#my nintendo game movie scale now goes

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

update i saw the mario movie !! it was cute actually

[omega-tech]

my thought's on physical media being lost

As most of ya know. Most major retail stores will most likely not be selling any dvd/blu-ray format anymore after the saga strike happens. Meaning there will be no more physical media. As streaming is our new way to view media of movies and shows. Owning them will no longer be a thing. I, for one, am a collector of movies and retro video’s games. I collect from nostalgia feelings to having a rare item on my shelf. I have been collecting movies ever since I owned a vcr/dvd player back in 2001. I used to buy used dvds for a dollar at my local goodwill to a dvd store. As when blu-ray came, i started to collect and buy those too. Some movies that were on vhs tapes that never got released on dvd but blu-ray release for limited copies. 

It saddened me and the people who collect them are now going to back up or hunt the movies they wanna have before people take up what remains physical of dvd/blu-ray movies. So when that stops, the clearance of those dollars to five dollars dvd/blu-ray goes back up to twenty dollars or more. It will be hard to own some of those movies and tv shows we all love.

As of now I've been buying a lot of movies and backing them up in my linux htpc that i used to stream my own movies of dvd-480p/720p format to blu-ray/4k hdr. And I just got a 8tb drive which will soon fill my collection of blu-ray/4k hdr movies. Which led to more hard drives to back my movie collection. I fear that soon physical movies will be a collection hobby and we will see those movies that most people don’t care about on a dvd platfoam, to a high price item just like retro video games. 

Which brings me to this subject. Piracy! I don’t like to say it but in the past, movies and shows have been piracy online for almost twenty six years now since the internet was widely used. And don’t get me wrong, yes those studio’s will never re-release some movies unless they’re going to overprice that physical blu-ray over $60. And that comes only the movie and steel book case with no extra features. And when movies stop being released, they’ll soon be lost. That is why piracy will be a thing again for lost media. 

I think I know why the studio’s are doing this, royalty! Meaning no pay out to the writers, actors, directors etc. which will lead to more issues when those people don’t get paid because the studios just refuse to release those physical media which is a good profit gain. And is also a lead to another issue, licenses. In all, after this strike happened from the stop use of A.I. technology and pay writers of the pay they show are earning. This is a reason to say from the studio “ok we will agree on these terms and don’t use A.I. but we will not be selling physical media which we know ya make money on”. So these studio’s will be banking on streaming then sales of physical media. That's just my thoughts.

In all, I don't like streaming because I don't feel like I own the movie but rather I rent it. And if i am going to do that, i rather have blockbuster or hollywood video’s to be back then streaming it. I wanna see those extra features like bloopers, deleted scenes or interviews of the director and actors that streaming platforms don’t have. Also I don't have to worry about the movie being cut out due to low internet speeds or the image getting clean for one second and then getting a digital grain scale like it glitching out when you didn’t seat the nintendo cart right in the console. But all, if you love physical media then you better start buying and collecting now before it is all gone, just like vhs tapes.  

That is my thought on physical media.

[mica-dmss]

Blog Post - 01

What makes media a work of art?

In the current works of media, we have ultimate access to sources of many kinds - music, movies, art and advice. Even the consumers of work within this generation are offered many tools and networks by media, which grants them the opportunity to become creators of their own ideal works. This shift in productivity offers a bright future, allowing for many artists to further bring their art to life.

Moreover, the productions within the media industries also benefit from the advanced technology of creation, with new improvements of elements have emerged, such as VFX, recordings, motion capture, and on. Games industries have never seen such massive popularity over the the years; in 2007, Nintendo (Nintendo Co., Ltd., 1889) achieved their biggest success through the release of Wii Sports (2006), with 82.9 million copies sold, thus making Nintendo's game labelled as "the top-selling single-platform exclusive of all time". (Sirani, 2023) Furthermore, Nintendo's release of their newest console, Nintendo Switch (2017), has led to another successful release of theirs. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has become their best performing game on Switch, selling over 57.01 million copies. (Nintendo, 2023)

As with more technological advances, comes with more promise of high-quality experiences in games. Rendering, texturing, scaling and so on. These aspects will further improve as time goes on, as it has been so in the last decade of gaming. Soon, players may fully immerse themselves into the world of these games, of which could harbour a feeling akin to theatrical performance; a work of art. However, regarding such rapid shift in the use of graphics within games, has that experience already begun?

