#i’m not a fan of the fact that they called it the tribal version but i do think it’s absolutely hilarious that mario was the person chosen

[gingergari]

there’s nothing i love more than making reference sheets for characters

dark eye truther version below the cut :^)

[sif-the-tsunami]

Ropes and Roses, Intro

A/N: Well hello, I had no idea that this was going to be something that other people wanted, please bear with me, I haven’t written in like fifteen years, so I’m not super familiar with the way fanfiction formatting has changed, so I’m using what comes naturally to me. 

Content warning: none really, maybe a little bit of insecurities stemming from perfectionism. I wanted to just introduce both of the mains in this one. This will become more adult in a little bit. Some spicy language also.

If this is also the title of something else, I can change it, its 3:30 AM and I can’t think of what else to call it.

Word count: Approx. 1300

“I’m sorry, Henry, you need to work on your flexibility. You are an incredibly strong person, but you need to move gracefully, more like a hockey player, not a soldier.” He hears the words repeat in his head over and over. What kind of bullshit was this? Henry had been working on his body, wellness, and was in the best shape of his life. The comments made by the director wrecked his whole day and to make matters, and his temper, worse was the fact that he felt disappointed in himself for letting the words ring in his ear. “I have a friend who I think will help you, she’s a dance instructor. Here, her name is Elizabeth, give her call.”

The beast of a man sat on his couch, the dance studio was twenty minutes away from his house in London. The director just said he had to pass as gentleman who enjoyed the seduction and intimacy of dancing as means of manipulation. He wouldn’t have to be ballroom competition ready, fortunately. He flipped his phone around in his hands for a few minutes and groaned to himself. Henry grabbed the card from his pocket and dialed the number.

“Thank you for calling the Rosehill Dance Studio, this is Mary, how can I help you?” A sweet voice asked as clear as a bell.

“Hello. My name is Hank, I was informed that I need to take some dance classes, and I was wondering if there was an intro class I could enroll it.”

“What kind of lessons are you looking for? We offer tango lessons, different ballroom, a couple difference versions of swing dancing...”

He cut her off in anxious embarrassment, “I need to learn how to do a waltz. I would prefer for the lessons to be private. I was told to ask for Elizabeth.”

Henry was never a fan of admitting defeat, but he knew that if he didn’t learn this, it would be the only scene that required a body double. He would be damned if that was the only thing he couldn’t do. He looked at his feet, and shuffled slightly.

“I don’t have any with Ms Rosehill for about the next six weeks.”

“I was told to be prepared for that, would you mind asking her if she should make an exception. This is a favor for Gregory Chapman.”

“Oh, I will need to put you on a brief hold.” Mary said, surprised by the name drop. After about two minutes of cheery hold music, she picked up the line and said “The earliest Ms Rosehill can see you is this Thursday, she asks that you be at the studio before 7PM. Please bring clothes you are comfortable stretching in, and the shoes you will be dancing in. If you cannot make it to the studio by your appointment time, please call us before hand no later than an hour ahead of time. Do you have any other questions?”

Henry thanked the receptionist and told her he had no further questions. He set his phone down on his lap, and looked at Kal who was nuzzling his other side. He leaned forward to plant a kiss on the dog’s forehead and realized that maybe he was too stiff. The work he has done previously required him to be massive, the role he was performing now as this villain required more fluidity than brutality. This character was the anti-August Walker. While he looked forward to not playing another well meaning good guy, he wanted to really sink his teeth into the possibility of expanding his repertoire.

______

Thursday came too quickly for Henry’s taste. He arrived at the studio promptly at 6:45PM and looked around the lobby. A loud, clear countdown was exclaimed and then the dancers began their routine. The music coming from behind a curtain was absolutely not was he was expecting. However neither was the instructor. He walked around to where he could watch and saw a dainty looking woman in front of the other group of women. They were all facing towards the wall length mirrors and looked so happy. This was a space for them, for their joy, and no one else’s. He knew he should not be observing this but he couldn’t stop. The tribal drumming was strangely soothing to him. The eight women moved perfectly together, they were seamless. He could tell she was leading the class from several verbal cues she was giving the students to indicate transitions and movement. He watched the women sway, shimmy and turn as if he were stuck in a trance. As the music ended, she pulled a phone out of her leggings pocket and paused the playlist. She looked towards the door and their eyes connected. She had the most adorable half grin Henry had seen in a long time. The look on her face said that she caught him like an unruly child sneaking a cookie. “Wonderfully done tonight ladies, I am so happy how far we have all gotten with this choreography. I think you all will ready for the studio’s recital next Sunday. Give yourself a hand, you are all so fantastic.” She was an American, it seemed. Henry pulled his baseball hat down a little as the women dispersed. The short-haired woman came to the front and observed the tall man in her lobby. “Hello, you must be Mr. Cavill. Please don't be surprised, Greg called me this morning to see if you and I were going to work together. It is a pleasure to meet you, I am Elizabeth Rosehill.” She reached her hand out to shake his. “Thank you for being on time.” “I thought I was early.” He smiled politely at his new instructor. There was something about the way she said Mr Cavill that made him feel like he was back in boarding school and he needed to be on his best behavior. “Early is on time, on time is late, Mr. Cavill.” She smiled back, just as polite. Her voice was clear, and her words were precise. “Please remember that for our future lessons. It was brought to my attention that you wish to be able to ballroom dance for an upcoming project. I will do my best to teach you but I need to know you will be as dedicated to this as you are your regular workouts.” “Yes, ma’am, I will do my best.” His voice cracked, he cleared his throat. Was he always this nervous when talking to women? She gestured to him with her hands and a warm smile to follow her. “May I ask what kind of dancing you were doing? It was beautiful.” “That was American Tribal Style belly dancing. It has fallen out of popularity back home, but I’ve been able to find pockets of women, and men in some cases, across the UK that seem to still enjoy it. It is a little less flirty than cabaret style which is probably what you associate belly dancing with. So to begin, I would really like to see how flexible you are, so we can sort out what sort of dance you will be learning. I am going to go lock the front door to make sure we are not interrupted, and in the mean time I need you to grab us two of the yoga mats. I would like for you to set them up parallel to each other, far enough apart so when we do some stretches we will not knock our heads together. Can you do that for me?” “Yes, absolutely.” “Thank you Mr Cavill, we will begin shortly.”

[aion-rsa]

15 Best Final Fantasy Characters

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While the list of things that Final Fantasy has gifted the gaming world is much longer than the one we’re bringing you today, one of the most consistently incredible aspects of this legendary RPG franchise is the quality of its casts of characters.

Even if you’ve only played one or two Final Fantasy games in your lifetime (or perhaps even just absorbed elements of the series through its prominent place in gaming culture) you likely know and have strong feelings about at least one Final Fantasy character. No matter how fantastical these games get, their heart will always be found in the heroes, villains, and even NPCs that drive some of the greatest adventures in RPG history.

Which Final Fantasy character is the best of them all, though? That’s a question fans will never find a universally approved answer to, but I’m willing to be most personal shortlists include at least a few of these incredible characters that have become icons of this franchise, the genre, and gaming.

15. Bartz Klauser (Final Fantasy 5)

Many Final Fantasy protagonists are tortured souls burdened by destiny and circumstances. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that type of character (we’re actually going to honor a few of those tortured souls later in this list), but too much of that kind of personality can really wear you down.

That’s what makes Bartz Klauser such a breath of fresh air. As a young man just trying to honor his father’s dying wish to go out and explore the world, Bartz didn’t ask to get caught up in an epic battle or grand adventure. Yet, he handles the incredible events that befall him with positivity, humor, and constant support for his friends and allies. 

14. Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy 8)

There was a time when it felt like Squall’s place somewhere at the bottom of any list of Final Fantasy protagonists was all but reserved. There are still more than a few Final Fantasy fans who passionately hate him, and it’s easy to understand why. He’s angsty, he’s sometimes derivative of other characters, and he’s even sometimes cruel to people who should be his closest allies.

Yet, there’s just something about Squall. His looks and gunblade certainly make him memorable from a design perspective, but there’s also something to be said for how we get to watch Squall grow throughout Final Fantasy 8 in a way that few franchise protagonists get to grow across the course of their own adventures. Squall is the surprisingly grounded heart of a Final Fantasy game that reaches all-time high levels of weirdness.

13. Zidane Tribal (Final Fantasy 9)

I’ll always have a soft spot for Final Fantasy 7 and 8’s more somber protagonists, but like many fans at the time, I was more than ready to embrace Final Fantasy 9’s return to medieval fantasy as well as its returns to slightly more upbeat lead characters. 

Zidane is a fantastic example of a more lighthearted Final Fantasy protagonist, but he is no mere throwback to a simpler time. There’s plenty of darkness in Zidane’s surprisingly deep backstory, which makes his attempts to become a better person and a better leader (as well as his insistence on enjoying life whenever possible) that much more interesting. 

12. Cidolfus Orlandeau (Final Fantasy Tactics)

Some version of Cid pretty much had to be on this list, but which Cid is the best of them all? Well, there’s certainly an argument to be made for Final Fantasy 7’s Cid, Final Fantasy 14’s Cid, and Final Fantasy 9’s Cid, but my vote for the best Cid goes to a somewhat outside the box version of this recurring character. 

It’s interesting enough that Final Fantasy Tactics’ Cidolfus Orlandeau is a warrior when so many other versions of Cid are engineers, mentors, or even political leaders, but what makes Orlandeau really stand apart is how powerful he is. This is one of the most overpowered characters in Final Fantasy Tactics in terms of both lore and in-game abilities. Actually, his incredible power kind of feels like a love letter to the entire Cid “lineage.”

11. Zack Fair (Final Fantasy 7)

It may seem like Zack Fair’s popularity only started to grow in more recent years, but the truth of the matter is that many Final Fantasy 7 fans have always loved Zack and just weren’t able to properly share their love for this previously minor character prior to the modern internet age. 

Before Zack Fair finally got to star in his own game (the largely underrated PSP title, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII), he won the hearts of millions with his optimism, friendly nature, and unwavering belief that he can fight to make the world a better place. He is, in many ways, what we think of when we think of heroes. 

10. Celes Chere (Final Fantasy 6)

Final Fantasy 6 certainly isn’t lacking in memorable protagonists (or villains), which really makes it that much more impressive that Celes Chere has arguably become the game’s unofficial lead all these years later. 

