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nyxshadowhawk · 3 years

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Dark Royalty Core Playlist

People seemed to really like the Beltane playlist so I thought I’d post more of my playlists! I started making this one when I learned that the Dark Royalty Aesthetic was a thing, and I am so happy that it is a thing! It’s now one of my favorite aesthetics, and it got me into more traditional classical music. This is intended to be a “master playlist” -- some of these pieces are taken from oliviaalee on youtube, but many are favorites of mine.

“Masquerade - Ballet Suite: 1. Waltz” by Aram Khachaturian, London Symphony Orchestra, et.al. “Expectation” by Herold Kittler, Nikolai Sergeyev, et.al. “Leopoldine” by Ez3kiel “An Extraordinary Tale” by Peter Gundry “Ghost Waltz” by Abel Korzeniowski “Dance of the Damned” by Peter Gundry “Lestat’s Recitative” by Elliot Goldenthal “Amur Waves” by Max Kyuss, Nikolai Nazarov, et.al. “Gnossienne no. 1″ by Erik Satie, Alena Cherney “Tocka” by Оркестр "Классика" “Midnight Waltz” by Adam Hurst “The Secret Garden” by Adrian von Ziegler “The Second Waltz” by André Rieu, Johan Strauss Orchestra “An Embassy Waltz” by Mickymar Productions Ltd and Failbetter Games “Tonight Ve Dance” Peter Gundry “Gramophone” by Eugen Doga “Merry-Go-Round of Life” by Joe Hisaishi “Cinderella, Op. 87, Act 1: No. 19, Cinderella’s Departure for the Ball” by Sergei Prokofiev, André Previn, London Symphony Orchestra “Valse sentimentale, Op. 51, No. 6″ by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Josef Sakonov, et.al. “Wood Carving Partita” (cover) by Tim Stoney “Danse macabre, Op. 40: Poème symphonique d’après une poésie de Henri Cazalis” by Camille Saint-Saëns, Rudfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, et.al. “Legacy of Sorrow” by Nox Arcana “Nocturnal Waltz” by Johannes Bornlöf “Incantato” by Adam Hurst “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61: Scherzo No. 1″ by Felix Mendelssohn, Staatskapelle Berlin, et.al. “Serenade for Strings in E, Op. 22: 2. Tempo di valse” by Antonín Dvorák, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, et.al. “The Shadow’s Bride” by Peter Gundry “Nocturne No. 20 In C Sharp Minor, Op.posth” by Frédéric Chopin, Alice Sara Ott “Ghost Bride” by Adrian von Ziegler “Suite Gothique, Op. 25: I. Introduction et choral” by Léon Bollëmann, Michael Phol “2 Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11: Rhapsody No. 1 in A Major” by George Enescu, Heinz Rögner et.al. “Bagatelle No. 25 in A Minor, "Für Elise", WoO 59” by Ludwig van Beethoven, Lang Lang “The Nocturnal” by Peter Gundry “Piano Sonata No.14 In C Sharp Minor, Op.27 No.2 -"Moonlight": 1. Adagio sostenuto” by Ludwig van Beethoven, Daniel Barenboim “Insomnies” by Ez3kiel “Dance of Gold” (cover) by Tim Stoney, Kristin Naigus, et.al. “Parliament of Owls” by Agnes Obel “An Amalgamation Waltz 1839” by Joep Beving “Dance of Pales” (cover) by Tim Stoney *** “Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14 (Episode de la vie d'un artiste) : II. Un Bal (A Ball)” by Hector Berlioz, Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra et.al. “Ritual” by Adam Hurst “Forest Tale” by Wilhelm Becker, Nikolai Nazarov, et.al. “The Awakening” by Peter Gundry “Ceremonial Spell” by Adrian von Ziegler “Autumn Moon” by Eternal Eclipse “Phantastic Dance No. 1″ by Dmitri Shostakovich, Christian Funke, et.al. “Waltz of Souls” by Adam Hurst “Agnus dei” by Samuel Barber, Roderich Kreile, et.al. “14 Romances, Op. 34: No. 14, Vocalise” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jan Vogler, et.al. “Holberg Suite, Op. 40: IV. Air” by Edvard Grieg, Staatskapelle Dresden, et.al. “Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55: No. 3, Scarbo. Modéré in B Major” by Maurice Ravel, Cecile Ousset “Waltz” by Eugen Doga “Dorian’s Theme” by Charlie Mole “Children's Corner, L. 113: IV. The Snow is Dancing” by Claude Debussy, Peter Rosel “Duo in G Major: II. Air” by François Couperin, Barbara Sanderling, et.al. “No.9 - Finale - Swan theme (Andante)” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra “Organ Sonata in C Minor: I. Grave - Larghetto” by Julius Reubke, Michael Pohl “Requiem for the Gods” (cover) by Wayne Strange, Chad Schwartz “Death Waltz” by Adam Hurst “Lacrimosa” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lisa Beckley, et.al. “Weeping Willow” by Gabrielle Aapri “Eternal Slumber” by Yonder Dale “Midnight Masquerade” by Nick Murray “The Vampire Masquerade Organ Version” by Peter Gundry “Cloak and Dagger” by Eternal Eclipse “Appassionata” by Rolf Lovland, Secret Garden “String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D. 810 "Death and the Maiden": II. Andante con moto - Arr. Gustav Mahler” by Franz Schubert et.al. “Reflections” by Toshifumi Hinata “Mariage d’Amour” by Jacob’s Piano “Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns, Yo-Yo Ma “Victor’s Piano Solo” by Danny Elfman “Sofia’s Waltz” by Carvajal “The Nutcracker, Op.71, TH.14 / Act 2: No. 14a Pas de deux: Intrada” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Mariinsky Orchestra, et.al.

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3yFvAGB5xdoOELbmiJ136U?si=1d1f15e826ac445b

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schattenkino-der-postmotten · 3 years

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SCHATTENKINO FÜR POSTMOTTEN

Alexander Wilson, Aesthesis and Perceptronium: On the Entanglement of Sensation, Cognition, and Matter, University of Minnesota Press

Anil Bhatti, Dorothee Kimmich, Albrecht Koschorke, Rudolf Schlögl, Jürgen Wertheimer, Ähnlichkeit, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur

Arthur Kroker, Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway, University of Minnesota Press

Augusto Monterroso, Das Schwarze Schaf und andere Fabeln

Bernd Flessner, Nach dem Menschen: Der Mythos einer zweiten Schöpfung und das Entstehen einer posthumanen Kultur, Rombach

Bruce Clarke, Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene, University of Minnesota Press

Bruce Clarke, Neocybernetics and Narrative, University of Minnesota Press

Carsten Strathausen, Bioaesthetics: Making Sense of Life in Science and the Arts, University of Minnesota Press

Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism?, University of Minnesota Press

Catherine Bell, Performing Animality

Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures, Routledge

Cora Diamond, Fleisch essen und Menschen essen

Daniel S. Traber, Whiteness, Otherness and the Individualism Paradox From Huck to Punk, Palgrave Macmillan

David Cecchetto, Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism, University of Minnesota Press

David Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction, University of Minnesota Press

David Wills, Inanimation: Theories of Inorganic Life, University of Minnesota Press

David Wills, Dorsality: Thinking Back Through Technology and Politics, University of Minnesota Press

David Wood, Thinking Plant Animal Human: Encounters With Communities of Difference, University of Minnesota Press

Davide Tarizzo, Life: A Modern Invention, University of Minnesota Press

Debashish Banerji, Makarand R. Paranjape, Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures, Springer

Diana Walsh Pasulka, Michael Bess, Posthumanism: An Introductory Handbook, Macmillan

Dominic Pettman, Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less Than Human, University of Minnesota Press

Dominic Pettman, Human Error: Species-Being and Media Machines, University of Minnesota Press

Donna J. Haraway, Die Neuerfindung der Natur: Primaten, Cyborgs und Frauen, Campus-Verlag

Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press

Donna J. Haraway, Cary Wolfe, Manifestly Haraway, University of Minnesota Press

Drew Ayers, Spectacular Posthumanism: The Digital Vernacular of Visual Effects, Bloomsbury Academic

Edwina Ashton, Steve Baker, The Salon of Becoming-Animal, New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Élisabeth Fontenay, Without Offending Humans, University of Minnesota Press

Elizabeth Grosz, Animal Sex: Libido as Desire and Death, Routledge

Erik Hannerz, Performing Punk, Palgrave Macmillan

Erika Cudworth, Stephen Hobden, The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism, Routledge

Ernst Kapp, Elements of a Philosophy of Technology: On the Evolutionary History of Culture, University of Minnesota Press

