#kevin would be actually Very methodical about all of this. have many rules as to when its fair to kill a human and when its not | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redrobin-detective · 3 years

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*crawls through you bedroom window* actually sorry I’m not done talking about the tragic, complicated clusterfuck which is Ben and Rook’s friendship/partnership. Because of how it was set up and their own personalities at the time, it was doomed to fail. I mentioned previously how neither got to know/understand the other and I retract that because it’s not entirely true. They did get to bond in a way that you almost have to when you’re in life or death situations together but they never talked about it and so each went on thinking they weren’t important to the other.

The whole nature of their partnership reeks of impermanence. Max obviously knew ahead of time that Gwen and Kevin were leaving for college and had time to prepare. Ben being on his own, reckless and stupid, was not an option. I wonder how many candidates they went through before they got to Rook. They chose someone who excelled at Plumber training, who knew the rules Ben never bothered to learn backwards and forwards. Someone who would balance out Ben and keep him reigned in. Someone who was obviously destined for higher management so why not give him the best field training possible? Rook, if not Ben, was certainly aware that it was a temporary thing. Ben was 16 going on 17, soon he wouldn’t need a partner anymore; this was the last attempt at training wheels. I imagine the partnership dissolved not long after Omniverse ends, when Rook becomes Magister and probably has new training and responsibilities. Ben, almost an adult by human standards and hopefully positively molded by Rook’s influence, is deemed ready to be on his own.

So imagine you’re Rook, you’re a newly graduated Plumber who was ready to take on the universe. You’re informed you’re heading to Earth and you will be working one on one with your idol, the Ben 10, the one who inspired you to leave your traditional, isolated homeworld. You meet your hero and while he’s got the watch and the quips, he’s also a child in a culture you don’t understand. You’re disappointed that your hero isn’t as perfect as rumor and propaganda told you. You’re angry and frustrated and you don’t bother to hide it, Ben almost seems to retaliate by being more obnoxious. The more time you spend with Ben, you realize there’s a method to his madness. He wins more battles than he loses, what Rook at first took to be Ben’s flaws turn out to also be his strengths. Seeing Ben in action snarling and laughing in the face of certain destruction, he realizes that Ben is, at the same time, a stupid, idiot kid who barely has an idea of what he’s doing but also twice the hero Rook thought he was. Suddenly Ben 10 isn’t just a poster in his room or a radio show to listen to in the dark, he is a real person and that makes him even more worthy of admiration.

And Rook does admire him, quietly. Ben keeps up his walls and Rook lets him because who is he to try and really befriend Ben 10? Rook is just one of billions of Plumbers in the universe, Ben is the universe’s savior. I bet before Rook ever stepped foot on Earth it was drilled into him that Ben Tennyson was to be protected at all costs, that Rook’s life was nothing compared to Ben’s. Rook already comes from a very restrained and private culture, he won’t initiate anything beyond what is needed for to the mission and to save his partner. It is enough for him to be able to work alongside his hero (even if said hero is thoughtless and ridiculous and has no sense of self preservation and he drives Rook insane but by gum does he respect the hell out of Ben when he isn’t contemplating murdering him). When the time ultimately comes for Rook to depart, he will be sad but not mention it. Because he imagines he is only a blip on Ben’s radar, a temporary partner before Ben goes onto bigger and better things. He never tells Ben that his loyalty wasn’t to the Plumbers, to Ben 10 but to the scrawny, sleep deprived kid who always remembered Rook’s favorite smoothie flavor.

Now imagine you’re Ben. You’ve saved the universe at the cost of your privacy, chance for a normal life, general sense of safety and sanity. You’re quickly losing track of what part is you and what part is the myth about you. Two of your three major support systems abandon you without notice. Over the years of AF/UAF, Gwen and Kevin saw all your brokenness, fears, vulnerabilities, watched you go from dumb kid to hero. You didn’t have to tell them these things, they saw them happen and just knew. And now they’re gone and you only have your grandpa who you love but is also sorta of your boss now. He tells you you’re being assigned a new partner, someone chosen without your consent, someone you’re expected to trust your life and secrets with. Fine, this Rook fellow will do. He can watch your back but he’s not having any pieces of your broken heart.

You fight, both bad guys and each other. The two of you have such opposite styles that you clash. He may have training and discipline but you have experience and incredible power. You fumble and bicker and somewhere through it all find an understanding. Suddenly the rumble of his voice is familiar as Kevin’s once was, his logical approaches and teasing barbs slot in where Gwen’s used to be. It’s not bad, you tell yourself. You know this isn’t forever, that it’s not real, but it’s not bad. Because you know first and foremost that Rook is a Plumber and you are not. You also know he is a fan and you are acutely aware how short you fall from the perfect hero ideal. Ben laughs, clinging harder to the arrogant hero façade and pretends Rook’s disappointment doesn’t crush him. If someone who’s forced to work with him doesn’t like Ben, then how can he be the beloved savior everyone tells him he is even though he doesn’t quite know how he got there? He’s just a kid doing his best and soon buries himself in his perceived role.

Time passes, Ben and Rook have been through so much. Against your will, he’s seen some of your broken parts. He sees past your cracks, sees your guilt and grief and bone deep fear. But he doesn’t seem upset, even more disappointed by the failure hero. He is kind, friendly, understanding. Not enough that Ben feels comfortable to open up but he relaxes, just a bit. Rook isn’t just a forced upon partner, he’s now a friend. But he knows Rook is only here because he was ordered, he feels Rook’s annoyance with him and believes his kindness is only out of duty. It’s fine, he’s used to everyone around him bleeding him dry of everything he has and then some. Just another part of being a hero. He’s not Kevin or Gwen but he is Rook and he is grown on you because Ben is always an open soul, one who wants to receive some love he gives so freely. You finally feel steady, like you can stop pretending so much and try and find some peace and happiness in your dangerous, chaotic life.

Suddenly so fast, you’ve saved the universe once more and Rook is moving on. It’s like Gwen and Kevin leaving all over again. Rook himself seems excited to move up the ranks, to get more tassles on his uniform. He is a soldier at heart, you are not even if you play the part of one. You are a child only you’re not anymore, while you were busy saving everyone again and again your childhood was stolen from you. Now on the edge of adulthood, you’re told it’s time to take responsibility. You want to scream you’ve been doing that since you were 10 years old, that someone else can do it for a change. You want to beg Rook to stay, to drag Gwen and Kevin home, to hide your loved ones away with you and not have to confront the big, bad universe alone. Instead, you do what you always do. You swallow all your fears, your wishes and hopes and shake his hand goodbye and wish him well. You don’t tell him you’ll miss him, neither does he.

Rook and Ben part as the strangers they never stopped being even if both of them aches at the loss of the close proximity, of the friendship. Both are very much aware that the relationship was weak, transient, that it might have been something more if they gave it more attention. However, too many things were between them and both of them genuinely believed the other didn’t care as much. The rest of their lives they remain friendly, distant but polite. It’s not much different from when they fought side by side even if they wish it different.

#ben 10 #rook blonko #ben tennyson #this got long #also very emotional #I feel exhausted writing this #digging through those emotions #wow I want to cry for both of them but especially Ben #holy shit this kid really doesnt have anyone he can really rely on #someone who won't leave him or doesn't constantly demand things from him #the basis of all his relationship is doling bits of himself away #until its just him and the many masks he keeps up to convince everyone that its okay #when hes just screaming on the inside #god I bet when Rook leaves he just has a long overdue mental breakdown #you can't live with that level fo stress and pressure without snapping #losing rook who was barely a friend bc Ben refused to let himself get attached only he did and it hurts #but not as much as believing that rook saw him as another assignment a stepping stone to higher ranks #a hero he once idolized and reluctantly learned to put up with #bc Rook himself is too private and awkward to admit that he admired ben more after working him than he ever did as a kid #that seeing someone so small and so mortal doing what he does is just incredible #god the miscommunication physically hurts me #Im already lying down but like... I need to lie down

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twh-news · 3 years

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Interview: Makeup Artist Douglas Noe on Loki’s Looks Through the Years & Creating Anew for ‘Loki’ [EXCLUSIVE]

Douglas Noe has been in Hollywood for three decades. An award-winning makeup artist, he’s worked on projects such as World War Z, Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man 3, I Saw the Light, and Birth of a Nation. On top of these impressive credits, he’s also been Tom Hiddleston’s personal makeup artist since joining the MCU in The Avengers, designing all of the looks for Loki’s subsequent appearances.

Noe has been nominated for three Emmys with one win, and five Makeup Artist and Hairstylist (MUAHS) Awards resulting in two MUAHS awards. His skills include creating making natural and period looks, prosthetics, hair, and tattoos.

Along with being the head of the makeup department for the most recent Disney+ series Loki, Noe is also creating looks for the new Netflix comedy series True Story starring Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes.

We had a chance to chat with Douglas Noe about his work on Loki, The Avengers, the incomparable value of teamwork on set, and most importantly, Richard E. Grant.

Nerds and Beyond: So you started your Marvel journey with The Avengers, but what drew you to your field in the first place? And how did you get your start?

Douglas Noe: Star Wars was a huge influence to me as a young boy, both sketching and drawing, and a little bit of sculpting but not much. Cut to 1983, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” comes out and I find a magazine called Fangoria on the newsstands where I can order blood and wax and pencils and fake hair. So, I started playing with these things. I was also taken with the horror movie craze that was happening in the early 80s — Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, and others, obviously.

In High School, in 1984, I joined choir thinking I would get an easy credit, but my voice had not changed. So the choral instructor had been waiting for a boy soprano to do a theatrical opera presentation. So with that I sang the lead, I quit choir after that, because my peers were merciless, but, I learned the world of theatrical makeup which I hadn’t been introduced to.

I did years of theater. I went to a performing arts high school — it’s called Fort Hayes School for the Performing Arts in Columbus, Ohio — graduated, went to beauty school, and continued working in Ohio doing industrial, commercial, theater, and opera [makeup]. Worked for Maybelline and Revlon, got restless, worked in Cincinnati on my first film in the summer of 1990, it was July so 31 years ago, A Rage in Harlem. And my boss said you come to Los Angeles, I’ll make sure you get on your feet.

Nerds and Beyond: So you mentioned that it’s been about 31 years since your career started, what’s changed over the course of those 30 years in your field?

Douglas: How much time do we have? I’d say the biggest, biggest change would probably be the way we make these things now. Although another large change, more specific, would be the materials that we use. There’s a constant evolution and reinvention of almost all aspects of the materials that a makeup artist uses. That said, I have to shine a light on the way we do things now with the onset of digital and digital cameras. Shooting on film now has almost completely fallen by the wayside. Film was very forgiving, quite frankly, and now it’s not so forgiving. And because of that, the bar has been raised. The wonderful thing about this journey is watching my peers just get better and better and better, my colleagues rising to meet the challenge of not having anything to hide from with this new way we make films.

Nerds and Beyond: So, sometimes you kind of throw prosthetics to the wayside in favor of a more traditional makeup. How do you make that decision on which one to go with?

Douglas: That’s an excellent question. The decision is based purely on what are we going to see. That’s where I start, what is the lighting? I have a conversation with the director of photography and I find out what is the dynamic. Obviously, I know from the script whether it’s an interior or exterior, or if we’re exterior but we’re going to be on a stage, if it’s day or night. These variables all play into my decision as to whether or not I should rely on my theatrical experience and ability to paint 2D to appear 3D, or go ahead and make small prosthetics and put them where I need to put them and use actual prosthetics in lieu of paint.

That has everything to do with lighting, locations, logistics, and because most of his [Loki’s] wounds appear on his arm and some on his face in the Void, it’s all very moody and very dark. And again, the theatrical quality of the paint is not going to be altered by the changing light, it’s just going to react the same way the rest of the face is going to react. It’s purple light, it’s going to make everything have a purple hue. There was no accounting for any correction that didn’t need to be done. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. It’s real.

Nerds and Beyond: So, you did make up for not only Tom on Loki, but you helped plan out the looks for everybody?

Douglas: Yes, what I do is I surround myself with strong talent. It’s all about team. I designed Wunmi Mosaku, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia DiMartino, and Tom [Hiddleston]. Regarding the rest of it, Neil Ellis, both Dennis Liddiard and I, added to the elements of his scars and wounds, which you would only see in close-ups.

The rest of it, the parameters are set — Blade Runner to Mad Men — and stay in those confines. And obviously, I choose color palettes for the women and there are parameters set for the men, but then it’s about team. I’m a big one on a team and not putting my thumbprints on other people’s work, but rather build other people up so they feel like they own what they’re doing.

My team consists of artists that also have stronger resumes and quite frankly, skills that exceed mine. It’s the mutual trust that allows us to keep a high level of artistic integrity in every aspect of the job. It also means I get the very best from my team, and it shows on the screen.

So, I didn’t have every look in my hand. Dennis Liddiard designed the Mobius character and I had Ned Neidhardt run with Gugu and turn up the volume on some of the elements that she already possesses that we can play with. Her eyes and lips, I think Ned turned the volume on both. And because we’re shooting in order, it’s a progression in the makeup you did.

Nerds and Beyond: When it came to Sylvie and Loki, when you when you’re doing those, did you try to kind of plan them both to have any similar things to give them a Loki look?

Douglas: It’s a fair question, but the answer is no. So again, I think the characteristics and traits that were going to be similar among them, aside from wardrobe and costume hints, were all character driven. And I did nothing with the makeup and hair to try to make them look or even closely resemble each other.

Nerds and Beyond: I want to kind of back up a little bit to Tom in the first Avengers film. That was by far one of his most standout looks. Can you tell me anything about what went into the creation of that absolutely tormented, haunted look that he had throughout that entire movie?

Douglas: Yeah, and that’s probably one of the elements that, because the character has evolved, we kind of left with Avengers because by the end of Avengers, and we carried it into Endgame, he does have a bit of an edgier look in Avengers, and not many people pick up on it. But the reality is he’s a little sculpted in Avengers.