Celes initially comes across as a standoffish enemy general who is only helping the player’s party because they’re temporarily united against a common threat. By the time we reach this game’s legendary opera scene, though, we understand who Celes really is and even start to sympathize with what we previously believed were her greatest flaws. Celes was one of the first Final Fantasy characters that properly showcased the storytelling potential of this franchise and gaming.

9. Lightning (Final Fantasy 13)

Final Fantasy 13 honestly deserves a lot of the criticism it regularly receives, but it’s always been a shame that the game’s divisive (often negative) legacy means Lightning is sometimes denied the status she so rightfully deserves. 

Lightning’s backstory isn’t the most complicated in Final Fantasy history, but that actually proves to be one of the character’s strongest qualities. Lightning is mostly interested in protecting her sister, which turns out to be all the motivation as she needs to embark upon an epic journey as well as all the motivation we need to sympathize with the incredible things she does along the way. Lightning is fearless, strong, determined, and the kind of person many of us like to think we would become in her situation. 

8. Balthier (Final Fantasy 12)

It’s certainly easy to understand why so many Final Fantasy fans have compared Balthier to Han Solo over the years. Balthier is, after all, a sarcastic yet suave sky pirate who gets caught up in a war. You don’t have to break your brain to see the similarities.

However, that doesn’t make Balthier any less of a compelling character. Balthier believes he’s the real protagonist of Final Fantasy 12’s all-time great story, which is honestly hard to argue against when you consider that he’s the most consistently compelling character in the game and one of the most consistently entertaining characters in the history of this franchise.

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7. Tifa Lockhart (Final Fantasy 7)

What is it about Tifa that’s made her one of the most popular characters in Final Fantasy history? Is it her warmth? Is it her combat abilities? Is it the ways that she’s able to so easily pivot between leader and supporter based on what the situation calls for? 

The answer is “yes.” Tifa is capable in ways that the best playable video game characters sometimes need to be, but she’s still vulnerable, conflicted, and sometimes scared in the ways that any of us would be if we were in her situation. She’s a truly well-rounded character who is more than worthy of her fan-favorite status. 

6. Auron (Final Fantasy 10)

On the surface, Auron is everything that you’d expect to see in a “cool” Final Fantasy character. With his giant sword, samurai-like philosophies and lifestyle, and mysterious vibes, you could even argue that Auron represents some of the “tropes” we sometimes associate with this franchise’s most notable warriors.

Yet, Auron is so much more than the (admittedly badass) warrior he first seems to be. As we learn Auron’s backstory, we also learn more about the Final Fantasy X universe and this game’s wonderfully weird and surprisingly complicated storyline. Auron is undoubtedly cool, but it’s the sweet and sorrowful details of his backstory that elevate him above some notable competition. 

5. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy 7)

It’s sometimes hard to look at Cloud and not see a collection of what we now think of as cliches for both Final Fantasy protagonists and JRPG characters. Even if you want to push aside the fact that Cloud helped introduce (or at least arguably perfected) some of those cliches, you can still make a compelling argument for the character’s all-time great status on the basis of some of his qualities that don’t get talked about quite as often as they should. 

Cloud is a much deeper and more mysterious character than he often gets credit for. Given that we learn more about him as we learn more about Final Fantasy 7’s plot, world, and emotional stakes, he’s also one of the best (if initially less obvious) player surrogates in the history of RPGs. 

4. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy 7)

Like so many of Final Fantasy’s other great characters, you could make an argument for Sephiroth’s “best” credentials on the basis of his design alone. Any character that looks this cool and has a theme song as incredible as “One-Winged Angel” is destined to steal some hearts. 

What’s most impressive about Sephiroth, though, are the ways that the Final Fantasy team has revisited this character and grown him over the years. Sephiroth is a tragic character in many ways, but you won’t find many who are willing to shed a tear for him or the ways he’s used his personal tragedies to internally justify unforgivable acts. 

3. Yuna (Final Fantasy 10)

While I don’t hate Tidus as much as some people do, I have to admit that I’ve always seen Yuna as the real protagonist of Final Fantasy 10 as well as one of the series’ best characters ever.

Yuna’s incredible empathy and compassion are appropriate character traits for a summoner who is so willing to complete what is generally considered to be a suicide mission. Yuna believes in the role she plays in this world, but she’s not so committed to her duties that she becomes this one-track protagonist that doesn’t get to develop a personality. Indeed, it’s Yuna’s likability that inspires so many Final Fantasy 10 players to see her complete her quest, whatever the cost may be. 

2. Kefka Palazzo (Final Fantasy 6)

When people are praising Kefka as a villain (which is obviously something that happens quite often), the line you’re almost always guaranteed to hear is that Kefka is one of the few villains in any medium who achieves their seemingly absurd plans for world domination. His almost unrivaled success as a villain has rightfully become the defining part of his legacy.

As a character, though, Kefka stands apart through the almost horror movie-like nature of his design (he’s somewhere between Pennywise and the Joker) as well as for the way he goes from court jester to world-destroying diety so convincingly. He is, at the very least, the best Final Fantasy villain ever. 

1. Vivi Ornitier (Final Fantasy 9)

Vivi’s short lifespan and the fact he was ignored and dismissed for so many of the few days he had to live should make him one of the most tragic characters in Final Fantasy history. Indeed, many aspects of Vivi’s life are a tragedy and a pretty compelling tragedy at that. 

Yet, there’s a reason that simply hearing the name “Vivi” puts a smile on so many Final Fantasy players’ faces. Vivi may discover the sorrowful truth of his existence in Final Fantasy 9, but he also learns the joys of friendship, confidence, and adventure. In many ways, the character’s final words represent how we all feel whenever we have to leave our favorite Final Fantasy characters:

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

“I’m so happy I met everyone… I wish we could’ve gone on more adventures. But I guess we all have to say goodbye someday.”

The post 15 Best Final Fantasy Characters appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sonofsallyjackson]

Xolexkathleen’s Series on Piper as Native Rep

I know not everyone is on multiple platforms so I figured I’d share the incredible couple videos by Xolexkathleen on TikTok that discussed Piper from her perspective as a Cherokee person.   If she is on Tumblr, I want to be able to credit her so please let me know and I’ll take this down and share her version, but I wanted to try and elevate her voice/videos if she wasn’t.   

I’ve created transcripts here for accessibility purposes since the videos themselves don’t include captions, but please actually go watch the videos linked themselves.  She also cosplays as Piper so overall just a great person to check out if you’re on TikTok

Video 1:  https://www.tiktok.com/@xolexkathleen/video/6860562228358155526

So my nobody thinks what you think Piper video actually got a lot of comments, views and likes and stuff. But I wanted to take this time and explain to you guys from the perspective of a Cherokee Piper fan why Piper is actually pretty harmful representation for Native people and Native girls especially.  So firstly the feathers.  If you are pretty into the fandom, you probably already know about what happened with Rick Riordan and the whole Piper’s feathers situation, but I’ll explain it to you real quick. Some native fans actually called out Rick Riordan for his use of feathers in writing Piper’s character because it’s stereotypical of Indigineous people and also eagle feathers are sacred so there’s literally no reason she’d be wearing them in her hair. In response, Rick Riordan wrote an extremely trivializing blog post downsizeing these complaints from Native people and saying, “Oh Piper wouldn’t care if other people think she shouldn’t be wearing them, because she’s doing what’s right for her.”  Which is completely wrong and speaking over native girls who are literally telling you it’s offensive and that it’s stereotypical and something that wouldn’t be right in their culture.  Part 2 coming up. 

Video 2: https://www.tiktok.com/@xolexkathleen/video/6860562691744992517

Part 2 of why Piper is not the best rep for native girls.  Rick Riordan writes that Piper’s dad, Tristan, grew up on a Cherokee reservation in Tahlequah.  There is no reservation in Tahlequah for Cherokees. There is just not. Tahlequah is where the tribal government of the Cherokee nation specifically is housed. The closest thing the Cherokees in general  have to a reservation is the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.  That land is owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and kept in trust by the federal government. Now I haven’t read all of Trials of Apollo yet, but I have heard that at one point Rick Riordan writes that Piper doesn’t consider herself Cherokee because of the tribe’s views of matrilineal descent, which is when everything descends from your mom. That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! I know so many Cherokee people whose moms are white or not Cherokee who are still Cherokee even though their dad is.  I don’t know why Rick Riordan did this, but I’m pretty sure it’s because he wanted to write Piper like a white girl and not get any criticism, so he decided to make her “Not Cherokee”. 

Video 3: https://www.tiktok.com/@xolexkathleen/video/6860563341337709830

Part 3 of why Piper isn’t the best rep for native girls. Going on from my last video, we see a lot of struggle with identity not just from Piper but from her dad as well.  Piper said in the Lost Hero that her dad never wants to play a native character because it would “hit too close to home,” but in that we see a lot of internalized racism and you know ashamedness of his culture.  We see that again in Piper when she says in the Trials of Apollo that she doesn’t feel like she’s Cherokee because of the tribe’s views of matrilineal descent.  These are all issues natives face.  It’s like a really real thing, but the way Rick Riordan went about describing them is pretty harmful.  Particularly because we don’t see growth in either of these characters in that aspect.  In fact, I’m pretty sure throughout the series we see both Tristan and Piper grow further and further apart from their native identities. So how’s that supposed to effect a 12-year-old Cherokee girl reading the stories? Pretty badly right?  

Video 4: https://www.tiktok.com/@xolexkathleen/video/6860563960387669254

Part 4 of why Piper is the best rep for native girls. The kaleidoscope eye thing really bothers me.  I mentioned that in a comment already, but why does the Cherokee girl have to be the one with changing eye color? Why can’t she just keep her brown eyes? Isn’t that beautiful enough for an Aphrodite kid? Rick describing her as having light brown hair or caramel hair is also weird because now people just draw her with orange hair.  Like what’s wrong with black hair? I hate how people describe her as half Cherokee, half white, because it implies the gods are white.  They don’t have DNA.  They’re gods. Rick writes Piper as having a not like other girls mindset which a lot of the other girls have, but he never specifically addresses the intersection of Piper’s racial identity and her gender identity and how that plays into the whole mindset.  Native women are oversexualized. They’re at huge risk for harassment, assault, abuse, etc,which Piper I’m sure knows.  Missing and murdered indigenous women is a genocide.  So Piper tries to make herself unattractive and unfeminine because she equates being feminine with being harassed.  But Rick never talks about that.  Neither does the fandom and now everybody hates her.  

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 2

Or: McCann Reads His Mail

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Dead Trilogy Volume 1

Dire McCann returns to his office, in “the heart of the tenderloin district.”

