whether their dreamers were currently dreaming--but she did feel as if he was still nearby. She wouldn't have been surprised if he really had been following them the entire time they'd been in the Dream. Watching a couple of rookie dreamhunters stumble through window after window was probably hilarious for him.

Small cottages made up the village. Warm yellow light burned in every window and warmth leaked from every chimney. Muddy boots stood by solid front doors. Emery peeked inside a few as they passed and saw families bundled up by fireplaces, parents putting small children to bed. They wore simple clothing: tunics and dresses and thick socks. Emery wondered vaguely what Grandpa Al and Edgar were doing. Probably looking for her. Hopefully looking for her.

She stopped before one cottage not far from the town square and tried the door.

"What are you doing?" Wes hissed.

She rattled the door handle. The latch didn't budge, and the people sitting before the fireplace inside didn't look up. She rattled it again, then banged on the door. They didn't so much as sneeze.

"We can't interact with them," she said. "They're just here for show."

"Then let's keep moving. Something's got to happen."

The town square was hemmed in by several larger buildings, each identified by rough wooden signs in an alphabet they couldn't read, some muddled dream-language that would probably only make sense to the Sandman himself. The lanterns here hung from high poles staked in the ground around a squat stone well at the center of the square. Boards covered the top of the well. A man stood in front of it, his back to them, a hand resting on the well’s lip. In his other he held a rusted scythe, and he leaned on it like a walking stick.

“Hello?” Emery moved slowly toward him, one hand on a revolver. She’d been through enough nightmares where someone turned around and had no face, or had tentacles or crab claws protruding where their eyes should be, or mouths filled with dead rats. And after the villagers in the cottages, she didn’t expect this man to hear her.

He did. He turned, and watched them approach with a wary expression on his fully-formed face. The weight of the blade turned the scythe in his hand. They hadn’t seen any fields on the way to the village, but he must have been a farmer. His clothes were also in finer shape than the other villagers’, and his hair was a crisp, clean blond, combed in a precise swoop from a neat part on the right side of his head. A razor-thin scar cut down his face, over his right eye.

“Who are you?” he asked. Emery started. He had a distinct, contained Southern drawl. A Texan in a German fairytale. Emery had seen some strange things in the Dream, but that took the prize. “Have you come to speak to the scientist? He isn’t seeing anyone now. It’s a bad time.”

That it was the middle of the night and that they were wearing armor that didn’t fit their surroundings didn’t seem to bother the man at all. Emery began to ask who the scientist was when Wes stepped up beside her. “Why isn’t he seeing anyone?”

The man with the scythe paused, looking between them, sizing them up. Then he said, “My name is Daniel. I take travelers to the path in the woods that leads to the scientist’s lab.” He motioned toward the castle spearing over the trees. “The way has always been dangerous because of the Witch of the Wood. We thought it would be safer after the scientist captured her, but since then, none of the travelers I’ve led to the path have returned, and we haven’t heard from the scientist.”

Wes glanced at Emery. Emery stared back at him—had they really just been dropped in a fairytale?—until Wes raised his eyebrows.

She turned back to Daniel. “That’s exactly why we’re here. We were sent to investigate what became of the scientist. We’re well equipped to handle whatever might be waiting in that castle.” She tapped her Peacemakers. Wes had put his hammer away, but he looked intimidating enough without it.

Daniel looked them up and down once again. Emery couldn’t tell if he was supremely unimpressed with them, or if his face just always looked like that. “Aren’t you a little young, Ponytail?”

Emery’s eyebrows shot up into her hair. Now he was mocking them? And when he himself couldn’t have been much older than them.

She smiled to hold in her anger. “We’re quite capable, I assure you. You can lead us to the path or we can find it ourselves; either way, we’re going up to that castle.”

“Fine,” Daniel said, shrugging. “But if something gets you out there, no one will come to save you.”

Joke’s on you, cowboy, Emery wanted to say. We’ve already got no one coming to save us.

“We’ll take our chances,” she said instead.

~

The path through the forest sat behind a blacksmith’s shop. The trees opened up there similar to the Sandman’s gateway and window, two huge oaks framing darkness. Moonlight founds chinks in the armor of the thick canopy overhead and dappled the pathway. Fog crept through the underbrush.

Daniel had brought a lantern with him; it cast shadows over his tanned, angular face. He handed it to Emery.

“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Don’t leave the path. Look for the knight when you reach the castle. She used to guard the front gate, but I don’t know if she’s still there. If she is, avoid her. She’s a real piece of work.”

“Don’t leave the path, avoid the knight. Got it.” What was the proper etiquette for leaving a helpful person in a fairytale? Emery saluted. Wes cleared his throat.

Daniel shifted his scythe into both hands and backed away. The lantern light left his face, shadowing his eyes. He became two bright curves in the moonlight: the blonde swoop of his hair and the iron edge of the scythe blade. Then he was gone, vanished into the fog rolling across the cobblestones.

Emery and Wes turned back toward the forest. The path was dark.

“Remind you of anything?” Emery asked.