In my first essay blogpost, I will delve into what it means to produce a work of art, referring to Wagner's creation and the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk. (1827) I will be using Nintendo's Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) as my major example of what makes a product a complete craft of art.

Let us define the term Gesamtkunstwerk, which translates to a "total, ideal, or universal work of art"; a 'synthesis' of different art forms into a unique genre. (Núñez-Fernández, 2011, p. 2) It is a media term coined by philosopher Karl Friedrich Trahndorff (1827) and popularised by famous composer Richard Wagner during the nineteenth century. (ibid, p. 2) In his essay, The Artwork of the Future (1849), Wagner applied Gesamtkunstwerk to define the aesthetic ideals within his own field of work; "integrating universal, archetypal themes found in folk legend into a single all-encompassing modern theatrical experience". (Núñez-Fernández, 2011, p. 2)

In short, the term articulates an idea that media forms are capable of creating an immersive experience. Examples seen throughout history consist of theatrical performances, architecture and literature. Wagner argued that out of all possible mediums, theatre was the most ideal form to create Gesamtkunstwerk. This can be demonstrated through any other media product that includes orchestrated music, as it delivers the 'perfect' experience to any product selling a narrative.

Wagner's work, 'Ride of the Valkyries', can be found in many works throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, despite its production way back in the nineteenth century. On YouTube, The Dollar Theater (2021) highlighted how one of the most iconic war films, Apocalypse Now (1979), used Rise of the Valkyries as cover during one of its dynamic battle scenes. The template of Wagner's music had brought more anticipation towards the scene's climax, as well as establishing the clear differences between the American attackers and the Vietnamese victims, which the latter's environment was peaceful up until the upcoming 'music' of war. (Figure 1 and 2)

Figure 1

Figure 2

While theatrical music imposed artistic foundations within the works of film that includes it, as Wagner envisioned so, we still see the evolution of Gesamtkunstwerk webbing further into games to form new holistic experiences. This brings me to my analysis on Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BOTW).

BOTW is a video game produced by Nintendo as another exclusive release to their Switch console. To encourage players in positively interacting with Switch, Nintendo introduced major titled creations. This includes the unique world of Legend of Zelda (LOZ), allowing players an opportunity to explore it in a refreshing experience. Players are provided the opportunity to adapt to new set of buttons, screenplay and even transportable elements; allowing gamers to switch their experience to different monitors, such as desktop and television screens.

In the case of BOTW, it does indeed feature an orchestrated original soundtrack (OST). Some of its songs are even interactive, in which players can trigger them whenever an action is prompted during gameplay; when the hero Link mounts on a horse in-game, riding it will ensue a light melody representing distinct tunes as throwback to the original game, The Legend of Zelda (1986). These specific tunes also alternate depending on the time of day gamers are playing in. (Figure 3 and 4)

Figure 3

Figure 4

On one hand, it is a minuscule detail. New players who had not touched any Zelda game prior would enjoy the fact that BOTW went to great lengths in ensuring that its gameplay would never grow boring, so this little inviting detail would make a pleasant distraction from the stretched out hours of travelling the world in BOTW. On the other hand, Zelda fans could instantly recognise the older tunes through its OST, making this new experience of a Zelda game not only enticing, but emotionally nostalgic.