Francesca Ferrando, Philosophical Posthumanism, Bloomsbury Publishing

Gilbert Simondon, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, University of Minnesota Press

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Tausend Plateaus. Kapitalismus und Schizophrenie, Merve Verlag

Giovnni Aloi, Deleuzian

Glemens-Garl Härle, Karten zu Tausend Plateaus, Merve Verlag

Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, Or, What It's Like to Be a Thing, University of Minnesota Press

Ilya Prigogine, Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue With Nature, Bantam New Age Books

Indra Sinha, Menschentier, Edition Büchergilde

Isabelle Stengers, Thinking With Whitehead a Free and Wild Creation of Concepts, Harvard University Press

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I, University of Minnesota Press

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics II, University of Minnesota Press

Jacques Derrida, Ned Lukacher, Cinders, University of Minnesota Press

Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning, University of Minnesota Press

Jamie Lorimer, The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life, University of Minnesota Press

Joey Keithley, Jack Rabid, I, Shithead: A Life in Punk, Arsenal Pulp Press

John Ó Maoilearca, All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press

John Protevi, Political Affect, University of Minnesota Press

John Robb, Punk Rock: An Oral History, PM Press

Judith Roof, The Poetics of DNA, University of Minnesota Press

Julian Yates, Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast: A Multispecies Impression, University of Minnesota Press

Julius Zimmermann, Die Eigenständigkeit der Dinge

Jussi Parikka, Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology, University of Minnesota Press

Kalpana Rahita Seshadri, HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language, University of Minnesota Press

Karen Pinkus, Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary, University of Minnesota Press

Kate Devlin, Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots, Bloomsbury Sigma

Kathy High, I offer my power in the service of love

Laura Erickson-Schroth, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community, Oxford University Press

Laurent Dubreuil, The Intellective Space: Thinking Beyond Cognition, University of Minnesota Press

Laurent Dubreuil, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Dialogues on the Human Ape, University of Minnesota Press

Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Lutz Dammbeck, DAS NETZ - Die Konstruktion des Unabombers & Das "Unabomber-Manifest": Die Industrielle Gesellschaft und ihre Zukunft: Nautlius Flugschrift, Edition Nautilus

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism, Bloomsbury Academic

Marcel O'Gorman, Necromedia, University of Minnesota Press

María Puig de La Bellacasa, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, University of Minnesota Press

Martin Kurthen, Robert Payne, White and Black Posthumanism: After Consciousness and the Unconscious, Springer

Matthew Fuller, Olga Goriunova, Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility, University of Minnesota Press

Michael Hauskeller, Curtis D. Carbonell, Thomas D. Philbeck, The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, Palgrave Macmillan

Michael Haworth, Neurotechnology and the End of Finitude, University of Minnesota Press

Michel Serres, The Parasite, University of Minnesota Press

Mick Smith, Against Ecological Sovereignty, University of Minnesota Press

Mickey Weems, The Fierce Tribe: Masculine Identity and Performance in the Circuit, University press of Colorado

Neil H. Kessler, Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism, Springer

ngbk, Tier-werden, Mensch-werden

Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, University of Minnesota Press

Nigel Rothfels, Representing Animals, Indiana University Press

Oliver Krüger, Die Vervollkommnung des Menschen, E-Pub

Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco, Animal Philosophy, Ethics and Identity: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, Continuum

Peter Mahon, Posthumanism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Bloomsbury Academic

Phillip Thurtle, Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life, University of Minnesota Press

Raymond Ruyer, Neofinalism, University of Minnesota Press

Riccardo Campa, Humans and Automata: A Social Study of Robotics, Peter Lang

Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press

Roger F. Cook, Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator, University of Minnesota Press

Ron Broglio, Surface Encounters: Thinking With Animals and Art, University of Minnesota Press

Siegfried Zielinski, Variations on Media Thinking, University of Minnesota Press

Stanislaw Lem, Sterntagebücher

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Branka-Rista Jovanovic, Evolution and the Future: Anthropology, Ethics, Religion- in Cooperation With Nikola Grimm, Peter Lang

Steve Baker, Artist Animal, University of Minnesota Press

Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism, University of Minnesota Press

Susan McHugh, Animal Stories: Narrating Across Species Lines, University of Minnesota Press

Thierry Bardini, Junkware, University of Minnesota Press

Timothy C. Campbell, Improper Life: Technology and Biopolitics From Heidegger to Agamben, University of Minnesota Press

Timothy Campbell, Adam Sitze, Biopolitics: A Reader, Duke University Press

Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press

Tom Tyler, CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers, University of Minnesota Press

Vilém Flusser, Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, Atropos Press

Vinciane Despret, What Would Animals Say if We Asked the Right Questions?, University of Minnesota Press

#posthumanism #viecher #imitation #donna haraway #karen barad #bruno latour #reader

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its-sixxers · 4 years

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OC Playlist Meme - Lizzy

tagged by @garriante!

taggin anyone who sees this and wants to do it, playlists are super fun!

tried to keep things somewhat era/tone accurate and WOOF was it a challenge

Their intro theme: Liz on Top of the World - Dario Marianelli

Their own favourite song: Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Judy Garland

Their boss battle theme: Vasily - Martin Phipps

Their love song: Spring 1 - Max Richter

Their sad times song: These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You) - Ella Fitzgerald

A song that fits their aesthetic: New Queen - Martin Phipps

A song that reminds them of a better time: Moon River - Audrey Hepburn

A song that calms them down: Clair de Lune - Debussy

A song that gets them hyped up: Cherry Bomb - The Runaways

Spring: Everybody Loves Somebody - Dean Martin

Summer: Be My Baby - The Ronettes

Autumn: Stand By Me - Ben. E. King

Winter: Gymnopédie No.1 - Erik Satie

The song that plays while they’re lying on the ground bleeding out in a Walmart: That’s Life - Frank Sinatra

The song that would play each morning if they’re stuck in a time loop: We’ll Meet Again - Vera Lynn

The song they’d listen to while robbing a Wendy’s: At Last - Etta James

The song they’d accidentally introduce to people in medieval times if they were a time traveller: Butcher Pete - Roy Brown

The song they’d play in the middle of the night when their neighbors are being too loud: Anything Goes - Cole Porter

The song that plays at their funeral: Dream 3 (in the midst of my life) - Max Richter

The song that plays when it’s revealed that they faked their death: Future King - Rupert Gregson Williams

Listen on Spotify here!

#tagged stuff #music #oc: tin lizzy / lone wanderer

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Best Comics of 2020

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It has been a year, hasn’t it?

The year started with such tenuous promise, and is ending the same way: slivers of hope among rivers of misery. But even with all the chaos, all the changes forced by the pandemic and that were coming anyway, we still got some incredible comics in 2020.

Let us be abundantly clear: every work of art made in the last year is a small miracle. Every comic creator who put irons in the fire in a year that certainly didn’t lack fires deserves gratitude and commendation. Picking 20 comics doesn’t do justice to the herculean work and dedication that everyone who works in comics demonstrated – from the creators, to the back office folks who kept the trains running on time and let us know they were coming, to the people who actually put the books in our hands, we should be immensely grateful to all of them.

To those creators we say: Thank you for giving us a few minutes on Wednesdays (or Tuesdays) to escape…all this.

With that said, there really were some excellent books, and we’re very excited to talk about the best comics of 2020.

20. Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist

Adrian Tomine (Writer/Artist)

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Adrian Tomine is here to share his sadness with readers and inspire it in anyone who has ever tried to make art and present it to the world. In what might be his greatest work so far, the cartoonist collects his own diary comics about being an artist and trying to release a book.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist is painfully raw, uncomfortably authentic, and impressively hilarious. It takes guts to make yourself the butt of the joke and to do it so well, but there is such heart and humor here that it’ll speak to any reader whether or not you’ve ever had the (mis)fortune to make your own comics or not.

19. Witch Hat Atelier

Kamome Shirahama (Writer/Artist)

Speaking of wonderful manga, this series is one of the best books on shelves in any genre, format, or language. It’s hard to overstate how inventive and imaginative Witch Hat Atelier is but for the sake of this list we’ll try.

Kamome Shirahama paints a wonderful world where magic is real but only a select few can use it. Coco is our heroine and when she accidentally learns the secret behind using magic she’s inducted into a witch’s coven and is thrown into a vibrant world of sorcery, spells, and uneasy friendship with her fellow students.

18. Daredevil

Chip Zdarsky (Writer); Marco Checchetto, Mike Hawthorne, Francesco Mobili, Jorge Fornes (Artists); Marcio Menyz, Mattia Iacono, Nolan Woodard (Colorists); Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

Chip Zdarsky’s Matt Murdock is terrific. His Wilson Fisk is Hall of Fame.