Wes looked grim. “If the Wilmark Fox shows up, I’m going to bash its head in.”

They started walking. This path through the woods was worse than the trails in Wilmark Park. The fog, the density of the trees, and the pressure of the Dream crowded in on all sides, like watching eyes. Past the pressure, Emery was sure there actually was something out there in the woods watching them, the same way she was sure of anything else in another person’s nightmare: the person himself knew it. The Sandman had had this dream multiple times, perhaps not recently, but throughout his life.

She shivered. “We’re walking through his subconscious right now.”

“We’ve been through twenty others. It’s no different.”

“But this is a dreamhunter. It’s so crisp. Everything’s so defined.”

It felt like a real forest, not a dream forest. They probably couldn’t step off the path, but it felt like they could. There was no narrowing of Emery’s vision, no slowing of her legs or scattering of her thoughts.

“He won’t sleep much, since he’s a dreamhunter. This is probably one of the few nightmares he’s ever had that was powerful enough to surface.”

Emery had never had a nightmare strong enough to come into the waking world. Most dreamhunters didn’t; they certainly had the capability, often more than non-dreamhunters, but they didn’t sleep enough to allow the nightmares to become corporeal.

This could have been the waking world, it was so realistic.

Besides the Texan, of course.

The trees ended before they came upon the castle walls. A stretch of moat separated the woods from the stone wall, like a huge sword had come down and cleaved the ground in two. A long stone bridge spanned the gap to a high portcullis, open now onto an empty courtyard. Emery and Wes started across the bridge, side-by-side, Emery holding the lantern up.

The knight appeared the same way Daniel had disappeared, in a roll of fog across the ground, sliding into existence where she had not previously existed at all. Emery wouldn’t have known it was a woman inside the armor if Daniel hadn’t said so; the knight was as old school as everything else around here, greaves and helmet and pauldrons, the whole nine yards. The armor was black, and she stood with her legs braced apart and her hands balanced on the pommel of a massive battle axe. The sharp center tip was planted in the groove between two stones.

“I suppose we should have figured there was no way to avoid her, huh?” Emery said, taking out her revolvers. Wes hefted his hammer in both hands. Emery raised her voice. “We’re here to see the scientist. We heard something weird was going on.”

Emery wasn’t sure they used the word “weird” in fairytales.

The knight didn’t seem to care. She could’ve been a statue if not for a single flex of the fingers of her right hand. The armor made her taller and broader than Wes.

“I don’t know about you,” Emery said to Wes, “but I don’t have the energy to fight this lady right now.”

At least the armor would hide a neat bullet hole in the flesh. She raised her Peacemaker and fired.

The bullet ricocheted off the knight’s heavy breastplate and tore through a chunk of the stone wall.

“Um.” Emery looked at her Peacemaker. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

The knight’s shoulders shook.

“I think she’s laughing at you,” Wes said. “That’s…nice of her.”

“Nice of her?”

“You just tried to kill her. She could be trying to kill you back.”

“Are you going to let us in or not?” Emery snapped at the knight.

With a visible sigh—a slump of the shoulders, a slight lowering of the head—the knight took her battle axe in one hand and started across the bridge. Emery felt the vibration of her steps through the stone, they were so heavy and rattled so loud.

Wes stepped forward. “I can hold her off. You try to get past her.”

“How did it not penetrate?”

“The Sandman has got some strong dreams. Just go. We’ll flank her.”

The knight’s axe slid into place in her hands before she swung it, smooth and automatic, like a machine. It came in a long graceful arc from her heel up to her shoulder, lifting Wes’s hair from his forehead as he jerked backward to avoid it. When it came back down, he raised his hammer and caught her blade on the hammer shaft.

“Go!” he grunted.

Emery dropped the lantern—it tipped and shattered—leaped past the knight’s legs, rolled, and sprang to her feet. Metal squealed on metal. Emery sprinted to the portcullis and turned. Wes was swinging now, driving the knight back a step only to leave himself open long enough for her to surge forward and tackle him against the short wall along the edge of the bridge. Wes locked his hammer with her axe again, but the knight was bending him back, farther and farther, until his shoulders almost touched the top of the wall.

Emery raised a gun to shoot, but thought better of it; if it ricocheted again, Wes was too close. She holstered the gun, fuming, and resorted to the old standby: she dashed back across the bridge and jumped onto the knight’s back, wrapping her arms beneath the lip of the helmet visor and yanking backward. Her momentum pulled the knight away from Wes, giving him the chance to drive the hammer head into the knight’s breastplate. Emery felt the deep thud of the impact. The knight staggered backward, but didn’t fall.

“Stupid—sturdy—scrap—metal!” Emery dug her fingers beneath the lip of the knight’s helmet. They needed a weak point to hit, a soft spot. The knight dropped her axe to grab Emery’s ankles and pry her legs away, but Wes swung for the knight’s elbows and she let go to avoid being hit. The knight stumbled, Emery pulled, and the helmet came off.

A fall of brilliant orange hair lit up in the moonlight.

Wes tried to stop mid-swing and lost his grip. His hammer flew from his hands and crashed into the low stone wall. He gaped.

