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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

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gwtoomanyalts · 3 years

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Hello! Thanks for the ask earlier, now it’s your turn. Could I request the notebook ask for Eira talking About Smodur the Unflinching? It’s really cool to see another sylvari that’s a member of a charr warband.

From @commander-coppercogg

Oh, sure thing! Haven't gotten the chance to write about her in a while , this will be fun ^_^

I got a letter from Varia today! I was so happy to hear that she’s doing well and we’ll be able to join her on the front line sooner than expected!

It was not all good news though I’m afraid. She did mention that Smodur had been killed during some sort of meeting. I was honestly surprised to hear the news! Not so much that he had died mind you, but that he had managed to do so outside of combat. I’d only met the man in person on one occasion, but I had always thought that he was the type to die face to face with his foe. A foe he had no doubt underestimated given the size of his ego, but face to face nonetheless.

I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, and he had done a great many things that are to be praised, but the Smodur that I’d met had been far from what I’d expected from someone who’d been hailed as the visionary that brokered peace between the humans and charr. Well, nevermind it, it is my journal after all and I can write what I wish. The Smodur that I’d met was nothing more than a self centered and power hungry man, and it’s not as though he even tried to hide that fact, so much as most were simply good enough to overlook it. I feel as though I am a good judge of character, at least now, and Smodur surely would have burned his own treaty with the humans to the ground if he thought it would get him closer to being the new Khan-Ur, I’m sure of it.

Still, whatever his true motivations I’m fully aware that Smodur the Unflinching will be remembered fondly by most everyone, charr and human especially. He did do some good in this world after all, even if his intentions were not always the most pure. I’ll kneel at the stature they no doubt make of him in the Black Citadel, paying my respects to the legacy of his accomplishments, if not the man I remember.

#ice brood saga spoilers #guild wars 2 #gw2 #sylvari #answers #ice warband #Eira

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borisbubbles · 5 years

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Eurovision 2010s: 02 & 01

It’s here.When you’re reading this I’ll be safely tucked away on a vacay, but let me say, it’s been an intense two months. 408 write-ups, 408 desperate famewhore, 408 beautiful people (and Boggie.). 406 have been ranked and now it is time to reveal whom I think the best entry of them all is.So let us start with the runner-up, the also-ran the entry that ALMOST could’ve made it, but didn’t.

02. Iveta Mukuchyan - “LoveWave” Armenia 2016

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All-time ranking: #12

Hey, it’s me. Look,

I know it might sound strange but suddenly I’m not the same I used be

it’s like I’ve stepped out of space and time and ~Come Alive~

When she touched us, the world went silent. Calm before the stormed reached us. The art in motion set off all sirens. She took over our heartbeat - beat - beat

IT’S TAKING OVER ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God I should just stop quoting “LoveWave” but it’s stronger than myself. SHE SHOOK MY LIFE LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE YOUR FAVES COULD NE-E-VER HAVE! It, too, is a stunning masterpiece, a masterclass in seduction, an example of how everyone should tackle avant garde. Completely original- ok lmfao that isn’t true, the Aminata influence is pretty obvious here. However, unlike most other copycats, Iveta understood that imitation is best served as a form of flattery: in other words she took on a great formula and made it even better. If Aminata was the “Love Injection”, the Iveta is the “Fierceness Injection”.

or more like a LOVEwave

SPREADING LOVEWAVES AND MY HEART GOES BOOM-BA-BA-DOOM-WO-OH-OH.

At the relatively small cost of a lesser vocal performance Iveta brought us a more unfiltered, more realistic, more intense exploration of what love actually does to somebody and the result is supereffective.

“LoveWave” is edgy and dynamic beyond my wildest expectations. It absolutely shatters me from start to finish. It’s a thrilling rollercoaster that never slows down and the second you believe you’ve figured out this meandering song’s musical formula, there’s yet a new twist around the corner. Its layers unfold slowly, gracefully, beautifully like the budding rose. There is only one entry that can compete with it in terms of its innovativeness and that’s the winner of this ranking.

ARMENIA

A country of high risk/high reward entries. Armenia isn’t always good, and they are in fact very often terrible. However, the moments when they are good are moments of undisputed slayage. The persistent coin flip of the Armenian selection is a very exciting ride and I always look forward to seeing what they have on offer, provided they can fix their staging problems.

________________________________________________________________

and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the WINNER is none other than:

01. Lena - “Taken by a stranger” Germany 2011

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All-time ranking: #04

Let us start by noting that Lena is DEFENDING HER TITLE, and what a defence it is. 😍 I shan’t get ahead of myself, but know that 2011 Lena blows 2010 Lena completely out of the water. Gone are the days of constipated adorkability. This beautiful introverted cygnet finally transformed into a graceful, confidence black swan.

Okay so... as it turns out, my bitching about German women and 2011 entries was only foreshadowing for the inevitable: my favourite song in this decade is the German entry from my least favourite year of the 2010s. 😂

Of course, the fact this daring and amazing entry was sent by a country which usually doesn’t do daring, in a year which otherwise doesn’t do amazing only further enhances the spice, but there actually a more rational reason for me ranking Lena first: “Taken by a stranger” marks the first time, the first true time an avant garde entry was taken seriously in modern Eurovision.

Remember what I said about the original source always being the best? We are here. “Avant-Garde Eurovision” is Lena City and we’re all living in it. Before “Taken by a stranger” novelty entries were either greeted with mockery (Silvia Night, Pas de deux, Divine, Visionary dream) or as flukes, anomalies within the system (Sanomi, Dancing Lasha Tumbai). Critics saw them as shallow gimmicks and little more.

“Taken by a stranger” reinvented the way people look at experimental music and did it with great style. Lena proved that weird can be accessible, that quirky can be high-quality and that artistic can be enjoyed. She proved that ‘different’ has a place in Eurovision.

She also proved that giant condoms make perfect dancing costumes:

Without Lena, we have no precedent for “LoveWave” or “Love Injected” or “Rhythm inside” or “Midnight Gold” or “Skeletons”. Without Lena laying the groundwork and being greeted with praise, some of the greastest, most innovative entries in Eurovision may have been brushed off like “Telemóveis” and “The Social Network Song” were.

Now, I understand that “Euphoria” arguably set the same precedent as “Taken by a stranger” did and that’s definitely a valid point. However two counterpoints: One: Loreen came after Lena and therefore only expanded on the foundation that Lena already had established the year before. Two: I love “Euphoria” but each time anyone in my vicinity praises it for being unique, a masterpiece, ... a great... song I just *yawn* instantly becooome *yawn* soooo tiiiiiiired, :snore:. “Taken by a stranger” is the true unsung hero that shaped the contest in what it is today, and remember, unlike Dina Garipova I always reach out to those who need it the most.

However, that’s the theoretical backstory behind “Stranger” winning my ranking, what about the practice? What about the live? Does it hold up to the placement I gave her?

The answer is a resounding YES. “Taken by a stranger” is a shining example of an excellent, near-flawless perfomance: Lena takes the microphone with mad confidence, gets absorbed by her song’s dark, psychedelic energy and delivers an A+ singing and miming effort. Her soul-piercing stares into the camera are chilling beyond the bones.

The story told here is immersive (the quirky beat), credible (Lena’s faces), humorous (dancing condoms) and entertaining (all of the above), all at once. It unfolds like a neo-noir audiobook. I can only think of a handful other entries that hit a similarly wide spectrum of great eurovision qualities with the same killer accuracy as Lena did, all of which (lovewave, euphoria, love injected, city lights, etc) made it deep into the ranking.

Over the years, I’ve patiently waited to see if anyone could replace Lena as my favourite of the decade. Over the years many came close, but never were great enough to dethrone her. The act which came the closest was indeed Loreen, but with “Statements”, not “Euphoria” and we all know how that journey ended. Perhaps its for the better. In her two iconic stints Lena proved that both chartable hits AND avant garde novelties can be worthy Eurovision entries, paving the way for Eurovision’s renaissance into a contest everyone takes seriously again, which makes her, in my humble opinion, one of the most, if not the most, important people to ever participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.

ALL HAIL THE DOWAGER EMPRESS OF THE 2010S:

Germany is the ultimate hit-or-miss nation. There isn’t a single country in the history of Eurovision that has ranked as often in my bottom 5 or top 5 as Germany has (T10/B10 for the semifinal era). I always either love or hate their entries (with the exception of Jamie-Lee). At the same time however, I am often frustrated by them. Their penchant to make the WRONG decisions out of a severely misguided sense of “tolle Klasse” is what causes them to often select utter garbage and it irks me because they are capable of undisputed greatness. Lena is the quintessential example of Germany at their peak and I both look forward and dread what the upcoming decade will provide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That concludes my ranking, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. 🤗 Since I started this endeavour my follower count almost doubled to 225-ish and BorisBubbles received 800 individual page views per day, roughly 20K per month. THANK you for all the support and for coming back to me. It means a lot and keeps me motivated to gladly return with more ranking material on the 1st of April 2020, when I hope we can kickstart the 2020s in great style.

If you want to see the full list, free to consult the overall list on IMGUR or delve into the archives

In the meantime, take care and we’ll hopefully see each other in April! 😘 Love, Boris.

#Eurovision #Eurovision Song Contest #Germany #Armenia #Iveta Mukuchyan #lena meyer-landrut #Taken by a stranger #LoveWave

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homenum-revelio-hq · 5 years

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Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Caroline!

You have been accepted for the role of ALICE LONGBOTTOM! It was so much fun to read about your Alice! I loved the way you explored the parts of Alice that are conflicted within the Order and her role within her family, as well as the survival and biases sections. I am so excited to have you as part of this roleplay!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Caroline

AGE: 21

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Roleplay’s a hobby, and often times the commitments that take precedence do just that — they take their precedence, and it’s something I’m rather unyielding on. I am able to come on and post fairly regularly, at least two days out of the week on busier weeks, and if the need for a hiatus/semi-hiatus arises I am fairly good in getting everything squared away with the admin. My activity high points are at nights, on weekends and Wednesdays, and I’m typically always lurking on mobile for plotting purposes at the very, very minimum!

ANYTHING ELSE: I'm about to talk your head off, for which I apologize! I’m a rambler through and through; never been able to stop it and I don’t think I ever will. Also, I’m submitting another application (because I really could not decide on just one character, thank you for that), so if you notice any similarities within the OOC exploration section of the application, that’s why! I ask that you please consider Alice as my first choice character. Thank you so much!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Alice Camille Longbottom (née Fortescue); Alice, a German-originating name, means “noble.” It is derived from the Greek word alethéia, which means “truth." Camille is derived from the Latin camilla, and its related meaning pertains to an unblemished character or pureness in order to serve at the altar.

AGE: Thirty-three; Alice was born on May 6, making her a Taurus. Taurus women are described as powerful forces to be reckoned with and the same could be said for Alice. Determined, uncompromising, and somewhat of a dark horse, Alice works hard and plays hard (when she bothers to play at all) and every action is infused with great intent and purpose. Her level of thoroughness and fixity will sometimes get her in trouble — once the blinders are firmly strapped into place, there is typically no doubling back.

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Alice identifies as cis-female and uses she/her pronouns. Her sexual orientation is heterosexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Pure-blood; while Alice’s family does not hail from the "Sacred 28”, both of her parents are of magical descent and come laden with rather typical pure-blood ideals, even if they are watered down.

HOUSE ALUMNI: Slytherin; green and silver scarf knotted tight around her neck, Slytherin was more of a stepping stone than a home. Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, even some Ravenclaws and Slytherins alike, they all had the notion that House equated family, but for Alice, it was merely the place that she best fit and the place that helped foster growth towards being the best possible Alice she could be. Rather introverted, Alice didn’t necessarily feel as though she belonged within the folds of her House’s fabric, and she certainly never took a needle and thread to sew herself into it. The stereotypes in Slytherin that others embraced were ones she actively turned away from. She liked not being tied down exclusively to her House and having friends elsewhere, liked having some degree of detachment that others didn’t seem to have when it came to falling for the idea that your House was your home. Slytherin was where she slept, Slytherin’s colors were hers, Slytherin encouraged her to follow ambition and was a garden where she could grow success, but her House pride derived from much different motives than that of her fellow alumni.

ANY CHANGES: N/A

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Listen, I gotta start by saying that I absolutely Alice. The reason I was drawn to her bio in the first place is that first and foremost, Alice is a strong character. She is a strong woman, yes, but she is a strong character, period. She is unsure and sometimes unsteady but she is a force to be reckoned with. She does not compromise herself for anyone. She knows who she is at heart, even if she doesn’t know who she is as a player in this world. She has a strong mind and a strong heart and a strong sense of independence — she doesn't need anyone else.

As mentioned above, Alice is a bit of a dark horse, somewhat unconventional for a woman who has a pretty stiff ideal system. To some, that would translate as aloof, self-isolating, detached from emotion and unapproachable, but I find that the opposite. Alice doesn’t just encompass everyone at first meeting (if she did, she would have been a Hufflepuff) because she has recognized a pattern that people’s first impressions versus their real personalities has too wide a discrepancy for her to be comfortable with. Alice instinctively keeps up a set of walls because she is selective in who she trusts, but once over that hurdle, Alice is the person you’d want in your corner, the person you’d want by your side staring down death. She is the kind to deplete from her own cup to give more to others and she will not complain — she will not draw attention to it, either. She does it on her own volition, because she believes it’s the right thing to do, and she will ask for nothing in return. She doesn’t mind being alone (quiet moments with her cat snuggling in her lap are some of the best). She does not wait for sunlight to poke through a cloud on chance and find her; she works herself to the bone in order to create a hole in the dark sky. There aren’t very many people that she trusts enough to let see all the facets (work Alice, Order Alice, person Alice, etc.) but those who do can note the way light finds her and makes her shine in a subtly brilliant way, the same way low lights bring out sparkle. Her liveliness is rather subtle, only seen by those she wants to let see. She loves fiercely and when it comes to those she loves or those she feels needs protection, she doesn’t hesitate to stand in the way. She is ambitious not for the sake of ambition, but with a purpose and an end goal. She’s a visionary, striving for a world that is inclusive and fair. She’s smart and sophisticated, knowing exactly how to present herself and keep all her edges smooth with a polished exterior. She’s cool under pressure, level head on her shoulders that she lets rule her. It’s what makes her so good in duels; she knows how to stack priorities over reactions, how to get inside the head of her opponents and stay one step ahead. Her exterior is hard but it is only to protect the emotion that lies beneath. She feels every single chink and chip and blow and feels it completely, vibrations running through her. She knows that vulnerability is what powers endurance, but she doesn’t let others see what keeps the electricity on. It’s the private moments where she lets herself fall apart, and then she gracefully stitches herself back up to keep moving through another day.

She is her biggest critic and her worst enemy is the voice inside of her brain. She worries excessively, worries that she isn’t doing enough, that she isn’t enough. She sometimes feels like she’s torn between two different worlds and that there is no true place of belonging for her, that she’s merely drifting and playing a game of charades that will only result in her losing. She is perfectionistic and she likes for things to be done correctly. She likes structure, likes having a set of rules and doesn’t like to deviate from them (they exist for a reason, after all) and it puts her in compromising situations when she is around people who are deviating or asking her to do so. It’s this hesitance and inner debate before her decision that is a fatal flaw — it’s war. It’s nothing but hard decisions, and yes, they’re the type to get people killed. Alice will fight but she’s also the type to ask why. She wants to know that there’s an existing means to an end, that it’s not all for nothing, perhaps too much so at times. There’s also a purposeful ignorance about her, especially when it comes to the Ministry. She puts her entire backbone into her job and the institution that allows her the chance to do what she is passionate about, but that institution is as good as compromised and she’d still prefer to jump through all its hoops. She’d rather walk through every step and be thorough than take the short cut, because she believes it eliminates mistakes, but she doesn’t see that sometimes, not making the split decision and cutting out the excess is a mistake in and of itself. Her family is another weakness — they raised her, they are what she knows, but she also knows that some of the things they think aren’t what she’s learned are right. Brother against brother is not uncommon in war and that’s the kind of thing to make Alice hesitate. Slytherins will use any means to achieve their ends, after all, but if it means turning her back on her own family? She’s not sure she could. Her temper isn’t the best either (that goddamn Augusta is what really does it for her) and when someone finds her buttons and keeps pushing, she isn’t the type to take it lying down. She doesn’t forthright express what’s wrong but she does wear some of her emotions on her face, unable to control the split second reactions of disgust or irritation or otherwise. It’s hard for her when she believes she is in the right and no one else can see her point of view (or refuses to), and it’s something that makes her shut down on the spot — or resort to more drastic measures.