I remember sculpting his cheekbones and temples, and doing a little play on his forehead for when he’s in the cell on the Helicarrier carrier with all that overhead lighting. I did like a little devil horn shadow, which is so subtle. The only person who’s going to notice is anybody who looks back at it and having read this and knows what to look for, but it is so nuanced and so subtle. And that’s the only place I think we did that. But the rest of him is very much chiseled and sculpted, but it’s a light touch.

And I think, again, as he evolved through the Marvel Universe and into the other movies that was something that was easy to leave behind, because I think that look played directly into his evil desire to rule over Earth. We rested that design element with that storyline.

Nerds and Beyond: It’s very clear too and I’ve always loved looking at that, because I’m a huge fan of the character. I’ve always loved kind of comparing how he looked in that movie to the rest of them.

Douglas: You’re on to me!

Nerds and Beyond: I’m not! I swear [laughs] So, what’s your best method for making the actors comfortable in the makeup chair? And with the final outcome?

Douglas: It’s dialogue; listening, talking to them, talking to their representation, whether it be an agent or a manager, and doing my homework and doing my due diligence to find out what’s going to make them comfortable the moment they walk through the door. I do my homework on them. It’s not just IMDb, it’s an internet search. So, I spend some time on the web and find out who these folks are, and if I find out, for example, they’re not one that likes to talk a lot, well, the writing’s on the wall, we’re not going to talk a lot, we’ll cut to the chase and get to the point. But also, it’s about building a rapport and building a relationship. Also, knowing that, I’ve said this in previous discussions, knowing it’s necessary to get out of the way.

Like if, for example, I’m not a proper fit for somebody, I have to be plugged in, I have to be aware enough to understand that it may not be working before somebody says to me, “Hey, this isn’t gonna work.” So it’s just about being open, especially as Tom’s personal on these projects and running the department, knowing that I don’t get to do everybody. I don’t get to put my thumbprint on other people’s work. Because not only is that disrespectful, it’s very often unnecessary, because I hire good people. I hire contemporaries and peers. Truly, you’re only as good as your weakest crew member. I surround myself with good people.

So, take Owen Wilson, for example, it would have been wonderful to do Owen’s makeup, but there were times when he was not going to be shooting with Tom and I was going to need to be ready for Tom or available to Tom, so it didn’t make sense. So I never touched Owen, I had Dennis Liddiard design that look and run with it. And then Ned Neidhardt took over that look when Dennis had to depart. That’s just one example of not trying to do everything.

Another one was the Classic Loki. I wanted to do Richard E. Grant’s [makeup] so bad, I can’t even tell you. I’ve been a huge fan since 1987. I wanted so badly to bring that full circle, didn’t make sense. It just didn’t make sense. So again, I never touched him. It wasn’t necessary. Ned was always there. And I think the same thing happened to me on Ragnarok reshoots, which I ran in Atlanta again with Dennis Liddiard. I wanted so badly to do Sir Anthony Hopkins makeup, but it didn’t make sense. So I was happy to hand it off to Bill Myer.

Nerds and Beyond: Oh man, I loved Richard E. Grant in this show so much.

Douglas: He’s amazing.

Nerds and Beyond: He’s so good!

Douglas: He really is. And he’s that good in person. He’s just so fun and interesting and alluring and attractive. He’s such a wonderful, wonderful person and, of course, a phenomenal actor.

Nerds and Beyond: I was watching little videos that he posted and he just seems like the warmest person.

Douglas: You know, just one last tidbit about Richard Grant is he’s got wonderful stories and as he’s telling them he’ll often stop and pause and just laugh. Just laugh, not for the sake of the stories or for anybody that he’s telling the story to, but because recounting the story brings him true joy. So he’ll stop and embrace that joy. Oh, it’s so wonderful.

Nerds and Beyond: That’s so amazing to hear. What is the most memorable job that you’ve done?

Douglas: The most memorable … That’s a tough one because I have so many fond memories of so many projects. The first Avengers film was memorable because there was a buzz, there was a vibration, a frequency, that was in the air when we were shooting that. We kind of knew we were making something big and something special. I don’t think any of us knew how big or how special it would be, but that certainly is one of the most memorable and most special projects.

I’m pretty good about focusing on the positive aspects of all these things, regardless of how difficult the project may be for whatever reason. The pros always, always heavily outweigh the cons, but I have a lot of wonderful, memorable experiences. Another one, it’s the polar opposite only because of the conditions in which we shot, but Birth of the Nation was one of the most memorable and exceptional experiences of my career. I was on the wrong side of 40, had 25 years of experience, and had still never worked so hard in my entire life. We did a 50-day shoot in 27 days. So proud of the work we did.

It was 100 degrees with 99 percent humidity, we shot it in the summer in Georgia, in Savannah, so it was hot, humid, and just getting the makeup necessary to be on individuals to stay put was its own challenge. And then the other challenges only added to that. But Nate Parker, the director, writer, producer, and lead actor, he is a special human being. And he was inspiring from start to finish. Usually, the first people in are the teamsters, transport department, and usually I’m second. He beat me in almost every single day. He’s in three hours before he needs to be. That was a very special experience.

Nerds and Beyond: Finally, are you excited about the news of Loki Season 2?

Douglas: I’m beyond thrilled! I invite being in the dark a little bit, I kind of like surprises and I like not knowing, so I suspected, but hearing the news confirmed, I was thrilled, naturally. What are they going to dream up? This is amazing. How do you top season 1 of Loki? That’s the burning question.

#loki #loki series #douglas noe #interview #article #nerds and beyond

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Life Detained.

The Mauritanian director Kevin Macdonald talks with Jack Moulton about researching Guantanamo Bay’s top secrets, Tahar Rahim’s method-acting techniques, the ingenuity of humanity during the pandemic, and his favorite Scottish films.

“You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me.” —Kevin Macdonald

It’s not uncommon for a director to release two films in one year, but Academy-Award winning—for his 1999 documentary One Day in September—director Kevin Macdonald is guilty of this achievement multiple times. Ten years ago, he released his first crowd-sourced documentary Life in a Day and the period epic The Eagle within months of each other. A decade on, he’s done it again.

The Scottish director (and grandson of legendary filmmaker Emeric Pressburger) released both his Life in a Day follow-up and the legal drama The Mauritanian this month. The latter tells the story of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi (sometimes written as Salahi), who was held and tortured in the notorious US detention center for fourteen years without a charge. The film, adapted from Slahi’s 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary, features Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as his defense attorneys Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, with Benedict Cumberbatch, who also signed on as the film’s producer, playing prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch.

Benedict Cumberbatch as prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch in ‘The Mauritanian’.

The Mauritanian also introduces French star Tahar Rahim to a global audience, in the role of Slahi. “The ensemble is excellent across the board,” writes Zach Gilbert, “while Tahar Rahim is best in show overall, bringing honorable heart and humanity to his role [of] the titular mistreated prisoner.”

Much of the story is filmed as an office-based legal thriller involving thick files, intense conversations, and Jodie Foster’s very bright lipstick. Macdonald expertly employs aspect ratio to signify narrative shifts into scenes recreating Slahi’s vivid recollections of torture and his achingly brief conversations with unseen fellow detainees.

Qualifying for this year’s awards season due to extended deadlines, The Mauritanian has already earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Rahim and Foster respectively. Slahi remains unable to travel due to no-fly lists, but he was a valuable resource to the production, providing an accurate and rare depiction of a sympathetic Muslim character in an American film.

It was the eve of Life in a Day 2020’s Sundance Film Festival premiere when we Zoomed with Macdonald. Behind him, we spied a full set of the Italian posters for Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic Blow-Up. As it turns out, he’s not a fan of the film—only the posters—so we got him talking about his desert-island top ten after a few questions about his new film.

The attention to detail on Guantanamo Bay in The Mauritanian is impressive. There are procedures depicted that you rarely see on-screen. How did you conduct your research? Obviously Guantanamo Bay is a place which the American government spends a great deal of effort keeping secret. It was important to Mohamedou and me that we depicted the reality of the procedures as accurately as we possibly could. That research came primarily from Mohamedou who has an incredible memory. He drew sketches and made videos of himself lying down in spaces and showing how he could stretch half his arm out [in his cell]. There are a lot of photographs on the internet of Guantanamo Bay which are [fake] and others are from a later period because the place developed a lot over the years since it started in 2002 and Mohamedou was able to [identify] which photos were rooms, courtyards and medical centers he had been in.

Director Kevin Macdonald on set with Jodie Foster.

How did you approach creating an honest representation of the graphic torture scenes, without putting the audience through it as well? Whenever films about this period are [made] they’re always from the point of view of the Americans and this time we’re with Mohamedou. You can’t underestimate the fact that there have really been no mainstream American cinematic portrayals of Muslims at all, so in portraying a sympathetic Muslim character who’s also accused of terrorism, you’re pushing some hot buttons with people. It was important that those people who are uncomfortable with him understand why he confessed to what he confessed.

Everything you see in the film is what happened; the only difference is that they weren’t wearing masks of cats and Shrek-like creatures, they wore Star Wars masks of Yoda and Luke Skywalker in this very perverse fucked-up version of American pop culture. Obviously, we couldn’t get the rights to those. Actually, I don’t feel that it is graphic. There is more violence in your average Marvel movie. It’s psychologically disturbing because you’re experiencing this disorientating lighting, the [heavy-metal] music, and he’s being told his mother’s going to be raped and he’s flashing back to his childhood. To be empathizing with this character and then to see them to be so cruelly treated is so deeply disturbing.

How did you prepare Tahar Rahim for his convincing portrayal of such intense pain and suffering? Tahar went through a great deal of discomfort in order to achieve it. He felt that to give a performance that had any chance of being truthful, he needed to experience a little bit of what Mohamedou had suffered, so throughout the movie he would insist on wearing real shackles which made his leg bleed and give him blisters. I would plead with him to put on rubber ones and he would say “no, I have to do this so I’m not just play-acting”.

He starved himself for about three weeks leading up to a torture sequence—he had lost an awful amount of weight and he was really unsteady on his legs. I was very worried about it and I got him nutritionists and doctors but he was determined to stick with that. You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me. He felt a great weight of responsibility to do this correctly, not just for Mohamedou, but he was speaking for the whole Muslim world in a way.

Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as defense attorneys in ‘The Mauritanian’.

What compels you to study this period in time? Mohamedou was released a couple of weeks before Trump came to power in 2016, so the story is still ongoing for him. He’s still being harassed by the American government and he’s not allowed to travel because he’s on these no-fly lists. I didn’t want to make a movie that was saying “George W. Bush is terrible”. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. This is looking back with a little bit of distance and saying “here’s the principles that we can learn from when you sidestep the rule of law”—what it takes to stand up like Lt. Stuart Couch did when everyone else around you is going along with something that’s really terrible.

You see that around Trump with the choices within the Republican Party to stand up and say they’re going to sacrifice their careers to do the right thing. It is a hard thing when there’s this mass hysteria in the air. The basic principles that the lawyer [characters] are representing is not about analyzing and replaying what happened after 9/11, they’re directly related in a bigger way to the world we all inhabit.

Did anything surprise you in how your subjects for Life in a Day 2020 addressed the pandemic? One of the most affecting characters in the film is an American who lost his home and business because of the pandemic, so he’s living in his car. He seems very depressed when you meet him for the first time, then later he’s telling us there’s something that’s giving him joy in his life. He brings out all these drones with these cameras on them and puts on this VR headset and loses himself by flying through the trees. I thought that was such a great metaphor for the way that human ingenuity has enabled us to survive and thrive during the pandemic.

I get the feeling of resilience from [the film]. This is a more thoughtful film than the original one. I see this as a movie of [us] being beware of our susceptibility to disease and ultimately to death and mortality, [and] how we’ve found these consolations as human beings. To me, it’s a really profound thing. It also speaks to the main theme of the film which is how we’re all so similar, same as The Mauritanian. It’s confronting you with all these people and saying we fundamentally all share the basic things that underpin our lives and the differences between us are much less important than the things we have in common.

Let’s go from Life in a Day to your life in film. What’s a Scottish film that you love but you feel is very overlooked or underrated? That’s really hard because there aren’t many Scottish films and there aren’t many good ones. Gregory’s Girl is the greatest Scottish film ever made—it’s the bible for life for me. That’s very well-known, so I would have to say Bill Forsyth’s previous film That Sinking Feeling, which was self-funded and made on 16mm black-and-white. It has some of the same actors and characters as Gregory’s Girl in it. Or my grandfather Emeric Pressberger’s film I Know Where I’m Going! which is a rare romantic comedy set in Scotland.

John Gordon Sinclair and Dee Hepburn in Bill Forsyth’s ‘Gregory’s Girl’ (1980).

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? I think it was Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line, which is one of the top five documentaries ever made and in my top ten desert-island movies.

What else is in your desert-island top ten? Oh god, don’t! I knew you were going to ask me that. I’ll give a few. I would say there would have to be something by Preston Sturges—maybe The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story. There would have to be a film written by my grandfather, so probably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which is the best British film ever made. There would have to be Singin’ in the Rain, which is the most purely joyful film I’ve ever seen. There would probably be The Battle of Algiers, which I rewatched recently and was an inspiration on The Mauritanian. Citizen Kane I also rewatched in anticipation of watching Mank, of which I was very disappointed. I thought it completely missed the point and was kind of boring.

Which was the best film released in 2020 for you? I thought the Russian film Dear Comrades! was really stunning. It was made by a director [Andrei Konchalovsky] in his 80s who first worked with Andrei Tarkovsky back in the late 1950s. He co-scripted Ivan’s Childhood. I would love to make my masterpiece when I’m 86 too!

Related content

Films with Muslim characters

Movies that pass the Riz test

Scottish Cinema—a regularly updated list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘The Mauritanian’ is in select US cinemas and virtual theaters now, and on SVOD from March 2. ‘Life in a Day 2020’ is available to stream free on YouTube, as is the original.