Big, bold, black letters on the door proclaimed, D. McCann, Investigations. Beneath his name, in much smaller print, was the disclaimer Consultation by Appointment Only.

I guess even Dire knows his first name’s a little odd and abbreviated it. Who’d want to give work to a guy who looks like they’re trying to give themselves a nickname.

There’s several paragraphs describing the office. The outer office/reception area has a coffee table with old issues of Sports Illustrated and three red chairs, like a doctor’s office with an even more limited selection of outdated magazines.

It wasn’t much, but he didn’t require any better.  Recently, his only clients had been the Kindred, and none of them worried about his taste in furniture.

Not to his face, anyway. Vampires are like suburban parents that way.

The office proper, or his ”inner sanctum” as the narration calls it, is pretty standard; huge oak desk, “an elaborate telephone answering machine,” a table with a fax machine, PC, and printer on it, some metal cabinets, and more red chairs. It was also mentioned to have an “outrageous” rent that was almost worth it for the building’s cleaning lady.

The glow of a nearby streetlight gave the room an eerie, ghost-like interior.[...]No cheaply framed photos with hearty endorsements or tacky paint-by-numbers artwork hung on the walls. McCann believed in a strictly functional workplace. Besides which, it made a better impression on potential clients.

McCann sits behind his desk and reloads his submachine gun.

Considering what had happened already tonight, it seemed like good policy to stay ready for trouble.

For all the good it did him, but good thinking I guess. Proper paranoia helps in the World of Darkness.

Then he checks his answering machine. Two of the messages are for “divorce work.” That kind of stuff “didn’t interest” McCann, but there’s another detective in the building who specialized in it, and McCann trades him leads for favors, so he writes down the names and phone numbers. Another message is trying to sell him health insurance.

McCann grinned. Considering his present circumstances, he wasn’t sure he could afford the premiums.

Finally, McCann gets around to checking the mail he was carrying around during the first chapter. After separating the junk mail, he’s left with the small box, which was from Switzerland, three letters from Venice, Italy, another from Australia, and the last from Peru. He starts with the mail from Venice.

Dated approximately a week apart, the letters contained detailed records for financial deals made during the previous seven days.  The facts and figures covered hundreds of major business transactions throughout Europe and the United States. The detective scanned the documents carefully. There were no unusual expenditures or unexplained finances. Not that he expected to find any. The masterminds of the Giovanni Clan were the greatest financial wizards in the world. They kept a tight watch on their investments. McCann merely wanted to make sure no one other than him was skimming the profits.

Interesting. Despite doing work for the Camarilla, McCann also has connections to the independent Giovanni Clan, or at least is stealing money from them, and in a way that even their “financial wizards” can’t detect. There’s an even more interesting reveal at the end of the paragraph.

The longer he lived, the more cautious he became. And, though he appeared to be in his mid-thirties, Dire McCann lived a very long time.

Huh. The summary on the back cover describes him as “mortal.” Then again it also misspells his surname as McCannan, so...

Next he opens the latter from Darwin, Northern Territory Australia, which contains a newspaper clipping. Recently, “nomadic” Aborigines fled their reservation in the Tanami Desert and set up a shanty town outside the city. Officials tried to get the “troublemakers” to go back, “but with no success.”

No one could offer an explanation for the natives’ unexpected migration. Nor were the unwelcome Aboriginals willing to discuss why they had abandoned their primitive shelters and made the long trek to the coast. Their only reply was to point in the general direction of the Macdonnel Ranges and utter the word “Nuckalavee, Nuckalavee,” over and over again.

The hell’s a mythological Scottish demon doing in Australia?

Unfortunately, no one other than the natives understood what the term meant.

Have they tried asking a Scottish person? Maybe someone from the Orkney Islands? This is like Native Americans fleeing from the Loch Ness Monster or a kappa.

For those of you who’d never heard of it, or had never played The Bard’s Tale, the Nuckelavee is this big horse with the upper torso of a rider growing out of the middle of its back, and it has no skin.

The story ended with the mayor promising city residents that the shanty town would be gone shortly.

Australians being shitty to the Aboriginals. What a surprise.

I know, hypocritical coming from an American. But still.

McCann grimaced. He understood why the Aboriginals had fled. But he doubted that the government officials in Darwin would believe his answer. Or care. Mentally, McCann noted that he should request that his clipping service search for any follow-up stories. Or reports of unusual disappearances in the Northern Territories.

It���s a minor spoiler, but not an unsurprising one given the setting, but the World of Darkness version of the Nuckalavee is a vampire; a Nictuku, the name for a fourth generation Nosferatu. Father Naples mentioned them during the prologue when he was talking about the Nosferatu, remember?

“A few of their fourth-generation progeny are rumored to be grotesque monsters, known as the Nictuku.”

But whether it’s the mythological Nuckelavee or a vampire character based off of it, it’s bizarre that Weinberg took a mythological creature from one culture, transplanted it to a completely different one on a different continent, and act like it was always a part of that culture. Even in 1994, before Wikipedia, anyone familiar with Scottish folklore would know better. Hell, check that fan wiki page I linked just now. The reference used for the page came from VTM: Clanbook: Nosferatu. It came out in 1993, and it’s most likely what Robert Weinberg used for information on Nuckalavee too. If the information on the wiki is accurate to the book, then the book straight up says that the thing is Scottish. Even if the vampire migrated at some point, more people should know about it, at least as a legend, than some scared Aboriginals.

Speaking of... I’m no expert on Aboriginal cultures, living on the opposite side of the Pacific and all, but I’m sure they can communicate better than pointing at some mountains and grunting a monster’s name in fearful tones like some old Hollywood tribal character. At least enough to say “there’s something life threatening by our reservation and we’re getting away from it.” The story’s sympathetic to them at least, but that part rubs me the wrong way.

Next, McCann opens the envelope from Peru. It contains a photo and a handwritten note from a member of the Explorer’s Club. The photo makes McCann “swallow hard”. More bad news.

Scribbled in black ink around the margin of the photo were the words, “Found at entrance to huge cavern, Gran Vilaya ruins, Peru.” The picture showed a massive stone statue of a crouching demonic figure with a misshapen, bloated female body and the face of a snarling jaguar. Circling her feet in a ring were a dozen stone heads. Judging from the size of the skulls, the demon stood a least fifteen feet tall.[...]It fronted a huge network of previously unknown caves that honeycombed the Andes for miles. No one knew for certain the purpose of the underground warren. Several members of the expedition thought it might have served as a ritual burial ground for the mysterious Chachapoya civilization due to the numerous skeletons found scattered all through the tunnels. Which would therefore identify the demonic figure as the guardian of the dead.

Credit where it’s due, Robert Weinberg didn’t just make up the Chachapoya. Little’s known about their ancient civilization, and some of what we do know come from the Inca that conquered them and the Spanish, which aren’t what you’d call unbiased accounts. They even lived in the kind of “fog-shrouded region” or “cloud forests” that Gran Vilaya was described as being found in.

The writer ended his note with the hope that McCann felt his research money was being well spent.

McCann used money from a “secret Giovanni slush fund”, which of course none of the Giovanni clan elders know about, to fund the expedition. McCann feels the cost was justified, but would’ve preferred it it if they’d found nothing.

The statue was not a representation of the spirit guardian of the dead Chachapoyas. It showed their murderer..

Not sure why the Spanish had to build underground catacombs for the Chachapoyas to die of disease and poverty in when- No, wait, he’s talking about a vampire.

A creature who abhorred all life, she was named Gorgo, the One Who Screams in Darkness. And the empty caverns in Gran Vilaya indicated that once more she walked the Earth.

Turns out she’s another Nictuku, like Nuckalavee. One with a kickass title. It looks like some very old, very powerful vampires are waking up, and McCann is not happy about it. He opens the box from Switzerland. It came from “an old friend.”

Inside were photocopies of more than three hundred pages of hand-written memos and high level classified documents. They were a mixed selection from a half-dozen different European security agencies. All were marked TOP SECRET.

But we readers don’t get to learn what they say, because McCann checks his watch and learns he’s gotta be at the Club Diabolique to meet Alexander Vargoss in half an hour.

McCann’s preparing to leave when his phone rings. Remember his “elaborate telephone answering machine?” It’s got some spiffy futuristic tech in it like a “caller ID feature” and the ability to record phone calls. Stuff that only someone secretly skimming money from the Giovanni can afford. But seriously, I enjoy reading old stuff and seeing things that are common today described as rare and amazing. Hell, I didn’t know caller ID was a thing in 1994. My family’s middle class and we didn’t get phones with caller ID until the 2000′s.

Unfortunately, none of his phone system’s features come in handy in this case. He doesn’t recognize the number, but McCann answers the phone anyway.

A man whose voice McCann didn’t recognize spoke in clear, crisp tones. “Lameth,” said the stranger, “beware of the Red Death.”

Without another sound, the man hung up, leaving a stunned McCann holding the receiver. Lameth, the speaker had called him.

Nah, Dire, despite his clear, crisp tones the mysterious caller still has a bit of a lisp. He was actually calling you “lame-ass.”

It was a name from the dawn of history, one that McCann believed long forgotten. A master schemer, the detective did not like unexpected shocks. Especially ones of this magnitude.

McCann certainly has the connections and resources to be a master schemer. Still, I’d of liked to have seen him actually scheme before the narration straight up calls him one.

He tries to listen to the recording of the phone call, but turns out it didn’t record. The caller ID screen is blank, and even the phone number it picked up earlier disappeared. This is starting to sound familiar.

Luckily, McCann memorized the number despite his previous confidence in technology. He calls the local police station, specifically a cop named Harry. He asks for a favor due to him for a bottle of wine he sent Harry for his birthday; the location where his phone call was made from. Turns out, it’s from a booth in the front lobby of his building. One that’s been out of service for months.

Let’s recap. Assassins just tried to kill McCann. Powerful vampires are waking up abroad, which is worrying for a very old schemer with an eye towards international news like him. And an untraceable magic man just called him by a very old name no one should know and warned him of a threat with an ominous name. All before he’s gotta meet with the Prince of St. Louis. Good thing McCann’s a big tough book protagonist, ‘cause I’d certainly be a little anxious.

Not a believer in coincidence, the detective knew the three events had to be linked together. But how?

The voice on the phone had warned him to “beware the Red Death.” McCann had absolutely no idea who or what the Red Death might be. He had a terrible suspicion that he would soon find out.