Wands, too, I think, speak volumes about their wizard’s personality. Wood: Rowan. Rowan wands are comfortable in the hands of those who are clear-headed and pure-hearted, which I think suits Alice quite nicely. Though the roads to hell are paved with them, she always has intentions for and of the best at the forefront of all she does and her mind is quite good at remaining one tracked and steady when placed under duress. According to Ollivander, rowan wands will perform equal to, if not better and out-perform other wands specifically in duels. Rowan wands do well with defensive magic, a particular strength Alice has per her own reputation as one half of an extraordinarily gifted (and perhaps lethal) dueling team to come through the Auror department. Core: Phoenix tail feather. Phoenix tail feathers can often be found in the cores of wands owned by witches and wizards who are considered noble, wise, willing, strong-willed, bright, loyal, and self-sacrificing, all of which are traits that align closely with Alice’s personality. While this core is not common among Slytherins due to its reputation to impede Dark spells, which further solidifies Alice’s personality veering from the stereotypes of Slytherin house. The qualities she holds near aligned with Slytherin but she knows there is a right way to obtain success and pursue ambitions. Flexibility: Hard. Owners of hard wands tend to view things in absolutes (black or white), which is a beyond fair summation of Alice. These are people who others may find intimidating or difficult to approach. Wands of this flexibility are great for complex and advanced levels of magic, which I envision Alice having wholeheartedly embraced. Learning was a piece in the equation to becoming the best she could possibly be and I see her brain being like that of a sponge, absorbing all it could and constantly wanting to take things to the next step, eager to move on to a higher level since the ceiling for her didn’t (and does not) exist.

And, because I really love personality tests… MBTI Type: ISTJ - The Logistician (x) Moral Alignment: Lawful Neutral - The Judge Enneagram: Type 1 - The Reformer (x) Element: Earth

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

The Fortescue family was, in terms of how pure-blood society operated, under the radar. No one looked to a Fortescue as an example (or a non-example); they were often after-thoughts. It was very much, oh! A Fortescue! They weren’t shunned out, they weren’t outcasts, but they certainly weren’t sitting in the thick of things. Dexter Fortescue was not the first Headmaster of Hogwarts to come to mind, after all, but not being first didn’t mean you were last. Alice and her brother (and potentially other siblings - I am very flexible to this and would truthfully love to see some other Fortescues running around in this group) were raised by Fennell and Adrianne to follow after their desires and dreams with a single exception: do not bring shame to the family. Do not push the Fortescue name into the light for all of the wrong reasons. There was never an explicit correlation to shame and bloodline, with the Fortescues always rather indifferent towards Muggleborns — they did not have qualms or prejudice towards Muggleborns being a part of the Wizarding World (if magic chose you, it chose you) but still being embedded in pure-blood society to some degree, marrying outside of pure-bloods would have caused under-the-radar tension within the family. Everything in the Fortescue family was done in subtleties. If there was disapproval, it was not outright shown, but alluded to in the choice of words or lack of action taken. Tempers, if they existed, were always below the surface. Alice could never truly recall a time when she saw her parents fight or get into arguments or display anger in a dazzling firework display. Fortescues knew how to keep up an appearance, how to be poised, and all grievances were usually dealt with behind doors or ignored to the point where they merely suffocated themselves on their own silence.

Alice didn’t have a bad childhood; she was much more reserved than most children. She would ride brooms and play a crude position of Chaser in Quidditch matches with cousins who actually let her join in the games (usually due to an uneven number of players) but she would also find just as much fun in reading through the books her father kept in his study, a miniature library of sorts. She was not the first person noticed sitting around the dinner table, but in her family, there was never anything wrong with being a chameleon and blending in. Her mother raised her with the understanding that the loudest person in the room wasn’t always the right one. Success didn’t depend on being flashy. Hard work and the drive and a pinch of patience would do the trick. Expecting things was a horrible way to look at the world: it wouldn’t just offer its hand and give away everything without some sort of price, whether it was immediate payment or came about later. Alice looked up to her mother perhaps more so than her father, finding a strength in the way her mother carried herself, fashioning her own confidence in the image of her mother’s. Confidence didn’t mean cockiness. Confidence was believing in oneself and their abilities, and it could be quiet. Strength could be quiet and show itself in a myriad of ways. Of course, her childhood days and beliefs have since shifted since her days at Hogwarts and in the Ministry. She hasn’t lost touch with following ambitions down their paths, not needing to be a firestorm to be a firebrand, but in adulthood she has grown away from their shadows and stepped into the light of thinking for herself, letting her own experiences shape her. Her family likes order and balance, which explains their position in the war. Her parents and grandparents see value in a pure bloodline and because they have never had to understand the struggle of Muggleborns, do not see the genuine harm Voldemort and his followers and their ideals bring to the Wizarding world. She has cousins far down the branches of the family tree who she knows side with Voldemort in more than just opinion, but in battle, too. It genuinely bothers Alice to hear her family talk like this, a veil being swept away of sorts. Alice, in her heart, knows what is right. The world is changing, why shouldn’t views? Tradition is valued and respected but sometimes tradition is a sword that runs right through people, good people. As she’s gotten older and lived a life beyond her parent’s four walls, a life that has brought her up to the face of just as much strife as success, she finds it harder and harder to operate under the radar. There are times when she doesn’t want to sit back in the lounge chair like her father and press a thin smile over her mouth, she wants to start an argument so that things will move themselves along. Despite their disheartening talk, Alice loves them still and there is the horrifying thought that the war will force her to either stand with her family or against when all is said and done. She has lost the golden view of her childhood and dismantled any heroification of her parents, but breaking away from them is a level of instability she cannot bear to think about. She doesn’t see the hypocrisy in that action, either.

OCCUPATION:

There were lots of different occupations Alice could have (and wanted) to delve into. Healer, working somewhere within the Ministry with law and regulation; Alice is very much driven and motivated by making things right. Florean had ambitions leading him towards entrepreneurship, a path that didn’t seem too terrible for Alice (though she didn’t know what her business would have looked like, and she wasn’t nearly as charming as her brother to draw in customers). In the end, Auror prevailed, and Alice hasn’t looked back. She was tough enough to handle the pressure (that or she knew how to absorb the shocks well while remaining on her feet), smart enough to think on her feet, and hunting down and imprisoning those who abuse magic, use magic for wrongdoing, it gives her a sense of purpose. It fulfills her. Alice is not the type who can consciously waste her life away when she knows there are things she can do to improve the world that she lives in, and being an Auror means she gets the most immediate course of action in improving the world — even if it is taking down one Dark wizard at a time.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER

The Order was, in the beginning, an extension activity. The Ministry had its boundaries like any structure of government would, and Alice could justify expanding beyond them. She saw the benefit in going the extra mile even if it was frowned upon on paper and in the laws. She, after all, had up close experience with Dark wizards, how they thought and the damage they could do, the threats they posed and how imperative it was to snuff out their sparks. She joined the Order on the precipice that it was the right thing: killing innocent people for things out of their control didn’t seem fair. She joined the Order because there was more she could do and the Order eliminated the need to dance around the red tape the Ministry would have set out. Alice wanted to fight, so she’d dedicate herself to the fight. It was new and exciting when the Order was first formed and even if some decisions from up high were questionable, it was a step on the path to making things right.

She’s somewhat of a veteran in the Order at this point. She’s survived long enough to have experienced highs and lows (and the current sinking low they are in as the scales tip out of their favor) that she’s got a jaded viewpoint of the Order. Violence used to be combated with skill, knowledge, strategy, the sheer goodness in their hearts or whatever noble shit she used to justify, and now it seems like the Order is sinking to the same levels as the Death Eaters when it comes to fighting fire with fire. The stakes raise consistently, especially being on the losing side, and more and more is asked of members of the Order who, like Alice, have tenure. Even members who are fresh in the fold are being asked to submit blind faith without context and Alice has lost all sense of novelty in that ideal, abandoned the assumption that it would result in victory. She is black and white in an organization that has always been grey and there are too many shades now for her to feel like she’s got any sense of alignment. Every decision and action sits uneasy with her. What were once infractions in the laws that she could justify turning a blind eye to (even if it did sprout lots and lots of questions) are now full on blowing past any sense of legality and it bothers her. There are too many shifty allegiances in the Order now — there’s Dorcas and her gang, taking matters into their own hands, there are those more committed to helping Muggleborns escape and go into hiding than eliminating the threat that causes them to go into hiding in the first place, there are those who no longer know where their loyalties lie, and then there are just those that she doesn’t trust, point blank. It’s hard for Alice to commit any kind allegiance to an organization that is hardly organized. She feels as though there’s no accountability, no real plan on how they’re going to win this war, and that will be what ultimately sinks the ship. Though she is a part of the inner circle, she doesn’t view it as any kind of grand privilege or incentive that she might have when she herself was bright eyed and ready to fight Death Eaters, eager to work hard and work her way up the ranks so she could feel her purpose being actualized and brought to fruition. I think Alice has her reasons for staying in the Order (people like Caradoc, trying to make her marriage with Frank stay afloat, the whole “we’re trying to take down the bad guys” thread still there somewhere in the tapestry) but it’s not because she agrees with what they’re doing anymore. It is a sinking ship. She is very much chained to it and the more they lose, the more conscious she grows of how heavy the chains are.

SURVIVAL:

“How have they not died?” I just love this question. You can figure Alice Longbottom hasn’t died because one, she’s not the type to follow anyone blindly and thinks for herself (she’ll be the first to question something if it sparks a question inside her) and two, there’s still a fair slew of Death Eaters running around. You could bet that if she’s going, she’s taking as many as she can with her with a bloodstained smile. Her death is something she refuses to let occur in vain. Like her life, it’d have purpose.

On a much more serious, in-depth sort of note, part of the reason Alice has stayed alive as long as she has comes with the privilege of her pure-blood. Her family aren’t blood traitors, not so far on the outskirts that they don’t have good graces to get them by. She takes advantage of it more than she realizes. She tries not to rely on her own bloodline or the one she married into to save her skin, but it has certainly dragged her out by the skin of her teeth from hairy situations before. Her position in the Ministry has also somewhat kept her stable. The Order is as good as illegal these days, and while the Ministry is corrupt, keeping her position as an Auror keeps a blanket of cover over her not-so-legal pastimes. She shut down the possibility of being a part of the Order to people with their prying eyes and questions and she has never outwardly given them reason to double back and pry further. Hunting Dark wizards puts a target on her back, obviously, but her skill and the formidable duo she and Frank can be has kept her alive. Her survival is strategic. She is aware that no one is safe, that even with all bases covered there are still blind spots. She doesn’t have an invincibility complex. She knows and has made peace with the fact she could die at any point, long since been a truth she’s accepted (practically necessity in being an Auror). It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t pull out the stops, have her reasons and hoping they will see her through. She stays at the Ministry not just in the hopes there is something left to save, but because of the protection it provides. She stays in the Order because there is value to her position in the inner circle, protection against those who think she is playing for the other team and intel that has kept her one step ahead in her work. She can divide her loyalty and the time has yet to come where she is forced to pick only one to commit to.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Alice is not a people person, not really. She’s an ISTJ; their circles are small and the way they make friends is utterly methodical. Alice picks and chooses who she puts time, energy, and loyalty into, and she doesn’t do so lightly — once it’s given, very rarely will she retract it. That said, it’s a time of war, and Alice is rapidly losing her stability, which means loyalty isn’t necessarily spouting out of her in spades. Relationships at this point in time have to be of substance, conversations need a purpose and an end goal or result contrived from them.

I think her relationship with Frank is possibly the most important relationship in her life at the moment, especially considering that it’s crumbling. Frank was the yin to her yang. She thought him a perfect complement to her; it was why they were so lethal in duels. He understood her, she (thought she) understood him, and Alice truly felt herself better just by Frank’s presence. Frank validated Alice in a lot of ways; he validated every feeling that didn’t quite align with what was in place for her, whether it was her exploring a freedom that many people around her didn’t or keeping to herself. She felt like she didn’t have to tick boxes or live up to certain expectations around him. Because of that, in a way, she would protect him with a dying breath, walk into fire with him and never look back. Now, of course, he feels off-kilter to her, and it is utterly nerve-grating. With everything going on she doesn’t necessarily have time to deal with working out the puzzle of what’s wrong with Frank and how do I make it right? and if it weren’t because of how much she loves him (or how long she’s loved him, per se, he’s remained a constant in a time when nothing is guaranteed and there’s somewhat of a reliance on Frank being the anchor in the storm) she’d shift her focus elsewhere. There’s never a good time for her to pick his brain and sift through the issues, which means it continues to get put off. There is a part of Alice that is afraid they’re no longer on the same page and she doesn’t know what she’ll do without him, so she simply doesn’t ask so she doesn’t have to hear the answer she doesn’t want to hear.

After Frank, I’d say that the next incredibly significant relationships Alice has are those with the inner circle. The inner circle is not the Ministry. There is no real structure, no hierarchy of responsibility. The inner circle is a group of people who are supposed to be trying to keep order within the Order all while win a losing-war, and where she may have been gung-ho in the beginning, she’s now internally straddling the fence. The only person she really trusts in the inner circle anymore (and is subsequently the tether keeping her intact with the organization as a whole) is Caradoc. Mary is a finger on the trigger and Alice knows that explosion is inevitable with her, she’s either going to lead Mary down a path that keeps her in a range of safety or wind up as collateral damage. James is just as much of a risk in her eyes. To her, all of the younger members of the Order have the right idea but they certainly don’t go about it in the right way. They’re all ready to kick up the gravel but they don’t see method to their madness, they see no benefit in taking a moment to process before they lurch into action, and to Alice, that’ll be the thing that gets everyone killed. Quite frankly, she doesn’t know how much more blood she can stand to have staining her hands.