Fisk is attempting to go legit after discovering as Mayor of New York City that there is a much larger pond he could be swimming in. But the big fish in that pond (the Stromwyns – think Marvel’s Koch Brothers) don’t much get along with someone as insignificant as Fisk. What they do to him, and what Fisk does back, is incredible.

The art on this run has been the real deal. Jorge Fornes and Marco Checchetto have handled the bulk of the pencils this year, and their dramatically divergent styles do a great job of showing the two sides of Murdock’s world – Fornes excels at the quiet investigatory work that Daredevil does, while Checchetto blows the doors off of some monster action set pieces. No lie, Stilt Man has never looked this good. This run is shaping up to be one of the best Daredevil stories of all time, a very high bar to clear.

17. The Department of Truth

James Tynion IV (Writer), Martin Simmonds (Artist)

What happens in a world where all conspiracy theories are actually true? Or that reality actually warps to accommodate new “truths” as they come into being? Such is the premise of The Department of Truth, which delivers on all the unsettling promise of its premise. The fact that it tells its story in a way that aesthetically calls to mind Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s 1988 collaboration Shadowplay: The Secret Team, which told some unsavory details about how the CIA conducted some real world foreign policy only adds to the eerie feel.

With more and more people getting internet brain poisoning thanks to wilder and wilder conspiracy theories somehow becoming mainstream every day, The Department of Truth feels like one of the more timely comics of 2020. We only wish it could be a little less timely in some ways, though.

16. The Green Lantern Season Two

Grant Morrison (Writer), Liam Sharp (Artist), Steve Oliff (Colorist), Steve Wands (Letterer)

Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp have been quietly making one of the best superhero comics in decades over at DC, and although we can’t quite believe we’re saying this, it’s about Hal Jordan. The most boring Green Lantern of all has come to life in this trippy, experimental, and beautiful series which transcends space and time, showcasing the best of what Morrrison and Sharp do.

If you think that superhero comics are all the same, The Green Lantern will change your mind (and likely expand it) as Hal adventures through Sharp’s sprawling and stunning cosmos.

15. Immortal Hulk

Al Ewing (Writer); Joe Bennett, Mike Hawthorne, Butch Guice, Nick Pitarra, Javier Rodriguez (Pencilers); Ruy Jose, Belardino Brabo, Mark Morales, Tom Palmer, Marc Deering (Inkers); Paul Mounts, Matt Milla (Colorists); Cory Petit (Letterer)

Over at Marvel, Al Ewing and Joe Bennett have been equally delighting and horrifying readers with this reinvention of Bruce Banner and the hulking hero he becomes. This is about as close to a horror comic as a mainline superhero title can get as the team delve into the multiple manifestations of Hulk and the man behind them.

Just like The Green Lantern, The Immortal Hulk both reconsiders and revisits the lore that has made the character so iconic, and also features an impressive collection of Hulk-centric characters from throughout history.

14. Shadow of the Batgirl

Sarah Kuhn (Writer), Nicole Goux (Artist)

DC Comics has been doing a great job bringing new visions of some of their best loved characters to the spotlight and Cass Cain got that treatment this year in this gorgeous graphic novel. Taking the one-time Batgirl and teaming her up with Barbara Gordon’s Oracle was a genius move, but the real magic here comes from the sweet natured take on the hero that Sarah Kuhn and Nicole Goux offer up.

Shadow of the Batgirl is a superhero comic with real heart and a look that feels far more like an indie comic than anything coming out of the big two. Just lovely!

13. Hedra

Jesse Lonergan (Writer/Artist)

Hedra is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and probably the same goes for you. It’s a completely silent comic, but it’s a massively dense, intricate storytelling experience. It’s light and cartoony, but it’s got panels that would look at home in an old Wally Wood comic. It’s got so many panels, and yet it’s full of moments that will take your breath away.

Lonergan manages the pace and flow of the storytelling so well that you have to experience it yourself to fully appreciate it. Hedra is a beautiful, smart, fascinating comic.

12. John Constantine: Hellblazer

Si Spurrier (Writer); Aaron Campbell, Matias Bergara (Artists); Jordie Bellaire (Colorist); Adita Bidakyar (Letterer)

Si Spurrier doesn’t seem like the type who gets mad often, but his John Constantine was fucking pissed, and goddamn if it wasn’t the best Hellblazer comic in decades. This too-brief run of comics starring everyone’s favorite dirtbag street mage was as much about England being a dumpster fire as it was about Constantine being a dumpster fire, and that low-key seethe gave this book an edge that many of Constantine’s more recent exploits have been missing.

Campbell and Bergara are gifted at depicting grimy fantasy, and Bellaire continues to be one of the greatest colorists who ever lived. In a sane, just world, a second volume of John Constantine: Hellblazer is being planned as we speak. Let’s hope.

11. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin

Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird (Writers); Esau & Isaac Escorza (Artists); Luis Antonio Delgado (Colorist), Shaun Lee (Letterer)

When we saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic called The Last Ronin, we had no idea they meant Frank Miller Ronin. The art on this comic is astounding.

The story is almost irrelevant, in part because it’s only just getting going (only one oversized issue has been released at the time of this writing). But it’s excellent set up – the last living Ninja Turtle assaults a city controlled by the Foot Clan to try and end their long battle once and for all. It’s set in the future, and heavily influenced by the cyberpunk ninja aesthetic so common to the genre, but filtered through a strong Miller lens that makes it a joy to discover.

10. Captain America: The End

Erik Larsen (Writer/Artist), Dono Sánchez-Almara (Colorist), Joe Caramagna (Letterer)

The superhero comic one shot is an underrated – even lost – art form these days. Annuals are often fill-in stories, and unless Marvel or DC are putting out an oversized issue to herald a line wide relaunch or a similar event, it’s rare that you get a nice thick single issue telling a self contained story of any real “importance.” Fortunately, there’s Captain America: The End.

Marvel’s The End line is exactly what it sounds like: an excuse for creators to tell not-really-in-continuity “final” stories for the biggest Marvel heroes. And while Captain America: The End ostensibly presents itself as the “final” Captain America story, it’s way more fun than that. Erik Larsen uses this opportunity to pay tribute to Cap’s greatest creative periods: specifically Jack Kirby’s two-fisted, acrobatic stint on the character in the 1960s, and his socially conscious and psychedelic late ’70s return to the book.

Wall to wall action, with Kirby-esque idea factory energy and dynamism at the forefront, Captain America: The End is one of the most purely fun superhero issues in years. But don’t mistake this for an exercise in nostalgia, as Larsen blends timely (and timeless) messages that help sum up what made Captain America great in the first place, and why we’ll never truly see the “last” Cap story.

9. Maison Ikkoku

Rumiko Takahashi (Writer/Artist)

We can’t make enough noise about how great Viz has been doing recently at making some of the harder to find manga classics available to bigger audiences. This lovely reprint of Rumiko Takahashi’s joyful slice of life comic technically came out decades ago, but most Western comics fans likely only came to it via this new printing.

Maison Ikkoku follows the misadventures of a young apartment building manager and the tenants that she has to keep in check. In turns sweet, silly, and saucy, this is truly a masterwork of manga that you must read.

8. Billionaire Island

Mark Russell (Writer), Steve Pugh (Artist), Chris Chuckry (Colorist), Rob Steen (Letterer)

This is not Mark Russell, Steve Pugh, and Chris Chuckry’s first time on our lists, but it’s definitely the angriest they’ve been since showing up on here. If we’re really being fair, it’s entirely deserved.

Billionaire Island is a wild fantasy story definitely based on nothing in reality about the world’s uber wealthy, who control the world, building their own island to ride out climate change while the poors all die off and suffer on the mainland. It follows a reporter with the Miami Herald, and an ex-mercenary who lost his family to Aggrocorp’s sterility experiments in Angola, as they try and bring down the aforementioned billionaires, are trapped on the island, and work to escape.

It is every bit as hilarious as you would expect from the team who brought us The Flintstones, but there’s an edge to it that wasn’t there in Russell, Pugh and Chuckry’s earlier work. That’s probably because of the villains – The Flintstones skewered society, while Billionaire Island takes aim at the shittiest people in the world. Several of them by name.

Despite the undercurrent of anger, Billionaire Island is still packed with genuinely hilarious moments. Pugh’s sight gags remain incredible, and the comedic timing on display is outstanding. I had high expectations for Billionaire Island coming into it, and it exceeded all of them.

7. The Magic Fish

Trung Le Nguyen (Writer/Artist)

Feel like crying a lot? Because The Magic Fish got almost everyone we’ve seen read it. It’s an incredibly powerful yet quiet comic about a 13 year old coming to terms with who he is and how to talk with his parents about it.

