#it's really had a profound impact on the way i view myself and the world | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zerochanges · 2 years

Text

My 2022 Media Binge Reviews

I find myself somewhat circling the drain during the year of 2022, I don’t want to say I was repeating the same year as 2021, but I also can’t exactly say I was doing much differently. I think both years were hard on me but in some different yet similar ways. I still work the same job I hate and my anxiety has still gotten the better of me in a lot of the same old ways, but also new exciting ways! The older I get the more it feels like essays like these always say “well blank year was a hard year” so I don’t want to say that anymore but it’s hard not to want to complain about a year’s worth of troubles all the same.

Last year I was really able to overcome some grief in my personal life by finally taking the plunge and getting through Twin Peaks, a series that for years I wanted to finish but never got past the first season. It was incredible, and made a lasting profound impact on me. And this year honestly just saw me chasing that high in a lot of ways. I think the general theme of a lot of media I consumed was “Twin Peaks-like”. Sadly nothing seems like it will ever scratch that itch for me. I guess that just goes to show how unique and incredible Twin Peaks was—but at the very least I think some of the most fun I had this year was chasing that high all the same.

American Psycho

This year finally saw me getting around to watching American Psycho in its entirety. Now I've seen it plenty of times on TV in bits and pieces. I’ve caught parts of it, and generally knew the whole gist of the movie, but honestly I don’t think I ever watched it from start to finish before. The internet is obsessed with this movie, the memes alone it spawned are everywhere, which honestly kind of finally got me to get around to it.

It’s easy to see why the internet would become so enamored with a movie like this, Christian Bale gives such an incredible performance as the lead, putting so much energy and life into Patrick Bateman that almost every frame of the movie he is in feels like it should be hung up in some meme museum. I’m old enough to still remember when he was cast as Batman in the Nolan trilogy and the consensus was “how the heck can the murderer from American Psycho be one of the best superheroes ever?” It’s funny to me to see the argument flipped to “wow I can’t believe Batman was such a good murderer in this movie.”

But beyond the incredible cathartic violence, and over-the-top performances there is definitely a very scathing view of the American lifestyle and capitalist hellscape we are all trapped in nowadays that much like I mentioned in my anime list with Kaiji seems far more relevant today than ever before.

Dune x3

This year for me was the year of the Dune. With the new movie coming out near the end of 2021 I finally got around to grabbing it on blu-ray, and while I was at it I just couldn’t resist grabbing everything else too. I got Dune opinions, and they are about as crazy as you would expect from a hipster like me. So let’s talk about the three Dunes.

Jodorowsky's Dune, this 2013 documentary is all about the failed Dune movie that never was by visionary and art film auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky may not be a household name so just to get a little preamble out of the way, the man has made some of the damn craziest films around—and his breakout 1970 ‘acid westerner’ El Topo is considered by many film historians to be one of the first Midnight Movies, starting a much believed trend for cinephiles the world over.

Towards the end of 1974 the man attempted what was at the time thought impossible by adapting Dune into a movie and he developed a variable dream team of auteurs and creative talent to do it, which he called his ‘warriors’; many of said warriors would go on to become absolute legends of the industry while many were already legends. Jodorowsky’s Dune was the very first film that ever saw acclaimed legend H. R. Giger worked on a film for example, and beloved French artist Moebius did a ton of art designs for the project. It was truly a melting pot, almost like a mini ‘scene’ of its own that brought together an unbelievable amount of extremely talented people. It’s honestly not a stretch to say that without Jodorowsky’s failed attempt at Dune that there would be no Alien, there’d be no Star Wars, there’d be no science fiction as we know it today in American cinema.

Jodorowsky’s vision really only ever saw the original novel as a jumping off point of inspiration, the man himself never even reading the book. What he sought to create was both incredibly dense science fiction and incredibly philosophical spiritualism. The end of his proposed Dune movie honestly gives me chills, and hell if I don’t want to steal that idea for myself.

It’s hard to say what the finished project would have been like, Jodorowsky’s own ambitions and artistic vision is what killed the project, trying to turn it into a 10 hour epic of a movie! I often wonder why they just couldn’t make it into an animated series when that failed. I mean they had Moebius right there! But perhaps it was for the best. The failure of the movie saw incredible talent shift to the four corners of the wind and go on to create incredible work of their own in cinema. When it comes to lost or unmade media there’s a mysticism about it; “if only we could have experienced it”, and I think that’s half of what makes it so good. If it was real, who knows how good it might have been, in a way I am glad I got to be fascinated by this best movie never made.

Now let’s get to my hot take and just say it, David Lynch’s 1984 Dune is so much better than Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune. There I said it!

Okay, please give me a minute to explain. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is by far a much better made movie that has a better reverence for the source material and overall makes for a grander and more easily digestible sci-fi film that finally accomplices the dream started in 1974 by Jodorowsky to create something great out of Dune. It’s just that it’s just another good movie. Honestly a lot of good movies already exist. So yes I think for the normal person this is the one, watch this Dune and enjoy, but for hipster’s David Lynch’s Dune is where it is at!

Lynch himself hates the movie, it crushed his spirit and the man calls it the biggest sell out of his career. Yet I think it somehow is something special. The film is easily gorgeous and out-there levels of weird which I think is important for Dune, and is something Villeneuve’s film lacks in a lot of ways. The fight scenes are satisfying and action packed in Villeneuve’s film, making for a great Hollywood movie experience … but is that Dune? Honestly I think I like Lynch's extremely awkward and poorly executed bumbling drunk sad sack fights more. Those honestly feel way more like Dune. People flying around and spin kicking hundreds of dudes in the face is great, but I’ll take two dudes awkwardly dancing around each other while big blocky Minecraft shields glow over their bodies. Now this is my Dune, baby.

There’s something surreal in both the execution and visuals in Lynch’s take on the material that simply vibes with me more. Had the movie been cut properly by Lynch and not butchered by executives to sell the maximum amount of tickets, had it got the chance to be the longer length or two movies that Lynch wanted, I think it would be a much more beloved cult sci-fi film today.

In conclusion, I think Dune is an awesome story and great material to really get weird with, and honestly it’s pretty cool that there’s a lot of out-there interpretations to be enjoyed today.

One Piece

2022 saw me return to One Piece once again and picking up right where I left off after binging through Thriller Bark to Punkhazard in 2021. While I didn’t watch nearly as much as last year it almost feels like I did, as I was able to finish both Dressrosa and Zou before the year’s end. Now Dressrosa is such a dense and huge story arc that took up many months of my year. This arc being a whopping 118 episodes long is honestly just flat out ridiculous, this one story arc is longer than most anime! For those who might need a reminder, the entirety of Yu Yu Hakusho is 112 episodes long, Dressrossa is 118 and in-story the vast majority of it all takes place over a single day!

This is by and large the most ambitious writing Oda has ever attempted by this point in One Piece and it pays off in dividends as so much truly happens and the entire series as a whole really starts to show a lot of its hand. This is what the entire post time-skip One Piece since Fishman Island has really been leading into. Luffy’s little journey from a boy with a dream is truly maturing into a fearless and brave leader able to sway incredibly powerful cohorts to stand up alongside him against an all powerful and corrupt uncaring world government that is far more preoccupied with keeping its status quo and image than the lives of those they govern. Oda is able to create a venerable army for which Luffy to one day lead on his quest to become King of the Pirates, so many interesting and just plain fun characters are able to stand up not just as new game pieces on the board to lose to show how strong the enemy is but as honest to god equals to our protagonists and are able to hold their own against the villains alongside Luffy and his crew.

We learn more about the world and see Luffy take on easily his biggest fight yet against DoFlamingo, a character that has easily been hyped up for what, like 500 or something episodes? And just wow, what a villain, DoFlamingo is easily one of the most interesting and compelling characters in the series and just a straight up horrifying monster of a human being, if you can even call him that. Which is great because Luffy has another trick up his sleeve, Fourth Gear. I had seen it before online, being an anime fan means it’s impossible not to get One Piece spoilers but I don’t think I ever appreciated Fourth Gear until now that I’ve seen it in action. This new form is just incredible and so well made. It shows so much creativity from Oda and I love how BIG it is! Anime protagonists nowadays just keep getting hotter when they power up, even the new Dragon Ball series see Goku becoming increasingly prettier, I really missed this. Luffy gets thicc in Fourth Gear, this is what I want, go all out, just have fun being a cartoon again, let dudes have muscles on top of muscles–and no neck while you’re at it. Give these boys just ridiculous proportions, let’s make even Liefeld shiver. Bring back the beefcake.

Luffy didn’t have all the fun either, I think Franky had one of the best fights in the whole series when he went up against Senior Pink, a bare knuckles, no hold barred, man to man slug fest that easily goes on for something like 30 episodes straight of just two manly son of bitches beating the ever loving fuck out of each other. Zoro fighting Picca sees our greatest swordsman to be taking on perhaps one of the most insane action set pieces One Piece ever had. And then there’s great moments with the new characters like Bartolomeo and Cavendish and oh yeah, did I mention Luffy’s thought to be dead brother Sabo shows up and utterly steals the show for a good portion of the arc? The appearance of Sabo in the story utterly wrecked me. I cried when Luffy was able to see him again, it was such a beautiful reunion.

Dressrosa is truly an epic as far as anime storytelling goes but Zou also somehow delivers so much too and in general that later half of Dressrosa and almost all of Zou really proves that One Piece is able to carry so much forward momentum and still be able to go places even 700 episodes in. The plot has never been more interesting, the goal has never felt more obtainable, and the fun is still there. Right now I am about a quarter of the way through Whole Cake Island and trying to finish it too before my Funimation subscription runs out. I have a month to go but I think I can make it. Wish me luck/

Orpheus (1950)

In my quest to relive the emotions Twin Peaks gave me I watched Jean Cocteau’s 1950 French film Orpheus. Now the film is a (then contemporary) modern reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in modern day Paris. I’ll be real with you guys, I knew jack shit about Orpheus when I watched this, to me Orpheus was just “the master of strings” in Persona 3 so even now I can’t tell you if they did a great job transposing the story to modern day, but I can say what Jean Cocteau accomplishes in this film is nothing short of stunning. The surreal atmosphere and cinematography is easily breathtaking while the plot balances both being playful and light while also dealing with dense topics like love and suicide.

It’s easy to see why Jean Cocteau is a legendary film creator and why David Lynch considers this film such an inspiration to him. A lot of visuals very much so look like prototypes of what he would later go on to do in Twin Peaks specifically, even down to the iconic Black Lodge. But this isn’t just some Twin Peaks prototype, it’s definitely a damn fine masterclass piece of cinema, definitely worth a watch for its own merits. I would say the shot of the film that stayed with me truly throughout all year was when Orpheus and Heurtebise walk through the world of death, it is something I think about often.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

I’ve seen the original Planet of the Apes when I was a lot younger, and pretty much that was about it. Growing up the movie was parodied and paid homage to in everything from other movies and TV shows to the cartoons I saw as a kid. It’s easy to think of all those parodies and see the remake and the modern reimagined trilogy and think the original is just plain bad but no! It holds up insanely well. I was surprised to see just how good it still is. This is such an iconic science fiction classic and so much has to do with how sharp the writing is, the incredible acting of Charleston Heston, and yes, that legendary twist ending. I implore you, rewatch the first Apes film, you won’t regret it.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

I thought the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie in 2020 was a cute well made kid’s movie with just enough material for adults to enjoy thanks to Jim Carrey’s performance as Eggman elevating the material. But the sequel oh boy, this is legit the best video game movie I ever seen. This film captures the spirit and tone of the Sonic franchise perfectly. It’s a love letter to the entirety of Sonic the Hedgehog and just a damn fun action adventure. All the characters feel much better utilized and written, with even the human sidekicks like James Marsden’s character having a lot more to do and better material to work with. I had never seen so much reverence for classic Sega video games on the screen before outside of other video games than this movie, and it truly felt like my childhood was coming to life in ways I never imagined before.

Sonny Boy

This year saw me finally getting around to watching Shingo Natsume’s original 2021 anime Sonny Boy. This was a critical darling of the Fall 2021 anime season when it aired but having been burned on so many “deep” anime that weren’t I was weary of it during that time—and not to mention busy and never got around to it. I heard so much praise for almost a solid year though and it seemed utterly visually and narratively interesting so I finally cracked and watched it. Glad I did, it was a rare example of something living up to its praise.

Actually I got to be straight with you, here’s another piece of media that I honestly only watched because I desperately was begging to feel what I felt when I watched Twin Peaks last year. Sonny Boy is nowhere near that though but somehow is. It’s completely different but delivers a similarly dense and visually fascinating world. The music being done entirely by indie groups gives the entire atmosphere of the show a homemade feeling to it—the emotional core is often tinged with this sense of raw emotions that feel free from the corporate mainstream often overly produced music in most anime. Together with insanely complex visuals and free moving animation that isn’t stiff or obsessed with staying on model and we got something that just stimulates all the right sectors of my brain. And damn if I can’t stop listening to the tracks even now.

I guess what I want to say is I came for the Twin Peaks comparisons, I stayed for the depression and how beautifully the show paints the futility of life and what death means in a meaningless world. Watch Sonny Boy, while praised during its airing the show almost seems totally forgotten about. You’ll probably have a good cry while doing so, but it will make you feel truly alive.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Okay, this is another example of me knowing all about this movie because of the internet. There are so many clips and memes about this movie that I have obtained endless enjoyment out of but I never actually watched the movie properly. This year I decided it was finally time and on Christmas Eve, I watched the legend, and my God: Best. Christmas. Movie. Ever. I think I found a new Christmas tradition that I am going to do every year. This movie is downright hilarious, the memes don’t even do it justice, you have to experience the whole thing in context, it’s even somehow funnier that way. In all the best ways.