[comingupforblair]

Easily the most common defense of the intense negativity towards the DCEU from people doing it has been a repeated claim that those doing it are, in fact, devoted fans of DC, sometimes even going as far as to claim a preference for DC to Marvel, whose behavior is a logical and justified reaction to what they see as a failure of the franchise to accurately translate the elements they feel are most important to the comics or repeat what has made other DC adaptations work in their eyes.

Since this is the most frequently cited justification, I’m going to speak directly to the people claiming it. For the purposes of this post, I’ll only be addressing people who see themselves as DC fans who’ve been let down by Warner Bros and excluding Marvel fans with a sense of tribalism, people who think that making snide comments about these films makes them cool, witty and/or unique (it doesn’t) and people who are just plain assholes who don’t really care and, if they weren’t raging about these films, would be just as angry about something else.

I want to make one thing extremely clear both in this and similar posts I make about these films and I can’t stress this enough:

I am not saying that you need to like these films.

You are not now nor will you ever be under an obligation to like anything. I have neither the ability nor the inclination to change your mind. My only goal is to get people to change how they think about how they don’t like these films and what actions they take as a result. Warner Bros are making considerable effort to win you over so your words do carry weight. You have power and, as a certain hero once said, with that comes responsibility.

I know you’re very attached to the image you’ve put forward of harsh but caring fans who are practicing tough love who believe that your words and actions will cause the films to shed what you believe have been holding them back in order to become something closer to what you think a live-action version of the DC Universe should resemble and I have no doubt that you sincerely believe both in that image and what you’re saying but that doesn’t mean you can just use that as a catchall excuse and not think further about it.

You have an obligation to put your behavior and words under harsh scrutiny and be willing to amend it as needed. You can’t just say you’re harsh because you care and leave it at that. You have to be willing to face the possibility that your behavior might sometimes be toxic and harmful and reflective of an image you don’t want to give off. Your tone and delivery and general image matter in how people react to what you’re saying. If you want people to listen, you have to make sure you’re not giving them reasons to ignore you right off the bat.

You also have to be open to the potential negative consequences of your behavior, regardless of the intention behind it, such as studios being less willing to take risks or make creative decisions that they worry will lead to people writing the films off before they’re ever made which have, in the past, included some of the greatest moments in the whole genre and overall becoming nervous and afraid and not trusting their creators.

I say all this because I see far too many people who don’t seem willing or able to apply this kind of thinking to their actions and no one else is in a rush to force them to. You can make any criticism of these films, no matter how illogical or unreasonable, and no one will call you out on it. It’s an environment that breeds  a mentality I know you don’t want to possess so it’s on you to take active steps to avoid falling into that trap. Remember that toxic and unreasonable people, of whom you’ve assuredly encountered a few in your time, never think that they’re being toxic and unreasonable. I haven’t seen any indication that most anti-DCEU people are any more willing to ask those tough questions of themselves.

You also have to be willing to change your behavior and beliefs. You can’t continue acting overly snide and cruel, ostensibly for a greater purpose, when the franchise starts actually improving in the way that you think it should. The kind of behavior I see so much of, of people who seem unwilling to part with their negativity and cynicism and dismissive attitude towards the films even after they make an effort to win them over, isn’t the behavior of a fandom that cares. They’re the actions of petulant and immature people unwilling to let go of their bitterness. No one wants to be the fandom equivalent of Snape, holding on to grudges and using it as a justification for being horrible. 

You have to be as willing to give praise when you see the films improving and I mean actual praise. Not the snide, backhanded comments you’ve convinced yourself are an acceptable substitute for a sincere acknowledgement of improvement.

If you believe that fans should have a say in how these films are made, as your behavior would seem to indicate, then you also have to acknowledge that power comes with a responsibility on your part to make sure that you’re worth listening to and that will sometimes mean admitting to being wrong or irrational or just plain abrasive and making changes for the greater good of fandom discourse.

Are you willing to do all of that?

If not, don’t say that you’re a fan who is only harsh because you care. If you really cared, you’d be willing to do all of what that entails, including the stuff that means acknowledging your own shitty or unhelpful behavior and making an effort to change.

[briangroth27]

Black Panther Review

I absolutely loved Black Panther! The film felt like it belonged in the MCU while successfully carving out its own corner of the universe, making it feel like a world unto itself. Even with its fantastical technological wonders, Wakanda felt real and the incorporation of various African cultures gave the fictional nation a history and texture that made it feel fully-formed and granted a powerful sense of depth to the proceedings. The cast was excellent across the board, supported by writing (from Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole) that gave everyone moments to shine and stellar direction from Coogler to match.  

Full Spoilers...

I didn’t know much about Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) going in, having only seen him in Civil War, Fantastic Four and Avengers cartoons, and an appearance here and there in the comics. Civil War got me interested in the character and Black Panther cemented me as a fan; he’s hands down one of the most engaging characters in the Marvel Universe! Chadwick Boseman is effortlessly cool as T’Challa, a down-to-Earth king, badass superhero, and charming romantic lead. In an unexpected and very welcome twist, none of T’Challa’s inner circle are afraid to call him out or have a bit of fun at his expense (depending on the character), which made them feel like a family and gave him a much more grounded sensibility than I was expecting. I liked seeing T’Challa as a more measured and mature man here, growing nicely from the vengeance-obsessed version we saw previously; his first steps toward ruling Wakanda and deciding what kind of king he wanted to be—and what sort of country he’d like to rule—were great to see. That T’Challa was willing to listen to wisdom from all sides—including his enemies—made him an even more compelling and unique hero. T’Challa is bar none the most likable and relatable royal the MCU has given us, with none of the pompous, somewhat bloodthirsty bravado of Thor or the labor camp-minded royal family on Inhumans. That went a long way to making me sympathize with a monarchy instead of yearning to see it overthrown; T’Challa actually does care about the people under his rule. I do wish we’d gotten to see how T’Challa interacted with and was seen by the common people of Wakanda instead of just his inner circle and the other tribal leaders, but this was a very small nitpick that can easily be remedied in the inevitable Black Panther 2 or even Infinity War.

It was awesome to see such a diverse cast in this film and I’m equally pleased we got to see so many strong women showcased here (I can’t imagine how much more important this film must be for African American and female audiences who are finally getting representation like this onscreen). Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) was awesome from the get-go as a Wakandan spy living in the outside world, working to help those in need. I loved her insistence that she couldn’t settle down as a queen knowing there were people outside Wakanda who could benefit from her skills and Wakanda’s influence. It was refreshing to see a hero’s love interest not only have an important life of her own completely separate from the lead’s arc, but to see her unwilling to sacrifice that life to please her guy. Nyong’O brought an engaging, likable, and determined energy to Nakia and I hope we get to see much more of her as the MCU evolves in a post-Infinity Wars universe. Letitia Wright’s Shuri was another standout, stealing every scene she’s in with an infectious, upbeat energy, and I loved her sister/brother relationship with T’Challa. They felt totally natural as siblings, with her needling him from time to time but still clearly sharing a relaxed, loving bond with him. Shuri is very likely the smartest person we’ve met in the MCU so far, and that’s awesome! Like others have suggested online, I cannot wait to see her become best friends with Peter Parker and outsmart Tony Stark at every turn. I loved that she loved showing off and trying out all the gadgets she made, and it was so cool that this princess got to be the Q to T’Challa’s James Bond. At first I thought it would’ve been better had Shuri remote-piloted the aircraft to shoot down Killmonger’s (Michael B. Jordan) forces instead of Ross (Martin Freeman)—she had the experience with the tech to do it, after all—but my friend pointed out that putting her on the front lines instead was a chance for her to directly stand up and fight for what she believed in instead of repeating what she’d done earlier in the movie, which gave her a bit more range. Plus, her panther blaster gauntlets were cool! I’m really interested to see how running the outreach center in Oakland with Nakia changes Shuri.

Danai Gurira gave an excellent performance as Okoye, leader of Wakanda’s elite Dora Milaje, who became torn between duty to Wakanda—and whatever king ruled it—and loyalty to T’Challa. I went in expecting a stoic warrior, but while Okoye was definitely effortlessly badass, I loved that she was able to have a sense of humor about T’Challa freezing when he saw Nakia (and able to jovially inform Shuri of this fact); it was clear they were more than just king and royal guard, they felt like old friends. Okoye and her Dora Milaje were an awesome facet of Wakandan society and I can’t wait to learn more about them in the future. I think Okoye’s relationship with W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) was perhaps a little too vague—amounting to the two of them referring to each other as “my love” without an explanation of what exactly that entailed—but it didn’t hurt the movie or either character for me. Instead, it added a bit more drama to W’Kabi’s decision to follow Killmonger while Okoye ultimately sided with T’Challa. I still would’ve liked to know more about the details of that relationship, though. Also regarding her relationships, it’s a shame a scene hinting at her being attracted to women was cut, but hopefully that will be fixed in a sequel.

W’Kabi’s insistence that the Wakandans take action to capture Klaue (Andy Serkis) and forcibly help the oppressed around the world was a great contrast to both Nakia’s stealthy attempts at helping outsiders and T’Challa’s initial belief that they should keep Wakanda separate. I loved that he was able to convince T’Challa to hunt down Klaue instead of leaving him to the CIA and that he spoke for a contingent of Wakandans who wanted to take action but not go totally public (at least at first). The fact that someone had to argue for capturing a criminal who’d attacked Wakanda was a great display of how intensely isolated the nation was and W’Kabi’s opinions added to the complexity of Wakandan views on the outside world. It was brilliant (and much more realistic) of the writers not to limit Wakandans to two clearly defined viewpoints. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) was perfect as T’Challa’s regal mother and I loved what we saw of her relationship with him and Shuri. I also liked that she was genuinely willing to make peace with M’Baku (Winston Duke) to stop Killmonger despite him having earlier challenged T’Challa for leadership of Wakanda. It would’ve been easy to make her stuck in her ways and refuse to go to someone like M’Baku, but while it was a concern that he could become a problem, I liked that she had the faith to offer him the heart-shaped herb to give him the power of the Black Panther. I’m definitely interested in how Ramonda will react to the new era T’Challa is ushering in.

