#and for the record just in case i needed to paint a clearer picture for you

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

You don’t need to be a political genius to know that Republicans are straight up shitting themselves right now. The Arizona Supreme Court ruling in favor of an 1864 ban was a tipping point across the country, and the GOP—in every state, at every level—knows that voters are furious.

It’s not just the nightmare stories of raped children being denied care and women going septic that put voters over the edge, but the disdain for women that seeps out of every anti-abortion decision. At the same time Arizona Republicans are enacting a law from before women had the right to vote, anti-abortion groups and Idaho Republicans are headed to the Supreme Court to argue that states shouldn’t have to give women life-saving abortions. How much clearer can they get? All of which is to say: strategists have their work cut out for them. How can they convince voters ahead of November that the anti-abortion horror show they’ve unleashed on Americans is good, actually?

If anyone has an answer, it’s Kellyanne Conway. The Republican strategist and all-around terrible person has been doing damage control in the wake of the Arizona ruling, pushing out talking points at record speed. And the messages she’s focusing on paint a clear picture of what we can expect to see from GOP candidates—including Donald Trump—over the next few months. In a recent appearance on Fox News, for example, Conway stuck to some of her old standards—namely, attacking Democrats as the real extremists. She honed in on ballot measures, specifically, saying that abortion rights activists are trying to pass amendments that are “more permissive than pre-Dobbs.” Of course, this is demonstrably false. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t love ‘viability’ language in proposed amendments—in addition to the fact that it’s just another restriction, Republicans will claim we’re pushing for abortion ‘up until birth’ regardless.

Conway also repeated some of our favorite anti-abortion bingo words like “compassion,” and “federal minimum standard” in lieu of ‘ban’—but it was something she said about states’ rights that piqued my interest.

[“What is state’s rights? Is it when the state Supreme Court speaks? Is it through a ballot initiative? Is it through the governor and the state legislature working together? Is it through the trigger laws that have been on the books? I can argue that it’s all of the above.”]

Over the last few months—especially as pro-choice ballot measures have advanced in multiple states—I’ve noticed Republicans tinkering with the definition of states’ rights and the ‘will of the people.’ Essentially, they know that they’re passing abortion bans against voters’ wishes, so they need to make it sound as if these laws are something Americans actually want. (That’s why they say ‘consensus’ instead of ‘ban.’)

This week, for example, Fox News ran a headline about the EMTALA case headed to the Supreme Court, stating that the Biden administration is “subverting state’s rights” by requiring hospitals to give women life-saving and stabilizing abortions. John Bursch, an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the radical legal group arguing the case, told Fox News, “It’s pushing abortion on states that don't want it.” It takes a lot of nerve to pass abortion bans no one wants, only to then accuse pro-choice politicians of disregarding voters’ wishes! But that’s the message I’m seeing come up again and again among Republican legislators, anti-abortion activists and conservative media.

Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day Substack exposes the GOP’s abortion bans are the “will of the people” charade in which they falsely suggest that the Democrats are the ones extreme on abortion.

These nimrods claim to be for “states’ rights” when it comes to abortion bans, but they would ban it nationwide in a heartbeat if given a chance to do so.

[toloveawarlord]

Ch. 5

Characters: Sophia, Fenrir, Kyle, and Luka

Pairing: Sophia Emerson x Fenrir Godspeed

Tagging: @plumpblueberry​

“Ain’t the records office closed at this hour?” Fenrir asked, refusing to leave the newest member alone. He cast a glance at the large clock that’s hand moved ever closer to the morning hour of three. Meetings could run extremely late, and as such, on more than one occasion had an officer been sent to retrieve a worker if Blanc weren’t present.

Sophia stuffed her hand into the bag barely clinging to her shoulder, shuffling around the contents until the cool brass ring touched her fingers. “We keep patient records here and have to be able to access them at any time. Only a select few have these.” The door blocking their path easily bypassed with the ring of keys.

The crystals flickered ominously before lighting the room. A layer dust sat upon the lids of the boxes of labeled files stacked too high for their weight. The doctor winded around them, finding the stack that held what she needed. Sliding them down one by one, placing them carefully on the ground, pale blue eyes widened at the hand swiping across the top, sending dust specks up into the air. “Don’t—” Sophia gave a sigh, giving up on the warning since it hardly mattered.

“Do ya not like dust?” A question asked by someone so innocent.

How different the two of them were.

Biting the inside of her lip, Sophia shook her head. “It’s nothing.” It would be careless of her to leave the hidden notes here now. There were many places available to keep them safe. The meaty file tucked close to her chest; she asked the Ace of Spades to put the boxes back in order.

She absently wondered how long he would continue to tag along. Long nights were more common than well-rested ones in her line of work. The time of night didn’t show on his features, a bright smile on his lips when their gazes met as they silently left the Civic Center. “Shouldn’t you be returning to headquarters?”

“Shouldn’t you? You work there now too!” Fenrir clapped his hand on her shoulder as if he were the sole member of her welcoming party. His demeanor friendly and emotions openly worn on his features. A genuinely honest man, just as… he had been.

The ache in her chest impossibly tight.

“It would be waste of valuable time. I have a loft in town.” Dwelling on memories of time that would never be returned to her would only cause more pain. Instead, Sophia intended to focus on this strange case. Her steps quieter than the boots of the army boy strolling beside her without a care. He seemed to latch onto her quickly but held no ill intent.

Simply, he was curious about her.

What better way to glean information than visit her home?

Fenrir stretched out his hand in front of her, stopping the doctor from climbing the final stair to the entrance of the loft. A quick hop over it to the landing, he bent slightly, fingers tracing over the broken frame. “Someone didn’t have a key.” His gun tugged from the holster as he pushed open the door.

The entire apartment had been ransacked but the Ace found no one still inside. He returned to the office space with a frown on his features. “You should check to see if anything is missing. I’ll find a soldier to report this to headquarters.”

“Do not report this.”

The crease between his brows deepened, not understanding their newest member at all. Her home had been broken into, trashed, and she stood there as if it were a natural occurrence. A civilian would be shaken up by this. “We need to find the culprit. You ain’t safe here.”

Sophia set the file she’d taken from the Civic Center on the messy desk, tapping her finger against it. “Nothing is missing. This is what they were after.” It made perfect sense, and the picture was getting ever so clearer to her. The mess simply a countermeasure to make it seem like a random break in.

“How can ya know that?”

How indeed. She didn’t want to prematurely bring up a hunch, so she fed small details. “This case is about drugs. Whoever is behind the production must be keeping tabs on the armies. They stole my notes from the clinic and must have known I kept copies.” Glossing over the how, Sophia began to stack the papers scattered across the desk. “Can you clean up the living room?”

“And they came here to find ‘em.” For the time being, it appeared that Fenrir wasn’t going to dig deeply into the missing details. Scratching the back of his neck, he gave a nod. “You got it.” He retreated like a scolded puppy.

Sophia holed up in the office. The state of it not as concerning as the single sheet of paper holding her findings for the patient. Something about the symptoms reminded her of something but it escaped her as to what. The tiredness falling over her required a strong cup of coffee.

She paused on her way to the kitchen, finding the Ace of Spades snoozing away on her couch. He’d done a decent job at cleaning and then made himself at home. What a strange man. He could sleep soundly in a stranger’s home, as if they were close friends or lovers.

She needed to distance herself from him.

******

The following morning, Fenrir passed her off to the Jack of Spades with a bright grin and pat on the shoulder. With a hungover Kyle, the three took a carriage into Black Territory. The wheels rumbled over the dirt road, tossing the carriage roughly whenever it hit a stray rock.

“And he ate an entire bag of that candy for breakfast. It’s like he can’t survive without sugar at every meal,” Kyle complained, rubbing his temples as if it would soothe his splitting headache. His distaste for sweets never changing.

Sophia crossed her legs, previously uninterested in the conversation between Luka and Kyle tossed the other doctor a pointed glare. “At least he’ll have a functioning liver by the time he’s thirty-five.” He’d likely drink himself to death.

Kyle muttered a ‘shut up’ before slumping against the side of the carriage to rest a bit more. Left alone together, Luka shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t understand the relationship between the two doctors nor her relationship with his friend. He couldn’t recall ever meeting her in school.

“We had a few classes together in medical school.”

“Oh. You were there at the same time?” His quizzical gaze shifting between the two of them, trying to puzzle out the age difference.

Sophia turned her gaze out the window, watching the scenery pass them by. “I’m twenty-seven. Kyle started medical school at a much younger age than me, but I had training at home from a relative that was a doctor.” She’d been born with the purpose of becoming a doctor, although the intension wasn’t to heal.

Luka was silent for a moment, mulling over the information and trying to make sense of it. “I don’t remember you at the boarding school, but Ed – the Jack of Hearts – he said—” His comment lost at the annoyed expression that crossed the doctor’s features.

“Whatever Edgar said should be regarded with caution. He enjoys entertaining himself at the expense of anyone else that crosses his path.” And he was quite dangerous. As a Clemence, surely, he’d heard the rumors floating around about the Bright family. Most of the time, it was written off as simply hearsay, but her own family had plenty of evidence to prove otherwise.

“He’s not a bad person.”

“I never said he was,” Sophia replied, the first to rise from the bench seat when the carriage came to a stop. Stepping down onto the dirt road, pale blue eyes scanned the small cottage. “He’s only at the mercy of his family obligations, like most of the old families in Red Territory.” That didn’t excuse the way he toyed with others, but she understood all too well what those obligations could make one do. She gave no time for the younger officer to reply, instead walking ahead to their destination.  

There was little around the house but weeds. Paint peeling away from the wood, showing how little it was cared for. Kyle rapped his knuckles against the door, rubbing his tired face with his other hand. He only perked up when it swung open, Alex’s wife questioning their sudden appearance. “We’d like to ask Alex a few follow up questions.”

The woman hugged the door close, warily eyeing all three army officers. Her gaze settled on Sophia. “You’re that doctor from the clinic. I-I didn’t know you were in the Black Army.”

“I was not when I treated your husband. May I see him for a follow up exam?” The woman’s hesitation evident as her eyes were focused on Luka, likely eyeing the large sword strapped to his back. “They’ll wait here, if you’re more comfortable.”

“I guess that would be alright—”

Although neither Kyle nor Luka looked pleased with the plan of her going in alone, Sophia went anyways with a suggestion of the woman explaining to Kyle how her husband has been. They could interview both of them that way.

She followed the given directions, up the creaky staircase and down the short hall to the last room on the left. The cold doorknob taking a bit of jiggling to access the bedroom. He was in worse condition than she expected. The shell of a man stretched out on the small cot. “Mr. Marshall, I’m doctor Emerson. I treated you at the clinic in Central Quarter.”

He was little more than a skeleton. “I remember.” His voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. With her help, bony hands icy cold in hers, Alex managed to sit up on the edge. “My legs have completely stopped working.”

Partial paralysis. Not unheard of after drug abuse.

Sophia crouched down, testing his reflexes to confirm. “How long have you not had feeling?” He should have come in immediately, but she refrained from saying so. The deterioration of his body too severe to have resulted from the previous overdose. He was likely still dosing every now and then.

“A few weeks.” He paused for a moment before speaking again. “But doc, you didn’t come here for a checkup. Being in the army, I’m gonna guess you are here about the drugs.”

Unusually honest.

“Yes. We’re investigating a dangerous drug affecting the whole of Cradle. You are the only user who hadn’t died.” It wouldn’t be much longer until he joined that statistic. Whatever he’d taken, it was infecting his muscles and nervous system.

“It’s like being able to see the world without a filter.”

Sophia tilted her head in confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Taking Wonderland. It opens up the truth of the world to be revealed. I saw so many beautiful things that are hidden.”

Hallucinations.

Rising to her feet, Sophia resisted the urge to dispel his fantasies. It wouldn’t do any good to shatter the dying man’s delusion. “Where do you get it from?” Even in this poor state, he should be able to remember the location.

“Oh, the red door —”  

BANG! BANG!

A rain of bullets pierced through the window next to the bed.

Sophia ducked down, reaching out to jerk Alex down into the floor with her. Warm blood coated her hands. Multiple bullets embedded into his chest and one perfectly drilled through his skull. The biggest lead they had was dead before she’d even had a chance to save him. Out of habit, she pressed two fingers against his neck for a pulse, finding none.

As quickly as it had started, it ended. An eerie silence set in. Only the wind lamented the passing of the troubled man.

“Sophia!” Kyle shouted from downstairs, cursing to himself.

“I’m fine. Alex is dead.”

“So is his wife. I’ve only got a graze. The Jack of Spades went after the culprits.”

Culprits? Multiple?

Sophia glanced around. All of the stray bullets were lodged deeply into the walls or floor, none easy to access for examination. She knelt beside the deceased, taking out a scalpel from her bag to remove one single bullet. Although it was covered in blood, the blue tip still showed through. A signature too unique to ignore.

A white flower starkly contrasted the destroyed room. It couldn’t be more than a day old as it didn’t have any wilt to it. Sophia folded it into a handkerchief and carefully placed it into her medical bag. It was becoming far too clear to her.

“Someone doesn’t want us investigating,” Luka said, meeting the two the doctors out in front of the house. He clutched his shoulder with a crimson hand, out of breath and pale. He hadn’t been able to detain any of the shooters.

“None of the other houses were targeted of any known overdose victims,” Kyle added.

“That’s because none of them were alive to give up the dealer. Alex and his wife were threats.” Not quite the truth but all of it that she was willing to give. Taking out a pen, she scribed some numbers on a torn piece of paper.

Golden eyes swept over her again, looking for any possible injury. “Are you sure that you aren’t injured?”

Her head nodded in response. “Yes, I’m sure. Give this to Edgar. He’ll know what it means.” Sophia held out the scrap until Kyle reluctantly accepted it. It would mean absolutely nothing to anyone except the Jack of Hearts. There was absolutely no need to check herself for injuries.

“How can you possibly know that?���

Sophia tugged the door to the carriage open, mulling over what her steps should be. Putting together all the evidence to present to Ray, she supposed. It would be best to do it sooner rather than later, but privately, nonetheless. Pale blue irises were void of much emotion when they turned back on her two companions.

“They weren’t aiming for me.”

[musicollage]

Benoit Pioulard. The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, 2016. Kranky. ( Mastered By – Rafael Anton Irisarri )  ~ [ Album Review |   1) Pop Matters  +  2) Exclaim!  + 3) All Music  +  4) Impose Magazine  + 5) Echoes And Dust  ]

1) The peculiar title of Benoît Pioulard’s latest album gives the impression that it could be some kind of best-of collection. It isn’t, but The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter could stand in as a succinct summation of Thomas Meluch’s charismatic melding of dream-folk, field recordings, and sandwashed atmospheres.

The completion of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter has been trailed by poignant timing and tragic coincidence. Meluch’s first album for Kranky, Précis, was released ten years earlier, nearly to the day. His brother, for whom the record is dedicated, passed away on the same day that it was finished. Listening Matter’s mood is not easily read. Its pleasure and melancholy are both wary. Meluch being a photographer as well, several of his Polaroids serve as the album art. There’s surely some reflection of the music to be drawn from the cover image; a fish eye mirror on a dark weathered wall, offering a detached and bent view of a beautiful day.

Starting with Sonnet in 2015, Benoît Pioulard has let loose an outpouring of ambient releases. There was Stanza, a companion to the Sonnet LP, Stanza II, the Noyaux EP put out by Morr Music, and the tour EP Thine. This past June he released the Radial EP, which featured an ‘interpretation’ of the Aphex Twin song “Stone in Focus”, to help pay for medical bills he incurred breaking his wrist while hiking in the Cascade foothills near North Bend, Washington.

Listening Matter swings back toward the singer-songwriter yin to Meluch’s structure-averse yang, a mode he hasn’t dwelled much in since Hymnal in 2013. Working again with Benoît Pioulard here is Rafael Anton Irisarri, who mastered the album at Black Knoll Studio in New York. Along with being the go-to guy for completing his own music, Irisarri is a composer with whom Meluch collaborates as Orcas. The duo’s stunning, underappreciated second album, Yearling, is a standout in both of their bodies of work.

Opening euphoric gust “Initials B.P.” is both a clearing of the throat and a girding of the loins. Outside the door lay a progression of perils to face down. “Narcologue” wastes no time, cutting into time and distance’s grip on love: "But this freezing of the heart / Is a shameful shuttering born of being apart / With numbness but in command / My senescence proves we hold together like sand”. Addiction lurks in “Layette”, which begins with the admission, “In a matter of time / I’ll slowly burn through my vices / Cos when I level with them / They still put me through my paces”.

