#but SF has a solid big place in my heart

[mrmllde]

wanted to share my SallyFace bits here

they are oldie (but goldie for me), and i miss drawing him dearly

[purplekoop]

Alright immediate followup to my last post, what if every Overwatch hero got a Street Fighter skin? Same general logic as the OPM collab skins, basically characters from one wearing costumes based on the other.

I am aware trying to find the venn diagram of tumblr users who like Overwatch and Street Fighter isn't gonna lead to much success but uhhh look I don't feel like putting 74 images in this one post so if you want context google it. (Also for a disclaimer for the hypothetical singular Street Fighter fan that finds this, I know next to nothing about any of the games besides 1, 2, Alpha, and 3, if there's a perfect match in 4, 5, or 6 I'm not aware of then I'm just Not Aware of them.)

Soldier 76: Either Ryu (Boring Standard Man), Ken (Boring Standard American Man), or Guile (American Military Man). Tough call between those three for him, but frankly my one reason for considering Ryu is because I think S76's VA would kill the delivery for Ryu's iconic lines.

I'd put Hanzo as Ryu and Cassidy as Ken, but like. Frankly it'd be a little cursed to have Hanzo and Cass both clean shaven.

Mei: Chun Li. Mostly because they're both Chinese and I think it'd be a fun combo visually. I don't have any clever ideas for what Snowball would be though.

Winston: Blanka. Pretty obvious. Weird ape-like man who jumps around the place and shoots electricity, weird man-like ape who jumps around the place and shoots electricity.

Reinhardt: Zangeif. Was very tempted to go with Hugo from SF3 (German Synergy), but I had to pair my two beloved large hairy men who would slam you into the concrete or give you a tender hug.

Zenyatta: Dhalsim. Okay like. This is literally the easiest one. Zenyatta was literally called "Robo Dhalsim" by people when they first saw him. Come on.

Doomfist: Balrog (yes I'm going with US names). I mean. Punchy man. punchy man. Simple math, folks. He'd also be a pretty solid Sagat, but. Punchy Men.

Genji: Vega. Skinny lanky pretty boy with a crouched fighting stance, a mask, and a knack for sharp things and screaming while launching himself at high speeds.

Ramattra: Sagat. This one's mostly based on body type, nobody else that was available is quite as long and lanky as Sagat. Plus, it'd be weird to not pair the one guy who actually shoots energy with his hands as an attack with somebody who can do that in Street Fighter.

Sigma: M. Bison. Like I said in my last post, besides personality this one lines up very strikingly well.

Tracer: Cammy. Simple enough, small nimble British lady, small nimble British lady.

Baptiste: Dee Jay. Not quite from the same place in the Caribbean (Haitian for the former and Jamaican for the latter), but I feel like they'd get along. Plus Dee Jay has a down->up charge input, which you can't say any Overwatch character has anything like besides Baptiste, right?

Reaper: Akuma. Shadowy edgelord. Nothing more complicated past that and the fact I couldn't figure out any better ideas for Reaper or Akuma.

Junkrat: Adon. Lanky bastard men. Simple math.

Roadhog: Birdie. Big dude with a chain he likes to grab people with, and (as of OW2) a mohawk. Funny enough, both Birdie and Adon were Street Fighter 1 characters who came back as playable for SF Alpha, so they do kinda stick together, which is nice cohesion for this "couple of dashing rogues".

Kiriko: Sakura. I know for a fact that logically, Kiriko should get an Ibuki skin. Ninja girl, throws knives, simple math right? But like. In my heart. Kiriko deserves Sakura more. The energy Aligns. She deserves to have the Schmoovement victory dance as an emote.

D.va: Karin. This is mostly just because they're both varying levels of rude. Plus I think Karin/Sakura is a ship to the same extent as D.va/Kiriko? Don't quote me on either of those.

Symmetra: Rose. Flashy extra girlboss. Frankly I think she'd just slay the outfit.

Junker Queen: Rainbow Mika. Mostly just because they're the two of the beefiest ladies from the respective series I'm aware of. The other option was Zarya, but JQ's showboaty personality and more flirty nature make me prefer her for this match over Zarya.

Lucio: Yun. Honestly just the bottom-heavy outfit and calm, cool personality, and how it looks cool in my head.

Echo: Twelve. Shapeshifting inorganic being, shapeshifting inorganic being. Though uh... not sure how you'd make this skin look... good?

Bastion: Q. It's very hard to think of any good matches for Bastion, but I think this one's funny enough to pass. Just imagine him with the hat and trenchcoat. Not sure what Ganymede would be. Give him a hat and trenchcoat too.

Moira: Gill. Definitely would need some extra details considering... Gill is kind of just a buff man pretty much just wearing a cloth over the bare essentials, but the split color design and the fact that if I heard Moira's VA say "The mark of my divinity will scar thy DNA" I would disintegrate make me at least enjoy the concept.

Aaaaaand that's all the ideas I got. Which leaves 13 on the Overwatch side of things without a match: Orisa, Wrecking Ball, Zarya, Ashe, Pharah, Sojourn, Sombra, Torbjorn, Widowmaker, Ana, Brigitte, Lifeweaver, and Mercy. Almost all of which besides very specific body type are ladies, which... I mean considering there were literally only 2 playable women in Street Fighter before Alpha, should kinda make sense. There's almost certainly more in 4, 5, and 6 that'd be great matches, but I haven't played those yet so uh. Sorry women. Also didn't think of anyone who really fit Torb's body type, Lifeweaver's too new for me to have any great ideas for, and... Wrecking Ball. I don't think that one's hard to explain.

Anyways I hope this nonexistent target audience enjoys this poorly organized hypothetical.

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

2021 KLAINE AND CC FANFICTION AWARDS RESULTS

Nearly 200 people voted for their favorite Klaine and CrissColfer fanfics in a variety of categories. All the fics that made it through to the finals are worth reading. A list of all the finalists can be found here. When you go check out the stories, please be sure to leave kudos and comments. 

Remember that everyone is a winner! We are forever grateful to all the writers for gracing us with their talent.

Thank you to everyone for participating!

Favorite NEW KLAINE FANFICTION AUTHOR (i.e. have posted their first completed Klaine fanfiction in 2020/2021) 1. coffeeorder | @coffeeorderwrites​ 🏆 2. gorgxoxus | @gorgxoxus​ 3. theyaskedmeto | @theyaskedmeto​

Favorite NEW KLAINE FANFICTION posted during 2020/2021 1. The Hating Game by coffeeorder | @coffeeorderwrites​​  🏆 2. Solid Gold by @heartsmadeofbooks​​ | LauGS  (tied)  2. The Seduction by @hkvoyage​​ | VoyageAsia (tied) 3. Friends in Low Places by Esperanto | @esperantoauthor​​ 

Favorite SUMMER Klaine Fanfiction 1. Boys of Summer by @whenidance​​  🏆 2. Summer (I'm In Love) by @coffeeorderwrites​​ 3. Between the Moon and New York City by @jackabelle73​​

Favorite HURT/COMFORT Klaine fanfiction 1. Lovesong by @andiheardeverything​​🏆 2. Solid Gold by @heartsmadeofbooks​​ | LauGS  3. Flowers in the Window by @heartsmadeofbooks​​​ | LauGS 

Favorite DOCTOR/NURSE/THERAPIST Klaine fanfiction 1. A Fresh Start by pickingviolets [PDF] [Epub]🏆 2. Lonely in Pink by a_simple_rainbow 3. How Far I’ll Go by JayhawkWrites | @jayhawk-writes​​

Favorite MENTAL HEALTH Klaine fanfiction 1. Rewrite This Story by idoltina 🏆 2. Here We Go Again by BlurglesmurfKlaine  | @blaineandersimp​  3. The Writing on My Skin by JayhawkWrites | @jayhawk-writes​​

Favorite ANDBERRRY Klaine fanfiction 1. Like Birds Of A Feather by CoffeeAddict80 | @caramelcoffeeaddict​ 🏆 2. Tangled in the Sheets by TheNameIsBritney | @byebyeblainey​​  3. Underneath by little_escapist | @little-escapist​ (tied) 3. Through Different Eyes Verse by GLEEAnna | @glee-anna​ (tied)

Favorite AGE GAP Klaine fanfiction 1. When The Time Is Right by lostinfictionalworlds |  @fictionallylost​​ 🏆 2. Expectation Fails by lilinas | @lilinas​​ 3. The Muse by The_Cimmerians | @the-cimmerians​​

Favorite ENEMIES TO LOVERS  Klaine fanfiction 1. The Hating Game by coffeeorder | @coffeeorderwrites​​  🏆 2. A Fine Line Between Us by MrsCriss2012  3. Friends in Low Places by Esperanto | @esperantoauthor​​ 

Favorite COLLEGE/NYADA Klaine fanfiction 1. Near Misses by flaming_muse | @flamingmuse​​ 🏆 2. Collide by scatterthestars | @scatter-the-stars​ 3. The Sweet DREAMers ‘Verse by perry_avenue | @perryavenue​ Favorite PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE Klaine fanfiction 1. Top Shelf Sundae by spinmybowtie 🏆   2. Only a Fortnight in Your Arms by Zavocado | @zavocado​ 3. Collide by scatterthestars | @scatter-the-stars​

Favorite BROADWAY/POPSTAR/ROCKSTAR/MUSICIAN Klaine fanfiction 1. Serenade My Heart by MrsCriss2012  🏆   2. When Are You Gonna Sing For Me? by TheNameIsBritney | @byebyeblainey​​ 3. If Music Be by BlurglesmurfKlaine | @blaineandersimp​

Favorite NEW CC ONE-SHOT fanfiction 1. Former Glee Co-Stars Married by mvgsucks 🏆   2. Behind the Music: F*kn Around by mvgsucks 3. Quarantine Announcement by mvgsucks  Favorite OLD CC ONE-SHOT fanfiction 1. Big Wood Cabin by orphan_account 🏆   2. Time Has Come (Let Us Be Brave) by scatterthestars | @scatter-the-stars​ 3. Bedtime Stories by dizzy | @alittledizzy​

Favorite CC HIGHSCHOOL/COLLEGE AU fanfiction 1. Trip and Stumble by dizzy & savvymavvy | @alittledizzy​🏆   2. Broken by scatterthestars | @scatter-the-stars​ 3. SF College Verse by missbegonia [PDF]  [Epub] (tied) 3. This Might Be A Love Story by andthenshesaid-write (tied)

[aion-rsa]

Andy Weir on Writing a Buddy Cop Story… Set in Space

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Andy Weir is all about survival. His first novel, The Martian, centers upon the attempts of astronaut Mark Watney to survive long enough on the Red Planet for a rescue mission to reach him. His sophomore book, Artemis, is a fast-paced survival story of a different kind, set among various criminal factions on the Moon. His latest novel, Project Hail Mary, raises the stakes even higher— it’s about the survival of our entire species, and all life on Earth.

In Project Hail Mary, the Sun is getting dimmer, thanks to a mysterious substance known as Astrophage, a type of interstellar infection. Humanity is facing a ticking ecological time bomb; unless the secret of the Astrophage can be discovered and the planet-wide cooling process reversed, it’s goodnight for life as we know it. There’s just one long shot left for humankind: send a starship to make contact with whoever – or whatever – is behind it all. 

Project Hail Mary is as much a mystery novel as it is an SF survival tale. The book opens with our protagonist, Ryland Grace, waking up in a medical bay with two corpses and no memory of how he got there. What follows is a constant peeling back of layer after layer of this mystery, until finally, the truth is revealed. It’s a deeply satisfying ride, made even more so for those readers who share Weir’s obvious passion for science. Surprisingly, at its heart, Project Hail Mary is also a buddy road trip story, which kicks into high gear when Grace connects with an alien partner he names Rocky. 

After bonding over a shared love of Terry Pratchett, Andy and I talked about the influences behind Project Hail Mary, and what it took to bring the world of the Astrophage to life. 

Den of Geek:  Project Hail Mary evokes similar feelings to the Robert A. Heinlein juveniles, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama books. Were those influences for you? 

Andy Weir: Oh, big time. I grew up reading my dad’s science fiction collection, Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke, they’re my Holy Trinity. And yeah, that sense of optimism I feel has kind of vanished from sci-fi, and a lot of science fiction ends up being this bleak, dystopian misery-scape where a teenager doing weird stuff is the only thing that’ll save the day. I just don’t buy into that. I have a firm belief that the future is almost always better than the past. I mean, 2020 kind of sucked, we can all agree, but I would rather live through 2020 again than 1920. 

Speaking of 2020, let’s talk about the Astrophage, which is basically Project Hail Mary’s nemesis. It’s a stellar virus, an infection transmitted from star to star. Did you plot the book during the Covid-19 pandemic, or was it just a fluke of timing? It seems like a very timely concept.