Tien, the aforementioned 13 year old, is a first generation Vietnamese-American with a crush on a friend and a mother who is still processing her move to the States and the family she left behind. Much of the story is about Tien trying to figure out how to broach the subject with his mother.

What stands out about The Magic Fish is how Nguyen tells the story. Much of it is is told by retellings of fairy tales – two modifications of the Cinderella story, and one of The Little Mermaid. The colors are especially effective in setting up the mood and tone of the sections of story, elegantly communicating so much about Tien’s emotional and intellectual state. And the fashion and hair are magnificent. Nguyen draws Alan Davis-good hairstyles.

Nguyen’s The Magic Fish is accessible, deeply moving, and beautiful, a book that should be shared with friends.

6. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen

Matt Fracion (Writer), Steve Lieber (Artist), Nathan Fairbairn (Colorist), Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

It’s probably good that the prank war issue, where Timmy Olsen stole the wheel off the Batmobile for Youtube clout, was published last December, because otherwise this entire entry would be the Den of Geek reciting bits to each other like this was comics Anchorman. And all that time we’d spend telling each other we sure have created some…content…would distract from the fact that Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen is one of the nicest, most thoughtful, best put-together comics in years.

Beneath all of the gags – and there are a ton – Fraction, Lieber, Fairbairn, and Cowles put together a deceptively complex character study of Jimmy, Superman and Metropolis. This is a book that is as much about what Jimmy Olsen means to the people of Metropolis as it is about Dex-Starr puking blood on the remnants of Jimmy’s Gorilla City wedding, or the army of Kevins attacking him.

Lieber and Fairbairn were the perfect choices for art on this story: Lieber’s facial expressions and Fairbairn’s bright color palette sell every joke and set every mood that the story requires, and the way the creators play with time and information release is masterful. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen is essential reading, both because of its importance to the Superman universe as a whole, and because it’s just that damn funny.

5. Once and Future (READER’S CHOICE!)

Kieron Gillen (Writer), Dan Mora (Artist), Tamra Bonvillain (Colorist), Ed Dukeshire (Letterer)

Turns out letting Dan Mora draw his way through an English lit degree is a really good idea.

Joking aside, our readers have excellent taste, naming Once and Future their top pick for comic of the year.

Kieron Gillen takes the “story about a story” formula, smashes several more stories into the first one, and then lets Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain go ham on the whole thing, and the resulting comic is breathlessly exciting, and gorgeous to look at. It remixes Arthurian legend and this year added a sprinkle of Beowulf and developed the magic a little more, while juxtaposing that rich fantasy world with the mundanity of things like a senior living facility.

Mora draws monsters exceptionally well, and Bonvillain gives several scenes an ominous glow that sets a hell of a tone. Once and Future is a great pick by our readers, and is comfortably one of the best books of the year.

4. Dracula, Motherf**ker!

Alex de Campi (Writer/Letterer), Erica Henderson (Artist)

You may not realize that you need a grindhouse ‘70s story about Dracula’s brides being extremely done with his shit, but trust us, you need Dracula, Motherf**ker! in your life.

This book isn’t especially long, nor is it terribly complex. We get a lot of echoes of the original Dracula story updated to a dingy 1970s Los Angeles, and a lot of what you’d expect from a grindhouse horror comic, but it’s done exceptionally well by two incredibly talented storytellers.

In retrospect, it’s hard to believe this is the first time de Campi and Henderson have ever worked together. Dracula, Motherf**ker! felt a lot like someone discovering peanut butter cups for the first time – there’s that dawning realization as you’re reading that it really works well, and then a secondary shock that nobody had ever done it before.

De Campi is a pro’s pro and a veritable cluster bomb of ideas. Henderson is a gifted sequential artist who gets to show off her mastery of color art as a storytelling device in these pages. The final package is outstanding.

3. Far Sector

N.K. Jemisin (Writer), Jamal Campbell (Artist), Deron Bennett (Letterer)

The quality level of Far Sector is almost impossible to believe. Jamal Campbell doesn’t have an enormous comics resume, and this is N.K. Jemisin’s debut comic story. And yet the skill evident in every panel screams that this was made by a team of master craftsmen.

Far Sector is the story of Jo Mullein, a new Green Lantern with an experimental, self-charging ring, dispatched to a floating megacity run jointly by three alien races; the Nah, a group of spacefaring fishtailed/winged bipeds; the keh-Topli, a group of carnivorous plants; and the @at, a race of sentient ethereal memelords. Jo is there at the request of the ruling council to investigate the City Enduring’s first murder in centuries.

Her investigation is our way into Jemisin and Campbell’s vibrant imaginations.

This is a stunning book to look at – at least once an issue, Campbell draws something completely mind-bending. And Jemisin writes with the easy confidence and command of the form that people who have been writing comics for 50 years can’t match: there isn’t a wasted word on a single page of this entire series. It’s elegantly topical, stunning to look at, and a ton of fun to read. Far Sector is handily one of the greatest Green Lantern stories of all time.

X of Swords

Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Leah Williams, Benjamin Percy, Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson, Gerry Duggan (Writers); Pepe Larraz, Carlos Gomez, Viktor Bogdanovic, Matteo Lolli, Carmen Carnero, Rod Reis, Phil Noto, R.B. Silva, Mahmud Asrar, Leinil Francis Yu, Stefano Casselli, Joshua Cassara (Artists); Marte Gracia, Israel Silva, Matt Wilson, Edgar Delgado, David Curiel, Nolan Woodard, Sunny Gho, Guru-eFX, Rachelle Rosenberg (Colorists); Clayton Cowles, Joe Caramagna, Cory Petit, Ariana Maher, Travis Lanham, Joe Sabino (Letterers)

X-Men fans are not commonly known for our penchant for consensus. We can and will argue over everything, from who’s a better partner for Cyclops to which story arc in the ‘90s was actually rock bottom. So when you get near unanimity that X of Swords is the best X-Men crossover since Inferno, you can pretty much take that to the bank.

The culmination of the first phase of the X-universe’s post House of X/Powers of X plan, X of Swords tied all the mutant comics back together to take on a couple of the biggest ideas dropped in and immediately after HoXPoX. It did something that was nearly impossible: it paid off a year’s worth of stories from ten different series, with satisfying climaxes for more than a handful of storylines.

It did this in part because several creators are making the jump to superstardom. Larraz somehow managed to do even better work than on House of X, delivering massive beat after massive beat in the final issue of the crossover. Tini Howard spent a year making Excalibur the best book in the line, and wove her plot threads through the crossover she co-shepherded (with Boss X or whatever they’re calling Hickman) to give us a foundational Otherworld and Captain Britain story. All the while, Howard also made sure that this Excalibur-centric crossover paid homage to the first Excalibur series – packing it full of magical silliness and genuine heart. Vita Ayala only got one issue in the crossover, but that issue will go down as one of Storm’s best stories of all time. And Joshua Cassara drew two issues of fights and competitions, and dropped multiple staggering spreads.

The X-Men line as a whole is the best it’s been in decades, and there’s no better proof of that than in X of Swords.

Blue in Green

Ram V (writer), Anand RK (Artist), Aditya Bidikar (Letterer)

Fiction is especially tough when the storyteller isn’t up to the subjects. If someone is writing a book about the smartest person in the world, the writer has to be smart enough to believably put brilliance in that character’s mouth. If someone is making a comic about a drug that makes everyone indescribably beautiful, then the art has to be angelic, or the book falls apart.

But when a creative team IS up to the task, the end result can be sublime. That’s what Ram V, Anand RK and Aditya Bidikar gave us with Blue in Green. A comic about jazz that so perfectly evokes the form of its subject matter that I’m willing to bet this comic is taught in years to come. Blue in Green is incredible comics.

Blue in Green’s story is broadly familiar: it’s the crossroads tale, where the Devil meets a gifted musician and trades the musician’s life for magnificent talent. Erik is a talented saxophonist with a rough family history who’s pissing away his talents half-heartedly teaching kids how to play. He goes home for his mother’s funeral, makes his deal, and wakes up days later, after a fugue state that included him blowing the doors off of a jazz club with his sax. Eventually, the bill comes due.

The presentation has a uniquely loose flow to it, moving from rigid grids to collage with prose attached, with surreal, disorienting colors that match the mood of the section of story marvelously. The way the storytelling shifts from section to section, the way the form changes so that it can tell the story as much as the words or art can, is one of the most skillful feats of comics creation I’ve read in years. It’s like its own kind of visual jazz. Blue in Green is an astounding piece of comics storytelling, and I can’t wait to read what’s next from everyone involved.