The elated melody of the brief but voluble “Anchor as the Muse” belies its sense of futility. Nearly halfway in and there’s still no resolution in sight on “I Walked Into the Blackness and Built a Fire”: “So I will give chase / The back roads are clearer than before / But mist is in pace / And I can’t see the paths anymore”. Not to overstate the point, but after going practically speechless since Sonnet, Meluch has a lot to get off his chest here. He also gives himself a narrow window in which to do it; a baker’s dozen of future-past pop songs etched onto water-warped tape that average in length somewhere in the two-minute range.

Contradictions being key to the album’s balance, it is only natural that Listening Matter’s greatest moment of levity comes wrapped in cataclysm. On “The Sun Is Going to Explode But Whatever It’s OK”, each successive verse is an eloquent capture of a different thought or perspective in the context of the end of it all; a couple of the sentimental kind, but most of the ‘oh well’ variety. “Oh in the great conflagration of the universe / The sun is going to fucking explode/It doesn’t help to block it with your hand / So just tremble with the ruptures in the land”. It’s the “Take It Easy” this generation deserves.

2) Over the past decade-and-a-half, Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) has covered a lot of musical ground. The Washington-via-Michigan producer has averaged a release per year, tackling electronic, ambient, electroacoustic and even shoegaze and folk along the way but on his latest LP, the aptly titled The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, Meluch has focused on a subject that has seemed to elude him over the years: himself.

According to Pioulard, the album was recorded during a rough period in his life; the 13-track LP tackles such subjects as grief ("I Walked Into a Blackness and Built a Fire"), turmoil ("In-the-Vapor") and self-medication ("Narcologue"). Opening the record off with the bleary and antonymous electronics of "Initials B.P.," Pioulard goes on to fill the album with guitar strums and vulnerable vocal sighs, while distancing himself from his most recent work. Despite the themes covered throughout, tracks like "Defect" and "A Mantle for Charon" sound honourably optimistic and cheery as Pioulard's voice comes off clean, clear and often chatty, akin to the warbling vocals of the Beta Band's Steve Mason.

Surrounded by ambient hiss and faint female backing vocals, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter shows Pioulard expressing emotion through simple but intensely personal songwriting.

3) Over a decade's worth of albums, Thomas Meluch took Benoît Pioulard's music in such wide-ranging directions that, by the time of Sonnet's expansive ambient instrumentals, it seemed unlikely he'd return to the project's folktronic beginnings. However, he does exactly that with The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, an album title that hints at coming full circle: if Precis was a concise introduction, then these songs are a poignant summary. Benoît Pioulard's music feels lighter and freer than ever, even as it touches on heavy subject matter. Within half an hour, Meluch reflects on life's impermanence ("Narcologue"), the fleeting comforts of vice ("Layette"), and mortality ("A Mantle for Charon") in ways that give Precis' affecting simplicity a greater depth. On songs such as "Perennial Comforts" and the gorgeous "I Walked into the Blackness and Built a Fire," he couples his flair for atmosphere with lyrical storytelling that paints a more complete picture of his world than ever before. Meluch surrounds these deep dives with ambient pieces that are the mainstay of Benoît Pioulard's work -- the breezy album opener is even called "Initials B.P." -- and the interplay of space and texture is lovely as always on "In-the-Vapor" and the velvety final track, "Ruth." Nevertheless, a voice as expressive as Meluch's should be used as much as possible, and his singing is especially welcome after Sonnet; on the lilting "Like There's Nothing Under You," he says as much with his circling harmonies as he does with his poetic words. Indeed, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter features some of his catchiest songs in some time, from the shimmering "Anchor as the Muse" to "The Sun Is Going to Explode But Whatever It's OK," a brisk singalong for an end-of-the-world campfire. A tenth anniversary is as good a time as any to take stock, but to Meluch's credit, it doesn't feel like he's revisiting the past merely for nostalgia's sake. Instead, adding the clarity of experience to his early work's atmospheric conciseness only makes The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter all the richer.

4) Musicians often need to assume a persona, giving an alter-identity to better create and perform. Thomas Meluch has been working under such a pseudonym for his solo efforts since 2005, moving deliberately toward his current intersection of folk and ambient electronica. His previous output under his Benoît Pioulard name has often been nebulous and, as with the case of last year’s album Sonnet, voiceless. With the release of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter, Meluch opens up his expressions both lyrically and via acoustic guitar. With this new effort, he shades his atmospheric music with a humanity that also works as a curative measure for his grief and emotional state.

Listening Matter begins with one of Meluch’s signature drone-based expressions, reminding of the ethereal and isolating moods of Brian Eno. Throughout the album, he uses these quick interims as a respite between vocal sets, seemingly giving himself a breather from his realizations and confessionals. When he does open up, his voice has a calming lilt reminding of many heartfelt troubadours like Nick Drake and Elliot Smith, recalling moments while looking forward. “Narcologue” has a flamenco flair but soothes like a opiate, emulating that painless relief from reality. With the bright outset of single “Anchor and The Muse”, Meluch reaches for balance and awareness in the aftermath of his struggles. Meluch states poignantly that “If you still resent me after everything I’ve done/ Well, then I can’t really blame you, can I?”, owning his faults with a weary finality.

The tracks on The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter rarely last beyond the three minute mark, but the impressions made are distinct and indelible. His production is stark yet sprightly, finding the right moments to add a layer of anodic ambience or environmental hum. The harpsichord produced on “I Walked Into the Blackness and Built a Fire” matches well with an understated gallop as rhythm track, echoing with rich history and a tangible sound. The album’s best track “A Match for Charon” features an uplifting chord progression and swells that creep out gradually bursts through the mix like sunlight. The listener acts almost as an audience member in a theatre, where Meluch’s songs are vignettes to be experienced as well as heard.

That hazy, memorable ambience is a trademark of the music from Chicago-based label Kranky and its impact is easily recognized on the Benoît Pioulard signature. What makes the efforts of Meluch distinct on this LP is his representation of the ebb and flow of life, acting both as the cause and effect of his music. One can perceive Meluch lift the weight off of his shoulders as his songs resonate with individual pain and resilience. This feeling becomes clearer with the knowledge that he lost his brother tragically upon completing this album. With this, Listening Matter is an unmistakable release from a record label committed to a singular sound and an individual effort from a musician still coming to terms with his own art and station in life.

5) Following an excursion of a wholly ambient release, one that truly enveloped the listener into a world that offered intrigue and mystery, composer Thomas Meluch offers his latest work under the Benoît Pioulard moniker. Returning now to his roots of experimental ambient folk, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter features Meluch taking a step back from his 2015 album of Sonnet, utilizing his incredible range of ambient composition to further push and extenuate his own acoustic-folk musings. The result of it all is an album that that feels strangely familiar and comforting, whilst managing to express many ideas and notions that are certainly different.

Whilst Sonnet emphasized ambient techniques greatly and featured very sparse vocals, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter instead focuses around Meluch’s own folk notions, all accompanied, pushed, moved and broken up by his own ambient techniques. At the heart of every musical technique, is Meluch himself who examines himself and his own experiences and understanding of troubling times with great examination, using the recording process of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter as a growing and healing process. Vices, virtues, life and death are all mused upon and expressed by Meluch, all blurred and obscured by ambient washes, as though there’s only so much we’re supposed to see.

There’s a great intrigue following this album and its release. Meluch seems to have spent much of the past two years really turning his gaze into himself, looking at how he views the world and understands it, before turning at introspection outward through the medium of his songs. There’s an incredible fragility to much of the work on the album, whilst also being incredibly headstrong and confident. As a body of work, much of the album seems to jump further ahead than much of Meluch’s work, sounding more concise and direct than the 2015 ambient work of Sonnet or even the more folk-directed 2013 album of Hymnal.

Meluch’s works may sometimes feel a little hard to really tap into at times, especially much of his earlier work which really felt experimental at times. It seems now Meluch has really honed in his incredible range and talents, creating an album that is no doubt experimental, but is also much easier to digest and understand, whilst still being a wonderful album experience that simply achieves everything it has set out to do. It’s arguable that Meluch has created a perfect entry point into his music for those who may be unfamiliar to his unique style, whilst also releasing a work that will really inspire his many lifelong fans.

[earlgreytea68]

The Fall Out Boy Lawsuit

OKAY. I’m writing this up very slowly and painfully because I was really looking forward to writing this up SO I PERSIST DESPITE MY COMPUTER’S DEATH. I got so many followers after my Omegaverse lawsuit post and I was like, “Oh, no, they’re going to be very disappointed that this blog is just a bunch of pictures of Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump” and THEN FALL OUT BOY GOT SUED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND I WAS LIKE, “MY TIME HAS COME.” 

In all seriousness, though, this is an incredibly interesting case, because here is what it boils down to: 

I am pretty sure Fall Out Boy thought they commissioned a couple of costumes to do whatever they wanted with. 

The creator of the puppets is alleging that Fall Out Boy actually licensed a copyrighted work for a very limited purpose. 

Okay, so let’s dig into this. 

Once upon a time, Fall Out Boy (probably Pete, let’s face it) was like, “Hey, you know what we need more of in our lives? HUGE LLAMA COSTUMES.” (actually the allegation is the puppet studio came up with the llama idea, but someone on the FOB side decided they needed to be used a lot, so.) Even though many other people might not have felt this gaping hole in their lives from lack of llamas, Fall Out Boy was here for us and gave us what we didn’t know we wanted: SO MANY LLAMAS. These llamas were ev. er. y. where. The complaint has pages and pages and pages dedicated to FOB’s use of these llamas in promoting Mania (I can’t keep up with whatever weird way they expect us to style the name of the album, sorry). 

Okay, so we’ve got these costumes, and if you have been at all aware of Mania-era Fall Out Boy, you’ve seen these costumes. According to the complaint, Fall Out Boy commissioned these costumes. A production studio got in touch with Furry Puppet Studio to order “wearable puppets” for use in the “Young and Menace” music video. They provided Furry Puppet Studio with the music video’s storyboard and some references to give them an idea what they were looking for. Furry Puppet Studio alleges that they didn’t use any of these inspiration photos, and it’s true that the puppets look absolutely nothing like what the FOB team sent to them. Instead, Furry Puppet Studio decided to use a llama monster they’d already created, together with a matching new llama monster. They gave the costumes to FOB with an implied license, they allege, that they only be used in the “Young and Menace” music video. 

Implied licenses happen, of course, but the fact that nothing about this transaction appears to be written down is why I can say that I’m not sure Fall Out Boy was viewing this as a copyright matter. You can have implied licenses regarding copyrighted works, but you want your copyright licensing to be in writing. That is much preferred; it obviously makes everything much clearer. When I first saw the news article about this case, I immediately wanted to see the written contract about the puppets, and come to find out: there is none. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a copyright matter, but it does say to me that I bet it wasn’t being treated as one by the Fall Out Boy side of things. (Or, Idk, maybe they totally knew this was a copyright issue, they just didn’t think to paper it. I can’t get a feel for how often and early lawyers were involved with the puppets.)

You might be wondering why we care about any of this. There is no dispute that Fall Out Boy bought and paid for the costumes. Why can’t they do anything they want after that? Because, if the puppets are copyrighted, when you buy a copyrighted work, that doesn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever you want with it. If you buy a book, you’re not allowed to copy it and hand it out at Target. If you buy a painting, you’re not allowed to feature it in a television show without permission. You’ve bought a physical copy, but the exclusive rights of copyright (like reproduction and public display) stay with the copyright holder, in this case Furry Puppet Studio, unless you have negotiated otherwise. Fall Out Boy did not negotiate otherwise (probably, I suspect, because no one raised the issue that the costumes might be copyrighted works, but again, Idk).

Fall Out Boy loves art. They’re on the record as sharing a love of art and collecting art. I bet they do indeed know what they get when they buy physical art. I just suspect that none of them stopped to think that the costumes might be art. 

Crux of the case: 

Therefore, the entire case hinges on (1) whether the costumes are copyrighted; and (2) whether the implied license granted to use these copyrighted works was limited to the “Young and Menace” video. 

As to the first part, Furry Puppet has copyright registrations, although they’re dated October 2018, which I only mention because if everyone knew they were dealing with copyrighted works, it seems like they would have been registered pretty quickly, instead of over a year after they were created. Sometimes, though, it takes you a while to get around to registration. And while some cases have been dubious about the copyrightability of costumes, the trend has been toward allowing them to be copyrighted, especially after a recent Supreme Court case basically seemed to make most clothing design copyrightable (the cases holding costumes not to be copyrightable tended to find they were “useful articles,” a doctrine usually used to prevent the copyrighting of clothing design, but that doctrine is...a morass right now, to put it mildly). 

As to the second part: 

I bet it’s definitely true that Rubrik only mentioned the “Young and Menace” video when it commissioned the puppets. The argument is going to be whether that therefore implied that they could not use the puppets for anything else. Because the contract is all implied, the court is going to have to spend a lot of time interpreting the parties’ intentions in their agreement with each other regarding the costumes. 

This part of the interaction is probably going to end up being important:  

The “Young and Menace” video was done, as Furry Puppet Studio admits. It was posted on YouTube in April. Months later, copies of the costumes were requested by October 15, because of the Mania tour starting on that date. Furry Puppet Studio reacts to FOB’s team’s request as follows:  

The FOB team contact replied: 

And then everyone moved on. 

So a lot of the case is probably going to revolve around what that interaction reveals about the scope of the implied license regarding the copyrighted costumes and what could be done with them. 

As an aside to this central case, the complaint references this: 

I was like, ...what are they referencing that Fall Out Boy has done this before? I really wanted to know! Especially because a few weeks ago I actually looked for Fall Out Boy lawsuits (THE THINGS LAWYERS DO FOR FUN) and couldn’t find any. So then we get to this: 

I tried to look into this and there is not much out there, so let me know if you know more. The stuff I could find called it an “out-of-court settlement,” which I initially took to mean there was a case that settled and some of the sources explicitly reference a lawsuit, but I’m pretty sure there was never a case, I just can’t find any lawsuit being filed. I could only find interviews with Eisold discussing this, very briefly (none with FOB), and he’s basically like, “It wasn’t a big thing, it was blown out of proportion.” It sounds to me like he raised the issue and they gave him writing credit, quickly enough that no lawsuit ever happened. 

(source: https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/cold-caves-wesley-eisold-talks-dance-music-his-hardcore-past-and-that-fall-out-boy-lawsuit-6596823)

I tried to find what they were fighting over, i.e., what Pete copied, but it genuinely seems like they wrote the songs together, so it wasn’t something existing that Pete copied so much as lyrics Eisold actively provided to them for the song. This does seem like the co-writer credit being left off was an oversight, which maybe indicates that Fall Out Boy has a tendency toward “forgetting” proper copyright acknowledgment, although it only happening once a decade ago isn’t that much of a pattern. 

What I really take away from the Eisold thing, though, is how easily and quickly it seems to have been handled. Eisold even says he’s still friendly with the band (that could obviously be a lie). But he had an issue, he or someone got in touch with the band, and a deal was worked out, quickly enough that no lawsuit was ever even filed. It makes me wonder what happened with this situation. There’s nothing in the complaint about Furry Puppet Studio contacting FOB to be like, “Hey, don’t use our puppets like this,” although that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And complaints don’t necessarily have to be filed right away. The Supreme Court, again, has recently found that you can wait until it’s worth your while to sue, so I guess that’s what the studio was doing. It’s just tragic to me because it seems like there were plenty of points where this confusion about the puppets and the copyrights and the license could have been brought up, and instead the Mania tour is over and the album’s promotion is mostly done and now this is happening, when the copyright harm that has happened is as bad as it could be. 

Again, totally possible this was all raised months and months ago and couldn’t get resolved without a lawsuit. I have no idea. 

Side note: the complaint doesn’t list the parties and jurisdiction/venue allegations until almost 60 pages in. I’ve seldom seen a complaint set up that way. Those allegations are usually right at the front. Anyone know if this is a new thing? 

[roominthecastle]

"Rassvet” delves into the time period between Katarina’s first suicide attempt in February, 1991 (following her run-in w/ the Osterman death squad) & the strategic “resurrection of Raymond Reddington”. Timeline-wise we are good here, imo, otherwise things get... interesting. More behind the cut:

Red told Liz that her mother walked into the ocean 2 months after the Christmas fire (1990). This date checks out. At the shelter, we can hear the news announcing the results of the Lithuanian Independence Referendum. This happened (for real) on February 10, 1991. We also know that Ilya/Red had his first surgical procedure on October 3, 1991. So it’s an 8-month period and not 6 as Liz says, but it’s not that big of a difference (you’re bad at simple math, Liz, and I can relate). Dom says that the various reconstructive surgeries took place over a one-year period, so Ilya/Red likely walked into the first bank towards the end of 1992. Katarina was still alive here and that matches Dom’s claims that 1) he came to the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union (so anytime after December 31, 1991) and 2) that he met Katarina a few months after he arrived, then he never saw or heard from her again. And this is where Dom’s story ends.