#kevin macdonald #michelangelo antonioni #scottish film #scottish director #emeric pressburger #the mauritanian #jodie foster #tahir rahim #tahar rahim #french actor #guantanamo bay #muslim representation #muslims on film #benedict cumberbatch #guantanamo diary #life in one day #life in one day 2020 #life in one day film #letterboxd

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darkdisrepair · 4 years

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Chicago PD Alignment Chart

so i’m bored and have always thought this would be interesting to do. here follows the chart i came up with, along with an explanation of why i put the characters where they are. unfortunately there were only 9 squares, so vanessa wasn’t on this.

analysis below, descriptions in italics taken from http://easydamus.com/alignment.html. pronouns may not be correct :)

GOOD:

the three i chose for “good” are the ones who have always worked to be better, to do better. they fight for the city (and in jay’s case the country) to make it better. they have always been very clear in their dedication to the truth.

lawful good (kim):

“A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished.”

i think this describes kim well. sometimes she is so set in the law that it can get her in trouble, like with her first CI, but it is all with good intentions. she does have flaws because she might not know when to stretch the rules, but she’s learning.

neutral good (jay):

“A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them.”

this is especially accurate for jay. he’s just trying to do his best and help those he can. he has a bit of a savior thing going on, but sometimes he struggles to follow through, as exemplified with camilla. overall, though, he always has good intentions.

chaotic good (kevin):

“A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society.”

after the season 7 finale, i think this alignment is very appropriate to kevin. he wants the best for everyone but isn’t afraid to question the rules in order to bring about questions of racism within the chicago police department. some may see this as a weakness (the site actually listed it as such) but i think it’s one of the most powerful things about him.

NEUTRAL:

as we go down the list, the edgier people get :)

lawful neutral (antonio):

“A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs [him]. Order and organization are paramount to [him]. [He] may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government.”

antonio definitely firmly believes in the code of law. he was almost always the voice of reason within the group and always reminded them of the lines. this got him in trouble with voight but he always stayed true to that... until the end. which is partially why he isn’t “lawful good”, because he did let his morals slip toward the end of his time on the show.

true neutral (hailey):

“A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil-after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.”

originally i had hailey in the “good” category, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that she doesn’t actually fall as solidly good as some of the others, especially post-season seven. her choices toward the end show that she has not committed fully to executing justice as a lawful or good person would- she’s willing to toe the line.

chaotic neutral (erin):

“A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer).”

erin is motivated by good (seen by the fact that she is a cop) but she is often driven by her own motivations, or even the motivations of others, like voight or her mother. she doesn’t strive to create chaos, but it tends to revolve around her anyway.

“EVIL”:

i say evil in the most relative way. none of these characters are evil- they’re police officers who work to improve the world. these descriptions require editing because i think all of these characters come from a place that isn’t quite evil, but a willingness to tread the line.

lawful evil (adam):

“A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. (...) He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.

(...) Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.”

adam cares about the law, but he is willing to break from his morals if it means he will protect someone he cares about (as shown by how he puts his career on the line for antonio). he is a little bit of a bad boy, but one who prefers to follow the rules whenever possible.

neutral evil (olinksy):

“A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no love of order and holds no illusion that following laws, traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On the other hand, she doesn't have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has.

Some neutral evil villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own sake. Most often, such villains are devoted to evil deities or secret societies.”

olinsky understands the police department. he knows what will work and what doesn’t. he’s willing to break these rules when he knows that following them won’t get him anywhere. the “secret socities” could be considered his relationship with voight, along with his shared knowledge of who killed bingham. he doesn’t seek to break the rules, but will.

chaotic evil (voight):

“A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.”

if voight were not a police officer, he would be extremely dangerous. but since he is a sergeant, he is not quite as dangerous. yes, he is hotheaded when it comes to defending the people/cases he cares about. he knows how to get what he needs and will do it, whatever the cost. like many chaotic evil figures, he is pursued by people who seek to overthrow him (the ivory tower).

what do you think? i’d love to discuss!

#chicago pd #jay halstead #kim burgess #kevin atwater #adam ruzek #hailey upton #hank voight #alvin olinksy #erin lindsay #antonio dawson

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ukcps · 4 years

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Winner of the December Monthly Banner competition was Kevin Quick. This is what he has to say about his beautiful artwork.

The piece I entered into the UKCPS’s December monthly themed challenge was inspired as a result of two other long standing interests that I have, namely photography and an interest in steam engines and more specifically road steam engines. As a result of the latter, I attend many steam rallies around the country and when I go I take my camera with me and take many photos (that is when coronavirus isn’t an issue!). When taking the photos I am also thinking about the possibility of using them for a drawing too at a later date, so will perhaps capture a scene with that in mind. So when seeking inspiration for my next drawing, I often look through my steam rally photos.

When it comes to drawing I am very much an amateur and completely self-taught and I see myself very much on a learning curve. As a result, so far, when I start a new picture I chose it so that it challenges me in new ways. At the time my drawing of General Gough was the largest drawing I had attempted (33 x 22 cm) and was a complete scene which in addition to the very complex engine in the foreground had a line of steam engines and fairground rides in the background, not to mention a number of people too.

When doing my drawings, as they do invariably contain a lot of detail, I have found that I prefer to use a very smooth paper and in this case it was Canson Bristol board and for colour pencils I use Faber Castell Polychromos as I have found them good for detail, although in the picture of General Gough I did in addition use some Caran D'Ache Pablo and Luminance pencils. To start a picture off, I use a grid technique as a guide to generate an initial detailed outline sketch. I do that using Adobe Photoshop’s grid tool to overlay a grid over the photo on my computer. As the picture I was drawing was very detailed, I used a grid with quite small squares. It is then a matter of calculating what size the squares need to be on the paper so that the picture will fit nicely. When drawing the grid on to the paper I use just the weight of the pencil to draw the lines i.e. so they are as lightly applied as possible and will erase later without leaving a trace as the outline is drawn. I think this approach may not be the quickest way to generate the outline but I get quite a bit of satisfaction drawing it by this method. At this point I always come to one of the more difficult points for me in the process and that is to take the plunge and actually start applying the colour pencils. For this scene I think I basically started at the top and worked down to the bottom and being right handed, worked from left to right on the way down keeping a clean sheet of paper under my hand to try and keep the picture as clean as possible. At the same time as doing the drawing I had the Photoshop zoomed in on the corresponding area of the original photo and when necessary I would use the colour picker tool in Photoshop to sample the colour in the photo to get a better idea of what pencil(s) to use on the drawing.  In this picture the background detail was quite challenging as the fairground rides and the steam engines in the background were small, so applying lines and highlights to give the right impression of the detail was difficult but I am very happy with the end result. When drawing the main engine itself drawing all the wheels and spokes was perhaps the most challenging part especially when drawn freehand (I wonder if others use rules and curve tools when doing such things…?). Finally, one of the things that probably brings this picture to life in my view is that the photo was taken on a beautifully sunny day, so the main engine casts a lovely shadow on the ground and combined with the perspective of the road it is on helps give depth to the finished picture.

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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years

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Ok, if I’m going to keep proper DM records for D&D on this tumblr, I need to actually write them.

Being An Account of Game #1: In Which Several Youth Attend A Party, And Some Experimental Magic Has Less Than Optimal Results

[all game logs thus far]

The Setting: It is a Thursday night in the city of Karna Vi, called by many the last surviving bastion of the Trava Empire in Highnorth. In the mostly student-inhabited districts around the University Karnassa, scholars are working, resting, eating, hanging out--and having parties.

More excitingly, there’s a classics major party tonight. And it’s not just any classics majors. It’s the self-styled Young Pre-Glorians. In a society mostly built on a relatively even mix of human, gnome, and dwarf citizens, where humans are the unnecessarily tall people who don’t live nearly long enough to ever get really good at rulership or scholarship (though gods know you won’t find a more versatile, intense group of people in any species you can name), this little cluster of classics majors includes two humans, two tieflings, and a half-orc, all living in one slightly shabby student apartment. Every single one of them is going to be dead before they’re a hundred. Every single one of them is obsessed with figuring out how things worked at least 2000-4000 years ago. And they party like it.

Our NPC hosts for the evening include Peary (a bubblegum-pink tiefling who makes historically accurate bathtub gin, and reconstructs ancient crafting methods from diary fragments and scraps, and den-mothers all the rest of her roommates with constantly chipper affection); Athenasi (or Athen, a human cleric of the Church of Lost Things made entirely out of sticks and paleness, who buries himself in ancient records trying to reconstruct the specific rituals used to properly worship long-mislaid gods); Riva (an enormous half-orc sportsball player and also wizard who mostly only bothers using spells to light his bonfires and translate dead languages, intent on uncovering the distant origins of magic as written ritual); Lisha (a human who got briefly campus-notorious last year when she reconstructed an ancient power-binding ritual well enough to actually summon an archdemon who hasn’t been seen in three millennia and somewhat incidentally get herself warlock powers); and Wren (a dark-skinned, gray-haired tiefling who knows very nearly everything there is to know about the politics and power struggles spanning half a continent and seven centuries, 5,000 years ago, and does not particularly care to know anything else).

These five like hands-on experimentation and practical research. They’ve thrown historically-accurate parties in celebration of a dozen ancient forgotten holidays, with Peary’s bathtub gin to really make it work. There’s rumors about an invitational-only orgy last year. In short, their parties are the place to be if you’re the kind of nerd who likes to study hard and party harder. Which...does not quite describe our PCs, but it’s a fun party to be at anyway.

Marion the human paladin has spent enough afternoons pouring through ancient records with fellow church acolyte Athen that they can’t really turn down the invite, even if Athen’s insistence on “you need to talk to other live people more than once a week!” is ridiculous and hyperbolic anyway. Kevin the elf barbarian has been a cornerstone of the University sportsball team for ten years straight, and would never turn down a party invite from a teammate, let alone a party that looks as promising as this one. Kou the halfling bard, who spends so much time with the music-majors half the university forgets she isn’t one, got invited along with her bard friends to be the entertainment.

Gnome rogue Reigenleif, of course, is the beer supply. Reigenleif is always the beer supply.

It’s a Thursday night, and a four-bedroom apartment with attached rooftop deck is crowded full of graduate students eating cheese, drinking a dozen different kinds of alcohol, and arguing about history. Life is, for the moment, good.

The Hooks:

One by one, each of our PCs--vaguely familiar to one another, in a nodding-acquaintance sort of way, though nothing like the friends they’ll be by the end of the week, let alone the eventual end of this campaign--finds themselves tugged into conversation with an acquaintance.

First (in-game time, though we played these way out of order thanks to a handy d4), before the party even begins, Reigenleif heads down into Old Town to pick up some beer. It’s one neighborhood over from the district of ancient, pre-Imperial ruins and thousand-year-old buildings where the University and its denizens live, so most students don’t know to come this far for good, cheap beer in the first place. (Of course, even if they did they wouldn’t know to go where Reigenleif’s going.)

Her destination is a small bakery owned by two dwarven brothers and a sister. Out the front, they sell excellent bread, with a very nice additional line in cakes and cupcakes. Out the back, the middle dwarven brother Milosh acts as middle management for a smuggling ring that’s known in the right, quiet corners for its ability to get just about anything for anyone, given the right place. Reigenleif runs errands on his say-so on weekends, in between avoiding her own research and helping out with everybody else’s. Buying a few kegs of decent ale that hasn’t been marked up for tax, and then reselling it to thirsty college students, has basically been paying her rent for the past two years.

“How’s the family?” Milosh asks, and, “how’s that school thing going?”

“Eh,” says Reigenleif, and, “school’s school,” and, “parents still want me to go straight,” which isn’t even a pun because every player at the table is so generally disinterested in heteronormativity that it’s too easy to even bother with.

“You know,” Milosh says, “you really want to do more of this and less of that, could be Anna’s got a job for you.”

Anna’s not a real person--she’s been the code name for the leader of the smuggling ring for over a century, and given that her so-called last name literally means ‘human’, probably if there ever was a real Anna Cheloveko, she’s long dead now. An Anna job might be hard, but it’ll pay, and then some.

The job, Milosh explains, isn’t too complicated. There’s a certain package that needs to get to the city of Ormiras, and then past Ormiras a week or so’s travel up into the local mountains. The contents of the package don’t matter, but with the strictures on the large industrial teleportation circles downtown, it’s unlikely to pass through without comment. A University student, on the other hand, looking to do some research in the library of another University, could use one of their teleportation circles without anybody raising an eyebrow at their research materials, now, couldn’t they? Grab a few friends to head with you up into the mountains, and when you come back down, there’d definitely be a job waiting--back here in Karna Vi, or with some of Anna’s friends in Ormiras.

(Reigenleif and her player go on a digression about bags of holding, immovable rods, and other magical items attempting to pass through teleportation circles, and then the potential of measuring continental drift with immovable rods over a long enough period of time. Milosh raises his eyebrows and wonders if maybe Reigenleif should stick with those University-types after all. This is about to prove extremely indicative of Reigenleif’s entire character.)

With that offer in mind, Reigenleif heads off, six kegs of ale for thirsty college students in hand. This would be tricky for the average human, let alone a three-foot gnome, but Milosh lets her borrow the Bag of Holding for the job. It’s no real risk. He knows where Reigenleif lives. He knows where her parents live. She’s good for it.

Second, an hour or two into the swing of the party, Kevin and Riva are out on the roof deck supervising a cluster of increasingly tipsy party guests as they climb onto each others’ shoulders and attempt to joust with a couple of sportsball sticks. The pair of them are taller than any two gnomes stacked together. They are taller than nearly any gnome on top of any dwarf here. They are taller than most double-stacked dwarves. They make good referees.

They’re cleaning up some good-natured bruises and spilled beer when Kevin’s friend Poppy finds him. She’s a half-elf, and barely as tall as his bicep. She has dark curly hair, and smudged-up makeup, and she is already drunk.