Eric Freeman’s acting is legit something I wish I could emulate. I want a whole movie or video game of just people going as hard as Eric Freeman in full earnest and not trying to ham it up. His screen presence is so funny, so magnanimous, so scene stealing, I can’t even breathe every time the camera focuses on him, I am utterly out of breath laughing every millisecond, on the floor gasping for air on the verge of death, but I can’t stop laughing. I just can’t help but love the movie even more as every minute passes.

And the story behind how the movie was made is even fascinating. If you get the blu-ray like I had to of course go out and find a way to buy it after watching it, there’s a great documentary on how the whole thing came to be. What started as a way to just re-edit the movie Silent Night Deadly Night so they could release it again and make more money turned into a passion project by the editor now turned director Lee Harry which is why he’s credited as both the director and editor of the movie. Harry took the old footage from the movie, turned it into flashbacks and made it into a sequel by shooting new footage. They honestly took a legit and serious slasher movie and turned it into the best comedy ever made. As far as I am concerned you don’t even need to watch the original Silent Night Deadly Night, just see all of it in Part 2’s flashbacks and bask in Eric Freeman’s life changing performance.

Stalker (1979)

Andrei Tarkovsky probably needs no introduction for film buffs but let’s just say for the uninitiated much like what I said about Alejandro Jodorowsky above this Soviet filmmaker is another auteur artist that is beloved in the world of cinema and leave it at that now because this list is already much too long as it is. Stalker is the first film of his I watched and one I wanted to see for many, many years—and one I only finally saw now because of my damn insistent pursuit of relieving the emotions Twin Peaks gave me.

Stalker a 1979 Soviet made science fiction film based on a 1971 novel Roadside Picnic which depicts a guide or Stalker taking two individuals through an incredibly dangerous location that is closed off to the public where extraterrestrials had once landed one night and left the next known as the Zone. The story fascinates me on so many levels because of my love of sci-fi, this thought that strange alien life interacted with a place on earth and left it so tangled up, so hard to navigate that common sense need not apply, that you have to go up to go down, you have to walk backwards to get forward, that at any moment some terrible curse could afflict you, that something you did upset the order of this strange land, that expert guides exist in this shady black market underground to take people on tours through it, and many traverse this illegal Zone because of the rumors of a room within it that can grant any wish your heart desires. How can I not want to see it? This is my kind of sci-fi. What I got … was something much different.

I was expecting this sci-fi epic, instead it’s very much almost not present. It’s more about the passage of time, what it means to be alive, the place of religion in the world, the meaning of living in a meaningless world, if there is any magic left to be had in a world where we understand so much thanks to science. The Stalker and the outlawed area of the Zone almost seems like reverence for magic that used to exist, an old world point of view that can still look to the stars and see Gods instead of just clusters of hot space gas. Stalkers with their silly rules; their going backwards to go forward seem like nothing more than that silliness, something modern people don’t need to do anymore. The Stalker in the film is often undermined by his two clients who constantly push their luck and break tons of rules he tells them not to. At its core it seems like a struggle between wanting to believe there’s something special in this life, and being a skeptic.

I wanted a sci-fi epic instead I got an artsy fartsy film that drinks way too much depresso espresso. Yet the magic of Tarkovsky’s film stays in my mind. The emotions I felt, the long shots that border on almost trolling you with boredom, they stay in your very soul. I still see the beauty of the undisturbed Zone when I close my eyes, the clearness of that water, and the magic of the bird disappearing into the dunes. The ending speech about time and what it means to all of us living from the Stalker’s wife, I hear it play back in my mind from time to time.

This isn’t really great sci-fi, I wanted to hammer that home to anyone listening, so your expectations aren’t all wrong like mine. But this is an incredible film that uses some very light sci-fi window dressing to convey incredibly complex emotions behind living in modernity. I recommend it a lot to anyone who can handle that fact.

El Topo, Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre—or how I fell in love with that weird Chilean Movie Guy

Let’s get back to Alejandro Jodorowsky as he was a big figure in my 2022 media. It started with the documentary about his attempt at making a Dune movie in the 70’s but after that I had to know more about the man. This visionary auteur who took Dune and made this insanely almost religious spiritual epic in space, now this dude sounds incredible. Also holy crap it turns out David Lynch was a fan of his work too and you can easily find a lot of his work being repeated in Twin Peaks. Uh-oh, you know what that means, right? Yup, let’s keep this pursuit up, boys.

We’re starting with the 1970 ‘acid western’ El Topo, since I still have yet to see his first film 1968’s Fando y Lis (although I do have it, I just have yet to work up the courage to play it thanks to its infamy). El Topo is easily what truly started his career on the world wide scene and not just in Mexico where he started out, it was a movie that would become insanely influential to many creative talents from the Beetles to Suda51; in fact No More Heroes is almost a complete remake/reimagining of it but anime.

This western is no simple cowboy movie, it’s spiritual and just all out bonkers. It almost feels like two movies stitched together too. The first half sees El Topo, or “The Mole”, as this badass gunslinger taking down the four greatest gunslingers in the desert who are almost guru-like, in order to claim the title of the best gunslinger and spiritual enlightenment all so he can lay with some bodacious babe. He however fails at this and dies, only to be resurrected as some religious savior to a village of deformed people that live underground, and as a new man he tries to rescue the village and lead them to prosperity.

This film is weird, and like yeah, bonkers. The two halves are almost completely different movies yet somehow they work really well together. I think the first half is easily the part most people really will enjoy while the second can easily lose you. All that said though this is the film that easily got me excited for more from Jodorowsky.

1973’s The Holy Mountain seemed like a slam dunk, the movie about an alchemist training a thief that broke into his Tower to be his protégé then taking on seven wisemen with him to ascend a legendary mountain to find the secret of immortality is the insane kind of bullshit I want in my veins. It’s a … that is to say it’s … the thing about The Holy Mountain is … well I hope you like drugs. So yeah, hard to believe but El Topo, the acid western, was made sober, while Jodorowsky decided to really, how do you say, “expand his mind” , on his next film and it shows because I think you need to be on drugs to fully enjoy this one.

The film has an incredible beginning and an absolutely incredible ending with an insanely good and thought provoking twist at the very end but the middle is very meandering. The scene where the Alchemist introduces his seven wisemen just goes on for like ever. They pretty much stop the plot for a solid 50 minutes just to show vignettes about each of these characters and they are all very good, and interesting, and some insanely funny, but like bruh, the movie is just dead in its tracks for at least half its runtime to introduce characters that essentially just stand in the background after their introduction and that’s it.

As I said the ending is truly something special and that I cannot elaborate on because if it’s spoiled for you I can confirm it kind of ruins the whole movie. Yeah I knew the ending spoiler before I watched it and that just really took the wind out of my sails. I loved the beginning of the film to bits, the middle just would never end its nonstop barrage of introductions for what turn out to be NPCs, then the ending I spoiled, it was a boring experience for me.

Don’t spoil the ending, and I promise the dragging middle will be worth it. Probably.

youtube

1989’s Santa Sangre or Holy Blood, is probably Jodorowsky’s most mainstream and easily digestible film. I’d also say maybe because it was his at the time most recent work, the film that David Lynch took the most inspiration from when he made Twin Peaks. If you watch some scenes in this one back-to-back with certain Twin Peaks scene, it’s definitely obvious what Lynch was watching at the time. Because of this I say it’s the movie of Jodorowsky I can recommend the most, it’s definitely the favorite of his I have seen so far. Hell I’d go as far as to say one of my favorite movies I ever seen.

Santa Sangre follows Fenix, a young man in a mental ward, and shows the story of his life and how he came to be in such a place. Fenix grew up in the circus, his father a womanizing drunk knife thrower and his mother a trapeze artist and also a devout Christian that runs her own crazy offshoot cult of Christ. It’s a fascinating childhood and the imagery is striking. It’s visceral and a wild ride but also something I have to tiptoe around and not explain a lot about. The movie is best experienced knowing very little about it. There’s a very apt comparison that can be made to a certain famous movie, film critics often call it “The Mexican version of [said famous movie]” and I wholly agree, but my God if you know said famous movie’s name that spoils way too much! Classic, film critics ruining film again.

I highly recommend this one despite almost bending over backwards to deny you too many of my thoughts on it. There are so many scenes that if I close my eyes I still see. The music is fantastic, the scene where Fenix plays piano is easily a stand out moment of cinema. This is the life story of one man I think you simply must experience.

Vinland Saga

The 2019 first season of Vinland Saga finally came out this year on special edition blu-ray and after waiting what felt like a lifetime I couldn’t be happier to begin my rewatch of the show. I know Sentai released their dubbed version of it back a year prior but I adored Vinland so much I wanted to wait for the special edition and I definitely felt it was worth the wait, as the poster proudly still is on my wall and I am never taking it down. When it comes to Vinland itself I will be brief and say it’s a fantastic anime, and one of the best the year it came out. I mainly just want to talk about this Sentai release which I found to be stellar, the special edition was of very high quality, like I said I love the cloth poster, and I very much enjoyed their dub. I thought the writing was much more naturalistic than the Netflix produced dub with better dialogue flow as well as being just dirty enough in the way Sentai usually is by sprinkling in some tasty F-bombs that most other dubbing studios would shy away from. I enjoyed how accurate it was, as an actual historian with a degree in this stuff it always drives me mad to see so much mainstream entertainment go for the bottom of the barrel easiest to understand AD over using Common Era, so I was glad Sentai used it. Also actually pronouncing the Nordic names correctly where the Netflix dub hilariously butchers all of them is a nice touch too.

Wild Palms

Wild Palms in a 1993 mini series that followed in the wake Twin Peaks mania. It’s very obvious how much the series wants to be Twin Peaks and often shows up in a lot of comparisons to it. It never quite reaches those heights however. Twin Peaks’ own mastery of mystery and otherworldly feeling just evades this production at every step but where it succeeds is capturing the other more humble aspect that made Twin Peaks great, the soap opera-like cast. It feels very much at home with the out-there and over-the-top quirky characters and I think is one of the best productions to capture that tone of the original first two seasons of the series. It probably helps that it was a Twin Peaks inspired production that was actually made during that 90’s era where soaps were still king on TV.

Where Wild Palms differs however is how the plot is far more science fiction based and often attempts to juggle complex conspiracies about religious and political leaders and it stumbles at times but by the end is able to actually pull off a fairly interesting story. Sadly the biggest hurdle is maybe the funniest thing. The series stars Jim Belushi and I’m sorry, he gives a great performance in a dramatic role of a father and businessman trapped in some crazy far right religious cult taking over corporate America through the mass media.

dailymotion

But it’s Jim Belushi, he has such an iconic and recognizable comedic voice and presence that it can be downright hilarious in really unintentional ways. Jim Belushi’s son in the series, an evil genius child, also suffers a lot from this because … it’s a very young Ben Savage. Yes, Cory Mathews is in some Shin Megami Tensei like end of days cult in this. And you know Ben Savage does an excellent job, you can see why he would become a lead in Boy Meets World after this, even as a child he’s a great actor, but it’s Cory Mathews, in a seat of power, in a cult that is trying to take over the world.

So yeah, the casting is kind of ironically funny today in 2023, especially for millennials, but the series does run a lot of great ideas and by the end of this short 5 episode mini series I was hooked. Some of the dream sequences are downright incredible and almost feel like they could have occurred in the Black Lodge, it’s definitely where the series cribs a lot of its ideas from Twin Peaks.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicles

If you know me personally you know I have an absolute obsession with the hit indie RPG called YIIK: A Postmodern RPG. Yes, truly a masterpiece that is beyond the understanding of a normal human being. Okay, enough snide, YIIK is a downright meme but it fascinates me endlessly. I spent so many years of my life reading about it and watching videos on it, and seeing playthroughs of it. Maybe one day I’ll actually play it … although I don’t think I’m that crazy. It’s a bad game but there’s a lot of creative ideas behind it and I want to say the creators’ commitment to their art is praise worthy, I have nothing but respect for Brain and Andrew Allanson and I mean this sincerely. They messed up, big time, but they created something with all their heart, they shouldn’t be made fun of for that.

Andrew Allanson the writer of YIIK is a huge book nerd, and often cites Haruki Murakami novels as his big inspiration with his 1994 novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicles as the biggest. And it shows, having read it now because of my YIIK obsession yeah, so many of the best and most creative ideas I thought were in YIIK are definitely just from this novel. That isn’t meant as a insult though, if anything like me questing to see all of David Lynch’s inspirations for Twin Peaks it just shows the creative process, we are the media we consume, and in turn we take that and turn it into our own thing.

#New Years #David Lynch #alejandro jodorowsky #silent night dealy night part 2 #sonny boy #one piece #american pyscho #Dune

12 notes · View notes

dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram · 2 years

Note

Hi Ralph! I learn so much from your blog- not just new information but you always help me understand other perspectives and empathize. I was recently diagnosed with “mild” autism and a non-verbal learning disability so I have trouble reading emotions in other people and I tend to see everything g very black and white. Your blog has been so amazing and helpful because we have a lot of the same interests but you write so considerately and coherently.

How do you feel about the Eras Tour? Do you have a dream setlist?

Also just to promote my favorite artist because I think you might like her world view. (Also I’ve probably come here before to suggest her to you) Her name is Maude Latour and she covers so much, especially navigating the blurry lines between friendship and romantic love as a young bi woman. Anything from her philosophy classes to the Too Hot to Handle reality show inspires her lyrics. One of my favorite lyrics by her is the bridge of her song Lola:

I want a world good enough to believe in

Temperature risin', the planet is heatin'

All of this time, I've been searchin' for meanin'

I remember the reasons

My sister, my friends, and the air that I'm breathin'

I'm 22, what the fuck am I feelin'?