Katarina’s “death”, however, is trickier. The show’s been playing fast and loose w/ Red’s “I’ve never lied to you” for a while now, and what he’s told Liz about her mother’s death is def on the very loose end here. Ilya/Red claimed Katarina committed suicide. Well, she did (“I went into the ocean to end my life.”), it was just an unsuccessful one and Ilya/Red did believe her to be dead for a while. He also claimed she was never the same after the fire, and her death is treated as a symbolic one throughout this episode, too (“The woman who walked into the ocean is dead.”). But I still think she is likely dead for real now, she just died later as a consequence of their Reddington Charade, likely as a result of a betrayal that contributed to why Red is the way he is today, why he accepts nothing less than utmost/undivided loyalty, and why he feels so much guilt around Liz, believing that he can never give back what he took from her.

So the dates are fine and, at the end of the day, “Lizzie, your mother is dead” is a statement that holds true, imo (at the very least as a “clever turn of phrase” if Kat is “gone” like Samar is, i.e. never coming back, never able to reach out). For now, I am at peace w/ this.

We also have confirmation that Ilya/Red was indeed there when Liz shot her father. They pulled the dying Reddington from the flames before the firefighters arrived, but he soon died in Katarina’s arms. Then -- after burying him -- Ilya/Red and Kat probably went their separate ways bc he only read about her suicide and had no idea that she survived. In fact, we find him back at work at the Embassy all perky and business as usual, which feels emotionally disjointed from the importance Katarina seems to suddenly take on in his life when he decides to sacrifice everything to protect her. Interestingly, he makes no mention of Liz in this initial vow of protection. In fact, he seems to have no particular investment/interest in Liz whatsoever, and, as we know, his promise of taking care of her “as his own” is never followed through, either.

So if Katarina is as important to him as that monumental sacrifice implies, how come he wasn’t out of his mind with grief before when he thought she’d drowned? With Liz, he is emotionally consistent: his devotion is 100% and so is his devastation when he believes her to be dead. I don’t see this w/ Katarina. There is an inconsistency here that makes me think that there was more behind his willingness to take over Reddington’s identity than a childhood pledge but the answer to this is in the missing parts of the story.

I am def not disputing that Katarina was important to him. They clearly had a bond. I think that childhood pledge was real, too, bc it’s something Dom would know about and it got repeated. I also buy the unrequited & unconditional love scenario bc it fits Red’s personality and he already dropped a comment about this to Liz. But I don’t see them as lovers.

Katarina was decidedly not interested, she was devastated by Reddington’s death, even had a second suicide attempt. She was in love w/ Reddington and also married to/lived with Kirk in Soviet Russia at the time Ilya/Red was stationed in Washington, so I really don’t see how tacking on a 3rd (long-distance) relationship would have fit her life or why. In this ep, they also stayed in separate hotel rooms, Ilya/Red knocked before trying to enter hers -- this behavior doesn’t match two people being in an established intimate relationship (even if it’s on-again, off-again) and I got the same vibe from Red’s POV in “Cape May”, too. Liz is his life and heart, the woman he loves, and after this latest episode, the parallel btw how Katarina and Red react to the death of the person they were in love with is clearer and stronger than ever. For Katarina it was real Reddington. For Red, it is Liz. And I am not even gonna get into the “my child is being raised by someone else” angle but it parallels, too: Katarina put a pin in her original “plan” and came back to make sure Liz was safe. Red did the same for Agnes.

Anyway, what we have in “Rassvet” is, imo, a blend of standard limited 3rd person narration + a curious (infuriating? depends on your perspective) case of an unreliable narrator, which resulted in 2/3 of the messages I got that range from “WTF did I just watch?” to “it doesn’t really add up” and “what about his family??” I don’t believe it’s supposed to add up (yet) and stuff is missing (for now) for a reason.

This ep taps into the signature style of previous flashbacks:

“Cape May” is Red’s distorted recollection filtered through a cocktail of opium, guilt, grief, and suicidal ideation

“Requiem” is Mr. Kaplan’s trip down memory lane that’s skewed by her severe physical/mental/emotional traumas

“Rassvet” is a classic story-inspired-by-true-events Dom tells his granddaughter

There is no objective record of past events presented to us in TBL. We never had that and we might never will. We have memories from sources that are compromised -- biased, altered, censored, redacted -- in various ways, and “narrators” who are unreliable for various reasons. In other words, we have stories and storytellers with agendas.

The lack of reliable omniscient narration becomes evident in “Rassvet” that fittingly revolves around the creation of an identity from a mix of hard facts and anecdotes -- “some true, grounded in reality, some invented” -- for a purpose that (imo) remains partially obscured. It is perfectly captured in both Red’s scene w/ Liz and his subsequent confrontation with our most recent storyteller, Dom: “I know the broad strokes, I know who I am. I need to know the details of exactly what you’ve thrown out there into the ether.”

Red used to be Ilya but the Ilya we see in this episode is Dom’s version -- idealized and incomplete, mostly to fit the story and Dom’s reasons for telling it. This is why Red needs to know what exactly has been said, imo. Liz has already told him the broad strokes and he is Ilya, but the details Dom used to color over things ended up painting a distorted picture that made Red twitch as he listened to Liz in that restaurant. “I know who I am”, he tells Dom but it sure seemed that he only recognized parts of himself in what Liz repeated back to him. The technicalities of him becoming Reddington were told. The whys and hows of his mental/emotional de-evolution are still unclear, imo. This is what Liz touches upon, as well, when she asks him why he stayed Reddington after his alleged original motivation (accessing the $40-million “frame fund” to use it to stay ahead of those hunting Katarina and him) was satisfied. And he naturally dodges her question.

Red detests monsters who masquerade as saviors. This was established at the very beginning when he demolished one of Liz’s idols, as was his view of himself as a violent, ruthless man and self-proclaimed monster who’s sick with guilt and grief and can only atone by protecting Liz. But now, thanks to Dom’s story, she has a skewed view of him as some selfless hero with the purest of original motivations. He was visibly uncomfortable when she believed him to be her father bc he is not that. He is uncomfortable to be perceived as her hero, too, bc he is not that, either, and he def does not see himself that way, either.

Red knows what we know and is angry about it: Dom omitted parts from his narrative and embellished or maybe even invented others. Dom blamed Red for Katarina’s death. He forgave her betrayal but not Red’s (which reminded me of Aram’s situation w/ Levi and Red’s reaction to it), and we have seen Red blaming himself, too, but that tragedy, the event necessitating a “Hobson’s choice” (either letting both Liz and Katarina die or saving one) is missing from the story. Dembe once told Red that Liz may never be ready to hear what he did to Katarina, but there is no trace of that in Dom’s story; it is all unconditional love and pure sacrifice. There is no trace of Red’s own family tragedy, either, but I still don’t believe any of this is forgotten or rewritten.

The former is likely omitted bc Dom’s “storytelling agenda” was to reconnect with Liz, smooth things over, and help everyone move forward. This motivation was floated in the previous episode via his carside chat w/ Red that’s all about the topic of forgiveness: “Why did she turn you in? What did you do that made her want to do that?” | “I haven't ever been totally forthright about myself. She thought she'd have a better chance of finding out more if I was in prison and couldn't interfere.” And it is brought to a conclusion -- on Dom’s part -- at the end of “Rassvet” when he tells Red: “What you need to do is to thank me for putting all of this behind you.” I think the story was Dom’s way of offering forgiveness to Red (a response to his “You forgave Katarina but not me” in the previous ep) and helping him move on. He believes he told Liz enough to give her closure, too. Red seems to disagree, claiming that this likely made things worse. He’s probably right and I cannot wait to see how it unfolds.

I think the other major omission -- that of Red’s family tragedy that’s been alluded to in earlier seasons -- is not in Dom’s story bc he doesn’t know about it. At least I had this feeling when Red showed up on Dom’s doorstep after Liz’s “death”. Dom acted like Red had never experienced the devastating loss of a family, saying sth along the lines of “You think now you know how I feel?!” If he knew about Red’s/Ilya’s wife and daughter, he never would have said that, imo. Also, Red was an operative and worked in the Ambassador’s Residence in D.C. that still housed the Soviet embassy in 1991. When he met younger Dom in Moscow, he greeted him by saying “Sir, it’s been too long.” So they were likely not in touch for a long time and Ilya/Red was stationed in the US for who knows how long and for what mission (it seems he was translating a report on a USA/USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement when Katarina’s crossword code popped up on the screen). This “blank period” gives us room for that missing story piece (which likely happened around/after 1987) and a plausible reason for Dom to not be aware of it.

Dom was not aware of the existence of the Cabal, either, until Katarina got caught up in their web, so I think it’s v likely that they were also responsible for killing Ilya/Red’s family, which -- coupled w/ wanting to protect Katarina -- would be a proper, plausible motivation for him to take on Reddington’s identity given that it provided him w/ something even better than $40 million: tangible access to the Cabal and the Fulcrum. The new identity brought the seed money and a stepping stone to launch his Odyssean mission.

[whiskey-londubh]

Of Blessings and Cursings

In the witchcraft community, regardless of how you define it, you’ll see a lot of different debates, and even outright arguments. It’s still made up of people, after all. There’s a particular recurring issue that I see now and then, however, on the subject of cursing.

There are people who call themselves “curse positive,” which obviously means there are those who, even unofficially, would call themselves “curse negative.” 

I’ve never really questioned whether curses are moral or immoral. “Right or wrong,” or even “good or evil.” What I have noticed, however, is that there’s a different “flavor” of witchcraft in the tumblr community. I could debate up and down, day and night, whether or not everyone who calls themselves a witch (or variation) is actually practicing magic, but the point of this is to explain why, when I see the issue of cursing or non-cursing brought up, I still ask myself why it’s an issue.

Witchcraft is about influence and energy. It’s about directing and asking, and being in tune with something in addition to a purely physical and “mundane” plane of existence. It is, therefore, not inherently evil or good. It depends wholly on the person using it. It’s a Thing.

Therefore, it’s totally relative whether or not cursing is moral or immoral. There are too many variables for such a broad brush. I don’t believe there’s no absolutes, or all absolutes, but in a community so intent on proving personal accountability/practice/interpretation, I find it odd that there are still so many people who will totally write someone off for being curse-positive. It may stem from some claiming somethingorother about “white magic,” or “light magic,” or, stripping away euphemism, “unthreatening magic that makes us look good to other communities.”

A little on my personal interaction with cursing, for a context -

I’m a very high energy individual, literally speaking. I’m not bouncing off the walls, but anyone who knows me reasonably well can attest that there’s a lot of energy inside me and I always have to do something about something. There is, therefore, a lot for me to work with. I can’t normally just take my hands off something and wait for it to turn out however it’s going to turn out. I have to be able to monitor, in the very least. “Are we there yet?”

Witchcraft has taught me that even when I feel like I can’t do anything, I can still be working on my own energy and ask the universe (and select deities, which I may talk about my interpretations of later) to at least consider me and others. Sometimes I get responses, even if they aren’t what I like.

That’s what the relativity means, though. Someone who’s asking the universe to do something in their interest isn’t inherently evil. I have a background in Evangelical Christianity, and that sentiment sounds alarmingly like the idea that anything we do for ourselves is inherently selfish.

It depends on the interpretation of that request, and whether someone else finds it justified. Therefore, sometimes we just have to do what we want to do, because we see things a certain way.

But back to literal case -

I’ve only enacted one direct curse in my practice.

Like spanking kids, I believe it should be considered the absolute last resort, and even then, only for deeds that were done with full knowledge of the effects as well as being unrepentant. I enacted it on two individuals who were given plenty of time and information to see what they were doing was harming someone, and they demonstrated that, even with full knowledge of the effect, they were willing to do it anyway because they cared more about the affects on themselves than the effects on others.

I don’t curse for accidents, ignorance, or miscommunication. That’s my normal standard.

I have what I playfully call the “clarity curse,” which isn’t actually a curse, but a spell to help someone realize the affects of what they’re doing and be given an opportunity to change with a clearer picture in mind. I joke that it’s a “curse” because in my experience, people consider feelings of guilt a curse. What they do with those feelings translates it into willful harm or not, however. Saying something is right doesn’t make it right, or anyone who said they were right to harm you would, actually, be right. Wrong.

We have to act on things as we see them. There’s simply no other option.

I also resort more to blessings, when it’s a matter of true ignorance, or simple case of you annoy me please change. I first developed the practice regarding a past coworker I didn’t mesh well with, and sought to bless her with a different position she was looking for. There was simply no reason to inflict anything on her, because there was nothing willful about it. 

Curses are not inherently immoral. It depends on the motivation, and what other mundane effort the caster has put forward, in addition to what actions are being “punished.” Like I said, there are too many variables to paint with such a broad brush of good vs. evil. 

All I expect from people, ideally, is that they stick to intellectual honesty. I may still disagree with their motivations, and the need for certain actions, but as long as someone is weighing and considering, and not contradicting themselves, I’m not going to be against their right to try and do something, even if I’m the one stepping up to undo specifics.

I’m more likely to tell someone the action wasn’t the choice to make, than to tell someone they shouldn’t have acted.

After all, that would be hypocritical of me.

Someone practicing magic is going to understand the appeal of the opportunity to influence things toward the result we want. It is, therefore, not about the action, but the reasons for the action. And people are always going to disagree with someone’s reasoning for certain actions, particularly if it’s a segment of the community more concerned with “pretty” or “kind” magic.

Don’t be the person claiming there’s no “bad” magic. But also don’t be the person threatening to curse someone for not letting you borrow the car.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself “curse positive,” also considering I’ve seen some witches throw around the word “curse” like it applies to someone cutting you off in traffic (research the differences between curse, hex, and jinx, PLEASE). 

These are my suggested guidelines. It can still fit in with the way you see the world, your background, and personality, but as long as these are followed, regardless of if I think a curse was necessary, I would personally consider it weighed and considered properly, apart from my personal view of the problem and results:

The crime must be clear and visible and stated concisely, but specifically. 

There must be a clear record of mundane efforts to clear the issue.

There must be a clear record of why certain mundane efforts weren’t made, whether it’s safety or impracticality in other regards.

Those mundane actions not taken should be weighed and considered again, to gain clarity if it’s due to hesitation, or true proportionate danger.

If there’s a possibility of overcoming the danger and/or hesitation, cast accompanying magic to assist the attempts.

If not, gather materials for each person involved in the willful crime.

The consequence must match the crime, in scope and proportion, and not exceed.

Emotion must be used only for energy, and not to inflate the consequences. 

Cast the curse.

Detach from those who have committed the willful crime, whatever that means to you. 

If all the above are followed, and the parties involved attempt to follow, re-cast anything you deem necessary, to assist in detachment -- as long as the above guidelines are kept. 

Let me know if you have any questions, particularly if I can clarify anything here. 

[tassium]

#TAYLOR SWIFT APPRECIATION LIFE

PART 4 - Red

(part 1, part 2, part 3)

Aaaaand we are back! Time for another dive into the discography of Miss @taylorswift​ - this time, with her fourth studio album Red.

This is definitely one of my favorite Taylor albums - I think a lot of swifties will agree with me on that. There’s something so achingly beautiful about so many of the tracks, and I really can’t wait to dive in and listen again - it’s been a while since I listened to this whole album with intent.

Without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?

1. State of Grace

If ever there has been a perfect way to open an album, I think we’ve found it, ladies and gents. Those drums! That electric guitar! What an introduction! 

And then there’s Taylor’s voice. Good lord, how I love her vocal performance on this track. Everything from how softly she delivers the beginning of the chorus to those belted notes - having listened to all of the first three albums in such short order, it blows me away to think of how much she improved from the beginning.

There’s also a lot of metaphorical writing choices that I really like. There’s something about that line “twin fire signs, four blue eyes” that just gets me every time.

And then. There’s the acoustic version on the deluxe album, and it’s so different but still so beautiful. Her voice starts off so soft, the song as a whole feels like a lullaby with this treatment. There’s something about the gentleness of this version that just hits me square in the chest.

2. Red

I. Love. Taylor’s. Metaphors. I love them! The descriptions in this song are so evocative, like - especially that one about knowing all the words to your old favorite song. That’s probably my favorite of this song’s selection.

The bridge is so cleverly put together, with the instrumentation perfect to back up the words she’s singing, and then... the final chorus, and her soaring vocals, and just... I love this song so much.