“Kevin,” she says. “Kevin, Kevin, look. Can I ask you a favor? Can I beg you a favor? Please?”

Poppy is in Kevin’s cohort in the art history department--they started with the same incoming class, ten years ago. You don’t really graduate out of university, in the Nine Cities. You study until you get hired into a professorship or government position, or you run out of money, take a lesser job, and quit. Poppy’s dad is an elf, with plenty of resources to throw in her general direction. She hasn’t run out of money yet. Ten years is a lot longer for a half-elf like Poppy than it is for Kevin.

Poppy says, “if I don’t do something big, I will never get hired, ever. I will never amount to anything.” She says, “I know there are Glorian-era ruins on the Iris Peninsula that haven’t been found. I know there’s something there.” She says, “I know there are elven aesthetic motifs in Glorian-era Irissan fragments. Seven hundred years before elves ever made it to this continent. If I go, I can prove it. It will matter. It will mean something.”

“You grew up on Iris,” she says. “And you’re good at hitting things. Right?”

It’s been 512 years since the Elven Ascendancy broke their isolation and sailed forth into the world for the first time in six millennia. Five centuries since the very first elves set foot on the continent of Nokomoris. The Glorian Empire conquered half the Iris Peninsula, and was driven out, and collapsed, a thousand years ago. Not a single soul under Glorian rule had ever even heard of elves. And sure, elves live on the Iris Peninsula now--in the cities, like proper elves, in shining tall buildings with a lovely background view of the tangled wilderness where they never, ever go. Elvish art in Glorian-era ruins? It would upend everything anybody knew about history. It would be huge.

“It would probably make my parents really happy if I tried to do a big art history thing instead of focusing on sportsball so much,” Kevin muses. “Sure, I know people. We can probably put an expedition together. I bet my parents would be happy with that.”

(Kevin and his player do sound enthusiastic about the idea of getting some good research and publishable papers, which tells this DM a lot I didn’t already know about his priorities. Sure, he likes sportsball, but getting an actual job in art history would make his parents happy. Kevin says ‘that would probably make my parents happy’ like it’s the only long-term life goal he’s ever bothered assuming he probably needs.)

Third, Kou and her band take a set break.

Lio’s been switching between singing and rocking out on the zither, because even in a cluster of bards, Lio makes a good frontwoman. She’s a tall dwarf, dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyeliner, dark everything. She’s a star in the music department, a cornerstone of student activities committees, a manic pixie overachiever, a goth anarchist who knows exactly what’s wrong with the world today, the artificial urban-wilderness divide that’s been imposed on society in the new century, the problems of traditional religion and modern capitalism. She’s a level 3 bard. She’s got a townie boyfriend in one of the local guilds who doesn’t mind when she makes out with boys, girls, and everything else on offer at parties. She is, without question, the coolest person Kou knows.

Lio is drinking water and also taking a couple of shots of Peary’s bathtub liquor, and Kou is hanging out and watching the party, and Lio sighs.

“You want to get out of here?” she asks. “Not tonight, I mean--the whole University conspiracy. Just go.”

“Yes,” Kou says, instantly on board without a single detail. Her girlfriend has been gone for three weeks. Her body is ready. Her entire everything is ready. “When? Where’re we going?”

“We could totally make it as bandits out by Zakri,” Lio says. “You know they’ve been doing all kinds of weird construction stuff along the main road between the two seas, trying to restart the canal project, and the main road’s been in shambles for months. I have a total plan. We could camp out along one of the smaller roads and take out caravans, be bandits, live like queens. It’d be great.”

“Yes,” Kou says again. “Absolutely. I’m in. I know some healing stuff, and I have a pocketknife. Let’s do it.”

(Kou asks precisely zero questions about where, or how, or why, or even who, for the entire conversation. I knew this would be the case by halfway through session 0, and I am delighted to be proven right. Kou is ready for absolutely everything and absolutely nothing. It’s going to be great.)

“Hmm, but we’d probably need more people,” Lio muses, in that way people do when they remember all the practical reasons they’re mostly joking about quitting their job and running away to live in the woods. “Unless you know how to use a sword.”

“I know some people!” Kou says. “Let me see who I can talk to. We can totally do this.”

Fourth, Athen takes a break from circling around the party with an eye out for any serious injuries or alcohol poisoning risk to find Marion in the kitchen, eating cheese and arguing about historical probability and textual interpretation with Wren. They’re having just about as much fun as an antisocial math nerd with a special interest in history can have at a party full of academics who also have a special interest in history--which is kind of a lot, come to think of it.

The party is loud and boisterous, so they head to Athen’s tiny closet of a bedroom to chat. There’s something he needs to talk about, and Marion’s a good enough friend to listen.

“So you’ve been talking about doing some fieldwork,” Athen says. “Have you thought about going west?”

Athen’s family lives west of Karna Vi, in the wide highland plains of the Highnorth, where there’s nothing for miles but cattle, a few sheep, a lot of rye and oats, and the occasional potato field. In his grandfather’s day, they were part of the Trava Empire, and that was fine. Theoretically their village doesn’t belong to anyone but themselves, now, and they farm as best they can, and sell what surplus they can at the closest big trade-town to someone who carts it into Karna Vi and sells it to city bakers and and housewives and leatherworkers, and it’s fine too, mostly, except for when it’s not.

Lately it’s not, so much. The Uvencatra Empire in the western mountains has been making some motions towards marching eastward across the plains, and they’re eyeing the region Athen’s family is from next. He’s concerned. He’s really concerned. He’s maybe about to drop out of school concerned.

“You know how to fight things,” Athen says. “And maybe you’d find things over there, in the Western Orthodox church records. I can go home and help heal people, but I don’t know how to protect them.”

“Oh, I am not the right member of my family for this,” Marion frets, and Athen frowns.

“Would any of the rest of them care?” he asks.

“Point,” Marion agrees.

(They’ve got a quiet monotone the whole time, slow to assemble sentences except when they start contemplating the actual possibilities of research within the Uvencatra Orthodox churches, spilling out hypotheses and jargon like water. Marion’s player has degrees in anthropology. Marion cares about Athen’s problems, but has no real thoughts about them. Marion has thoughts about historical research.)

“Let me think about it,” Marion says, and the party goes on.

The Fight

By dawn, most of the party has cleared out, though not quite all of it. A couple of failed Con saves mean that Kou is dozing in a chair in the living room, not quite with it enough to notice the rest of the band leaving, and Marion is passed out cold in Athen’s bed alone. Reigenleif has spent most of the party hanging off to the side, watching people and occasionally scooping up anything that appears to maybe be a weapon that’s been carelessly left sitting around, tucking it into the Bag of Holding just to make sure this party doesn’t go sideways in a nasty way; she can’t leave until the kegs are given back over into her keeping, so she might as well help clean up.

Kevin, out on the deck, has not actually realized the party has ended yet. He’s only just beginning to notice the lack of people as the first rays of sunlight creep over the city, and a very loud bang sounds from the top of the roof.

It jolts Kou dozily awake and Marion tumbles onto the floor in an instant. Kevin and Reigenleif, already outside along with Riva, look up just in time to see the outlines of Wren and Lisha on the roof in the pale morning sun, alongside some billowing smoke and two cat-sized things skittering along the roof tiles in acid green.

Then Wren falls off the roof to the deck and takes so much damage in a ten-foot fall that her scrawny little NPC self ends up unconscious. Then combat begins.

There’s a flutter and a flurry as the quasits on the roof hiss at everyone and skitter away. Initiative is nobody’s friend, and fighting something ten feet above everyone’s head isn’t easy, but Reigenleif upends her entire bag of holding and sends a pile of belt knives, a couple of blunt-ended reproduction historical weapons, and a fancy letter opener skittering out over the desk, and hides behind a convenient barrel. Riva grabs a sportsball stick. Kou has enough movement to rush out onto the deck just in time to see Lisha fall; “Oh, fuck!” is now the official incantation for her Healing Word, and Wren is safe, although not very happy.

Kevin tries to intimidate the quasits, all six-foot-seven of burly elf growling directly at them, and it actually works on one. The intimidated quasit instantly turns into a bat and swoops off through an open window into the living room to Get Away. The other quasit, annoyed at the attempt, casts Fear on Kevin in retaliation. It is super effective.

Marion makes it out to the living room, wearing no armor but carrying the heaviest candlestick she could grab, just in time to see an acid-green bat swoop through the window and start destroying things. It’s very early and she is probably slightly hungover but also she’s a good researcher and knows what a quasit looks like, so she whacks it. It bites her, poison and all--make that definitely pretty hungover.

Athen made it outside around the same time as Kou, and has been trying to heal people who need it as Riva tries to whack at a tiny demon on his roof, Kevin attempts to cower behind a gnome, and Reigenleif and Kou both throw things. Kevin succeeds in a wisdom save after another round or two, and manages to do some good thwacking damage. The quasit turns into a foot-long centipede in an attempt to escape, and skitters along the wall through the door into the house, before Kou Cutting Words’s it to death.

Lisha tries to jump off the roof to get down and help, and sprains her ankle. Athen is already inside giving Marion a hand, and none of the PCs seem inclined to help.

Between Marion and Athen, the second quasit goes down relatively quickly. The first one has already disappeared into nothingness, and the second one follows soon behind. Marion lay-on-hands’es themself, and drinks some water, because they have utterly forgotten that quasits have venom at all and damn, this hangover. The nauseous feeling passes after a minute or so, anyway. Athen goes outside to heal Lisha, Peary appears from her own room wanting to know what the hell is going on out here, Kou is jumping between ‘I insulted it and it died and I’m real cool!’ and, ‘did my entire band just ditch me here because I fell asleep?’, and everything is equally as chaotic as it was in the middle of the fight, when the knock sounds on the door.

The Head of Campus Housing brought security with him, and he’s not happy.

The Aftermath

Marion pulls rank and some excellent persuasion checks to keep the entire set of Young Pre-Glorians from getting evicted right now, and everybody else in the room from being put on housing probation. Marion lives with their parents on the other side of the city, or, more accurately, in the library--housing probation doesn’t mean much to them, but it does matter to everyone else.

Lisha, apparently, was attempting to use the limnal nature of sunrise, sitting over a party that both was and was not a party any longer, with people below who were drunk, and dreaming, and no longer drunk, on a day of particular celestial configuration, to do some magic experimentation, because obviously. Wren wanted a familiar. Lisha could totally use a ritualistic setup to cast a spell she isn’t high enough level for and doesn’t actually know, and also alter it to bind to somebody that isn’t even her, and make it work. Maybe not today, but probably next time, right?

The PC’s are somewhat annoyed with Lisha, but also agree that the university just does not have enough ritual magic experimentation labs, and that really needs to be corrected. They also figure that, housing probation or no, it’s maybe not a bad time to get out of town for a bit. They’re good at fighting things together! They’ve got some options!

They toss some ideas around--Kou’s option involves banditry, and Marion’s pretty sure they’re not allowed to do that, but Reigenleif’s has, like, three weeks in the mountains, and that sounds pretty awful too. Athen and Poppy both need help, and they’re both friends--Kou doesn’t care where they go, and Reigenleif is up for whatever sounds interesting. Poppy’s research trip sounds like a good way to make the university like them, which after this display might be particularly useful.

In the end, the decision comes down to Marion, who’s happy to help people but is mostly only considering either of these treks as a road to more god-research, to help define the variables to determine the maximum number of gods the Church of Lost Things still has to discover. There’s a western orthodox church in the Uvencatra Empire, out past where Athen’s family lives, and they could have all sorts of records and knowledge that Marion doesn’t...but nobody knows what the hell is going on in the Iris Peninsula. The entire place is apparently a forest, and that means people don’t travel it much for some reason? It’s all sort of unclear and difficult to understand from this side of the continent. So what the heck, Poppy’s thing it is.

Poppy is somewhat taken aback to be woken up slightly hungover at 10 AM by Kevin and also a random human knocking on her dorm room door to tell her that yes, they and two other people she’s never met are in for her expedition, and also can they leave tomorrow please? But also sure. Why not. These things happen when you ask Kevin for help. She’ll talk to her advisor to push those expedition grant funds through, and they’ll leave on Monday. Maybe let’s have lunch or dinner this afternoon? After Kevin and Marion sleep?

Reigenleif, meanwhile, takes Kou along to return the bag of holding and empty kegs to Milosh, in the hopes that having a highly charismatic good-persuasion bard along might just increase their chances of persuading Milosh to let them keep the Bag of Holding for this journey. Little does she know that, while Kou is fun and delightful and good at persuasion, she’s also an awkward flailer who doesn’t entirely understand what they’re supposed to be convincing Milosh of in the first place, and has no proficiency in deception whatsoever.

The conversation stumbles and bobbles a bit, before Reigenleaf gets to the meat of the situation: they’re not going to Ormiras, but does Anna maybe need something delivered or picked up from another of the Nine Cities? Perhaps something on Iris? Like, say...

“Cloud Bay,” Reigenleif says, naming the only city on the Iris Peninsula she can remember at 7 AM on zero sleep, which is unfortunately not the same one Poppy mentioned to Kevin earlier.

“Cloud Bay?” Milosh says. “Shitty weather and elves? What’re you going there for?”

In an attempt to leverage her higher Deception score over Persuasion, Reigenleif starts to spin a relatively believable lie about engineering research and her own degree work. Unfortunately, she doesn’t roll particularly well. More fortunately, or perhaps more unfortunately still, Milosh doesn’t actually care ‘why Cloud Bay’, aside from as a rhetorical question, so it’s not particularly useful in any case.

“Look,” Milosh says. “Let me talk to Anna about Cloud Bay. Check back in tomorrow or Sunday, maybe we have a job for you there, maybe not. A’right?”

They snag a couple of muffins on the way out. Kou feels a little useless, but so be it. Marion crashes in Kevin’s room, since he just needs a corner to meditate in anyway, and everyone naps until the meet-with-Poppy time in the evening.