Yeah, I just keep feelin'

Slowly healin'

Thank you for reading this and thank you for giving us your insights.

Thanks anon - it's so lovely to hear that people get something from my blog. It means a lot to hear that I communicate in a way that works for you. It is incredibly difficult navigating a world that tells you the way you are is wrong - and you have my love and solidarity as you figure it out.

As I've said before, I'm dyspraxic and I find it really useful to understand that there are two levels to that. The first is that there are things that are really difficult for me that are easy for other people. There are all sorts of tools to navigate that - and most of them work best if I emphasise to myself that the way I am is OK. The other level is that being expected to do things that I can't do has had a profound impact on my life and my sense of self. I find it really useful to think about those two aspects separately - I don't know if it's useful for you, but I thought I'd pass it on.

I'm also glad you've found artists' that resonate with you. As I've said before it takes a lot for me to get into an artist - and I need to be in a particular mood to start. But I will pass this on for others.

I'm a bit late to the party - but I didn't have a dream set-list for the Eras tour. It seemed like such a daunting task I would never have attempted it - and it seems even more daunting now (although I do have some thoughts about the songs she chose from Lover).

#Oh Taylor #I don't know that I think she'll tour long enough #to bring that tour to NZ #but I can dream

3 notes · View notes

thevirgodoll · 3 years

Note

Is it possible to be neuro-typical and still have mental health obstacles/issues? Like honestly…I am AWFUL at self-discipline. I lack focus and sometimes I have to force myself to finish things (even if last minute). But, I genuinely, truly, deeply at the bottom of my heart, DON’T believe I struggle with any mental disorders. Whenever I do research for things like adhd and what not, and I interact with fellow classmates with adhd, I don’t find myself relating to those issues on a deep profound level other than lack of focus/discipline and occasional anxiety.

It is definitely possible, but I think you're comparing yourself too much to Internet articles and your peers. I will give you facts just for your own convenience and you can decide on your own. It doesn't hurt to think about it.

Everyone with ADHD represents differently, considering there's ADHD Inattentive Type, ADHD Hyperactive-Impulsive Type, and ADHD Combined (that's all of it together, which is me!). This creates a stark difference in all of us with the disorder. Primarily Inattentive especially presents drastically different due to the low population of those who have it. It creates imposter syndrome, when it's not any less debilitating. There are even uncommon symptoms that go under the radar, that we didn't even know was ADHD.

Another thing to consider is if you are POC, AFAB, or identify as a woman, it's severely under diagnosed in these populations due to the stigma. And to speak to my demographic, Black women, we do not notice there's something off until we find difficulty in late adulthood due to the ableism and bias in healthcare. Most BW will believe ADHD is something different than what it actually is, and avoid getting knowledge from the right sources (because most are for children, or little boys...). We downplay a lot of our symptoms with mental illness.

The thing is, ADHD is specifically unique because it's a disorder that is neurologically based and developmentally based.

Let me explain executive function!

Executive function helps us manage time efficiently, switch between tasks without conscious effort, problem solve, avoid impulsivity, retrieve information, and regulate emotions. ADHD impacts the development of executive function through neurological structures of our brain, so that becomes executive dysfunction - peep this comic from ADHD-Alien to see it in a situation played out. And another!

I like to use the analogy of neurotypical's dopamine neurotransmitters (thousands of them) completing their job at work while ours don't even show up, even though they really want to. Here's an example of how severe the symptoms are in a comic from ADHD-Alien.

Therefore, it's a deficiency in dopamine and norepinephrine. This is why medication becomes important for a lot of people with ADHD to bring it back up. Beforehand, self medication is usually an issue, through other stimulants like coffee. The low chemicals in our brain will cause those of us afflicted with ADHD to seek stimuli to compensate for that, usually involuntarily.

Tasks with high stimulus are more attractive to our brains. What has some sort of incentive is at the forefront of your brain, and that's why you're not able to do things that you should do. Your brain legit screams, "Do something else, or I'm turning off!!!" This is also why those of us with it have endless amounts of hobbies because we go through various phases of what is the most interesting.

Before diagnosis, most people will be told they're lazy, just need to try focusing/try harder, or that everyone has this same problem. That is all due to professionals not advocating for ADHD properly, having a view that ADHD is just a little boy kicking, being hyper, screaming, and a belief that ADHD is tied to poor academic performance/low intelligence. This all prevents people from seeking treatment and creates internalized ableism. This also leads to feeling like the ADHD diagnosis is invalid due to childhood symptoms being suppressed until adulthood.

I must also mention... it's well known people with ADHD WILL have AT LEAST one co-morbidity... which means it can attribute to the development of these disorders if the symptoms go unnoticed. Depression, OCD, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Substance Use Disorder, and more. Autism and ADHD counts as well, and often people have an overlap because they are basically brother and sister in casual speech.

A lot of us were already diagnosed with a co-morbidity, anyway. So our brain already had to seek chemicals and that can make it even harder for diagnosis to occur and make it easier for misdiagnosis or increase risks. ADHD also creates the likelihood of suicide, doesn't matter the age bracket.

There is a lifetime prevalence for other disorders for those of us with ADHD either way, because of how difficult it is. So, even if you feel you may be "milder" in presentation, that's not invalid, and don't be put astray by TikToks or Twitter posts. Know your facts and be careful, because social media will say everything is an ADHD symptom, when it's not, especially TikTok. They will also use the wrong words or invalidate less common symptoms. Don't buy into that.

TL;DR: Though you may have mild anxiety to begin with or depression, my concern is that executive function requires the ability to self regulate. Through this you have the ability to essentially force your reward system, so that way you can prime your brain for a greater reward in the future. Anyone with executive dysfunction has a deeper problem than they realize, and I would've been doing my brand of mental health and improvement a disservice if I didn't at least try to define the reasons why you should also consider that you may display lesser known symptoms. Even if you are neurotypical in your world view, mental illness has been defined so concretely by certain people that it becomes confusion. I can tell you're having difficulty. It seems you're having trouble either way with something, so you should seek services if you are able, as well as think more about what's been going on lately.

#answered

65 notes · View notes

rmenvs3000w22 · 3 years

Text

Blog 2: My Ideal Role in Environmental Interpretation

Hi everyone!

As you know, this weeks task was to “describe your ideal role of environmental interpreter”. What a task to do when you’re in (what I like to call) a not-quite yet quarter life crisis! I have absolutely no idea what job I would like to have next week let alone long term. But that’s okay. I tried to start writing this post almost every day this week, and each time I wrote something completely different, decided that wasn’t quite it, and deleted what I wrote. But this post is due tomorrow, so instead of continually trying to identify this mysterious role, I am instead going to write a list of things I like and we’ll see where that takes me.

Things I like:

1) Being kind to the Earth

This was the first thing I thought of when I started trying to write about an ideal role, so maybe this one has more weight behind it. I really love advocating for the Earth and am constantly trying to make eco-friendly changes that reduce the impact I have on it. Being waste free is something that I have always aspired to do. I love that being eco-friendly is rising in popularity, and my biggest wish would be that it could become a trend that is cool to follow. I think in little niche communities it is, but I’m talking a trend bigger than obsessing over Justin Bieber in 2010. I also really love the idea of trying to mitigate the impact that I do have by cleaning up what other people have left behind. I think I would really like to do things like beach or ocean cleanups. If that could be a good paying job, I would never turn back.

2) Wildlife animals and conservation

I have always had a passion for caring for animals and would love for this to be a component of a nature interpretation role. Specifically, I really love studying unique species and understanding the adaptations and conditions that have allowed them to get to where they are now. This links in with my previous point of caring for the environments around us, but I would love a role that highlights and brings awareness to the negative impact of human existence on the animals that live around us.

3) Developing genuine human connection + meeting new people

I really like deep and profound conversation. This is something I’ve only recently noticed about myself, but I now value it like nothing else. I really hate small talk and awkward interactions. I would rather introduce myself and be able to have a conversation like we’ve known each other for a decade. We all have so much to learn from one another. We have all lived such different lives and we all have unique passions and opinions and experiences that make us who we are. Why wouldn’t you want to want to be able to view the world in as many ways as possible? I think a position where I have opportunity to meet all kinds of new people would be incredible.

4) Awareness + Growth

I live very intentionally and really love using nature as a tool to help me do that. I really love practicing awareness by focusing on how the environment around me makes me feel. I have always been a very emotionally grounded person, and I think practicing gratitude and awareness in nature is the best way to figure out what makes you happy. Once you practice awareness in a very physical sense, I think it starts to get easier to become aware in the other aspects of your life. I also think that ability to reflect on how things in your daily life make you feel can completely change your life. Everything from the people you surround yourself with to the food you eat or the items you own can have such an impact on your life – be it negative or positive. Once you notice how the negative things affect you, you can begin to cut them out and start to surround yourself with only the positive things. I personally think that’s the best way to work on being happy. My ideal role would physically be in nature so that I am able to keep growing and working on my awareness every day. I would love to help others do the same.

5) Science

Of course, this can be expected as I’m about to graduate with a biology degree, but I would really love an interpretation role where I can apply scientific reasoning and data to my interpretations. I love having a deeper understanding or explanation as to why things are the way they are. I love being able to look at landscapes and understand how they were created, even if it’s just a rough idea. A lot of things in the universe are still unexplained by science and theories are just theories, but I love having the knowledge to evaluate different explanations and I love trying to find which ones I agree with or don’t. I also love the possibility that everything we know is wrong. At one point, people were being taught that the Earth was flat (and also the center of the universe). Even though they were confident everything they knew was right, it simply wasn’t. There are incredible discoveries being made every day, theories that are proved wrong, and things that still have no explanation. I love it all.

So in summary, my ideal role would be one that uses scientific reasoning to interpret nature in a way that promotes or contributes to the mitigation of environmentalism, brings attention to anthropogenic effects on wildlife, allows for good conversation and genuine human connection, and promotes self-awareness and growth in both myself and everyone involved. I’m not quite sure what that role is, but if I find it, I’ll let you all know.

Cheers,

Riley

10 notes · View notes

demonslayedher · 3 years

Note

what important messages or meanings did demon slayer leave you? it left me a lot, i interpreted the "messages" and the "teachings" in my own way, i don't know if they correspond to the real messages given indirectly by the author in the manga but i'm objective in evaluating, i hope i succeeded. in the meantime i ask questions also because it's interesting to know the point of view of others 🦋

This has been such a pleasant thing to ponder all day, Anon. I feel like I had good ideas hours ago, but I’ll try to keep my answers succinct.

When I feel like I need to explain myself to people in real life for why I’m so obsessed with Kimetsu no Yaiba, besides it encompassing lore that very, very, very easily aligns with many of my long term interests, I often say it’s the simple shounen power fantasy I need in my life right now. A lot of analysts paying attention to the phenomenon in Japan have said its success is partly due to the pandemic, and how demon slaying is a basic, timeless story, and how many of Japan’s legends of demon slaying throughout the centuries have been about struggling against diseases. There is something straightforwardly comforting about the Demon Slayer Corp .vs. Kibutsuji Muzan and his hoard.

That’s not what I think Gotouge had in mind, though, as no one could had predicted how KnY’s success would skyrocket in time with the pandemic’s development. But there’s something to be a said for a good-vs-evil story, a never-give-up story, a friends-we-made-along-the-way story. Those are all good messages in and of themselves.

If I had to boil the main message I get from KnY down to one thing, it’s “you’re special, just like everyone else”, though I hate to boil it down to that sarcastic wording because Gotouge has always come across so sincere about this.

With such a varied cast full of characters who each have their own struggles, it’s really nice to see how people find themselves relating to different characters for different reasons (or looking to characters they admire because they see something they want to relate to in them), be it for circumstances or personality flaws or for their motivations. It’s also nice how I can enjoy a character for who they are and root for them even if I don’t particularly relate. Personality wise I see myself in some characters more than others, but there’s other things too. For example, as someone with a lot of younger siblings and someone who practices martial arts without being especially good at them, there are a number of little things that hit me on a deeply relatable level. Like, “ouch” levels.

But if I had to come back to that “you’re special, so is everyone else” thing, I have three general things to say about it: 1. Gotouge is in a very, very strange position, catapulted into being an extremely influential, special person. But Wani-sensei practically bleeds humility; and the insistence of looking for what’s wonderful and worth appreciating in other people has felt stronger and stronger the more popular KnY has gotten. The extra pages at the end of volume 23 really feel like they hammer this in.

2. Something a lot of people have pointed out about what makes KnY special is how much you see of the demons’ tragedies, and how Tanjiro is like Emphathy Incarnate. He’s not the first sympathetic hero out there and this isn’t the first shounen series with sad back stories for its villains. But what drives this home is that anyone has potential to become a demon who commits unforgivable crimes, no one is special.

3. Now for the message that probably hit me the hardest, driven home especially clearly in the Rengoku Vol. 0 extra: Is there any value in trying if you don’t have talent?

Obviously we all know we’re supposed to say “yes, there is, work hard, do your best” but I don’t think most of us really believe that. It is extremely easy to fall into patterns of “I’ve worked so hard but I can’t get ahead, I didn’t win this competition, my classmate is so much better than me, my work will always be second-rate, what is the point? Have I wasted all my effort because I can’t be the best? Because I can’t be noticed and praised? Will this hard work never amount to anything because other people are more talented than me?”