M’Baku was another great character I’m excited to know more about in future sequels. Like I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, the idea that he and the Jabari tribe could peacefully exist separately from the rest of Wakanda—despite worshipping a different god and speaking a different language—was a refreshing surprise. I was definitely fooled into thinking that M’Baku would want power if Ramonda gave him the heart-shaped herb, so giving her the injured T’Challa instead was a great twist. M’Baku screwing with Ross’ expectations of what “tribal” behaviors were was funny and I’m glad the film smartly didn’t refer to M’Baku by his comics alter-ego, “Man-Ape.” How M’Baku and King T’Challa interact going forward is absolutely something I’m eager to see. Will M’Baku’s help in taking Wakanda back from Killmonger bring them closer together or show him that even with supernatural powers, T’Challa needs help holding his country and is potentially weaker than he seems? Forrest Whitaker’s Zuri was a perfect connection to the history of Wakanda, its treasured ceremonies, and its supernatural aspects, balancing Shuri’s high-tech modernity excellently. It’s impressive how easily the film weaved together supernatural and sci-fi aspects, and the extrapolation of those things into the characters was masterful.  

N’Jobu was only in the movie briefly, but I enjoyed his reaction to the world outside Wakanda. Sterling K. Brown’s performance absolutely sold me on his passion and the impact he’d have on his son, despite his short screentime. John Kani’s T’Chaka was very welcome and it was cool that he got to converse with T’Challa in the afterlife, another supernatural flourish that served to broaden the Black Panther mythos rather than muddle them with too many different sources of weirdness. I liked that T’Chaka’s past sins not only made T’Challa realize he was not perfect, but tied into T’Challa’s decision about whether to reveal Wakanda or not and gave Killmonger another reason to hate Wakanda. I was especially surprised and pleased that this hatred complimented Killmonger���s bigger goal of helping people rise up against their oppressors: his argument with Wakanda was that it stood by while people were enslaved, not solely that T’Challa’s dad killed his. That gave him so much more dimension than just being a revenge-minded villain.

As pointed out elsewhere, the film expertly weaves the mystical, science fiction, space, and superhero aspects of the Marvel Universe together. It also includes an added layer of social relevance in Killmonger’s concern about the state of African-Americans and others whose ancestors were sold as slaves around the world and are still oppressed today. All of this is tied into the film’s MacGuffin, vibranium, but Coogler wisely doesn’t frame the plot around some cliché MCU villain like an evil businessman or government agent seeking to plunder Wakanda’s vibranium (which probably would’ve been the most obvious place to go). Instead, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens has a legitimate point and that makes him the best MCU villain yet. Enemies who are out to burn everything down for no reason can be threatening—at least in terms of power—and corrupt businessmen and governments often make for obvious real-world villain parallels, but I would definitely like the MCU to start putting more effort into giving their villains honorable impulses taken to horrible, destructive extremes. That’s far more interesting and complex: it gives the heroes something to fight beyond a set of cool powers (and gives the audience something to reckon with in the real world and within ourselves). Killmonger being suspiciously watched while viewing a display of his own stolen culture is a perfect example of the simultaneous scrutiny and dismissal of African-American youth in present-day America, instantly giving him a relatable, realistic connection to the audience. Not only does that scene touch on this problem with our society, but it also masterfully ties into the plot. That Erik was able to so thoroughly affect T’Challa, essentially pushing him toward revealing Wakanda to the world so that it could do the most good, was a great twist. While the film does play into the MCU’s formula of a hero and villain with identical powers facing off, Erik’s position as king of Wakanda (a development I didn’t see coming at all; I was sure T’Challa would beat him in the challenge and he’d start an uprising) made the “mirror image” plot point feel much more natural. Their opposing views on how to best run Wakanda also gave them a great argument to fuel their physical battle, and that’s something every superhero movie needs to aim for (I’m more than a little wary about Thanos’ goal of killing half of everything resonating with the Avengers anywhere near as closely as Killmonger and Vulture related to their heroes). Killmonger’s final lines, about wanting to die a free man instead of going back into a cage, were absolutely powerful and affecting.  

Ulysses S. Klaue was fun as an entirely different sort of villain. Serkis was clearly having a blast playing the cartoonish supervillain archetype and I loved it. I’m always up for some classic villainy and this script gave us just the right amount. I didn’t expect Klaue to die, given his status as one of Black Panther’s greatest villains, but I don’t think they were going to do much more with him than what we got. A solid chase/fight with T’Challa with an argument about the Wakandans being hypocritical, an introduction for Killmonger, and a connection to Ross were all we needed from him, and we got just that. I definitely don’t want Everett K. Ross to become the new Agent Coulson, uniting the next generation of Avengers or something; I think the heroes should unite themselves (as a king, T’Challa could certainly lead that charge if Steve Rogers is no longer around). That said, I liked what the movie gave us of Ross and he was played with just the right amount of wonder at Wakandan technology. While I’ve seen criticisms online about him playing such a big role in the climax, like a claim that they still needed a middle-aged white guy to stop the bad guy, I disagree. He had piloting skills and needed Shuri’s tech to get the job done (she even configured the holographic projection to mimic a plane he was familiar with), so it’s not like he was successful just because he was a white guy. This also isn’t a Batman Begins situation, where Batman’s actions on the train with Ras Al Ghul were irrelevant to the finale because Gordon blew up the train tracks. Had T’Challa not defeated Killmonger, Eric still could’ve rallied his supporters and Wakanda would likely be in a civil war. I think Ross helped as much as was needed to be useful, but I don’t think he overshadowed anyone.

The complexities that must arise from five tribes living in such close proximity to each other, coupled with fun aspects like war rhinos, the mystical veldt afterlife, Shuri’s technological wonders, made this a world I want to visit many, many more times! Wakandan society seems like it’s brimming with interesting social structures, so I hope the sequel really digs into how T’Challa and his people relate to one another. I doubt everyone will be happy he revealed their paradise to the world and I wonder how quickly the needs of the international community will start to weigh on the Wakandans. How they balance their own needs with those of the world will be very interesting to see. I also absolutely love that African society here is portrayed as advanced, rather than what we often see in Hollywood films, and I was impressed by how easily a place as fantastical as Wakanda was rendered as a real, breathing community. I think it’s cool how much of Africa was represented here without Wakanda feeling like a generic and homogenous “Africa” (at least to my eyes; someone with African heritage might see that aspect very differently). While pulling aspects of several different African cultures to create the fictional Wakandan culture may be problematic for some (as I’ve seen online), I think the script has enough leeway to say people from those cultures were the ones who founded Wakanda in the first place.

Bucky’s (Sebastian Stan) brief cameo was cool and I would much rather see him find peace and purpose as a figure with the Wakandan War Dogs—if the White Wolf title is a hint he’s supposed to be the MCU version of Hunter, comics’ T’Challa’s adopted brother—than see him take over the Captain America mantle. If he took over as Cap, I have a hard time seeing how he’d be different from Rogers in the role besides being less upstanding and more angsty, neither of which I want to see (if the mantle must be passed, Sam Wilson seems like a chance to explore what today’s Captain needs to be/represent and adding flight to the shield would make for entirely new fight dynamics). In Wakanda, it feels like Bucky can forge an identity for himself.

At this point, I’m far more excited for Black Panther 2 than I am for Infinity War. I want much more of this world and these characters, and I’m excited to see how they interact with the rest of the world now that Wakanda’s no longer a secret. It would be a huge misstep if Wakanda is destroyed in Infinity War, so I hope that film doesn’t go that direction, since it feels like it would derail everything that’s been set up here. Instead, I’m hoping Wakanda is at the forefront of rebuilding the world after Thanos is dealt with.

Black Panther is still in theaters, commanding the box office for an astonishing fifth weekend in a row and it certainly deserves it. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? A trip to Wakanda is definitely worth a trip to the theater!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

[agtdalecooper]

Colin Firth, L’Uomo Vogue [July 2014]

Giving a voice to those who need it.

Surfing the web looking for information, the definitions of Colin Firth are always the same: "One of the most talented of today’s actors, appealing, classy, chic, cultured, engaged in humanitarian causes, and with one of the most stable and lasting marriages in the world of cinema".

"So what’s wrong, Mr. Firth?". The actor does not like interviews and does not hide the fact. He smiles with his eyes, frowning slightly, "When they describe you like this, it’s because they do not know you and I do not want to be known by the public. So this boring description is perfect".

English by birth and sense of humour, the son of two university professors – the mother of comparative religion at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, and the University of Winchester, and his father, the head of education for the Nigerian government, professor of history.

It was in Nigeria that Firth spent his early childhood, of which he does not have clear memories, though well acquainted with the local culture and intellectuals who live in the country. Perhaps this nomadism and the spirituality “inherited” from his parents led him to take an interest in different cultures and to work since the early 90’s with Survival International to defend the rights of indigenous peoples around the world.

A convinced ambassador in the campaign to save the Awá, one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil, called the “most threatened tribe in the world”, he is a supporter of the importance of protecting the culture, customs and way of life of marginalised, isolated populations who only want to protect the “romantic” aspect of their existence in a world that is increasingly obsessively industrial.

His theory is that "we evolve in length but not in breadth" and ignore everything that is not directly consistent with what we define as “evolution”. "Destroying these ethnic minorities is genocide. We are destroying our planet. We think we are making it more beautiful but we do not do it with due respect. I’m not at all naive or utopian nor against capitalism. I’m just aware that we will not be leaving anything good for the generations that follow. We should not accept this situation".

Engaged on several fronts, he also works with Oxfam for the Make Trade Fair campaign, while his wife, Livia Giuggioli, has established GCC-Green Carpet Challenge to bring a greater awareness of eco-sustainability to the red carpet.

Firth does not flaunt his commitment in any way. He just does things. Simply. He doesn’t shout but he is listened to. Colin “dissents”, writes, performs and produces.

He is the executive producer (his wife the producer) of In prison my whole life.  The documentary shows a different version of the case against Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political activist accused of murdering a Philadelphia police officer in the ’80s and sentenced to death. He has published a story, The department of nothing, which is part of the Speaking with the angel collection, whose purpose is to raise funds for the TreeHouse Trust, which helps autistic children, and has contributed to the writing of We Are One: A celebration of tribal peoples.

After being fascinated by the book by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a people’s history of the United States and the movie The people speak again by Zinn and Arnove, Firth co-published The people speak: Voices That changed Britain with Arnove, which was a play and a documentary before coming out in book form.

"Seeing from the other side, seeing the country from the part of people who are different, seeing through the eyes of those who rebelled to show that democracy is not a spectator sport, as Zinn claimed". It’s a project – giving a voice to those who are “against” – that Colin would like to develop in many other countries.

Firth was also co-author of a scientific treatise on the analysis of the brains of politicians to see if there are differences between a politician of one party or of another, coming to the conclusion that Conservatives have a greater amygdala volume and liberals have larger volume of the anterior cingulate cortex. "I was curious: there must be some synaptic circuits in the brain that affect certain positions".