Obviously, this is by no means the full extent of ‘relationships’ for Alice - I’m merely just writing what I personally picked up from the connections listed in her bio. As a member of the “inner circle” Alice has a position that puts her into contact with nearly every member of the Order in some way and I’d love to expand and explore other connections where she discovers and aligns to people who are in the same boat as her when it comes to the tone this war has taken and how to go about it (every girl needs a drinking buddy to bitch to) and bumps heads with those who differ or have their issues with her/how the inner circle operates.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

I rank chemistry higher than anything, truthfully. The way I look at things is that at the present moment, Alice is married to her work and her alignment on the right-wrong spectrum much more than she really is with Frank, whether she can swallow her pride long enough to choke that out or not. There’s a lot of waist-high angst that Frank and Alice have to explore and work their way through that I’m fully ready to fling myself into, but when it comes to any kind of definitive thing or endgame, I’m leaving myself open for any and all possibilities that come through. The rift between them could close, the rift between them could deepen and drive Alice into isolation (or into the arms of someone else) — it’s something I personally want to save for discussing and developing over time with Frank’s writer. I never join groups or apply for certain characters on the sole precipice for a guaranteed ship, I’m drawn to characters based on the vision and what avenues I can take with them, how I’ll be able to write them into the fold. With Alice, romance is certainly an undeniable element to her character but I don’t think it’s a very prominent shade in her palette considering everything else she’s got going on. I always leave windows open! I’m just more interested in diving in, exploring her, and seeing what colors and shades I can pull out of her when writing against other incredibly talented people.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

To put it rather plainly, Alice doesn’t have much room (if any) to complain when it comes to how she has it. Her family may not be what the Wizarding World would hail next to royalty, but aside from being a woman, she’s got just about every box ticked when it comes to possession of privilege. Pure-blood? Check. Caucasian? Check. Heterosexual? Check. Alice doesn’t expect the world to hand her things on a silver platter but she’s used to drinking out of a silver cup. I like to think that she’s intelligent enough to recognize her privilege and an existence of bias but very rarely does she check it at the door. Alice’s morality and sense of wrong and right is one that I think, given the direction of this group, will be something wildly fun to explore! She’s always consumed with doing “the right thing”, her world is very much black and white, but Alice’s interpretation of “the right thing” may not be what underprivileged people in the magical community consider to be right. When she is called out on behaviors or exhibiting her bias, I want to see to what extent she will recognize her wrongdoing and legitimately grow from it. She knows discriminating against Muggleborns is wrong, but her actions don’t always reflect that (usually an unintentional thing, but nonetheless still indicative). In a way it goes hand-in-hand with her association with her family (they aren’t radicalized like the Death Eaters and they wouldn’t say that Voldemort is right, but the principle of the thing is enough to align them) — Alice may educate herself and think differently, but will she choose to put it into practice instead of just turning a blind eye and grinding down her teeth to keep quiet? She’s the kind who likes to make things right, but is she too selective in what she makes right? What holds her back from speaking up against her family, what will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back (if it comes at all)? It’s something I definitely want to explore as time goes on, and I really would love to perhaps put Alice in a situation where other characters really push her in a corner and make her analyze what she’s doing about her privilege. Acknowledgment is an important step, but action (especially out of the mouth of someone who is impassioned when it comes to aligning things back to a rightful state) is just as important, and not just when it is convenient. That latter component is something Alice does need work on but I think with time, she could find herself steadily improving upon. Let her fuck up be it in a subtle manner or of epic proportion, let her be educated and let her have the opportunity to (maybe) grow from it! After all, if we as human beings are stagnate and refuse growth, are we living at all?

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

I’ll be honest, I’m very selective when it comes to Harry Potter groups. I like having some kind of structure within them but also having the liberation to run with my muses, but above all else, I look for the groups who go the extra mile. Whether that’s with plot, originality, or just the sheer dedication admins and members alike pour into their group, I like to think I have an eye for finding the diamonds in the basket. To me, this group is it. I’m a sucker for an AU on anything. The creative freedom, the doors it opens, it entices me and it gives me as a writer to take a chance that I probably wouldn’t otherwise. I also really like groups that walk the balance between external and internal strife, while also allowing their writers the chance to flesh out characters in a different light than canon did. That can be hard for groups to find and walk, but I think you’ve done such a magnificent job in doing such that it’s crazy to not at least try my hand at a muse or two. For Alice in particular, I was drawn to her bio because of the completely different light you’ve angled on her and the garden of opportunity sown. As writers, we sometimes ask things of the characters we breathe our life into and what I love most about Alice is she’s the one who always steps up to the plate, an equal participant in the process. She makes you question your own motives with her character and why you write her in the way you do, she doesn’t conform to one style or one story line, and she demands all of your attention and affection with the glaring reminder you will not tame her or conform her to the basis of another muse or a past portrayal. It is imperative to her character and the development she has the possibility of undergoing — she relies on you as much as you rely on her. At the same time, she is almost an entirely separate being and writes herself (this application for her did anyways) and Alice is an incredible opportunity to deviate from myself, the canon of Harry Potter — or at the very least, the preconceived notions of fandom as to what canon in the Marauders era entails — and just write. I’m looking forward to writing a character far different from anything I could have envisioned for her (as a Slytherin myself, I’m pumped to be writing a fellow Slytherin!) or that I would have predicted taking on and I like a challenge. I’m looking forward to getting to walk in your Potterverse, I’m looking forward to how the future isn’t set and what incredible things can come from it. And of course, I love the things that can be born from war-based settings, whether it’s a plot drop or character tension, and to be on the inside of it as well as watch it unfold is an exciting prospect!

PLOT DROP IDEAS:

Look, I love angst. So much. As if you couldn’t tell. One group-wide plot I think that could be a lot of fun, especially since this is a smaller bunch, is to see what would happen if outside forces wedged their way into the group in an attempt to divide and essentially conquer the Order? I’m not sure where Peter’s storyline will take him, of course, but I think it’d be fun to play out something where there’s a strong cause for suspicion after a mission that one of them has betrayed the group and is working as a double agent, and of course, everyone thinks it’s someone different and results in everyone pointing the blame at everyone and just, a lot of angst, testing these friendships and bonds, seeing who’s ready to sell out who and so forth. This would obviously create a big vulnerability within the group since they don’t trust one another, throw in perhaps the Death Eaters or other Dark forces attacking them out of nowhere…I think it has some potential, it’s just a little idea right now that definitely needs some fleshing out, obviously, but it’s an idea that could be really fun. Another small little plot idea I have is someone in the Order going missing (could be a NPC close to one of the players, or could actually be one of our players) and it’s revealed they’ve been captured, they’ll be exchanged harm-free if our little group hands back over something of importance to the Death Eaters. There’s a time limit involved as well, and if the group doesn’t comply, this person is killed. Of course, segue into conflict, angst, and all the good emotions. Ultimately though, I like waiting and seeing the dynamic of the game and all the other players to really develop group plot ideas? As far as Alice-specific, I am currently planning to play her devoid of child, but dependent upon future discussion with other players (and of course seeing where the course of things take her), I think it’d be fun to see Alice fall pregnant and watch her struggle with that whole Pandora’s box? Would she tell Frank or keep him on the outside? Would it bring her joy or terror? Would she keep the baby or would she choose another route considering the bleak state of things? Just an idea.

ANYTHING ELSE? N/A

#homenumaccepted #bio rpg #bio rp #marauders #alice longbottom

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villa-kulla · 5 years

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so I saw Avengers Endgame last night, and honestly.....

I actually frickin’ LOVED it haha, I haven’t genuinely enjoyed one of the Avengers ensemble movies that much since the first one. Granted I’m still very sleep-deprived and on a slightly giddy high from how much it exceeded my expectations haha, and once I’ve thought more about it I’m sure I’ll find things to nitpick. But for the time being, I’m still pretty much swooning.

FULL INCOHERENT THOUGHTS/REACTIONS TO SPECIFIC THINGS BELOW THE CUT, AND OFC, ***SPOILERS*****

ONCE AGAIN: ******SPOILERS********

these are just my rambling Emotions about different moments, ostensibly in the order they occurred in the movie, but actually in the order I remember them:

The opening scene: that moment when Clint turned away from his daughter, and then turned back to see just a few remaining ashes floating slowly where she’d been was beautifully shot. Also beautiful: the soft gasp that went around the theatre right when it happened haha

Killing Thanos within the first 10 minutes and breaking the expected formula and thereby thrusting the movie out into unknown waters? lmao WELL PLAYED, ENDGAME <3

Steve picking up Sam’s mantle and running a support group for survivors? flawless move. My heart couldn’t take it

Okay first thing I genuinely didn’t like: “fat Thor” as a punchline. It was so cringey. My friends and I were discussing how that actually COULD have been so great had they explored Thor’s breakdown and PTSD in a meaningful way, and I mean who wouldn’t adore thicc Thor? But instead we got comedic zooms on his beer belly, and yeah. Kudos to Hemsworth for being a gem and making it work but yeah. Nothing wrong with Thor going to seed physically as well as mentally, just wish it hadn’t been played for laughs is all

Tony basically ripping his heart out and putting it in Steve’s hand? I knew my Vintage™ Stony feels were going to resurface and oh boy did they ever haha

Honestly their whole dynamic in the movies works very well if you imagine that they had angsty hate sex that wasn’t actually hate sex at all, and there was the possibility of real feelings there, but for whatever reason they just couldn’t. quite. make. it. work.

That moment with Antman and Hulk’s fans was so genuinely awkward and I could not stop laughing. Paul Rudd is a gift

It only took them 7 years to realize that all fans ever wanted was the Avengers lounging around in hoodies and eating takeout, but it felt all the more earned for it haha

this is silly but it was nice to have a return to Nat’s red hair...sort of lol

TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST! TIME HEIST!!

^^^ That was around when I really started settling in like ‘oh this is gonna be good’

the only spoiler I was exposed to was the ‘Steve’s ass finally gets the recognition it deserves’ post, and did it ever

got as close as we’ll get to canonically bi steve rogers and imma take it haha. Checking out your own ass? Legends only (in fact in our post-movie debrief over drinks, our first toast was ‘here’s to bisexual disaster steve rogers’ he time heisted my heart all over again)

and honestly props to them for going the cute nostalgic route by revisiting all the old movies like that, and not trying to be overly ‘dark and gritty’ for the whole thing. It was lovely how they did it, and very appropriate

The ‘Come and get your love’ credits from GotG is like the only concrete thing I even remember from that movie lol, and I was so giddy when it resurfaced

I’ll be honest, I’m so over aliens and space lol, any time one of these movies goes to space I’m basically yawning instantly, I’M JUST NOT INTO IT FOR THESE MOVIES SORRY. So I’m glad the space stuff was kept to a minimum in this haha. The way they do alien civilizations just never really packs a punch for me, with the single exception of...

......NEBULA MY LOVE <3 She was always the most intriguing and raw of any of the characters in those movies for me. Karen Gillan gives her an amazing presence, so I was glad to see her get a good showcase in this one

Oh hi Robert Redford, I definitely wasn’t reading Butch and Sundance fan fiction on the bus to work 12 hours before this movie asdjhgf haha that was a fun surprise

“Hail Hydra” ajshgd FUCKING EPIC OH MY GOD. I couldn’t breathe. That was amazing.

On a much less lighthearted note.......Natasha. Oh god. I really didn’t think they were going to go there with any of the original six but they did. Natasha was my original fave at the tender of 18, I was completely in awe of how Scarlett portrayed her, immediately cut my hair and dyed it red in tribute haha, and claimed her as my OG fave. I adored her, and still adore her. And honestly, I would have been so much more upset about her fate if...it hadn’t been so completely right for her. As much as I hate to say it, what she did was very character-appropriate for her, and really brought her full circle. And sneaky/unexpected to the end omg. That’s my girl. I’m a diehard Black Widow fan, and I think it’s safe to say she definitely wiped out the red in her ledger, if there ever was any left <3

.....that being said, really, no lingering zoom on a photo of her somewhere at the avengers compound? Nothing? The reaction immediately afterwards was well done, but it was kind of awks that it never came back with even a mention lol

Loved the way they did the ‘Guys...I think it worked’ emphasized only by the sound of birdsong. This movie killed it with the quieter moments

And now for something absolutely not quiet:

STEVE!!!

CAUGHT!!!!

THOR’S!!!!

HAMMER!!!!

I HAVE NEVER HEARD A THEATRE COLLECTIVELY LOSE THEIR SHIT LIKE THAT IN MY LIFE

I may have screamed. So. fucking. aces.

Between ‘Hail Hydra’, ‘That is America’s ass’, and lifting the hammer, Steve really owned this movie didn’t he lol

that’s my boy <3

they may have turned steve’s last movie into an avengers movie, but man alive this avengers movie was pretty much steve’s show and he killed every second of it

I’m giddy just thinking about it

And speaking of giddy, everyone’s return.....normally the big final climactic battle scene tends to pale in comparison to nimbler action sequences that happened earlier, but I said giddy and I meant it. They really pulled out all the crown-pleasing stops in it, and it was impossible to nitpick, I had the biggest fucking smile on my face the whole time

AND OH MAN THAT ONE LITTLE MOMENT WITH DR. STRANGE. HOLDING UP ONE FINGER. WHAT A MOMENT. INCREDIBLE. JAW-DROPPING. VISIONARY. TRANSCENDAENT. UPLIFTING. MY HEART SOARED.

Until......THAT MOMENT

“I am Iron Man”

TONY

Oh god

Everyone speculated it would happen, but I didn’t actually think it would. IDK MAYBE I’M JUST NAIVE LOL.

I was actually kind of numb there for a while and I stayed numb until....

“Your dad liked cheeseburgers too”

Yeah there was no recovering after that lol, I was basically a wreck until the end from that moment on

Man...Tony Stark actually died....

As powerful as it was, I don’t really think they had to go there in order to bring the pathos? Idk I have mixed feelings about that choice lol, his big moment was epic but you know what else is epic? Going back to your log cabin to live with your family in peace lol. Idk I’m still not sure how I feel about their choice with that, but maybe it just hasn’t fully hit me yet

Sam as the new Captain America?? A-fucking-men

And this brings us to the ending

the controversial ending which is already causing its own civil war based on what I’ve seen so far haha. And for what my two cents are worth....

I loved it. That was a bold move and I really have to give them props for choosing something risky and unexpected as a conclusion.

That last shot was absolutely beautiful. The moment ‘It’s Been A Long, Long Time’ kicked in I think my breath caught. And that slow zoom in on the window to see Steve and Peggy dancing 11 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a close, and sealing it with a kiss? Gorgeous.

I’m honestly choked up again just thinking about it lol.

And although it’s a small thing, no end credits sequence?? That’s what we call true closure lol, and I think that was what really hammered in the fact that it’s really all over, folks <3

Yes there were some nit-pickable things, some things that could have been better, or came too little too late, and I can’t even BEGIN to wrap my head around the time-travel implications in the conclusion (and I’m not sure we’re supposed to haha). But they took approximately 9000 storylines and characters and managed to represent them in what was actually a genuinely emotional, thoughtful, and entertaining movie that managed to smash the expected formula and the gently pick it back up again to piece together a satisfying, crowd-pleasing, and soaring resolution. Yeah a good deal of the emotional-payoff was already built in what with audiences bringing their own 10-year journeys with these movies to the theatre, and part of my excitement about this movie is definitely tied into the overall pop culture phenomenon itself. But as a movie it exceeded all my expectations, and I’m very satisfied. Thanks, Marvel. It’s been a good run <3

#spoilers #avengers #avengers endgame #endgame spoilers #shares #MY THOUGHTS AND STUFF #and now i need to sleep lol #the movie finished at 10:30 and i had to work the next day but....we HAD to debrief after something like that lol #how could we not #so add another couple hours to a schoolnight outing WHY NOT #i managed a 4 hour catnap before i was up again to go to work #where i wasn't as dead as i thought i'd be #dead now though lol #but yeah i loved it #i went with 2 other diehard marvel fans and at the end we all turned to each other like #'......they pulled it off O':'#and they did <3 #good times

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ty-talks-comics · 5 years

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Best of DC: Week of June 19th, 2019

Best of this Week: Teen Titans #31 - Adam Glass, Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo and Rob Leigh

Lobo came to bring the pain.

Starting off with a bang, Lobo completes a contract on a Dhorian at the behest of Kanjar Ro, blowing up the disguised alien’s bodega before shooting him right in the face for his cash. After completing the contract, he receives a job from The Other to take down the Teen Titans. After an initial rebuff of the job, his interest is piqued after he's shown an image of Crush, the only other living Czarnian. (not counting Twink Lobo that should still be trapped by Larfleeze)

Cutting back to the ending from the last issue, Lobo confirms that Crush indeed her daughter and proceeds to absolutely DESTROY the Titans. All of my love comes for this book comes from just how amazingly dominant Bernard Chang makes Lobo look and how terrifying Glass scripts him.

All of the Titans rush the Main Man with Roundhouse being the first to face his wrath. Lobo takes Roundhouse, who has taken the form of a ball, and uses him to BEAT THE OTHERS. He slaps Kid Flash with his best friend, he smacks Red Arrow upside her head, Robin dodges, but his cape is used against him as he’s crushed between Roundhouse and Lobo’s hands. Kid Flash tries to come back with a flurry of punches, but Lobo has none of it and decks the Kid in his face.