3. Treacherous

This is easily one of my favorite tracks on this album. So much of the lyrical content on this album as a whole is brilliantly evocative and paints such a picture, and I think this song is a highlight example of that. It’s like seeing a music video playing out in my head when I listen to this song. And of course it doesn’t hurt that this song is permanently tied to a trip to see a friend whom I was hopelessly in love with at the time (nothing came of it and I got over it, it was just a whole thing in my head). I’m pretty sure it’s played that role for A LOT of people over the years.

4. I Knew You Were Trouble

I love the almost light, almost too treble-y quality to the verses and prechoruses of this track, and then the chorus kicks in the door and the bass drops and takes you right down with it - to the cold hard floor (too much? yeah, I know)

The bridge bit (all of us remember That Performance where everyone freaked out about the pronoun, right?) is a highlight, thought honestly I have to say I think that’s the case because of the way it takes us into that One Note - at least for me, anyway.

5. All Too Well

Ooof, this track. Right in the feels. Given the right circumstances, this song can easily bring me to tears, and has done many, many times. Everything about it, from the lyrical content itself and her delivery of the words to the absolutely brilliant choices in the instrumentation - I haven’t quite figured out how they made such a driving beat in the second verse feel so soft even as the song builds up - it doesn’t really hit you until you get to the bridge--

And what a bridge it is, l o r d. That hurts, man, every time. The second half especially - what a picture and feeling it brings up to imagine feeling like “A crumpled up piece of paper” and what a comparison drawn in “to break me like a promise.”

6. 22

22 is a BOP and I’ll fight for that. She captured so much of what it feels like to be in your early 20s in this song - miserable and magical indeed. This song is so danceable and fun, which of course I can’t ever resist. I wouldn’t say it’s a work of genius or anything, but most of what Taylor does has at least a touch of genius in it - if only in the way that she can build such a good catchy song that gets stuck in everybody’s head.

“who’s taylor swift anyway? ew.” (I love that bit)

7. I Almost Do

When this song first came out, I only knew the feelings in it in an abstract sense, but since listening to this song the last time and this time for this review, Things have Happened and suddenly it’s hitting me a whole lot harder than it ever did before. Ouch.

I absolutely love the wind up into the “I almost do” in the bridge, and the amount of emotion she pours into that section - really, into the song in general. Also, what a closing line. It’s that same trick she’s been doing forever, but it just works so well here.

8. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

Speaking of absolute BOPS, this track, oh my god. There are so many delightfully vindictive lyrics - “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine” and that LAUGH in the background is a highlight for me every time. This song is so easy to sing and dance along to.

I especially love the way in the build up to the spoken bridge bit, the instrumental sounds like it’s in another room or something, and it gradually becomes clearer as the song keeps building, and then she hits that note - which, can we just talk about the 1989 era performance of this song at the I heart Music awards? because. Heck man.

9. Stay Stay Stay

So I’m not super involved with the swiftie community because honestly, yall are too much for me and I’m a little afraid of it, but... apparently people don’t like this track? And I don’t get it. Because this is so cute and bouncy and I love it to pieces. The wandering bassline and the ukulele usage along with the beat that sounds like someone clapping, and that cute little guitar riff in the instrumental bits? It’s so much fun! And then her little giggle at the end is like. the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.

I’ll admit I’m not as much of a fan of the “no one else is gonna love me when I get mad” line but that’s beside the point.

10. The Last Time

Oh l o r d this track. Way, way up there on my list of favorites, for sure. I can’t pick an absolute favorite on the album but this would definitely be a contender if I tried. I think this track is absolutely stunning - and I love Gary Lightbody’s voice in the first place, so that certainly doesn’t hurt.

Their voices blend so beautifully, and that deep bass drum beat in the background drives the song so well, and I just... really love this song, okay. Probably my favorite thing about it is at the end when they drop out all the instruments entirely and it’s just their voices being allowed to shine. They’re subverting the typical so much by having him sing the high melody, and I love it s o  m u c h.

11. Holy Ground

Another example of great use of instrumentation, the way the drums are so driving, but then they drop out during the first time she’s singing about the holy ground feeling. It really paints a sacred, untouchable feeling onto the remembering of the relationship when it really worked.

I can’t resist doing a little air guitar over the bridge(??) with those ringing chords, which is so much fun, and I’m so glad it’s there. The ending of the song is also beautiful, with those last few words of just her voice. That’s really evocative as well, of the feeling of that “holy ground” relationship being gone.

12. Sad Beautiful Tragic

This song lays this aching feeling all over me from start to feeling. It’s a beautiful piece of music, and the breathy quality to her voice through the verses and early choruses is just stunning. The vocalization in the background is absolutely haunting. Even in the stronger pieces of the song, she manages to hold onto so much of that softness, which is just... something I don’t entirely understand, if I’m honest. There’s something so nostalgic about this track, which I think makes it fitting as the one that leads into the next one...

13. The Lucky One

This song is a bop, okay? The drum work at the beginning of this track pulls me in right from the start. It feels very... vintage, if that makes sense? Like it really works as a throwback to the time period she seems to be trying to invoke. (I’ll even forgive her for mispronouncing foyer)

In the last verse, there’s the addition of guitar that feels like it almost modernizes the song a little bit, which makes sense, since now she’s singing about her arrival on the music scene. It’s just a really excellent use of instruments to build an environment into the song.

14. Everything Has Changed

Definitely another favorite of mine off this album! I’ve been trying to find someone to learn Ed’s part and sing this song with me practically since the album came out.

Their voices blend so well, and I love the choices of harmonies throughout the track. The acoustic guitar lends itself perfectly to a song of this style. One of my favorite parts is definitely the ending lines - “so dust off your highest hopes” - and the way she delivers those lines.

But we definitely need to talk about the music video, because... has there ever been something more adorable than that video? I want the rest of the movie please. 

15. Starlight

Listen. She’s a cute little number, and I love the story behind it, and I almost never skip this track if it comes on my shuffle, but I don’t have all that much to say about it. I do like it, though, it’s a jam.

16. Begin Again

I love the soft guitar opening in this song, and the harmonies that come in that are so close to the melody you almost can’t hear them except for how they fill up the audio so nicely.... beautiful. Honestly, though, this song has such a bittersweet feeling to it. Like, to think of the past relationship she’s thinking about, and what it must have been like... ouch. right in the feels. Then, of course, on the other hand, we have the soft happiness of the Wednesday in a café. <3

Bonus track time!

17. The Moment I Knew

This song is a showstopper of a track - the production on this one is gorgeous but honestly, I don’t have a lot of feelings about it in general. But it’s a beautiful piece of music.

18. Come Back...Be Here

I always forget how much I like this song!!! This is another one with absolutely beautiful production, and Taylor’s performance is stunning. Some of the lyrics in this song are just. Right In The Heart for me. It really captures the hurt of long distance relationships, and it hits me really hard every time.

19. Girl At Home

This is probably my favorite bonus track on Red. This song is a BANGER and I will fight on that. Like. Listen. YES, let’s shame the dudes who cheat on their girls! You know what this song is? Growth. This is taking that trope from the first three albums of going after a guy who already has a girlfriend and flipping it on its head and I love it.

She hits some beautiful notes in this song, though I’ll admit she has better power notes. Also, can we talk about “call a cab, lose my number” because... that is ICONIC.

And with that, another album has gone by. We’ve made it to what I think is really the turning point in Taylor’s style of music, though she really transitioned very smoothly from country into pop overall.

Next up: 1989

[ben-winch-writer-rocker]

Live, Masonic Auditorium, Detroit, 01/14/1978

Fred “Sonic” Smith and Oppositional Defiance Disorder:

The appeal of MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith goes beyond his guitar work, savage, deft and incendiary as that work may have been, and far beyond what traces of that work remain via studio and live recordings. In this era of “over-diagnosed” psychological disorders, Smith’s “condition” might well be labelled, like Kurt Cobain’s, “oppositional defiance disorder”. But unlike Cobain, Smith had neither the drive to be a frontman nor the good grace (or self-doubt) to back down in the face of physical opposition. And unlike Cobain, he was no suicide; his anger faced squarely outwards, driven by a righteous indignation that, at first, was anything but self-implicating.

A famous MC5 creation myth paints the young would-be revolutionary. While discussing the band-to-come at a Detroit restaurant with Wayne Kramer and Rob Tyner, Smith knocked a glass over mid-rant and (according to Kramer) said, “Yeah, this is what we’ll do, we’ll just knock shit over if we wanna knock shit over. We’ll be powerful. We’ll take a stand.”

“That ain’t cool,” Tyner said. “That ain’t being powerful. You’re not taking a stand. You’re not proving anything.”

Smith: “Well what are you gonna do about it?”

Tyner: “I’ll do what I have to do.”

Smith: “Then let’s fight.”

So they fought outside in the icy parking lot. After a couple of punches it went to the ground and Smith, an athletic six-foot-plus, came out on top, fist raised. “I could smash your face in,” he said.

And Tyner said, “Well why don’t you?”

As Kramer tells it, for three teenagers this was deep, and they got in the car and drove around for hours analysing what had happened. For Smith, I suspect it was a turning point, maybe not just in his relationship with Tyner (“After that they were tight,” says Kramer) but in his understanding of what nowadays might be termed his disorder. Of course it didn’t stop him fighting (he’d spar with Tyner again, and tackle two policemen when they arrested MC5 manager John Sinclair), but just maybe it started him questioning, turning his ideals from “smash everything” to “smash what needs smashing”, and giving him the dignity and true-seeming righteousness that comes across so strongly in his future wife Patti Smith’s recollections. (Fred Smith died in 1994, aged 46. See Patti Smith’s book M. Train for some touching writing on the man.)

From Detroit delinquent to doting family man, Smith’s trajectory was always up, despite that the MC5 crashed and burned due to record-company hassles and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band never had the chance to repeat that ignominy, largely or partly, if the other players’ testimonies are accurate, because Smith willed it that way—because Cobain-like he taunted and insulted any A & R man plucky enough to make him overtures.

So, like the MC5, like the Flamin’ Groovies, like even—to some extent—the Stooges (whose masterpiece Raw Power was, production-wise, a misfire) Sonic’s Rendezvous Band are one of the great protopunk should-have-been-a-success stories. In a sense they may be the greatest, because of their failure, because of their mystique. And that mystique is rooted not only in mists-of-time semi-invisibility, but in the aura of rebel iconoclast Fred “Sonic” Smith.

Scott Morgan and the Tonic:

But since Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, despite the name, were a two-singer band, let’s discuss the second singer, especially as he was, by any traditional yardstick, the better frontman—louder, more professional, with clearer diction (Smith’s was, make no mistake, awful; fans will be arguing over the substance of his lyrics forever), and more possessing of what some listeners may have taken as charisma. And in any case, the first song on the album is his: “Electrophonic Tonic”.

Scott Morgan, a veteran of fellow almost-made-it Detroit rock band the Rationals, had cut his teeth as a frontman singing Otis’s “Respect” pre-Aretha’s-version and turned that song into a regional hit, which, thanks to the last-minute non-involvement of Jerry Wexler’s Atlantic, never made it national. (Faced with the Rationals’ lofty demand of five grand upfront, Wexler demurred, handed the song to Aretha, and the rest is history.) A soul singer, then, with a hard rock edge, which may simply have been what it took to get across in the intimate and sonically inadequate venues of Detroit in the late 1960s, Morgan delivers his parts here with an R & B frontman’s panache, positioning himself on the classic-rock continuum somewhere between Ted Nugent and Steve Marriot, though when he sets his band loose they kick harder—thanks to ex-Up bassist Gary Rasmussen and ex-Stooges drummer Scott Asheton as much as to Smith’s semi-insane, close-to-breaking-point, post-Chuck-Berry guitar solos—than almost anyone except AC/DC, and with a sheer abandon which the famous Scots-Australians, ever the professionals, rarely mustered.

But let’s back up a little. Harder than anyone? What about Sabbath, Zeppelin, Deep Purple? I’ll make it clear: Sonic’s Rendezvous Band doesn’t do lumbering. Much as they’re classic, classic as hell, you couldn’t call them dinosaurs because they’re too fleet-footed. But nor do they sprint, they’ve got too much distance to cover; every other track here clocks in at over five minutes, and two of them (Smith’s masterpieces “Sweet Nothin’” and “City Slang”) are nearer to seven. The tempo is Sex Pistols and up, the beat almost motoric. (Asheton focusses on hitting hard and keeping the pace; he hasn’t got time for fancy flourishes.) Their roots are in R ’n’ B boogie, just as Sabbath’s were in blues. And I’d say they were just about as ahead of their time as Sabbath, if inevitably (given they had no record deal) nowhere near as influential.

But back to the “Tonic”. It’s a good song: deft, workmanlike, shuffling the same old three classic-rock chords in a natural and not entirely expected fashion. There’s a nice halftime breakdown in the middle. It’s got grit. Those who weren’t bemoaning its classicism (this was a support slot at a Ramone’s gig, after all) were probably shaking their heads in disbelief at its onslaught, unless they were shaking their asses with sheer abandon, tearing up seating, going wild. As an opener and a mission statement, it kicks ass. But for me, it’s only in track two, “Sweet Nothin’”, that the magic happens.

Sweet Nothin’:

Who can say what arcane voodoo is at work here? On the surface it starts out not so dissimilar to track one. We’ve jumped from E to B though, a good sign. (B is a great guitar key, enabling riffs that E makes obscure.) But to start off with, at least, it’s the same three-chord theory. There’s a subtle key-shift in the pre-chorus, and then with the chorus we’re in new territory: the minor sixth—the “Raw Power” chord, the “Suffragette City” chord, the “Sonic Reducer” chord—rears its head and Smith puts his cards on the table. Like Sabbath’s embrace of the devil’s interval, this is a chord-change that would inspire an entire genre—postpunk—and it darkens proceedings and ups the drama as soon as Smith unveils it.

What can I say? “Sweet Nothin’” is an anthem, despite or maybe because of the fact that I can’t hear more than a few words of it. It’s a love song, that much I’m sure of, maybe penned for the soon-to-be Mrs Patti “Sonic” Smith. (Patti Smith was on the scene intermittently in Detroit around the time: the two had sparked up an affair—she was still married to her last husband—and SRB would support her in bigger venues, breaking away from their intimate, not to say dead-end, bar gigs, where according to legend they played for as few as six people.) Whatever the “message”, I don’t care; I feel it in my bones. And when Smith, after repeating the simple refrain “You’re really really something sweet nothin’” in the plainest of minor-key melodies five or six times before the final solo, sing-shouts “You take my breath away”, barely caring if he’s in earshot of the microphone, I know exactly what he’s saying. Besides, whoever said an anthem has to meansomething? What does “Pretty Vacant” mean? “There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply.” You either know it deep down, deeper than words, or you never will. “There’s more to the picture than meets the eye” after all, and “Sweet Nothin’” is as good an illustration as any.

To make it clear, “Sweet Nothin’”, in my opinion, is one of the top twenty rock songs ever. It gets in. It obsesses you, or obsesses me, and I say this as someone who discovered it at age 43, via Spotify, through a $200 portable Bluetooth player. As Roberto Bolañosaid, if you want to find out if something’s a masterpiece, translate it. Translate it badly. If it stillretains its power, there’s your answer. And this album, smothered in tape saturation and poorly mixed from the live desk, was hardly a good translation to begin with. It’s not a classic like Bowie’s Low, or Abbey Road, or even the flawed Raw Power—not a finely-wrought work of art. It’s more like a jam tape. And what’s more, like a jam tape that doesn’t half sound familiar. I’ve beenat those jams. I’ve played in them. Not that our jams were as powerful, but I’d say Sonic’s Rendezvous Band stake a convincing claim to sounding like what, to this day, many rock bands want to sound like.

Into the Red:

And so it goes, through the five-minute semi-psychotic choogle of “Asteroid B612” (weird name for Morgan’s declaration of righteous love for his woman, bisected by a brilliant, dexterous-soulful blues-at-11 solo from Smith) to Smith’s five-plus-minute slightly more contemplative but still excoriating “Gone With the Dogs”, which to tell the truth slightly pales, given that Smith’s voice is already hoarse and he’s just graced “Asteroid B612” with some of his tastiest guitar-work. But wait, that accolade may well go to track six, “Song L”, which attempts a truly strange percussive minor-chord motif that doesn’t quitework but adds a new-wave-like aspect to Smith’s palette (it almost sounds—wait for it—sophisticated), before the nuclear explosion of the solo. By now, admittedly, following Morgan’s “Love and Learn”, it all seems slightly like business as usual: high-energy rocker after high-energy rocker; two guitar solos a piece, apparently thrown in whenever Smith feels like it; each song culminating in a swelling classic-rock crescendo. Nonetheless it’s precisely the lack of dynamics that makes this feel so modern. It’s unrelenting.