It does, but it’s pure coincidence. I actually finished the entire book before COVID-19 happened. This is the longest I’ve ever had a book done, but not yet published, because COVID messed with the print production pipelines. I actually finished the book in January of 2019. Astrophage was originally a technology called black matter, not a life form. It would absorb all electromagnetic radiation that hit it, and turn that energy into mass, in the form of more black matter. I thought, this is the perfect spacecraft fuel, because it mass converts. Then I thought, “Well, we have no way of creating that technology, I could not make that take place in the modern day… what if it wasn’t a technology? What if it was a life form?” Black matter takes energy and makes more black matter, but that’s kind of what life does, right? Humans take energy and make more humans out of it. That’s what we do. Cats take energy to make kittens. 

It’s the ultimate double-edged sword. It has the power to wipe us out, but if we were smart enough to harness it, Astrophage could become humanity’s gateway to the stars. 

That was my…kind of “shower epiphany.” I was thinking, “Oh, but we’d need to be really careful, because we wouldn’t want to let this shit get in our sun, because it would start breeding out of control. That’d be a disaster. We can’t have that.” Then I was like: “Wait a minute, disasters are where books come from. We can have that. We will have that!” Astrophage was… I can’t say handed to humanity on a silver platter, it was really more handed to humanity on a spiky, poisoned platter. 

That’s how the Big Three – Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke – saw atomic power, wasn’t it? 

Yeah, they did, and they’re not wrong. I still think that in the real world, our best bet for regular interplanetary travel is going to be ion propulsion, which requires a huge amount of energy, and so that’ll be reactors. This isn’t weird, way off in the middle of nowhere, made up science; this is real stuff. Humanity has put ion propulsion craft into space and used it, but if you scale that up big enough that you can have a passenger spacecraft, then you’re going to need to scale up the energy production. So, pretty much nuclear reactors are the only way to get that much energy out of such a small amount of weight. 

The novel has a very non-traditional structure, essentially starting at two different time points, and unfolding from there in tandem. Was Project Hail Mary a difficult book to plot? 

It wasn’t difficult to plot once I decided to use that structure, but it was a very difficult decision to go for that structure. I hate flashbacks. I always tell aspiring writers: “Don’t use flashbacks. Nobody likes them.” One of my main problems with flashbacks is, I’ll be really invested and interested in a story that’s going on, then suddenly we’re off somewhere else. We were over here doing neat stuff, now you’re over here doing boring stuff. This is a book, it’s entertainment, not a lesson. So, flashbacks often feel to me like you’re out playing with your friends and your mom tells you to come in and clean your room.

But I realized that this story, if told linearly, would be really weird. The whole scientific mystery which leads to the creation of the Hail Mary, and then the launch, is interesting, but it’s not a book… and so the flashbacks skip over the years. There’s this scene, and then the very next flashback you see will be two years later after that. The whole book would be really disjointed. From the second act on, it’s a completely different book. And so, I couldn’t think of any way to do this other than flashbacks. I’m like, “If I neat out the backstory bit by bit so that the stories kind of converge, and I’m constantly revealing new information in the flashbacks, then the flashbacks are compelling as well,” and just had the two stories come together at the end.

If this had been poorly executed, it would have been a very difficult read, but I felt no jarring at all due to the jumping backward and forward in time. I found myself looking forward to the next flashback, then getting back to the Rocky and Ryland show.  I was also delighted to find there’s a lot of humor in there.

People don’t know it when they start the book, but it’s a buddy cop movie, basically. I don’t know if you watched those road movies from the ‘40s. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby will be on the road to something. There’s a bunch of movies that start with Road to…and then a location. It’s always the same principal plot, these two guys are trying to get somewhere, and all the funky, comedic things that happen along the way. It’s kind of like that. 

So, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the team behind The Lego Movie among many others, have been tapped to direct the Project Hail Mary Movie. 

MGM bought the rights, and they bought them outright, not an option, which is neat, because it implies they’re much more serious about making the movie. Ryan Gosling is attached to play the lead, so that’s pretty cool. 

Wonderful! Who’s your dream casting for Rocky, Grace’s alien partner?

I have some ideas for that, but I don’t want to give them away, because there’s been a lot of discussion on how do we portray the [alien] language situation on screen. In the book, after a while, I just start using italics to indicate what Rocky’s saying, and either Grace is looking it up on his computer, or later in the book has just learned Rocky’s language, learned how to understand what Rocky’s saying. We have an idea, and I think it’s a really solid idea. Ryan Gosling came up with it, and so I think that’s what we’re going to do. But films are so security conscious, I can’t really talk about it. 

It was great talking with you, Andy, and I wish you the very best of luck with Project Hail Mary. 

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

You too. Bye-bye.

Project Hail Mary hits the shelves on Tuesday, May 3rd.

The post Andy Weir on Writing a Buddy Cop Story… Set in Space appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3gTzEik

[cupcakemolotov]

6/? Wow the Sagredos have successfully married into money for like three centuries and not one eep of them being broke has leaked. Truly impressive. Man, I just want like an outside POV, an Herald forum, something about House Baylor. Because how does this look from the outside? One sister married into House Rogan, House Baylor looks like a vassal House but isn't officially. And the new Head of House Baylor got Alessandro Sagredo to leave his blue blood family.

I mean, the Sagredos are fairly scary.

But yes, I find this bit of information to be interesting. You gotta wonder what blackmail is going on behind the scenes. Alessandro obviousy scared the pants off the women he was previously engaged to because he shut the one down hard at the opera. very hard. and she shut up.

7/? Lol tumblr has decided I’ve spammed your inbox with too many asks so I’ll have to continue later. Hopefully you’re received them all. I haven’t even started waxing lyrical about how much I love Catalina. Catalina and Elara are def my fav IA heroines. (I’m so sad that iron covenant #2 is probably years away, although I completely understand why no one would want to write a dark book in 2020).

Catalina and Elara are a great deal of fun. Though I absolute adore the Nevada books. This family is insane, and I hope we keep getting books! (And god, give me Hugh. But yeah. Illona an Gordon have had a particularly rough few years personally, and Hugh is just not an easy book. I can wait.)

8/? i think that's what number I'm up to. I just love Catalina so much. It's just so refreshing to have an Urban Fantasy lead who isn't a gut-reactionary archetype (which don't get me wrong, I also enjoy). I enjoy her methodical planning. I really like her and Nevada's chat. I agree with your comment to the other anon, I think it answered some of the things that fell flat in SF, enough so that it felt planned and plotted.

I honestly think Sapphire Flames is a much better book now that I have Emerald Blaze. I went back and re-read it and it bothered me way less now that I have more information to work with. Which. Is always a good sign about a book in general and how a series is going I think. Its baby-catalina and baby-alessandro and then not!

9/9 Now that I've completely vomited all my EB initial feelings at you... in a hopefully somewhat coherent manner... how did you find EB? What did you love/hate? What do you want to see in Book 6? What gem do you think will be used for Book 6's title? It looks like popular opinion is Ruby in the IA FB group but I kinda want to see them stick to blue/greens/purples) coloured gems. Did you manage to catch any of the Zoom panels with IA? Have a wonderful day! And thank you so much for listening!!!

Over all, I really enjoyed Catalina and Alessandro in his book. I thought they did a good job of working in a bunch of big plot points and smoothing out threads from the previous one that bothered me. As I have said, they clearly went into this book with an understanding of what fell a little flat and made a point to fix it. I so greatly appreciate that about them.

I think in general though, Alessandro was good in this book but also a little off for me. I liked that he answered here questions, I like that he threatened Victoria, I liked that he backed Catalina up. But I felt we could have gotten a little more from in places that would have made things just a little more seamless. They didn’t do a bad job with him, but there was a lot of reflection that happened elsewhere that we got told about. I can’t even tell you where it could have been worked it, it just felt a tiny bit off point. Not a lot, just a little. My favorite scene for them in the book was in the van when he was patching her up! That was a delight. And the scene on the balcony cleared up a lot of things, but I feel like Alessandro in the third will need to grow a bit more. Or to show us the ways he has grown. He needs something to make him just a little more of a real character, though right now I am still struggling to find the words to explain what I even mean with that.

I really do enjoy Catalina. I like how they have done a good job of showing the similarities between the sisters and all their differences. Shes a lot of run while not being Nevada, and I appreciate that. Being the middle child and suddenly the boss I think is a difficult thing for someone and the family dynamics are spot on. I am really looking forward to seeing how she chooses to deal with her problems in the future.

I fucking love Leon. Give me his book. Please.

Also. WHERE IS MY MOMMA BAYLOR AND HEART ROMANCE? WHERE? *GRABBY  HANDS* GIVE IT TO ME.

Grandmother Tremaine is my favorite not-bad guy in this series. And I maintain my suspicions about Linus, and who he is but they haven’t really give us many bread crumbs about who Ceaser is either. And I want to punch Xavier in the face and cannot wait until Catalina takes his smug ass down. The dick.

I dunno, there has been a lot of thought about this and we shall see what happens! I probably would have to read it again to give you more thoughts (which I will be doing probably shortly!) But Illona and Gordon always manages to surprise me with their plot twists, and I do so enjoy that about them.

10/10. Oh wait- I completely forgot to mention- can't wait to see what powers Catalina's dark wings develop. Also super interesting that both Catalina and Alessandro have speedy healing talents (not connected, but attributable to both their respective powers). I wonder if Catalina's green/gold wings have been her passive field this whole time. The making people love her part. Using her wings/song to control/guide people's memories is probably active field?

I think Catalina’s power are going to be very interesting because she is not in a magical  bubble. She also has her other family magic and there is no telling what she got from Tremaine. I think your guess is very solid, but I don’t think her love me bits are entirely passive. But I do think the black wings are potentially a House Secret and something that is going to be very unexpected. But the opposite side of love is fear, right? So yeah. its going to be So Interesting.

[belasims]

Sim Download - Ariana Prieto & her kitten Jorge😁

Hey all! I’m putting my first TS4 sim (and her adorable kitten) up for download! I hope you like them! ❤

CC you will need for Ariana:

Default Skin (optional) | Skin Tone ND | Skin blend ND | Skin Details | Eyes ND | Hair | Eyebrows | Eyelashes | No EA eyelash mod | Nose mask | Hair edges V5 | Eye bags | Moles | Lipstick (TealeafLoveLost version) | Eye shadow | Eyeliner | Blush | Face shine | Outfit | Shoes | Nails (solid version)

DOWNLOAD: Ariana Prieto (sfs)

CC you will need for Jorge:

Eyes (default replacement) | Eye spec remover for pets mod

DOWNLOAD: Jorge (sfs)

Additional info:

Ariana’s bio and random facts are below the cut.

TOU: Do whatever you want with them, just please don’t re-upload or claim them as your own. I’d love to see them in your game, so feel free to tag me if you use them.😁

Happy Simming!❤

Ariana Prieto

Aspiration: Friend of the Animals

Traits: Ambitious, Cheerful, Music Lover

Bio:

Ariana is a city girl, born and raised in San Myshuno. She knows her way around like the back of her hand. As a kid, she spent a lot of time after school putting out food for the local strays, and her love of animals propelled her into veterinary school which currently takes up a decent amount of her energy. When she’s not tending to sick animals, she’s spending time with her close-knit family and small group of friends. She’s one of 4 kids and has a twin brother with whom she’s very close. If you were to ask any of them, “What’s 1 outstanding quality that best describes Ariana?”, it would most certainly be her ability to light up a room - her laugh is contagious and she has a special way of helping even the gloomiest of sims find some joy.😊

Random Facts:

Bisexual

Wants a big family

Bilingual (fluent in Spanish, English, & Simlish)

Just adopted a kitten and named him Jorge

Terrible cook, but loves food & eats out way too much. Will give back rubs in exchange for delicious home cooking

Keeps a special place in her heart for those who bake sweet treats for her

Is the one everyone calls when they need a listening ear

Self-taught pianist (she’s quite good 😉)

Is always listening to music and will randomly bust out singing songs from her favorite movies

Doesn’t have any piercings or tattoos

Kinda wants a tattoo but is too indecisive on what to get

Gets the hiccups when she’s really nervous

Sleeps with a dim light on but refuses to admit being afraid of the dark

Wrecks her journal to decompress after a stressful day

Dislikes: dishonesty, narcissism, extreme temperatures, having to get up way too early, poor oral hygiene, and wasting food

[whifferdills]

thoughts on “Rosa”, from the whitest kid u know

accidentally deleting reaction posts is my new favorite hobby. you’d think i’d learn, but no. i got the new Viagra Boys album on les go

the one thing i wanted from s11 was for them to not fuck it up, and they. didn’t fuck it up. cheers

Systemic racism is a top contender for the scariest DW monster, I love it. viscerally upsetting, truly horrifying in a way DW hasn’t been in a while. Like a peeled-back “Midnight”. SF excels at metaphors but in a world where people complain about Star Trek being in favor of social justice, it’s very refreshing to see a show stop beating around the bush and just. Do it. Even whatsisface, space racist future-/pol/ fuckboy, is just a racist. No grand backstory, cause no one ever really has one, yanno? People hate you and want you dead for no reason. We’re staring down the barrel of a gun right now, fuck a metaphor.

i kinda like that the TARDIS is back to being a conspiracy theory than some unknowable mythical thing. i can see our Proud Boy doing the racist version of what that dude in “Rose” did with Nine, just...obsessively poring over the shitty ill-sourced evidence and coming up with all the wrong conclusions

it’s back up to 8/10 on IMDB, which is fair. but MAN did this episode make people mad. respect.

aw Dr Who learned how to be an ally. They have some swagger moments here, but no big speeches. No real Doctor Moment, and rightfully so. Their (and Graham’s) total discomfort at having to be on The Bus is...someone smarter than me will hopefully unpack that

I like the subversion of the ‘CANT CHANGE HISTORY’ trope. usually it’s a bunch of technobabble about fixed points, here it’s about preserving that one, small, consequential change to history.