Djinn teleports him into Crush’s room and he sees her wall of pictures and articles about her dad. Djinn tries to bind him with magic, but he uses a mirror to turn it against her and just as he’s about to kill her, Crush saves her in the nick of time, suplexing him out of the Titan’s hideout. Lobo, unaffected, uses her as a basketball, throwing her into the backboard before using his hoop as a bat and hitting a home run with her as the ball. Throughout the carnage he has nothing but a smug grin, like he’s playing with these kids; because he is.

Lobo has killed a lot of things, including his own children, so killing the Titans would be nothing to him. At the very least, he’s jovial and having a fun time beating their asses. Chang draws him as being kinda relaxed and casual about his violence. He’s still rippling with muscle and almost appears to be showing off a little, it’s really charming in a sick way.

Catching up to Crush, he shows no restraint against her. He breaks her ankle to test if she has his healing factor, grabs her by the hair and smashes her into a train. The impact is hard and brutal with the train crumpling as Crush’s face kisses it. Back at the hideout, Djinn has the idea to loose Crush’s chain, Obelus, as it might be the only thing that can save her. Crush, however, is not a fan of the idea because the chain came from Lobo and may not obey her. In her anger, she crushes her communicator and LOBO CRUSHES HER WITH A TRAIN.

This splash page made me lose it. Lobo just leans on the train car as Crush is pinned underneath, reaching out in pain and the bottom is EXPLODING in a hail of debris and fire with a deep red and some blood spatter effect acting as the background to the insanity. Lobo taunts her, saying she was lucky that he wasn’t around to mess her up for all of her years, but that there was still time for him to let her down. The absolute CHAD hasn’t been in her life at all, comes back and IMMEDIATELY threatens to ruin it, absolutely. I can’t believe how callous and brutal it is.

Crush spits blood in his face and just as Lobo is about to deliver his coup de gras by smashing her head into a fine red past on the ground, Kid Flash swoops in and saves her, setting up Round 2 for the next issue.

This issue was absolutely insane thanks to The Main Man. Lobo just brings out the crazy in everything that he’s in and introduced the Titans to a WORLD OF PAIN. Crush was absolutely an overpowered member of the team because almost nothing could hurt her and to see her absolutely dominated like this was astounding. One thing that truly stood out was her anger when seeing Djinn in danger because of her, pun intended, crush on the young Genie. She had a burst of rage and actually slightly overpowered Lobo, but of course he continued the beating.

Lobo’s ferocity stood out in a way that we haven’t seen in any of his fights with Superman or his time in the Justice League of America. He wasn’t angry at all, but was having fun. While he could have swatted any of the kids into dust, he played with them, dragging out their pain. His fight with Crush was hard to read/watch at times with his banter. It was almost scary how ready he was to straight up murder her to keep his rep as the last Czarnian, (again, not counting the pretty boy) but at the same time he was weirdly fatherly in his own murderous way.

Honestly, this issue was just a ton of fun. I love Lobo and any chance that I get to see him act like a madman, I enjoy. Adam Glass wrote him so very well that it kind of feels like a callback to Giffen and DeMatteis’ series and Change makes him look like an imposing freak of nature that eats nothing but protein and drinks rage. Seeing Crush express even a little bit of fear was fun because all we’ve gotten out of her is anger and snark. I can’t wait for the next issue and her eventual win just to see what she’ll be capable of. High recommend.

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Runner Up: Superman: Year One #1 - Frank Miller, John Romita Jr., Danny Miki, Alex Sinclair and John Workman

That's the approach visionary writer and sometimes crazy person, Frank Miller, took when writing the great, but flawed, Superman: Year One. The book is a masterwork on the slow burn that builds excitement and tension for a character that has all the potential to be exciting, especially as a young child.

Beginning with the destruction of Krypton from the toddler Kal-El's point of view, the boy is rocketed from his dying home. He watches as his parents get further and further away, engulfed by the fire and explosions of the dying Krypton, scared and alone until he reaches his new home; Earth.

TW: Attempted Sexual Assault

Slow and steady wins the race.

This presentation feels a lot more personal through his eyes. Though his inner monologue is a bit jarring for a toddler, it speaks volumes that he doesn't know what's happening. He's terrified that his parents are leaving him alone, that he may never see home again. His hands press against the glass in fear.

Pa Kent just happens to pass by, noticing the rocketship land with this strange child in it. The baby Kal exhibits a strange telepathic suggestion ability and makes Pa Kent think that taking him home is all his idea. Ma Kent is introduced as the ideal small town mother and the majority of this book expands on Kal-El's life in Smallville.

This comic acts as the absolute ideal in what Superman's life as a kid could have been. It's hokey in a way that the Kents are just simple farmers and the perfect parents with Clark learning the values of how to be a good person. He defends his nerd/outcast friends from bullies and gains the love from the always awesome Lana Lang.

The books flaws, however, are as awful as the entire thing is good. Things get a bit jarring as the bullies go from simple name calling and egging to physical violence and attempted rape after Lana takes pictures of their actions. If anything should have been cut, it should have been this gross depiction of near violence against a teenager.

This and the fact that there's no real comeuppance after the fact, aside from Clark just beating their asses, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth and the plot is dropped from there. It shifts to his relationship with Lana Lang after he reveals his powers to her and gradually makes up his mind about his future. In his late teens, instead of going to college or to Metropolis for his common origin of becoming a reporter, he decides to join the US Navy.

I am a little biased because his experience was much like my own from people questioning the decision, to telling my girlfriend at the time that I'd come back and what not and the teary goodbyes. Of course everyone who joins may have the same story. It just felt very personal to me and stood out as the most glaring change to how Clark Kent becomes Superman. I felt kinship and traumatic flashbacks when seeing John Romita Jrs. representation of RTC Great Lakes.

Speaking of the amazing artist, his art for the book is absolutely stellar. Capturing the vibe of the dry heat of the American Midwest, Romita Jr pulls you into every scene. The sense of scope is grand in space, it feels home-y in Smallville and the road to Illinois feels desolate and empty and yet full of hope and joy.

The line between adult and children's faces, however is very thin. Clark's faces run the gamut of emotions from joy, to surprise to near rage, but between each time jump, it's hard to tell just how old he actually is. Ma and Pa Kent age with the subtle graying of hair and maybe a few wrinkles, but Clark is forever having the face of his three year old self.

Despite covering ground that's been trodden millions of times, Frank Miller's found a way to inject a bit of interest into a familiar origin story. I love the new angle of Clark Kent becoming a Sailor and fighting for America, not exactly knowing what kind of person that it will change him into. Though I hope we get a more focused and less Crazy Frank Miller in the next issue. Attempted rape is disgusting as a simple storytelling device and depending on what kind of accounts he's gotten from Sailors on boot camp, things could go either way.

I am excited for the future of this series, however, and can't wait for the next one. High recommend!

#comics #dc #dc comics #teen titans #robin #djinn #crush #lobo #kid flash #roundhouse #adam glass #bernard chang #superman #superman year one #frank miller #john romita jr.#dc black label #possible trigger warning #trigger warning

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telegraphopera-blog · 5 years

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“The Tales of Kutcharitaville”

In the mid 70′s a small family restaurant opened at the address 2186 Hendersonville Rd. in Arden, North Carolina. The restaurant was called Kutchie’s Dine and Dance Supper Club. The proprietors were a husband and wife team named Kutchie and Anita Peleaz.

The restaurant later on changed its name and theme to Kutchie’s Key West Cafe, a tropical beach themed cafe. The last dated article mentioning the cafe as open was published on a local online news platform in 2006.

The cafe closed soon after the publication of the ‘06 article, after three decades of business. The property now sits vacant, having been partially demolished, but the land and remaining structure is still owned by a member of the Peleaz family.

Shortly after going out of business, strange mentions of the restaurant began to appear in internet key word searches, due to the fact that someone was obsessively posting about the now-closed restaurant, writing about it over and over. The mystery poster began leaving these mysterious posts online in the year 2009, despite the fact that the Key West Cafe had been closed for a few years. The posts were created for the next seven years.

These mysterious posts, positive glowing promotions for Kutchie’s Key West Cafe, were signed with many aliases, Jake Carson being among the most prominent, and they continued to be posted in news article comment sections for a total of seven years. The posts were also left below food and literary reviews, and even in the guest-book sections of online obituaries.

The appearance of these posts, which were written about a defunct cafe and posted for seven years straight, were a mystery to the internet. No one could understand why someone would rave about and promote a long-shuttered dining establishment for seven years.

If you look around the internet, many of the thousands of these now legendary posts can still be found, as well as YT videos on the topic, and a variety of links will take readers to web pages like 4Chan and Reddit, where people devoted to discovering who wrote the posts discuss the mystery.

For more info see the top pinned posts at: r/KeyLimePieMystery

My Analysis of the KLP Mystery

In 1958 charter boat Captain Tony Tarracino purchased 428 Green St, in Key West, Florida. He named it Captain Tony's Saloon. The building itself was home at one time to an ice slab morgue, and in 1898 it housed a wireless telegraph system instrumental in receiving messages from Havana during the Spanish-American war. After that the building housed a bordello, and a speak-easy and then became a bar and has continued to be a bar in some form or another to this day.

The famous address is most noted for being a hangout to many celebrities, including many well-known literary figures, including Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, and Shel Silverstein. During the bar's run as Sloppy Joe's in the 30's, Hemingway spent a lot of time there. Later, in the early 70's, it became a favorited haunt of Jimmy Buffet. Buffet played his music at the place until he opened his own bar, Margaritaville, around the corner on Duval St. He was allegedly paid in the currency of tequila, to play Captain Tony’s, and he even helped to immortalize Captain’s Tony’s Saloon with his famous song "Last Mango in Paris"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Tony%27s_Saloon

This recounting of the history of Captain Tony’s Saloon is significant, and this history of the Key West scene is vital to the theory I am putting forth, for many reasons, as it is some of the relevant information that supports the theory that Kutchie himself was the author of these posts.

We all know that Kutchie's Key West Cafe was a beach-themed cafe, made complete with the stylistic flavorings of the famous Key West scene. Kutchie masterminded this theme as the 2nd incarnation of the restaurant at some point after it's prior run as Kutchie's Dine and Dance Supper Club ended.

A poster on Reddit found microfiche “Help Wanted” ads in which Kutchie’s Dine and Dance Supper Club advertised its intention to hire workers in 1976. It was in the 70's that Jimmy Buffet was the toast of the town over in Key West and those years in particular were Buffet’s “pre-Margaritaville” heyday at Captain Tony's. During the 70's is when he spent his time playing Captain Tony's for tequila payments, as the legend tells it.

The first Margaritaville is listed as opening on Duval St. around the corner from Captain Tony's Saloon in 1985. It is not clear at what point the name and theme of Kutchie's Cafe changed, but at some point during it's approximate 30 year run, it changed it’s name from Kutchie’s Dine and Dance Supper Club and began doing business as Kutchie's Key West Cafe.

During this time, Kutchie created the Cafe, which we have seen referred to in the KLP posts as “Kutcharitaville,” which is a play of words on Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. The posts also refer to Kutchie as "The Captain," in the same fashion as Captain Tony Tarracino of Captain Tony's Saloon fame. Therefore what we know of Kutchie and his Key West Cafe, is that it too was influenced by Captain Tony's Saloon, Jimmy Buffet and his Margaritaville vibes, and by the Key West culture in general.

It seems obvious that Kutchie’s Key West Cafe's tropical phase intended to pay homage to and capitalize off the popular Key West culture of the day and throw back to it’s musical and literary heyday. While Kutchie built that creative cafe world for the entertainment experience of his diners, the posts created by the KLP poster also build a creative world for the readers. This is Kutchie’s World.

The Key West Cafe strived to re-create a slice of the delicious pie that is the famous Key West scene, within the perimeters of Kutchie’s world building, and the posts also work on a literary level to streamline Captain Kutchie’s Key West Cafe into the same pop-culture literary world of legend that Captain Tony’s Saloon and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville also inhabited in popular culture through their mention in music and literature.

The posts attempt to create an alternate world in which Kutchie is a Captain, just like Captain Tony, and they link Kutchie’s little tropical paradise in North Carolina to the famous Key West literary and music scene through online world-building, same as Captain Tony’s and Margaritaville were immortalized by writers and artists in the popular media of the day. It is worth noting, that Kutchie himself has been known to build creative worlds for purposes of entertainment.

Therefore I believe that is reasonable to assume that this writing serves the purpose of further enhancing the historical pop culture relevance of Kutchie and his Key West Cafe and serves to allow Kutchie to continue to create parallels between his creation, the Key West Cafe and the real Key West scene.

The author of the KLP posts builds a fantasy world through their attempt at unconventional modern literature, much like Kutchie's Key West Cafe itself was a world built by Kutchie from his imagination, and was formed by him merging his personal interests into a “fantasy play” themed business.

In the world of the KLP posts, statements are made by the author in which Captain Kutchie is memorialized in the same breath as Captain Tony and also the two ”famous” Captains are cast in the role of buddies, having had adventures together in the world built by the KLP posts. Was this past friendship fantasy or reality? Only Captain Kutchie and Captain Tony know for sure. Perhaps it is all just wishful thinking, or tall tale telling, an old man spinning yarns.

"The Late Great “Captain Tony Tarracino” of Key West Fame was an Old Friend of “Captain Kutchie Pelaez”. Together the two of them Sailed Many Adventures Not Known To Much Of The World! Nighttime Runs Too Cuba And Back. Cheese Burgers, Rum, Scotch, Cigarettes, Cigars, Treasure Maps, Pizzas, Chocolate Bars and Key Lime Pies Helped The Two Make History. If You Can Believe It Even “Mel Fisher” Was Known To Hang With Them!"- Jake Carson FB

https://www.facebook.com/jake.carson.98284/posts/1854653334767359

“..And With An Extra “HEAVY-HEAVY HEART”, “Captain Kutchie Pelaez’s”, EXTRA GOOD FRIEND And OLD PARTNER IN CRIME….The Legendary….”YANKEE JACK”,..Of Key West and Boston, Mass. Has Passed Away, Much Too Soon..Rest In Peace Pisan…….Enjoy Your Key Lime Pies Buddy… .. …We Remember “Yankee Jack”, “Captain Tony”, “Jimmy Buffett”, “Mel Fisher”, “Captain Terry Levi”, “Captain Kutchie Pelaez” And Many Other Famous Characters Down In Key West In The Good Old Days. What A Blast Those Days Really Were!…. ....Do You Ever Wonder?..Who Writes All This Crap?..Well, We Sure Do. They Deserve Getting Awards For Such Literary Skills, We Hope They’re Getting Paid Well. This Stuff Is As Good As “Hemingway” Or “MAD MAGAZINE”!” -Jake Carson FB

In the above post, Captain Kutchie Peleaz is hailed by Jake Carson as a visionary in the same breath as Yankee Jack, Captain Tony, Jimmy Buffet and "many other famous characters" and then the author goes on to question if you have ever wondered who writes this crap and states that it’s as good as "Hemingway"

It is obvious that while the creator of the cafe strove to pay homage, it’s also obvious that there’s an intention in the writings to also create a modern experimental literary work that places Kutchie's Cafe somewhere in pop culture history, in the same way that authors such as Ernest Hemingway paid homage to Key West and recorded of it for posterity in history.

It is made clear when the author says, “This stuff is good as “Hemingway,”” that they fancies their work on the KLP posts to be a valid form of creative modern literature and that they are conceptualizing themselves as one of the vanguards of this new style of creative writing.

Hemingway and Buffet memorialized Key West and Captain Tony's Saloon in their popular writings. The KLP poster is memorializing the Key West Cafe in the now popularized KLP writings order to push the Cafe into the annals of pop-cuture history for posterity.