“Marcia?”

The knight grabbed Emery’s legs and dislodged her. Emery hit the ground with a huff. The knight grabbed her axe up again, then turned, and Emery looked up into the face of Marcia Montgomery.

Her riot of hair fell past her shoulders instead of stopping at her chin, and she looked younger than she should, but it was definitely her.

“Who are you?” Marcia said, glaring between the two of them. “How do you know my name?”

“You’re our—” Emery started, until Wes began furiously shaking his head behind Marcia’s back. “The villagers told us. The one with the scythe. Daniel. He said you were a real piece of work.”

It was enough to turn Marcia into a human volcano.

“Scum-sucking slick-haired coward! Of course he told you! He wants me out of the way, but he won’t even come into the woods himself, oh no. He’ll send others in for him! If he wants to fight me, he should come and do it!”

“Why does he want you out of the way?”

“To get to the castle! They all want to get to the castle!”

Marcia paused, huffing, then scooped up her helmet from the ground and shoved her way past Wes.

“You want to go in, go in. I was here to save you, not to defend him.” She motioned at the castle with her helmet. “If you’re still alive when I get back, I might pull you out. Go inside at your own risk.”

Then she shoved her helmet on and vanished between the trees, taking with her the sudden warmth of familiarity. The loss of it made Emery feel heavier, and it took an extra effort to get back to her feet.

“So, Marcia is in the Sandman’s dream,” Emery said. “She was acting weird about him before. They definitely know each other.”

“They must be close, if she’s such a prominent figure here.”

“Does that help us at all? Knowing that? Maybe we could use her as a defense if he tries to attack us. Like, you know—he’s about to dose us with sleeping sand, and we say, ‘Wait! We know Marcia!’”

Wes looked unconvinced.

“It was just an idea,” Emery said defensively. “Let’s go inside before she comes back.”

   (Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIVE)

[kojakus]

[jimmiekiser]

Different Types of Liability in a Restaurant or Bar

Running or owning a restaurant can be a really fun experience. It can also take up a lot of your time and require your full responsibility. Not only for your actions, but the actions of others.  If you run a restaurant or plan to buy one in the future here are a few liabilities you will want to consider.

DUIs

One of the most common types of liability in a bar or restaurant are those that revolve around DUIs.  Somewhere around 30% of the traffic fatalities that happen each year are due to DUIs.  But, don’t think that regular automobiles like cars and trucks are the only thing to look out for.  If you have an establishment, for example, in the mountains that allows snowmobile drivers or people on ski-lifts to get off and come in your restaurant, these people are also a liability.

Make sure that you purchase a Liquor Liability Policy if you plan on having liquor or alcohol in your establishment.

Activity Hazards

At first thought, you might not be able to think of any activity hazards that might happen in your establishment. But, here are a few to get your brain moving:

– Mechanical Bulls – Falling from Chairs – Bar Fights – Burns from the bartenders flaming alcohol trick – Making bananas foster or other food items in front of tables

These hazards aren’t just for your patrons either. They cover your employees as well.  In order to properly be covered for Activity Hazards in your establishment, you need to write down exactly the types of risks involved and put them on your insurance application so that the agent can give you the right amount and type of coverage.

Missing Exit Zone

If you do not have an exit zone in your establishment OR you do but the light on the sign is broken or out, you could be asking to get sued not only by anyone in your establishment that might get hurt because of an emergency, but  family members of anyone who is killed in the event of an emergency.  This light should always be on and should never be blocked.

Flammable Decorations

In the same way, you need to recognize possible injury for activity hazards, you also need to recognize the possibility of flammable decorations and injuries as well.  Burns are painful, but they also can disfigure a person so not only would you be paying for an individual’s medical treatment, but also pain and suffering which can be incredibly high.

Decorations such as Tiki torches are a great example of flammable decorations.  They look great, they might add to the atmosphere or theme of your establishment, but is that really worth possibly injuring someone and then, in turn, getting sued for it?

Probably not.  Tiki torches aren’t the only flammable decorations, so are outdoor heaters, fireplaces, Chinese lanterns, etc.

When looking for insurance for your establishment, make sure they have loss control inspections.  This enables a Risk Management professional to come in and tell you which areas or processes in your building might be problematic.

Essentially they are your go-to person for figuring out what items, activities, or even food items in your establishment carry the most risk.  (i.e., a mechanical bull.  It may seem like a fun thing to put into a bar, but without the proper insurance and proper forms for your patrons to sign, you could be in big trouble if someone gets injured.)

Free Consultation with a Utah Business Lawyer

If you are here, you probably have a business law issue you need help with, call Ascent Law for your free business law consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Helpful Business Law Articles

Business Lawyer in Utah

How to Screw Up Your Bankruptcy Discharge

Financial Planning for Beginners

Business Lawyers

Dismissal After Passing Chapter 7 Means Test

Estate Planning for Blended Families

Source: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/different-types-of-liability-in-a-restaurant-or-bar/

https://realestatelawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2018/04/19/different-types-of-liability-in-a-restaurant-or-bar/