The post The Best Comics of 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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tybaltcapp · 4 years

Photo

Now let’s do some catching up here:

Regan and Cornwall were busy climbing their way to the top of the SCIA field, but an unexpected miracle (tragedy? inconvenience?) gifted them two little girls. Regan seems more happy about this than Corny. Oh, also, Regan got into a fight with Cornwall and out of spite took Cornwall’s last name (wig!) They’re now the Danes, and their kids, Margaret and Maria, have taken the name as well.

Tybalt said fuck the feud, i’m gonna get an education. Determined to clean up his messy record, he sets sights on achieving his lifelong goal and enrolls in the poly-sci field.

Beatrice and Benedick grew up into teens, both with the Family aspiration. Poor Patrizio didn’t live long enough to see them grow up, unfortunately. (Press F)

I’ll make a separate post about this but I converted the Veronaville Market near the Capp Manor to apartments, since I never used it and to be frank it looked kinda ugly. The first tenants, The Copleys. Brother and sister duo Martin and Wendy don’t always get along, but are for now, I guess. Martin’s taking a liking to a certain Kent Capp, where Wendy’s got her sights on some rando NPC she started autonomously flirting with.

I also slightly rebranded Sim State University to Lear State College to fit the Shakespeare aesthetic of the world, and the first sim enrolled is none other than iconic family bin mf Erik Swain. Still trying to figure out what I want to do with him. He’s pretty generic which is good since I can make whatever tf I want outta him. LSU will get it’s own post in a second.

Bianca started climbing the Science career ladder, but along the way met a ~handsome~ bachelor John Boyega (I named him after the actor because I was watching TFA and accidentally started making Finn as a sim and here we are lmao). They got hitched and moved into an apartment downtown in a real lowkey event.

The Picasos found a nice little house on Via Veronaville, and immediately planted roots. Their son Daniel grew up real mf fast. He’s actually a kid now but I didn’t get any pictures of him yet.

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vermiculated · 5 years

Text

books - this is why ‘monthly” is a valuable interval

oh geez.

White Nights - Ann Cleeves

Sawkill Girls - Claire Legrand

Lady in Red - Maire Claremont

Behind Closed Doors - Amanda Vickery (vg)

A Rope of Thorns - Gemma Files

Dreaming Darkly - Caitlin Kittredge

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics - Olivia Waite

Astray - Emma Donoghue

Heartthrobs - Carol Dyhouse

Nine Pints - Rose George

Daily Rituals - Mason Currey

Rereadings - Anne Fadiman ed

Rustication - Charles Palliser

What Makes This Book So Great - Jo Walton

Creatures of Will and Temper - Molly Tanzer

The Lost Man - Jane Harper

The Sins of Lord Lockwood - Meredith Duran

The Jade Temptress - Jeannie Lin

Hither Page - Cat Sebastian (hashtag soup feelings)

Paradise Lodge - Nina Stibbe

Medical Bondage - Deirdre Benia Cooper Owens

Flagrant Conduct - Dale Carpenter

Intimate Friends - Martha Vicinus

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Night's Black Angels - Ronald Pearsall

The Politics of Narrative - Kenneth Graham

Indigenous Navigation and Voyaging in the Pacific - Nicholas Goetzfridt

Pornography - Mari Mikkola

Life in the English Country House - Mark Girouard

Country House Life - Jessica Gerard

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (classic beachread)

A Tree of Bones - Gemma Files

Battleborn - Claire Vaye Watkins

Marilou is Everywhere - Sarah Elaine Smith

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities - Chen Chen

The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine - AJ Youngson

Consider the Fork - Bee Wilson

You May Kiss the Duke - Charis Michaels

My One and Only Duke - Grace Burrowes

The Quick - Lauren Owen

Our Kind of Cruelty - Araminta Hall

I Am Still Alive - Kate Alice Marshall

Will's True Wish - Grace Burrowes (the wish is dogs)

The Trauma Cleaner - Sarah Krasnostein

Ghost Wall - Sarah Moss (vg)

At The Lightning Field - Laura Raicovich

Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald

Felix Yz - Lisa Bunker

Amazons and Military Maids - Julie Wheelwright

A Debutante in Disguise - Eleanor Webster

A Little Light Mischief - Cat Sebastian

Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho

Re-dressing America's Frontier Past - Peter Boag (peat bog)

Courting the Cat Whisperer - Wynter Daniels

In Miniature - Simon Garfield

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls - T Kira Madden

The Science of Shakespeare - Dan Falk

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause - Shawn Wen

A Flag Worth Dying For - Tim Marshall

Ordinary Beast - Nicole Sealey (vg)

Combat-Ready Kitchen - Anastacia Marx de Salcedo

The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe - Rudolf Dekker and Lotte van de Pol

Kiss Me Someone - Karen Shepard

Safari Honeymoon - Jesse Jacobs

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine

Nine Continents - Xiaolu Guo

300 Arguments - Sarah Manguso

Grief Cottage - Gail Godwin

Red Bones - Ann Cleeves

Life Mask - Emma Donoghue

The Flame and the Flower - Kathleen Woodwiss

Brute - Emily Skaja

A Bride's Story 6 - Kaoku Moru trans William Flanagan

Skim - Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

The Invention of Pornography - Lynn Hunt ed

Canned - Anna Zeide

Mostly Dead Things - Kristen Arnett

Free and Natural - Sarah Schrank

A Tree for Peter - Kate Seredy

In the Distance - Hernan Diaz (vg)

Mastering Fear - Rikke Schubart

Beyond Speech - Mari Mikkola ed

Portrait of a Woman in Silk - Zara Anishanslin

The Art of Living - FL Lucas

Pornographic Art and the Aesthetics of Pornography - Hane Maes ed

Elizabeth and Jacobean Poets - John F Danby

Family Fortunes - Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall

Silence of the Grave - Arnaldur Indridason trans Bernard Scudder

She Walks in Shadows - Silvia Moreno-Garcia ed

The Hallowed Ones - Laura Bickle

Making the Grade - William Fischel

The Joseph Johnson Letterbook - John Bugg ed

Manet Manette - Carol Armstrong

Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun - Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Regency House Styles - Trevor Yorke

Timekeepers - Simon Garfield

Patience and Sarah - Isabel Miller

The Warlow Experiment - Alix Nathan

Girls Who Score - Illy Goyanes

In Search of Time - Dan Falk

Skeleton Keys - Brian Switek

The Englishwoman's Bedroom - Elizabeth Dickson ed

Ghosts - Roger Clarke

Joseph Johnson - Gerald Tyson

Falling in Love with Statues - George Hersey

Necromanticism - Paul Westover (vg)

Essay on Sepulchers - William Godwin

Passions Between Women - Emma Donoghue

Women's Friendships - Susan Koppleman ed

Olivia - Dorothy Bussy

Mooncop - Tom Gauld

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi trans Mattias Ripa

Star Wars Super Graphic - Tim Leong

Luisa Now and Then - Carole Maurel trans Mariko Tamaki and Nanette McGuiness

Daughters of the Lake - Wendy Webb

Rules for Vanishing - Kate Alice Marshall

The Outermost House - Henry Beston

Feminism and the Body - Londa Schiebinger ed

Winter in the Blood - James Welch

Capturing Sound - Mark Katz

The Table-Rappers - Ronald Pearsall

Black - Michel Pastoreau trans Jody Gladding

In These Times - Jenny Uglow

The Daylight Gate - Jeanette Winterson

The Grave Keepers - Elizabeth Byrne

Metropolitan Life - Fran Lebowitz

Life Among the Savages - Shirley Jackson

Social Studies - Fran Lebowitz

When My Brother Was an Aztec - Natalie Diaz

The Imaginary Corpse - Tyler Hayes

The Invention of the Restaurant - Rebecca Spang

Moll Cutpurse - Ellen Galford

Manchette's Fatale - Doug Headline

Hand-Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People - Matthew Diffee

In the Pines - Erik Kriek

Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson

Nightingale - Paisley Rekdal

Louis Riel - Chester Brown

Fantastic Metamorphoses - Marina Warner

Elektra - Derrick Puffett ed

Tenements, Towers, and Trash - Julia Wertz

Ghostland - Colin Dickey

Feminism and History - Joan Wallach Scott ed

The Hide and Seek Files - Caeia Marsh

Red Rosa - Kate Evans

A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts - Ying Chang Compestine

Death is Hard Work - Khaled Khalifah trans Lori Price

Civil War - Lucan trans Susan Braund

The Making of the Modern Body - Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur

Oculus - Sally Wen Mao

The Write Escape - Charish Reid

Freedom Hospital - Hamid Sulamin trans Francesa Barrie

The Lion of Rora - Christos Gage et al

Mauve - Simon Garfield

The Lake of Dead Languages - Carol Goodman

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

#books 2019 #that was so many

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burlveneer-music · 4 years

Audio

Music from the Association for the Promotion of New Music (APNM), vol. 1 & 2 - 2-disc compilation from New Focus Recordings

The Association for the Promotion of New Music (APNM) was founded in 1975 by Jacques-Louis Monod as a community of American composers with shared aesthetic values. This double album release features acoustic (disc 1) and electro-acoustic works by their member composers, including Stephen Dydo, Sheree Clement, Laurie San Martin, Carl Bettendorf, and Hubert Howe. Produced by Stephen Dydo and Erik Lundborg Graphic Design by DJ Pallotta

#new focus recordings #apnm #modern classical #electroacoustic #experimental #electronic #compilation #various artists #2020

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scientificphilosopher · 5 years

Text

Book List 2018

I’m a couple weeks behind on this, but here’s the list of books I read in 2018. I’ve broken it down by category, though this is pretty loose since, you know, genres bleed into one another and such. You can also find reviews of some of these books here, and I always take requests for reviews as well. Follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading and rating.