And I wonder, was it only in the space above zero VU—well into the red—that Smith felt the thrill of being powerful, of knocking stuff over, that had made him want to play guitar in the first place, but without the need to do violence that had very nearly made him cave his friend’s face in? Whatever their motivation, for the remainder of the set he and his collaborators play their hearts out, so much so that by “City Slang”, pretty much the ultimate showstopper, it’s hard to believe they can still play at all. Yes, the performance is patchy compared to the seven-inch version (the only record released by SRB in its lifetime, and a flat-out masterpiece). Smith is barely enunciating by the last shouted refrains. But he always maintained he liked performers that stepped up to or over the line, and all four players do that here. It’s pure adrenalin.

Plainly no band could have kept up this intensity without some serious motivation. And the truth is that by “City Slang” Smith sounds tired. Probably he didn’t have what it takes to be a frontman, at least not a touring frontman, and possibly he knew it. Maybe all he wanted was to sing his songs—because they existed, because he’d written them, because if he didn’t no-one else would. And it’s this near-complete lack of ego—this hesitating on the verge of doing nothing at all, then throwing himself in regardless body and soul—that makes Smith’s performance here one of my all-time favourite perfomances by a male singer, despite its faults. It’s the tone, bluntly masculine but vulnerable, straight-talking, speaking calmly from the centre of the storm. What can I say? He means it, and he really doesn’t much care how it goes over. Or better put, sure, you can tell he’s humbled by the crowd’s ecstatic response, but get a record deal, tour the country, maybe get rich and famous? The song and its performance are their own rewards. And, just maybe, this degree of selflessness could only have come from a singer who didn’t think of himself as a frontman.

From playing back-up to Rob Tyner and sharing the stage with Scott Morgan, Smith transitioned, shortly after this recording, to playing husband and sideman to Patti Smith, collaborating on her 1988 album comeback album Dream of Lifeand its breakthrough single “The People Have the Power”. For someone who started with a will to destroy, the adult Fred “Sonic” Smith had learned humility. His story, or what I’ve managed to uncover of it, is a true inspiration, because though he never hit the bigtime he lived the dream, doing what he wanted how he wanted at maximum volume, and never with that preening strut of the peacock that suggests it’s all theatre.

Live, Masonic Auditorium, Detroit, 01/14/1978 is a flawed document, and who knows, it may be that Sonic’s Rendezvous Band were never going to break through outside of Michigan. Regardless, it’s a classic. It takes your breath away.

[tinydemonwriter-blog]

10 Tips for Private Investigators to Conduct More Successful Surveillance

Observation is a work of art, not a science. Shockingly a considerable lot of its best exercises are found out through experimentation. Regardless of whether you direct protection safeguard or household examinations, reconnaissance is a vast piece of your day as a private specialist. The accompanying 10 proposals will enable you to lead a more practical and effective reconnaissance.

 1. A Detailed Intake Sheet Start by social occasion as much data as you can from the customer in advance. This sounds really evident yet youd be shocked. Numerous customers essentially need to give you the subjects name, age and address and abandon it at that. A nitty gritty admission sheet draws together data well beyond the business standard: data, for example, regular checkups, treatment arrangements, conjugal status, number of youngsters, pastimes, and so forth. This takes into consideration a clearer image of the subjects routine and encourages you keep away from re-concocting the wheel out in the field. This data, together with a hunt of open and restrictive databases, will spare you time and enable you to give your customer a more practical examination.

 2. Is Your Surveillance Vehicle Completely Forgettable? If not, it ought to be. White, dark, silver and dim are the most mainstream hues for vehicles. Beige and darker vehicles will in general be the minimum discernible and, unexpectedly, get the least tickets. Red, yellow and custom paint occupations make your vehicle excessively observable. While youre at it, investigate your reconnaissance vehicle and ensure it mixes in to your condition. No guard stickers, no window stickers, no vanity plates, no crippled plates, nothing connected to the reception apparatus, no custom edges, no secondary selling adornments and no body harm. Your vehicle ought not be excessively spotless or excessively messy. The less detectable your vehicle is the more fruitful you will be on observation. With regards to tint dont simply get limousine tent on your windows and forget about it. Limousine tint is frequently unreasonably dull for reconnaissance promptly toward the beginning of the day and late during the evening. A mix of dim tint, a windshield cover and dark observation window ornaments is sufficient to veil your essence. Ensure you agree to your states tint laws.

 3. A Pre-Surveillance Check Very couple of organizations lead a pre-reconnaissance check since they're more worried about their budgetary main concern than giving quality work. With a pre-reconnaissance check the specialist drives by the subjects living arrangement in the daytime the day preceding what might ordinarily be an early morning observation. This enables the specialist to watch the right location in sunlight hours, see what vehicles are available, find a reasonable region to set up and leave, search for potential issues and scout ahead for likely exits. Its the initial phase in a progressively effective reconnaissance.

 4. What Time Do I Start? Commonly it's best to be set up for a laborers comp or obligation observation by 6:00 a.m. Any later and you chance the possibility of losing the subject or thinking about whether they are even home.

 5. Moving into Position Move your observation vehicle into position rapidly, especially in a local location, and get set up. In the event that you played out a pre-reconnaissance check you won't sit idle circumnavigating the square twice or pondering where you'll set up observation. You'll just move directly into your pre-decided position. Search for spots that will in general make you less discernible, for example, stopping between two living arrangements, by substantial trees, dividers or overwhelming vegetation.

 6. Noting the Call of Nature One of the greatest missteps made by new kids on the block as well as prepared specialists is supposing they can briefly sever observation and get lunch at a drive-through or take a fast bathroom break. It's for all intents and purposes an axiom that the one time you do it, is the one time the subject chooses to leave. Be set up for a long reconnaissance by keeping a little cooler in your vehicle. Fill it with water, vitality bars, natural product, anything that is speedy, simple and will give you vitality. Obviously that implies when nature calls youre must remain right where youre at. Old water containers or half-gallon juice containers are useful for putting away pee. Whatever you use ensure it has a strong cover. In case you're a female specialist a water bottle wont do. You can buy a little convenient RV latrine which can be utilized over and over. Lamentably, it'll must be cleaned over and over.

 7. Do You Possess Superhero Powers of Observation? It's anything but difficult to pull up on observation and air out a soft cover book. In any case, you wont get much of anywhere in the reconnaissance world. Utilize your forces of perception and remain centered. Watchfulness is its own reward. Is everybody's grass cut aside from the subjects? Is it junk pickup day and his jars are still in favor of his home? Are there sacks of compost before the subjects carport entryway? Utilize your forces of thinking. Keep in mind: individuals are animals of propensity. Men start shaving on a similar side of their face inevitably. Hope to build up examples in your subjects conduct.

 8. Keep That Camera Steady Do your customers require Dramamine when they watch your recordings? Innovation, as Sonys Steady Shot, has helped picture adjustment. Go above and beyond and use either a monopod or a tripod.

 9. Simply the Facts, Ma'am Just the Facts. Your reconnaissance notes ought to contain clear and succinct realities, not supposition. Compose your notes as though you anticipate that them should be subpoenaed. Any censorious, fiery or prejudicial remarks with respect to the subject are amateurish and could hurt your customer in court.

 10. Pursue That Car! Tragically, tailing somebody is best learned by experimentation. Its greater part appears glaringly evident. For instance, its generally preferable to lose somebody rather over be scorched. It's tied in with observing marginally in front of the subjects vehicle and guessing what they will do. Will they make the light? Assuming this is the case, you would be wise to accelerate. The separation you keep between your observation vehicle and the subjects vehicle is directed by the sort of traffic you're in. Overwhelming traffic: remain close. Parkway or rustic traffic: you can permit some separation between you. When you start following a subject attempt to search for anything on their vehicle that makes it special, e.g., guard stickers, window stickers, body harm, and so on. Notwithstanding what sort of vehicle theyre driving, when you start tailing them in rush hour gridlock you'll see only that specific model of vehicle. If you are looking for more information about Investigations visit DiscreetInvestigations right away.

[theashemarie]

Riding Out the Wave - Pearlina Fic

The Octo expansion got me good. Had to write something, even if it’s small. I’m shooting for 4 chapters in this little thing, but we’ll see. 

↪Chapter 2: [How We Got Here]

↪Chapter 3: [Gulf Space]

↪Chapter 4: [Morning Breakfast]

Crossposted: [AO3] [FFN]

Ch. 1: Adventures in Babysitting

It’s a brand deal that does it. Grizzco is fishy, but they (Marina) don’t want to alienate a loyal advertiser and they (still Marina) want to support a local business. Pearl couldn’t care less, to be completely honest, but Marina is so positive! About the whole thing! Saying things like “Oh Pearl, just think! It’ll bring in freelancers! Then Mr. Grizz will be set!” Pearl knows for a fact that Mr. Grizz is already set, considering the emails she’s read on her father’s computer, but she doesn’t mention that because Marina is so damn cute when she’s smiling and clapping her hands.

Yeah, Pearl has a problem. She knows she’s wrapped around Marina’s finger, but Marina doesn’t know it yet. Pearl also knows that she can’t say anything about her feelings (oh, and there are many feelings), because she’s... Well, she’s scared. And she’s not sure Marina feels the same way. Well, she kinda doesn’t know. Marina is really handsy and touchy-feely, but that’s probably a Marina thing. An... Ocotling thing maybe... Agent 8 isn’t like that but maybe it’s a specific Octoling thing. An if-you’re-close-to-an-Octoling thing.

Yeah, Peal knows she’s hopeless.

Pearl’s had an embarrassing crush on Marina for a while, but the whole Agent 8 thing really localized and magnified it for her. For a while there, she thought for sure Marina was going to figure it out, especially after she threatened to cut Cap’n Cuttlefish if he hurt her, but Marina never figured it out. But, there are moments when they’re back in their apartment and Marina touches Pearl just there, with this tender look on her face, and Pearl swears that she sees something there. Marina’s smiles are like the clouds parting before a brilliant sunset, but those moments look like an emotion that Pearl recognizes but can’t put a name to. Marina always looks at Pearl so fondly when it’s late and they’re lit only by the television; things are softer then, including their bickering, and especially Marina’s quiet gazes. In these moments, Pearl swears that there’s something growing between them that they’re tiptoeing around, testing, probing, but never leaping into.

But, predictably, come morning, with the harsh light of the sun and then the studio lights, Pearl isn’t so sure. She never makes her move, never asks, because this is something that should be reserved for quiet and private, but by the time they get there, she’s talked herself back into the corner of uncertainty. She second guesses, fears she’ll ruin things with Marina if she asks, so she keeps her crush to herself.

So, the brand deal. What Pearl thought it would be: Posing with Marina in a bunch of Grizzco Brand clothing from Mr. Grizz’s new clothing line (it looks about as grungy and crusty as the stuff he throws at his part-timers as compensation for working a few shifts; Pearl half-expects all the clothes to be straight from the bowels of Mr. Grizz’s closet, but she doesn’t say that, just wrinkles her posh little nose at it like her Papa taught her to), holding their signature weapons and smiling a lot (well, Marina smiling, Pearl glowering and smirking because she knows she looks like a gremlin). But, that’s not what she gets.

Record scratch, freeze-frame. Right there. Witness Pearl’s personal hell.

What she gets from the brand deal: Spawning Grounds at dusk, two cameras, attached to drones, two teammates, who look to be as new as the Jr. Marks stitched into the shoulders of their Grizzco Mandated Uniforms, dualies and splat brella in the rotation, both of which the newbies are blinking at in confusion, Marina with an Octobrush and Pearl with a Splattershot Jr.

So, no, she’s not happy.

She poses for the pictures. She follows Grizz’s barked, tinny orders when they filter in from her earpiece. She’s not happy about it. One time, she pretends to not hear him and jumps in the water and he’s contractually obligated to revive her, and she lives for the sound of his cursing as he does so. But then Marina gives her this look, the kind of look that makes her want to crawl out of her own skin and beg for forgiveness because she’s disappointed her.

She’s so, so, so hopeless but she doesn’t care really. Marina makes her want to be better with all of her passion and attention to detail, and the sight of her hands on the turntables always does something to Pearl that just lights her up inside and she just. Wants to make Marina happy. And if that means dealing with the angry bear man then so be it.

“You know what I think?” Pearl says as they’re taking a short snack break. (At least Grizz has the decency to provide food, even if it is cheap and stale.) “I think Grizzco is a glorified daycare.”

Marina glances at the two inklings standing guard over the snacks. One of them has the timing to take a long, loud slurp out of a juice box. “I think you might be right,” Marina answers, bemused. Then, she asks them: “Hey, how old are you?”

“Fifteen,” they chorus in their high-pitched woomy voices.

“Thought so,” Pearl says. Marina does that thing where she tries not to laugh and fails, so what comes out is an adorable little snort. Pearl has to look away to hide an embarrassing blush.

“This is child labor,” Marina mumbles as Grizz calls them back out to finish the shoot. Why he’s in charge is a mystery to Pearl. Shouldn’t there be some sort of middleman out here? What about their manager? This is the last time Pearl’s letting Marina handle business for the foreseeable future.

“Maybe so,” Pearl mumbles back as she watches the kids shoot each other with their weapons. The ink pellets off them harmlessly and paints the immaculate floor, causing Grizz to grumble. Marina mumbles something about a Squee-G being the perfect fix for that but Grizz doesn’t hear her.

They take a few more photos and things are looking to wrap up nicely. The kids are actually pretty good at modeling, so Pearl wonders if they’re actually not just some apprentices that Grizz picked up off some roster. Explains why they don’t know how to use the weapons all that well, if they spend all their time modeling at least.

Then, of course, the foghorn goes off.

“Uh oh,” the kids, who Pearl is now calling Dualies and Brella, chime together.

“‘Uh oh?’ Why uh oh?” Pearl asks, but she has a sinking feeling in her gut, because she knows what the foghorn means.

“Grizz, what the heck is going on?” Marina demands. Her hand flies up to her ear, as if that’ll make Grizz’s answer come out clearer.

“I forgot to mention,” comes the grizzled voice. “There’s a wave coming in.”

“There’s a what?” Pearl squawks. Her hands tighten around her Splattershot Jr., and she feels Sheldon’s painstakingly crafted casing crack from the strain.

Marina is pacing—not a good sign. “We’re jumping back to the boat,” she commands.

“Nope, sorry missy.” Pearl can practically hear Grizz’s slimy smile through the comms. “Super jumping is restricted in this area and I have all the permits. We need some action shots. Smile for the cameras!”

“Grizz—!” Pearl begins, taking in a deep breath to unleash the most vibrant and vile curse words she can come up with (the ones she saves for the special occasions), but she’s cut off.

“See you back at the boat!” Grizz sing-songs. Across the Spawning Grounds, the all-too-familiar basket appears. “Now go get me some golden eggs!”

Comms go silent with a loud buzzing sound. Pearl rips hers out. “I’ll kill him,” she declares.

“Not if I get to him first,” Marina mumbles darkly. She grips her Octobrush tighter as the foghorn comes again.

Pearl can see smallfry and chum climb out of the water on the docks. “Let’s kill him together. Hey kids,” she directs towards Dualies and Brella, who are cowering together, “group up and stick with me and Marina. We got this.”

Across the Spawning Grounds, a Steelhead heaves itself out of the water and onto the docks. The kids scurry to huddle behind Marina’s taller frame, and she holds her Octobrush out with perfect form. Suddenly, Pearl remembers that Marina used to be part of an elite fighting force. An Octoling force, and she was high ranking. She holds the Octobrush like it’s an extension of her arm and her whole stance changes, crouched, lethal, familiar, deadly.

Pearl is... hm. That’s attractive, isn’t it? That’s killer. Pearl forgets where she is for a second as she watches Marina launch herself toward the chum. She even takes the Steelhead out by swinging her Octobrush a few times from right below it. Then, she jolts Pearl out of her daze by yelling for help with the eggs. Pearl nearly trips over herself and can’t find the trigger of her weapon for a few seconds. But, when she manages it, Marina beams at her.

And that’s... hm.

+++

They’re on the third wave when it finally happens. Pressed against the basket with two dead teammates (Brella and Dualies fought hard) and next to no ink, Pearl knows that her end is coming. She sees a cohock wind back, pan primed to bludgeon her into an inky pulp, and she flinches, her weapon useless. They’re down three eggs and there’s only a couple seconds left. What’s worse is that the whole world will get to see her temporary demise, and that hurts more than anything. She may survive this, but her career probably won’t.