It’s not enough for the Key West Cafe to have been “like” a Key West haunt, it must also be recorded in pop culture history, in order to truly be legend, just like a real Key West hangout.

The Title of the Masterpiece is “The Tales From Kutcharitaville”

At one point, Jake Carson states "Hell, If You Didn't Know Better, You'd Probably Guess That This Is Just Another Chapter From That Famous Island Book Named "The Tales From KUTCHARITAVILLE"!...." It is here we are informed by the author that the pieces of work that have been placed all over the internet actually combine, like an old fashioned serial radio show or different books of the Bible, to form a modern internet literature masterpiece called “The Tales From Kutcharitaville" in which the KLP author memorializes his youth, his love of family, and their cafe, which was in the Peleaz families lives for around 30 years.

In the work, “The Tales From Kutcharitaville,” the KLP author takes you into Kutchie's world, by re-creating it for you on some level. For those who have never been to that famous Key West scene or even to Kutchie's Key West Cafe, the posts strive to recreate the energy from that moment when the two worlds were combined through the creative energy of one man.

In my opinion, I believe that this all works together to show that the author of the KLP posts is none other than Kutchiemon himself. The author builds a world in their posts to pay homage to the fame of the Key West Cafe much like Ernest Hemingway paid homage to Key West in his writing and much like Kutchie paid homage to the Key West scene by styling his Cafe according to influences from famous Key West characters like Captain Tony and Jimmy Buffet.

What We Also Know

We know that the Peleaz family has conservative leanings when it comes to politics, and the KLP poster seems to share similar political leanings, or so it seems from their writing. The pages the KLP poster comment on and the celebrity characters mentioned in the world they build also reference artists or celebrities from the boomer era. One example of this would be the attraction the author has to post the KLP writings on web pages covering performing artists like Don Rickles.

What I Believe

I believe in the years after Kutchie's Key West Cafe closed down, that Kutchie had nothing to do to foster his creativity, and missed building a fantasy Key West world, and thus moved onto the 2nd phase of world building surrounding the Kutchie's Key West Cafe, the phase in which the shuttered cafe was intended to be boosted to pop-culture literary infamy through the unconventional method witnessed in the author's use of free platforms to leave their mark.

The author has chosen to clue us into their creation of the KLP world through the use of real world communications platforms that traffic in promoting food and entertainments relevant to the author's world building experience in order to create an “organic feeling” of “manufactured fame” for Captain Kutchie's Cafe. I believe this is Kutchie's effort to create a world of literary legend for his own Key West cafe that will parallel the literary legend built by famous writers to convey the Key West scene's vitality and lore.

Through the writings, the Key West Cafe takes on a life of its own and becomes a little more famous in pop culture in the same way the original Key West scene is. This legend created, makes the Key West Cafe even MORE like the venues he modeled his cafe after, and also through these writings about the key West Cafe, the Key West scene itself is further immortalized, despite the fact that its even out of business now for over a decade.

I believe that the KLP posts constitute a new form of literature that is modern, interactive, and dynamic in nature. The works that comprise "The Tales From Kutcharitaville" make use of free platforms and interact much like an ARG within the real world, to create a parallel world in which Kutchies' Key West Cafe comes to literary prominence through the work of the KLP poster's world building much the same way that Captain Tony's Saloon and the Key West music and literary scene came to prominence after it was celebrated in world famous music and literature.

So we know that the author has also told us the name of this “book” that they have published through unconventional means and they have also explained to us that their work is on par with Hemingway and while many literary scholars would argue that the KLP posts do not constitute a valid form of literature, this author argues that they do, because the platforms on which we receive literature and how we interact with literature changes historically and always have.

This is why I believe the author of the KLP posts to be a sort of modern day Burroughs, or Bukowski. Insert the name of a famous ground breaking experimental author here and you get the picture.

I agree with the author of the KLP posts when they stated that the author deserves awards for their literary skills. I believe the world they have created rises above the level of "just some comments on a board," and that the format chosen and the mystery imbued in it elevates the writing to an interactive level of performance. The world draws the readers in. Unlike much of modern literature, the world of the author of the KLP posts grabs the reader’s attention and demands discussion.

I would argue that the KLP posts constitute a successful “life's-work masterpiece” by the author, and that the author is among a new modern vanguard of experimental underground literary figures that choose to self publish their works in unconventional formats.

Most would believe that to be considered literature, one must have a book for sale on the shelf, or on the internet, but the KLP posts rise above the commercial literature we know today and present an experience that is on par with a much more highly elevated art form. The book “The Tales From Kutcharitaville” is not just something that you read and set aside, it is something you consume voraciously, and discuss.

It pulls you in on its whirlwind adventure and also takes you along for the ups and down's in the life of the story's central figure, the Hero of the book “The Tales From Kutcharitaville,” Kutchie himself. It even casts you in a role, in which you become an actor in the story, an "investigator of literary mystery."

This engrossing experience is provided to you at no charge, the price that is paid is the fact that Kutchie’s little Key West Cafe that used to be on Hendersonville Road in Asheville goes down in literary history, much like Captain Tony's, and the earned posterity is valid and justifiable as the post-humous notoriety is gained through a dynamic, ground-breaking new style of literary presentation. As a matter of fact the fame brought to the Key West Cafe posthumously is the writer’s “Award.”

It goes without saying that Captain Kutchie and his Key West Cafe deserve the literary prominence granted through the posts. The entertainment provided by the literature works on two levels. On one hand we are caught up in this urban legend through the serialized postings and on the other hand, we are also whisked into the world of Kutchie's as actors, where we investigate this manufactured literary urban legend.

Loose Lips and Being Loved

My theory on why nobody in the know will disclose this author's identity- I believe for the urban legend to work on every level, the author can not and should not claim credit for their work. The mystery is part of the charm of the multi-level literary work, "The Tales From Kutcharitaville," and the mystery of not knowing who created the posts, combined with not knowing why they did it, is what propels the posts to the high level of dynamic performance art that allows them to inhabit both today's world of creative non-fiction, and also reside with one foot in the real world past.

The mystery of the WHO and WHY is what makes this literary sensation something we can all can obsess over, and ask questions about, and interact with on so many levels. It's what makes this mystery one of the most thrilling creative reads of modern times.

Some would argue that the posts veer into the crude, perverted, and disorganized, and at times show signs of a disorganized mental state. But many famous authors from literary history struggled with mental disorganization and many of them created their writing from within awkward disorganized mental states.

Author William Burroughs, for example, often wrote from an “unusual place” that people would say was born of mental disorganization. His work, much like for example, Bukowski’s, was often seen as crude and vulgar and sometimes when an author's literary works were fragmented, crude, and vulgar and showed signs of disorganization they were published and lauded anyways, as “samples of the real life mind” of the author.

If an authors world is disorganized, that is simply the world they are bringing you into. Vulgarity, perversion, and signs of mental disorganization do not invalidate the serialized work "The Tales From Kutcharitaville" from being considered as a modern-day literary masterpiece. These odd features actually help to propel it into its strange sense of notoriety. These features make the work more honest and interesting, as they provide a sense of genuine character to the work.

While it could also be a writer who frequented Kutchie's, or it could be one of Kutchie's own family members, or more than one party, I strongly believe all the available evidence points to Kutchie himself as being the author. I believe that as he aged and his mental and creative state changed, these factors, along with the prominence of the work finally coming into view of popular culture, he decided to stop posting because sometimes, enough of a good thing is enough. Once the posts caught on and began to provide the former Key West Cafe with a new infamy, and people began to write to, make calls to, and otherwise contact the Peleaz family, he stopped posting the posts, because of his health, and also because the posts had served their creative purpose probably more then he ever imagined they would.

Continuing to post the posts in the face of the public attention the posts are now receiving, would only serve to complicate the situation for the author and for the Peleaz family as a unit. If the KP works were created to make the Cafe famous post-humous it worked, but also the family began to face what amounted at times to fanatic harassment.

People’s Theories on “The Tales From Kutcharitaville”

Some have theorized that the Peleaz family have something to do with criminal actions, that somehow involve the KLP posts, but no evidence has ever been found to validate these assertions of criminal conspiracy. People have also speculated that the posts are the covert/overt comms of spies, as well, that the work is being done by a bot.

And while no one has ever been able to prove that the Peleaz family has any involvement in untoward affairs, and are proven pillars of their local society, the spy theory has never been substantiated even in the least either, nor has the bot theory. No theory has ever been proven.

The Pelaez family is an upstanding local family in a tight-knit community of mountain folk, hesitant to trust or embrace outsiders. They've lived there all their lives, and the patrons of the Cafe often grew up alongside of them, and went to school or even to church with them. The Pelaez family, by all appearances, are well-respected hard-working locals that are beloved by the residents of the Asheville-Arden-"Skyland" area. As a rule, they do not possess criminal records.

If Kutchie wrote the posts and someone who knew him well did know this, I believe that they would protect this fact from getting out, simply because all of the love that is shown in the posts for the Key West Cafe and its patrons. That love was very real and is returned by the people of Asheville-Arden to this day. To this day, the people who Kutchie loved, still love Kutchie and his little Key West Cafe back.

Many believe the secretiveness surrounding the topic of authorship indicates some sort of criminal conspiracy in the community of Asheville, but people are often very protective of the people they love. And regulars of Kutchie’s Key West Cafe say they were made to feel like part of the Peleaz family. To this day there is still brand loyalty to Kutchie’s Cafe.

It has been reflected that some believe that Kutchie is no longer well health-wise and some readers feel that the writing style of the KLP poster often demonstrates a decline of the poster’s mental health. I believe this is another reason why people would protect the identity of the author, especially if the people in their lives protecting their truth believe that the posts were a product of a looming mental health crises. Everyone loves Kutchie.

These posts are really about love. They are about Kutchie's love for life, his youth, his community, his Key West Cafe, Key West culture, and his family. The restaurant was the waiting room he spent the best years of his life in, during his time here on earth.

In the stories he is a figure of action, adventure, and good times, he as a protagonist is a provider of and creator of community. In this community there is a lot of love. In these posts Kutchie has been living it up once again, this time memorializing himself in a contrived literary hoax, in which he has adventures with his celebrity buddies and he has created this little world for himself to use to extend to us and the world at large, the love that went into the fantasy world building of his Key West Cafe and share with us his own brand of magic, much as he shared the Key West Cafe and its “beach in the country,” charms with the community.

I believe that the author of the KLP posts is a creative genius. I believe that creative genius living in his own self-made world is none other than the Captain himself.

Who else would place him as the action-adventure star in his own “internet fan-fiction” fantasy Rat-Pack, and who else would seek to elevate The Captain and his former Key West Cafe into the annals of modern literary history? And why? No one but Captain Kutchie himself has any motivation to build this world in which he is glorified. This is original Fan-Fiction, by the Captain, for the Captain.

The Copy Cat Posts/After The First Mention on Reddit

I believe that after the posts became a topic of discussion online, and people began to question the family members and contact them, that someone else in the family possibly began to reply to the public, or possibly participate in posting some of the posts.

I do think this is a possibility to explain why it seems like the posts/messages were at one time being replied to or perpetrated by a different party, while showing different styles of writing and sending quotes from a game like Silent Hill.

Another theory that I'm also leaning toward to support why this occurred is that at some point, some hacker folks who read about the KLP post mystery on Reddit managed to crack their way into some of the accounts in an effort to doxx the identity of the writer, and instead of do so, they used their opportunities looking around in the accounts, to reply to some of the messages themselves.

This could account for why the replies that were sent to people after the story broke on Reddit, seemed to be related to gaming themes. Gamers on Discord have been known to try to hack their way into these mysteries. I have found evidence as well, that places some of the family members in the online gaming community. This is why I embrace both theories as possibilities regarding the origin of the replies that didn't seem to come from the Original Poster of the KlP posts.

In regards to it being driven by a bot, I could see how an independent Bot could somehow find the KLP posts and begin to re-incorporate them into their work, but I also believe that it's also likely that the KLP poster could have also purposely made use of a bot in order to spread their creative KLP posts more frequently than possible for them to do by hand on their own.

Human/Bot SEO Theory

It's also a possibility that someone involved with the Key West Cafe, Kutchie or a family member, was working online from home to create content to support an-SEO related internet promotion business and simply chose to discuss and post about their favorite topic, while at the same time endeavoring to use the SEO service they were providing content for to elevate the Key West Cafe to modern internet literary fame.

I believe that this is a faint possibility because the author of the KLP posts states something about hoping that the author will be paid well. If there is any case that this author received any payments for their work, in order to monetize the work, it would have to provide some sort of tangible real world value to some business or other, in order for the author to receive a payment, and if the writing is not being sold as a creative work through a traditional literary showcase format, it must somehow in the end contribute to enhance something that is monetized. There is no proof that anyone has received any payments, but the fact that the author mentions this possibility of a payment means that some could have been made, and there aren't many reasons someone would be paid to generate content like this. The content is either somehow monetized or its art. But it could be both.

I believe that the author intended for their work to make the Key West Cafe known post-humous but they never realized or understood what the outcome would be, or knew what effect the work would have on the public or the Peleaz family. At the time of authorship, I believe the authors intentions for the posts were sort of a dream that they eventually found actualizing before their very eyes. And they had no way to know that this dream would lead to calls, mail, and emails directed at the Peleaz family, inquiring to know who wrote the posts.

I am confident in my theory that Kutchie has written these posts himself and I believe that this is one of the most exciting and creative writing samples in this era of new writing and literary presentation to be found online. I believe the author has created a masterpiece and I am thankful to have been invited along on the action-packed, fantasy-driven, world-building ride.

I feel like I almost know Kutchie by now, as I have been inducted into his Famous World, through the thrilling artistic work, “The Tales From Kutcharitaville.”

I have been sat down at a table, I have been given the Pie. I have tried the Pie.

And it was good.

#Kutchie's Key West Cafe Key West Kutcharitaville Captain Kutchie

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thefreshfinds · 6 years

Text

Lewielxrdd:

Real as it gets, authentic, level-headed and on the rise —

Lewielxrdd spars your ear canal with walloping instrumentals and a blare of rhymes (that can induce heavy emotion, hyperactivity or relatablity) as he speaks about his past, daily obstacles, fun antics and accomplishments.

Hailing from the art flooded corners of Chicago, Lewielxrdd has practically been around music for as long as he can remember. “There was a time in my life where my mother would put on BET Jams and then I would be calm for the rest of the day [as a baby].” says Lewielxrdd “But I have been in the studio since I was one years old. I was constantly around musicians whether it was a cousin of mine or an uncle. My father was affiliated with Twista Do or Die and my cousin, Bobby Ambrose was apart of the legendary Chicago Crew ILMindstate. My other cousin is the founder "SlappedCity Productions" and runs that with my cousin Poncho Deuxfois. Everything is family based for the most part. Tazzie H, Kaza Blocc & Dahshanae (who are aspiring hip hop and R&B artist) are my siblings. But to stay on topic, I started spitting when I was 10. I always loved music so I gave it a try & I have been writing & recording ever since. I didn't start taking it seriously until I was 16. I promoted parties & concerts back in high school so I was pretty well known . The group I was with promoted Chief Keef, Lil Durk & every artist you can think of from the city. [S/O DJ Amaris & TKO ENT] but being with that crowd helped me get familiar with the sides of Chicago, (North South East & Westsides). Chicago is a big city but it’s small at the same time because everybody knows each other. But the movement I was apart of is SlappedCity Productions, GBF (Gett Bagg Familia) M.I.L.F Gang (Music Is Living Free Gang) & B.O.B (Build Our Brothers). When I am surrounded by people with the same vision and drive, they instantly become like family to me”

A visionary who dreams about being legendary, he dashes that same feeling when it comes to creating music. “It’s my truth” Lewielxrdd says “Music to me has no boundaries and I feel like a lot of people can relate to my pain and happiness. It can be boasting, street poetry even food for the mind.” What Lewielxrdd really wants to do is tell the world his story.