My love for Graham increases exponentially. Can he be my grandpa?

Vinette Robinson brought it. All that warmth and idiosyncrasy and gravity, she both nails the fictional character and sells the historical person. The best scenes have her in it. And I’d expected Marjorie Blackman to excel so thanks I guess Chibbers and the BBC for letting Rosa be both a regular woman who was just. fuckin over it, and an activist directly working for social change via purposefully planned sit-ins and sit-downs

RYAN. my heart is broken, and warmed. what a fuckin day, huh, start out by getting punched in the face by a white man for being black and then he’s meeting MLK. i wish him nothing but the best in the universe, he’s certainly earned it

Grace woulda loved this (and should be here)

Yaz as a non-black POC in segregated society, struggling with debatable passing privilege while knowing she’s not actually safe - again hopefully someone smarter than me will unpack that

also Yaz the cop vs Direct Action Ryan - there’s a lot there

btw Ryan basically did a murder, I wonder if the show will pick that up

dialogue still clunky and expositiony. like, chibbers, you know that this script will be accompanied by visuals, yes

that said, Yaz and Ryan’s dumpster chat is a good. it’s on the nose, sure, but it’s a TV approximation of what people do talk about, do have to talk about. and this show has a platform, yanno? a lot of people watch this, kids watch this. go ahead be on-the-nose about how black men need to hold their temper (and get profiled anyway) and how anti-immigrant fearmongering affects brown people. US politics aside, Paki-bashing as a national sport wasn’t that long ago for the UK

MUSIC. the horns, almost Aaron Copeland. Akinola doin it and im here for that. Gold who? I’m willing to entertain disagreements about the Andra Day at the end but imo it was well-used (also she’s great so).

Pacing! Flow! Not so much of it. I like the individual bits but the editing still feels disjointed

Better on putting people in a place (that motel scene is great) but still way heavy on talking heads. Same DP as “Ghostument”. No credits listed on IMDB for “Anarchy in the Spider” but i’m hoping they switch it up a bit. narratively, thematically, this season locked into place for me here but we’re still struggling a little with the basics

That ending was pointless and bad. If we needed a capper, they coulda done anything other than “oh an asteroid was named after Rosa Parks” (in colonized space by an Earth that hadn’t met other cultures yet). like, what, why? a poor decision

feelin a solid B, B+ on this one in the sense that it will probably remain one of my favorites, it just drops easy to catch balls too often despite nailing its core mission statement

[aurimeanswind]

Back Again—Sunday Chats—7/8/18

Welcome Back!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and I wanted to open up with a bit of a litany of excuses as to why that is! I know when you’re just on the outside looking in its hard to know exactly why I haven’t been posting these or asking questions, or really anything on Sundays. It’s a combination of things.

First of all, the last two Sundays I have not been home to write up Sunday Chats. Three weeks ago I was in Cuba! Well, technically I was at Key West, the day before I’d go to Cuba, on a cruise ship. Most importantly, the only internet access I had was through the data on my cell phone, and so I couldn’t really post Sunday Chats. In theory, I could solicit questions via my phone, I could write it up offline, and then go on and post it when I’d get home the following Wednesday, but I really didn’t want to because it was honestly a genuine vacation for me. I wanted to kind of check out and try and not be online so much. Of course, I failed a little bit in this regard, I was checking Twitter ravenously any time I had an internet connection, because I have a problem. For the most part, when I was off on my cruise with my mom and my brothers three weeks ago, I was without an internet connection, and it was a little nice, but also a little stressful.

The week before that, it was E3! We were living in the Microsoft/Bethesda press conferences! I was going to write something that day but honestly between the post shows and just consuming E3 I honestly did not have time. I’ve done like, reaction write ups in the past, but I was a bit more down to live in the moment this go around.

Then I was in San Francisco! It was the day after Kinda Funny Prom, which was lovely, we’ll get to that in a bit, but that Sunday I was seeing a movie with Barrett Courtney, my sweet boy, and was just exhausted after KFP and everything then. I had stayed up way too late the night before talking games and eating pizza. I had a great time, but I was still pretty checked out.

The Sunday between those two, I was completely exhausted. Honestly? I’m still exhausted. The best thing, I think, to alleviate my normal “post-con depression” type thing I get after a Kinda Funny Live event and seeing all my friends is taking another, separate vacation just beforehand. I had barely enough time to stay at home and just sit on my couch and play video games before suddenly being whisked off to San Francisco. So getting home, I am just so happy to be home, to be sleeping in my pitch-black room on my comfy foam mattress. To lay on my couch and play whatever video game I want (which mostly has been Tales of Vesperia... again) and just... relax. Ya know what I mean? I just want to relax. I’m a solitary person. I’ve talked many a-time before on here, but I just love to be alone a lot. And I just want to be alone sometimes, especially after several back-to-back socially exhausting experiences.

And that’s a big part about why I’ve been so crappy about doing Sunday Chats consistently. Even before this last month of vacations I’ve been very touch and go about SC. Now that I have fully transitioned into being a full time employee, I work a lot more than my body is used to, even if I am four months into my new role at my job. It’s a lot for me. And I’m barely keeping up with my IP work of being an editor there. And that’s, I think, more important, because I am making decisions and a team is relying on me for that.

I essentially circle around two days off a week, Wednesday and Sunday, and so I work Thursday-Friday-Saturday, plus I have the podcast on Friday nights. Without getting too into the details, Saturdays at my job take quite a toll. Like, a lot on me, so just making it to Sunday, I’ve genuinely forgotten completely about Sunday Chats because I am sleeping in and resting and just trying to get my bearings. I know it’s not much of an excuse, but I’m hoping to turn Sundays into equally as productive days as they are relaxing. It’s just about finding that balance.

As per usual, my trip to San Francisco was motivational in some ways, so I feel inspired to continue to work harder and do more now that I’m home, and hopefully that can last me until PAX West in a couple months.

But that’s generally where the status of Sunday Chats is. As a big update, while not going into effect quite yet (maybe not even for months) but Sunday Chats will soon transition to be a full feature on IrrationalPassions.com. I think it’s a natural transition and it makes sense. It’ll still be available and accessible to all, but I want to play around with some format ideas I have, and I think it makes sense to be there since it is, predominantly, about video games, as it always kind of was. I want to have these heartfelt chats there, because I think as the “editor-in-chief” of the site, it helps build a rapport with the audience of that site which seems to grow every month.

Now that’s all done, let’s get to the editorial!

My Feelings and Emotions in San Francisco

I like this title because it’s just all about the feels. As many frequent Sunday Chats readers would know, depression is just slowly becoming one and the same with me. Like two amorphous blobs just close enough to each other that they become one. Like slime enemies from Dungeons & Dragons that just jell together on spiritual and self-hatred-like level.

So I’ve been through a rough like... 2018 to be honest. And so being in a place where I was just genuinely surrounded by affection and good vibes was really, really moving for me. I put out a twitter thread about the feeling which I think encapsulates most of what I’d want to say, and you can read that here.

But a big thing is how being in SF has proven to be a huge opportunity for me in the past: a time to “schmooze” as some people say, and talk to people, make connections, market yourself, or just meet as many people as you can and spread “the brand” as much as possible. And honestly, I just wasn’t here for that this year. I’ve gotten to a very, maybe even regressive place in my life, where I’d rather not get out there and try and be at the center of things and meet as many folks as possible. There were certainly several folks I had never met before that I wanted to meet, but for the most part I spent that time focusing on more intimate interactions with specific people.

A lot of this manifested in folks I’ve admired for a great long while, and that’s the fellows at OK Beast. I got to have a real heart to heart with Ian Preschel, someone I just haven’t been as close to for whatever dozen reasons that usually amount to time, and understand him better as a person. I got to have an emotional moment with Moises, someone I admire so goddamn much and for some reason keeps saying I’m the reason he started writing. I got to spitball ideas with Alex Van Aken, my fellow Alex-in-Arms, and share the wonders of running a business Slack with Blessing. They’re people I just genuinely look up to and inspire me legitimately every day, and I’m excited and hopeful to collaborate with them in the future. I have nothing but love for all of them, including Brandon, wherever he is out there.

I got to spend a ton of time with Barrett and Alyssa, my hosts, and Jacob Bryant who was also rooming with me at their place. They’re just family to me. Enough said.

I got to spend a huge chunk of time with Nicole Humphrey and Cameron Abbott, two very special friends to me, and for reasons I’d rather not put on blast here, it was very important to me that this time was worked into my trip, and I’m so glad it was.

Those dense, meaningful interactions are what I live for. It’s literally why I started the show Get Acquainted (new episodes coming soon I promise!) and they were the highlights of the weekend. I won’t list them all here, but suffice to say on a personal level this trip was very important to me, rather than on a “business level” which it has been for me in the past.

Thank you all for being open to wasting your time with me, I’ll be forever grateful.

ONTO GAMES.

What’s On Tap

Hollow Knight

I HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT THIS GAME ON SUNDAY CHATS AT ALL YET AND IT’S INCREDIBLE OMG.

I love this game.

Final game time was 42h and 7m, and all of it was excellent. Well... Not all of it, there were a couple very frustrating bosses. But most of it was excellent.

One of the best Metroidvanias ever made. Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Prime are the best of the genre full stop. It sits proudly in that number.

Don’t think. Play it.

Unless you really don’t like hard games, because it’s very difficult, but crazy rewarding!

Ys VIII

I just got this pretty recently and am only about four or so hours in, and so far it’s just a wonderful delight.

Compared to the demo I played a great many months ago on PS4, the Switch version does take quite the graphical hit, especially if you have a hangup about anti-aliasing. There are a LOT of jaggies to be seen here

BUT, I think performance wise it’s still very solid. Some hitches here and there, but during combat it’s generally smooth, and that’s what’s most important.

Very good. Recommended.

Captain Spirit

Honestly, there is too much to say here. Don’t hesitate, go play this. I do not care if you’re like Jurge Cruz (social media editor at IP) and are dead inside and don’t like Captain Spirit. It’s free. Go play it.

Nuff. Said.

More thoughts coming soon.

Questions

Remember you can tweet me your questions by looking for my tweet with #SundayChats in it on Sunday afternoons, and you can be a part of this write up! Much love to everyone who always shows up (I’m looking at you Brandon Gann! <3)!

Goddammit Tyler you keep asking me wrestling shit and you know I hate wrestling...

Uhh...

What if I just showed up and was Noctis?

Originally posted by ffxvcaps

A great many things! Event wise, I’m very excited about PAX West. Assuming I can still make it, which I should be able to, it’ll be a blast.

Plus there are new shows and new things coming from IP soon that I am just hyped for.

But let’s be honest with each other? Okay? Let’s all be real here?

Motherfucking Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition.

‘Nuff said.

My favorite Romantic Comedy of All Time just so happens to also be my favorite movie of all time, Silver Linings Playbook.

It is, in my humble opinion, a perfect film. It is the only movie I have watched over 10 times.

It’s very important to me, and while it may seem dumb to many of you, it told me that even fucked up bad people like me can find love in both themselves and others. And I really needed to hear that when that movie found its way to me in 2013.

Good LORD am I the WORST to ask about this. Well, first, Jamie. It was a goddamn pleasure meeting you at prom.

I mean, look at us:

I was very drunk and I’m so sorry.

But on a real level, a few things.

First, I did this horrible thing where I wrote everyday for almost three years straight and that was just a self-made torture and I have to keep myself in shape motivationally speaking or else I’ll have to do that again. And that sounds torturous. But as far as building strong habits I think that did help a lot. I mean, Sunday Chats is a direct by product of that, and I think generally people seem to like SC.

Second, I spend a lot of my brain energy trying not to worry about shit I have zero control over. If I misread a text and think someone hates me for whatever reason, which I do pretty much on a daily basis, I’m either going to text them back and ask, or do nothing, and if I’ve decided to do nothing, then I don’t get to be upset about it. If someone is doing some wack shit, I’m either gonna keep talking to them, or nah. Just do it, and everything else, well there is nothing you can do about it. Usually. But my depressed-adled and crazy-ass garbage brain still spends many an hour worrying about things I have no control over. But I’ll say this, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at it. Skill comes with time and age.