The Campaign Plan

Poppy is just a little taken aback at the new crew she seems to’ve acquired, but she’s ready to go and they’re game, so, sure. Let’s do this.

She elaborates a little on what she told Kevin, in some angles, and says less in others. The Glorian Empire, as some of the party know better than others, stretched out from here in Karna Vi across most of the Attiks Sea and around the continent. They sped the civilization in the Midlands, they spread the Eight Churches throughout the continent, they founded cities, they built roads. They founded Port Charé on the coast of the heavily-forested Iris Peninsula and began to build in, cutting trees and building roads and forts and towns as they went. Kera the Conqueror, famed emperor, oversaw the expansion across easily half of Iris, naming literally everything after himself as he went.

Iris was hard to conquer, and the Empire began to pull out not long after Kera died. They left ruins and roads, and the people of Port Charé, who’d lived in this city for two centuries at this point and were not about to move back to the other side of the sea, even if this was going to be the only bastion of civilization for a thousand miles. There was a working road to Ormiras. They’d manage.

As for those ruins, deep into Iris--who knows what’s there?

Sober and in front of three strangers, Poppy doesn’t say anything about pre-Elven Incursion elven aesthetics. It doesn’t really matter, because Kevin told everybody everything, but some things are just too historically improbable to admit you believe.

“So,” says Poppy. “Are you in? I can get grant funds and our travel paperwork Monday morning. We circle into Port Charé and follow the roads as far as they go. I have an old map, Imperial-era. We can find things nobody’s seen in hundreds of years.”

The party doesn’t need to ask each other. They’re in. They all know they’re in.

Six months on an archaeological expedition in a forest for four city kids, three of whom have never seen anything more than a single ten-acre orchard in their lives?

Oh yeah. Total piece of cake.

#c the DM #The Yarn Crew goes adventuring #d&d #game logs

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enterprisetrampstamp · 5 years

Text

The Martinstown WIP Part 2

Part 1

This is Part 2 of what is likely to be a nice, long t’pura fic once I’ve banged it out. It’s a bizarre length and actual amount of plot by my standards, so I’m in want of comments and breaking my usual rules to post sections of it before it’s fully complete. Please, holler at your ambiguously gendered author with any #thoughts you have!

***

“For Pete's sake,” Kevin says, as T’Pring calmly sweeps the pot of assorted trinkets and other random items that they’ve been betting from the center of the table to join the rest of the pile in front of her. “Who invited the Vulcan?”

She blinks, pausing in her movements. “This is a weekly poker game.”

Kevin’s face does something complicated. “Yes, but--”

“I was not invited,” T’Pring tells him. “None of us were invited. This is a recreational activity intended to facilitate the formation of strong bonds amongst the crew; it occurs during a pre-established, recurring timeslot.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Kevin tries, eyes roving about the table as he attempts to find a sympathetic face. (He does not. The most sympathetic among them, Cristobal, fell asleep nearly an hour earlier. A thin blanket has been draped across his shoulders, and his gentle snores undergird their conversation.)

T'Pring continues to gaze at Kevin. “I do not understand," she says.

“Except that you do.” Kevin sets his hand flat on the table, fingers spread wide and his eyebrows rising, as he attempts to keep his voice calm. “I’ve been on this ship for nearly two years, so I know you, and I know that you know what figures of speech are, and I know, and you know, that you are trying to fuck with me.”

“I am a Vulcan,” T’Pring says, managing to convey an air of vast insult without modulating her voice or altering her expression. “I do not ‘try to fuck with’ people.”

"No," Pinga agrees. Her eyes glitter with amusement, and she brushes a strand of her thick dark hair- shot through with streaks of grey- back over her shoulder. "You do not try to fuck with people."

The corner of T'Pring's mouth raises, momentarily and minutely, into a smile. She inclines her head, stating solemnly, "I accept your compliment as intended."

Laughter runs around the table.

“I’m going to cry.” Kevin runs a hand over his face, his own laughter a little fraught and helpless. “I’m--Lainey, I am, literally, I’m going to cry.”

“You can’t cry; you already bet your handkerchief.” Lainey snickers as he groans, leaning forward to thunk his forehead lightly against the table. She reaches out to pat his shoulder, and where it should be sympathetic, instead it is mildly condescending.

Such is the way of younger siblings, or so T'Pring has been led to assume.

She finishes collecting her winnings. It all means little to her, of course, but most of it means little to any of them, and what items may be missed by their original owners usually find their way back to them before the end of the night. The collection of material goods is not the point of this activity--regardless of whether or not T'Pring excels at it.

“I shall provide you the opportunity to win it back,” she tells Kevin magnanimously, picking the handkerchief out to toss into the center of the table as the ante.

The rest of the table follows suit; Lainey selects a battery to add to the pot, then reaches across her brother to grab a piece of candy from his pile. Elina adds a pack of saltine crackers, and Pinga- who has been playing for Cristobal since she herself ran out of items a couple of hands earlier- raids his pockets for the little slip of fabric he uses to clean his glasses, before ruffling his hair fondly and adjusting the blanket about his shoulders.

"How motherly," Elina teases, the words warm and taunting in her thick Georgian accent, and Pinga doesn't even look over at her.

"Bite me, grease monkey."

Cristobal snuffles in his sleep.

"Whatever," Kevin says, voice muffled. "Thanks, T'Pring. You're a real mensch."

She tilts her head slightly in agreement. "It is only logical, as I have no need of a handkerchief."

"Naturally."

T'Pring glances up as the door slides, silently, open on the far end of the kitchen. Their captain pauses on the threshold; not in need of their service but simply to observe, and so she returns her attention to the human bonding ritual of mild teasing and humiliation.

"Yes," she says. "It is in fact natural that Vulcans do not cry."

(This is not, strictly, an accurate statement; Vulcans are capable of tears, although they are rarely shed due to the obdurate cultural norms requiring mastery of their emotional expressions. But T'Pring has become fluent in the human usage of hyperbole for humorous purposes, as well as a great many other things which would scandalize even the most progressive members of her homeworld's society.)

(If only there were more of her people left to be scandalized.)

Kevin makes a noise which can only be classified as "pathetic", and groans out, "Please stop."

"Take pity on him, beta," Fatima says, one hip propped against the doorframe and her arms crossed over her chest. "He's too delicate for your sledgehammer of a sense of humor."

"Is that an order, Captain?" T'Pring asks calmly, as she collects the cards. It is her turn to deal. She considers employing sleight of hand in order to provide Kevin the necessary cards to regain his handkerchief, but it has been approximately 4.786 Terran years since she was last able to effectively avert suspicion by calling upon her species' reputation for integrity, and Elina is remarkably observant for a human.

Of course--

The ability to cheat is why they use a physical deck of cards, as opposed to the holo-capabilities of the glass table upon which they currently play. She meets Elina's warm hazel eyes across the table, a smirk hiding somewhere in the darkness of her own, and shuffles the deck with a sharp, crisp noise.

Fatima does not smile, but there is something in the twist of her lips that implies amusement. "Consider it a firm suggestion," she says, her tone dry.

"Very well." T'Pring turns her shoulders away from the table to face her, one slanted eyebrow rising slightly. "Do you wish to join us?"

"Hm." The captain pushes away from the door, shoving up the sleeves of her shirt and squinting as she moves to lean over the table. "Is there anything worth winning left?" she asks, poking at the modest pile of objects next to Lainey's elbow.

"Is there ever anything worth winning?" Elina holds up a primitive- and cheap- ink pen from her own pile. "I have no paper to use this on."

"Because the washers you brought are so much more practical," Pinga mutters.

"Don't be rude, bebia."

"I'll show you rude, tiguaq--"

Fatima clicks her tongue. "Behave," she admonishes, even as her hand sneaks out for a piece of chocolate out of T'Pring's winnings.

T'Pring, quick as a snake, smacks her hand away. "Behave," she echoes.

Despite the gloves- thin, dark purple leather- which she has long adopted as a method of protecting the crew from the brunt of her telepathy and vice versa, she catches the barest glimpse of her captain's playful shock and ire.

"Insubordination," Fatima says, with a side-eyed glare as she rubs her stinging knuckles. "I could have you court martialed."

"Given that we both have no brig, and that I am the member of this crew most often called upon to serve the role of a security officer--" T'Pring shuffles the cards with another crisp crack-- "I believe your Terran phrase is, 'I should like to see you try.'"

Fatima sighs. "You were so sweet when we met."

T'Pring pauses in her movements to stare at her. "I was not," she says, her blank face once more conveying an air of grave insult.

"No," Elina agrees. "She's always been a prideful twat; she used to just hide it behind Vulcan stoicism and words that none of us could understand."

"Now I am a strong independent woman who openly speaks her mind," T'Pring says, in a tone that could almost pass for dry.

Lainey shoves her glass in the air, cheering, "L'Chaim!"

T'Pring raises that piece of chocolate between her index and middle fingers, a glitter of amusement somewhere deep in those dark eyes, and agrees: "L'Chaim."

#t'pring #t'pura #femslash #the latter two being where this is going anyway #for now it's a lot of exposition to set up the ship #and her crew #basically... it's kelvin timeline star trek with a firefly conceit by way of an original series star trek vibe #it is the best of every world. or like... that's the goal anyway #anyway let me lay out the questions I have about this section if anyone wants to offer their feedback:#am I throwing too many people at you too quickly?#does it feel just entirely out of character for t'pring or are you getting the sense that she's been on this ship with these people for long #enough for this to make sense?#I'm playing fast and loose with her characterization since there is SO little in canon--one TOS ep and then obviously she isn't even #officially acknowledged in AOS yet #imo I've got a good story built for who she is and why BUT I'm very open to commentary if it's not coming across well #and more broadly--is the style coming across well? it's been a while since I wrote extensively in present tense #and it gives it a particular vibe that I'm trying to balance against my need for constant dumb jokes #speaking of dumb jokes #pinga looking at cristobal: aw :') isn't he so cute :')#I'm gonna rob him :')

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witches-and-weirdos · 6 years

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📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂 📂

Send “📂“ for a random yet completely useless headcanon I have

Wow, 11! Good!

Flaani doesn’t yet know a lot about the great wide world outside her tribe. Yes, she had traveled a lot, but at first she was surprised that humans don’t have gills and even more so that they can’t by any means breath under water. She was sorry for them as they are missing out on so much that they can’t even imagine. If you tell her there is a land there water is a scarce resource and there’s mostly just sand, she will find it hard to believe.

Currently she also just assumes that everyone can mold tools by hand like her people does. Should she ever see someone sharpen a blade with a sharpening stone she will be very confused as to what that person is trying to achieve, and should the person tell her, and explain that he can’t do it in any other way, she will ask for the weapon, run her thumb across its blade twice or thrice on both ends, and give it back terribly sharply.

For the Oolashi, using tools is oftentimes the harder way to do something. As with sharpening a blade, to find a good material and work it into a sharpening stone and then run it across the edge many dozens of times is simply not comparable in effort or time to just simply taking the blade and using magic on it. Creating a blade is even worse, really, why don’t humans just take the ore, extract the iron with a pull of hand and then shape it? It only takes a minute or so if you don’t want any decoration on the thing… Well, Flaani will one day have the realization that humans don’t do things that way. And then she will have to learn that humans simply can’t do it that way… She will be sorry for them. But that day hadn’t come yet.

Raw fish is tasty, but cooked fish is undeniably better! Too bad cooking needs fire… Only a madman would ever in his life try to use fire… Aaaaand humans apparently, for whatever reason… Yepp, humans are really strange creatures!

The Oolashi have multiple sets of small pointy teeth that is good for catching and holding prey, but not for chewing. They cut flesh with tools, or hold it with their teeth and pull it with their hands until it tears apart. They can also do the crocodile spin but that’s only for larger prey and of course, in water. It is quite fun to do though and children love it!Of course, sometimes a tooth or two can’t take it and breaks or falls out. This is not very painful, but definitely unpleasant. It will however grow back in a few weeks, and until then, plenty more are still there to use. Oolashi loose and recover teeth until the end of their lives.

The Oolashi only have hair on their heads (where it naturally grows in dreadlocks) and on the final section of their tails (where it grows really strong and pointy.)The Oolashi can hurt people by slapping them with their tail’s hair, but it isn’t actually dangerous... okay, that isn’t true. The wound it leaves is shallow and will barely cause much bleeding. The problem is the bacteria that likes to live there. Bacteria that will get into that shallow injury and make the wound fester if not sterilized. This is one of the Oolashi’s natural defense mechanisms, though it technically can be used to hunt land animals if one does not have tools.The Oolashi have no natural immunity against these bacteria, but they have practices to quickly “sterilize” the wound in case an accident happens (which isn’t entirely uncommon among children). And when I said they “sterilize” it, I meant they put a certain alga on the wound, which kills the bacteria off quite quickly. They cultivate this alga, so there’s always more than the tribe would ever need. It also attracts fish, which are easy to catch. They don’t kill too much from these attracted fish, as they know very well that would scare them away for good.

You can easily tell if an Oolashi is trying to scare you away or if she’s terribly angry at you. Accompanying the threatening facial expression and body language, her cheek-fins will stretch out and rise, then shake. The hair on her tail will also rise, so she can more easily slap you if she needs to. This is of course, not a cognitive decision, but a natural part of her body language. She can however move her cheek-fins like this willingly, but other Oolashi will easily tell that apart from actual natural expressions. Other emotions also affect the cheek-fins and the tail-hair, though somewhat less obviously to the human observer.