At least for me, it’s a lesson I need to learn over and over. Throughout KnY, it comes in many different forms: Kokushibo driven to throw away his life on two different occasions because he feels so inadequate compared to Yoriichi’s talent, Tanjiro feeling like he’ll never amount to anything no matter how hard he works because the rest of the world is still just so much more powerful than he is, Shinobu seeing only her own physical weakness when comparing herself to Kanae, Kaigaku feeling threatened when he’s not recognized as superior, and Giyuu, freaking Giyuu, so on and so forth.

But Shinjuro’s burn-out (not meant to be a pun), and young Kyojuro’s efforts to understand his change in demeanor, recognizing he cannot claim to know his father’s heart, but also coming dangerously close to falling into the same self-doubt, that hurt. Why even cheer on someone who you can tell is just going to fail anyway? What could that boy’s efforts even be worth?

But even though that boy was untalented and soon died, the strength of character he had was what left a profound impact on Kyojuro. It’s because of people like him that Kyojuro, who did later become an extremely powerful person worthy of Akaza’s attention, could overcome the tempting moments of wondering, “what’s the point of anyone who isn’t talented even trying at all?” Most of the characters are talented. Extremely talented, or extremely hard working. But none of them will ever be Yoriichi.

And Yoriichi never saw anything good in himself anyway.

This is where we all can benefit from having Tanjiro in our lives, to reread those last extra pages of volume 23, and to have someone remind us, we are special, we are precious, we are worthy of so much respect, and all of our efforts are important.

25 notes · View notes

4homiesfilm · 3 years

Photo

5 Things - Devin

April 9, 2021

And so it begins…

Well, I’m missing you all a ton right now, wishing I wasn’t back in shitty, smelly, stinky New York but still on the lake, ripping an apple bong, and trying to shimmy. Anyway, here are 5 things inspiring me right now, that I want to share, and hopefully some of my excitement and inspiration will rub off onto you...

1. “Films aren’t just for telling stories — they should create an impact that encourages other people to make work.” -Mati Diop.

This wasn’t intentional, but in many ways this may just be the perfect quote to kick off this little weekly experiment of ours. This is what I want to do in general, with each film I make, but it’s especially relevant to the film we started making on this trip. Like I said the night we delved into the dark depths of how hard life has been the past year or more: we can help each other, and we can do so by inspiring one another. Mati is the perfect symbol of this for several reasons. When I first saw Atlantics, a little over a year ago, it made me think of Alisa and her style, particularly her Cuba doc. Both those films moved and inspired me in strangely similar ways, and so I had to tell her to watch it. I think it’s safe to say that Mati’s film also inspired Alisa, and then she urged all of us to watch it last weekend, and the excitement was then spread through all of us. This is so cool to me, and gives me so much creative energy. I could say so much about the film itself, and all the different aspects that moved me and blew me away, but just this rippling impact that it had on all of us makes me so happy. However, one of my favorite aspects is the music, so I will add this quote from Mati as well (which is from the same article, linked just below the quote):

“Fatima is by far one the best musicians and artists of my generation and embodies the music of my time. I chose her because I wanted the music of the film to bewitch the audience like a djinn [genie] would, she also has an understanding of the complex geopolitical landscape of the film. My [way of telling stories] is fed by a lot of different references — European Gothic and the romantic movement, as well as my African and Muslim heritage — so I think the film is really a strange aesthetic combination. Fatima and I have a very similar hybrid culture.”

The full interview: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/mati-diop-interview

2. Lee Chang-dong (aka... Director Dong)

Wow, he has been such a profound source of inspiration for me these past few weeks. Each film of his we watched - and for Thomas and I it was three, yes three damn films! That’s like half his filmography! - had something different and new that blew me away, whether it was particular moments or something larger, something deeper pulsating underneath the surface. This interview he did after Burning’s release is fantastic, and these are the quotes that particularly stuck out to me:

“To me it seems that films these days are becoming more and more simple, and the audience seems to desire simpler stories. Of course, films sort of shape the desires and the demands the audience makes, so I kind of wanted to go against this trend and see if a film can sort of throw endless questions at the audience. Endless questions about a larger mysterious world. This film is the result of that experiment.”

“[Hae-mi is] also the only character in the film who persistently pursues the meaning of life. The moment she disappears, I wanted the audience to sort of feel her absence and ask themselves what she represents and has been searching for — her presence in this film is very important, even when she's not there. The dancing in this scene really signifies her entire presence in the film.

When she's dancing the Great Hunger dance, searching for the meaning of life and really seeking true freedom, you see her doing that dance surrounded by both the lies and natural beauty that we live in. The scene being set during sunset, you see light and darkness co-existing, and you see the moon in the sky and you also see the grass swaying in the wind, you see the livestock, the farm and, of course, the Korean national flag, which symbolizes politics. You see all these elements that represent aspects of our lives — even the Miles Davis tune. I thought that through this scene I could portray and combine all of these elements together in the most cinematic way possible, so that the audience can really feel the potential of cinema as a medium and the unique aesthetics of cinema. So from the beginning to the end of the scene, I didn't want it to feel like it was directed or staged; I wanted it to feel as if we were able to capture this slice of life very coincidentally, and to capture Hae-mi's pursuit of freedom.

...The moment I thought of this image was when I first knew I could make this story into a film.”

Full interview: www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/oscars-interview-lee-chang-dong-burning-1167869

3. Tsai Ming-liang. It makes me so excited that What Time Is It There? connected with Thomas the way it did, because this guy is one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. Watching that film was so inspiring and such a great way to end the trip, because it made me so hopeful about the future, and all its possibilities. In so many ways, Tsai makes the films I want to make. You all have to watch Rebels of the Neon God and Vive L’amour. Here is a quote by Tsai which is so similar to how I think about the films I make:

“When I was younger, I wanted to be a painter and I have always enjoyed looking at paintings. Viewing a film is admittedly a different experience from viewing a painting, but in my films I am continually trying to develop an experience for my audience similar to that of viewing a painting. I am more like a painter who is using the language of filmmaking than a storyteller who is using the medium of film.”

And here is Tsai talking about his star and muse Lee Kang-sheng, his star and muse who has been in every one of his films, which I also find so fascinating and, again, inspiring:

“It’s not about a face being pretty; it is about how you frame it. The reason that I always cast Lee is his face. His face inspires me to look at film in a different way. Thinking about it, over my twenty-year career in feature films, it was never about the story, it was about filming Lee.

[His face] evoked a particular sensation that touched me deeply, while the professional actors that I auditioned did not touch me as much. Ordinary faces, and ordinary people, tend to leave a stronger impression on me. When I chose Lee to be my actor, there was a lot of criticism. People complained that he did not have the face of a star. He wasn’t big or muscular. Yet, what deeply touched me was precisely this sense of ordinary-ness in his appearance. He was natural. Lee’s appearance in my films actually changed the whole path of my development as a filmmaker away from standard, industrial-style films and in another direction.

As we have continued to collaborate, Lee has aged and his body has changed a lot. Usually in the film industry, when an actor ages and changes, the director will get a different actor to perform. Rather than choose that path, I chose to accept these changes and to allow the audience to watch as someone gets old and sometimes gets sick. I am using the changes in the body of Lee to have a conversation with the world. He will always be my actor. Using Lee throughout my career has been a kind of constraint because I could easily have used other professional or “star” actors. Placing this constraint upon myself was an active choice: a choice that was not driven by market forces but by what I wanted to achieve in my films.”

Here’s the full article:

https://www.cineaste.com/fall2019/painterly-poetics-tsai-ming-liang-and-lee-kang-sheng

4. Our film, which I’ll be posting many stills from in the coming days/weeks, but for now, here are these three.

It felt so good to be working on something new with all of you, and just be in that process, and see what comes out of it. I think we got some really exciting stuff, which I have to now go through and explore, but just the act of filming it and working together put me on such a high. Particularly that first night, when we got the blue shots of the lake (the boat going by, the green light of the other dock turning off) and then filming Thomas eat the enchilada...I get a specific creative rush when filming something that feels so exciting and new, and it’s a rare feeling, and I felt it then, and in other fleeting moments while filming for those days and nights. This is just the beginning...

5. Planning our next trip. Whether it be a road trip or just another week or so at the lake, I just want to be together again.

9 notes · View notes

curewhimsy · 3 years

Text

-Unfinished- Defota POV vent drabble fic under the cut…

I referred to him as his fanmade “human name,” Kanade.

Defosuke is referred to as his fanmade “human name,” Hibiki.

—————— Kanade’s Point Of View

My piano teacher thinks I’m the biggest idiot to have ever lived. Emphasis on “biggest,” considering I was fat enough to break the smaller piano seat she was using that day just by sitting in it. She got really visibly annoyed at me and lectured me with how much it would cost to get fixed. While hauling out a sturdier chair for me, she asked me my favorite food. I assumed at the time she was just making casual conversation. I smiled and told her I liked rice balls. Anything with rice, really. I remember the way she furrowed her brow as she began to nag to me about how rice is a very simple carb, and that get converted to sugar in the body. I should stop eating so much rice, she said. “No wonder you’re so large.” She said. “And I don’t mean that in a healthy way.” Those were the first interactions we shared together. It all went downhill from there. (Add Kanade’s interactions with the piano teacher, how much the piano means to him, how he feels like quitting because of his teacher.) Every lesson was like that. My teacher wouldn’t stop nitpicking about things that made me feel awful, hurt, useless. She behaved, and continues to act as if I don’t even feel these emotions, that I cannot feel broken. Because I am just a robot to her. I am an android, but my feelings can still be hurt. She criticizes me as if I already don’t know these things. I know I’m fat. I know I’m not good at anything; I’m horrible at piano, the worst singer in my family, and too shy and timid to ever speak up or draw attention to myself. I lack charisma, I’m not intelligent, and I’ve never told an actually funny joke in my entire life. I have no inherent value. (Talk about more of Kanade’s dreams, such as being a pianist, a writer, how he feels like cooking for his family isn’t much (“Throwing things in a pot isn’t anything special. Anyone can do it.”) You know how some people can saturate the room with an overpowering presence just by being in it? I never understood how people are able to do that. My own presence is so weak. “Non-existent” would be more accurate. I can’t help that I’m so reclusive. Because whenever I’ve tried to come out, I was always pushed down. My classmate, Momotaro, is one of those people with a bright aura. People always smile when they see him. They loosen up and the atmosphere becomes really lively. I really admire him. Momotaro is kind to me often, but I suspect it’s mostly out of pity. He’s invited me to hang out at clubs and parties before, but I found it overwhelming because I get self-conscious. (Talk about more of Kanade’s interactions with Momotaro) My younger brother, Hibiki, is a lot more outgoing than me. He’s always in the sun, the spotlight, as I watch him from afar, from the shadows. He has charisma. He’s dorky, but in an endearing way. He’s goofy, funny, and quite popular. He wants to be taken more seriously, he says. But I still don’t see any problem with how he’s perceived. I’d give anything to be more like him. He also has some of the highest grades in his age group at school. Me? I’m just a big fat loser with a brain that doesn’t work. My younger sister, Uta, is a musical genius with a gift. She has a very close group of friends who all support each other. Uta is quiet, but she still has charisma. She’s snarky and her sense of humor is dry. The way she expresses herself is very unique. I don’t really have a solid self-expression yet. I don’t even have much of a full sense of who I truly am. Uta’s friends are really quite amazing too. Uta is close friends with someone named Taya Soune. He is kind, polite, and has maturity beyond his years. He is a very profound person—I envy that fact. He also has a beautiful voice, I was blown away when I first heard him sing. He had such an airy, delicate tone. His range could very easily be soprano, despite him being masculine. I find his voice really special. I’m just another awful baritone. Uta’s other friend, Ritsu Namine, is quite a character. Unlike me, he sticks around in your mind for quite a while. He makes a very big impact. He also has a powerful, well-controlled singing voice, really something special. When he belts the big notes it sends straight shivers down your spine. I don’t think I could ever be able to do that… not like him. Uta’s friends Momo and Teto are so cheerful. They’re always smiling and carefree. Teto is usually bouncing around making people smile and laugh, and her vibes are so positive. I want to make people happy the way she does. But all I ever do is make people and myself sad. Momo is so polite and caring. She loves the world and benefits so many causes. I’m not even as kind and selfless as she is. If I was, I wouldn’t be filled with so much envy. Uta’s friend Ruko Yokune is even taller than me. But unlike me, they’re not fat, despite them sleeping all the time. Because they’re not lazy when they’re not sleeping! Ruko is always motivated and has a lot of drive and determination. Unlike me, who’s always down in the dumps. Unlike me, they wouldn’t be sulking right now! They let nothing get in their way! Why can’t I be more like them…? Which brings me to my youngest sister, Koe. Even though she’s a bit of a crybaby like me, well, she’s just a kid. But unlike me, she always keeps trying, even through her tears. My family and friends don’t know I’m feeling this way. (Talk about an event where Kanade hid his sadness from his family.) I really want to try again too. But sometimes… it’s exhausting just knowing I’ll fail again. Just knowing I’ll be hurt and in the dark again. It’s scary. I’m afraid I will be hurt again. And then my wound will grow even bigger. I’m afraid one day it will grow too big for me to handle. Still… I spend my days to look for a reason, an opportunity, an excuse, or an incentive, to try again. Because trying again is the only way I will one day succeed.

#oof #utau

2 notes · View notes

shesasurvivor · 4 years

Text

My Hunger Games Story

I debated whether or not I wanted to do this. I wasn’t asked to share this, but my Hunger Games story is important to me. My story began during a dark period in my life. Those of you who have been following me for a while are probably already familiar with it. I’ve come a long ways since then. But The Hunger Games dramatically changed my life, and who I am, and with the new story out there in the world, maybe it’s time to tell it again.