Third, I think finding someone on relatively equal footing as you but maybe doing something better or more interesting or just simply different than you can really be motivational. It’s easy to get demotivated by someone else’s success, but words I try and hold onto every goddamn day are “someone else’s success does not equate to your failure”.

I hope that helps!

I have not had a lot this year, unfortunately. Avengers was great? I looooved Ant Man and the Wasp! Adored it. Just saw it yesterday (on Sunday, actually!) and it was phenomenal.

But outside of that I don’t have much. It’s crazy to say that in a year where a new JK Rowling Harry Potter movie is coming out, but Johnny Depp is in that movie and he is fucking human trash and for some reason WB is letting him just waltz around like he hasn’t done horrific things. 

But anyway, I’d very much like to see Fireworks, from the same folks what made Your Name, but the dub wasn’t playing anytime I could see it this past weekend. :(

Maybe if it goes up on streaming soon (which I’m hopeful it will) I can see it.

Outside of that, I got nothing.

As someone who actively dislikes breakfast and most breakfast food, this is tricky for me to answer. I know your whole breakfast fetish Quin, so I won’t shit on you here, but I guess it’d just be a simple bagel (everything bagel. or poppy seed, depending on my mood) or maybe pancakes/waffles.

My thing is waffles/pancakes aren’t breakfast food, they’re anytime food. Or 1am food.

I have traveled a lot yes, but it’s been to a lot of the same places over and over again unfortunately. Not that that’s necessarily bad, but it’s been a lot of SF, Boston, etc, etc. 

Having just gone to Cuba, I finally have a passport! So it’s time.

It’s time Japan. I’m coming to you.

And hopefully Ireland too. But those trips will likely have to wait a bit and be very far from one another.

ISLAND BOY!

Well, that is a nightmare scenario for me, because I’d definitely die very quickly. BUT. If I had to choose.

First up would be Bentley from Sly Cooper, because he is a big needy nerd like me and would want to get the hell out of there ASAP just as much as I do, and he could make like, a series of small helicopters out of coconuts or some shit.

SECONDLY.... Hrmm.... harder choice.

There is a really great joke here about choosing Fi from Skyward Sword because maybe she could just DOUSE our way to a better situation, heaven knows...

But I’m mostly above that.

I’d say Cappy from Mairo Odyssey just because I just looked at my Cappy hat and it’d be fun to just capture turtles and crabs and stuff on the island. Not Bentley, he’d consider that an invasion of privacy.

I don’t know if YOU should get Detroit, but I absolutely love it. I’d say read Logan Wilkinson’s excellent review of the game, available here:

http://irrationalpassions.com/detroit-become-human-review/

He liked one relationship in that game a lot more than I did, but generally we’re on the same page with it. I love the game, and if Heavy Rain did anything for you then I think Detroit is better in just about every way.

I’ll say this: it’s not like 2018 has been BANGERs for me, but after 2017, where two of my new favorite games EVER came out (Breath of the Wild and Persona 5) it’s just so impossible to follow that up. That being said, I’m medium to high excited about MANY games this fall: Spyro, Tomb Raider, Valkyria Chronicles, AC Odyssey, Life is Strange S2, Code Vein, Darksiders 3, and Smash Bros. That’s a whole lot in just three short months to eat up like some yummy yummy candy.

So while I think he first half of 2018 has been pretty great, mostly because of Hollow Knight, but also Ni No Kuni 2, Celeste, Yakuza 6, and Moonlighter, its still been good. It’s been a big one for me to reconnect with my indie darlings. And that’s big for me.

I hope that helps!

Checklist

It’s been a while eh?

Well here are some recs!

“The Short But Chilling ‘Captain Spirit’ Weaponizes Empathy Against You” - Patrick Klepek - Waypoint.

I have barely read this but everything about it jives with me. Another one to check out only after you’ve played Captain Spirit, which I assume all of you are going to do, because it’s free, and because I asked you so nicely to do so.

The Music of Persona 4 Golden - Blessing Adeoye - OKBeast.com

I mean, it’s about arguably the best video game soundtrack of all time, from one of the best music-takers in games, that just so happens to be on my favorite video game of all time. What do you want? Go watch.

OK Beast Podcast Episode 100 - OKBeast.com

I’ve found myself far more into OKBP since they merged OKB and PPR into one show. Here is their 100th episode, where they decided to rank the best 100 video games ever. For some reason.

Like, what if on Ep 400 of IPP we ranked the top 400 video games of all time? Fuck that.

Love those boys.

That’s it. That’s all she wrote. Or rather, that’s all I wrote. Sorry this posted Monday, I hadn’t checked my work schedule for a minute and then I saw at like, 8:30pm I had to open today and that means I have to wake up at 6am and I figured I should be responsible and get a full night’s sleep. Still didn’t fall asleep until about 10:30am, but I wrote some of this last night.

I’m rambling.

I love you all.

Do me a favor though?

Keep it real.

[mindlesssportsguru-blog]

2018 NBA Conference Finals

Well, we have officially reached the time of year where all that stands between us and the painful summer months of baseball season is the NHL and NBA playoffs. With the meat of the MLB season quickly approaching, I decided to focus on the last exciting sports story until NFL training camp starts up in August, detailing the final four teams remaining in the NBA playoffs.

Traditionally, the NBA playoffs are notorious for being predictable, lopsided affairs in which the team that was expected to win from the beginning, wins. Since 2000, the sport has been plagued by dynasties, meaning that certain franchises are so dominant over a span of several years that no other teams seem to have a chance. Whether it be the Tim Duncan-led San Antonio Spurs (1999-2007), the Los Angeles Lakers (2000-2002, 2009-2010), or the LeBron James-led Miami Heat (2011-2014), big market franchises monopolize the sport for several years at a time. The last couple years have been no different, as the Golden State Warriors formed a squad that would go on to win two of three championships, with the one loss coming at the hands of The King: LeBron James. After posting an incredible 73 win season (NBA record) and blowing a 3-1 lead (never forget) to James and company, the basketball gods gave everyone in the entire world the middle-finger when former-MVP Kevin Durant decided to take his talents to the Bay Area, joining Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green in a star-studded lineup. After much speculation on whether this team would gel correctly and blow everyone out of the water, the Warriors slashed and devastated their way through the 2017 playoffs with a record of 16-1 (T-NBA record), topped off with yet another title. Following this basketball killing spree by the Warriors, the rest of the NBA seemed to be in the sunken place, watching the new and improved “Lineup of Death” (yeah, that’s literally what they’re called) ravage the rest of the sport.

Fast forward to now. We are nearly a year removed from Durant nailing that three in LeBron’s face in game five, and things are relatively the same as they were then. The Warriors are PROBABLY going to win again, and they are PROBABLY going to beat LeBron’s Cavaliers in the Finals for the third time in four years. This post could end after that sentence, but where’s the fun in that? With both Conference Finals surprisingly knotted up at two games a piece, the next week could dictate the landscape of the NBA for several years to come. With the title (seemingly) up for grabs, here is some context on the two matchups thus far, and what each team must do to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy in June.

The East

Over the last 15 years, the rest of the Eastern Conference has served as the Avengers equivalent to LeBron James’ Thanos (sorry to anyone who hasn’t seen Infinity War). Every couple years, there seems to be a Thor-like team who looks like they may have what it takes to derail The King, and every couple years LeBron is forced to snap his fingers and eviscerate that “challenger” from existence. The Paul George Pacers, the Derrick Rose Bulls, and the Al Horford Hawks (lol) have been LeBron’s biggest competition, which is the equivalent to an average sized man standing in front of an Escalade traveling 80 mph thinking “Hey I might have a chance at stopping this thing.” Bottom line: LeBron James is a force the likes of the NBA has never seen before. These playoffs have been no different up to this point, as LeBron has single-handedly led this group to the conference finals. Averaging a ludicrous 33.7 points on 55% shooting, LeBron is on a mission to reach an unprecedented eighth consecutive NBA Finals. After being pushed to seven games in the first round against a gritty Pacers team, the Cavs embarrassed a 59 win Raptors squad, a team that has been stopped in their tracks by LeBron for years now. With his game-winning buzzer beater in game five, LeBron ripped the hearts out of every player and fan associated with the franchise, including famous rapper Drake, who had been chirping James from the sidelines throughout the series. The Cavs would go on to decimate the Raptors in game four, leading to the firing of Head Coach Dwane Casey, a Coach of the Year candidate.

What has been most noteworthy about this Cavaliers team is the absence of anything resembling a supporting cast. Other than Kevin Love who, when healthy, is an all star caliber player, this is undoubtedly LeBron’s worst supporting cast since his first stint in Cleveland. Playing themselves into the fourth seed in the East, these Cavs looked both offensively and defensively challenged throughout the season. The strategy is simple: surround LeBron with perimeter shooters and hope it is good enough. JR Smith and Kyle Korver could be viable assets on a championship team, but both lack dimensions to their game other than perimeter shooting. Adding Jeff Green looked to be a promising move right up until the playoffs, when everyone remembered Jeff Green is a bonafide playoff scrub. Many players came and went this season through various “panic trades” the Cavs made in an attempt to appease The King. Jordan Clarkson, Rodney Hood, and Larry Nance Jr. are all solid role players, but their ability to compete against the likes of Golden State or Houston is seriously doubtful.

The most glaring absence from this squad is all star PG Kyrie Irving, who voiced his dissatisfaction with the Cavs last year and was traded to the Boston Celtics. For the last seven years, LeBron has always had a “sidekick” to help in his quest for the Finals, and Kyrie was just that. Kyrie’s performance in the legendary 3-1 comeback against Golden State was nothing short of transcendent, and his scoring prowess is widely respected throughout the league. His departure from the Cavs this off-season certainly took a toll on the Cavaliers’ internal situation, and perhaps more importantly, created an Eastern Conference foe unlike any LeBron has faced in the last ten years.

Enter the Boston Celtics, arguably the greatest franchise in the history of the sport. General Manager Danny Ainge has worked like a maestro the last five years, acquiring draft picks and assets like low hanging fruit. More importantly, he scored big time with his last two first round picks, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. These two potential all stars, in conjunction with defensive expert and “team dad” Al Horford have created a threatening team in the East, playing themselves into the two seed. What is more impressive, however, is that Boston is without their two best players. PG Kyrie Irving and SF Gordon Hayward. After losing these two stars over the course of the regular season Boston has seen tremendous support from role players such as Marcus Smart, Marcus Morris, and Terry Rozier.

So, how does this team match up with the Cavaliers? Surprisingly, the Celtics can stand toe-to-toe with the Cavaliers and have been very successful thus far. While the Celtics cannot match LeBron’s size, speed, and athleticism, their role players have been outperforming the Cavs’ up to this point. Their outstanding bench, along with terrific performances at home are going to make this team a tough out for the Cavaliers. That being said, let’s bring this back to the Marvel Universe. With all my heart, I would love to see the good guys come back and defeat Thanos. It almost feels like it needs to happen. As much as I want to believe in the Celtics and their youth movement, I simply cannot pick against LeBron James until it is proven that he can lose. Whether it be next year or in 2026, LeBron will eventually decline, but this is not the team that is going to get it done. PREDICTION: Cavs in 6.

The West

No matter which team comes out of the East, they are going to have their work cut out for them against the Western Conference Champion. In one corner, we have the Golden State Warriors. You can learn pretty much everything you need to know about this team in a couple sentences, so here it goes.

This is the greatest team ever assembled. Period. End of story. A lot of romantics like to look back on the days of Michael Jordan’s Bulls and say that they could defeat this Warriors team, but that is wrong. At point guard, the Warriors have Steph Curry, who has broken the NBA 3PT record for 4 consecutive years, and is widely regarded as the best shooter in the history of the game. He led this team to a 73 win season without Kevin Durant, and is the engine that makes the team roll. Did I mention he is a two-time NBA league MVP?

Next up, we have Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Thompson is widely known as the second best shooter in NBA history, which is a bit ridiculous that he is teamed up with Curry. His ability to knock down shots and get hotter than Hell in a matter of minutes is terrifying for any team they play against, especially considering he is their third best offensive weapon. He is also a flexible defender, specializing in taking out the other team’s best perimeter scorer. Draymond is a freak defender. While Klay is an outstanding perimeter defender, it is Draymond’s versatility that makes him unique. He can guard every position on the floor, making him a valuable asset that allows the Warriors to play their “Lineup of Death”. He also possesses a terrific basketball IQ, allowing him to run the pick and roll with Curry to perfection.

Those three together form an unstoppable core that allowed them to set the NBA record for wins in a season. Any team in the league would find it nearly impossible to matchup with all three of them. Now that we have finished covering the Warriors, let’s move o-...wait...wait a minute...nevermind we’re not done talking about the Warriors. If those three players weren’t enough, God thought it would be funny if the Warriors went out and signed all-time great scorer Kevin Durant, a former MVP. His 6’11” frame matched with his ability to handle the ball and shoot from anywhere on the court make him a lethal weapon. Many consider him to be the best pure scorer in NBA history, and he has certainly earned that type of reputation. He is the second best player in the NBA, behind LeBron, and now rather than having to score on his own, he can play his part in the well oiled machine of the Golden State Warriors. Before KD, the Warriors were probably going to win the championship. With KD, it is nearly a foregone conclusion.