In addition, Lewielxrdd hopes to bring all artist together through his sound. “It’s too much hate out here & too much money to make to be beefing.” Lewielxrdd goes on to say. Off the record Lewielxrdd continues with “What I mean by "the internet" is that you can click your browser & type where you’d like to. It really could be the same way with us musicians. If you want a feature with “so & so” it wouldn’t be a problem with the system I'm trying to implement. The moral of the story is that I'm trying to make a change and end the beef.”

Aside from finding inspiration through what his obstacles, Lewielxrdd also is inspired by: his father, The Cool Kids, Nas, Rakim, Twista, Do Or Die, DMX, Wale, Big Sean, G Herbo, Lil Bibby, Uzi, Lil Wayne, Bone Thugs N Harmony, De La Soul, Biggie, NLM Geno, Poncho Deuxfois & his little brothers.

As for where he sees himself in the next 5 years? Lewielxrdd envisions being on tour with his family, dominating the rap game with his team, creating great music with great vibes, traveling the world and starting his own label (with will be in the honor of his father).

On a whole, Lewielxrdd is an artist who is climbing up the eminent latter of hip-hop.

By having relatable stories and a high drive for notoriety...he’s destined to be elevated in the Top 3 before we even know it!

By: Natalee Gilbert 🌞

Check him out at:

SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/1lewielxrdd

Instagram: @1lewielxrdd

••••

Lewielxrdd currently has a single out called Changes and plans on releasing a mixtape called “Broke Boy”.

Lewielxrdd says “The meaning behind the name (of the mixtape) is that we all want the finer things in life so we hustle like we're broke. Anyone can be a “flashy” broke boy. It’s a term that is normally negative but I took it, flipped it & made it my own.”

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inevitably-johnlocked · 6 years

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For the Playlist I have a jokey one, (from Sherlock’s pov) ‘Bottom’s gonna be on top’

youtube

[Nick Bottom]No more Mr. AnonymousNo more world that is Nick Bottom-lessMy name will be synonymous with being on the topI can see it nowI’m the cat’s meowIt’s a hit, pow!It’s gonna be great, gonna be greatEverywhere I goThey will love me soHail my nameOh, it’s gonna be great, gonna be great[Ensemble]Master Bottom, you’re such a wonderful writer[Nick]You really think so?[Ensemble]And your talent is talent beyond compare[Nick]Why thank you[Ensemble]You’re a star, you are, and you couldn’t be brighter[Nick]Now you’re just embarrassing me![Ensemble]You’re a real visionary[Nick]Thank you Jesus and Hail Mary![All]This Bottom’s gonna be on topThis Bottom’s gonna be on top[Nick]Man, I’m gonna sizzleMan, I’m gonna pop[All]And this Bottom’s gonna be on top[Nick]This is heaven sentFeeling confidentMoney well spentIt’s gonna be great, gonna be greatThrow a big paradePraises will be madeCompliments paidIt’s gonna be great, gonna be great[Bea]Me and baby are so eternally grateful[Nick]You’re who I’m doing it for[Bea]Thank you for our cottage in the woods[Nick]You deserve it![Nigel]If gratitude were a food I’d have a big plateful[Nick]Nice metaphor, bro[Nigel]You’re the greatestYou’re the man[Nick]I really shouldn’t say itBut yes I am![All]This Bottom’s gonna be on topThis Bottom’s gonna be on top[Nick]Once I get going, never gonna stop[All]Yeah, this Bottom’s gonna be on top[Renaissance Writers]We are the royalty of the Renaissance writersNow we’re handing down the crown to youYou were a nobody but overnight you’re someone better than the rest of usNow you are the best of us[Will]Not. So. Fast[Nick]Hello, Will. I knew you wouldn’t go down without a fight[Will]The top sir, nay, thou surely doth jestI say on my honour here I doth protest[Nick]YawnRhyming couplet? That is so 1580’s[Will]Oh yeah?Well[Will]If you want to make it to the topThen you’re gonna have to go through meCause on the top is where I liveAnd I will not be giving up that easilySo there[Nick]Oh man I have been waiting for this moment for so longI’m gonna enjoy it when I knock you off your perch[Will]Oh no you won’t[Nick]Oh yes I will[Will]Oh no you won’t[Nick]Oh yes I willWill:Oh no you won’t[Nick]Oh yes I will[Will]Oh no you won’tMy accomplishments are much more accomplished than yours[Nick]In your dreamsI am the best[Will]You can’t be the best because I am the bestI have written 12 plays and each one is a testament to my great skillI am the WillAnd I wrote the Taming of the Shrew and Richard III and Richard II and Henry’s IV, V, VIAnd Titus AndronicusAnd oh did I forget Romeo and Juliet[Nick]Well I have just written the thing that the critics are calling the greatest thing they’ve ever seenThe people are loving itCan’t get enough of itEveryone, even including the QueenShe recently invited me to her castle where she knighted meAnd privately she told me that you’re not any good, not any good, not any good, not any goodAnd she told me that all of your plays make her vomitAnd none of them’s as good as my musical Omelette[Will]Wait a minuteYou wrote Omelette?[Nick]Yes[Will]I never thought that I would meet my equalBut I concede that I’ve been bested by the bestMaybe we could partner on a sequel[Nick]Oh my, how the tide has turnedLet’s reviewWhat have we learnedSee, you were hereBut now we’ve swappedSo kiss this BottomI’m on the top[All]He’s on topHe’s on topWah-wah-wah-wahYeah this Bottom’s gonna be on top(Repeat)Yeah this Bottom’s gonna be on topYeah this Bottom’s gonna be on top[Nick - Dialogue]Bottom’s upYeah this Bottom’s gonna be on top

(Lyrics from Genius.com)

ASDLKFAHSDFKLAHSD NONNY OMG I AM DYING. This is FANTASTIC.

Yes, this needs to be on my playlist, thank you so much for it XD

#steph replies #johnlock playlist #johnlock music #artist wayne kirkpatrick #song bottom's gonna be on top #Anonymous

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iameverything · 4 years

Text

A Conversation: Bedhead

“Bedhead is a dreamy Indie synth-pop musician that hails from Toronto Canada.”

First off, who are you? Hello! I’m Veronica, but you probably know me better as Bedhead! I like all things art. Music, painting, photography, drawing, etc... I like to do it all! I’ve been singing since before I could even talk, and a musician for almost my entire life.

Tell me about your journey and how it all led to the career and name that is Bedhead? Aside from music, my background is actually in multimedia and communications. But after graduating, I was really miserable doing the whole 9-5 corporate thing found myself missing creative outlets in my work. I started a job hosting art parties which I loved, but that made me realize that I really missed actually performing in front of people. At this point I was working on a music project with a friend, but that never saw the light of day. I realized that I wanted to pursue music, I had this vision of what I wanted to do, and no one was going to make that happen but myself. All these things were sort of like little streams leading to a bigger river, and that’s how Bedhead was born!

I liked the name Bedhead for a number of reasons. The main reason is that it represents leaving a place of safety like your bed but still showing up anyway. It takes a lot of strength to do that. When I started writing music, I was going through depression. Anyone who has experienced this knows that some days getting out of bed is the most difficult chore. But getting up despite your struggles, maybe not totally together or perfect but still trying, shows incredible resilience. Aside from that, I’m a pretty active dreamer (sometimes I wrote songs in my sleep!) and I also get a lot of compliments on my curly hair so it pays tribute to that a little too haha.

Do you or have you ever had any affiliation with the 1998 Texas rock band Bedhead? STORY TIME! As you can tell above, I put a lot of thought into names… sometimes too much. I kid you not, it took me about a year to pick Bedhead, and I had more than 20 potential names for this project in the SHORT list. Any artist knows as soon as you think of a name you like, look it up. When I looked up Bedhead, I found this Texas rock band that broke up over 20 years ago and my family and friends thought it was perfectly fine to use the name. Just in case, I found their website (which looked like it hadn’t been changed since ‘98) and sent off an email, I had no idea if it was still active or anything. The name at this point meant so much to me, it really represented everything I wanted this project to be, and no other name I had thought of came close to it. I didn’t hear back for a while and told myself, if this name is meant to be, they will respond, and either way I will be okay. One of the members responded the next day! Gave me his blessing AND the website. I believe most of the members are now in Atlanta, I would love to meet them someday.

Let’s talk your recent single Fight No More, I must say, it is so damn good and the video is fantastic. If your fans could take any message from the new single, what would you want it be? Wowow thank you so much! The message to its barest bones is that you don’t have to take crap from anyone, even yourself. When I was going through depression, I eventually hit this wall where instead of getting sad, something snapped, and I realized I didn’t have to a prisoner to my own mind anymore. I wanted the song to come from a point of view of dealing with another person, like “If my depression were a friend who I knew was no longer good for me and my well being, what would I say to them?”

Like I mentioned the music video is fantastic, the color in it is great. Where did the idea for the music video come from? Who shot it? Since the song is written from the perspective of two people but really about an inner battle, I sorta envisioned myself fighting myself. Like trying to take back control of your life from your own demons. I had that brief plot outline when I pitched the idea to the director, Jacq Andrade, but that was about it. She immediately understood what I was going for, and we had a great brainstorming session. We both love colour, and wanted the visuals to be eye-catching. The result was the beautiful trip inside the psyche that is this music video. She’s a total visionary, and I’m so happy we brought to life.

youtube

Your first single you put out that made everyone first take notices was Bitter, a favourite of mine; With two singles out of the bag, do you already have an idea for an album coming up? How is the process been going for that anyway? Yes! Bitter and Fight No More are both going to be on an upcoming EP coming this year! The idea for the EP has been brewing for quite some time now, so I’m excited to finally share what I’ve been up to since last year. It’s been an awesome journey getting to this point, a lot of self discovery and inner reflection, trying different ideas and sounds to find what works best with the vision.

What is your thoughts on labels wanting to give "makeovers" to new artists they sign? I try to stay open to change while still being faithful to myself. I mean even how I write music changes all the time! We’re constantly exposed to new experiences, people, places, etc. and I try to stay open to how they might inspire my music. When we close ourselves off to new or different ideas because they don’t fit what we’re “trying to do” we limit our creativity. Even if I don’t know what the change will bring or where it’ll take my sound, I think as artists it’s how we grow.

What sort of things/artists/ideas inspire you these days to create the music that you do, in the style you do? I am always inspired by nature, usually more in my photography, but lately it has been creeping into my music too! There’s a song on this EP about that...

When can fans look forward to Bedheads next show and what can they expect? We’re currently in the process of tweaking the live setup, we have drums now!! We’ve been in winter hibernation practicing, making some visuals, getting everything ready so we’ll be ready to rock for some late winter/ early spring shows. Stay tuned!

Rapid fire: If you were not called Bedhead what else would you want to be called? Dang, I deleted that list of names! I remember liking V a lot. Favorite venue to play in? Might be too early to call, but my first show at Ildsjel Collective will always have a special place in my heart <3 Favorite current underrated artist/band? Does underrated mean I think more people should know about them?! If so, I’ve been listening to an artist called Malory! Favorite current song that isn't your own? It Might Be Time - Tame Impala Secret to a great song? It’s gotta be great with just piano/guitar and voice.

#bedhead #toronto #music #tune #questions #interview #qa #canada

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catholicartistsnyc · 6 years

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Meet: Stephen Lyons

STEPHEN LYONS is an actor and musician living in NYC. (www.StephenLyons.net)

Catholic Artist Connection (CAC): What brought you to NYC, and where did you come from?

Stephen Lyons (SL): I am originally from West Chester, PA. In summer 2013 I made the decision to move back to New York after being inspired by Once, A New Musical. I was very much excited by that type of show and the storytelling. I was living in Philadelphia at the time when I saw a friend of mine in the Broadway production. I moved to the city and met one of my bandmates at an open mic who happened to be working on 'Once' and knew our mutual friend and we formed the band Bonfire Falls.

CAC: How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? What do you see as your personal mission as a Catholic working in the arts?

SL: "Give beauty, give beauty back to God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins). This was the mantra ingrained in my experience at DeSales University by my dear mentor, the late Rev Gerard Schubert, founder of the DeSales University Theatre Department. To me, it is the responsibility artists have in using their gifts to bring light, refreshment, revelation and hope to the human experience.

Bono of the Irish rock band U2 has also played a huge impact in my understanding of the responsibility of Christian artists have in advocacy. Oftentimes, especially in this hyper sensitive culture, there is this enticement for despair. Bono encapsulates it in U2's song "Every Breaking Wave":

"baby every dog on the street / knows that we're in love with defeat / are we ready to be swept off our feet / and stop chasing every breaking wave."

To me, that line is about the journey toward faith, hardwired hope under the strata of despair circulating in the frequencies of social media.

Faith is a garden. It is a quiet place in an inner city neighborhood waiting for discovery, for someone to walk in, connect and lend a hand. It is a response to beauty waiting for us to cultivate and reflect back to God.

CAC: Where have you found support in the Church for your vocation as an artist?

SL: Through the Catholic Artists Connection network. The daily postings, reflections, opportunities and encouragement have been helpful in understanding your relationship to your work and the greater community of Catholic artists.

CAC: Where have you found support among your fellow artists for your Catholic faith?

SL: The Our Lady of Harlem Artist House has allowed me the ability to pursue my music and acting career. Without this community, without this support, I'm not sure I'd be here. I had gone through a personal hardship which effected me both financially, emotionally and spiritually. The support network of my housemates has given me the strength to get through a very difficult time and help me get on my feet again. Our unique house of artists of different disciplines has been a special grace.

I would also like to draw special attention to Cole Matson who has a very special gift of vision. He blends that unique skillset of an academic, intellectual, humanist and love for artists that defines what should be the model for New Evangelization, a kind soul who is always positive, and encouraging artists. He himself as an artist and visionary is a tremendous gift to the New York City Catholic Artist Community.

CAC: Where in NYC do you regularly find spiritual fulfillment?

SL: I attend St. Malachy's, The Actor's Chapel. Candlelight is an important aspect to prayer and meditation. I have a very strong memory of votive candles and colors from a young age. It is a quiet, peaceful important part of meditation and prayer. "Be still and see that I am God." Ps 46:10 The smell the look of flickering fire (the Holy Fire) which has a simple power.

Also minor rant: can I just say I like St. Malachy's because they use REAL candles and not those fake push button jobs! Completely defeats the purpose.

CAC: Where in NYC do you regularly find artistic fulfillment?

SL: As far as artistic fulfillment, I belong to the Writer's Room (Open Mic) which is an extremely supportive and nurturing space to showcase new music and network with other musicians. I also belong to Actor's Launchpad which provides monthly coaching for film / tv / networking and they also offer free self-taping for auditions.

Harlem is a huge place of inspiration for me right now creatively. It is going through a complex change. The African American experience has informed my faith in a powerful way. There is such a deep music and cultural history here that resonates with me both on a spiritual and creative level. There is a lot of complexity here as well as soul.

I also get inspired by our community garden, Mandela Garden. It is the only wildflower garden in Manhattan and boasts 30 different species of wildflower no longer found in the city. People underestimate the power of gardens, of working with the earth. There is both a physiological and psychological thing that happens when you work in a Garden. It causes you to think differently about the World around you and how you think. It’s also a nexus in this neighborhood where the community can come together. Sadly, our garden is in danger of being developed, but we are fighting in court.

CAC: How have you found or built community as a Catholic artist living in NYC?

SL: Participating in monthly Mass, activity with members of Our Lady of Harlem House, and attending events through Catholic Artist Connection.

CAC: What is your daily spiritual practice? Where do you like to go on retreat?

SL: In my morning prayer, I thank God for the gift of life, the gift of the day. I pray for the loved ones in my life and the Grace to be attentive to their needs. I'm also focused on direct intentions, what I hope to achieve through God's Grace praying an 'Our Father,' 'Hail Mary,' and then speaking the intention 10 times. I pray 'Jesus I trust in you' 10 times as well, surrendering all to God and concluding with a Glory Be.