Another media form contributing to BOTW's successful reception is the unique art style of its gameplay. A blend of 2D and 3D, BOTW has created an illusion of illustrations coming to life, which appears both appealing and different from any of Nintendo's other games, let alone ones from the LOZ franchise. Additionally, BOTW is complimented with high-quality rendering, with pleasant colours and details to the game's environment and characters demonstrating a strong sense of craftsmanship; almost like the game has been painted on. Thus, the vividly engaging elements of this game makes a possibility of an interactive experience seem like a fine art exhibition; its quality of style exceeding almost every past Zelda game Nintendo has ever produced. Compared to arguably the best Zelda game by fans, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), there is a strongly apparent proof of age between both works. (Figure 5 and 6)

Figure 5

Figure 6

Lastly, a form within the game of which may be considered the best aspect that BOTW could offer is its writing; the storytelling within this game is anything but linear, and the freedom that BOTW is endless. While the usual main narrative task is provided, players have the choice to travel the game's universe instead. They can fight monsters, help civilians, hunt for food and unravel secrets hidden in ancient shrines scattered all throughout Hyrule. There is no rush to finish the game, and players can spend many hours as they like to merely explore and appreciate its world-building element. As Lupe Núñez-Fernández explained, the potential of Gesamtkunstwerk offers power to the artist in placing its audience "under a spell so that everyone experiencing the work is transported into a state of complete intoxication, as if in a mystical initiation, in which each individual becomes part of the artwork". (Núñez-Fernández, 2011, p. 2) All of this coupled with the aforementioned art and music of BOTW produces a true experience, of which all players can witness the satisfaction of every score and visual prospects of the gameplay, thus making the product seem much more than just a scenic game.

Given the origin Nintendo's first console, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the games of this brand have come a long way from its arcade beginnings back in 1983. This advancement in technology may have allowed players a further immersive experience using Switch, though it can be argued that the technical advantage is not what makes a game like BOTW a 'work of art'.

What makes BOTW truly a work of art is its ability to bring all forms of media together within one product, in a sense that they all bring the most out of each other in setting up a high-quality performance of a game. Thus, its audience is likely to get sucked into the gameplay of BOTW, unaware of how engaging its entirety is until after a long period of time.

Sources:

Apocalypse Now (1979) Directed by F. Coppola. [Feature film]. Beverly Hills, CA: United Artists Corporation.

Nintendo (2017) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [Video game]. Nintendo.

Nintendo (1998) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Video game]. Nintendo.

Nunez-Fernandez, L. and Nunez-Fernandez, L. (2011) Gesamtkunstwerk: new art from Germany. London: Saatchi Gallery.

Sirani, J. (2023) IGN. Available at: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-selling-video-games-of-all-time-grand-theft-auto-minecraft-tetris (Accessed: 7 January 2024).

[skimaskkass]

Pre - Jeri (album review) (breakbit music/ROFLTRAX classics #1) (re-formated)

https://jeri.bandcamp.com/album/pre A long time ago (2014ish) I slightly helped or maybe tried to help a label called Breakbit Music. I am no Breakbit Music master but maybe I will be one day. In the meantime I can reminisce about albums that are dear (or not) to my life as a music fan and other things. One of these albums is Pre by Jeri. I had heard someone I’m in contact with make a track similar to one of the tracks on this album, though not exactly. I wondered if she knew this album and she didn’t. I mention this because I am very proud of her because this album is not just dear to my heart but makes me realize more than 99% of music I listen to how special life and musical ability is.