Unless the Houston Rockets have anything to say about it. The Rockets were constructed specifically to defeat the Warriors, and thus far they have performed, tying the series 2-2 last night in Oakland. Built around All-Pro scorer James Harden and the “Point God” Chris Paul, the Rockets won 65 games during the regular season, leading the league. With those two ball handlers on the team, the Rockets can play night in and night out with 48 minutes of elite ball handling and decision making. Their role players are primarily perimeter shooters, and they play their roles to perfection. To bring it all together, C Clint Capela has proved himself to be an elite rim protector and scorer inside, perhaps garnering a max contract this offseason.

With stars like James Harden and Chris Paul, this team looks poised to make a run into the NBA Finals. They have great coaching, a great scorer, a great point guard, and a greater than average bench. These are all the aspects we usually see in a Championship team. However, if you have not realized yet, I am more so a realist than a romantic, and I do not believe the Rockets will beat the Warriors. The Warriors have been to this point for the fourth consecutive season now, and their experience will be tested over the next three games. That experience coupled with their ability to rip your throat out at any given point with their three point shooting, makes me believe they will not only defeat the Rockets in six games, but they will go on to win the NBA Finals in four games (five if they feel like being nice). PREDICTION: Warriors in 6.

[dccomicsnews]

A female creative team is something of a rarity for Wonder Woman comics. The character was originally created by William Moulton Marston, and many of her most famous storylines were penned by male authors like Greg Rucka and George Perez. At the same time, director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot just proved with their blockbuster Wonder Woman film that female creators can take the character to new heights.

EW recently caught up with one half of the new creative team for Wonder Woman, Shea Fontana (who is teaming up with Mirka Andolfo for a six-issue run starting with Wonder Woman #26) to preview her new Wonder Woman run and discuss what the character means at this cultural moment — especially when she’s written by women.

  ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve been writing Wonder Woman in the DC Super Hero Girls comic. What will be similar or different about your interpretation of her here?

SHEA FONTANA: She’s a pretty different character in DC Super Hero Girls to where we are with Wonder Woman now, but at her DNA level she’s the same character. She’s certainly more mature in this arc, but I think the things that make her Wonder Woman – her sincerity, her search for peace and justice, her desire to know the truth, those things all really remain the same. She’s certainly at a different point in her life in this arc. She’s seen a lot of things, and she’s trying to hang on to those values that are so important to her when she has seen so much war and devastation in the world. I always find it interesting to make the Lasso of Truth her tool of choice because truth is what allows us to be compassionate for people and allow us to connect with people.

  EW: Speaking of war, this issue has several scenes of Diana at a UN refugee camp or interacting with military officials. Her role as an ambassador for peace sets her apart from other superheroes like Batman, who think of themselves as explicitly waging a war. How will you be playing with that here?

SF: In this issue, we take her from this place where she’s been in a lot of battles, she’s basically been fighting nonstop since where she left off in Rucka’s run, and now she is a warrior that fights for peace. But how do you deal with that, and what does that mean when it feels like the battle never ends, even when she comes home? She’s back in the U.S. in the issue, and she’s kind of trying to have a break and act like a normal person and have this time to herself, but she doesn’t really know how to do that. Like anyone returning from war and battle really has to struggle. She’s comfortable on the battlefield, she’s comfortable in war, she knows what her place is there, but when she comes home it’s confusing.

It’s about Wonder Woman finding that even when she’s out of the war zone, there’s all these battles being waged around her. She’s figuring out how to do that, and really at the heart of this arc is the relationship between her and Etta Candy. Here we have two really strong women who put themselves into danger on a daily basis but would also take a bullet for each other. How do you play with that dynamic when they’re both such strong forceful personalities?

  EW: Etta Candy was a foundational part of Wonder Woman’s mythos at the start, then she went away for a few decades, and now she is back, though in different forms – here she’s a military intelligence officer, in the film she’s a WWI-era secretary, and originally she’s a college girl. What is the constant about Etta across these different versions, and what does she add to Wonder Woman?

SF: I think what I like about Etta is what a good friend she is. She gives a nice counterpoint to Wonder Woman, she’s the worldly one who knows what’s going on and can help her through these adventures. There was a scene in Rucka’s Year One story where she gives Wonder Woman her first margarita. I thought that was so funny and a perfect moment to show how this relationship works. I love how these two women play off each other. There’s no competition, no gossipy jealousy. It’s just this pure friendship that they have.

EW: You’re working with artist Mirka Andolfo for this story. How do you guys work together and what does she add to your interpretation of Wonder Woman?

SF: Mirka Andolfo has been a really cool artist to work with. She adds a wonderful femininity to Wonder Woman. Sometimes you see her and the interpretation can be very masculine in the art, but Mirka does a great job of balancing, showing that she is a warrior who’s tough and strong but she’s a woman too. Mirka is also great at capturing action and building suspense, as she does in this issue. She’s done a fantastic job. We do write full scripts, so she’s doing a full script, and then we go back and forth as the art comes in and make tweaks. She absolutely has any leeway to make changes because she’s an incredible artist and I completely trust her.

  EW: The Wonder Woman movie was highly acclaimed, and one thing it seemed to get credit for was having a female director, Patty Jenkins. You guys are both women working on this comic. What does it mean to have women creators writing Wonder Woman?

SF: There’s definitely a subtext and subtlety that we bring it. As women, we understand a little bit about what it was to be Wonder Woman. It’s not something that’s been impossible for male writers, I think a lot of male writers and artists have done an incredible job with her. But I think you’ll get a little extra dose of Wonder Woman’s feminine side and how she balances that. Especially in the first couple issues, we see her struggling with ‘you can’t be a woman and a warrior at the same time,’ and how she marries those sides.

  EW: This arc seems to be partially about Wonder Woman trying to achieve a work-life balance, and that struggle can be harder for women, who are often torn between giving themselves up to others and taking time for themselves, right?

SF: That’s absolutely a theme of this arc: How much of Wonder Woman’s self should she sacrifice? I think of it as a metaphor – you can give one kidney and save one person’s life, or you can give two kidneys and save two lives, but that would be crazy. We have this expectation of superheroes to give and give and give, but how do you preserve yourself when you’re in this position where you know you can give and give and help people, but at what cost?

  EW: We get a flashback to Diana’s childhood on Themyscira in this issue, showing her pressured to give up a beloved doll. What do you like about flashbacks like that? Will they continue throughout your run?

SF: Those will continue throughout the arc. That moment was actually slightly personal for me. It’s a lot like something that happened to me when I was a kid. I had this ratty doll and I loved it so much, but my mom said it was gross and I should throw it away. I was trying so hard to be tough for my mom that I was like “okay, I’ll throw away my doll.” It was such a hard thing for me to deal with. Later when I was an adult I told my mom about it and she was like, I had no idea. She actually found one of those dolls on eBay and replaced it because she felt so bad. It’s one of those things where kids, and I see this in the work I do writing for kids, are so desperate to please their parents and show they’re a big girl that sometimes they do things that are very hard, but you don’t even know what the challenge is for them because they’re pretty good at covering up. That’s just one thing I wanted to bring to Wonder Woman, how the expectations for her, being the only girl on Themyscira, were very high. How can she just be a kid when she’s among these Amazons?

  EW: Between the 75th anniversary last year and Rucka’s much-celebrated Rebirth run and now the movie, it feels like Wonder Woman is more resonant in the zeitgeist than ever. How does she speak to our current moment?

SF: I think her moment is long past due, and I’m glad she’s finally getting it. It was so cool to be writing the Wonder Woman comic as the movie was coming out and seeing my entire Twitter feed of just people loving it. It also makes a high bar for me, but it was just amazing to see people connecting with this character. It’s not that she wasn’t connecting before, it’s just happening now in a bigger public way. So we have all these lifelong fans who are finally able to see what they dreamt of seeing on the screen for 40 years, and then we have all these new people who are just superhero fans or film fans who now find Wonder Woman and get to love it too. Women’s rights are always moving forward. We had a big year with the Women’s March and seeing how people are really in tune to the struggle for equal rights and equal pay and all those things, that it’s just becoming more public and part of the zeitgeist. Of course, this is how it should be.

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DC’s Shea Fontana Talks Her New Wonder Woman Run A female creative team is something of a rarity for Wonder Woman comics. The character was originally created by William Moulton Marston, and many of her most famous storylines were penned by male authors like Greg Rucka and George Perez.

[inyourbestwriting]

This week’s dose of local funtime is brought to you by San Francisco’s Japantown. I’m leaving the Inner Sunset for this one, but it’s worth it. It’s also rather topical, as the annual Cherry Blossom Festival is happening there this weekend. 

Firstly, a history lesson. Often overshadowed by its whopping great big Chinese neighbour (the largest Chinatown in the States) our Japantown, or Nihonmachi is small and can easily be explored in half a day. The Japanese first started to arrive here in the 1860s and originally settled around Chinatown. Following the 1906 earthquake, many were forced to move and chose to settle where Japantown stands today: about a mile west of Union Square, which is not somewhere that will feature in my SF Places to See.

The reason for its modest size is a sad one. The Second World War was not kind to Japanese Americans, many of whom were sent to internment camps. Prior to the war, Japantown spanned twenty blocks, but was shrunk to its current size of around six. Not only did the war slow the steady Japanese population growth, those returning to the city afterwards found they could not reclaim it in its entirety as others had moved in in the meantime. The African-American population of the area increased from five thousand to nearly forty five thousand  between 1940 and 1950 as a result of both an increase in wartime jobs (a lot in shipbuilding) and because of people fleeing the Jim Crow laws in the South. As you can read more about here: “since housing was available in Japantown, many people moved into the houses, set up businesses, and created a new community; this displaced some of the returning Japanese families but allowed for the Fillmore to flourish as the Harlem of the West. Japantown endured and remains an integral part of San Francisco alongside the Fillmore.”

Whilst small, what we have today is a busy and thriving centre of Japanese culture. It’s not classically beautiful. In fact much of it is pretty ugly: typical of 1960s concrete-heavy architecture, and the heart of it is based in a shopping mall called the Japan Centre which straddles (quite literally, over a bridge) Geary, a main city road. 

That said, do not be deterred; it’s still lovely. It’s focal point is the Peace Plaza, featuring a five-tiered (concrete) pagoda, a gift from the people of Osaka. Just across the road on Buchanan Street is a pedestrianised area designed to resemble a river. Also concrete, but somehow manages to be surprisingly pretty in spite of this. 

My Japantown favourites in here can be divided into edible and giftable. 

On the edible side: Sophie’s Crepes, where the sweet crêpe with black sesame is the thing to get. Mifune-Don is good for savoury pancakes, called okonomiyake. Kissako Tea is known for its onigiri, or rice balls, stuffed with various delicious things. Uji Time will furnish you with a ice-cream in flavours such as matcha and tofu, served in a soft-baked cone shaped like a fish inspired by taiyaki, which are seam bream-shaped cakes. I’ve also heard good things about Sushi An, a tiny little sushi bar that you’d miss if you didn’t know it was there. I’ve not been but it comes highly recommended by sushi fan friends. 

All of these are inside the mall. Outside are Ramen Yamadaya, which is a chain and not fancy at all but still good. The slow-cooked pork that comes with the ramen is super duper delicious, especially on a damp and foggy SF day. Almost opposite this is the wonderful Benkyodo, an original Japantown business that opened in 1906. Its owners were interned, but reopened the business following the war. Pictured above, it looks like an old American diner, complete with red formica counter, serving (pretty terrible) diner food including hamburgers, hot dogs and slow-burnt coffee. They are NOT why you go. Your reason is instead their wagashi, or sweets (“confections that win affections!”, as they say themselves): both mochi and manju (varying riffs on a glutinous, stuffed cake made from rice flour). There are lots of traditional ones filled with things like red bean paste or with green tea in the gooey outer layer, but also more Americanised versions such as the peanut butter manju, which sounds terrible but is actually amazing. 

Super Mira market is lovely: a small, family-run supermarket that feels like somewhere your granny would shop, were she Japanese and in a Wes Anderson film. The produce is hand-packaged and the price labels are often handwritten. Aside from all your kitchen staples, it also has a tiny great-for-lunch restaurant which serves an ever-changing selection of bento, including shrimp shumai, or Chinese-style dumplings, for which it has become popular. Bella ate her first solid food in there, in the form of an udon noodle. Also inside the shop is a tiny bakery called Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop, famous for its coffee crunch cake covered in shards of honeycomb. 