Let me know what you think if you’ve read any of these books or have recommendations, and, as always, please feel free to send me malicious personal attacks if I say something you disagree with.

Non-Fiction

Philosophy

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag

Ethics Without Ontology by Hilary Putnam

Meaning in Life and Why It Matters by Susan Wolf

The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love by Susan Wolf

The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World by Owen J. Flanagan

Meaning in Life by Thaddeus Metz

The Human Eros: Eco-Ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence by Thomas Alexander

Naturalism and Normativity by Mario De Caro (Editor), David Macarthur (Editor)

Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity by Michael P. Lynch

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter by Peter Singer

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment by Robert Wright

A Defense of Buddhist Virtue Ethics by Jack Hamblin

Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought by Dennis C. Rasmussen

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Reality, Art and Illusion by Alan Watts

Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett

Science

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte

Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovara

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us by Richard O. Prum

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

The Physics of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku

The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World--and Could Destroy It by Alanna Mitchell

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

Visions for the 21st Century by Carl Sagan et al.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science by Chet Raymo

Politics/Race/Gender

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay (editor)

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Tears We Cannot Stand: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

The Common Good by Robert Reich

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

Memoir

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

South of Forgiveness: A True Story of Rape and Responsibility by Thordis Elva

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker

The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman

My Own Life by David Hume

Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth

Calypso by David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

History/Biography

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan

God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang

Fiction

Literary Fiction

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Another Country by James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Home by Toni Morrison

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

The Dead by James Joyce

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

A Confederacy of Dunces by Jonh Kennedy Toole

The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo

Genre Fiction

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Slice of Life by Kurt Vonnegut

2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Pure Drivel by Steve Martin

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

The Green Mile by Stephen King

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

The Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events #1 by Lemony Snicket

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Worst of 2018

Every single book I read this past year had redemptive value. Even if it was total garbage, it still taught me some stuff (like how not to write a book). Even a bad book can be a good book if you let it be.

So, here’re a few books that didn’t quite hit the spot for me:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Best of 2018

It was genuinely difficult to choose my top books of 2018. What a literary year it has been for me. 2018 marks the most books I’ve read in a year, and I was lucky enough to come across some real game-changers. I finally read the Harry Potter series and, boy howdy, did it ever live up to the hype. What took me so long?? But this was, more than anything, the year of James Baldwin. He has made an indelible mark on me as a reader, a writer, and a human. What a year this has been! I hope to read a fraction as much beautiful, lovely, challenging, profound prose in 2019.

In no particular order, here are the books of 2018 that most moved me, shook me, rattled me, rolled me:

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Well, there you have it, folks. Here’s to many more good books in the years to come!

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. —Ursula K. Le Guin

#reading list #2018 #nich #reading #books #writing #long post #long

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videogamesincolor · 6 years

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Lament for Mr. Negative, or misleading the audience to hide an Octopus (SPOILERS)

I think one of the things I was excited about with regard to Marvel’s Spider-Man (or, Spider-Man PS4) was the fact that the game appeared (emphasis on appeared) to be hinging its bets on a relative unknown villain (within the spectrum of the mainstream or pop culture awareness), Mr. Negative – otherwise known as Martin Li (voiced and apparently modeled after Stephen Oyoung).

I had some trepidation toward the use of the character – especially since the “Demon gang”, a seemingly Chinese-American fronted group of criminals, tended to invoke the aesthetic of “Evil Asians” that was really hot all through the eighties and early 2000s (think any action film dealing with the “Yakuza” or “The Triads”) – even with the presence of characters like Yuri Watanabe (a Japanese-American police officer who works with Spider-Man) as an apparent offset to Martin Li.

His comic book backstory certainly invokes a lot of those feelings, but his affiliation with characters like The Spot (who I initially mistook him for, lmao) and Hammerhead, opens the character up to an otherwise interesting avenue of villainy. At least, on the assumption that the game had no intention of using established rogues (like it ended up doing).

Mr. Negative was quite literally the only villain you saw consistently amongst the promotional material, even after the reveal of the Sinister Six during E3 2018. The advertisement and demos seemed intent on letting the audience know that this was a person that Peter Parker looked up to and admired greatly – what with his repeated insistence to want to help him in earlier demos from 2017.

More importantly, Martin Li wasn’t just important to Peter, he also meant a lot to May Parker (Aunt May), who was a little more proactive in helping around Li’s shelter (because she doesn’t exactly have other responsibilities like Peter does).

When you get to the game, proper, however, Martin Li is rarely seen in the game beyond a few cinematics that establishes he was responsible for creating the help center, F.E.A.S.T, which shelters the homeless and generally helps out those without stable financial means or a stable lifestyle.

But, once Peter shows Martin the “Demon gang” mask, and he vaguely explains it’s a mask with ties to an old story his parents used to tell him as a child, then the character rather disappears for long periods of time. If you aren’t going into the game blind, you already know Martin is the ringleader of the “Demon gang” that begins terrorizing New York following Wilson Fisk’s arrest.

The problem with watching the story unfold is that you never see Martin doing anything within the narrative to reinforce that he’s a legitimate threat, most of the really violent acts are done (seemingly) on his behalf by people under his influence. You also really don’t get to see his side of the narrative, you just see him reacting to Peter’s constant interference with his plans.

He shows up two times before he goes completely villainous: Once to tell May and Peter to look after F.E.A.S.T when he goes off for an undetermined absence, as it’s the only “good” part him left, and again when Peter discovers his cubbyhole in F.E.A.S.T, and just says-without-saying he knows that Peter is Spider-Man and that he found his hideaway.

Afterward, a lot of your encounters with the Demon gang have nothing to do with Martin. When he shows up again one last time (before the Sinister Six reveal), actually leading the Demon gang, it’s just so he ends up getting arrested and sent to “The Raft” (a maximum security prison for supervillains and above-average criminals).

You certainly don’t get any information about his motivations until well near the end of the game. Assuming I didn’t misunderstand the shabby video, he was experimented on by Norman Osborn – and the experiment resulted in the creation of his “Negative” powers and the death of his parents, who I think were getting him treated for some kind of illness.

The downside to that reveal, however, is that information isn’t about informing him as a character. It’s all to establish why Otto Octavius – Doctor Octopus – broke ties with Norman Osborn and left (or got fired from) Oscorp. And that’s the problem with Spider-Man’s story.

Martin Li was never the primary antagonist – that rather becomes obvious when Li is reduced to nothing more than a boss battle mechanic alongside the Sinister Six. He was used by Insomniac games as a smokescreen to hide the fact that Doctor Octopus was the central antagonist of the game.

I really thought Insomniac was gunning for the sympathetic villain angle Marvel Studio’s been trying to reproduce since the advent of Black Panther’s Erik Killmonger, but when you take Martin Li’s actions into consideration to the greater narrative – none of it really comes off as understandable or remotely sympathetic.

Doctor Octopus wants to besmirch Norman Osborn’s name by making him seem incapable of protecting the public from terrorism (specifically bio-terrorism), he’s not particularly interested in exposing his crimes against humanity (the experimentation he did on Martin Li) or using the recorded evidence to get him thrown in jail (the excuse being “he always bounces back” from a scandal).