The opening “Seq1″  is musical chaos to me. But it is not nonsense. It sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard. I’ve heard some orangy (an alias Jeri had used earlier) tracks before and maybe this is a distillation of that. Jeri was a king of sampling and using them at the right moments. Every time that “woo!” plays you don’t know what to do and when it jumps out of the middle of a spaced out bar. It gets sandwiched by FM sounding percussion arpeggios with even more staccato drums and snares that without intentionally listening for a pattern doesn’t seem like there is one. It’s such a free track that somehow has order sonically is face melting. Musicians should take note how to create textures with the same sounds by placing them at different spaces like they are in this track. But remember this is just the intro. The next track “Toxic People” has this Nintendo 64 sounding echoing guitar over this seasick portable game system synth. It draws you in and the drums come in. The hi-hats sound like they could be on a high quality Amon Tobin track in their modulating pitches. The drums once again phase through different pitches, sounding irregular, FM sounding. Then this really low fidelity, reamped industrial drumming runs into the mix and the song’s baseline comes in (but it’s the kind of overwhelming thing that you hear in dubstep or grime tracks that just bubbles and soaks the mix (which is also somehow trombone that seems to have the suggestion of higher frequencies which maybe is why it coats the ears in ear candy)). The drums have sped up and become isolated. It sounds like industrial influenced ‘post-techno’ or something along those lines. Before you can make that thought the drums are run through a flanger. There’s a proper bassline that comes in that would fit a Nintendo 64 game (I will bring it up a lot). It’s wild. There’s reverb slowly being filled in the mix from the seasick synth. There’s some ring-mod sounding vocal cries and the track ends. “*SHOT*”: is playing and brace yourself for a lot of notes on this track. There is this percussive kind of 8-bit/bit crushed melody that sounds has the effect of dramatic fast horror movie-like piano playing. This track also has a sea sick synth. It sounds like howling ghosts now. The bass drums come in and are replaced with a bassline and then there is a ghost acid bassline and these ghost drums that are going at a fast tempo (ghost in this instance meaning low volume). It is at this point of the album where I say if you’ve ever been a fan of madness combat’s music. Listen to this album. It’s just bassline and the drums with some cuts of high pitched spooky sounds. There are these portamento woodblock sounds in the fast drums that might have echoing delay and/or vocoder on them but regardless they are an excellent detail. The 8-bit/bit crushed sound gets panned around and sounds ring modulated now. Every loop there are two slight notes that adds to the techno spinning inferno music, yeah it is quite tribal at this point. At 1:25 a great transition sound and more vocode-y drums and then this melody that I can’t describe the sound of. It’s like a synth lunatic singing as this synth squeal keeps pitching down. The piano stuff I was suggesting now completely reveals itself at a nickelodeon-fast speed...The track just keeps changing and changing and changing a bunch of distorted sounds come in over it and the after the bass kicks up and the sounds are being swiss-cheesed by distortion. The song falls into a loop where the drums change into that fm squeak and a formant camera-shutter with light melodies taken from sounds from before and it goes back to the consistent sound it started with. Except I notice a high pitched sound in the background now. The bassline bumps back and the percussion ghosts play in the background over a synth hi hat. The track ends. “Computer”: IDM crackling drums and deep town ball bounces over quiet strings. Insane synth 1 and 2 start descending both. Then gabber kicks and noise snare that are quiet play a hell-decent march over fm pads and synths that make creature-screams. Crackle and ball bounces come back and the synths. And back to the gabber hell-on-display.“Synop”: starts with a synthesized brass sound. A quiet high pitched pinging over absolutely beautiful resonant filter sweeping snares and expected character rich kicks. Then a really long melody starts playing that sounds like it’s for a Nintendo 64 game for robots. Then this high pitched club music melody comes in that I absolutely love. And a wandering synth robot starts to sing. It sounds like abstract vocoded vocals and high pitched hotel service bell sounds. There’s a high pitched sine wave sound that tells the robot to stop. Sometimes there’s some distortion in the robot’s singing. The music stops to focus on this part. It’s tremolo and then has a finish. There’s a lot relistening this track deserves. “Kesanspor”: starts with a formant synth for alien salsa over two notes of synth strings and a winding sound that’s revving up. Then a distorted roar. This complicated pad sound that sounds like 50 laser sounds suggesting a choir and an electronic church refrain synth ‘yeah’ are added.  