She closes her eyes. This part is never easy. Feeling her whole being fling outward in a burst is never fun, and the resulting respawn is even less fun, but, like every other inkling, she’s used to it. Luckily, Grizzco’s jobs are pretty safe and most people respawn without trouble. There are always exceptions though—

“Get away from my Pearlie!” comes a cry, so guttural that it takes a few seconds for Pearl to identify the voice. That’s Marina, flying through the air as if she has wings, swinging her Octobrush (because of course the weapons didn’t rotate like they were supposed to; this was a glorified photoshoot after all) and howling like there’s death hot on her heals. She destroys the cohocks and chum in a couple swipes of her weapon, slams a bomb down on their teammates’ life preservers, and they all pop eggs into the basket, grabbing quota at the last second.

It’s the hottest thing Pearl’s ever seen. She’s cemented in place as the foghorn goes off again and the salmonids turn tail and run. Marina gives her a bright smile, the complete opposite of the harbinger of death that she just embodied, and she scoops Pearl up into her long arms. Face pressed to Marina’s chest, Pearl can only blink in surprise, limp.

“Oh Pearlie, I was so worried! I turned around you were gone!” She gives Pearl a loose shake. “We’re supposed to stick together! You know that!”

Pearl very much wants to say that she’ll always stick with Marina, if she’ll have her, but her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and her teeth feel like they’ve been rattled loose. She swallows once, forcefully, and nods.

“Y-you got it,” she manages, and almost collapses as Marina releases her. Luckily, Marina grabs her again, this time by the arms, and holds her steady. “You didn’t have to save me though,” Pearl continues, because she has an image to uphold. “Grizz is a pretty good babysitter. Almost everyone respawns.”

Marina laughs, and it sounds a little hysterical to Pearl. “I can’t stand to see you splatted. I hate it.” Her voice is so gentle, so tender, something Pearl isn’t accustomed to hearing, and Marina rubs her thumb just there, on Pearl’s arm, exciting little goosebumps.

Pearl’s head is still spinning so that doesn’t make sense to her. “Wha—”

Maybe it’s the nerves. Maybe it’s the panic. Maybe it’s the relief. But, Marina pulls Pearl close again. Everything slows down, right there. Their teammates in their squid partying become muffled background noise and all Pearl can hear is her own heartbeats, her own breathing. Because suddenly, all she can see is Marina, and her face, getting closer and closer.

Until, their lips are touching. Marina’s arms pull Pearl impossibly closer, as if trying to meld their bodies together, and Pearl swears she can feel Marina’s hearts, hammering against her own chest. Marina’s hair is wriggling around them, and Pearl feels one of Marina’s hands come up to cup her jaw.

The world is nothing but Marina, and Pearl nearly falls down again as her knees give in. The shock of the last few minutes is too much for her but that’s okay. She uses her weak knees as an excuse to surge forward and press her lips harder into Marina’s and is delighted when Marina squeaks and then hums against her lips.

When they eventually pull apart, the world has calmed down. Their teammates aren’t looking at them, respectfully, and all of the salmonids are gone. Everything seems clearer. Pearl can feel every single pore on her face as she smiles.

Then, she realizes what they’ve done and that smile falters. The cameras whirr above them, trained on their heads.

“Shit,” Marina mumbles. Pearl can’t help but share the sentiment.

[welcometophu]

Not Your Love Song: Chapter 14

Marked Book 2: Not Your Love Song

Chapter 14

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I look at these kids sometimes and I realize that I’ve forgotten everything about being in high school.

Rory stares down at the message from Darrik on his phone, gaze flicking back to the professor at the front of the lecture hall after a moment has passed. He cares about music theory—it’s one of the foundation courses for his major—but he’s not sure he really needs it. He’s been writing and selling songs since he was in middle school. There’s probably something he’s going to learn here which’ll help him get to that next level, but he can also probably ignore it for a little while.

Besides. There’s always the recording available online after, if he needs to review.

You do realize I was in high school just last year, he types back. On the other hand, I’m happy to forget everything about it.

He hopes it makes Darrik laugh, rather than making him feel weird about their age difference. He locks the phone, sets it on top of his notebook and picks up his pen.

There’s no time to write before it buzzes again. Alaric this time, the message popping up and fading too quickly for Rory to read it.

If Rory wants to be a good student, he should shove his phone deep in his bag and ignore it.

Or he could just ignore this discussion of four part harmony as something he’ll never try to pull off with Phoenix Rising—Andy doesn’t sing, and while Stormy’s enthusiastic, she’s only passable, not great.

Rory unlocks his phone, and Alaric’s message pops up.

Why is Dayton offering now to carry children when I want them? I know it might be important someday, but I’m nineteen. I don’t want to think about being a father. I’m still trying to figure out how to be a leader. And how to play football instead of going to war.

Rory bites the insides of his cheeks to keep himself from laughing out loud.

Because Clan is weird, he replies. And your Clan is a very particular brand of old-fashioned weird. There are Clan out there that like Mages and don’t feel the need to set up secret societies with lines of succession. Like Darrik’s family. Rory’s never asked about the humans that are born into Alaric’s family, but he can’t think it goes well.

A fresh message in yet another conversation thread pops up.

Pawel said I should use the cards because they’re traditional. I could try something else. Like bowls of water. Or crystals.

Yeah. Rory isn’t getting anything done, not if Kit’s free now, too. He resigns himself to having three conversations at once, although for the moment, he resolutely ignores the sudden stream of incoming texts from Alaric and Darrik while he responds to his group chat with Kit and Shane.

Well, you need to use your cards with Thorne, because that’s your assignment. Working with me isn’t for a grade, remember? We just need to do what you’re most comfortable with. What’s safest for Lorraine.

The professor’s voice goes silent, and Rory quickly scribbles down the notes that he’s paused for them to take. As long as he looks busy, his cell phone use should fly under the radar. He hopes. The girl in the seat two to his left glances over when his phone buzzes again. Rory scoops it up to hold in his free hand so the buzz won’t vibrate noisily against his desk.

Did you talk to Darrik? Shane asks.

There was an article about her in the paper this morning. About the benefit concert and the fund for the family, Kit sends. They mentioned her moving to Sunnyview this weekend, so that sounds like a real thing.

So if we want the hospital, you need to talk to Darrik, Shane adds.

Rory chews on the inside of his lip. Yeah, I know. I’ll try to do that today and get back to you. Okay? I haven’t asked him about Saturday yet, either.

He closes that conversation and switches to the thread which has a picture from Darrik. It’s an overview of Darrik’s classroom, taken at an awkward angle which manages to maintain privacy of all the students by not showing a single face. There are more than a dozen kids in the room, and three have their heads on the desk, while one is leaned back in the chair, mouth open, looking like he’s snoring. Three girls have made a small circle in one corner, and are painting each others’ nails. Two students look like they’re working on a project together. Most are just playing with their phones.

Study hall, Darrik says. Which is as boring for me as it is for them. It’s a struggle not to sleep through 6th period every day.

Which is obviously why you’re texting me.

You’re the most entertaining person I know.

It’s a lie. It’s flirtatious, and outrageous, and so obviously untrue, but it still makes Rory smile and flush at the compliment.

If I’m interrupting, you can tell me to stop, Darrik adds. I used to text Noah in the middle of his classes because I’d forget when they were. He once had his phone confiscated and after that he sat down at my computer and put all his classes in my calendar.

Noah is still such a huge part of Darrik’s life. Rory can’t think of a conversation they’ve had yet where Darrik hasn’t invoked Noah’s name within a few sentences.

It’s okay. The professor has a no phones rule but he’s not going to call me out in the middle of a lecture. At least, Rory’s pretty sure he won’t. His phone’s quieter than a few others that he’s heard go off repeatedly during this class on other days. Besides, you’re not the only one texting me today.

Oh? Who else is bored out of their minds? I mean, I did just have to break up a squabble about whether Joshua scored a goal or not while playing paper football. He didn’t, in case you’re curious. It was obviously outside the goal posts.

I have no idea why you went back to high school voluntarily. I couldn’t wait to get away from people like that. Maybe it’s too blunt, but Rory presses send before he can reconsider it. And I have a group chat with Kit & Shane. Plus Alaric and I are always talking about something or other.

There’s no immediate response, so Rory switches back to his conversation with Alaric while waiting. There’s a picture attached, of Chris, eyes scrunched close, one hand on his chest, mouth open as he laughs, followed by a series of texts.

Chris sent me this when I told him.

Why is Chris laughing at me?

Dayton just asked me this again. She says we should make it part of our formal alliance. I’m not marrying her. I am definitely not having sex with her. Although it’d be a good alliance, I know, and if I was straight I’d do it. Theobald would probably approve except I don’t think he likes Dayton.

Rory would be laughing if he weren’t in the middle of class. He puts a hand over his face, smothers the sound that almost escapes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He breathes deeply, gets himself under control.

I don’t think she expects you to have sex with her. Use artificial insemination. When you’re thirty. And did she ask you to marry her? She’s probably just asking you to join your lines, which isn’t a bad idea. Make sure there’s some kind of out in the contract, in case you change your minds. I mean, maybe in ten or twenty years you’ll be ready for kids. You might think having a surrogate ready to go is helpful then.

Rory hesitates, then adds, We’re still just kids ourselves. Whole lives ahead and all that. Don’t sign anything you’re not ready to make good on in a decade.

He touches the notification that pops up from Darrik. I remember you talking about Alaric. He’s your roommate. Who are Kit and Shane?

It’s the perfect opening. Rory’s fingers stutter and stall on the keyboard.

This should be easy. He doesn’t need to go into detail. And he can’t see Darrik’s expression—if he’s angry, or offended, or hurt somehow. They’ve both got time to think through their words and tailor their responses. It’s perfect.

Rory inhales, exhales slowly, then types.

We’re all in Coven together—that’s the magical club on campus. Kit’s from a predictive line, and he’s learning traditional magic. Shane’s just a totally typical Mage. They both might be interested in helping reach out to Lora. If you think that might still be an option.

Class ends, and Rory shrugs into his jacket then packs up. He doesn’t have a class now, so he texts Kit and Shane, I’m heading to get food if you want to sit down and talk about options. I’m going to the Townhouse Dining Hall. As soon as it sends, he shoves the phone deep in his pocket and shoulders his bag.

He feels the first buzz when he’s halfway to his dorm, and ignores it. But it keeps buzzing, so either he’s getting a string of texts or—he pulls it out, sees Darrik’s name on the screen and answers the call. “Aren’t you in study hall?”

“I have five minutes while one class heads out and the next one comes in, yes, Rachel, please put your report right in that bin there. Can you tell the rest of class as they come in? Excuse me.” Shuffling movement, then Darrik’s voice is muffled. “They like to listen to everything.”

“Can you blame them? High school life is boring.” Rory remembers writing a song about one of his teachers, making up an entire second life for him outside of school. It’s never been a popular song, and Rory resolved when he recorded it never to tell the truth behind the lyrics.

“The class coming in now—these are smart kids. They’ll go somewhere eventually.” Another shuffling sound, and Darrik’s voice comes clearer. “I was wondering what you’re up to tomorrow night. I could pick you up and we could go out somewhere around PHU, if you want to talk about these plans you’re making.” He hesitates, adds more quietly, “For Lora. Which yes, that option is still on the table. But I need information before I can talk to her family, because we can’t do anything without their permission.”

“She’s being transferred soon,” Rory says quietly. “Do you think it’d be better for us to do this in the hospital? Just in case she wakes up or something and needs medical care.”

Silence aside from the sound of Darrik’s breath.

“Darrik?”

“Do you think she’ll wake up?” Darrik says slowly. “Do you think you can make a ritual that will help wake her up?”

“It’s not what we’re trying to do, but it’s a possible side effect.” Rory’s not sure exactly what they’re doing, other than trying reach out to someone who is currently beyond any normal kind of reach. “If she did, that’d be good, right?”

“It’d be great.” No hesitation, only the sound of relief in Darrik’s voice. “I don’t know why I was fine, why I’m the only one who came out of that mess alive and awake and intact. And I just want her to be okay.”

“We’ll do our best.” There’s nothing more that Rory can promise. “And dinner tomorrow sounds good. I’m meeting up with Shane and Kit tonight, and I’ll make sure I have good information for you.” A bell rings in the background, and Darrik curses under his breath.

“I’ve got to go. They might be smart kids, but this class doesn’t follow the five minute rule. If I’m thirty seconds late, they decide class is canceled and disappear.” The click of a door, sudden noise in the background, blurring Darrik’s voice. “I’ll pick you up at six. Make a reservation somewhere you like, okay?”

“Okay,” Rory agrees, and the line clicks silent.

He never managed to ask about Saturday, either. He’ll just have to do that tomorrow night.

His phone buzzes, and he glances down, half expecting it to to be Darrik, but no, it’s Alaric’s message popping up. Dayton wants to arrange another alliance.

Rory snorts at that, types as he walks. How many alliances can you have with one person? Or is this another thing being written into your alliance contract thing, like babies?

She started by saying we didn’t have to have a formal alliance and now she’s the one mentioning babies. I don’t know why. A pause before another text appears. But not babies this time. I told you about Devon and Aly, right? The Clan from New Hampshire?

He probably did, but Rory can’t remember the details. My head is full of weird ritual things with Kit and Shane so remind me again?

They’re the ones who brought two Clans together along with a Mage community, and they’re still bringing in other Talented folk as they find them. Because Talented people are dying in New Hampshire.

Oh, right. Okay, yes, I remember them. Aly’s pregnant, right?

The dots appear and disappear several times before Alaric’s texts come through in a quick stream. Yes, she’s due in a couple months, and everything looks good so far. She wants to find a magical midwife to be with her in the hospital. She’s afraid the plague could impact the baby.

And they also want to talk to your family. Because they’ve got such a good community, and they’re open-minded, and they’re very self-sufficient. Which my Clan is, too—the self-sufficient part. I could help them with that.

But your family could help them with mixing Magic and normal and maybe some ideas for helping other Talented people too and building a community.

Rory wonders why he hasn’t heard about the plague aside from Aly and Devon. Why no one seems worried about it spreading, if it’s had that much of an impact on their Clan communities. What about the plague?

They think it’s gone. No one’s fallen sick in ages, and now there’s a second pregnancy—one of the Mages—that’s passed three months. But they’re still nervous about the babies.

It’s understandable. Rory’s caught in the conflict between knowing that Gram would want to know about this—she and Nana and David would want to go in and help these young people—but at the same time, he doesn’t want to put her in the path of danger.

He can’t make that decision for her. Give them my email address, he decides, slowing down his walk so he can finish typing before he goes inside. Once I hear from them, I’ll start up a group thing to get them in touch with my grandparents and with my folks. Mom will want to help, and Dad’s all about rights for Talented people and he’ll help them with setting up a community, all the legal things.

He gets back a small series of smiling faces. Thanks. I’ll tell them to email you.

Okay, Rory sends. He stands just outside the door that leads into the public entrance to the basement under the Townhouse, and he stays to one side while typing. I’m meeting up with Kit and Shane to do Mage stuff. We’ll try to keep it to the dining hall so we don’t stink up our room.

He shoves his phone back in his pocket; he doesn’t need to see Alaric’s response to that one. And if anyone else needs to find him right now, they can wait until after Rory’s seen Kit and Shane. He wants to make sure he has something to share with Darrik when they go out tomorrow.

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[tagadatsoin]

WHAT IS VIDEO PRODUCTION?

Video production is the process done by video makers to capture and create unique and awesome content with the use of raw videos, pictures and text, edited and pieced together using various video making software, to have a one-of-a-kind video masterpiece. It is a tedius process of capturing, re-capturing and editing various inputs to create a video for your specific need or to impact a unique set of audience.

Video makers invest time, effort and money into obtaining various equipment and software to further aid them in the pursuit of video perfection. Video makers search for the perfect scene and insert the perfect music that best fits the message of the video. All this is done in order for the audience to completely be immersed in the video being presented.

Video production continues to evolve, with new storage media, equipment, methods and software being developed ,meaning that there will continually be improvements to it. As time goes by, we see more and more graphics, effects and music being added to video presentations thus making this art form progress even more.

If one wants to become a video maker, one should first understand the key concepts to video production:

Writing

Shooting

Editing

WHAT IS WRITING?

Wriritng involves creating the plot, outline or script to any video production endeavour. Sure, you can go out and take lots of videos of various people, places, things and events, and go back to your studio and piece together all the video clips you’ve gathered and create a video, but it wouldn’t have a story; it would just be a hodge-podge of various clips. To be an effective videographer, you need to have a story. In every story, there has to be a beginning, a middle and an end, hence the need for effective writing.

Through the process of writing or creating a script, you have to ask and eventually answer the following questions:

Who should I talk to?

Where and when am I going to start filming?

What do I want the viewer to receive?