So, as a means of keeping himself out of the spotlight, Octopus uses people like Martin Li, who’ve been exploited by Osborn, to exploit Li’s vengeful state-of-mind further to his own benefit. Sure, it makes Doctor Octopus look like an absolutely irredeemable asshole that needs be locked up, but Martin Li comes off looking like a fool who got played. Nothing Martin Li does is of his own design. It’s all basically done to the benefit of Doctor Octopus and on his orders.

Afterward, Spider-Man just knocks Martin Li out – following the last big boss battle with him – and he just vanishes from the narrative altogether. IIRC, we never know what happens to him after the fight, but the game lets us know that Doctor Octopus was thrown in jail (where he belongs). I guess Martin’s still lying on the ground in Oscorp somewhere?

The game takes great pains to establish how important Peter’s relationship with Otto is in relation to his work and his belief system (Peter repeatedly tells Otto that he was everything he wanted to be, he worshiped him, and admired his mind), but you really don’t get that with Martin Li.

By far, most of Spider-Man’s interactions with Martin never feel quite earned because neither Martin nor his alter-ego, Mr. Negative, are present in the story very long.

Why would Martin Li try to turn Spider-Man to his side when he’s proven to be nothing more than a nuisance? This might’ve made sense if there was any real time was dedicated to Martin and Peter’s relationship, but there wasn’t, so it’s like some odd thing that comes out of nowhere just so the player can have a trippy experience in the “Negative Zone” with Mr. Negative during a platforming battle.

I dunno, I’m disappointed that this was how it turned out for the character. They really could’ve built an entire story around Mr. Negative and Martin Li.

#videogamesincolor #marvel's spider man #spider man ps4 #mr. negative #martin li #insomniac games #lord jesus its a long post #spider man series #spider man spoilers

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moviemagistrate · 5 years

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“Black Panther” Review

Isn’t it weird to live in a world where the most culturally significant film of the year is a comic book movie with CGI war rhinos? Maybe it’s just my inner contrarian talking, but I can’t help but be baffled at not so much the financial success (the Marvel/Disney juggernaut has shown no sign of slowing down), but rather the critical praise and awards that have been bestowed upon this film. I’m not naïve; I know that this praise stems mainly from the film’s inclusivity (I hesitate to use the word “diversity” since the cast is all black save for a couple of white dudes) and for being the first film of this size to have a mostly-black cast and be directed by a black director. Quality-wise, on the other hand, “Black Panther” strikes me as just slightly above average for Marvel, and all the more disappointing considering all the talent involved.

The story is initially about T’Challa/Black Panther, the newly crowned king and protector of the isolated and highly technologically-advanced African country of Wakanda, who struggles with the duties of being king while also hunting for arms dealer Ulysses Klaue, who robbed his country of some of their precious metal vibranium, killing lots of his people in the process. Eventually the plot morphs into a power struggle for the throne by T’Challa’s long-estranged cousin Erik/Killmonger, who has become bitter and angry over their country’s isolationism and refusal to help the oppressed peoples of the world, along with his own personal connection to T’Challa’s father.

The plot is nicely focused without having too many villains, and isn’t encumbered with lots of pointless action scenes. What action there is, however, is too reliant on CGI and not enough on genuine excitement or imagination, and feel like a massive step down from director Ryan Coogler’s excellent fight scenes in “Creed”. The finale in particular is pretty lame, with some spaceships shooting each other in the sky while a bunch of extras fight in a field, and Black Panther and Evil Black Panther fight on a murky train track, and it all looks like a PS2 cutscene if the PS2 had an axe lodged in it. Even the one-on-one duels during the challenges to the throne suffer from the shaky-cam/fast-editing cancer combo, missing even a nice dose of brutality to the kicks and punches. If anything feels like Marvel’s formulaic nature stifling a talented filmmaker, it’s the action in “Black Panther”.

Speaking of which, for all of this film’s wonderful costumes and artistic design, the film feels like it’s not showing nearly enough of Wakanda. We get a few flyovers of the main city and one street where people walk happily along, but most of the time in Wakanda is either in fields or a lab where Black Panther’s Q (and sister) makes gadgets and patches people up for him. So much hype is made about the wonderment of Wakanda, but visually we really don’t see much that’s interesting in it. The sequence in Seoul where it briefly becomes a Black Bond film (the best part of the movie) is also the best looking part because of Seoul’s naturally pretty nighttime aesthetic. It’s really only in the dream sequences where characters speak to their fathers in some ancestral plane where the film finds its own visual groove (love that purple), but this only happens a couple of times in the movie. And while there’s some creative camerawork at play, the colors mostly feel the usual muted way they do in Marvel’s films, the film desperately needing some vibrant stylization and color (ironically).

The story shows flashes of ambition and works better than the action or the visuals. Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger has considerably more depth than the typical one-dimensional Marvel villain, his anger stemming from the real world injustice that his people have faced for centuries, and wants Wakanda to take global power and help the oppressed of the world. This stuff feels so real that the film almost seems scared to embrace him, so of course they have to counteract his valid points by making him a murderous psychopath who executes people who don’t fall in line with him, and who wants to spread laser-guns around the world and start World War 3 (I guess I shouldn’t expect too much for a character named Killmonger). The film makes the occasional stab at political awareness, but never quite commits to it, which just makes the ending speech about opening borders feel so frying-pan-to-the-head blunt that it could have been written by Spike Lee. Speaking of villains, Andy Serkis is very entertaining as the arms dealer Klaue, bringing so much swagger in every scene he’s in that the impish fun he’s having is infectious, so it's unfortunate that the movie gets rid of him so early, even if it’s understandable why.

The rest of the characters are a mixed bag. While the king's sister/gadget scientist is a bit annoying at times (the "WHAT ARE THOOOSE?" line made my skin crawl), she's played with enough enthusiasm and comic timing that she works. I really like the character of Okoye, the king's bodyguard/general, because she has an interesting moral conflict in the film as her unwavering loyalty to the throne clashes with her personal beliefs and convictions (the film would have probably been better if it was about her). I even like Martin Freeman as the film's tag-along CIA agent (and token white guy), and the bit players all have their moment to shine. The main problem with the cast is actually T'Challa himself. It's refreshing that he's not the same smarmy, quippy white dude that all the other heroes are, but while they got rid of that trait, the writers forgot to replace it with anything else. How can you describe his personality? Noble? Boring? The character has a good conflict set up for him, a new king thrust upon the throne by tragedy and struggling to determine Wakanda's future, but he just has no charisma in this film, something desperately needed if Chadwick Boseman (who is generally a good actor) is to carry his own franchise.

Ultimately, "Black Panther" works as another solid Marvel film, the safety net of Marvel's lack of ambition being slightly elevated by a good cast, the Seoul scenes, the villains, and Ludwig Göransson's kick-ass score. But ultimately, the few reaches that "Black Panther" makes for greatness only serve to highlight how cookie-cutter the rest of the film feels. Other than its brief flirtations with interesting subject matter and the refreshing sight of an action blockbuster’s cast having an average melanin level greater than 1%, it’s still more typical MCU, filled with lame humor, a dull and muted color palette, and the same ol’ large, cluttered 3rd-act battle filled with embarrassingly bad CGI. Wakanda Whatever.

#black panther #movie #review

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littlelonghairedoutlawllho · 6 years

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Inspired by the victorian aesthetic post: 5 headcanons about an AU where one character (probably Raoul or Erik, idk) once went on a paleontological mission and ever since has been in a state of existential crisis.

This did not turn out at all the way I imagined. It was supposed to be wildly philosophical, and it ended up sad.

Instead of joining the Navy, Raoul goes to America. It’s Philippe’s idea, for him to have a year of experience somewhere else before coming back and becoming a Naval officer. Raoul isn’t given much say, and goes reluctantly. En route he falls in with Martin, a paleaontologist (though he remains privately convinced that the man is secretly a gold prospector) and it’s through him that he finds himself agreeing to join a summer expedition West.

It’s the first time Raoul has ever truly been in love with someone. He was infatuated with Christine, and never had any strong feelings for anyone else, until he meets Martin. And it surprises himself when a relationship quietly develops out of it shortly after they reach Boston. He knows nothing about bone hunting and frankly thinks it’s all ludicrous. Giant creatures who roamed the earth millions of years before humanity? It’s all nonsense. Did God send them down? Or did God plant the bones to lead beautiful men like Martin astray? It’s more than he can get his head around, but he’s too far gone to much care.

They reach the Dakota territory, he, Martin, five other keen young men, and an ex-Army scout. And Raoul is awed by the first bone he sees, by how huge it is and how fragile. He’s no less mystified by how it got there, by how such a thing could possibly have lived. But Martin’s boundless enthusiasm leaves his growing discomfort in the pale, and living and loving beneath the stars, surrounded by these ancient bones, he’s not wholly certain that he’s not dreaming.