A strange orchestral hit is added to the dead space between string sounds. This arcade sound that is loud but distant plays. There’s some hi-hats that come by to say hello. “Opalei”: Drums start: Kick drums that don’t sound like any kick drums I’ve ever heard personally. Noise snare and a synth-y but somehow metallic sound that’s almost a ‘hyuck’. At 0:05-00:6 there is a stutter in the drums that you gotta love the glitchiness of which is in the loop. Reverb-spaced out (a processed square-wave?) synth that suggests a string section come out. There’s harmonies of this sound and a pianoish, watery synth melody dripping nice through the mix. The melody loops and the drums switch up and then the melody goes to church organ mode and also formant squeals I’ve never heard before except maybe in a Rustie track. You now notice the side-chaining bass drum that is humble but starts rocking out to the magic. This is what bedroom producer synth-rock heaven sounds like. The synths go all filtery and flittery between high and mid tones. They start to take on a liquid quality as time slips. The string section comes back with a variation on the original melody, listen to that detail at the end of the sequence. It is a beautiful gated sound. Then a strange sound sneaks in that sounds like sitar and there are strumming sounds. “M0d”: A murderous string sound and a mid-range fm synth that’s like an electric guitar riff from DOOM over a kind of timpani drum beat. You’re getting ready to murder people to this song as wood block and congas add a playful touch to the track. There’s a slight high pitched triangle (the percussion instrument) sound there. Bursts of echo-y wavy synths start to add the melody to the track. The drums are now rock drums. There’s a turntablism sound at the end of the sequence. There is a slight variation to the sequence then a major one where it scales back and adds beautiful conga sounds and blatant triangle sounding noises with dynamic sound effect rustling noises. There is a cute synth doing a little boat toy whistle (it has an almost old video game / emulating-that-sound quality) after the echo-y wavy synths get more animated, excited and dramatic. I start to notice the bottle whistle sound. This sound starts to pan through the mix when more dramatic sounds are stripped back. Then the song switches up. The synth bludgeons that were echo-y and wavy go transform into searing hot jabs. N64-sounding acid bassline comes in. The bottle whistle transforms into an ore of noise. “Smoke Gogol”: Drums pan left and right. Acid like you’ve never heard it. Melodramatic portamento synths like cartoon character swoons. A sound like someone tapping on a stage mic to test it. Phone/Ringtone sounding synths and snares pan. It gets replaced with a resampled crossfaded type sound bobbing up and down from a low tone. The drums stand out more and variations abound including the phone sound pitched down. I noticed a synth pad that was behind the portamento synths when they came back. The structure is like poetry. First it goes A B A B then C D C D and loops back again. “Thez”: It sounds like a re-amped chop of When The Levee Breaks. Re-amped to make it sound just so beautiful. There’s that odd resampled sounding synth sound that seems to be speaking and singing to us. But that’s because there is a vocal sample in the background that’s grunting in an alien language. The synth goes up and now it really is singing. There is that constant note hammering way in the background that I love to hear in things in popular music. It gets isolated and moves up and down the scale with the drums. And then a N64 guitar comes in and acid nudges panned past you like you were driving past them. The guitar goes full wonky then the resampled sounding synth comes back. It is so unique. The resampled sound isolates and I notice the string sound that has been in the background maybe awhile. And in that isolating the sound shows you how wild it is. The track regains some layers and fades out like a dying candle. “Porta”: It sounds like a fm synth became a sad siren coming to retrieve a body. The snares are like snipps. The base drum sounds like a heavy object dropping on a metal plate. There’s another guitar-y sound. The track sounds like 5th gen video game music for a bad dream. There’s formant synths that harmonize with the siren. There’s a descending sound at the end you can hear at 1:30. It sounds like percussion of some kind. “Holtz IV”: Acid bassline that has an emulated sound quality to it which makes me think of it in a 5th gen gaming console. It’s on it’s own. Then this reggae melody string instrument comes in. More re-amped drums. More video-gamey sounds, this time an organ replaces the reggae melody. The organ comes back sounding more epic, perhaps it’s been layered multiple times. You gotta love it when it stutters. This is building up to the best part of the album for me. It’s not the medieval video game melody that comes in or the marching band beat that comes after it. Or the sick bass drum that comes in the second medieval melody starts. The drums flit around shortly as tastefully as any track of druqks. The glassy synth comes in (triangle wave I believe). And it’s one final surprise. There’s a bouncy club bass drum, I suppose it’s an 808. The squelching organ comes in to dance with the glassy arpeggio. Reverb at the end of the track. I didn’t know Jeri. We never talked. I knew a fair amount of the people on Breakbit Music though. He did a live set during the record label’s virtual music festival, ‘Bit Mania’. A pioneering thing for the early 2010s for sure. I remember the label’s founder mrSimon saying when the song Toxic People played something along the lines: “This is [jeri]? This sounds too good to be him”. Just a joke and Jeri said something in response. I know that being in that chatroom together was a privilege even though I never reached out to him like a fair amount of the people on the label. I didn’t really listen to the other albums under the name Jeri or too much of the Orangy stuff (which was too good to listen to imo). When I saw the cover for Pre I was entranced. It is beautiful and the album is... I view the outstanding musical genius of this album as a distant goal of what I want or imagine others to achieve as an artist. Anyone who can approach this kind of music should feel wonderful at their ability. People who know Jeri or are fans of him know that he passed away in 2014. I know his music will live on because of its power. But only if the effort is made to share it with the world.