By investing time and effort into your writing, you get to have direction on how your video is going to go. One will get a clearer picture on the things that need to be considered going into the video production process like weather, people, location, and the like. It is through the writing process that you get to roughly outline the video project. But also keep in mind that though the presence of a good outline is best, one must leave a certain amount of mystery or ambiguousness which will be given only upon actual filming.

Writing also involves determining what equipment you should use and bring along to every video recording. Cameras, lights, audio and recording equipment all have their respective strengths and weaknesses and it is imporant to decide which one is needed in a particular scene.

WHAT IS SHOOTING?

After you have decided on your outline, you are now guided on what to ask, where to go, and what to do in your upcoming video, now it is time to put the plan into motion. Shooting is the actual process of going out onto the world and to start filming.

Shooting involves experiencing the story you want to capture. It’s easy to get lost with the myriad of things going on while filming, this is where the importance of the script or outline lies, it reminds you of what is important in the filming process.

It is very important, in the shooing process, to be consistent. Consistent in such a way that your style of filming does not get lost, despite the various angles and possible dialogue that may present itself. Be consistent in your style of filming, the storyline and the plot because audiences can be distracted with the possible various angles and directions you shoot at and it could give an entirely different look and feel to the video.

Do not be afraid to mix it up. Simple words to keep in mind during the shooting process are: wide, medium and tight. Be sure to capture footage, especially action scenes, dialogue and other impotant scenes in a wide angle first. Then repeat and take time to shoot the same scene in a medium angle shot. And finally, be brave and get yourself in the mix of the action by filming in a tight angle shot. By doing so, you can have the opportunity to get various angles of the same scene and eventually be able to emphasize the important ones in the future.

It is also very imporant to keep things stable. Remember that you are shooting and telling a story, not a music video or sport shot. Use a tripod and or stablelizers whenever possible to minimize the effects of shaking onto your captured video. Shaky bits can confuse the audience on what you are trying to portray.

WHAT IS EDITING?

After you have gathered all your footage, stuck to the storyline and captured all that needs to be captured, it is time to piece it all together – hence editing.

If you have stuck to your script and storyline, then you are at an advantage, meaning that you have some work cut out for you, but you aren’t out of the woods yet; you still have to sift through various footage to ge the best ones that portray the desired message.

Be sure to show your subject, the one talking, on screen once in a while; it helps build understanding and trust between the storyline and the audience. We tend to associate voices to people, so by doing so, you help paint a better picture of what he/she is trying to say.

One has to be creative whenever one is editing. It is through the editing process that the video gets brought to life. If a particular subject matter, example a dog, is being talked about, one does not necessarily have to show the subject itself, one can use the environment that the subject habitually interacts with to be able to paint a clear picture and or story.

One of the hardest things about editing is selecting which scene should be part of the video. Just because you spent so much effort to capture a certain scene in a very obscure and hard angle, doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be part of the video, that is why a particular scene is shot multiple times at various angles. If a certain shot doesn’t help in the desired message, cut it out. We cannot stress how difficult the editing process is, that is why sometimes the videographer isn’t the same as the editor. The one who shot the video tends to be more attached at a particular scene, because they put a lot of effort into capturing it, and could lead to a biased editing.

In the editing process, it is important to separate one’s self from the experience involved during filming, because one might confuse the participation in a particular scene as valid reason in it being included in the final video. If you are acting as the videographer as well as editor, we recommend that you remove all emotions attached to the captured footage and rather focus on the desired story or message of the final video.

What are the essentials to every video production adventure?

Video making is an art form, with it one can convey various messages in an extremely creative manner. By creating unique video content, one is able to do away with the limitation of words, sentences and letters and instead convey thoughts, ideas and emotions through actions that is captured via a recording device. To create videos one needs the following:

Camera or video capturing device

Tripod or stablelizer

Lights

Software

CAMERAS OR VIDEO CAPTURING DEVICES

They are the heart to any video making project. Video maker’s use this machine to capture content which will later be edited and pieced together to tell the story. These devices enable individuals to shoot content, zoom in, zoom out, record audio and most imporantly, store various scenes and footage. Without this device, no video production can happen.

TRIPOD OR STABLELIZERS

Stability is important to every video project. The audience will be unable to understand properly the message the video wishes to impart if the footage taken is not focused, unclear and shacky. Tripods are essential because they are attached to video cams and allow the video cam to record the scene, in a manner which is focused and stable. Tripods these days come in various functions such as panoramic shoots which allow for the video to be shot in various angles and be directed via remote.

LIGHTS

Lights, much like in photography, aid in giving a better view of the subject matter as we all have the subtle effect of painting emotion. Lighting is essential because it helps set the scene, in a particular strip, without the need for dialogue. Lights also help the video in identifying small details and or emphasize the subject.

SOFTWARE

The software used in video production is responsible for piecing together and editing various footage. The software acts as the medium in which all the footage is loaded and it enables the editor to sift through the various recorded videos and select which one is apt for the final output. Video editing software also allows editors to create customized effects, transitions and music to further enhance the video output. It allows the editor to custom any and every video to fit what needs to be portrayed.

Video production has become a very lucrative industry because in this day and age, documentation and presentation is becoming key to every event. People now a days are investing time, money and effort into making various important moments of their lives well documented, edited and presented in various occasions. These video projects often involve days even weeks of preparation and require various individuals to be involved. Here are some of the events that involve superb video production setups:

Weddings – weddings happen only once, in the majority of cases, in an individual’s lifetime, thus should be well documented and presented on the day as well. These involve ellaborate gimicks and should be shot in various locations so as to achieve the desired image of the couple-to-be. Normally the process of childhood, how the couple met, where they went, what goes into the wedding preparation and the wedding itself is documented in the entire process and is then presented upon reception.

Debuts – a woman’s 18th birthday is usually well documented. A woman is only 18 once after all and recent trends suggest that this event should be well documented. This process normally involves taking the debutant to a very beautiful place and various footage is taken of her in various ellaborate clothing. It involves messages from her loved ones, both local and abroad, who wish to impart life lessons unto the debutant.

Corporate events – corporate event documentation has become a fad in recent years. Companies shell out big bucks in order for their events to be documented and presented also during the event. It usually involves a bit of dancing, messages from key individuals in the company and various gimicks.

Film – this media has been part of the modern age for decades. The film industry shows how much the video production process has evolved; from black and white to colored to completely CGI films, so much is possible with video making. Films are probably the most commercial form of video production. It has been around for ages and is continually being patronized by individuals worldwide. Box office hit after box office hit, people cannot get enough of movies, actors, stories and visual effects. Various storylines keep the audience glued for the next upcoming movies boasting the most popular movie actors. There is no dobut that because of the film industry, video production will further enjoy rapid development and unparalleled worldwide support and a cult following.

With so much going on that needs to be documented, why not practice your video making skills and become a video maker. You just need a camera, a good storyline and time to create your next masterpiece.

[demblackmamas-blog]

Imprint & Impact: Mental Health in the Postpartum Period

Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/demblackmamas/imprints-impact-mental-health-in-the-postpartum-period

Listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dem-black-mamas/id1210253100?mt=2

Sometimes we have experiences that stick with us. Are imprinted on us. That leave us tossing and turning at night for weeks - months even - so restless in our spirits that sleep won’t come or won’t stay. We search for meaning or ways to cope through it, make sense of it, use it for good. I’ve had a few of those moments, and some still color the way I experience and respond to the world many years later.

One of my most vivid memories from childhood has to do with a little girl I grew up with. She was a sweet girl and I enjoyed playing with her. She was in my class and also lived in my neighborhood, so we saw each other all the time. One day at school as we were walking down the hall, she collapsed suddenly, then began to convulse and twitch. It was my first time seeing an epileptic seizure. My little mind couldn’t process it. It was as if her body betrayed her for what seemed like hours, although I’m sure it was only a couple of minutes. But for however long it was, she was a prisoner to her own body. It wouldn’t allow her to lay still or to stand or to speak. This was incredibly frightening to witness as a child. How did that happen? Why couldn’t she control it? Could my body do the same thing to me one day? I became hypersensitive to epileptics. This girl, a man who lived on our street, a family friend’s son… I would watch them closely, observing their every move for a hint that it was about to happen. I couldn’t be caught off guard again. I couldn’t handle it. I read up on epilepsy until I was confident that I’d know how to respond in case it happened again...how to prepare... how to be a helper instead of running or being frozen in my fear.  I guess this was the best way my young mind could cope with what I had seen and experienced. I was terrified, traumatized. The thought of one’s body reacting in a way that was out of one’s own control was too big for me.

That was decades ago. Yet, when I think of moments that are imprinted on me, it always comes to mind. There is another more recent experience that has impacted the way I approach my interactions with new mothers. 

After it happened, my friend tried to brace me...

“Sit with it”, she said. “

Write down everything you remember so you have record, but know that that in itself is a re-living of it and will be more difficult than you expect”.

She was right. Writing this, I’m struggling with the words to paint the picture for you without infusing more of me into the story than is appropriate or accurate. Truth is, I don’t know where to start. But I know where it ended.

This one is about the time I encountered my first client in a mental health crisis. It shook me to my core.

I see parents of all sorts in my line of work. There are the stern “just the facts” types, sobby emotional wrecks who need reassurance they won’t royally F this up, and what I call deers in headlights parents who don’t even know what to ask. And the truth is, no matter how well you prepare for parenthood, you can never really wrap your mind around it until it happens. And then, it’s sink or swim. Some have a harder time swimming than others. Don’t get me wrong. Most parents of newborns that I see are struggling. They are all exhausted, confused, frustrated, overwhelmed. These are the normal emotions of managing life with a tiny human who cannot tell you what they need, yet they Need. So. Much.

But this client...she...was different. She was so much more. And I’m fighting back tears just trying to find the words.

You know how you know when something is just… off? How you have that gut feeling you forgot to do something important? It’s nagging but try as you may, you can’t put your finger on it but you’re sure there is some major important thing.

Did I leave the stove on?

Did I remember to pack my passport?

Did I forget to make a call?

Is someone somewhere waiting on me to do some... thing?

As I think back now, that’s how it felt. I knew it. She didn’t really have to say or do anything dramatic to give her secret away. And the first consultation was pretty routine as consultations go. I just had a sense. She put up a strong facade, but hidden behind her eyes was something... well, nothing actually. There was a vacancy, a mechanical way that she approached her interactions with me. As I drove home that night I spoke with a colleague. I remember saying, something was off.

Over the days that followed, a clearer picture came into focus. There was always some new thing that needed to be fixed. She requested I come back again, and again. Each time with just a tinge more urgency than the last. Each time I talked her down, did a little LC magic, and she declared me a genius who had saved her life. I went home happy and waited to see if there would be a new thing that required a follow-up visit. We had gotten into a little rhythm, as it were. I didn’t think much of it since some parents lean on us more than others. This was just her personality, I surmised. And then it happened. I went over for what I thought would be a simple, quick follow-up visit. But it was anything but simple and nowhere near quick. She hit her breaking point that night and I had a front row seat to it all.

There I was, that night years ago, my adult self in my client’s living room. I stood there, watching, listening, frozen as she shouted and cried, vacillating between anger and despair. I tried to say reassuring things, to tell her it would be ok, remove the mantel of guilt and shame. But there was nothing I could do or say. It was like watching someone collapse into a seizure, writhing on the floor, teeth clenched, and eyes rolling back in their head. She was out of control, not of her body. But of her mind.

This is what a mental health crisis looks like.

I am not equipped to deal with this.

She needs help… more than I can give.

How could I have not seen this coming?

She needs to be protected from herself.

We, the baby – oh God the baby – needs to be protected.

What am I supposed to do?

Those are the thoughts of a grown woman standing face to face with fears rooted in childhood. Of a lactation consultant ill prepared to support a mother in crisis. In over my head. Frozen and afraid, wanting to run and hide and send some responsible adult in to fix it, make it all better.

I made it out of there that night, albeit changed. But not before making sure that the mom and baby were safe and that the baby would be fed with or without mom for a few days. And then, I made the long drive home through dark and windy roads utterly shaken. When I arrived home I was happy that my family was asleep. I didn’t have any more words. But in the safety of a long hot shower, I wept. If anyone was listening, they might have said I sounded something like my client, wailing. I wept for this woman for whom it was all just too much. I wept for all the mamas out there who are exhausted mentally and physically and just trying to keep it together. I wept for a society that puts such a stigma on mental illness that even though I asked on my first visit if mom is struggling with any anxiety or depression, she said NO. I wept because when I asked if there was a friend or relative I could call to come and stay a while to help her get a break, she said, “NO. I have no one.” I wept because there was nothing else for me to do, no way to help. And that was terrifying.

And then I did the coping thing that I perfected as a kid. I read everything I could get my hands on about postpartum mental health. I did what I could to make sure I wouldn’t be caught unprepared the next time. More importantly, I learned a few tips to share with expecting parents about being vigilant and responsive in protecting their mental health in the postpartum period.  

There is no room for shame when it comes to your mental health. If you are feeling not like yourself, please talk to your healthcare provider.

Postpartum blues, postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are elevating progressions of the same condition. Blues are very common and subside on their own in hours or days, depression is longer lasting and starts to become debilitating, psychosis is the most pronounced and has the greatest potential for harm.

Plan ahead before delivery to have your “people” available and ready to pitch in and help.

Be honest with yourself and your healthcare team if you have a history of anxiety or depression.

Do not allow thoughts of suicide or harming your baby to go unchecked. There is help available to you and those thoughts are a sign that you need it immediately.

Give yourself a lot of grace as you figure out your new role as a parent, and figure out your baby.

New parents get very little sleep. If you find that you are battling insomnia even in the quiet moments when sleeping is an option, take note. This is especially important if instead of tired, you feel energized in the first weeks.

During pregnancy if you start to feel depressed there are medications that are safe to begin taking even before you deliver your baby.

As much as I love breastfeeding and I support it as a method to stave off postpartum blues and depression, more complex mental health situations may be exacerbated by the constant waking and the responsibility of having a newborn tethered to you 24/7. Make the best infant feeding decision for you and your family.

You’ll have precious few moments to think and rest mentally. Fill those moments only with things that feed you and make you whole. Everything else can wait. 

My client and her baby were okay in the end. They received the help they needed from healthcare providers. They found their people. They took it one day at a time. I often think back on her and consider what I would do differently today. In some ways, I suppose I grappled with it for years. It’s an experience that has stayed with me, not unlike that experience with my childhood friend. We’ve all had those moments that change us, stick with us, impact the way we move through the world. It changed the way I see new parents and how I serve them. I will never again shrug off that “something is off” feeling.

Whether you’re experiencing this stuff firsthand or watching a loved one or even a client trudge through the murky waters of postpartum crisis, let my story be a lesson to be kind to yourself. Be honest with yourself and those around you. This is not a game. We need you here and we need you whole. Do whatever it takes to be here and to be whole. 

Nikki Killings is a Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC, RLC) with several years of experience in breastfeeding counseling and education.  A mother of three, she fell into her passion for supporting mothers and babies through her own breastfeeding challenges with her first baby. 

Like her: https://www.facebook.com/LionessLactation/

Follow her: https://www.instagram.com/Wrapstar_lactivist  https://twitter.com/wrapsnboobs

More Info: https://www.lionesslactation.com/

[ryanscoolnesschronicles]

WEEKS 3-4: HITCHCOCK-A-PALOOZA – Still the Master

Okay, exposition time. Alfred Hitchcock has been my favorite director since I could fully comprehend what a director actually did aside from snagging the last slot in the opening credits. Though his nickname was (and still is) the Master of Suspense, he was the Master of many other things; construction, theme, and tone are just the first that instantly come to mind. I had already watched the vast majority of his heralded classics, like “Vertigo”, “Rear Window”, “Psycho” and “North by Northwest” (the films traditionally most associated with everything his name entails), but seeing as how he directed more than fifty films over the course of 51 years, there were countless gaps in my knowledge of the true breadth of his career. In acknowledgment of this, I charted a daunting course: at least twenty-seven films in less than two weeks, ranging from the silent era (including his first finished movie as a director, “The Pleasure Garden”, from 1925) to his penultimate effort “Frenzy” (in 1972). 

As it turns out, there were plenty of masterworks that I had not yet incorporated into my film vocabulary, but probably just as many compromised or bungled affairs. But through it all, I developed a clearer picture of the man behind the camera. His peculiarities, his obsessions, his fetishes, his failings. It was a process of discovery, both remarkable and unsavory, and if you’d care to join my thought process on two whirlwind weeks, please read on.