Five months after my oldest sister passed away from a horrorific battle against cancer, I was alone in a city, trying to figure out who I was now that my old world had ended, and things would never be the same. Who was I now? What kind of a person was I? The illusion of safety was gone forever. The naivete of childhood was gone, and replaced with an existential crisis. This was in March 2012, and in the backdrop of my life, as I dealt with this, the media was abuzz with the news of the film adaptation of The Hunger Games. I knew nothing about it, aside seeing the books on Best Seller displays frequently at bookstores. I had liked Harry Potter, but skipped the Twilight craze, and figured it would be the same thing with this new pop culture fixation. I literally remember walking past a display window at Barnes and Noble that promoted the books and upcoming movie, and thinking, “Now there’s a movie I’ll never see.”

A couple weeks later, my cousin, who was also my coworker and only real friend near me, physically, at the time, was reading something on her break from her work. I asked her what she was reading, and she told me it was The Hunger Games. I was a little surprised, and asked her if she liked it. She summarized the story, and said all though it was “a little bit teenybopper” it was good. When she explained it was a dystopian tale, my interest was finally piqued. Dystopian had alwasy been a favorite genre of mine. Reading 1984 in my teens scarred me for life.

That same night, my (other, living) sister posted on Facebook that she had just finished the first book. I was surprised that she and my cousin were both reading this book, and seemed to like it. Then, the next day, my mom calls me, and says, “ I just finished reading The Hunger Games; you HAVE to read this book!” I went home and bought the Kindle version that night.

Not going to lie, it took me a little bit to get into it. But I knew I already liked it. I was looking up fanfiction before I was even done with part 1. I’m ashamed to admit that I started out looking for Gale, but when the rule change occured, and Peeta told Katniss to, “Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kill me any time you feel like it,” I threw my head back in laughter. That was the moment I fell in love with Peeta, and that was the moment that turned me into an Everlark shipper.

By the time I finished the first book, it was Easter, and my mom had flown out to spend the holiday with me. The Saturday before, we went to see the movie. I hated it from the first viewing. I remember having to fight the urge to stand up and yell at the screen, I was so disappointed in it. After the movie, we visited the local Target, and I bought Catching Fire and Mockingjay, where I started reading immediately.

Catching Fire was even better than the first book, and made the shipper in me so happy. Mockingjay, on the other hand, changed me. It was so moving, and heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. When I finished the series at last, I remember hugging the books to me, and wondering if I could somehow find a way to convince Suzanne Collins to write more books. Which was why, when she announced she was writing a new book, I felt like my one greatest wish had finally come true.

The series stuck with me, and I was obsessed. I began reading as much analysis on the series as I could find. I began reading about trauma and PTSD, and their role in the series.

And that’s when I realized I had symptoms of PTSD.

It was another year before I got help. During that time, my mental health declined significantly. On top of the horror I went through watching my sister slowly waste away, I also had an abusive boss who only aggravated things for me. Even after I started getting therapy, it took a while to climb my way out. I started drinking to deal with the massive hyperarousal I was dealing with. I started having dissociative episodes, that terrified me. I had no idea what they were at the time, and truly thought my mind had broken completely. I finally realized I was at a point where I either needed to check myself into a mental hospital, or quit my job and move back in with my parents while I put myself back together. I chose the latter.

It wasn’t fun living with my parents again, but it provided the sanctuary I needed. Slowly, I began to heal. I found a new job in my new city. I met a guy there, and one of our first exchanges was when he told me he loved the books so much, he was upset at what the movies had done to them. I thought I had found a Peeta, but unfortunately, neither of us were really in a place where we could be in a healthy relationship. Still, the experience helped me heal, and it was because The Hunger Games had brought us together.

At some point, I was finally put on medication to handle my PTSD symptoms, and my life changed signficantly for the better. It’s been (mostly) uphill ever since, and today, you would have no idea that I have PTSD, save for the occasional jump at a sudden loud noise. But The Hunger Games... it started that change in me. It gave me an outlet for the heavy emotions of grief. Reading Mockingjay was the only time I could truly get myself to cry after losing my sister, because I’m not very outwardly emotional.

The exploration of ethics, morals, and philosophy in The Hunger Games really helped cement my own values as well. I feel like that could be a whole other post, though. But just as Katniss learned to be more compassionate, and that kindness and humanity mattered more than basic survival, I learned this as well.

The very first thing my mom told me when she finished Catching Fire, was, “I just finished Catching Fire; you are SO Katniss!!” I think I grabbed onto this a little too much back in 2012-2013, because it helped me work things out. But the similaries were definitely there, almost to a scary degree. I’m still protective of this series, and Katniss, because it feels so much like it’s a part of me. It’s a part of my soul. I can’t begin to describe how important these books are to me. It transcends a normal fandom love. Even with as much as I love Star Wars, it’ll never be what The Hunger Games is to me. THG is deeper, and far more profound in my life. That’s why I get a little miffed sometimes, when I feel like I’m, I don’t know, being overlooked in the fandom? This is so deeply important to me, and I just want a voice to make it known that it is so. I think, as I’ve gotten older, I’m not exactly lke Katniss anymore, but the similarity is still there, and these books will always be with me.

Oh! And before I wrap this up, I should probably mention that it’s because of The Hunger Games that I met my best friend, @triplebigday! We live in two different states at the moment, but we’re still practically inseperable. She is family at this point.

I also met another friend, who was active here arouuund 2012-2013 (parachutesfromhaymitch). She’s long since left the fandom, but she’s brought out some of the best in me. Her influence is another reason I am where I am today.

Nothing has ever impacted me the way this world has, and I suspect nothing ever will again.

#THG #THGstory #I feel like I left a lot out but honestly #thinking too much about how I used to be #can trigger some bad stuff #and I've already been backsliding a bit this week #so here we are

72 notes · View notes

jrenvs3000 · 3 years

Text

Personal Ethic as a Nature Interpreter

Here we are, delving into our last blog posts of the semester! I have truly appreciated this course for so many reasons. Sharing perspectives and ideas about nature interpretation and the beauty of this marvelous planet with my classmates has really inspired me. It has been exciting to read about all of our unique experiences and I do feel as though it has allowed me to view aspects of nature in new ways.

In order to describe my personal ethic as a nature interpreter, I must start out by stating my core personal ethics that I carry with me in my daily life. These are as follows: compassion, empathy, kindness, honesty, dedication, respect, responsibility and fairness. These are the values I actively strive to live by every day, and certainly try to bring forth into my role as a nature interpreter. As a wildlife biology and conservation major at the University of Guelph, some of my greatest love and passion is found within nature. I have a strong desire to learn all I can about the animals and plants with whom we share this planet, and in doing so I hope to play a significant role in environmental sustainability and education.

I believe that we as humans have a profound responsibility of preserving and honouring the creatures we share the earth with. Nature is their home, and though we all enjoy its beauty, it is essential that we take our knowledge as nature interpreters to do our absolute best to care for it. I have always had a great deal of empathy for wildlife, from little bugs to majestic eagles. I also love plants, and I feel connected to nature each time I am out in the world and take the time to look around at the world of greenery around me. I love using plant identification apps on my phone to learn about new species and share this information on the apps so more people can learn of the whereabouts of these species! It is so incredible to bring people together through a love of nature. The same goes for birdwatching, which is another activity I really love. I love tagging the location of birds I see in nature so it can provide data for others to share. In case anyone is interested, I really enjoy “Seek” by iNaturalist for plant identification, and Merlin Bird ID from Cornell Lab of Ornithology for birdwatching. It is always exciting to hear a familiar call of a favourite bird when out enjoying nature, and sharing this information with people who are with you.

The Black-Capped Chickadee (30 seconds)

(A 30 sec clip of a black-capped chickadee from Hinterland Who’s Who- you can learn so much in half a minute!)

Reviewing the main questions continually asked throughout this course, I believe it is relevant now to answer them on a personal note.

Who am I as an interpreter?

I am an advocate for wildlife, their habitats and trying to bridge a connection between nature and humans in order to create a better world.

2. Who is my audience?

My audience is people of all ages who can contribute in a meaningful way to wildlife and their environment. As mentioned in the course, kids always seem like the most impactful audience because the influence we can have when they are young and learning about the world can stay with them for the rest of their lives.

“Whether you introduce a child to a pileated woodpecker, you provide tools to allow them to make safe decisions when on a hike with friends, or something else, you are offering a spark to be fanned and developed” (Hooykaas, A., 2021

3. How can I make this experience meaningful?

My experience as a nature interpreter, as a steward of the earth, can be made meaningful by making connections with others. In forming connections with other people and educating each other, holding each other accountable, and speaking for the voiceless (ie; nature), this experience can be extraordinarily meaningful.

I feel a great deal of responsibility in my role as a nature interpreter. As a young woman who is incredibly passionate about our natural world, I know my education is a privilege and a tool in my belt that can be used to connect people to nature. It is a circle, the importance of wildlife to people and vice versa. Humans take comfort in nature in order to recharge, whether that be out birdwatching, hiking, or canoeing. On some level, we all take comfort in nature and amongst our beautiful wildlife. However, wildlife really depend on us to ensure their survival based on how we value them and their habitats, which we coexist in. Wild animals are so important to us, not only on an emotional level, but their wellbeing is also a direct correlation to the health of our ecosystems and even our economy (Hinterland, n.d). Education is power, and the responsibility of teaching fellow Canadians about our natural world is one I am more than happy to take on.

Hinterland Who’s Who from the Canadian Wildlife Federation, courtesy of Environment and Climate Change Canada has an incredibly informative website regarding the importance of wildlife, and I will include it in my citations for anyone who is interested to read!

Some statistics from this particular page made me a little bit emotional. As we all know, working and studying in the field of nature interpretation, can be very daunting and sometimes feel hopeless. When we are constantly bombarded with news of environmental destruction and loss, it feels like we are fighting a losing battle. However, I will share these statistics in this blog post so at a glance it may lift your spirits a bit to see just how many Canadians truly care about our natural world!

-14.5 million Canadians (70 percent of the population) participated in wildlife-related activities around their residence or cottage. These activities included feeding, watching, studying, or photographing wildlife. Some 6.6 million people put out special feed for wildlife.

-3.9 million people made trips or outings whose primary purpose was to enjoy wildlife.

-1.9 million Canadians belonged or contributed to wildlife organizations.

-17.7 million Canadians (85 percent of the population) took part in activities such as watching wildlife films or television programs, reading wildlife books or magazines, visiting game farms, zoos, aquariums, or natural history museums, or purchasing wildlife art, crafts, or posters.

(Statistics Canada, on behalf of the Canadian Wildlife Federation)

As I have come to realize, the approaches to nature interpretation that are most suitable to me are those that are hands on and directly helpful to nature. Throughout my hopefully very long career in wildlife research and conservation, I plan on learning more about our beautiful natural world and making it a better place.

A final note, I want to thank everyone so much for a great course! I feel like I have learned so much about myself and others and my perspective of nature interpretation has broadened so much.

Citations

1. Seek by inaturalist · inaturalist. (n.d.). Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app

2. Hinterland who's who - benefits of wildlife. (n.d.). Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.hww.ca/en/issues-and-topics/benefits-of-wildlife.html#:~:text=Wildlife%20is%20important%20to%20natural%20processes&text=These%20ecological%20processes%20are%20essential,and%20by%20preventing%20waste%20accumulation.

3. Merlin Bird ID. (n.d.). Home page. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

4. HinterlandWW. (2010, March 23). The Black-Capped chickadee (30 seconds). Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjl9MUojYzY&t=30s

#final blog post!

3 notes · View notes

renjinobankai · 4 years

Text

Another byaren fanfiction I found

Joy (joyinthedance)

2006-06-11 23:42:00

Title: “Captain Material”

Characters: Byakuya x Renji

Rating: NC-17, maybe.

Word Count: 2490

Warnings: Spoilers through end of Soul Society arc, and oh yeah, yaoi.

Disclaimer: If these guys were my property, I’d be happy for life. ^_^

Summary: This is just my take on how the definition of hotness (aka ByaRen) began.

Damn that Kurosaki Ichigo! Thanks to the boy’s interruption that day in the healing ward, Abarai Renji had never told his captain the really cool line that had been on the tip of his tongue. Afterwards, he had chickened out and made up some throwaway comment, because really, it didn’t sound that cool. It sounded pathetic. Pathetic to think that a street rat from Rugonkai could so much as lay a finger on the Kuchiki heir without throwing off the balance of the universe, much less confess the fact that his long obsession with surpassing his captain was more than mere rivalry. Renji was certainly competitive, but this passion went deeper than a drive to be the best, deeper even than the desire to show the frustratingly snobby noble that class did not determine ability. He had never realized what his feelings meant until Rukia’s rescue, but now it was impossible for him to deny them. However bitterly, however hopelessly, it was true: Renji was in love with Kuchiki Byakuya.