Kevin’s inherited ability had caused plenty hate and envy in his early life. As a child, he often used it instinctively to avoid getting hit, which - if you train to be a warrior and you’re the only one who can do that - is a problem. He was often taunted to try and fight without his ability, which he normally accepted, but when he didn’t win like that, he was looked down upon greatly. Noxus values strength in many forms, but if you are given a free wildcard you can play to escape any danger, you just become weak in people’s eyes if you use it too often.With time, he learned to only use it when he needed to, and never in training if the rules didn’t specifically tell him to. When he made this step forward, and showed that he is indeed in the same skill level as the others without his abilities, the negativity he received became positivity, and suddenly his ability was a virtue.Noxus values supernatural powers if you are someone even without them, or if you gained them through your own effort. But if you have no virtues behind those powers, you are just a weakling, given an unfair advantage freely.Kevin will always keep this in mind. He does not rely on his ability to partly phase into the spirit world and become incorporeal at any moment. No, he fights without it for the most part, only using it when needed or when a tremendous amount of effort is spared by doing so. (Or sometimes when is absolutely done with life’s bullshit and really just wants to get something done.)

Remember that Kai’sa’s second skin appears and disappears in a cruel way, shattering into a million pieces and poking its way through her human skin, and then her human skin mends the newly gained holes together? Yeah. While between her legs there is a slightly different method (larger plates form near and close together over her lady parts) her breasts are not this lucky. That part, especially the nipples, is so incredibly painful that she simply just never ever tells the skin to leave that area. She did once. The creature eventually returned the skin when a hunt came. No second time had happened. And if she ever got into a relationship, if her partner asked her to show it in an intimate situation, she would have to refuse to do so.

Many that are maddened by the Void speak in terrible languages that not even they can understand. Many hear whispers and commands that they must obey, even though they themselves have no concept of what the words they hear mean. And many draw strange otherworldly shapes on whatever surface they can find that entrance them. These are things one can easily encounter when infiltrating or fighting a Void Cult.Kai’sa understands those words. Not cognitively, but something in the back of her mind has an understanding that somehow leaks into her unconscious. In truth, it is the creature that lives on her, in her, who understands. She cannot actively read what a Void cultist wrote, she cannot translate what the Void cultist said, she just… knows the crucial unrefined meaning behind those words. And she doesn’t necessarily realize when this happens.She also draws these entrancing, maddening shapes when she’s bored. She draws them into the dust on a table, into the sand with a stick, and if you gave her paper and a pencil, she would doodle them on that too. She hadn’t yet realized what they are, after all, she’s just passing time. Normal humans doodle things as well, right? What would be so special about her shapes?

Riot said Kai’sa’s facial markings are tribal warrior-tattoos. I said they are instead a sensory organ that her creature forced her body to develop. This isn’t new. What is new is that she also has markings on the side of her ribs in area below her breasts, which stretch up through her back. She also has two-two sets of markings on her arms, and on her legs. Markings always come in pairs of two.The sensory organ tingles numbingly if close enough to Void Energies or Voidspawn, and gives her mind the exact direction of those energies or creatures. She doesn’t have to see, hear or smell one’s presence to be able to shoot it down. She has no idea how or why it works, but she is grateful for it and considers it a very beneficial mutation, even a “gift”.

There! 11 random headcanons I loved to get out there! Forgot they all should have been useless, but oh well!

#Flaani #Kevin #Kai'sa

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scifigeneration · 6 years

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Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

by Kevin Knuth

US F/A-18 footage of a UFO (circled in red). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Parzival191919, CC BY-NC-SA

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

Cover of the October 1957 issue of pulp science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This was a special edition devoted to ‘flying saucers,’ which became a national obsession after airline pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a saucer-shaped flying objects in 1947.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there’s plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

The Fermi paradox

The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.

With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.

This photograph was taken in Wallonia, Belgium. J.S. Henrardi

Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.

UFOs, taboo for professional scientists

When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.

While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. And no aliens have visited Earth. Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.

I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.

The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can’t possibly be true. But there are credible witnesses and encounters.

Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?

I am often asked by friends and colleagues, “Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?” The fact is that they do. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.

As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock’s respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.

UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope’s field of view. Further sightings are documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky,” in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.

Evidence from government and military officers

Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.

Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil. Arquivo Nacional Collection

The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call “CIA drones” which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.

1948 Top Secret USAF UFO extraterrestrial document. United States Air Force

In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: “Disclosure has happened. … I’ve got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who’ve come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?”

A topic worthy of serious study

There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.

Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.

Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#science #astronomy #NASA #UFO #telescope #space exploration #extraterrestial life #Aliens #alien life

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davidmann95 · 7 years

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why os batman great?

I tend to focus on the guy in the red cape at the expense of my second-favorite character, but let’s make something very, very clear: in terms of the sheer scale on which he and his iconography have imprinted onto the popular consciousness, the ratio of output to quality across all mediums for a character that’s experienced the kind of proliferation he has, and his ability to not only endure but remain at the forefront of the genre he practically co-founded across decades, Batman is easily the greatest superhero of all time.

Explaining why that’s the case is tricky to truly, substantively get right, because there’s a difference between what makes him great as a character, and what’s made him the most popular character in the world. Not to remotely denigrate the attention span/intellect of the average moviegoer or suggest they don't 'get it', but I have to imagine most people don’t love Batman because they've extensively thought about his complex motives and the fascinating symbolism that rules his world, but because he drives the world’s dopest car over to his job of suplexing crime into the pavement, which is valid because that rules. So we’ll start at the immediate mass-appeal stuff and work our way down, and the big one is something we’ve already touched on:

Batman’s cool as hell

There are certainly contrarian souls who would argue that Batman is not, in fact, relentlessly awesome. Think about him for a couple seconds, they might note, and he’s a silly manchild living in his parents’ underground basement who can only emotionally engage as an equal with literal children; they might drive the point home that his particular brand of macho hyper-capitalist performative Hard Man edginess is both shallow and ultimately passe. And if you’re engaging in a character-centered examination of his archetype as in The Lego Batman Movie or Morrison’s work with the character, those are fine points. But in terms of whether or not he’s surface-level cool? Pull your head out of your ass, peel open your eyes, and engage with the larger culture for a second: Batman is as close to objectively rad as it is possible for a concept to be.

Batman wears black body armor and drives awesome cars and sounds like Kevin Conroy. Batman lives in a mansion that also has a cave in it, and wears the slickest suits when he’s not being Batman, because Batman can buy anything. Batman is ripped and sexy.* Batman knows every martial art and parkour and can blend into the shadows, and he has a belt of James Bond gadgets. Batman is a genius who’s always ten steps ahead and can escape any trap. Batman has a pitch-black sense of humor. Batman is vicious even as he’s utterly cool in the face of danger. Batman fights horror movie villains of the supernatural, monstrous, fetishistically disturbing, and plain ‘ol slasher varieties, and wins (when he’s not busy dancing across the rooftops in pursuit of a leather-clad Anne Hathaway/Michelle Pfeiffer/Julie Newmar). Batman’s climbed his way back from chemically-induced psychosis, a shattered spine, and the gates of death, all by wit and sheer brutal force of will. Batman has a city that’s New York and Chicago and Vegas and Hell rolled into one, and when he’s needed it literally blasts his logo onto the sky in public acknowledgement of his supreme coolness, but he also travels the world to other cool-looking exotic locales so he can be cool there too. Batman has theme songs by Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. And crucially, in spite of all of this, Batman is tormented. You can argue the validity of those conventions on an intellectual level, but what it amounts to is that Batman is a kickass figure of the night who’s the best at everything and has the best of everything, snarling all the while even as he keeps an air of amused detachment about the whole affair, and those are archetypes that humanity’s long since given the thumbs up as constituting capital-c Cool. We like people who can kick ass, the outlaws, the capable and the mysterious, so long as they’re in good stories that let us buy it. And more than anyone in pop culture aside from maybe Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine - and that dude’s done, while the Dark Knight forever remains - he’s That, the superhero.

* Yes, his depiction is more typically centered around a straight dude perspective of male physical perfection than anything actually particularly sensual or alluring, but the intent’s clearly there, and when you’ve been played by Clooney and Affleck I figure you get to claim ‘sexy’ as a fair semi-universal descriptor.

Batman is spooky

Of course, if cool was all there was to Batman’s general persona, he wouldn’t be cool at all, he’d be Poochie in a Dracula cape (which given it will presumably last until the heat death of the universe is a premise The Simpsons will inevitably have to get around to at some point, so remember you saw it here first). But what backs it up and lets people take it seriously is that he’s spooky. Not necessarily frightening - though he can most definitely be that too - but there’s an ethereal, shadowy aspect to his world that goes beyond the fright mask. It can take many forms for many situations and versions of him and his setting: lurking on a gargoyle over an alleyway, waiting for some poor unsuspecting punk to try and stick up an innocent family only to drag him ten stories up and leave him sobbing for his mother; karate-chopping his way through deathtraps and colorful henchmen, which for all its unabashed fun still carries the air of Halloween pageantry and neuroses let loose; haunting the grimiest parts of an urban hellhole, waiting to burst through the window of a roach-infested apartment or a musty disused warehouse to break bones and spill blood; appearing from nowhere, grappling with mind-bending chemical trips and fighting to stay one step ahead of killers in the shadows, dueling mad rich perverted cultists and literal demons of the underworld, overlooking a shadow city forever in flux to reflect the horrors of the moment. Even at his most innocent, there’s something irreducibly seedy and violent and enigmatic about Batman, and that not only provides immediate distinction and character to him and his surroundings - one that distinguishes both from their contemporaries - but legitimizes the entire enterprise as something that can be taken seriously.

Batman is playful

At the same time, Batman’s fun - even at his most serious he uses Batman-shaped boomerangs, and drives a cool car even though gliding and swinging lets him better avoid traffic. He needs to be fun for the kind of ubiquitous pop appeal he has, and it’s built in on every level of the brand no matter how far away you try and veer from it, letting a character rooted in loss and declarations of bloody revenge work just as well for four-year-olds as forty-somethings. The cave, the costumes, the sidekicks and signal and colorful rogues and utility belt and trophies, they give his world a size and dimension that lets him dip his toe in nearly any genre, with his inherent seriousness backing him up to let you buy him in any of those narrative territories. At the end of the day, the people shaping Batman at least subconsciously know it’s all a game, and in letting him have that kind of fun he’s granted versatility and the ability to invigorate as well as stun audiences.

Batman is emotionally, symbolically raw

And sitting at the heart of it all, giving him the gas in the engine that propels all of the above forward, is that he comes from the most viscerally, broadly relatable place of any superhero. The only one who approaches him is Spider-Man, and even there the meaning of his tragedy is somewhat displaced - there’s loss and guilt, yes, but that’s merely the catalyst for a message of responsibility. Here, that Bruce Wayne loses a concept everyone is on some level familiar with, of the happiness and comfort and stability that family is supposed to provide, is itself the point. He grabs the emotional lever right at the animal hindbrain and pulls until it snaps off: everything has gone wrong, and someone must pay for making things this way. Then for good measure he actually does make them pay while adhering to a righteous moral code that defies all he fights against, elevating himself from spooky fun action hero into myth. He’s surrounded by a city where abstract horrors consolidate down into entirely literal figures - for instance, in Gotham the fear that we can be outfoxed, overwhelmed, and systematically taken apart in service of evil stroking its own ego because we just aren’t good enough to survive is a dick in a neon green hat who likes crossword puzzles (as opposed to Superman’s world of much more personal and basic human concerns blown up to cosmic scale) - and he in turn becomes a myth of us persevering through the worst to fight back.

Batman is genuinely a good character

I place this last because this is really the nuts-and-bolts level. It’s essential, none of the above would work for 79 years and counting without it, but it’s not something many but the hardcore (which includes the comic readers by default at this point) consciously think about. But on the ground floor beneath everything else, Batman’s not just an effective piece of branding, atmosphere, and emotional manipulation, but a good character. In his motivations, with the anger that compels him often making many miss that underneath, he far more powerfully wants to ensure that no one else goes through what he did. The childishness of his methods and mindset regarding ‘the mission’ meeting the maturity of his dedication and brilliance, and the humor that can come from that disconnect (especially when his alternating disgust and amusement with his daytime masquerade as a normal person gets involved). The tentative, essential friendships he’s built with the likes of Gordon and Superman. The fatherly connection with Alfred, and the see-saw of the latter’s feelings of guilt, responsibility, and pride in his charge. The spark of his rivalries at their best. The detective work that can be as thrilling as a good punch-out when pulled off right. The forever changing complexity of the Family, a web of Robins and Batgirls and assorted hangers-on with him at the center, their existence and growth a chart of his own emotional progress and regression. His jet-black wit and self-awareness, his ability to empathize with fellow victims, his difficulties in trusting and openly loving those around him when his world is built on the knowledge of how easily those can be stripped away and how badly it hurts. The paranoia, the compassion, the drive and endurance. Beneath all the trappings, Bruce Wayne is just plain and simple a really, really good, interesting, multi-faceted character, fine-tuned under decades of creators and by his existence facilitating the creation and development of countless *other* good characters. And that’s really all it takes underneath it all to prop up a symbol that’s built empires, redefined cultures, and changed lives: the idea of a good man who refused to give up in the face of a cruel world when it forever scarred him, and made himself something greater to fight back and help others not have to go through it alone. That’s why Batman’s great.

#Batman #Analysis #Opinion

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popculturespiritwow · 6 years

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THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #23: PROFILES IN PLUMAGE

LIFE AFTER MOMMY

While Issue 23 is in a sense a prelude to the arc proper, magazine-style profiles of our Pantheon post-Blood Blister-Ananke-Pop!, one of the great elements of the issue is how it lays out the new status quo within interviews that are the fruit entirely of online role play between Kieron and the interviewers. In other words, the interviewers didn’t have a sense of the story goals, they were just approaching their subjects the way they would in real life, and it was up to Kieron to improvise in a couple key notes – Baal as now Responsible Father Figure/Super Hero who is Going to Stop the Great Darkness and Wear Suits**; Laura as Maybe Actually the Destroyer After All Tho; Morrigan receding into the Undeworld with Baphomet; Ammy’s continued insistence that everything is going to turn out super great for everybody; Woden making a machine to “mimic” people’s powers (see: things that will also work out super great for everybody); oh, and everybody’s still going to die, tick tock.