What does he think of politics? "I’m an optimist. We need to look at reality. If we seek perfection, we will never do anything. In many countries there have been changes but not necessarily for the better. Sometimes you have also to accept a compromise, but not in a reductive sense, just to be able to move forward. And anyway, every era comes to an end and now a new one is emerging. Or at least I hope so".

Colin has always been “curious of the truth” and “against” ever since he was a teenager. "I was not a rebel, but I simply could not find the school system interesting. I liked music. I thought of writing or composing just to skip classes. So during weekends, I started a seminar for acting and a lady who I still see today urged me to continue. I did not want a life dedicated to something depressing. I did not want a boring life. So I chose an acting school and have not looked back! Those were years in which I was very committed to being a hippy".

And now, despite his hatred for school, he has received an honorary degree from the University of Winchester. "My career has progressed with alternating rhythms", he says of a curriculum that started in ’84 with the role of co-star alongside Rupert Everett in Another Country.

This was followed by many films: Valmont by Forman, a television version of Pride and Prejudice which provided him with thousands of fans, the two Bridget Jones and the "late bloomer” success of A Single Man by Tom Ford, for which he was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA award in 2010, and on to the triumph of his role as King George V in Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, which won a hat-trick of awards (Golden Globe, BAFTA, Oscar in 2011).

"Sometimes you think you have chosen a good part, and sometimes instead the package is not perfect, but if you want to work you need to do different roles. Sometimes I choose a part because I like it or know the director. Sometimes I like the story. Sometimes I do not like the other actors, although this does not happen often. Often a project takes time, as was the case for the film I’ll be doing in autumn. It took three years to arrive at the starting point. I always learn, as I did with The King’s Speech. I found myself in a world I knew nothing about, among those who suffer from stuttering. I am moved by the courage of these people. They are heroes. The children especially, who must find the strength daily to face life: now I am working with them through an organisation. The writer of the movie is a stutterer and in shooting the film I realised the sense of panic that grips you even in the most simple situations, such as answering the phone or ordering in a restaurant. I have great respect for these people".

Two years ago he was made CBE by Queen Elizabeth.

And fashion? He has a relationship with the sector that is not limited to the movie, A Single Man, and having a wife committed to promoting environmentally sustainable creations: few know that he also has a past as a cover boy. In 1988, he appeared on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue.

"I respect fashion. I recognise it has its own language. Fashion goes to the heart of people and is a factor of socialisation. You can use perfect manners of speech and have a large vocabulary and yet say superficial things. Fashion tells stories. There are stories behind every outfit. It makes you dream. Fashion speaks to people and has a great power over people. In media terms, it has a great power".

And Italy? "I have a great love for Italy, for its territorial diversity and its riches. I have an Italian wife and two children who are half Italian. My life would be very empty without Italy!".

L'Uomo Vogue, July-August 2014 (n. 452)

[commandertheory]

Aether Revolt Commander Set Review

For each new set, I write an article discussing the new legendary creatures and the nonlegendary cards that I think will be relevant in Commander.

The Set Overall

I think Aether Revolt is a great set for Commander. Most of the legends are playable (and a few are quite powerful), there are a lot of cards for niche archetypes, and the artifact decks got a ton of support. Considering that Standard sets are not designed with Commander in mind, I think we made out like bandits.

Also, Paradox Engine is the most broken card to see print in the last few years.

The Commanders

He may seem like he’s just a value commander, but the best version of Sram is probably the Equipment combo deck. There are so many 0-1 CMC equipment (like, more than 50) that it’s not particularly difficult to cast a dozen or more of them in a turn (it helps if you’ve got cost reduction effects and some additional card draw). Once you’ve dumped a few dozen equipment onto the field, you can just slap them onto Sram (with a little help on the equip costs from Puresteel or Sigarda) and swing for a ton of Commander damage. Here’s the list I’ve been playing with:

Sram Equipment Combo

Baral is quite good in Azami and Talrand, but I think he’s even better in the command zone. My first take on Baral was a pretty passive draw-go list, but a clever reader suggested High Tide combo and the resulting deck I made is pretty damn solid. Baral can save you a dozen or more mana over the course of a High Tide turn, greatly improving your odds of comboing off. Here’s the list I’ve been playing with:

Baral High Tide Combo

Haste and the ability to protect one’s self are key qualifications for a strong Voltron commander (a low CMC is another), so Yahenni fits neatly into that archetype. In addition, their sacrifice ability gives you much more room to build around them than similar monoblack Voltron commanders (Grave Pact effects and/or Dawn of the Dead/Corpse Dance seem like good places to start). Here’s a (rough) list to get you started:

Yahenni, Undying Partisan

This is not a card for Commander. I say this because it seems as though Kari was specifically designed to keep you from doing cool things with her. Exiling the token at end of combat prevents you from clamping it or building up a token army, and her attack trigger doesn’t play very nicely with extra combat steps, either.

In addition to being a great addition to various +1/+1 counter decks, Rishkar is a strong commander that turns random value creatures into mana dorks. A list:

Rishkar, Peema Renegade

There are only a handful of ways to repeatedly recur this dude in monobrown, so I think you’re better off trying to figure out how to win with Commander damage than you are trying to Silence everyone for the rest of the game. Cheap, evasive bodies are exactly what Voltron decks are looking for, and no other colorless commander comes down as quickly as Hope.

The Maindeck Cards

In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:

Spread

1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster). 2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks). 3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions). 4: This card is effective in most decks in this color. 5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.

Power

1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block. 2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well. 3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse. 4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents. 5: This card has a huge impact on the game.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Getting revolt and only being able to target tapped creatures are not insignificant restrictions, but White has basically zero ETB creatures that just straight-up kill stuff, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Note that she is Sun Titan- and Recruiter-compliant and that she’s a playable Dwarf for Depala.

Spread: 4

Power: 1

Using her fairly seems like a terrible idea, since she requires you to let somebody else kill you (which could obviously backfire horribly if anyone has a removal spell). She could be interesting if you’re trying to dig really deep with Necropotence or Hate someone to death, but Resolute Archangel seems like a safer bet (and you actually get to keep your angel).

Spread: 1

Power: 2

This one is a little speculative, since I’m not sure exactly what deck it fits into. However, White sources of card advantage are usually worth scrutinizing, and small bodies are relatively easy for White to recur.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

An auto-include in Jor Kadeen that I believe has potential in other White token builds. Three bodies for four is not a terrible rate, and when you factor in the mana generated by this card, you’re actually paying quite a bit less than that.

Spread: 5

Power: 3

The jump between 2 CMC counterspells and 3 CMC counterspells is a big deal, but so is the added flexibility of a Stifle. Any deck running a lot of counters is going to be happy to add this to its suite.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

This will work about 30% of the time when you play it in your Breya tribal Thopter list.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

This is actually pretty legit as a way to draw more cards in Paradox Engine combo decks. Not sure other decks will be able to get enough value out of it to justify its inclusion.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

I think that you probably shouldn’t run Trophy Mage if your game plan is to grab Worn Powerstone or Coalition Relic or something. If, however, you’re running combo pieces that happen to be CMC 3, the Mage will do good work.

Spread: 3

Power: 3

The initial testing I’ve done with this card has shown me that Improvise is significantly worse than Convoke since you’re not likely to be running a bunch of artifacts that don’t already tap for mana. While you could typically count on Chord of Calling costing 2ish mana less than what’s printed on the card, you should expect that Whir of Invention will not be discounted during most games (unless your deck has a bunch of artifact tokens for some reason). The card is somewhere between Transmute Artifact and Reshape in power level, and I don’t think it’s correct to run it unless you’ve got artifacts that will win you the game (whether by themselves or as part of a combo).

Spread: 1

Power: 1

This is not a Dark Confidant, and I don’t think the energy deck is a real thing in Commander. You should probably view this as a worse Pain Seer.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Not really sure what deck this is for. Kaalia can do much more powerful things than trading Signets for Disfigures or taking a card from each opponent and I doubt the Black artifact decks are interested in a sac outlet that costs 7ish mana.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

If your metagame tends towards low mana curves with lots of mana dorks and small utility creatures, there’s a reasonable chance that this will be a 1-mana board wipe.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

I think this could be good in something like Purphoros, where you have a ton of tokens to feed to it and more creatures entering the battlefield on your side is exactly what you want to be doing.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Some Zada decks run Fists of the Anvil, and this is strictly better.

Spread: 1

Power: 3

I think Kari Zev’s Expertise could be pretty sweet in a Zada deck. Giving all your dudes haste is marginal but casting a million cheap spells for free seems perfect for the deck, since Zada can have a little trouble generating enough mana while she’s going off.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

I’d probably play this if it was colorshifted to White, but Red has a lot of strong competitors when it comes to artifact destruction (Vandalblast, Shattering Spree, Rack and Ruin, etc.). I think Purphoros might like it, since both halves of the card are useful in that deck, but most other lists can skip it.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This seems like a solid addition to any Elfball-ish deck that has a lot of mana and is always looking for gas. For example, that Rishkar list I posted earlier.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

I think this is a pretty reasonable card to play in +1/+1 counter aggro decks that just want to turn on their Oona’s Blackguard or get value off of their Hardened Scales.

Spread: 2

Power: 4

I’m actually a big fan of these kinds of cards in fatty-heavy Green builds that are looking for ways to restock their hands. Rishkar’s Expertise is only slightly more expensive than most of these effects, and it’s likely to refund most of that mana when it resolves.

Spread: 4

Power: 2

Green/White decks to be permanent-based, so the +2 is pretty likely to hit and obviously the -2 is almost always going to be relevant. The main question is whether he’s worth six mana, and I believe the answer is no for most decks. The one deck where I think he could be above average is Planeswalker control. Generating card advantage and killing creatures are the most important abilities for a planeswalker to have in that deck, so Ajani should be right at home.

Spread: 5

Power:1

Seems super low impact compared to other cards in these colors. Compare with Capital Punishment.