* * *

The Sixth Division captain was seated at his desk, facing a tidy but daunting stack of paperwork. Business had just begun to return to normal after the chaos surrounding the Aizen debacle, and the serious injuries both he and his lieutenant had suffered only compounded the problem. Being behind drove Byakuya crazy, but it wasn’t just his work that was bothering him. Somehow, something else felt unfinished, but what that was exactly was dangling just out of reach of his consciousness. He tried to concentrate, but his pen slipped and spattered ink across the page. With a silent curse he crumpled the paper and cast it into the empty wastebasket he seldom had the need for. He closed his eyes, trying to relax his furrowed brow and cleanse his mind of thoughts, but it was feelings, not thoughts, that were distracting him. He should have been able to suppress the beginnings of emotion before they even registered, but he found he could not. They bubbled up to mar the calm surface of the clear pool of his inner world, forming an image out of recent memory: Abarai Renji, his fiery hair pooling about his body like the blood he lay in, eyes fierce with a resolve unbroken by defeat. Again Byakuya felt the sensation grip him, a profound and conflicted intermingling of feelings, some of which he barely recognized as belonging to him…

“Taichou!” a familiar voice barked, and Byakuya’s eyes snapped wide open. Renji took a step back; it threw him off to see the usually imperturbable man appear so startled, almost embarrassed. Before the lieutenant could let out his breath, however, Byakuya had composed himself completely.

“Renji.” There was something unusual about the captain’s tone, but Renji couldn’t put his finger on it.

“I just thought I’d bring you some – ” Renji was struck suddenly by the way the moonlight illuminated the sleek black hair and the gleaming kenseikan that bound it. In that moment Byakuya seemed to be composed entirely of soft light and stark shadows…such ethereal beauty disarmed him.

“—uh, tea.” Renji finished, flustered. He quickly set the cup down on the desk, hoping the captain couldn’t detect the slight trembling of his hand that almost made the steaming liquid slosh over the rim and onto Byakuya’s meticulous work.

Byakuya’s face didn’t change, but he took the drink gingerly and immediately took a long sip. He was exhausted, Renji realized. Only with the recent chain of events had he begun to understand the burden that the older man carried and the strain he hid behind his aloof countenance.

“Thank you,” Byakuya said, setting the cup down and once again taking up his pen. It was a signal for his subordinate to leave, but Renji lingered.

“It’s late, Taichou. I was wonderin’ how long you were plannin’ to work tonight. I know you don’t wanna, but you need rest. You still haven’t completely recovered from your wounds.”

Byakuya raised one eyebrow as if to say that he had more than recovered, thank you, and that Renji should speak for himself.

Renji looked away. “Well I’m gonna head off to bed.”

Byakuya took another silent sip of his tea, but he didn’t take his eyes off the lieutenant. “Goodnight, Renji.”

Dammit! Renji thought as he closed the door behind him. Why does he always have to make things so damn awkward? They had never exactly been friends, but now that they had faced each other as enemies, a fog of unresolved tension had settled over their every interaction. Renji had grown accustomed long ago to the icy glares and disdainful words, but this was different. He couldn’t tell how Byakuya’s estimation of him had changed, or if it even had. Though Byakuya had ultimately come around to Renji’s point of view, the fact remained that the lieutenant had defied his captain and misjudged his character. Now that he understood Byakuya’s motivations better, Renji felt slightly ashamed of his rash actions. Not that he had done the wrong thing, he was sure of that, but he wondered whether he had done it the wrong way. Had he heard an extra helping of condescension in the noble’s voice as he pronounced his name? Or…could it possibly have been a trace of tenderness?

No, no, no! Renji thought. I can’t kid myself like that. Facing out from the balcony, he looked down at the lamplit streets of the Seireitei below him, and beyond that, Rugonkai…and above it all, the thin pale moon. He could not understand how two people could work together so closely and yet maintain such an insurmountable gulf between them, which he was not sure was growing or receding. Certainly it had widened as their ideological conflict had come to a head, and yet, in certain moments since then, the barrier had seemed to give way ever so slightly, like a veil fluttering in the wind. It was these fleeting glimpses that fed Renji’s desire. He wanted to have physically what he knew he could never have emotionally – that is, nothing between them. He sighed and turned around to leave, then stopped with a start as he found himself face to face with the very object of his thoughts. “K-kuchiki-taichou!” he stammered.

Byakuya looked only slightly surprised to see his lieutenant loitering outside his door. “Is there something you want, Renji?”

You bet there is, Renji thought, imagining himself pouncing on the unsuspecting Byakuya and pinning him against the door with a passionate kiss. How glorious it would be to cup that porcelain jawline in his hand, to weave his fingers thorough that night-black hair, to gleefully and spitefully and lovingly defile the captain’s untouchable dignity with his own raw and feral passion. Except, he realized suddenly, he was not imagining this at all. He was kissing Byakuya, and rather intensely at that.

Now you’ve done it, Renji you fool, he scolded himself as his tongue explored the warm recesses of his astonished captain’s mouth. You’re going to get yourself Senbonzakura’d to shreds again. But in that moment, it was worth it. Byakuya wasn’t exactly kissing back, but that didn’t matter. Just the sweetness of penetrating those perfect lips was enough. Renji kept his eyes closed, fearing that if he opened them he would wake from a dream – and also fearing to see the look on Byakuya’s face. At any rate, his other senses were giving him plenty to work with: the softness of that impeccable hair with its aroma of opulence, the flawless skin surprisingly warm under his fingers. Renji had his captain right where he wanted him, he realized with a thrill of delight. He had never felt so powerful in his life, and this heightened his growing arousal as his hand glided beneath edges of the noble’s robes.

Unfortunately for Renji, his newfound supremacy was short lived. Suddenly he was falling forward as Byakuya’s free hand grappled for the doorknob and the door swung back open into the room, taking the two shinigami with it. The impact broke Renji’s hold on Byakuya; he opened his eyes, and their mouths parted. If he kills me right now, Renji thought, at least I’ll go with no regrets. Finally daring to look, Renji saw the slight pink flush in the captain’s cheeks, and in those bottomless eyes, a glimmer of…what?

“I suppose I should not be surprised by your want of restraint, Renji,” Byakuya said as he pushed the door shut, “but if we are to proceed, it would be unwise to do so in such a conspicuous location.” Before Renji even had time to process the other man’s words, Byakuya was returning his lieutenant’s kiss with an intensity that betrayed real feeling. Even if his tongue hadn’t been otherwise occupied, Renji would have been dumbstruck by three simultaneous realizations: one, that he was still alive; two, that the notorious ice prince seemed capable of genuine passion; and three, that he enjoyed being kissed by Kuchiki Byakuya even more than he enjoyed kissing him.

As Renji recovered from his blissful shock and responded to Byakuya’s advance, they shared a moment of heated chaos: tongues fighting for dominance, ravenous hands moving of their own accord, robes loosening and falling open around sculpted shoulders. Then, before he realized it was happening, Renji was on his back, pinned to the floor and completely bereft of control. Renji’s eyes widened; Byakuya’s narrowed. “Really, Renji,” he said archly, “don’t tell me you expecting it the other way around.” He slipped a finger under the band that held back Renji’s hair and snapped it in two, letting the brilliant locks cascade over the floor as he moved in for another kiss with fierce, efficient grace.

Now Byakuya’s own hair was unbound and both shinigami were stripped to the waist. Byakuya’s tongue began tracing Renji’s tattoos with incredible lightness, lingering at a chiseled collarbone, a taut nipple, the contours of flexed abdominals. Though his tongue was warm, its electricity sent shivers over Renji’s body. It flickered along the edge of Renji’s waistband and paused there mischievously. Then Byakuya raised his head and just looked at the lieutenant for a minute, drinking in his body with his eyes. For a moment Renji appeared transfixed by the deep blue-gray gaze; then his arm shot out to untie the captain’s hakama in one swift pull. Byakuya’s eyes widened for an instant as the garment fell down around his ankles. So did Renji’s, but for a different reason.

“Caught ya off guard, eh Taichou?” Renji started to say, but he was silenced by aristocratic lips against his own. Byakuya undid Renji’s sash with one hand and buried the other in his scarlet hair as he deepened the kiss. Renji had given up hope of regaining dominance; it was enough to know that he of all people had reduced the aloof Kuchiki heir to this primal state. Byakuya’s tongue had recommenced its calligraphic dance down his lieutenant’s body, now unencumbered by clothing, continuing downward and taking Renji’s erection into his mouth. Renji moaned and arched into the motion that sent hot waves of pleasure coursing though him. You bastard, Kuchiki, he thought as Byakuya deftly teased his arousal to new heights, you’ve totally done this before. Once again the fear he might be dreaming seized him, but never in his most private fantasies had he dared imagine this sweet delirium. Just as he was up against the very brink of release, Byakuya pulled back.

“What the hell?!” Renji cried breathlessly. “What’dja stop for?! Don’t torture me like that, Bya – gaaah!” In his indignation he had sat up too quickly, allowing Byakuya to flip him in one quick maneuver. Renji suddenly found himself face down, still throbbing with need.

“It seems you have forgotten your place, Abarai-fukutaichou,” said Byakuya, as first one, then two slick and slender fingers prepared Renji for what was to come. Even now, Byakuya’s voice kept its collected, commanding tone, but its refined edge had given way to a lustful hunger. “Do you remember when I told you the difference between you and me?”

“Yeah,” Renji answered weakly, between gasps of painful pleasure. “Level.”

“You will find, Renji, that in some things, there are only two levels. Yours – ” Renji cried out as his captain entered him, “ – and mine.” Renji’s body burned with the delicious ache of Byakuya filling him, rocking him, pressing up against the deep core of his desire. He squeezed his tearing eyes shut and his breath came in ragged moans as Byakuya drove hard into him again and again. Somewhere, he felt hands, lips, teeth, nails, heaven, pain, more heaven…everything blurring in the blinding pleasure. Years of being disparaged, reprimanded, and even imprisoned now seemed to Renji like torturous foreplay leading up to this impossible yet inevitable moment. His whole body belonged to Kuchiki Byakuya, and Renji couldn’t have wanted anything more. Their rhythm quickened, and their glistening, quaking bodies seemed to fuse together, scarcely able to contain the rising energy between them. Renji braced himself as his captain’s thrusts intensified, feeling the heat within him breach its threshold. “Byakuya – !” he managed to cry, wracked by the throes of climax. For an instant they were equals as they both came at once and collapsed on the thin carpet of discarded clothing.

They lay there, damp and fatigued and silent, as their breathing gradually returned to normal. Finally, feeling confident that it was safe to move of his own volition, Renji looked up to meet his captain’s eyes. Byakuya looked spent, and absolutely radiant. Renji had never seen him look so beautifully human. For someone who had just been ravished, Renji was feeling exceedingly proud of himself. “Well, what did you think, Kuchiki-taichou?” he asked, flashing a roguish grin. “Was I captain material?”

“Don’t be cheeky, Renji,” replied Byakuya before kissing his forehead with a touch as soft as a single cherry blossom.

Renji closed his eyes. His life had just gotten amazingly better. And, he realized, much more complicated. How were they supposed to keep this under wraps? Could he make it back to his room unseen? Where were his clothes, anyway? Oh, yeah.“Um, am I supposed to go back to my room in…this?” Renji asked, lifting up one rather wrinkled and less-than-clean sleeve of the robes they had substituted for sheets.

Byakuya looked down at his own uniform and once-pristine white captain’s cloak, which had also seen better days. Trailing a smooth hand across his lieutenant’s shoulders, he replied, “That depends on whether you decide to go back to your room.”

Renji managed to mask his giddy delight with his well-honed sarcasm. “Somehow I get the feeling this isn’t really my decision.”

“Catching on, are we?” Byakuya smirked. “You always have been a fast learner, Renji.”

Renji just smiled. Sex and a compliment from Byakuya in one night.

He wasn’t sure which surprised him more.

#anime bleach #anime #fanfiction #byaren #abarai renji #kuchiki byakuya #byakuya x renji #yaoi

69 notes · View notes

chiislushie · 4 years

Text

What FFIX Means to Me

This may sound ridiculous to some... but every once in a while I will sit here and I’ll just think about Final Fantasy IX and the impact it had on me and how I view life. Ever since finishing it a while back, I’ve wanted to just get my thoughts out there about it. So, that’s all I’m really doing here. If you choose to read this, thank you! and I hope I can convince you to play the best Final Fantasy game ever made and maybe even have a similar experience to the one I did.

Being raised in a Christian family growing up, I never thought much about death or the afterlife. You’re always taught that there’s life after death when you die whether it be heaven or hell. However, when you start growing away from those religious views and suddenly come to the realization that hey, there’s probably nothing after death. The fear... the hopelessness that left me with started to feel crippling. Trying to wrap your head around just not existing is both terrifying and impossible to really understand.

Now this is probably something that most people deal with to some extent as they grow into adulthood and everyone finds their own way to deal with it. For me that ended up being Final Fantasy XI. Now I played IX when I was around 15 or 16 and made it almost all the way through but was under leveled and wasn’t able to finish the final level. So one day a few years ago I decided I was going to replay the entire thing. I got out an old CRT and hooked up my ps1 and began what ended up being one of the most life changing stories I think I’ll ever experience.

I’ve played my fair share of Final Fantasy games at this point, including most of IX. I’ve loved the series for almost as long as I can remember and of course the characters and story are always enjoyable and well written. Every game has it’s themes. VII starts as a story of fighting a mega company, Shinra, in a desperate attempt to save the live blood of the planet while then moving into more of a story about identity. The entirety of VI is a story of loss and moving on from it. Not only does the main story follow this, but the backstories of every character mirror it. However, I can’t say any of them truly had any kind of profound affect on me. Well, this time, IX is a story of coming to terms with death and the meaning of life.