Back inside the mall, on the to-gift side is Daiso, a big Japanese dollar-store full of all sorts of household things you never realised you needed, including all the Pockys your heart could ever desire, joined-at-the-top chopsticks for kids and plastic molds that turn sticky rice balls into little panda heads. Ichiban Kan is along the same lines, just not as cheap. Also great for kids is Amiko, for things like character backpacks, tableware and food-shaped erasers which make me wish I’d kept up the collection I started when I was six. Pika Pika a shop full of photo booths which produce customisable stickers. Nippon-Ya is a gift shop that sells traditional (and mainly edible) host gifts, all wrapped in lovely paper, as well as other Japanese sweets such as outlandishly-flavoured - to us Westerners, at least - KitKats (apple vinegar? Sweet potato?). Kinokuniya bookshop is full of enticing wonders I sadly cannot read, as well as toys and notebooks. Its entire lower level is given over to manga and anime, if you’re that way inclined. 

Outside the mall is Paper Tree, selling reams and reams of beautiful paper for both wrapping and origami, as well as other stationery and cutesy toys which would make more great presents for kids. I also love the kitchenware shop Sanko for its ceramics and delicate glassware. My brother bought me this bright yellow mug from there with a rough, unglazed handle. 

A great way to see the area is by doing a food tour, such as the one run by Edible Excursions. If you’d rather do something more relaxing, the Kabuki Springs and Spa is an onsen, or bathhouse, about which I’ve heard good things but not yet experienced. As you may have gathered, my visits thus far have mainly been about the food. 

[sameverything]

Mariners Spring Training Notes Part 3

It’s beginning to look a lot like April (mid/late March).

Later today, the M’s fly to Japan.  They have 2 exhibition games against the Yomiuri Giants before opening the 2019 regular season with two games against the Oakland A’s.  

Next Wednesday I’ll wake up at my usual time of 4:30 AM and be able to catch the last hour of the season opener on the radio on the way to work.  (I made the mistake of telling my wife that if there was a not sketchy place that was open at 2 AM and playing the televised game, I’d be tempted to wake up earlier to watch it.  She was very confused and wondered if I had hidden a secret baseball obsession.  You think you know someone, but can you ever really?)

Right.  The M’s! They’ve lost Kyle Seager for a month and Ryon Healy will likely be manning third base in his absence.  Healy’s got power, for sure, but the Mariners will need him to keep his average up.  This leaves a bit more breathing room in the 1B/DH logjam, and gives a month for Healy, Daniel Vogelbach, Edwin Encarnacion, and Jay Bruce to all find their rhythm.  Healy and Bruce showed off their rhythm last night against the Giants (SF, not Yomiuri,), and Vogelbach has been very solid this Spring.  Edwin Encarnacion will be good.  It’s hard for me to give him my heart though.  Nothing against him, just the knowing that we’re only renting him til we can trade him.  And that’s likely the case with Bruce too.  Such is the fan’s dilemma.

The pitching has been a little worrisome, but I’m reminding myself that you can’t base anything on Spring Training.  I’m still hoping Felix Hernandez has a solid season.  But if he doesn’t?  I’m worried about his presence in the clubhouse.  In a rebuilding phase the M’s can absorb an ERA around 5 if he’s working hard and being encouraging and positive in the clubhouse.  They can’t absorb the negative influence on the young guys he could choose to have.  But, I’m hoping for the best.  I’d love to see him back in a Mariners’ uniform next season, though I don’t think that’s likely.  Though Marco Gonzales didn’t make it out of the 3rd inning last night, I love how he fought back in the 2nd, 3 straight strikeouts after giving up a run.  I also love that Yusei Kikuchi’s Mariner’s debut will be in Japan.

Most of the new young guys are starting the 2019 season in AAA, for the Tacoma Rainiers.  Just bought my ticket for a mid April game against the Albuquerque Isotopes.  Two tickets, actually.  Despite her protests, my wife is an enabler.  It’ll be good to see those guys get a bit more seasoning before they’re big league ready.

Looking forward to the season!  We have some talent that could surprise, and with luck we could compete.  I’m trying to temper my expectations.  But it’s baseball.   GO MARINERS!!

[onlykeithpowers]

You might know Keith Powers from his runway/campaign days, but lately, the model-turned-actor has been slaying TV screens! From MTV to BET, he’s definitely one to watch, so naturally, VULKAN had to chat with the star about his first role, adjusting to fame, celebrity crushes, to what’s coming up in 2017. Be sure to catch him on BET’s 3 night miniseries, “The New Edition Story,” where Powers portrays the iconic Ronnie Devoe, airing January 24th-26th.

Before you became an actor, you were a model, walking some pretty prestigious runways and representing some incredible brands. What was your favourite moment from your time as a model? 

I think my favourite moment as a model was being at work, being creative, and seeing the final product. I wasn’t really in love with it, but it was good for me because it kept the bills paid. 

 How did you get into it?

I was recruited by J.E. Models in San Francisco; I was living in SF at the time and football wasn’t going as planned. It wasn’t all peachy right away and I still had to figure everything out. I moved to L.A. and still wanted to play football. I had a retail job, but decided to give modeling a shot anyway and try to get signed. I went to a meeting with Ford Models but they didn’t accept me and from there, I went to J.E. Models and they said they would recommend me, as opposed to me going by myself. They recommended me to Wilhelmina and I was like no, they won’t sign me, but I went anyway! After two days went by, I called them and asked what was going on, and they were like, come on down…and they signed me! The rest is history.

Are there any brands or models that you’re still hoping to work with? 

I just want to do campaigns for my favourite brands; Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, stuff like that.

Did you ever find yourself drawing inspiration from another model’s career?

I always thought Nathan Owens was cool! I really always liked his career, but a modelling career was never one that I “had to have!” It never did anything for me, and I knew it wasn’t in my heart.

Do you think your experience as a model prepared you to be an actor? Why or why not? 

Definitely! It got me used to being in front of the camera and on set with a full crew. I look at it as a blessing and I know that everything happens for a reason. It prepared me for the world of acting. Sometimes, you think you’re ready for something and you’re really not, and when I was started modelling, there was no way I was ready to be an actor. The modelling process really helped me with the basics.

What encouraged you to become an actor and what steps did you take to achieve this goal? 

The performances encouraged me to get into acting and people laughing, crying, and talking about what they saw on TV. It really inspired me to become an actor. I want to inspire people, I want them to laugh and cry and be in awe. I want people to see me and feel like I do when I see Will Smith. He makes you want to be on his team, and I want people to feel like that with me. That’s the luxury of being an actor and a storyteller. 

Can you tell us a bit about your first-ever role? What was going through your mind when you first stepped on set?

I acted in a movie called “House Party: Tonight’s the Night” and I was frightened to be on set and do something like that! I’m not going to lie, I’m so happy that I did that because that was when I fell in love with acting. We shot the film in South Africa, which was crazy! My first job I ever did, and I got to shoot in South Africa…how many people can say that? I was so nervous, but I felt like a natural; I was scared but I was ready. I was like, “this is what I’m going to do now.”

So from the get-go, you knew that acting was your niche, not modelling? Yeah, exactly! I felt it instantly. Whenever I’m acting, I never feel like I want to go home. When I’m on set, I never want to leave, even when I’m tired. I just feel the most joy when I’m doing it.

What did you enjoy the most about playing Theo on MTV’s “Faking It?” 

What I loved about playing Theo was that it was the first time people saw me on TV and they fell in love with that character. Even though his love interest was wrong, they (the audience) still stood by him. It was a great way to introduce me to TV and I got a better understanding of the episodic structure. “Faking It” opened a major door for me and it was so amazing to do because it was comedy and I had really wanted to make people laugh and I still do…and the show was a perfect introduction! 

We see that you have a crush on fictional character, Khaleesi, from “Game of Thrones.” Are there any real life celebrity crushes you can tell us about?

I’ve always loved Halle Berry and have a huge crush on Emilia Clarke who plays Khaleesi. She’s so strong in that role. What I look for in a woman is what Khaleesi is; strong, independent, and someone who takes charge like a boss. I really love women of the 90s-J Lo, Salli Richardson, Nia Long, and Julia Roberts. Nowadays, I think Zendaya and Zoe Kravitz are pretty epic. I love natural looking women and their simple beauty, not when they look like Barbie dolls. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s just not for me!

In “Straight Outta Compton,” you played Dr. Dre’s younger brother, Tyree. What did you do to get into character? Did you feel any pressure to be a part of a biopic that told the story of the legendary, NWA?

That was a huge role, and I felt like a had a big responsibility to play Dr. Dre’s little brother, so my whole thing was just to make them proud, before anyone else. I thought, my job is to make Dr. Dre happy and proud, that’s number one and I’ll let everything else fall into place. The film became an instant classic! I knew it was going to be big, but I never thought it was going to become what it did. I was so focused on making Dr. Dre proud that I didn’t realize we were making a classic. 

Speaking of biopics, you’re set to star in BET’s 3 night miniseries about music group, New Edition, which comes out this month! Can you tell us a bit about the role and how it was different from your other ones? 

This one was different because I’m singing and dancing, playing a character who goes through three different eras, and I’m a lead! I’m portraying a member from a legendary group and I’ve never danced before, and I had to learn how to do a Boston accent. It was totally different, it was amazing, and I’m super happy about it. I’m excited!! 

Did you get the opportunity to meet New Edition? If so, what was that moment like for you? 

Meeting New Edition was CRAZY! I hadn’t even been booked yet; they were still putting me through the ringer, I was the last person to be casted. Even though I was dancing with the main cast, it still wasn’t 100%. So when I met them, it made me want it even more because the whole group was behind the project and I knew I HAD to book it.

Were there any obstacles that you had to overcome while playing this role?

The dancing, for sure! It was the first time I ever felt like I was going to quit because I just couldn’t get it down. I was so frustrated and so when I did finally get it, I realized that you really could do anything you put your mind to. I was casted late, so I had a shorter time to learn the routines and even when we started shooting, I still wasn’t fully ready, but it was crunch time and it was now or never! 

 What was your most memorable moment from the set of “The New Edition Story?”

It was performing in front of the extras and the original members of the group. Seeing them watching me was so nerve-wracking. I’m performing in front of the people that were living this! That was really memorable because I knew I had to get this down and I had to represent Ronnie Devoe right.

Like being someone’s understudy for his or her real life?

That’s exactly right! 

 At what moment will you know that you’ve made it as an actor?

I think the moment you know you’ve made it is when you don’t have to audition anymore! I feel like I’ve made it…I still audition just not as much anymore. When you know you’re solid in this industry, is when they call you and know who you are. You’re choosing what you want to do and have more control. At the end of the day, though, it’s all very personal. If you want to do one commercial and you did it, than you’ve made it! That’s what matters the most, because when you compare your career to others, you stress yourself out. You can’t compare your career to someone else’s because every career and path is different.

What’s been the hardest part to adjusting to a life of fame?

Right now, it hasn’t been too hard! I’m just trying to remain humble and down-to-earth. I don’t want people to feel like they can’t talk to me because I’m a celebrity. I want to be that guy you can walk up to in a grocery store and have a conversation with, not be surrounded by bodyguards and unapproachable. I just want to show people that you can make it in this industry and still be a human! We’re not robots. I want to be there for the people. I learned that from Mike Tyson, with what he said about Floyd Mayweather, who I love, by the way. Tyson said that Mayweather isn’t a real champion because he can’t walk the streets by himself; he needs bodyguards because some people don’t like him. A real champion can walk the streets like Muhammad Ali did, a champion for the people. It stuck with me because I want to be someone for the people, not someone you see on TV and then see in person and can’t even come up and talk to. I don’t want to be that! My whole thing is staying grounded so the adjustment hasn’t been that difficult.

2017 is shaping up to be a huge year for you! Which parts are you most excited about and what can we expect from you in the future? 

I’m excited for all my projects to drop and for new fans to meet my work! “Famous In Love” comes out April 18th, “The New Edition Story” airs the 24th, 25th, and 26th of January on BET, and “Reality High” comes on Netflix in the summer! I’m excited for this year and I think it’s one of the most important ones of my career…it’s a big year and I just have to play my cards right

[instantdeerlover]

Where To Go When You Finally Realize The Bungalow Is Terrible added to Google Docs

Where To Go When You Finally Realize The Bungalow Is Terrible

In 2012, a bar opened in a bungalow house on the grounds of a Santa Monica hotel and instantly became the most popular place to drink in the city. It was called The Bungalow, and it had a giant patio a block from the beach, fire pits to curl up next to with friends, exceedingly strong drinks, and a lot of hot people you recognize from TV. It was, in theory, the perfect LA bar. Except for one thing: none of that actually happens here.

For maybe five minutes when it first opened, The Bungalow lived up to its potential. But heading to this bone-crushing mess today is a bonafide nightmare. The giant line snakes around an unshaded parking lot next to some port-a-potties, the sprawling bar space is packed in like a Hollywood dance club, and you can’t even see the ocean. As for that hot crowd of famous people? It’s just a bunch of tourists taking selfies with surfboards and post-grads in identical outfits with an open tab on their parent’s credit card.

You can do better than The Bungalow. Whether you’re looking to have a cocktail by the beach or make day-drinking plans for a group, there are better bar options all over the city. Go to one of these spots instead.