Spread: 4

Power: 3

Cards that synergize with other good cards tend to be good themselves, and this guy is no exception. Green/White has a ton of spicy (and cheap) permanents that tend to draw removal, so there are always going to be solid targets for recursion. It’s also worth mentioning that he goes infinite with a sac outlet and Saffi Eriksdotter or Angelic Renewal. In fact, if you’ve got a Sterling Grove and a little time, you can sac Sterling Grove on your upkeep to put Greater Good on top of your library, draw it, then cast Rallier to reanimate the Grove. Sac the Grove again to put Angelic Renewal on top, then cast Greater Good and sacrifice any creature other than Rallier to draw the Renewal off the top. Cast Renewal, then Sacrifice Rallier to Greater Good, looting for three. Angelic Renewal returns Rallier, which returns Renewal. Repeat until you’ve dug through your entire deck for a win condition sac outlet.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

While I do like the -2, the +1 is not impactful enough to make me want to use it and the ultimate is pretty terrible. Black has so many better options for removal that you don’t need to waste your time with this slow, expensive, narrow, situational card.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

It’s basically a second copy of Hardened Scales for the decks that want it. It’s a little worse against infect, but that’s whatever since the infect decks are already so lethal to begin with.

Spread: 1

Power: 1

Not only am I pretty confident that the energy deck doesn’t exist in Commander, but even if it did it would probably involve Blue, and I can’t imagine running this over one of Blue’s many Time Warp effects.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

The only lists I can think of that have enough non-mana rock artifacts and non-artifact spells to use this card tend to specialize in either artifact tokens, Vehicles, or Equipment. In artifact token or Vehicle decks, you’d almost always rather be attacking with your tokens/Vehicles. This might do something in the latter archetype.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I don’t think this is good enough for most tribal decks, but it can generate free counters in Ghave.

Spread: 2

Power: 5

Best card in the set, and it’s not close.

Your deck has to be heavily invested in either mana rocks or mana dorks for this card to be effective, but if you’re in one of those camps then you’ll find it to be quite absurd. Once you have Paradox Engine and 3+ mana worth of rocks/dorks, you’ll find that every spell you cast is either free or it actually nets you mana, so you can just chain card draw spells and dig through your deck until you hit a win condition. It’s such a strong engine that it’s worth it to build an entire deck around tutoring it out, because the upside is enormous. This card will also change up the order in which Arcum Dagsson tutors for stuff, since it untap your Myr Turbine and your Arcum to net an additional tutor with every spell you cast.

Here’s a list built around Paradox Engine:

Nin Artifact Combo

Note that the deck doesn’t even have access to Black’s tutors, which means the ceiling on the Engine is even higher than the frequent T5 kills that list represents.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

Depala is the only deck so heavily invested in Vehicles that it could make use of this effect. I like the idea of limiting the amount of creatures you keep on the board in your Vehicle deck so that you can exploit Vehicle’s immunity to board wipes, and this card does a good job of enabling that strategy.

Spread: 2

Power: 2

Most colors have better ways of finding their win conditions, so I think it’s safe to say this is only likely to be good in Monored or Monobrown artifact ramp decks. It’s obviously absurdly expensive, but you’re probably going to be in a good position if you can fire it off even once, seeing as you can just grab a Blightsteel or an Eldrazi or something.

Spread: 2

Power: 3

This card is super hard to evaluate, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. It seems great in sacrifice-oriented artifact builds like Daretti or Breya, but I’m not quite sure how good it is if you’re playing an artifact deck that has less control over when things hit the graveyard.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

I’m always on the lookout for artifact creatures that generate value because I think artifact reanimation needs more solid targets to be truly good. Esper artifact decks probably have better things to do than try to cascade into value, but I think this guy could be playable in Daretti.

Spread: 1

Power: 2

If Mox Opal is good in your deck, I give you permission to run this card.

Wrapping Up

Please let me know if there are any cards you think I missed or if you think I evaluated any of these cards incorrectly. Thanks for reading!

[zipgrowth]

The Professor Who Quit His Tenured Job to Make Podcasts and Lecture Videos

What’s life like after quitting a tenured job as a professor to become a freelance educator, making video courses and podcasts for a living?

That’s one question we had for Kevin deLaplante, who did just that when he left Iowa State University in 2015 to focus on running his Argument Ninja Podcast and teaching courses on his online Critical Thinker Academy, both aimed at bringing concepts from his scholarship to a popular audience.

One area he’s exploring these days is the rise of tribalism in U.S. politics and culture, and how that’s leading to polarization that is making it hard for us to talk to each other. He’s arguing for a new kind of “tribal literacy,” so we can better understand how humans are hard-wired to be drawn to certain tribal behaviors that, in too large a dose, can lead to trouble for societies. He says that, perhaps surprisingly, he has more time now and can explore the topic more broadly than when he was a traditional scholar.

Listen to the EdSurge On Air podcast? We want to hear from you! Fill out this five-minute survey, and you can enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card.

He made the move to his new phase of scholarly life during a rush of enthusiasm for so-called MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, that big-name colleges were starting to offer low-cost higher education to a wider audience. It looked like there was going to be a big realignment. But the big shiny revolution didn’t exactly happen.

So we also asked deLaplante what he thinks about the broader landscape of online education that he’s part of.

Listen to the discussion on this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen.

EdSurge: What got you started making online courses on your own?

deLaplante: I started creating videos as an extension of my classroom teaching—some version of the flipped classroom where you're doing lectures all the time, you're doing the same intros to this figure, or whatnot. You imagine: wouldn't it be nice if I could have a version of that lecture recorded, and it's a format that you like and then you could upload it on a web server so the students could look at it. Then you could switch up the kind of activities that you're doing in your classroom time.

That means that the students then get to access that content asynchronously on their time. That was something that Khan Academy understood—the value for students to access content at their convenience in the environments in which they're comfortable, and to be able to see the same lecture over and over again.

I think the broader reason why I was thinking along these lines was because I always had an interest in public education. When I started as an undergraduate student, I was a physics major and I became a philosophy of science student and then I went to graduate school to study philosophy of science. f My heroes at the time were people like Carl Sagan. He was a well-known astronomer, but he was also using television and film and these other multimedia technologies effectively to communicate these big ideas to a broader audience. I really responded to that. I was thinking about cool ways of communicating these interesting philosophical and scientific ideas in a way that was accessible to the public and went beyond just writing books.

In 2015 you actually left your university job. What made you decide to leave and focus on these other activities.

The vision was partly to be mobile. My wife was never a fan of the town that we were living in when I was an academic. We were thinking about ways in which we could be portable and mobile, and that means really having a location-independent business from which we need to replace my salary.

The most positive jumping off moment was when I realized I'd made $30,000 in extra income in 2012 or something like that. That was a combination of speaking gigs that came not out of my academic work, but because of the videos I put on YouTube.

The first year I put my courses [on Udemy, an online course market], I had about 12 hours worth of content. I threw it all up there back in 2013. In the first month, I made $800 bucks.

So you have been doing this full-time for three years now. Is it sustainable? Did you pull it off?

I'm still here working from my basement in Ottawa.

Back in 2015 there was still excitement around Massive Open Online Courses and other online learning, and I’ll admit I was thinking more professors would break off on their own like you did. But other than a few unique stories, it’s not that common. What do you think about where things are now compared to that moment when you left as far as the landscape of this independent educator world?

One thing that happened is that the academic institutions all bought into online courses. Now they saw an audience that had to be served in order to [be competitive] for students.

But there has to be demand from educators and teachers who want to make this shift. It's quite risky. It's an unusual path, and there's every social incentive [to stay on a campus] as you become socialized into academia.

You're socialized not to think about going out on your own. You're socialized to believe that research has to be done a certain way—this is the path. Once you deviate from that, once you start considering these alternatives, it's not something that you share. When I was harboring these interests in alternative forms of education and possible career paths, I never told anyone in my department who I didn't trust.

It was secret?

It was. It was in some ways an open secret. I could say, “Well, I'm working on these video courses as a supplement to my own teaching.” They certainly were supportive of that. You could take workshops on how to use audio and video. The institution was interested in faculty who were pursuing audio/visual projects. I actually took a bunch of those free courses.

As soon as you start talking about [going off on your own], it’s like, “Then you're not serious. You're not a serious academic anymore.”

I remember at the time talking to people secretly, and they'd like, “Yeah. I'd love to do this.” They're kind of privately envious of the idea of having the freedom to do these things. It was all kind of hush-hush. In that sense I think that the broader picture is that there's these incentives to do things to maintain the status quo, even in an environment where the jobs are rare.

I also never thought that my moving to teaching online was some indictment of classroom teaching. I also never imagined it as a replacement for it. I still don't. The difference between developing YouTube videos and stringing them in a sequence to provide a structured learning experience and actual teaching is night and day. It's the same as the difference between buying a textbook on biology and going to a classroom where they teach the content in that textbook.

My video series ... becomes like a multimedia textbook.

But aren’t there downsides of going solo? The fact that you have to get people to somehow sponsor you or your work, is that a negative influence on your research that you were protected from as a faculty member?

The commercial side of this proposition is going to keep some people away from it, for sure. If they recoil at that thought then they're going to have a hard time, because there's just no doubt that you have to think like an entrepreneur some fraction of the time in order to do this successfully.

Business and income cannot be bad words, and academics are very poorly socialized on this. There are a lot of mindset issues with academics who have never had to confront the economic realities of the institutions in which they work. It's an interesting dynamic. I think if you're an independent content creator, you do have to be careful about trying to chase audiences and do what you think audiences want as opposed to what you think is important, or what you're good at. Just like any business.

In your podcast these days you are talking about “tribal literacy” and the growing polarization in the U.S. How worried are you about our level of functionality in our democracy?

I'm very worried.

I'm a philosopher of science by training. Back in the day I was a complex systems philosopher of science. I studied complex social and physical and biological systems. I think social polarization is a complex social phenomenon. It probably has a set of complex origins, like multi-scale, multifactor origins. Part of what I've been doing with my recent videos, and some of the stuff on the podcast, is trying to map out my understanding of the dimensions of this problem.

When I sketch out my next podcast episode, it looks like it's the section of a book.

I'm not teaching in a classroom so I have the time to read stuff and do these projects. One of the misconceptions about this is that when you leave academia to do online teaching, you're basically giving up research. It's certainly not the case for me. In fact, I've probably written more and done more reading since I've been independent than I was doing as a paid academic.

So in a way I’m still trying to figure out the lesson or takeaway from deLaplante’s story. Is he the beginning of a new kind of public independent scholar? Or is this just a unique tale of someone with a rare mix of skills and interests willing to try this?

And if this is going to be some kind of trend, is that a good thing or a bad thing for higher ed and the broader society? Do we want a world where each scholar has to convince an audience of students to come study with them, and will that leader to broader access to education. Or is that a recipe for disaster, and do we need to fiercely protect these campus structures to give the structure to philosophers and other thinkers to thrive and explore whatever they want, no matter how popular their ideas are or not. Or can we have both?