During the course of the day I pray for people I meet along the way. If i see someone in despair or homeless for example I will say an 'Our Father' or 'Hail Mary.’ I try to be conscious of seeing Christ in everyone I come in contact with.

In the evening I may pray rosary or recite the Chaplet of Divine Mercy which is one of my favorite prayers. I pray for family and friends and I remember the souls of family and friends who've died.

Honestly, I have not done a whole lot of retreats because of budget. I tend to go to quiet beautiful places. There are some beautiful hiking trails and spots in Pennsylvania where I grew up I like to go to. Landscape informs my songwriting a great deal. I generally like to get lost in the country.

CAC: What is your daily artistic practice? And what are your recommendations to other artists for practicing their craft daily?

SL: Generally I try to carve out 1 - 2 hours a day of songwriting. I understand some artists force themselves to write at such and such a time each and every day, but that's never worked for me. Often, it comes unexpectedly.

To quote Martha Graham:

It is not your business to determine how good it (your creative expression) is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

I try to be present to the World around me, to look for God in the face of His children every day in the World, to see where injustice or acts of courage are happening. Creativity most be allowed to flow it is your response to your daily existence. Journaling sometimes helps. For me I also will record melodic or lyric ideas on my voice memos or notes on my iPhone during the day. Oftentimes in my songwriting I'm searching for a vocal line. It begins with a vocal improvisation with 'non-sense' words until the feeling of the vocal and the chord structure starts to drive a narrative.

CAC: Describe a recent day in which you were most completely living out your vocation as an artist.

SL: Every time I get to rehearse with my bandmates (Bonfire Falls). I've never been part of a group of incredible, giving, supportive group of musicians and songwriters in my life. Each time we are in the room, there is an incredible energy of diversity in thinking, feeling and creative expression. It is the ultimate example of how a band can create outcomes you never thought possible. Each one of us contributes in powerful ways. There is a 'Yes And' mindset always present. There is a flow that happens, an almost heightened intuition.

CAC: You actually live in NYC? How!?

SL: I had been sublet hopping for about a year when Emily Snyder (Turn to Flesh Productions) introduced me to Cole Matson, who was looking to pull together a group of Catholic artists. Cole had asked me to check out an apartment in Harlem. When I got out of the 125th Station at Lenox Ave there was a teen gospel choir singing on the corner. It was a group from Vy Higgensen's Gospel For Teens which focuses on preserving the art form of Gospel to young people. I had been going through a very difficult year and when I saw that it was a kind of grace that this was the right place at the right time. Catholic Artist Connection also provides a great network for finding housing.

CAC: But seriously, how do you make a living in NYC?

SL: This is the pain for every artist. I had been working in a full time job when I moved back to New York in 2013. I have a background in sales and marketing, and leadership development, but it was taking up too much of my time and energy. I had made the decision to leave that company and go back to my music and acting career.

Resources for actors I've found very helpful: Actors Access, Backstage, Playbill, Casting Networks, Casting Frontier to name a few.

I do a lot of catering because it’s flexible work. JitJatJo is a great new staffing app for people in food service. Gigmor.com is great for gigging musicians.

CAC: What are your top pieces of advice for Catholic artists moving to NYC?

SL: I wish I had the Catholic Artist Connection when I first graduated college and moved to New York. Your faith is what sustains you, knowing that you have a community of fellow Catholic artists is so important to learning and dealing with the city. If you are deeply sensitive or highly intuitive you need to be aware of how the city will affect you. I'm one of those types and for many years I didn't quite understand how to handle it. Highly intuitive or feeling people experience the world in a much more deeper level than many. It’s what makes us powerful artists. It is a strength, not a weakness, but sometimes you need to protect that sensitivity. New York will give you skin, but you have to be patient.

It is important to stay grounded in your faith and connecting with a support network. Seek out spiritual direction and understand that the city will push you to grow. Look to volunteer or help those in need. Find a garden.

Be patient with yourself and give it at least a year. That first year can be brutal.

Second piece of advice I'd share is find flexible work that won't drive you INSANE. Too much sitting at a desk will sap your energy and your creative spirit. If you can teach something on the side DO THAT!

Also catering is fantastic. It keeps you moving and they feed you. It’s flexible. Great way to save money and also network with other artists. Did I mention networking? Take classes. Networking is so so so important!! Actor's Connection, Actor's Launchpad, The Growing Studio, check Backstage for other resources.

Remember to Love God through the work you do by loving humanity - be conscious of becoming too in the World. If you're an actor pray to St. Genesius. Align your intentions with the One who made you out of Love.

"Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God beauty's self and beauty's giver."

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castlehead · 7 years

Text

Wandering Radical

Perhaps at the end of the day I am the sun, am as absurd as calling It a morning sun or setting, like a battle between mind and mind,

To scope the angles of the clouds and sweetly To assume the when, sans context

Of the time, completely blind to when, the sky in either case a mirror Image. Its qualities indicate both ends of today,

Revealing the same hued leveling frames congealing on the horizon Like wet sugar at the bottom of your cup of tea, which I am

Not sure this is; or I am The sun’s ill-researched absurdity Itself, whose heat spills all serious upon

The blank heavens: a blank dark as had ruled Across the garden grounds where-

-The radical will, is fated to, wander. It is when Our watches tell us that the day is come, yet light is not Yet light but lesser dark. Something vague on the horizon

Upheaves the severest corners Of sleep, but leaves us as of then not sensitive to the explosive Draught wakening senses to their duty; drippingly, A high peace of morning, a piece of the

Peace, of time in fickle frames unmovable. The- -Radical takes a walk.

It is how he does his time on this visionary Earth, Or call it prison, fabrication---it is this fabricated

Intensity of devotion that makes him Properly diurnal.

In his quakes of pattern, The radical configures An equivalent paean for the sun and

Moon. I memorialize the minutes of his life by linking these. All of him is all of me accumulated, but in frames of death, not Life, though the radical takes some action to deny his lack of self, Once fetched together by the sun and once all the frames are single-file

As like the resuscitated breather’s breath, the radical Enacts his betrayal of me and himself, he takes his walk back To the moon’s fugitive remaining parts,

Essentially backing the wrong horse, his reasoning a roast Of change of day, a circular riposte

Unto that offense of passing time, that is, a passing into The light of day, as if his own reality were more at stake

In a fluxive World. This choice resulted quickly in diffusion, him With the rest of night among the weltering calm

Palinode, and pallet, of dawn colors---this To catch the memory of being, as if he was at all

Before I made him wander, by being in the night, He is from bones to flesh to a frame among frames Of passing time, a circular riposte

Unto some offense, when to be the footman both Of a sun and Moon, independent of the meld of both Into some other---since in being, One cannot be, without an Other---

Robs time from the already-flimsy being Of the radical, makes his realness flee

Into something metaphorical already, even before I write it so: He has been there before, in the metaphor. He says

This in the garden, and suddenly finds no More to be found there but tombs, tombs

Garbed in glitz and beads for epitaph of words Soaking in the petty stylings of truth’s obligatory

Temporalities, and those truths especially of life, In bleak essay for our dank attachments Daily to be rid, for sake of his

And any life of radical, And he lamed by these withered words about it. Yet they are not idiom

To be put together, the way one as him, but not him, The way I put together the blueness of the atmosphere And light through the big tree: with my massive-

-Painter’s hands, I cluck him out his hoot, contrary hoot, And find I holler answer in

My own mind: he sees himself---in my gusty, Gutsy absurdness; yet unsated, continues licking at these

Chromatic choirs of light through lewd yew trees. It was his sun heaved upwards to the other side

Of the planet, for he was there where I cannot be, The same as maker cannot be the made. He eyed

The sun: it was the same answer---to night’s different gilding, Artifice both, for both come from my hands; what drapes

The dark of damfool night in a slightest glow of visibility Rides on the backs of particles of light later, depending on That ignorant steed, to paint the morning reality instead.

The radical unsheathed by Dawn, realizes nothing of this wilderness of symbols, but Sees clouds where they should be, and as is normal, he

Battles certain pained thoughts that, weakened by Sleep, had almost made a night of his day, this day.

A weal reddens at the rejection Of moon in its final places, somewhere In the moon, as it turns inward, a touchy thing: Its ardor to oppress

The dawn is like a perspective once asleep, then made alive to Meet the challenge of the old inevitability that will compromise it,

Settling the pitch of night’s end finally upon the cities’ Grace as much upon the valley, and all of this, a slow contumely

Unto that moon, a passive, suffocating greyness to its Light, leaking away into usurping horizon: the radical Takes a walk: I am filled with a madness to confess

What he might have gotten away with never affirming, If he just only lived the lie, that he was born, not made. The

Sketchy, yellow light to heat the frost on grass To runoff watering lower berths, lower hills. Tell me his

Reality, o nature, or my nature. A whisper of wind got blown like a charge. Some

Cold glaucoma at first was deadly lush in my wandering radical Who saw this night in him the horse to back. As opposed to that Which took its place, and does, whether I create Or not; having no alternative.

The sun broke out across the nothing new like an Omen by the reins. In blowing hymns of rays---

There were pink yellows, majesties of common, virilest Red into vermilion---the caroled heralding of the sun

Got at him, cornered all the frames Of him, being so enhanced at soul By the drooping weight of bell-flowers Among other garden vesture finally Mid garofani and rosa venturing

Curled thorns up to meet the oxidation of self’s throne, He sitting like the sun at the tips of his head, fighting to Be as massive as the sun, thinking in steps, inconclusive Frames that want the very flat face of meridian their

Home.---Disinterested, apart, I the sterilest painter Could only hope his interest tell the story enough, As if, being a mirror in dark, all that is here is what

Is here. If the sky were conscious of reactions to itself, But not the source of that, the origin of its own self- -Most metaphysical; and wearying of no obligated Approbation/dismay towards a lot of unfelt reality As tunes this poem here,---then, my

Light might could speak in a spark Or charge through the yew trees, back At him, and make him live, more than

One thousand Frankensteins, for the big, Blue bushes---or what light through staid

Clouds: by the time of this frame the day was obviously day, and Yet the radical sought some communicant or symbol for this, Searching for certainty about all the selfhood, anything

As might state its line of reasoning to him, As if I owed him my logic! I told him life

Only existed so he might put himself at stake, Risk to regard the brittle branches of the little Trees as a heft equivalent to the heft of his

Reality, which I painted from scratch; one tree, one instance Of a tree in the particular, all that was needed.

So it seemed, I was the sun, or wasn’t, Or was the wisdom of the sun.

I saw time’s rambles. I took a walk this time. I switched him out; I switched

This mind of mine to strange frames Of the radical’s within, and moved That microcosm to another crown, Throne, another chord for him to Feel real in hearing: for the royal Equipage to harp out and just for

Time, for time's dreadfulness in being, bearing out- -Portals into fiction I spot there in the air I desperately breathe.

This was harder than one could Think to do. That is, to grab this thing I made

As if I could also be it, know the battle of the sun And moon my own, yet something different From that too. To grab-

-All of time’s incessant religion, always multiplying Into further depths, barely there. You’d have to do it,

Grab it differently, grab different: yes: each and Every second, make and be a different body for The frame. You'd have to dismiss the servile

Shadow of fawning publicans that follow you around, Saying about how you are so great, bickering about when Which second out of all the seconds should grab you,

That is, me, on my infinite coattails, and kill me off, while moves All long time along, isolating being from the sun, the moon from

Being; nay any heralding of light’s Meridian pathway across land and sea,

A suggestive throne but not for any sycophant. There is A need of mine, that is, to separate the hope to go on, Debased by now, from the rule of the frames Over this sucking choir.

A comfort: confusion and pure spectacle proceed with Chromatism, charisma---the pure hoot, pure hail of the

Commodious reaching of time, and light, and light unfolding; Telling, heralding itself as pleasance, eden of edens. But The radical is never there. Nor am I, however the balance Might go. All that could survive once the both of us fossilize into The symbols, forms, ratiocinations, metaphors that built us, he And I, we realize, become with the gradualness of nightfall A brute spectacle of all these different frames,

And I the painter, I am one who moved my heart of the sun From its nestled tomb in some headachey beyond beyond

The trees squared in the hills. The hills like lonely Wizards’ hats that loom, and not one bright finality

. . . . . . .

in the bunch of 'em. This bunch of cosmic minutes out of time and made of a time that differs from these my, your dripping frames. In FRANCE, the existentialists,

absurdists and surrealists would think of what I’ve made so far as so much beauty, malformed by a- -damned spectacle: of technicolor light: yes: through

famished trees. And yet, how may I take one frame, and call that my religion: is such a thing not the

same if chosen from any frames’ minutes, droll and fabulous microcosms shooting like full rays of sun, and

the sun, the ultimate, the viol, singing sadness out of tune, to show absurd beauty in a sleep? I- -took a walk. It is impossible to escape the sad

strains of this gay blowing, an impossible poise, a- -hymn, a waltz of chromatic diligence regarding this the span, the catalogue of minutes’ colored light in

a day as wide as wanderers in spaces. Cursed, this demeanor of the sun goes off into cacophony. In the sewn sky. Bowels, led from an open maw

of time, down. The radical shakes his locks at this nice, religious consistency of frames. Again, are not the followers of time, like is the radical, not more than time’s followed rules incarnate?

One can’t, or won’t, babble out a frame of multiples, and call it questing for the walk he took that morning I had made him to take.

But did I keep my reverie intact: is it spastic as surreal rays through this moment of a-

-tree, or many trees, this dallied instance: what choral agony is there to follow, after followers and radicals give up with rhetoric:

questions are not questions; no more were drips of time the frames of time. No more were suns the last

of a truth; a kindness. There’s millions of suns left. There's millions of ways the way I walk will leave the blowing sun the blowing wind---or tiding---of

immaculate change. I took a walk because I was the radical, the radical was I, a changeling, feeling

out for the code for a being in the sun and in the moon. For all these sad strains

of waltz broke through religion, time’s religion, which, after all, is the only religion. To what else

are we forced to adhere, day in, day out: and- -how is it there’s no God for this hymn of the beholder: is he beholding gold sides, green sides,

pink yellows? Absurdity is deep running. It is my rebellion; the rebellion of a- -wanderer wandering, having no alternative.

To sum up, to instate, clip the infinite to ends, that is my mission. It is to round out the brittle, brittle branches of the tree---make the tree

a part of the sun, and walk, with rays blowing in my face. Dis-organize the senses; break the new wood. For something in the heart of time's- -quite idiomatic, allusive, seeming done before, and yet no further notion of the hymn is taken,

elaborated out of dull surprise. Out of dreamt, dreamy frames of blithe light in a quiet fury. In a ghost, a moving ghost of meaning. God’s ticking

clock. So what is it I'm always speaking of: I do not know, and it makes me anxious to move on from whatever it was that rose, having no

alternative.

#poetry #google drive #revision

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coolmohnishahluwalia · 5 years

Text

Business is thrilling again. Enjoy it from a distance

With trade wars, scandals and stock-market swings, it's a heart-pounding financial ride. Lately, though, some of the unicorns look more like dogs—they don't earn profits but have a knack for making headlines

For that vertiginous feeling of riding a roller coaster, the stock market these days is better than ever, but some of the fabled "unicorns" — those start-ups that combine technology, convenience and bewitching backstories — are starting to look more like dogs. You might want to enjoy the spectacle from a distance

We’ve got trade wars, spectacular startups, scandals, and mad, stomach-churning swings in the stock market.

Do you feel the excitement?

It’s almost like the good old days — the kind of heart-pounding financial ride that led to the dot-com crash of early 2000 and, yet again, to the calamitous economy of the mid-2000s.

Everybody needs a distraction from the unending hellscape that is the news from Washington. I recommend the business world: For that vertiginous feeling of riding a roller coaster, the stock market is better than ever.