The Spots  Frank Wonho Lee Mama Shelter $ $ $ $ Hollywood $$$$ 6500 Selma Ave

Mama Shelter in Hollywood can get just as crowded as Bungalow, but at least this rooftop bar really does have good views and far fewer people screaming about their friend Taylor and how “she always does this!” The colorful space has foosball tables, outdoor movies, a full restaurant, and giant lounge beds wrapped in Mexican blankets with a shockingly low percentage of human sweat on them. The cocktails are all movie-themed (the tequila-heavy Y Tu Mama Tambien is our favorite), which is endearing simply because you’re staring right at the Hollywood sign.

 Nomad Rooftop Bar $ $ $ $ Downtown LA $$$$ 649 S Olive St

A new hotel rooftop bar opens every week downtown, but NoMad is our favorite. The big poolside space rides a fine line between relaxed and rowdy, with a crowd that careens towards the latter. There are great views, servers who won’t vanish for 45 minutes, and a giant stone sculpture of a Roman god’s face that looks like it was stolen from the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. But the real reason we love it here is the drinks. Whether it’s the spicy paloma or the frozen blue Hawaiian, NoMad’s cocktails are extremely well-made and strong enough to validate their $16-$18 price point.

 The Lincoln $ $ $ $ Venice $$$$ 2536 Lincoln Blvd.

Finding a place to drinking outdoors on the Westside is easy. Finding a place to drink outdoors on the Westside with a crowd that doesn’t make you want to leave immediately is much harder. Skip all the fist-pumping bros in Sperrys, and go to The Lincoln in Venice instead. This cocktail bar on Lincoln Blvd. feels like a well-designed mechanic’s shop, and while it does get crowded at night, Saturday and Sunday afternoons are much more low-key. The front patio is great for lounging with solid cocktails (get the Bitter About My Hot Friend) and a crowd that generally knows how to communicate without having to shout “yo” before every sentence.

Sorry—looks like you screwed up that email address

INFATUATION NEWSLETTER Get our newest guides & reviews first,

plus more restaurant intel you won't find anywhere else. TRVL ATL ATX BOS CHI LDN LA MIA NYC PHL SF SEA DC Subscribe Smart move. Excellent information will arrive in your inbox soon. Do you have friends and family who also eat food? Enter their emails below and we’ll make sure they’re eating well. (Don’t worry, we won’t subscribe them to our newsletter - they can do that themselves.) Help Your Friends No Thanks Well done. You’re a good person. All good. We still like you. Want to quickly find restaurants on the go? Download The Infatuation app.   Apotheke $ $ $ $ Chinatown $$$$ 1746 N Spring St

It’s Saturday, you just bought a new shirt that you feel good about, and you want to drink somewhere that makes you feel like you know about cool things. Skip the Westside entirely and go to Apotheke in Chinatown. This cocktail bar imported from NYC has a 19th-century apothecary aesthetic and medicine-themed cocktails that are different and creative. The interior is somewhat small and gets crowded quickly, so head outside to the massive back patio, post up at the outdoor bar, and if anyone asks about your shirt, just tell them that you bought it from a pop-up.

 Block Party $ $ $ $ Highland Park $$$$ 5052 York Blvd

There’s a difference between casual day-drinking and blacking out and sexting your landlord from underneath a ping pong table. If you’re looking for the former, go to Block Party. The mostly-outdoor bar in Highland Park is one of our favorite day-drinking spots on the Eastside with a huge back patio, an excellent craft beer list, shuffleboard, and a boozy snow cone you can accidentally spill on your crush to get their attention. They don’t serve any food, but you can order delivery from any restaurant you want.

 Idle Hour Bar $ $ $ $ North Hollywood $$$$ 4824 Vineland Ave

The novelty of drinking inside a surfer bungalow a block from the beach is nice, but the novelty of drinking inside a giant wooden barrel built in 1941 in North Hollywood is better. Idle Hour reopened in 2015 after being closed for 30 years and has been one of the most popular places to drink in the Valley ever since. It’s rowdy any time of the day here, but you and your friends are always able to find a corner to take over. They have a massive beer list, good cocktails, and a back patio with a giant statue of a dog smoking a pipe.

 Tropicana at the Roosevelt $ $ $ $ Hollywood $$$$ 7000 Hollywood Blvd

At first glance, Tropicana is another poolside bar with a crowd trying too hard and cocktails that are more expensive than the Lyft you took to get there. Your eyes aren’t totally deceiving you. But the longer you stay at this iconic Hollywood pool, the more you start to like it. Surrounded by 1960s bungalows, Tropicana is the closest thing LA has to a weekend in Palm Springs, and the space is big enough to keep that girl who just cannonballed into the pool with her Louboutins on at a safe distance. Even though they’re expensive ($16+), the drinks are good and, most importantly, strong.

 Tower 12 $ $ $ $ American ,  Bar Food  in  Hermosa Beach $$$$ 53 Pier Avenue Not

Rated

Yet

It’s been a successful day at the beach, and you and your friends don’t want it to be over yet. You aren’t getting into Bungalow with those flip flops on, so go to Tower 12 in Hermosa Beach instead. In fact, just spend the whole day there. The sand is cleaner, the water is nicer, and Tower 12 is the perfect post-beach drinking spot. On the second floor on the Hermosa Pier, this bar/restaurant pulls in crowds for cold drinks and good burgers, and that’s all that really matters to you at this point. Stick around at night when the DJ appears and things get a bit wild.

 Jakob Layman Big Dean's Ocean Front Cafe $ $ $ $ Bar Food ,  Bar  in  Santa Monica $$$$ 1615 Ocean Front Walk

There are only so many Trents in pastel khaki shorts you can meet before your mind goes into freefall. Avoid them at Big Dean’s. This classic outdoor dive on the Santa Monica boardwalk across from the pier might be in the heart of the tourist zone, but we’ve never seen a tourist here. Instead, you’ll find mostly regulars who are not being primed to take over Dad’s consulting business in Manhattan Beach in three years. Drinks are cheap (it’s beer and wine only), the bar food is solid (get the chili cheese fries), and it’s a great place to watch a game.

 Resident $ $ $ $ Arts District $$$$ 428 S Hewitt St.

We love Resident because no matter what you’re looking to get into on any given day, you can find it at this indoor/ outdoor bar in the Arts District that doubles as a music venue. If you’re looking to casually drink outside and flirt with the dog next to you, Resident’s patio opens every day at noon with a bar inside an Airstream and water misters to keep your body temperature under control. But if the night is ripe for some dancing, head inside where there’s always a DJ/band lighting up the stage.

via The Infatuation Feed https://www.theinfatuation.com/los-angeles/guides/where-to-go-when-you-finally-realize-the-bungalow-is-terrible Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created June 30, 2020 at 02:42AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

[ecotone99]

[SF] The Gulf | Ep. 6: Prison Island New Year

Murder.

Elijah is here awaiting trial for the premeditated murder-for-hire plot of his friend and former chief of staff, Ben Rupert.

The news broke the day after he arrived here. It’s the biggest story since I-can’t-remember-when.

“Why would they let him come here?!” I practically shout. “I thought they weren’t supposed to allow murderers in class-three confinement!”

I’m at Eric’s cabin, and tonight I insisted on the hard stuff. I’m a few shots in, and cradling a mug of beer. Eric is being a good sport about it, trying to calm me down.

“Just remember, he’s not a murderer yet. He’s innocent until proven guilty.”

I give Eric a sharp look.

“It is a little strange,” Eric admits. “It’s the first I’ve seen them let an accused murderer book a cabin and roam the island freely. I guess wealth does come with some perks.”

“And why does he get so much time to prepare for trial? I got less than twelve hours for mine.”

“A, they always give more time to prepare in serious cases. B, you really should have insisted on representation at your hearing. Sounds like you basically got railroaded… a good lawyer would have got an extension to prepare an argument, find some good precedent, and probably could have kept you out of confinement while you paid your debt. Then again the odds were stacked against you with a guy like Francesco. But still, you probably could have got the release threshold down to five or ten grand–”

“Can you just let me vent?” I ask. But I know the truth is, he can’t. He really can’t help but look at things from a logical, rational perspective. That’s actually why I like spending time with him. But right now, I could do without it.

Eric flashes a sympathetic smile. “Look, it’s a big island, just avoid him.”

“He’s two cabins down from me!”

“Lock your door at night.”

“I love how not getting attacked is my problem. Talk about blaming the victim.”

Eric shrugs. “You’re right. That’s not fair. And it’s also the natural state of the world. Getting struck by lightning isn’t fair. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it. But you still shouldn’t stand in a field during a lightning storm.”

“But-” I start.

Eric interrupts, “I know you aren’t ‘standing in a field.’ But you can’t reason with predators anymore than you can reason with lightning.”

Eric gets up and fumbles around in some drawers. He drops a set of brass knuckles which thud on the wooden table.

I look at him skeptically.

“What? If you’re actually concerned, you should be prepared to protect yourself.”

“Aren’t weapons prohibited here?” I ask sheepishly.

“Yeah, and so is alcohol. Besides this isn’t a weapon, it’s jewelry, four rings all joined together.”

I smirk, and pick up the knuckles. They are even heavier than I expected. They look hand pounded, like an ancient Roman cuff bracelet a warrior might wear.

“Where did you get these anyway? Don’t they search packages?”

“I’ve gone through a lot of hobbies here. This was the metalworking phase about six or seven years ago. You’ve already drank out of a pounded copper mug from the same era.”

“Well thanks. I guess it can’t hurt to have the option,” I say. And it does make me feel better.

“Better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them,” Eric says.

On video Majorie looks tired. She has bags under her eyes, and without the usual smile she’s lost her glow. I avoid the subject for a couple minutes… but we both know it’s coming.

“So, how’s the new roommate?” She asks, forcing a smile.

“I was pretty shocked to see him. Do you think he did it?”

Majorie looks away, and blows air out of her mouth in a long sigh, “I don’t know. I’m having a tough time thinking of a motive… at least one that is strong enough for murder.”

“What about the video of Ben jumping off the building,” I ask, “They must know it was a fake if they arrested Elijah.”

“That’s the thing… I don’t think they actually have enough evidence. Rumors have started getting out that it wasn’t a suicide. The task force got pressure from Gulf Sails to clear it up. I mean it’s the first murder on Gulf Sails in, what, a decade?”

“So if they could prove it was a deep fake, then they would have something solid on Elijah?”

“Well yeah, it was Elijah’s people who turned over the video in the first place. So if they could prove it was faked that would at least give them another path to go down for the investigation.”

“You mean they could put pressure on his underlings to start talking?”

Majorie shrugs, clear her throats, and says, “I guess that’s the theory.”

“Can you send me the video?”

“Why?” she asks reflexively.

“Well, I’ve been working on something ever since you told me about the technology they use to analyze deep fakes. They look at it forensically, the files, the meta-data, down to the ones and zeros. They’re trying to see if anything has been altered, added, or tweaked. But it’s almost impossible to tell, that’s the entire point of the deep fakes. What they should be doing is looking at the outputs.”

“Well isn’t that the entire point of deep fakes, that the outputs look real?” Majorie asks.

“Of course, they look and sound real to humans. And everything at the chip level looks real enough to the technology analyzing it. But I had a hypothesis that when you analyze the outputs, there would be a slight difference between real and fake videos.

“I was rewatching some old movies to write about on my blog. The special effects used to be really bad, you can see the cuts in the film, the model cities for explosions, the impossible ninja moves, that sort of thing. But over time they got better and better. It looked almost real… until the directors would go too far and start making it look fake again because their ideas outpaced the technology.

“It’s like they were getting close to reality, never quite syncing up, and then passing back into the absurd. Then they would make the effects better and better again until they were back for another shot at the real thing.

“So I decided to test my hypothesis, that given enough data, there would be unique patterns for deep fakes versus real videos. I put together two databases, one with unaltered videos and one with known fakes. I coded a basic program to analyze and plot things like voice, posture, gait, movement, and just graph it out.

“Both of them, the real and the fake videos, look like a mess when graphed out. You get nothing from just looking at them. But when you overlay the plots, you start getting a picture of the differences. The deep fake plots aren’t as tight, they are more jerky, with sharper edges, and the real ones are much smoother in general.

“To be fair, you would need a lot more data and a better analyzer and grapher to really build a decent program. But I asked my friend Brenton to create a random mix of ten fake and ten real videos to test. I analyzed them, and got 90% accuracy, just by comparing the two graphs with the naked eye. I’m sure if I can write analyzing script I can get it even more accurate.”

Majorie’s mouth is hanging open and she’s looking at me like I just seamlessly landed a triple back handspring.

“Dege. This is amazing. I had no idea you knew how to do all this.”

“What?” I laugh, “No, it’s all pretty basic. Anyone could have done it. The code is really rudimentary, and–”

“Well, no one else did do it. Is there any way you can send me the program?