Now just to start us off for those who have never played the game, here is the setup to our story. Immediately you start following Vivi, our little black mage. Not our main character but probably the most relatable to our theme of death going forward. Vivi has a ticket to see tonight’s showing of “I Want to be Your Canary” performed by the theatre trope Tantalus on their ship of the same name. Vivi is then disappointed when he finds out his ticket is a fake. After this a mysterious rat-like kid shows him to an area on the roofs where they can see the play. They are then found by guards, where the rat kid ditches Vivi and Vivi is chased, leading him to the stage on the back of the Tantalus. For now this is where we’ll leave Vivi and switch to our main character Zidane, who on the surface, is our pretty typical puckish rogue main character type. Zidane shows up with the crew of the Tantalus, in disguise as a theatre ship, with the true goal of kidnapping the princess of Alexandria, Garnet Til Alexandros. In the middle of the show, our main character Zidane sneaks into the castle and runs into a hooded figure wearing the classic FF white mage robes. The figure dashes past Zidane, down the stairs and out the castle. Zidane, realizing the figure is the princess he’s after then goes after her. The Queen then, realizing Garnet is gone, sends our next character after her. Steiner, Captain of the Knights of Pluto and final character of our opening. We then go into a three way chase which leads to the stage on the back of the Tantalus where the play is taking place. Here, Garnet asks Zidane to kidnap her and bring her to the city of Lindblum. He agrees. Now, this is where Vivi also shows up and with a large ball of fire, drives back the guards. Vivi then ends up roped into a battle with Zidane and Garnet against Steiner. The Tantalus tries to make an escape with Steiner, Vivi, Garnet and Zidane still battling on the back. A bomb is sent at the ship which goes off, damaging the Tantalus and causing it to crash in the forest.

After this our group is off! and our true story begins. Now I’m not here to spoil the entire game but rather just to talk about some key points. I will do my best not to spoil any main plot points, however, there will unavoidably be some small spoilers.

At one point early on, our group stumbles upon a village. Here they find these soulless dolls being packaged and shipped to an unknown location. It’s here that Vivi discovers that he looks exactly like these dolls. At this point he doesn’t understand what this means but it’s the beginning of where he starts to question his existence. What is he? Why do these dolls look like him? If these dolls were artificially created then was he too? It’s not until later when traveling to an unexplored continent he gets more answers, when they come across a village full of the dolls who have begun to think for themselves and escaped. These dolls tell Vivi that they were created as tools of war and they were created with a very limited life. Eventually, in an unknown amount of time, all of them will just stop. Vivi is visibly upset by this and dashes off. Throughout the rest of the game we have multiple conversations with Vivi about this where he mimics things that many of us can relate to. Vivi: “I don't think I really understand what it means to live or to die. Where do we come from...? Do we go back there when we die...? If that's what it means to live... I wonder where I came from... Where will I end up when I die...? Why am I shaking? What is it I'm feeling...?" Vivi: "I tried to stop worrying about things, but I just can't. I know you told me not to think too much, but..." Zidane: "That's because we're different, Vivi. You don't have to do everything my way, you know?" Vivi: "I want to stop... I don't wanna feel like this anymore. What if I keep feeling like this?"

Vivi is going through these same thoughts many of us go through. Wondering what happens to us when we’re gone and what the point of us being here is. These were all the thoughts and feelings that I had been having for years. Things that I never told anyone or talked about. Never have I felt this connected to a games themes, not on this personal of a level. So every scene after this, every conversation these characters had, felt incredibly personal.

Zidane: "Vivi... Well... in the end, it boils down to two simple choices. Either you do or you don't. You'd think with all the problems in this world, there'd be more than two answers. It's not fair... but that's the way things are. The choice is yours. I just wanna protect the people I'm with. Doesn't matter whether I can or not. It's what I believe in."

“You taught me that life doesn't last forever. That's why we have to help each other and live life to the fullest. Even if you say goodbye, you'll always be in our hearts. So, I know we're not alone anymore. Why I was born... How I wanted to live... Thanks for giving me time to think. To keep doing what you set your heart on...”

“That was the only thing you couldn't teach me. But we need to figure out the answer for ourselves “

What is most important to you? What do you hold dear? These are the things you live for. When faced with the end will you say you had a life worth living? These are all answers we have to find for ourselves. No one can answer them for you. For some it may be family, others may want to see the world. There are no wrong answers as long as in the end you felt like it was a life worth living.

I still can’t know what is after death but I can at least do everything in my power to be sure, in the end, I can answer to myself “That was a life well lived”. To find happiness in the smallest things and show love to the people I care about. Then take the bumps life throws you the best I can.

There is so much more to this game and so many other characters to love. So please! play it yourself... The memories from this game and the lessons it taught me are something I will always hold close to my heart. the ideals that I choose to live by are my own and won’t be the same for anybody else. They will probably change with time but I will always do my best to live up to them. So to end this... “Everyone... Thank you. Farewell. My memories will be part of the sky... “

#personal

3 notes · View notes

quietmack · 5 years

Text

Happy Valentine’s’s Day

On this Valentine’s Day, I want to send a special message to so many people who have been with me on this journey. Some have left, some we don’t talk as much as we did, some are still walking beside me, but all have had a profound impact on who I am today and becoming happy and accepting of myself, for I guess seeing what they saw in me. So no doubt this will be long, but I have to be me. So feel free to skip to where you are tagged or who you like, and know that I love and care for these people.

I first came here as Mackforknowledge. I was shown this wonderful world by @sweetestsarahbella, which I am 100% certain I could not tell you what name she was using at the time, of the tens she has tried on since. A wonderful, creative, special woman with a mind that could baffle and intrigue me by the way she sees the world around her. It is a way I will never understand, but I marvel in all the time.

Isn’t it amazing how sometimes you can meet someone and you slip into the mindset of a younger version of yourself? That is what happened when I found @poetryinmotion (I believe) now the incomparable @coldtofire. She was cool chick from down the street. The one you try and impress and show off for because you have no idea how to be cool like her. Such an inspiration and taught me what may be the most valuable lesson of Tumblr, “That was not about you.” You may feel like they are, but 99.9 % of the time, they are not about you. Thank you for being as kind as you are cool.

You talk to someone like @southernights. Who can talk about anything with, from kids to demons.

The last friend from my former self was @vegaskittycat (I am horrible with names) now @queen-vkc. A friend who showed that friendship, once created, can last no matter how long the silence, but every time you sit together, things pick right back up.

It was now time to go away, as many of us do. But of course I got drawn back in. I vowed to be quiet, not get so involved. Not talk, not even post. Just see my old friends, if I could find them. Then if you do post, not reblog any pics of people, not be porn. Be a side of you that you can’t show, that you want to be. But then you see a post or a pic on the theme day. Then you say hi to a green-eyed girl, a few sassy ones until you become Friends with The Sassy, there are one hit wonders who stay around just long enough to start to get to know and then poof, are gone. There are Marie’s and her drunk cat friend who mixed sexy and funny while also promoting and uplifting other women.

So you indulge the drunk cat, no it is @curiouswinekitten2, not drunk cat lady, when she asks for asks. You send stupid funny asks, not trying to impress, just make her laugh. You ask so many questions you become her “Stalker”. The jokes build and build and you learn that in Compton, “Fuck off” really means “I love you”, people are strange.

You begin to see the image you have of someone based on their blog says more about how you view the world and yourself than they present. You see all these beautiful women putting themselves out there, and you could never approach them. They are out of your league. They post all this cool, smart, deep sexy stuff. Until you finally say something to them and find out you were intimidated by your future Bff who is just as messed up as you are, as we all are, here. Right @meesh33699? A more loyal, loving fierce friend, who knows when to listen, when to kick you in the ass, and knows when you kick her in the ass it is needed and because you care. Plus she will post nudes and send them if you need a pick me up or out of the blue!

There are people on their own journeys who walk along beside you. There are people who you will talk to for years who will never even share their name, @MrsPage, I know you are around. There are some who put their names in their name, or used to, @bourbon-and-pearls, whose growth as a person and a woman I am amazed to have witnessed. Hard to believe how this all started with pruney fingers. @shysirensmile, who is equal parts funny, vulgar and beautiful and who is an awesome big sis!

There are friends you will send whatever you can to help, even if it is stepping away, @prayertoprofanity. Because as Tim McGraw sang, “Just to see you smile!” Friends you can’t even remember how you became friends just know they are always there @hotdrunklove.

But you begin to realize that all these people, and so many more, come into your life for a reason and at the right time. I know there are some who I was not good to or for, it was the wrong time or place, or I was just an idiot. I know I am not perfect. But when you are ready, the right ones show up. They may not even realize it.

You feel creative one day when a freaking gorgeous woman likes and starts following you so you send a Goddess some spur of the moment long winded (I know , right?) introduction that for some reason doesn’t make her run for a restraining order, but leads to a true friendship. @sargasmicgoddess, you are exactly who you are. You are always you and that is an amazing and beautiful thing. Your boobs are not your best feature at all!

You final get the courage to message a gorgeous woman who had intimidated you with her beauty for a long time on all these theme days. And then you find out she is even more beautiful than you can imagine inside and out. Who is as caring and understanding of a person one can hope to find (and they all seem to find me). And when 2 people who are trying to be quiet get together, there is not much silence @quiet1-04.

Then there are the days you get a wild hair up your ass. When a mutual with eyes that can steal your soul, makes a comment about her body, A comment that you respond to without even thinking, countering every point she makes, explaining why each thing she sees as a flaw is a gift that should be cherished and loved. @hypnoeyes9, you can hide them but we all see how beautiful and amazing you are. (And if anyone has an issue with this, blame her, she asked what she was getting for Valentine’s Day.)

@evolvingperceptions7, thank you for helping with patience, with me being better at communicating and with acceptance. With how being open and honest, even not when that is what is wanted to be heard, will always lead to a better resolution.

Well, this is already super long, and there are so many other people I wanted to name, but if you made it this far, and want to know how I feel about you, feel free to message me, I will gladly tell you. And maybe on Valentine’s Day this was a love letter. Maybe it was a letter to remind me how far I have come. Or maybe it is a letter to You, to better know who I am. Either way, thank you to everyone who follows and may see this. I hope you all know this is a safe place that honest and open discourse is always welcome. I value you all and your thoughts.

88 notes · View notes

tinyshe · 3 years

Text

still worth reading ... more now than ever:

The Kraken Unleashed: Are We Ready to Fight the Beast?

Father Richard Heilman January 14, 2015

“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. They worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it? – Revelation 13:1-10

“In the 2010 film, Clash of the Titans, there is a scene in which Zeus, angry with the humans, is persuaded by Hades to visit vengeance upon the mortals in the form of the Kraken, a giant monster from the depths of the sea. The visual of this great evil being unleashed is something to behold:

“If this scene is evocative, perhaps it is because it’s familiar. Like a Kraken released, we have a colossal problem in our world today. There are few who are not stunned by the growing specter of evil; a darkness more profound and spreading more quickly across the globe than any civilized human being could have ever imagined. Many of those I speak with have admitted that they now abstain completely from watching the news: “It’s just too much,” they say. “It’s just so horrifying!”

“For the past two years I have been confiding to close friends my own growing sense that something is happening, that something unholy is stirring. I have spoken with others who have admitted the same suspicion. The way I have tried to describe it in the past is like the rumblings felt just before a volcano explodes.

“Now, I find myself wondering if the eruption is upon us.

“Who could ever conceive of atrocities like those we are seeing executed in the name of religion? Where once we might see coverage of a tragic conflict far away, we now face an evil that is not confined to some distant corner of the planet. With the always-on, near-instant spread of information in our digital age, your next door neighbor can be radicalized from the comfort of their living room.

“What we are facing is, first and foremost, a form of spiritual warfare. In a time where violence is rampant and the innocent are threatened, it is true that we must be ready to physically engage the malefactors. But if we deny the spiritual nature of this surge of evil we are facing, we will have no hope of victory.

“When confronted with atrocity, the immediate reaction of most people is, “What can we do to stop it?” Yes! That is the exact question we need to be asking. Summoning us to courage, St. Augustine challenges us to do battle: “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

“But to begin to answer the question of what we can do, we must first properly assess where we are. What are our capabilities? How is our strength? What is the state of our conditioning? Without this kind of brutal honesty, we are likely to flounder rather than fight.

“Jesus warned, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth” (Luke 21:34-35).

“And yet isn’t that exactly what has become of us? Consider this sobering analysis of our present condition from columnist Jeffrey Kuhner at the Washington Times:

“For the past 50 years, every major institution has been captured by the radical secular left. The media, Hollywood, TV, universities, public schools, theater, the arts, literature — they relentlessly promote the false gods of sexual hedonism and radical individualism. Conservatives have ceded the culture to the enemy. Tens of millions of unborn babies have been slaughtered; illegitimacy rates have soared; divorce has skyrocketed; pornography is rampant; drug use has exploded; sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS have killed millions; birth control is a way of life; sex outside of wedlock has become the norm; countless children have been permanently damaged — their innocence lost forever — because of the proliferation of broken homes; and sodomy and homosexuality are celebrated openly. America has become the new Babylon.

“This cultural assessment is bleak. And I believe that underlying it all is a deeper evil, a more ancient and intractable error which gives rise to all the rest. Many have pointed to “Modernism” as the heresy of our times. Modernism, while it takes many forms, is basically a break or rejection of our past in favor of all things new. And, while it seems evident that our Church is fully infected with the heresy of Modernism, I believe that it, too, is a symptom of this more fundamental threat.

“What am I referring to? Something that impacts the very nature of human existence and the opportunity for our salvation. Lacking an official name, I call this monster, “Stealth Arianism.” Students of history know that the Arian heresy – the worst crisis in the Church before our present age – was rooted in the belief that Jesus Christ was merely a created being, not equal to God the Father. Stealth Arianism follows the same fatal error, but with a twist: while the Arians of the fourth century openly denied Christ’s divinity, today‘s Arians will profess Jesus as God, and yet through their actions deny it. In other words, they don’t even know they are heretics. Many even believe that they are doing God’s work in their attempts to elevate Christ’s humanity at the cost of His divinity.