It’s all a pretty big gamble and it works really really well.

**Just realizing, the guy who makes it his mission in Imperial Phase to protect Minerva is simultaneously quietly killing children. Wow I don’t know how to feel about any of that.

TOMATO, TOMATO

What is this thing we’re reading, issue #23? Is it a comic book recreating itself for an issue as a magazine in order to do something fun and different and also expand the whole “gods viewed as celebrities” concept, show us how the Pantheon are viewed by the wider world?

Certainly that’s how it presents itself. And I dare you to find an issue of another book that does that as well, from layout to shot selection to the kinds of narratives it weaves. And other than the Chris Eliopolis-style three panel strip that ends the issue, and maybe Jamie’s four panels depicting Ananke’s death, there’s not a lot about what goes on within the issue that seems to resemble the storytelling methods of a comic.

But its cover is 100% comic book. We’re given an issue number, the title of the comic, the creative team, the production company. The page dimension are also those of every other issue of the series. And the cover design, Baal against the white background, as though having escaped the comic book frame which now hangs over his shoulder, is the design for the Imperial Phase run of issues.

The back cover fronts (backs?) the magazine vibe, replacing the series’ normal quote from within the book with an advertisement for a Persephone-branded phone. (I have to believe in a world where the ring tone is “Persephone is in Hell.”) But even there, if you want to be picky, you’ve got the bar code and comic book rating in the bottom right.

So it’s a comic book, right, doing celebrity rag really well and why am I wasting your time debating about this. But then there’s this... even if it’s not in a way like pretty much any comic book the art of the issue does generate story, in the way that magazines of its variety do, costume plus setting plus pose revealing character and plotline.

And not only that but the fullness of the story being told in each article and the issue as a whole is a result precisely as a result of the interactions between art and text. Indeed, the very choice of photos first to take and then to use emerges out of both the text of the story and the pre-interview idea for the story that the writer or editor brought.

Clearly issue 23 is the band we love at the top of their game innovating even further and making us think that much more. But maybe it’s also a way of highlighting not that a comic can be a magazine, but that in the way they deliver story, magazines are actually a kind of comic books themselves.

WHO TO GET TO WRITE YOUR PROFILE IF YOU’RE NOT A TOOL

Kevin Wada’s art is just fantastic, both spot on for the kind of magazine the issue is trying to present and also with just the perfect shot selection for the characters.

That two page spread of Baal or the crazy shot of Woden. Wow.

But for me the gold of the issue is the fresh insights the article authors bring to the characters.

“It’s why fans love her,” Leigh Alexander writes of the Morrigan. “She creates spaces where it all feels inevitable, and therefore okay. Or definitely, assuredly not okay, so you can stop pretending, You can stop struggling. Or you can only struggle. Either way it’s a relief.” The blessing of the Morrigan, yes it’s a nightmare, you’re right, and with that truth, an easing of the pain. (I love all the articles, but Alexander’s is particularly wonderful. The feeling she has for the Morrigan gives the piece such pathos.)

Or here’s Dorian Lynskey, writing about Baal. “This, then, is Baal’s spin for the day: there will be a plan. We mortals might not know what it is, it may not even be decided yet, but there will be one. DO I believe it? I’m not sure. But I believe that Baal believes it. After so much blood and chaos, he needs to believe it.”

(Did Lynskey have any idea of the secrets Baal was hiding? I don’t think so. And yet knowing what we know not, could his piece be any more dead on?)

In her profile of Woden, author Laurie Penny says “He takes women and turns them into videogame cheesecake. He takes women and turns them into something less than human, something comprehensible and controllable, with clear win conditions.”

She also kids that his workshop is like the Batcave, and follows with another incredibly prescient remark: “’Where’s Alfred? Or...no, hang on. You’re Alfred.”

Mary HK Choi’s insistence on often calling Lucifer by her birth name, which at first works as a refusal to take the claims of godhood as anything more than as millennial celebrity publicity stunt; but then becomes part of insisting on Luci’s innocence and vulnerability: “Lucifer if perfect right now – vibrant and happy. And while there is a humane aspect to the fatalistic branding, the finite relevance that is the reality of the celebrity industrial complex in the age of social media, it’s still super sad.

“When she’s skipping to the mall, shudder at how her parents (unrepentant Beatles fans) conceived her on the night of a Blur gig...she is very much a kid. A kid swaggering to impress you and thousands of people for whom everything is performance.”

(Also, we get that great quote from Kieron, “Being the devil is knowing you’re lost.” Rather than Purveyor of Lies, Lucifer once again as the one who understands the lie within it all.)

Lastly, here’s Ezekiel Kweku, after hearing Ammy explain away Ananke’s death: “She looks preternaturally serene, godlike once more. For some reason, this makes me even sadder.”

(“She doesn’t want you to see in her a deconstructed divinity, she wants to appear as whole and uncomplicated as an undivided beam of light,” is so perfect as sentences go I would be filled with a jealous rage if I could stop enjoying it.)

NO BUT SURE ANOTHER WOODY ALLEN MOVIE IS FINE THO

I do this newsletter on pop culture and spirituality called Pop Culture Spirit Wow. (Join us and we can rule the galaxy forever.) And the week Avengers: Infinity War came out I did a whole thing on the history of the Avengers, including some of their most iconic storylines.

And in doing research, I stumbled upon this post from former Avengers writer Jim Shooter, who insists that Hank Pym “was not a wife-beater”. The famous moment where Pym hits Janet van Dyne, he said was actually the mistake of the artist. “In that story (issue 213, I think),” Shooter writes, “there is a scene in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of ‘get away from me’ gesture while not looking at her. Bob Hall, who had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action, turned that into a right cross!” And it was too late to fix it, so they had to go with it.

Years later, Bob Hall responded, saying Shooter “had never said he didn’t like the slap panel”, but that he could believe he’d made a mistake, because he was young and didn’t know what he was doing.

But I don’t know, this is a pretty different from an “accidental slap”:

Also, what precipitates this terrible moment is Pym on trial for having seemingly shot a woman in the back (turns out she was a robot) and feeling a lot of pressure. The issue features Tigra worrying about Jan and wondering why she stays with him. “Don’t you see you’re worth ten of him?” she asks.

And after his “accidental slap” he flips out in court, ultimately sending in a robot to save him.

So I don’t know, actually an accidental slap feels a lot less likely than what was drawn. (Actually it feels exactly like what someone who just hit a woman says to try and get away with it.)

Once it “happened”, Shooter and Marvel were “stuck” with it (#TheRealVictims), and Shooter had to rethink where he was headed with the characters. Jan files for divorce next issue, in fact.

If you look at the history of comics, you won’t find many moments like this, at least not at the Big Two. Men do not hit women.

Unless they have powers, that is. Then it’s kind of all fair, or at least occasionally permissible. And it never comes up in later conversation. It’s just the way things are. She was super strong, she hit me first, of course it’s okay.

In both the Morrigan and Baal pieces the characters talk about Baal having hit her. That attack happened twelve issues ago (when you include the 1831 special), and it’s still considered a significant ongoing story point for both characters.

Once again, WicDiv making us consider things that the world kind of ignores. (Or even enjoys.)

DENIAL, THE NEW FRAGRANCE

The very last beat of this issue, the wacky cartoon, is maybe the hardest hitting punch of all.

They’ve been through all this craziness, they’ve found out they were being manipulated all this time, and they just straight murdered someone. So what do they do now?

What else? They party.

It’s like the Danger Laura Wilson warning of the first two arcs, but now applied to the whole group, and just as firmly ignored. The only one who really seems to understand at all it is Luci, and she’s dead, er, a living head stuck in a cave we won’t know about for another year of issues.

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie #life after mommy

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hussainshiyam · 3 years

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Trash Talk: Its Prevalence and Futility.

Originally Published on the 26th of January 2021

Aaaahh, trash talk or what I call weaponized rhetoric has been around ever since I can remember. Talking trash isn’t just limited to the sporting arena. Friends picking on each other is also a form of trash talking. Depending on the closeness of the relationship in which the trash talking takes place, it can either lead to belly laughs or fisticuffs.

Trash talking has probably been around since human beings started competing with each other, primarily in the sporting arena. The need to outdo the other while also talking trash adds to the drama of sports.

However, these verbal attacks were kept behind closed doors and the public was none the wiser for it. Slowly but surely the public became aware of these verbal barbs thrown at each other, the public’s interest in witnessing those match ups became greater.

Yet, most competitors as well as the organizers had no intention of publicly engaging in trash talking to their opponent. The main reason for the reluctance is that the narrative of sporting events is that it is based on mutual respect, humility, fairness, and meritocracy. The mantra being, “the best man always wins.” Trash talking is antithetical to the image the sports wants to maintain and promote.

Rather than leave the matter up to the athletes to regulate trash talk, the governing bodies made rules that curbed trash talking. These were the “bringing the sport in to disrepute” rules. This meant that a lot of the trash talk is done away from referees and umpires because, were they to be aware of it, there will be some form of punishment. It could be something as simple as a warning or a far more serious one like a suspension along with a hefty fine. It all depended on the severity of the incident.

Retired athletes’ retelling of instances of trash talk are hilarious. The basketball world is full of stories of how great Larry Bird and Michael Jordan are at talking trash. Retired athletes like Kevin Garnett and Reggie Miller tell stories of talking trash to Michael Jordan and how spectacularly it backfires on them as MJ would pull off one incredible move after another making bucket after bucket with them having no reply to it.

Trash talk is primarily used to get in to the head of their opponent and to weaken them psychology. The idea is to have them defeated even before they enter the arena. Just as trash talk could weaken an opponent, it can also energize them and be a motivator. For the overcompetitive person, trash talk is just fuel added to the fire that burns within them. It is undeniable that trash talk adds to the spectacle and generates heavy interest from the public. Who can forget rivalries born out of trash talking? Such as the legendary match ups between Patrick Viera and Roy Keane gave us some of the best moments in football, Michael Jordan’s match up with Isiah Thomas or anyone who says anything about him gets annihilated on the basketball court, and, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb’s rivalry in baseball.

Trash talk is not just limited to the players, it also happens between coaches. Who can forget the war of words between Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho? Jose Mourinho’s ability to talk trash is the stuff of legends. Pep Guardiola admitted in an interview after leaving Barcelona that one of the reasons he left was because he was tired of the back and forth between him and Jose.

For most of a sport’s organizing or regulating body discourages trash talk as it is seen as disrespectful and shows a lack of humility. It is not so with combat sports. Combat sports such as Wrestling (WWE style, not the Olympic one), Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts actively encouraged trash talk. It adds to the spectacle as well as to the drama. Due to the nature of it being one on one as well as the violence involved, trash talk was perfect to wring the audience in to a frenzy.

The first instance of securing a title fight through trash talk and annoyance was Jack Johnson in 1908. It took Johnson 2 years of following the reigning champion Tommy Burns to agree. Even then he did so after the promoters guaranteed to pay him $30,000 win or lose. His constant taunts, attacks through the media, and literally showing up to places where Tommy Burns was were things that were unheard of for a black man to do. Through his action and his skin colour Jack Johnson was immediately cast as the villain and Tommy the hero. In 1908, the racist whites expected their white hero beat the black villain. The fight took place in Australia and Johnson toyed with Burns, delivering punch after punch while laughing and trash talking to Burns. It got so bad that the police intervened and put a stop to the fight.

In doing what he did, Jack Johnson has popularized trash talk and turned it into a tactical advantage. Subsequent fighters have taken trash talking to new and dangerous levels.

Perhaps the most famous trash talker in the world Muhammad Ali admitted that he used the tactics Jack Johnson used to get a title fight with Sonny Liston. Ali’s eloquence and quick wit made him the perfect trash talker. He even turned some of his trash talks in the form of poems. He would show up to Sonny Liston’s and trash talk him, he would show up places where Liston was eating, he would show up to the gym and taunt Liston. He successfully hounded Sonny Liston in to giving him a title shot.

As expected, Ali’s fights generated huge interest from the public and drew large crowds to his fights. He always thought that his very eloquent trash talk was in good faith and spirit. He had somehow convinced himself that the person at whom the trash talk was directed knew that he was putting on a show for the media to gin up curiosity and increase the size of the television audience. He was mistaken. One of those people who never recovered from the hurtful and mean things said at him was Joe Frasier. Even Ali admitted that he regrets some of the things he said. Sadly, Joe Frasier died without getting an apology.

The art of trash talking carries with it a dark underbelly that rears its ugly head from time to time. And when it does, it leaves the sport to claim these are one off occurrences. And they are right. However, it has to be acknowledged that these instances are on the rise.

Because trash talk has no boundaries, has no limits, has no topic that can’t be touched, and definitely no person that is off limits, trash talk has led to fights during press conferences, weigh in’s and during the face off.

It used to be fun to watch the juvenile insults fighters throw at each and we, the audience, saw it as lighthearted banter between opponents. That is not the case with these new age fighters who use trash talking as the means to insult, offend, belittle, and dismiss. These aren’t athletes who derive honour from competing. For them winning is all that matters and they will use any and all methods to achieve that objective.

Perhaps, the greatest trash talker of this generation Conor McGregor has taken trash talking too far according to many. But how can we say he took it too far when there are no rules or limits. Anything regulated by an unwritten understanding between parties cannot hold a participant’s refusal to follow it.

Trash talking has become so bad that a confrontation in which Khabib slapped a team mate of Conor for talking shit about him. Khabib took offence to Artem Lobov insinuating that Khabib faked injuries to get out of fights.

This led to the infamous dolly throwing incident in Brooklyn where Conor and a bunch of his friends attacked the bus Khabib and his team were in. All this because of some trash talk and a slap.

After that incident, it was obvious to all that a fight between Conor and Khabib had to be made. During the promotion of the fight Conor took his trash talking to new levels of disrespect and offensiveness. He labeled Khabib’s father as a coward, called Khabib a mad backwards cunt because he doesn’t drink alcohol.