“I feel like it would be a lot easier to just send me the video. It’s not one nice cohesive program right now. There are a lot of moving parts I haven’t uploaded to the cloud yet.”

“Yeah, hmm… I just don’t think I can send you the video with the prison surveillance. I don’t want to overstep my bounds with the investigators.”

“If they want your help, seems like they wouldn’t mind? Well anyway, let me see if I can get the program glued together a little better, and more user-friendly.”

“That would be amazing! Um… in the meantime… Are you looking for extra work?” Majorie asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I have all these clients who send me video evidence. It’s not like your program would hold up in arbitration or anything. But it would at least give me insight into which of my clients are sending me fake evidence, which are being tricked themselves, and who is worth my time.”

“Yeah… sure, I would love to help.”

“Great,” she says, “I have about 15 I can send you now to get started, and pay per analysis? Maybe if your program is good enough we can get you out of there much sooner,” she winks.

The hair on the back of my neck pricks up a second before I hear his voice.

“The whole world has gone mad, Dege.”

Elijah takes a seat on my rock wall, looking out towards the ocean. I am working out on my deck, enjoying the cooler evening hours when the sun has dipped below the island’s horizon. I reach into my pocket and slip my fingers into the brass knuckles I’ve been carrying around. The cold metal takes some heat out of my elevated heart rate, like a stress ball.

Elijah is waiting for me to respond, but I don’t. Not sure what I would say even if I wanted to. Seconds pass. Finally he looks my way.

“You don’t believe the whole thing do you?” he asks, incredulously.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” I lie.

“It’s a smear, a desperate attempt to take down someone successful. It has the whole city divided. My supporters are fleeing, taking their platforms to dock at Paradisia, or elsewhere. A whole contingent linked their platforms into another community as a protest.

“Gulf Sails is just so desperate to take the blame for poor Ben’s death off them. They are willing to send an innocent man to prison because of social pressure!”

He keeps pausing to see if I have anything to say. Then he continues stream of consciousness style, like he’s thinking out loud.

“But they miscalculated. That was the real breaking point. People won’t put up with it! They won’t. The way they handled this from the getgo just reeks of corruption. You know the chief investigator they hired has ties to competitors of mine?”

He looks at me, expectantly, waiting for an answer.

“I didn’t know that,” I say monotone, pretending not to be interested, but the truth is I am making a mental note to look into that later.

“Why would I murder one of my best friends?” He scoffs, looking back to the ocean. “It is a cleverly orchestrated smear that I will be cleared of in just a matter of weeks.”

When he says “weeks” I swear I hear his voice crack. Elijah clears his throat.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Elijah says, looking back to me. “Ben was being extorted by a high up Gulf Sails executive. That’s why he killed himself. Don’t believe me, just keep an eye on the news. It was getting out into the public, that’s why they moved on me with no evidence whatsoever, so they could get the drop on the news cycle. That’s what this is all about. Apparently these days justice is whatever the public believes!”

There’s something in Elijah’s eyes… I think he’s worried.

Suppose he is lying, and this all comes crashing down on him while he’s still here in pretrial detention. He realizes he’s going to be confined for the rest of his life. He thinks, might as well get my kicks in while I have the opportunity.

I’m actually concerned under those circumstance that he might try to rape me, if he has nothing to lose. I don’t know, maybe I’m just freaking myself out, maybe he was just drunk and displaying a fucked up sense of humor at the club in Barracuda on Halloween.

But it’s boring into my mind the insanity that I even have to consider such a course of events.

“I brought you something,” I say to George. Christmas is approaching, and I was feeling the holiday spirit. I’m still curious as to my connection with George, if we really are family. But another part of me just wants to break down this barrier.

I hold out the bottle to him.

“What, some of Eric’s whiskey?”

“I worked for it.”

“Well la-dee-da, why are you giving it to me?”

“I was just thinking about what you told me before… how trade breaks down barriers.”

“Trade,” He says sternly. “So it’s not a gift then? Call me cynical, but as I suspect of any gift, it’s not actually free, eh?”

“I… well… no, just… maybe just, like, don’t be such a hard-ass all the time?”

“Not worth it,” he says, and starts to head in.

“Wait! Fine, yes, it’s not a gift. But maybe you would be willing to trade this bottle of whiskey for another history lesson?”

“You can read about it on the internet cheaper.”

“It’s the analysis that’s valuable…” I say. “As much as I searched, I couldn’t find any sources that talked about the far-reaching economic effects of interracial fucking.”

I think I just managed to get a smirk out of him, but he hides it well, clears his throat, and puts back on his gruff look.

George stares at me for a while. “Alright come on, kid. It’s been a while since I’ve got to preach my opinions on the collapse of the USA.”

He’s still a dick to me the entire time we talk history. He makes me feel really stupid sometimes, and practically yells at me for asking apparently dumb questions.

But if I look at it from a comical perspective, like is this guy seriously this salty, I can handle it. I think the shots he keeps pouring me helps as well. Holy shit this guy can put them down.

“No, fuck that bullshit nation-state nostalgia,” he practically shouts as we are closing in on finishing the bottle. “It was the same in the city-states of Machiavelli-era Italy as it is now. A shitload of small conflicts still result in far less death and destruction than the large global catastrophes that empires create!”

I hold my hands up, “I’m not arguing, I was just asking a question. Seems like the big governments existed for a reason.”

“Yeah, for the same reason gangs exist. To wield power through violence! And in the process they plant some flowers and make sure no one else beats you up, so stupid people can’t imagine living in a flowerless, violent world.”

George flops into his seat, and finishes the rest of the bottle. “And it looks like you’re all out of learning tokens,” he says, slamming the bottle back to the table. “Kindly make your way to the exit, thank you for participating in George’s history lesson.”

It’s weird without all the festivities leading up to Christmas that typically happen living at home. It’s the type of stuff that I always grudgingly took part in… but now I miss.

My family does come to visit on Christmas, which is really nice of them to change their plans to spend time with me.

I hug my parents, and even go in for a hug with my little brother. While in the embrace, he makes sure to remind me, “You’re a disgrace to us all. You’ve shamed the family, and brought dishonor on our house.”

“Great to see you too Raji.”

And honestly, it is. I miss his stupid, sarcastic, peevish sense of humor.

My dad opens up a little. I think he is proud that I am living on my own, entertaining guests, and working hard.

The conversation takes a strange turn after the mulled wine and rum cake dessert.

“You really should get into spa culture, Dege. Well… maybe not on a prison island.”

“It’s always been a little too homoerotic for my tastes,” I say.

“Well the lab test put me somewhere between 32 and 36% homosexual. So maybe that’s my outlet… if you believe it’s genetics.”

“Wow, that’s pretty gay dad,” Raji says.

My dad scoffs, “You should see your mother’s-”

“Ollie! Those results are meant to be kept private.” My mom scolds. “I could sue you for telling them.”

She’s kind of joking, but it is technically true. And she’d probably win something small.

Then it’s New Years 2100 and it might be the worst day of my life. I tried to talk to Majorie, but she was busy.

I video chat with Craig and Dean for the first time since I asked Dean for the money to keep me out of here. I already apologized in a text for putting him in that position, and since then he’s reached out every week or so. He even offered to mentor me to help me make the money quicker.

They are getting ready to go out for the night, with a few other friends. They link me in to the big screen, and I get the full view of the living room, with all the festivities.

It’s too painful. I manage to keep up my happy appearance for a few toasts. But even though I have my drink on my side, there’s an energy I can’t tap into. It’s just not the same being on the other side of a screen.

I’m exhausted after only a few minutes, using every ounce of energy to make sure I don’t infect their mood with my crushing disappointment at being left out of the turn of the century festivities. I sign off quickly.

This sucks. The day I have been dreaming about for my entire life, slipping away.

After marinating in my own pity for a while, I head to Eric’s. Then we both walk over to the main pavilion where the big party is for the night.

The female prisoners from the other island are here visiting for the New Year’s Eve party. And to my shock, some of them are pretty attractive. I didn’t bother to go to any of the meetups when they came before.

I’m not sure why I assumed they would all be ugly… I think I was too influenced by old movies and TV shows about prison.

The post nation-state world just hasn’t left its mark on popular culture as intensely yet. I suppose that’s because there is less of a concerted effort to push one particular narrative. And now I realize I sound like George…

A young woman comes up to me and pulls me onto the dance floor without a word.

She’s probably about my age, and is wearing a lot of eye make-up. As we dance to something electronic sounding, I start wondering what she did to get here. Probably some kind of theft or fraud. I wonder if it was to buy drugs. I’m judging her even though I’m in the exact same position.

When the song is over we have a conversation. After about 15 minutes of talking, I realize I haven’t gotten anything out of it. I’m just bored, and know a little bit more about her party-life in Florida before her asshole ex-boyfriend (read: sugar-daddy) “falsely” (I’m sure) accused her of stealing from him.

She’s pretty. Pretty enough that I wouldn’t have hesitated to pursue her in the past. I wouldn’t have cared about how mind-numbing her personality was. But now I don’t want to.

At first I assume it’s just because of Majorie, but I don’t think that’s all of it. I just don’t have the energy to be around someone like this for a night, even if the reward is great sex.

She gets the hint as my contributions to the conversation trail off. She storms off, clearly annoyed, muttering something under her breath.

“I thought I was going to have to cut in for a second there,” Elijah says as he slides up to me, on the edge of the dance floor. He’s dancing in front of me, yelling over the music.

I’m backed up against the kitchen counter bar, so I start to walk left but his hand shoots out to grab the counter, and block my exit.

“Hey man, I just want to talk,” He says, still gyrating to the music. “I mean we’re both in the same boat here.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I say, moving right instead. But he’s right in front of me, and I can’t inch away without squeezing between him and the bar. He keeps dancing, closer and closer to me as I edge my way to the right.

“Look maybe we got off on the wrong foot, but I think you have the wrong idea about me.”

“Well you’re reinforcing that idea right now!” I yell. Now I’m at the end of the counter and there is a wall in my way.

Elijah’s is smiling but he still manages to look pissed off. He doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way. I start to push past him but his arm goes to the wall, blocking my path. I break the other way, and he grabs my arm. My other hand goes reflexively to my pocket, but I didn’t bring the brass knuckles… making the mistake of thinking I’d be safe in public view.

“Didn’t you notice, Dege?” Elijah says, smile twisting, “We’ve accidentally stumbled under some mistletoe… and rules are rules.” With his free hand he grabs the back of my head to hold it in place so he can land a kiss directly on my lips.

I’m squirming away, but he is so fucking strong! Only when I feel him start to wriggle is tongue against my tightly pursed lips do I finally muster the strength to push him off balance enough to get out of his reach.

And as I storm away, wiping his saliva off my mouth, a small crowd around us actually oohs and giggles, as if I was into it! Like me pushing him off and storming away wasn’t a clear indicator that I didn’t consent to that.

“Oh, I get it now,” the girl I was dancing with cackles as I leave the pavilion

Eric is out there smoking a cigar with Brenton and Crenshaw, and stops me when he sees my face.

“This guy is so fucked up! A god-damn psychopath,” I vent to them after telling them what happened. I can barely get the words out straight, I’m still shaking with rage and embarrassment.

“Just hang with us,” Crenshaw says, “If that motherfucker comes near you again I’ll make sure his face can’t be used to sell anything but reconstructive surgery.”

And Crenshaw is big enough to fulfill that promise. He might not have the cut muscles of Elijah, but he is massive, and got his training street boxing.

Luckily (or unfortunately as I started imaging watching Crenshaw deliver a beatdown) I don’t see Elijah for the rest of the night.

And as midnight rolls around, I cheers Happy New Years with a few other cons, as fireworks blast in the distance, over the Gulf.

These ones are for us. A weak show by most standards, but at least we got any at all.

But as our short display of explosions ends, another fireworks show continues somewhere in the distance.

The explosions are so large and powerful that they mimic the rising sun on the horizon. A few seconds later the low booms follow.

It must be miles away. It’s not Barracuda, I know that, Barracuda is too far. But it might as well be. There’s someone, lots of someones, having fun out there. On their yachts or on their platforms. With family or friends. Kissing the girl or boy they love.

And then there’s me. Here. Watching from the outside. Just catching the outer susserations of their party. Whatever is extra. The bursts of lights and booms they don’t need that spill out over the ocean, and roll along it for miles.

They force you into it, force you to not quite take part, but be well aware of what you’re not involved in. Just listen, watch, know there is someone out there who isn’t you getting the full benefit of those fireworks. The champagne, the songs, the drunkenness, the camaraderie.

I wonder who the guys are kissing. What if Majorie is kissing someone?

“Stop it kid,” Eric’s voice breaks my trance. “I can see what you’re doing.”

I know he knows– if not the exact thing I was thinking, at least the rumination of things I can’t change. It does make me feel a fraction of a bit better– the validation that someone else sees what’s going on for me.

I manage a wry smile, nod to thank Eric, and turn back to the fireworks.

I’ll try to be stoic, and not bring down the mood for our prison island New Year.

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