Companies that combine technology, convenience, and bewitching backstories have been shouldering their way to fame. These are the fabled “unicorns” — the tech startups that investment firms pumped up to a valuation of $1 billion dollars or more.

Lately, though, some of the unicorns look more like dogs. They don’t earn profits but have a knack for making headlines.

Take WeWork, a company that, basically, leases office space, and loses a lot of money doing it. That’s not very glamorous, in itself. Yet that dull-sounding business became “disruptive,” in Silicon Valley jargon.

The most disruptive thing about it may have been the antics of its hard-partying co-founder, Adam Neumann. As The Wall Street Journal reported, Neumann transported marijuana stuffed in a cereal box across international boundaries in a private jet.

What is the WeWork business plan, anyway? They basically offer open office space, Wi-Fi and coffee. They invented ... Starbucks?

I’m writing this in a Starbucks, which didn’t need pot-stuffed cereal boxes to prosper. Although who knows? Something convinced Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks chief, that he should run for president.

But this isn’t about politics. Business is diverting enough.

The mess at WeWork continues to simmer. Neumann stepped down as chief executive in September, but the company has had to put off its initial public offering of stock, and it continues to lose enormous sums of money.

I can hardly wait to read the book about WeWork, once somebody writes it. Disruptive companies make great reads. “Super Pumped,” the new book about Uber, the ride-hailing giant, written by my colleague Mike Isaac, has become one of my favorites. He described Uber’s corporate excesses, including a private multimillion-dollar Las Vegas party featuring superstar Beyoncé, as well as numerous incidents of lawbreaking and a toxic culture for women.

Uber bid its founder, Travis Kalanick, goodbye as chief executive in 2017 (he remains on the board of directors), and it has been on a more stable management footing. But the company continues to be a money loser. In August, it posted a quarterly loss of $5.2 billion.

For a terrific read about a company that flew high, then crashed and burned in scandal, don’t miss “Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou. It is about Theranos, the blood test company, a stock market wonders not so long ago, and now, an example of enormous fraud.

Books like these have found a proud place on my virtual bookshelf (I’m an audiobook guy) and provide wholesome diversion from political news.

There is one major problem, though: This kind of excitement makes for riveting entertainment, but it isn’t necessarily what you want in an investment portfolio. Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is exhilarating. Compound interest is not, yet it is more likely to float you safely to retirement.

I’ll concede that a conservative approach isn’t for everyone. A handful of companies make it colossally big while taking outsize risks, and some investment firms — and individuals — get rich when these companies turn out to be world-beaters.

The Japanese giant SoftBank, for example, invests regularly in highly disruptive startups. It made a fortune as an early investor in Alibaba, the Chinese internet company. SoftBank has funneled enormous amounts of money to Uber and WeWork, investments that have suffered lately.

Investing genius turns up in unexpected places. Punk rock legend Iggy Pop recently told The New Yorker that he credits his independence from the whims of the music industry to an early investment in Apple stock.

The singer-songwriter, who gave us gems like “Lust for Life,” had so many wildly self-destructive moments onstage — slashing his chest with glass, throwing himself into the audience, stripping, vomiting on cue — that he has made even the wildest CEOs look like sleepy Florida retirees. But as an investor, apparently, he is a sober, risk-averse, calculating machine.

Picking individual stocks is iffy. I know for a fact that I’m no Warren Buffett or Iggy Pop. At times like these — that political hellscape is impossible to disregard entirely — it seems wise to play it safe and park your money where smart advisers tell you to: in low-fee index funds that track the broad stock market.

If you’re worried (and what rational person isn’t?), you can buffer your portfolio with conservative choices, bulking up on funds with bonds and money-market securities. I have to admit that when my own future is involved, I am fully committed to being boring. Boring is the new sexy.

(It pains me to admit that this argument got me nowhere when it came to high school and dating.)

While I’ve taken risks for work, I am not a fan of thrills for their own sake. Once, I waited more than an hour with my son for a ride on one of Six Flags’ roller coasters in New Jersey. When it was finally our turn, we slipped into the seats, but at the last moment, I hopped back out. “See you in three minutes, Sammy,” I said. I enjoyed his enjoyment. But I did not want to throw up.

I still don’t. I’m no Iggy Pop.

Making other people sick to their stomachs is more my style. I’d love to start a company so disruptive that nobody understands what it is. Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University, calls the language of visionary startups “yoga babble,” explaining to my colleague David Gelles: “It’s as if my yoga instructor went into investor relations.”

Ka-ching! If I can come up with an idea that is nutty enough, I might even be able to get SoftBank to put money into it.

Beyond these pipe dreams, my own money is safely stashed away. But, Mr. Pop, if you want to give me some investing advice, I’m listening. #MohnishRANotes

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toomanysinks · 6 years

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Waymo CTO on the company’s past, present and what comes next

A decade ago, about a dozen or so engineers gathered at Google’s main Mountain View campus on Charleston Road to work on Project Chauffeur, a secret endeavor housed under the tech giant’s moonshot factory X.

Project Chauffeur — popularly know as the “Google self-driving car project” — kicked off in January 2009. It would eventually graduate from its project status to become a standalone company called Waymo in 2016.

The project, originally led by Sebastian Thrun, would help spark an entire ecosystem that is still developing today. Venture capitalists took notice and stampeded in, auto analysts shifted gears and regulators, urban planners and policy wonks started collecting data and considering the impact of AVs on cities.

The project would also become a springboard for a number of engineers who would go on to create their own companies. It’s a list that includes Aurora co-founder Chris Urmson, Argo AI co-founder Bryan Salesky and Anthony Levandowski, who helped launch Otto and more recently Pronto.ai.

What might be less known is that many who joined in those first weeks are still at Waymo, including Andrew Chatham, Dmitri Dolgov, Dirk Haehnel, Nathaniel Fairfield and Mike Montemerlo. Depending on how one defines “early days,” there are others like Hy Murveit, Phil Nemec and Dan Egnor, who have been there for eight or nine years.

Dolgov, Waymo’s CTO and VP of engineering, chatted recently with TechCrunch about the early days, its 10-year anniversary and what’s next.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Dolgov, which has been edited for clarity and length.

TC: Let’s go back to the beginning of how you got started. Take me to those first days at the Google self-driving project.

DOLGOV: When I think about what drew me to this field, it’s always been three main things: the impact of the technology, the technology itself and the challenges as well as the people you get to work with. It’s pretty obvious, at this point, that it can have huge implications on safety, but beyond that, it can impact efficiency and remove friction from transportation for people and things.

There is this sense of excitement that never seems to die off. I remember the first time I got to work on a self-driving car. And it was the first time when the car drove itself using software that I had written, you know, just earlier in the day. So this was back in 2007. And that completely blew my mind. (Dolgov participated in the DARPA Urban Challenge in November 2007 before the Google project launched.)

Our #tenyearchallenge has been building the world's most experienced driver. Thanks to two visionary @Google characters for getting us started & to the @Waymo One riders in #Phoenix we're serving. HBD #Waymo pic.twitter.com/Ew4fdXjM7c

— John Krafcik (@johnkrafcik) January 17, 2019

TC: What were these 10, 100-mile challenges that (Google co-founder) Larry Page came up with? Can you describe that to me a little bit?

DOLGOV: This was probably the main milestone that we created for ourselves when we started this project at Google in 2009. And the challenge was to drive 10 routes, each one was 100 miles long. And you had to drive each one from beginning to end without any human intervention.

These were really well-defined very clearly, crisply defined routes. So in the beginning, you’d engage the self-driving mode of a car, and then had to finish the whole 100 miles on its own.

The routes were intentionally chosen to sample the full complexity of the task. In those early days, for us, it was all about understanding the complexity of the problem. All of the routes were in the Bay Area. We had some driving in urban environments, around Palo Alto, we had one that spent a lot of time on the freeways and went to all of the bridges in the Bay Area. We had one that went from Mountain View to San Francisco, including driving through Lombard Street. We had one that went around Lake Tahoe.

We tried to cover as much of the complexity of the environment as possible. And what’s really great about that task is that it really helped us very quickly understand the core complexity of the space.

TC: How long did it take to complete these challenges?

DOLGOV: It took us until the fall of 2010.

TC: It’s kind of amazing to think that the project was able to complete these challenges in 2010, and yet, there still seems to be so much more work to complete on this task.

DOLGOV: Right. But I think this is the nature of the problem. There is a huge difference between having a prototype that can do something once or twice or a handful of times versus building a product that people can start using in their daily lives. And it is, especially in this field, when we started, it’s very easy to make progress on these kinds of one-off challenges.

But what really makes it hard is an incredible level of performance that you need from your system in order to make it into a product. And that’s number one. And number two, is the very long tail of complexity of the types of problems that you encounter. Maybe you don’t see them 99 percent of the time, but you still have to be ready for that 1 percent or 1.1 percent.

TC: When you think back to those early days — or maybe even more recently — was there ever a moment when there was a software problem, or even a hardware problem that seemed insurmountable and that maybe the tech just wasn’t quite there yet?

DOLGOV: In the early days, we had all kinds of problems that we faced. In the early history of this project, we only set out to solve some problems without really knowing how we were going to get there.

You start working on the problem, and you make progress towards this. Thinking back to how these past few years have felt to me, it’s been much less of a here’s one problem, or a small number of really hard problems and we kind of hit a wall.

Instead, it’s been more like hundreds of really hard problems. None of them feel like a brick wall because, you know, the team is amazing, the technology is really powerful and you make progress on them.

But you’re always juggling like, hundreds of these types of really complex problems, where the further you get into solving each one of them, the more you realize just how hard it really is.

So it’s been a really interesting mix. On one hand, the problem getting more difficult, the more you learn about it. But on the other hand, technology making more rapid progress and breakthroughs happening at a higher rate than you would have originally anticipated.

TC: When did you realize that this project had changed (beyond the official announcements)? When did you realize it could be a business, that it was something that could be a lot more than just solving this problem?

DOLGOV: I would describe it as more of an evolution of our thinking and investing more effort into more clearly defining the product and commercial applications of this technology.

When we started, in that very first phase, the question was, “is this even feasible? Is the technology going to work?” I think it was pretty clear to everybody that if the technology succeeded then there was going to be tremendous impact.

It wasn’t exactly clear what commercial application or what product would deliver that impact. But there was just so many ways that this technology would transform the world that we didn’t spend much time worrying about that aspect of it.

When you think about it, what we’re building here is a driver: our software, our hardware — the software that runs in the car, the software that runs in the cloud. We look at the entirety of our technology stack as a driver.

There are about 3 trillion miles in the U.S. that are driven by people. In some cases, they drive themselves, in some cases, they drive other people, in some cases, they drive goods. Once you have the technology that is “the driver,” you can deploy it in all these situations. But they have their pros and cons.

Over time, our thinking on ‘what are the most attractive ones?’ and ‘in what order do we tackle them?’ has matured.

This is what they’re doing today as a result of all of that work. Ride hailing is the first commercial application that we’re pursuing. Beyond that we are working on long-haul trucking, long-range deliveries. We’re interested, at some point, deploying the technology in personally owned cars, local deliveries, public transportation and so forth and so on.

TC: What application are you most excited about? The one that you think maybe is overlooked or one you’re personally the most excited about?

DOLGOV: I’m super excited about seeing the technology and the driver being deployed in, you know, across the globe and across different commercial applications. But I think the one that I am the most excited about is the one we’re pursuing as our number one target right now, which is ride hailing.

I think it has the potential to affect positively the highest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

I also use our cars every day to get around; this is how I got to work today. This is how I run errands around here in Mountain View and Palo Alto. It’s wonderful to be able to experience these cars and it just removes a lot of the friction out of transportation.

TC: So you you take a self-driving car to work every day right now?

DOLGOV: Yes, but in California, they still have people in them.

TC: How long have you been doing that?

DOLGOV: Awhile. Actually, it seems like forever.

I’ve always spent time in the cars. I think it’s really important to experience the product that you’re building and have direct experience with the technology. This was obviously the case in the early days of the project when there was a small group of us doing everything.

As the team grew, I would still make sure I would experience the technology and go on test rides at least weekly, if not more frequently.

When we started pursuing the ride-hailing application, and we built an app for it, and we built out infrastructure to make it into a user-facing product, I was one of the earlier testers.

That must have been three years ago.

TC: Did you expect it to be at this point that you are right now, 10 years ago, did you expect like 10 years from now, this is where we’re going to be? Or did it happen faster or slower than you anticipated?

DOLGOV: So for me, I think on one hand, I would not have predicted some of the breakthroughs in the technology on the hardware front, on the software and AI and machine learning back in 2009. I think the technology today is much more powerful than I would have probably said in 2009.

On the another hand, the challenge of actually building a real product and deploying it so that people can use it has turned out to be more difficult than I expected. So it’s kind of a mix.

TC: What were some of those technological breakthroughs?

DOLGOV: There were a number of things. LiDARs and radars became much more powerful.

And by powerful, I mean longer range, higher resolution and more features, if you will, in terms of the things that they can measure — richer returns of the properties of the environment. So that’s on the sensing side.

Compute, especially in the hardware-accelerated parallel computation, that’s been very powerful for the advancement of neural networks. That has been a huge boost.

Then there’s deep learning, and the neural nets themselves have led to a number of breakthroughs.

TC: Yeah, with the last two examples you gave, I think of those as being breakthroughs more recently, in just the last few years. Is that about the time frame?

DOLGOV: We’ve always used machine learning on this project, but it was a different kind of machine learning than today.

I think in 2012 is probably when, on our project, there was meaningful effort and when we were working together with Google on both the self-driving technology and deep learning.

Arguably, at the time Google was the only company in the world seriously investing in both the self driving and deep learning.

At that point, we didn’t have the hardware to be able to run those nets on the car, in real time. But there were very interesting things you could do in the cloud.

For deep learning, 2013 was a pretty big year. I think this is when ImageNet won a big competition and it was a breakthrough for deep learning. It outperformed all the other approaches in the computer vision competition.

TC: In 2009, could you imagine a world in 2019, where numerous self-driving vehicle companies would be testing on roads in California? Was that something that seemed plausible?

DOLGOV: No, no that’s not the picture I had in mind in 2009 or 2010.

In those early days of the project, people kind of laughed at us. I think the industry made fun of this project and there were multiple funny spoofs on the Google self-driving car project.

It’s been pretty amazing to go from, ‘oh there is small, group of crazy folks trying to do this science fiction thing at Google’ to this becoming a major industry that we have today with dozens, if not hundreds, of companies pursuing this.

Google’s self-driving Lexus RX 450h

TC: What will be the tipping point that will get folks on board with self-driving vehicles in their city? Is it a matter of just pure saturation? Or is it something else that all the companies, Waymo included, are responsible of helping usher in?

DOLGOV: It seems like there’s always a spectrum of people’s attitudes towards new technology and change. Some of the negative ones are more visible. But actually, my experience over the last 10 years, the positive attitude and the excitement has been overwhelmingly stronger.

What I have seen over and over again, in this project that really is very powerful, and that is powerful and changes people’s attitudes from, uncertainty and anxiety to excitement and comfort and trust is being able to experience the technology.

You get people into one of our cars and then go for a ride. Even people who are anxious about getting into a car with nobody behind the wheel, once they experience it and once they understand how useful of a product it is, and how well the car behaves, and they starting trusting it, that really leads to change.

As the technology rolls out and more people get to experience it firsthand, that will help.

TC: Are the biggest challenges in 2009 the same as today? What are the final cruxes that remain?

DOLGOV: In 2009, all the challenges were all about one-off problems we needed to solve and today it’s all about turning it into a product.

It’s about the presentation of this self-driving stack and about building the tools and the framework for evaluation and deployment of the technology. You know, what has stayed true is that it’s all about the speed of iteration and the ability to learn new things and solve new technical problems as we discover them.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/08/waymo-cto-on-the-companys-past-present-and-what-comes-next/

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