But all such dreams must end. And as summer closes out, they pack up to return east. Raoul’s heart aches at the thought of returning to France, and he makes quiet plans to stay on, to journey out west again and see the vast cattle herds, the smoky towns and gambling halls. The journey is slow, for the sake of preserving the bones, and Martin is increasingly pale, and Raoul tries not to think of it, tries not to think of what it means to hear him coughing in the night, to feel the heat of his skin pressed close, to hear the rattle of his breath in his throat. He’s had coughing fits all summer, but nothing like this, and if dinosaurs once walked the earth, did God create them? Are they all living on in an afterlife of their own, like all things that must surely have passed in the millennia that Martin insists lies between the dinosaurs and them? And as Martin coughs, and blood spatters red on his lips, it seems so important to know.

It is pneumonia, in the end. Pneumonia that steals the breath from Martin’s lungs. They are a week out from Chicago, and he dies with his hand pressed to Raoul’s lips, his last words murmuring of dinosaurs. And if Raoul was losing his religion before, there is nothing left of it as he closes Martin’s eyes. The dinosaurs surely must have lived independently of any God, and if the God he grew up with might have planted those bones to give a man like Martin something to cling to, then how could he steal him away on a frosty night beneath a sky of stars, surrounded by packing crates of pieces of dreams? It’s the most unnatural, most wrong, must terrible thing he’s ever heard, and the light goes out of the world, and he cannot understand how there could ever be anything after this.

He returns to France, but there’s not a word of what he’s seen that he can speak to anyone. It’s all he can do just to breathe, all he can do to keep the earth from slipping beneath his feet. And he smiles fake smiles at people’s questions, and nods, and escapes to the sea to sail beneath the stars that to him will always be Martin’s.

It is on his leave when he meets Christine at the opera, and they can each sense that there is something not right with the other, but too much has passed between them now, more than either of them could ever begin to articulate. And when Raoul decides to study biology under a Professor widely held to be odd because of his fascination with long-dead creatures, everyone he has known is baffled, and decides that his trip to America was the ruination of him.

But when, five years later, he is sailing back for Boston, it is the first time that he is able to take a breath.

Send me an AU and I’ll give you 5+ headcanons about it

#phantom stuff #palaeontology au #raoul/oc #i swear to god i never meant it to be so sad #convenientalias #shauna replies

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Second Life for Shipping Containers: Selling Bao Buns and Baked Goods To drum up publicity for his downtown Indianapolis food hall, Craig Baker posted photos of orange, turquoise and hot pink shipping containers on Instagram. They might seem like an odd way to promote a food emporium and culinary incubator, but the steel boxes piqued locals’ curiosity. “They’re very much like Legos, right?” Mr. Baker, an entrepreneur and a chef, said of the shipping containers inside the AMP, an artisan marketplace and a former utility garage where vendors will sell PB&J sandwiches, Ethiopian cold-brewed coffee and chocolate-covered strawberries coated in edible glitter. “We’re building our own little village inside a giant garage,” he said of the 40,000-square-foot space, which also contains a full-service restaurant, an open-air bar, a community prep kitchen and a stage. “People want to see what you built.” Shipping containers have been heralded as a trend in residential design, where they are used for modular homes, but they’re also winning over commercial planners who have used them to liven up the bars, cafes and restaurants within developments anchored by food halls. When used in industrial areas or port cities, the containers give the projects a sense of community, critical in a pandemic when retailers and restaurants are shutting their doors. But the shipping containers also present challenges for developers, including adapting them for indoor uses and making them safe for guests and employees during a pandemic. Most food halls rely on shipping containers to populate the vendor stalls, but some also use them as a canvas for art installations or as common spaces. As food halls proliferate, builders are using forward-looking design to stand out from the pack to avoid resembling a sterile cafeteria. “Food halls are a dime a dozen these days; there’s a lot of them doing the exact same thing,” said David Weitz, a co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners, which this month opened Oasis, a food and entertainment hub built on the site of a former ship engine repair firm in Miami’s artsy Wynwood neighborhood. Six yellow, pink and lavender shipping containers are used to sell bao buns and gyros while 16 more form a 75-foot-tall central Tower Bar painted in the same colors by the Spanish artist Antonyo Marest. The Oasis is one of a dozen food halls that use shipping containers and one of several opening this year, along with the AMP in Indianapolis and BLVD MRKT near Los Angeles. There are 242 food halls operating in the United States, a jump from 222 at the start of the pandemic, and cities have been relying on their creative concepts and communal dining spaces to re-energize dormant neighborhoods. At least 190 more are in the works, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report. The trend started in 2013 with the Downtown Container Park, a project conceived by Tony Hsieh, the Zappos chief executive, who died last November. The development, which was central to the $350 million revitalization of downtown Las Vegas, inspired other developers like Barney Santos, who will open BLVD MRKT this summer in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Montebello after seven years of planning. “I remember seeing the container park and feeling so inspired by the design,” Mr. Santos said of the Las Vegas development. “I wanted to recreate that experience in my neighborhood, to do something no one would expect to see.” Developers like Mr. Santos said using shipping containers was a design choice rather than a cost-saving one. Used shipping containers cost $2,000 to $3,000, but builders can expect to pay five times that amount to add windows, doors, support structures, and kitchen and other equipment to pass local health inspections. That makes the cost comparable to installing regular food stalls. Today in Business Updated May 11, 2021, 10:07 a.m. ET For entrepreneurs, opening a food stall in a shipping container allows them to add flourishing touches to personalize their space. At many indoor food halls, stalls often look the same except for a few variations in signage. “The creativity that opens up is the most curious,” said Mr. Baker, the project lead for the AMP. “You’re giving them a canvas, and you say: ‘Look, here’s your space. What are you going to do with it?’” That resonated with Joanna Wilson, owner of an AMP dessert shop, Punkin’s Pies. Ms. Wilson chose colors that matched her brand, adding black-and-white floors and awnings to the hot pink shipping container as well as a sparkly chandelier that shines like her glitter-covered strawberries. The semi-enclosed space also allows her to tuck away most of her kitchen equipment. “I’m trying to make it look dainty and neat,” Ms. Wilson said. “I don’t like showing my refrigerator, microwave and the kitchen area.” The design choice makes sense in major port cities like Long Beach, Calif., where the developer Howard CDM built SteelCraft, one of the earlier incarnations of a shipping container dining venue. “There’s shipping containers everywhere” in Long Beach, said Kimberly Gros, the founder of SteelCraft, which manages two other Southern California locations, in Garden Grove and Bellflower. “So we thought we would create a structure that was different, that really connected to us.” Reusing materials appeals to many consumers, both from an environmental and aesthetic standpoint. “I think when you take an item and subvert its original intent and create an entirely new use for that item, that’s always interesting,” said Erik Rutter, a co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners. For indoor food halls like the AMP, bright hues liven up an otherwise gray space while maintaining an industrial feel. “The color palette for the containers really pops,” Mr. Baker said. But there are a few caveats to using shipping containers in food-centric destinations. Some developers advise sticking to outdoor uses to avoid complex retrofitting. In an outdoor setting, oven ventilation can go straight from the oven hood through the roof, which is the most common setup. But for a food hall at the bottom of a 50-story building, the process becomes more complicated because the venting may have to go up 50 stories, said Mr. Weitz of Carpe. Most developers have stuck to outdoor uses, but some food halls in the Midwest, such as the AMP, Detroit Shipping Company and Parlor Food Hall in Kansas City, Mo., have placed them indoors. Design experts say the key is to stick to bakeries and other light cooking uses indoors instead of, say, a shop that requires a deep fryer. That’s why the AMP used shipping containers for businesses with limited cooking requirements and conventional stalls for those that required more, said John Albrecht, a principal at the architecture firm DKGR, which designed the AMP. Coping with the pandemic is also a bigger challenge for indoor food halls where guests often jockey for coveted seats. Most have pushed takeout and delivery services and have reconfigured their seating to enable social distancing, said Phil Colicchio, a co-leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s food and beverage consulting group. But perhaps the biggest struggle for shipping container-led developments is staying relevant as more open. “The worry is that the more that go this route, the more the spaces start to look alike,” said Trip Schneck, also a co-leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s food and beverage group. Expect shipping container developments to keep popping up, especially as cities identify more industrial areas in need of revitalization. But it won’t be long before architects identify the next big thing, said Howard CDM’s president, Martin D. Howard. “Brilliant thinkers and creative minds will come up with other ways to make it interesting for people to come out and eat and drink and have a good time,” he said. Source link Orbem News #baked #Bao #Buns #Containers #goods #life #Selling #Shipping

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