“You see, once we diminish the identity of Christ as the Son of God, we are left to view Him as simply a historical figure that was a nice guy, a respectable teacher and a good example for how we are to live. Religion is then reduced to a nice organization that does nice things for people as we seek a kind of psychotherapy for self-actualization. And this is not only not what He came to give us, but it’s something He made sure to leave no room for.

In his Christological examination, [easyazon_link asin=”0060652926″ locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”onep073-20″]Mere Christianity[/easyazon_link], C.S. Lewis makes the case plain:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

“Over the past 50 years, the Stealth Arians have done everything within their power to remove from our lived experience of Catholicism anything that would point to the divinity of Christ, and the supernatural quality of our faith. Everything has been stripped from our churches – sacred art, sacred architecture, sacred music, and the sacred elements of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – and we are left in the barren desert of the banal. It is no wonder many Catholics think nothing of approaching the Most Holy Eucharist dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, and grabbing the host like they’re reaching into a bag of chips. As Flannery O’Connor said, “If it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” It’s more surprising that these individuals even bother to attend Mass at all.

“Moreover, the Stealth Arians have deliberately chosen to keep their teachings muddled, ambiguous and elusive in an effort to increase “pastoral sensitivity” as the highest of all values, which keeps people feeling good about themselves just the way they are – though never challenged to strive for sainthood! Of course, when people like the way their church makes them feel about themselves, that keeps the money flowing into the collection basket. But whether confused and uncertain, or simply spiritually blind for lack of true pastoral care, the faithful who have been abandoned by their spiritual leaders are prone to be conformed to the world and its prince, a murderer and liar from the beginning.

“St. John Chrysostom exhorts, “Let us be filled with confidence, and let us discard everything so as to be able to meet this onslaught. Christ has equipped us with weapons more splendid than gold, more resistant than steel, weapons more fiery than any flame and lighter than the slightest breeze … These are weapons of a totally new kind, for they have been forged for a previously unheard-of type of combat. I, who am a mere man, find myself called upon to deal blows to demons; I, who am clothed in flesh, find myself at war with incorporeal powers.”

“That sounds noble for St. John, but about for us? Are we really prepared to such a fight? Just when we need mighty spiritual warriors for these dangerous times, Satan has spent the past 50 years diminishing the Church’s legions to little more than a bunch of Girl Scouts. Now that we are left in our weakened state, Satan seems to be calling out to deal the last blow, “Release the Kraken!”

“Indeed, what can we do?

“St. Paul gives us the answer in his epistle to the Ephesians (6:10-18):

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

“Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

Originally published on September 18, 2014.

Father Richard Heilman

Fr. Richard M. Heilman is a priest of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin State Chaplain for the Knights of Columbus. He is a regular guest host on Relevant Radio’s The Inner Life, and is the founder of the Knights of Divine Mercy, which is an apostolate for Catholic men’s faith formation..

He is also he founder of the Ladies of Divine Mercy, which is an apostolate for Catholic women’s faith formation. He is the author of the Church Militant Field Manual and the Roman Catholic Man website, which are both dedicated to helping Catholics understand and train for their role in the mission of combating evil and rescuing the souls of our loved ones who have lost the precious gift of faith.

#catholic #fr richard heilman #be awake #be aware #be prepared #get right with God #spiritual battle #pray #are you ready to fight the beast

1 note · View note

poppytalksmedia · 3 years

Text

We Are All Media Artists Now

Social media has become the new norm for so many people, including myself, that we often forget that what we post can have an impact. Every image we take, and upload is unique but, as soon as the post goes live, who owns that image?

It’s a difficult question to answer. In theory, once a piece of media is on the internet, it is the consumers, and they can do as they please with it. But ownership is not as simple as that; the images and videos we put on social media are a form of art, even if they do not appear to be on the surface. My interpretation of art is that anything we make with a creative influence is artistic, whether it was intended that way or not.

Let me explain: social media provides us with a platform where every individual can express themselves however they wish (within reason). Because of access to such a platform, people produce content they want to share and therefore, are content creators. Creating such content, no matter the purpose, is intended for other people to view, just like physical art you would see in a gallery. This viewership is what, in my opinion, makes social media content art and, as a result, makes people on social media, media artists.

So, back to image ownership and usage. Even though I view every image on social media as artistry, does that give other people the right to use it? It’s a question even I don’t have an answer to but, that’s where memes come in. Time and time again we see funny images from people’s personal content being used alongside a funny caption for consumer entertainment. However, these memes can have an impact far greater than the people creating, sharing, or even ‘liking’ them realise.

A prime example of this is the well-known ‘Kombucha’ meme. Brittany Broski is now a well-known content creator and influencer but, when she first went viral back in 2019 for her initial reaction to drinking Kombucha, her whole life was impacted. Brittany was working in a bank at the time and as a result of the widespread use of her video for meme content, she was let go from her job. Granted, her life now has benefitted from this outcome but, at the time, the impact could have been detrimental for her.

Brittany essentially signed away her livelihood when she posted that video; even if the video were removed, the damage would have already been done with the image being circulated across multiple platforms all over the world. Whilst arguably Brittany owned the right to the video and images cut from it, she could not physically stop other people creating content from a video she had chosen to put online. From her media art, came consumers and other media artists willing to make more content for entertainment. But ultimately, what seemed like a harmless meme had real-world problems.

Is that the problem with everyone becoming a media artist in todays world? I would argue that most people nowadays create media art, but is that a problem? Not enough people realise the influence of a single tweet or photo posted, shared, ‘liked’, to understand how impactful they can be. Media art can have a serious impact on real-world events, but not enough people realise that creating their ‘harmless’ content is in fact influential.

Meme creators are not very well-known as people but, there is enough of them to not only create their own content, but also share other people’s content to their large following. Instagram and Twitter meme pages have really taken off in the last few years and have amassed millions of followers in the process. With so many young people on these social media platforms, it does put into question what these young people are seeing and how it impacts their opinions.

Young people are influential, that’s a given, but so is everyone to an extent. Meme culture and media art that is shared over the internet can have a massive social influence on events and public opinions. This can be seen recently in the 2020 US Election which saw Donald Trump ridiculed by not only major media outlets, also social media which, in turn, may have led to the outcome of the election. Obviously, it is not just media artists that aim to inform and persuade, it is the press as well but, there is no denying these content creators who are often seen as insignificant can have a profound effect.

Looking more closely at meme or comedy pages, we find that not only are they often anonymous, they also often have a lot of followers but are private accounts. Being as inconspicuous as they are allows these pages to post content that can be deemed inappropriate for young people and get away with it. Whilst bigger media organisations, such as newspapers, are regulated in the UK, on social media it is up to the platform itself, as a private company, to deem what is appropriate for users.

Having to monitor the entire platform for themselves can be difficult, hence a lot of content does slip through the net. These pages that create this content probably don’t consider who may be viewing it, and young people who do see harmful or inappropriate content may not be aware that is harmful. Examples that I have seen from these pages include beheadings, serious injuries, and unsuitable sexual content. This is the danger of everyone becoming their own media artist and their work now being more accessible than ever.

I am guilty of partaking in meme culture; the funny tweets and TikTok videos that are shared to other platforms that I ‘like’ and share are far less harmful than others I have seen but, that doesn’t mean I do not participate in other people’s content being shared online, possibly without their knowing. I do enjoy the memes people make, but without even thinking, I often laugh at the expense of other people. Knowing that people work hard to produce this funny content makes me wish they were credited more but, unfortunately, with the internet putting this content on such a large scale, it can be almost impossible to find out who created the original meme.

However, there is of course an upside to the advancement in accessibility to people who want to share their media art for the greater good. There are people wanting to share their hard work to a large audience, earn a living and give people free entertainment; it is amazing how this has become a career for so many people. I often see video makers, photographers, influencers etc sharing their work online, and me just stumbling upon it by accident can lead to more views, customers, or income for them. For that, I am grateful that media art is as extensive as it is.

Whilst I did not always view myself as a media artist, I know that I do in fact fit the description. I create content, sometimes public, for other people to see. It may not take a lot of effort, use complex tools, or have any profound meaning behind it, but it is still ART! I took those photos or videos, I wrote that caption, I shared it with the world. That is why I think that we are all media artists now.

#prosumer #media #socialmedia

1 note · View note

agentnico · 4 years

Text

Da 5 Bloods (2020) Review

WAKANDA FOREVER!!!!!!!

Plot: From Academy Award® Winner Spike Lee comes a new joint: the story of four African American Vets - Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) - who return to Vietnam. Searching for the remains of their fallen Squad Leader (Chadwick Boseman) and the promise of buried treasure, our heroes, joined by Paul's concerned son (Jonathan Majors), battle forces of Man and Nature - while confronted by the lasting ravages of The Immorality of The Vietnam War.

Talk about coincidental relevancy! The Black Lives Matter movement is in full swing currently (following the death of George Floyd), and non-other than Spike Lee releases a Netflix film about Vietnamese veterans, emphasising that it wasn’t only the whites who fought and died for their country during the war. On a serious note, racism was always an issue in the US, so movies like this should always be welcomed, with or without the movement. Director Spike Lee recently addressed the fact of his new film’s release timing accidentally coinciding with what is happening on the news recently in an interview with Variety, where he said the following: “I cannot take any credit for this. The film was shot when it was shot; it was ready to come out when it was ready to come out. And then the world changed for everybody. When something is repeated all the time it becomes a cliché … but that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. And the truth I’m talking about is timing is everything. This film’s coming out at the right time for the world we live in.” Couldn’t have put it better myself, Mr Lee! This reiterates how severe racism is engraved in America’s DNA, especially that we keep coming back to this issue over and over again. You’d think that by now people would have learnt from their mistakes and would have become better. But as I said, it’s in the DNA of the US, and there is only so much that that can be changed unfortunately. History has taught us a lot, and sadly history tends to repeat itself. But let’s not talk about negatives. In this pandemic filled world where new films are such a rarity due to cinema closures, we actually have a decent film to talk about! So let’s talk about it!

In a nutshell, this is a quest film! Find a fallen comrade and do some good ol’ gold digging whilst they’re at it! As expected with these treasure escapades, things get out of hand. Straight off the bat, our four leads meet up at the beginning of the movie, and right away you sense the camaraderie between these guys. Through the solid writing and great acting, you truly get the feel that these are true friends who have been through a lot together, like, say, a war! You get to observe their friendship and their love for one another, and though each of them have their own ideologies and beliefs, they work naturally well together, and at the end of the day that is what friendship is. A group of different people who share something in common. That is a theme I’m sure everyone can relate to. That is unless you don’t have any friends, in which case I am very sorry to hear that. Wish I could help. Not even much for advice on that one. Maybe get out more? Honestly, I’m no counsellor, so not the best point of conversation on this topic. I can provide you with a pat on the shoulder and a “there there” if necessary, but that’s about it... Anyhow, friendship!! There’s a lot of it in this movie! That’s just one of the many profound themes applicable to humanity that are present amongst the scenes that play out before our eyes. Even with the Vietnam war aspect, from the trailer I thought this was going to be a war movie, but it actually isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the war element is certainly present in flashback form, but otherwise it is a modern day set tale. So the war is done, but that is the thing, for these guys, this war never ended. They still suffer from PTSD, getting nightmares and constantly being haunted by past demons, and thus the horrors of war are constantly surrounding them. Again, a very timely theme that can resonate with a few, even as loosely as the idea of being tormented by the past. This makes the movie work really well. It feels real, as it is dealing with a lot of true to life human emotions.

I need to also mention the technical side, as the way this movie is filmed....it feels like a filmmaker who knows his chops! For example, the way aspect ratio is used in this movie to emphasise the time and place in certain scenes really helps in separating the different story elements and tones. The modern day plot-line is presented in normal scope 23.5 aspect ratio as well as 1.78, then the flashbacks that show the Bloods fighting in the jungles of Vietnam during the war are shown in 4:3 (basically a slightly widened square shaped, very old-school) ratio with a more grainy palette, that very much adds to the feel of the past. Heck, for many audiences this might not be a big deal, but I appreciated this cinema trickery.

As a whole this movie is a solid watch (and surprisingly intense with quite a few shoot-outs), and, like The Irishman last year, perfect for a streaming service like Netflix, as it’s a pretty long movie, reaching over 2 and a half hours, so it’s very comforting to split your viewing into two or three sittings. In terms of negatives, there aren’t many. As I said, it is a bit long, and 20 minutes could have been chirped off, and also at times the movie does come off a bit preachy and on-the-nose with some of its ideas, which seems to be a bit of a Spike Lee shtick, as I had the same little complaint with his previous directorial outing BlacKkKlansman (though, again, that was a very good movie too!), but never so much that it was beating you over the head with its messages. Though as previously stated, a lot of the themes and ideas are timely messages and thus I cannot really fault them. Also a shout-out to the entire cast, everyone is on their top game, and as I haven’t seen many of these actors before, I will definitely make sure to keep an eye out for them from now on, as these fellas have talent! Special applause goes to Delroy Lindo, who gives such a raw, emotion-filled, vulnerable performance, that I really hope The Academy consider him for an Oscar nomination at the ceremony next year. The film as a whole to be honest definitely oozes with awards potential. We’ll just have to see if these nominations truly come to fruition. Also those looking forward to seeing Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman, in this movie, just want to warn you, he isn’t in the film much. That being said, his role is very important and has a great impact on it’s characters. So don’t worry, you will still get your chances to scream “Wakanda Forever!” at the top of your lungs, you Marvel sycophants!

Overall score: 8/10

18 notes · View notes