Khabib is not one to talk much during the buildup. He is on record saying he wouldn’t do any promotional work if he wasn’t contractually obliged to do so.

The fight itself was one of dominance. Conor was out of his depth and he was getting pummeled. Khabib is well known for talking inside the octagon and as he delivered one blow after another, we can hear him say, “let’s talk.” “Let’s talk now.” It was a show of control and domination by a supremely gifted fighter who doesn’t care to trash talk.

After Khabib submitted Conor, he jumped over the octagon and attacked a friend of Conor’s who had been hurling insults at him throughout the fight. The venomous trash talk has finally consumed Khabib.

In the aftermath of the fight, Khabib excoriated those who condoned Conor’s behaviour and allow the disrespect to fester in a sport he saw as one of mutual respect and honour.

Khabib was almost universally condemned for his inability to control his emotions after the match and going after Dillon Danis. It was the most watched pay per view event in UFC history and the scenes after the main event were exactly the kind of scenes the UFV didn’t want to broadcast. And it seemed like trash talk has taken another victim.

Actually, what many thought would happen to the UFC did not happen. Because of who Khabib is and his personality people gave him the benefit of the doubt and blamed the trash talk. It wouldn’t have worked out that way it did had it not been anyone else but Khabib.

Khabib comes from the mountainous region of Dagestan which is part of the Russian federation, and he is a pious Muslim. Because of who he is there was never a second of doubt as to why he did what he did.

Whether anyone realises or not, ever since that incident trash talk has been on the decline. Fighters no longer feel the need to go overboard with the insults. For this, we should all thank Khabib. He has landed a huge blow against this abhorrent and demeaning act of trash talk. To Conor McGregors credit, he did learn the one thing he cannot allow to happen if he were to continue trash talking. That being, one who talks trash cannot be dominated. Losing is acceptable, but getting beat and dominated are unacceptable. To continue to be a trash talker one must know, it is not about losing, it is the manner in which you were beaten.

Trash talking will always be around so long as human beings compete with each other. That is not the concern. The concern is, in what form will it exist. Will it be confined to the context in which it can exist or will it go deeper and deeper into the abyss of human disrespect.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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WandaVision: The Endgame Is In Sight

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As WandaVision barrels into its final four episodes — following the game-changing finale of the show’s fifth installment, “On a Very Special Episode…” — the suspense and drama in the show is ramping up at increasingly high levels. But the anticipation and hype about the program itself is also continuing to build, particularly among Marvel fans who wait patiently for the show to reveal all its cards and deliver on the implications that have been laid out in the past five weeks like a trail of quantum breadcrumbs.

At this point, however, that pressure is nothing new to WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer. Just like it did to the rest of the entertainment industry, the pandemic threw Marvel’s Phase 4 rollout into disarray — only for this wildly experimental show to land in the front-facing position as Phase 4’s opening gambit and introduction to the next era of the ever-expanding MCU.

“There were so many levels of pressure on this show that that particular point of pressure wasn’t any more intense than any of the others,” says Schaeffer during a chat over Zoom with Den of Geek. “I actually think that debuting on Disney+ was more intimidating being the first one out of the gate, but that’s just my scared self talking. There was a louder voice in my head saying that it’s worked out so well. I think that because of the year that we’ve been through, it does somehow feel right that the show is debuting in this way at this time.”

Schaeffer also claims that any changes or adjustments that she, director Matt Shakman and the rest of the production ensemble on WandaVision may or may not have had to make once they learned they would be leading the charge were just business as usual for the mighty Marvel machine.

“There’s adjustments and tweaks all the time, because that’s really how things operate at Marvel,” says Schaeffer. “There’s always room for improving upon what’s there. And there’s constant discoveries about how to make things more exciting for the fans and to make the stories interweave in more exciting ways. So it’s just an ongoing process.”

Of course, as well known before the show aired, that process started with an unusual idea from Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige: what would it be like if we placed two of the MCU’s most powerful superheroes, the psychically enhanced Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and the cosmically powered synthezoid Vision (Paul Bettany), into a sitcom? And what would happen if that sitcom format jumped from decade to decade over the course of each episode?

With that groundwork laid out, Schaeffer’s job as head writer was to flesh the initial premise out and make it into a coherent narrative that nevertheless took some big swings and incorporated a lot of other ideas and elements from the MCU. “When I was invited to pitch it, it existed as Kevin’s concept,” she recalls. “They had a lot of ideas and a lot of them were very exciting. Some of them were conflicted because it was just a big sort of kitchen sink of exciting ideas. My task was to make sense of that and to find a through line through all the really noisy and exciting ideas.”

While the framework of the show stayed mostly the same, it developed even further as the creative team expanded. “Once I hired a writers’ room, the content of the episodes shifted a bit and we just got closer and closer to — everything just got more cohesive in establishing the rules of the world and having everything be supportive of the larger story that we were telling,” says Schaeffer now.

One advantage that Schaeffer had was that she had already worked within the Marvel creative system: she did some work on the screenplays for both 2019’s Captain Marvel and this year’s upcoming Black Widow (she’s not credited on the former but has a story credit on the latter) and was already familiar with the Marvel development and production process, even if the job of head writer on a TV series was new ground for her.

WandaVision: What Big Marvel Cameos Could Happen?

By Kirsten Howard

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“I wouldn’t say it was easier,” she says when asked if her previous experience helped her gear up for WandaVision. “But I think it was absolutely to my benefit that I had that experience and knew a lot of the executives and understood their particular development process, which is unique and as you can see very successful. So that was really, really helpful. And I think, as you said, this was my first time running a writers room and doing that new task in an environment that I was familiar with was very helpful.”

As for what that writers room has in store for us in the weeks ahead (note: this interview was conducted before the airing of episode 5), Schaeffer has also learned the Marvel method of answering such questions in the most non-direct way possible. Exhibit one: we ask her if the sitcom format — which is now stretching into the 1980s — will continue throughout the length of the show.

“That’s a tough question to answer. I’ll say that I and my team are acutely aware of not wanting to abuse the patience of our audience,” she responds. “As a viewer myself, and as a fan myself, I love a slow rollout, but I expect the creators to stick the landing. If I’m going to pay attention, if I’m going to invest myself and my time, I want to believe that I’ll be rewarded for my attention and for my love. And that’s what we’ve tried to do.”

For our final question, Schaeffer answers in a way that is sure to make Kevin Feige — the master of press misdirection — proud. With WandaVision alluding now to the existence of other universes, and Wanda herself confirmed to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is Schaeffer (metaphorically speaking) going down the hall to where Sam Raimi and his team are working on that film and sharing notes? And since Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is a major character on the show too, does Schaeffer have occasional chats with the Captain Marvel 2 folks?

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“There’s a lot of communication at Marvel that is overseen by the tremendous executives there,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “And so I’m told what I need to be told for my particular job. And I have access to some of the other creatives on other projects, sometimes socially, sometimes because of the work. I just consider myself lucky to be part of the community.”

New episodes of WandaVision premiere every Friday on Disney+.

The post WandaVision: The Endgame Is In Sight appeared first on Den of Geek.

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meatmachine · 4 years

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Ideas for Kinesiotape

A good clinician can discover a seemingly unlimited number of ways to tape their patients if they just consider this one thing...

Youve seen it on pro athletes in the NBA/NFL/PGA/MLS olympics and beyond, but what is actually going on with all this Ktape? What is kinesiotape!? How does Ktape work? Who is Ktape for? Is it only athletes? What if Ktape doesnt work? Is there a brand that is better? There seems to be a lot of different ways people use Ktape... is there a right way? is there a wrong way? Whats the best way to use ktape?! First, let’s clear the air on some of the Ktape basics, then ill try to explain how I think the absolute best use of Ktape is to think about treating or an intervention of the skin AROUND the area you’ve taped (NOT the area under the tape, but around it that is most impacted)... but more on why this little secret actually works later... first...

WELCOME! to the anatomy of therapy, im doctor john cybulski and let’s get right into the ktape craze sweeping the therapeutic nation.

The Kinesio Taping® technique and Kinesio Tex tape was developed by Dr. Kenzo Kase in Japan more than 25 yrs ago. In the 1970's Dr. Kase began searching for a sports taping method which could assist in the healing of traumatised tissue and muscles. He found that standard taping techniques, such as athletic taping and strapping, provided muscle and joint support, however, they reduced range of motion, and inhibited the actual healing process of traumatised tissue. In 1973, Dr Kase's objective was to create a therapeutic tape and taping technique which could support joints and muscles, without restricting range of motion.

This is the first new and fresh perspective Ktape gave us in the therapuetic setting.... NOT decreasing range of motion. This fundamental idea that healing happens when you do NOT decrease range of motion is absolutely pivotal and i believe somehow overlooked by many clinicians today. Obviously, most clinicians will state that one of their goals is of course to increase range of motion, but sticking strictly to this principle almost immediately excludes those who are hypermobile and can cause confusion. but we will discuss more about hypermobility and ktape later.

So this is the answer to our first question: WHAT IS KTAPE? It’s a stretchy tape design to NOT decrease range of motion and help in the healing process. Sticking closely with the idea proper movement is indeed therapeutic.

Which leads us nicely into our second question: HOW DOES KTAPE work then? If we are taping someone and NOT decreasing range of motion, how is ktape helping? And this is where i start to go more off script because some bigger ktape brands often list that.... There are five main physiological effects of Kinesio tape: skin, circulatory/lymphatic, fascia, muscle, and joint. Now they stay safe in their wording by saying “effects” but Ive seen a number of different brands promote their ktape as beneficial to treating the: skin, lymph, fascia, muscle and joint. So ill have to edit to my own personal views, but the idea and standard line of ktape brands is to say that the tape lifts the skin and allows for easier circulation of lymph (and in turn inflammation) which then allows the muscle, fascia and joint to heal properly. I mean, okay. Sounds nice, but for me there might be a couple logical leaps in there. As i said in the intro, the skin not taped, nearest the tape may be out best way to intervene, but I have a hard time really understanding exactly how the fascia muscles and joints are effected. Perhaps its obliquely and indirectly through 6 degrees of separation from kevin bacon, but it’s going to be very challenging for your client/patient to actually be able to experience or sense some sort of change on that deeper level. Which is only really building my case as to why and how the superficial approach to thinking about the skin as you tape is actually the most efficient way to tape.

but the larger how is still in line with other ways of taping. Support through a certain joint in a certain direction will not decrease range of motion but can limit possibly damaging movement patterns. So let’s imagine that lateral abduction of the arm is painful at the AC joint. Placing the tape (with minimal tension) over the lateral aspect of the deltoid and shoulder while the arm is adducted should in THEORY help make the patient aware of that lateral abduction and limit an overuse of that specific movement. The idea that you need to stop picking the scabs and allow yourself to heal is obvious here. Although this CAN have an effect on the muscles and joint the intervention is really directed at taping the skin over said muscles and joint with the opposing tension (here adduction is helpful while abduction is painful) to illicit a sense of balance to the joint.

This is the standard approach. However, (with the same situation in mind) you can actually achieve some pretty interesting outcomes if you move the affected joint passively into or even past the point of pain and tape in that position.

So in taping the shoulder while in adduction, the deltoid, shoulder skin is stretches tight and then secured as tense underneath the tape. While if you passively raise the shoulder into abduction the skin and muscles around the shoulder would have some slack, or be looser than the first scenario. So when you are laying down your tape you’ll need to consider is you want the area underneath the tape to be slack or tense.

This is the most clinically consistent way I have been able to use Ktape to help my patients. Otherwise it’s simply that i slap some tape down, make it look nice and hope the patient tells me that it felt good. Using an solid skin stretch or taking the tension off of the skin and then taping is the best way to allow my patients to actually sense what I am trying to accomplish with the tape. They can feel via their skin that something is being pulled or something is relaxing.

So who is this tape for? The main problem here is that it’s mostly seen on high level athletes and your average joe doesnt think they can also find some benefit in taping. This is untrue. One of the most obvious differences between a pro athlete and us mere mortals is that we are often no as conditioned as the pro and the more deconditioned the patient the more effective a passive intervention will be to their system. It’s wildly important to explain where Ktape falls in terms of interventions and in returning your patient to their normal ADLs.

The tape will not heal you. Within the context of treatment it is merely stopping you from reverting to your old movement patterns. This is just another way of describing my first use of skin tension or slack to limit or encourage certain movements.

The tape is not the treatment. It is one piece of the puzzle. A good clinician can discover a seemingly unlimited number of ways to tape when considering what the provocative movement might be.

To limit lumbar flexion you tape them in lumbar extension

To encourage hip extension you place and tape in hip extension.

To limit cervical flexion you tape in cervical and thoracic extension

To encourage thoracic extension.... you tape in thoracic extension. and so on

It’s far less about the direction of the tape than it is what is happening to what the tape is being used on.

My basic rule would first be to over set the posture you’d like to encourage. Really exaggerate shoulder external rotation before laying the tape down. If you combine movements like left external rotation, left forearm supination, wrist extension... and so on, you can create more torque to trap underneath the tape.

There are a number of other fun techniques to use with the ktape but the last one ill talk about is in reference to when a patient has a very localized trigger point or area of pain. Let’s use the common upper trap, levator trigger point, or knot that patients often describe. If say this point is triggered by cervical rotation away from the side of pain. LEt’s says the pain is in the right upper trap and is triggered when the patient looks over their left shoulder. Then we know we need to turn the cervical spine to the right as far as we can and then and only then lay the tape down. The one different piece here is that we wont take over the “trigger point”... we tape just below the trigger point, or next to the trigger so as to create a new point of tension when turning to the left.

That’s the main point with the ktape as with the rest of your therapeutic interventions. Creating situations where tension is either relieved or tension is created naturally by the patient. That’s the definition of an exercise really. Ktape may be frowned upon by those who use it or see it’s use as something besides that, but if you do realize where you need to create tension with your patients and where it’s best to relieve tension then ktape can be a major ally in helping your patients

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