HITCHCOCK WATCHED IN WEEKS 3-4: “The Pleasure Garden” (1925); “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” (1927); “Blackmail” (1929); “Murder!” (1930); “Rich and Strange” (1931); “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934); “The 39 Steps” (1935); “Sabotage” (1936); “Young and Innocent” (1937); “Foreign Correspondent” (1940); “Rebecca” (1940);“Secret Agent” (1936); “Jamaica Inn” (1939); “The Lady Vanishes” (1938); “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (1941); “Suspicion” (1941); “Lifeboat” (1944); “Spellbound” (1945); “Stage Fright” (1950); “I Confess” (1953); “The Wrong Man” (1955); “Frenzy” (1972); “Under Capricorn” (1949); “The Paradine Case” (1947); “Marnie” (1964); “Torn Curtain” (1966); and “Topaz” (1969).

OTHER STUFF: “Play It Again, Sam” (1972), d. Herbert Ross; “Chillerama” (2011), d. Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Adam Rifkin and Tim Sullivan; “What Did Jack Do?” (2017), d. David Lynch; “Underwater” (2020), d. William Eubank; “Bad Boys for Life” (2020), d. Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi; “The Gentlemen” (2019), d. Guy Ritchie; and the Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Circuit (2019).

–THE PICK OF THE WEEK(S)–

“Foreign Correspondent”

Hitchcock hated the physical production process. He would intricately storyboard, structure and design every single inch beforehand, and that was where he derived the most satisfaction from his occupation. But when it came to actually work with actors and executing his grand intentions, it became an obligation. A chore. Much has been made of this disdain, often blown out of proportion, but in my unimportant opinion, this actually makes him a more impressive artist. Having such a driving unstoppable vision that he could walk onto a set and dictate all the necessary moving parts needed (ambitious moving parts at that), finish on time and on budget and effortlessly assembled without getting caught up in or absorbed by the process? I couldn’t do that. I don’t think that most filmmakers would be capable of it, then or now.

“Foreign Correspondent” was Hitchcock’s second release of 1940 (allow me to reiterate: SECOND release, the other winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards for whatever that’s worth), and contains any number of mind-boggling feats of spectacle. One of the opening scenes depicts an assassination in the middle of a crowd at a political conference after which the murderer disappears into the ether surrounded by hundreds of umbrella-wielding civilians, which brings to mind elements of Busby Berkley production numbers. Another features lead actor Joel McCrea traveling to the Amsterdam countryside in the shadows of massive windmills, accomplished using remarkable miniatures, impeccably integrated matte paintings, and expansive practical sets. These are each impressive and worthy of awe, but I really want to talk about is what I consider to be the single most impressive set piece in his entire career: the plane crash. Move over, crop duster. Step aside, shower murder. In a four-minute sequence, a flying boat is shelled by a German destroyer and crashes into the ocean, forcing the passengers aboard to evacuate amidst the threat of drowning, eventually making their way onto the collapsed left-wing, and having to attract the attention of a nearby ally boat for rescue. It incorporated every single production technique developed at the time (and even contributed a few new tricks to boot), all without the benefit of pre-visualization or digital assistance of any kind, before the advent of video playback (and includes a shot that is the forefather of the modern “dolly through a window” overused CGI effect). If something went wrong or didn’t work convincingly, neither the director nor his crew would know until they had the time to surveil their footage in a screening room. One particular shot involved the illusion of seawater flooding in through and obliterating the windshield of the cockpit, accomplished by rear projecting shots of the windshield onto rice paper positioned in front of a chute connected to multiple water tanks. (The rear projection shots were captured before principal photography by a stunt pilot who deliberately flew towards the ocean at a downwards angle and pulled up at the last second, which is terribly dangerous.) When cued, the water burst through the projection screen with a ferocity that approximated the breaking of glass without having to cut between multiple angles.

The confidence and skill required to pull off just one aspect of the sequence is a cocktail of exacting composition and blind luck and I’m having a panic spiral just thinking about it. Beyond shooting it properly, the individual techniques utilized then had to be assembled in an analog edit, seamlessly cutting between the material Hitchcock shot and stock footage, audio recorded in different environments and different days mixed into a scene that takes place in real-time, merely one component of the overall two-hour runtime. 

If that’s not the essence of directing, the essence of epic cinema, I don’t know what is.

[duaneodavila]

Machado: Get Local Judges Out of Adoption of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors

Upon arriving at the border, either alone or with their parents, children from abroad are placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Settlement. Until June 20 of this year, those minors who arrived with their parents were still marked by the government as “unaccompanied” because of the administration’s policy of separation at the border. Thus, the parents’ cases were put on a separate track, leaving the children. some as young as 2, alone as they went through the immigration system.

Of course, as many of the parents were deported – very few have a chance in hell without an attorney that they’re not entitled to – many kids were left behind. Separation at the docket is more accurate than separation at the border. What could compound this problem? State judges granting parental rights to foster parents stateside while not having a damn clue what’s going on with the biological ones:

Alexa’s case began in November 2015 under the Obama administration, years before Trump’s family-separation policy rolled out. Her 15-month separation from her mother exposes the fragile legal standing of children under the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and a flawed, piecemeal system that can change the course of a child’s life.

It took 28 minutes for a judge in a rural courthouse near Lake Michigan to grant Alexa’s foster parents, Sherri and Kory Barr, temporary guardianship. Alexa’s mother and the little girl’s immigration attorney were not even notified about the proceedings.

Based on their experiences with Alexa, the Barrs had become convinced that Alexa’s mom was a bad mother and that the little girl would be abused if she were reunited with her.

“My wife and I are sick over this,” Kory Barr told the judge, who wished him good luck as he granted the foster parents’ request two days after Christmas.

“Based on their experiences with Alexa”? It’s understandable that the foster parents felt a protective instinct for the child, and that they wanted the best for her. But courts are where reason and logic experience are supposed to be paramount, where learned jurists use their expertise (or lack thereof, in a particular area of the law) to make a just determination, or decide that the subject matter is in the wrong place.

During an emergency hearing, Kory Barr pounded on the judge’s bench as he begged him to help them keep the girl in Michigan and insisted that child-welfare experts needed more time to investigate.

“Every day they are telling us this could happen very fast,” he said. “We have her bags packed.”

Judge Mark Feyen confessed he wasn’t familiar with the federal agencies involved, saying, “This is kind of hard to pin down exactly who the interested parties are.”

Responding to their concerns that Alexa’s life could be in danger, Feyen granted the Barrs temporary custody after their attorney, Joshua Mikrut, asserted he had a “loose understanding” that a prior order had been issued suspending Ramos’ parental rights, though he didn’t know where. The judge asked him to return with proof, and also scheduled a full guardianship hearing for a few weeks later.

“Every time I get one of these, I learn a little more,” the judge said.

The lawyer has a “loose understanding” of the immigration process, and the Judge is learning “a little more” as he goes. This is where it gets dangerous. It’s a toxic mix of incompetence and improvisation, and it involves people’s lives.  And where the hell is ORR in all this? Can’t it have an attorney appear in these courts on its behalf, if nothing else. to paint a clearer picture or wave the Supremacy Clause flag?

Even if the local judges wanted to find out what the hell is happening on the federal side, they’re not qualified to do so, and there are temporal and geographical constraints. There’s no online docket for deportation proceedings. Aside from being present during the deportation hearing (which they won’t be) and understanding the dynamics (which they can’t), the judge or his representative would have to go in person to the immigration court to request a physical copy of the file, which may take days to locate if the case is not pending or recently closed.  The file will rarely contain the deported parents’ contact information from abroad.

Only then will the Judge be find out: (i) the contact information for the attorney of record; (ii) if a deportation order for the parent, assuming one exists, is final and not pending appeal; and (iii) whether there were allegations of prior criminality in the charging document.  Even if there are charges of prior crimes, there’s too much background information missing to make a competent determination as to the parents’ criminality.

There’s a practical way for these parents to avoid this mess, even if they face deportation. The ORR can release unaccompanied minors to an “appropriate sponsor” in the U.S. once she comes forward and tells ORR that she will assume responsibility for the child. There are many parents from Central America who send their children with a group* to the border – a practice that’s dangerous, for obvious reasons – and they have a family contact in the States ready to come forward and ask for custody from ORR.

As for the local judges granting parental rights here when the parents exist elsewhere, there is a practical answer as well. Get out of the business of granting adoptions of children of deported parents when you have no competency to do so.

*The definition of “group” varies in reality, in criminality to familiarity.  Some pay coyotes to bring their kids to the border, while some children chug along Central America with their peers, until they reach the border and are processed by CBP or make the daring trek across the border.

Machado: Get Local Judges Out of Adoption of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors republished via Simple Justice

[luiseee14]

What is video production? 

 Video production is the process done by video makers to capture and create unique and awesome content with the use of raw videos, pictures and text, edited and pieced together using various video making software, to have a one-of-a-kind video masterpiece. It is a tedius process of capturing, re-capturing and editing various inputs to create a video for your specific need or to impact a unique set of audience.

 Video makers invest time, effort and money into obtaining various equipment and software to further aid them in the pursuit of video perfection. Video makers search for the perfect scene and insert the perfect music that best fits the message of the video. All this is done in order for the audience to completely be immersed in the video being presented.

 Video production continues to evolve, with new storage media, equipment, methods and software being developed ,meaning that there will continually be improvements to it. As time goes by, we see more and more graphics, effects and music being added to video presentations thus making this art form progress even more.

 If one wants to become a video maker, one should first understand the key concepts to video production:

 1.  Writing

2.  Shooting 

3.  Editing

 What is Writing?

Wriritng involves creating the plot, outline or script to any video production endeavour. Sure, you can go out and take lots of videos of various people, places, things and events, and go back to your studio and piece together all the video clips you've gathered and create a video, but it wouldn't have a story; it would just be a hodge-podge of various clips. To be an effective videographer, you need to have a story. In every story, there has to be a beginning, a middle and an end, hence the need for effective writing.

 Through the process of writing or creating a script, you have to ask and eventually answer the following questions:

·  Who should I talk to?

·  Where and when am I going to start filming?

·  What do I want the viewer to receive?

 By investing time and effort into your writing, you get to have direction on how your video is going to go. One will get a clearer picture on the things that need to be considered going into the video production process like weather, people, location, and the like. It is through the writing process that you get to roughly outline the video project. But also keep in mind that though the presence of a good outline is best, one must leave a certain amount of mystery or ambiguousness which will be given only upon actual filming.

 Writing also involves determining what equipment you should use and bring along to every video recording. Cameras, lights, audio and recording equipment all have their respective strengths and weaknesses and it is imporant to decide which one is needed in a particular scene.

 What is Shooting?

After you have decided on your outline, you are now guided on what to ask, where to go, and what to do in your upcoming video, now it is time to put the plan into motion. Shooting is the actual process of going out onto the world and to start filming.

 Shooting involves experiencing the story you want to capture. It's easy to get lost with the myriad of things going on while filming, this is where the importance of the script or outline lies, it reminds you of what is important in the filming process.

 It is very important, in the shooing process, to be consistent. Consistent in such a way that your style of filming does not get lost, despite the various angles and possible dialogue that may present itself. Be consistent in your style of filming, the storyline and the plot because audiences can be distracted with the possible various angles and directions you shoot at and it could give an entirely different look and feel to the video.

 Do not be afraid to mix it up. Simple words to keep in mind during the shooting process are: wide, medium and tight. Be sure to capture footage, especially action scenes, dialogue and other impotant scenes in a wide angle first. Then repeat and take time to shoot the same scene in a medium angle shot. And finally, be brave and get yourself in the mix of the action by filming in a tight angle shot. By doing so, you can have the opportunity to get various angles of the same scene and eventually be able to emphasize the important ones in the future.

 It is also very imporant to keep things stable. Remember that you are shooting and telling a story, not a music video or sport shot. Use a tripod and or stablelizers whenever possible to minimize the effects of shaking onto your captured video. Shaky bits can confuse the audience on what you are trying to portray.

 What is Editing?

After you have gathered all your footage, stuck to the storyline and captured all that needs to be captured, it is time to piece it all together – hence editing.

 If you have stuck to your script and storyline, then you are at an advantage, meaning that you have some work cut out for you, but you aren't out of the woods yet; you still have to sift through various footage to ge the best ones that portray the desired message.

 Be sure to show your subject, the one talking, on screen once in a while; it helps build understanding and trust between the storyline and the audience. We tend to associate voices to people, so by doing so, you help paint a better picture of what he/she is trying to say.

 One has to be creative whenever one is editing. It is through the editing process that the video gets brought to life. If a particular subject matter, example a dog, is being talked about, one does not necessarily have to show the subject itself, one can use the environment that the subject habitually interacts with to be able to paint a clear picture and or story.

 One of the hardest things about editing is selecting which scene should be part of the video. Just because you spent so much effort to capture a certain scene in a very obscure and hard angle, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be part of the video, that is why a particular scene is shot multiple times at various angles. If a certain shot doesn't help in the desired message, cut it out. We cannot stress how difficult the editing process is, that is why sometimes the videographer isn't the same as the editor. The one who shot the video tends to be more attached at a particular scene, because they put a lot of effort into capturing it, and could lead to a biased editing.

 In the editing process, it is important to separate one's self from the experience involved during filming, because one might confuse the participation in a particular scene as valid reason in it being included in the final video. If you are acting as the videographer as well as editor, we recommend that you remove all emotions attached to the captured footage and rather focus on the desired story or message of the final video.

   What are the essentials to every video production adventure?

Video making is an art form, with it one can convey various messages in an extremely creative manner. By creating unique video content, one is able to do away with the limitation of words, sentences and letters and instead convey thoughts, ideas and emotions through actions that is captured via a recording device. To create videos one needs the following:

·  Camera or video capturing device

·  Tripod or stablelizer 

·  Lights

·  Software

 Cameras or video capturing devices

They are the heart to any video making project. Video maker's use this machine to capture content which will later be edited and pieced together to tell the story. These devices enable individuals to shoot content, zoom in, zoom out, record audio and most imporantly, store various scenes and footage. Without this device, no video production can happen.

 Tripod or stablelizers

Stability is important to every video project. The audience will be unable to understand properly the message the video wishes to impart if the footage taken is not focused, unclear and shacky. Tripods are essential because they are attached to video cams and allow the video cam to record the scene, in a manner which is focused and stable. Tripods these days come in various functions such as panoramic shoots which allow for the video to be shot in various angles and be directed via remote.

 Lights

Lights, much like in photography, aid in giving a better view of the subject matter as we all have the subtle effect of painting emotion. Lighting is essential because it helps set the scene, in a particular strip, without the need for dialogue. Lights also help the video in identifying small details and or emphasize the subject.

 Software

The software used in video production is responsible for piecing together and editing various footage. The software acts as the medium in which all the footage is loaded and it enables the editor to sift through the various recorded videos and select which one is apt for the final output. Video editing software also allows editors to create customized effects, transitions and music to further enhance the video output. It allows the editor to custom any and every video to fit what needs to be portrayed.

   Video production has become a very lucrative industry because in this day and age, documentation and presentation is becoming key to every event. People now a days are investing time, money and effort into making various important moments of their lives well documented, edited and presented in various occasions. These video projects often involve days even weeks of preparation and require various individuals to be involved. Here are some of the events that involve superb video production setups:

1.  Weddings – weddings happen only once, in the majority of cases, in an individual's lifetime, thus should be well documented and presented on the day as well. These involve ellaborate gimicks and should be shot in various locations so as to achieve the desired image of the couple-to-be. Normally the process of childhood, how the couple met, where they went, what goes into the wedding preparation and the wedding itself is documented in the entire process and is then presented upon reception.

2.  Debuts – a woman's 18th birthday is usually well documented. A woman is only 18 once after all and recent trends suggest that this event should be well documented. This process normally involves taking the debutant to a very beautiful place and various footage is taken of her in various ellaborate clothing. It involves messages from her loved ones, both local and abroad, who wish to impart life lessons unto the debutant.

3.  Corporate events – corporate event documentation has become a fad in recent years. Companies shell out big bucks in order for their events to be documented and presented also during the event. It usually involves a bit of dancing, messages from key individuals in the company and various gimicks.

4.  Film – this media has been part of the modern age for decades. The film industry shows how much the video production process has evolved; from black and white to colored to completely CGI films, so much is possible with video making. Films are probably the most commercial form of video production. It has been around for ages and is continually being patronized by individuals worldwide. Box office hit after box office hit, people cannot get enough of movies, actors, stories and visual effects. Various storylines keep the audience glued for the next upcoming movies boasting the most popular movie actors. There is no dobut that because of the film industry, video production will further enjoy rapid development and unparalleled worldwide support and a cult following.

 With so much going on that needs to be documented, why not practice your video making skills and become a video maker. You just need a camera, a good storyline and time to create your next masterpiece.