The Professor Who Quit His Tenured Job to Make Podcasts and Lecture Videos published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[survivoremathia]

Ep. 7 - “"I Love Lies and Deceit" - Isaac”

LOGAN

IF I DONT WIN IMMUNITY IM GOING HOME KNOW THAT THATS ALL HELP PLEASE I CANT GO HOME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

OWEN

Well well well!!! Ryan B went home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Surprise surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :~) I threw a vote on Scott just in case Ryan, who did absolutely no campaigning whatsoever, had an idol or something from the labyr*nth. But he didn't and he's dead so! Fun!!!!!!!!! Anyways... I want to win individual immunity kind of, although I think I have a good case to get Jay out of here. Still, I don't know what Duncan will think of me if Jay DOES get shipped off, and it might be better for me if Scott goes because I've never talked to Scott and there's no relationship there? With Trevor and I on the same tribe there's always the worry someone will want to split us up but I don't see how that benefits anyone really because we'll just be a target at merge. We're like an extra fat meat shield :) use us :))))))))) anyways, none of my alliance wants to win immunity because the challenge is an unnecessarily difficult version. It worries me that we all feel cocky enough to...not try lmao afsdkhdfsjfds which makes me want to try but at the same time??? I don't want to do that it's finals week and it's too much. I just want to merge so I can fuck everyone up

LOGAN

also everyone in this game? likes me as a person? but i think ERRYONE knows im a threat and im in the bottom so i need to win. that is all. love rob. ill die for rob. 

JD

Yeah, this challenge is going to be bad... I'm much sorry

-

Jesus fuck. That sucked... I hope i never have to do anything like that again. 4 hours of my life i wont be getting back *sigh* but i saved that cute little rock from the underworld, yes i did.... I think I'll name him... He- hey! My rock just does back to the underworld... Well there goes that. *Le shrug* (sleepy Jessy is sleepy)

SCOTT

I am shocked I survived the vote. But I am confident I will most likely be voted out at the next tribal, and since the challenge is basically computer slavery. I am screwed. WELP *Prays for the merge* 

LOGAN

woooo, my death is happening!

-

IN THE GAME I MEAN IN THE GAME I PROMISEHTBDFGJNSDKMZ

TREVOR

Sam chose me to go to the labyrinth. A good ally. Maybe I will take him to the end. 

-

We're voting for Jay. I kind of insisted it without discussing it which is bad but I wasn't in the mood. 

It's either gonna tie with Scott or be 4-3-1 as I'm gonna try and get Scott to vote for Owen if he comes online. If it does tie we will vote Jay on the revote so it's fine. I have Lydia's 20% challenge advantage because I'm not allowed to give it back to her. Oh well. I'm sure we're swapping or merging after this.

SAM

https://youtu.be/ZNx-K60v4BU

ROB

Literally the only person who I did not to win. Fuck I think I couldve done it. Lazy ass. I'm definitely in danger once more. 

SAM

MORE CONFESSIONS yeah i'm pretty nervous about tribal tonight. i'm afraid that one of the newbies is going to get voted out, so i might have to appeal to duncan that the newbies are on his side. or that i can get them to be on his side because i think they might be down to vote for him. they're concerned with mending fences and they believe that duncan might not help them but LIKE LOOK DUNCAN WILL PLAY WITH ME AT MERGE AND MATT SUMMERS ISN'T CALLED MATT FUCKING SUMMERS FOR NOT REASON so i'll have to check in on everyone later today and make sure their heads are in the right spot. that's all. at least it isn't me.

SCOTT

This song goes to my tribe if they vote me out (Verse) Wrap it up, I said I don't have time I guess you're outta luck, but I'm doin' fine Give it up, you don't wanna act like you care And I don't want a house full of her hair (Pre-Chorus) (And you said) Literally, babe Are ya gonna give up so easily? I thought I meant more I thought you was stronger... (And you said) Literally, babe I've been stressing about us all day, well Guess you bit off more than you can chew I've got li-te-ra-lly nothing to say to you (Chorus) You wanna play me till I kick you out You wanna call me when you're feeling down Beggin' on your knees, BITCH PLEASE! And when I finally let you bring me close You wanna promise me you'll never go Then you wanna leave, BITCH PLEASE! (Interlude) Don't text me, you're pathetic, BITCH PLEASE! This is the only way you'll hear from me, HA! Don't text me, you're pathetic, BITCH PLEASE! This is the only way you'll hear from me, HA! (Verse 2) Listen up, you don't get a goodbye You don't get another shot to make me everything I'm not I'm a girl on fire, I'm a girl who dreams And you're a boy who needs to stay the hell away from me (Pre-Chorus) (And you said) Literally, babe Are ya gonna give up so easily? I thought I meant more I thought you was stronger... (And you said) Literally, babe I've been stressing about us all day, well Guess you bit off more than you can chew I've got li-te-ra-lly nothing to say to you (Chorus) You wanna play me till I kick you out You wanna call me when you're feeling down Beggin' on your knees, BITCH PLEASE! And when I finally let you bring me close You wanna promise me you'll never go Then you wanna leave, BITCH PLEASE! (Bridge) And it hit me like a ton of bricks Like a ton of your ugly hats When I was broken, when I was lonely When I was reachin' out for your hand That the sun could go down My shadow and taunts, there's no-one around, I swear We're as lonely as with you there (He's not gonna get that...) (Whatever!) (Chorus) You wanna play me till I kick you out You wanna call me when you're feeling down Beggin' on your knees, BITCH PLEASE! And when I finally let you bring me close You wanna promise me you'll never go Then you wanna leave, BITCH PLEASE! (Interlude) Don't text me, you're pathetic, BITCH PLEASE! This is the only way you'll hear from me, HA! Don't text me, you're pathetic, BITCH PLEASE! This is the only way you'll hear from me, HA!

MATTEW

So...double tribal. Yikes! I feel like I'm in a pretty good spot at this point. I have an alliance with people that I don't think have any reason to flip, but the only troubling thing is the fact that there could potentially be a boatload of rewards and items out there just waiting to get played. Hopefully my alliance is the only one who has gained access to Room 5, but there's always that uncertainty about the Labyrinth that's super scary. We could easily try to play it safe and blindside someone again, but now's not the time for paranoia. I've been thinking a lot about numbers come merge and I'm starting to realize that Trevor is probably at the center of the dynamics of the other tribe. He has Owen and Lydia that he's really close with, who each have people that can branch off to form a majority. I want to trust Ryan when merge comes, but we've been apart for so long at this point that I can't be certain where he his loyalties lie until we can meet back up and talk game again. My point is, there's a lot of uncertainties that could lead to me being in the minority come merge so my focus for the next few rounds is to keep as many people happy with me as possible. I mended bridges with Logan a bit and we've had some pretty solid game talks, so hopefully they're being honest about being willing to let Rob go and they're not just trying to screw me over. I'm going to have to start talking with Duncan again, because there's a lot of uncertainty and distrust between us and if we're going to be able to form a majority at merge, we're going to have to patch things up and look forward. Still, preparing to get #snatched at tribal council tonight.

JD

What kind of evil was that! Escape from hell???? Na man, i think I'll just stay there next time... I mean i saved the rock though! That rock... That will help me do absolutely nothing. By God. 

Okay seriously though, i have control issues. I get that, i know that and I'll embrace my faults. I also think it's one of the reasons why I'm so worried about this tribal. I've had class all day and i haven't been able to really talk to people the way that i want to. I can't get a read on the other three to know if they are really going to stay with us or if they are just planing something with some items. The only thing that I'm not worried about is the idol, maybe that means I'm putting too much trust in Sam but i did save his ass last time we were in tribal. And yes I'm taking all the credit for it because even with Ali's extra vote, my tribe wanted to vote for Robby and i believe that i changed their minds. I saved Sam. Sam best not be fucking with me. Right so last night me and Sam talked in length about what he wanted to do in this game. He told me that Duncan gave him the idol. Something about after you use it you have to give it to someone else. So if he's telling me the truth, and i really think he is, he has the idol. He also wanted to know if i had  any connections with anyone on the other side .... I mean yes! The other half of my final four is over there... I didn't tell him THAT though. I told him that when Trevor came over we talked but mostly about being old... Which was not a lie. That was the first thing we talked about, and being Canadian. Me and Ali liked him enough and checked with Lydia about bring him in with us and i hope that they really have been able to work out their differences Because here is my set up. Final 2 - me and Ali (we can't take a vet with us, that's just asking to lose) Final 4 - me, Ali, Lydia, Trevor (idk what our name is anymore but i really liked when we gave ourselves seasons so I'm going with 4 seasons right now) Final 5 - 4 seasons and Sam because i still think Sam owes me and i plan to collect on that at some point. Final 8 - Owen, Matt, Isaac. And if the 8 of us can get together straight out of the merge, if that happens after tribal, then there would be 12 players in the game. We have more then majority and we get ride of a couple people before shit hurts the fan I'm sure. At 10 it might get bloody cus everyone is going to have their own groups that they want to go to the end with. Right so that all came from mine and Sam's conversation was that he wants to work with Trevor and Owen, because they are a power couple and he thinks they would be targeted before any of use. Which would be truth if Trevor wasn't in my main alliance. All this could go to shit tonight. Any four of us could get voted out or Lydia and Trevor might have decided to leave me and Ali behind. We'll see. About to vote and I'm such a control freak that I'm trying to figure out how to be more involved. Like lying to Logan and telling them to vote for Matt or Sam to see if we can trust her. But... There so much bad that could happen. God I'm going home tonight -_-' 

ROB

If you're not going to stay loyal to me then you can't expect me to stay loyal to you. I'm doing whatever it takes to stay alive in this game, even if it means turning my back on the people I was close to. JD*sigh* i thought this tribal was set. I hate scrambling ready 

ALI

This tribal is awful :( Rob is the general consensus, and I'm being especially nice for two reasons. A) Because I feel really bad B) Because I don't want him to play an idol and for his one vote to vote me out. I wanted to work with him, but that core Olympus 3 was just too tight grr. I wish we could vote off Duncan, he is kinda shifty and I'm still put off by him lying to me... Next time... Also, whoever invented that challenge can CATCH THESE HANDS. It was awful. Also, Scott is probably going tonight, which'll make me one of two newbies left and the only Brit. If Rob goes also, I think I become the youngest person, the only Brit and one of two newbies.... I'm going into extinction.

ISAAC

I love lies and deceit. All of a sudden I'm shook about Trevor keeping me out of the loop™ So me, myself, and I and my petty ass are going to be ugly™