[thainews1]

Should Your Child Watch TV News? Surprising Opinions of Top Anchors

More than ever, children witness innumerable, sometimes traumatizing, news events on TV. It seems that violent crime and bad news is unabating. Foreign wars, natural disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child abuse, and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the grim wave of recent school shootings.

All of this intrudes on the innocent world of children. If, as psychologists say, kids are like sponges and absorb everything that goes on around them, how profoundly does watching TV news actually affect them? How careful do parents need to be in monitoring the flow of news into the home, and how can they find an approach that works?

To answer these questions, we turned to a panel of seasoned anchors, Peter Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley--each having faced the complexities of raising their own vulnerable children in a news-saturated world.

Picture this: 6:30 p.m. After an exhausting day at the office, Mom is busy making dinner. She parks her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in front of the TV.

"Play Nintendo until dinner's ready," she instructs the little ones, who, instead, start flipping channels.

Tom Brokaw on "NBC News Tonight," announces that an Atlanta gunman has killed his wife, daughter and son, all three with a hammer, before going on a shooting rampage that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a jumbo jetliner with more than 300 passengers crashed in a spinning metal fireball at a Hong Kong airport.

On CNN, there's a report about the earthquake in Turkey, with 2,000 people killed.

On the Discovery channel, there's a timely special on hurricanes and the terror they create in children. Hurricane Dennis has already struck, Floyd is coming.

Finally, they see a local news report about a roller coaster accident at a New Jersey amusement park that kills a mother and her eight-year-old daughter.

Nintendo was never this riveting. See here ข่าวไทย

"Dinner's ready!" shouts Mom, unaware that her children may be terrified by this menacing potpourri of TV news.

What's wrong with this picture?

"There's a LOT wrong with it, but it's not that easily fixable," notes Linda Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning news program geared for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and gore on TV is NOT good for kids and it doesn't do much to enhance the lives of adults either," says the anchor, who strives to inform children about world events without terrorizing them. "We're into stretching kids' brains and there's nothing we wouldn't cover," including recent programs on euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book- banning, the death penalty, and Sudan slaves.

But Ellerbee emphasizes the necessity of parental supervision, shielding children from unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, there were terrible images of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids wanted to know if they were safe in their beds. In studies conducted by Nickelodeon, we found out that kids find the news the most frightening thing on TV.

"Whether it's the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a downed jetliner, or what happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your children, over and over again, that they're going to be OK--that the reason this story is news is that IT ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. News is the exception...nobody goes on the air happily and reports how many planes landed safely!

"My job is to put the information into an age-appropriate context and lower anxieties. Then it's really up to the parents to monitor what their kids watch and discuss it with them"

Yet a new study of the role of media in the lives of children conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that 95% of the nation's children ages 8-18 are watching TV without their parents present.

How does Ellerbee view the typical scenario of the harried mother above?

"Mom's taking a beating here. Where's Dad?" Ellerbee asks.Perhaps at work, or living separately from Mom, or absent altogether.

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are working as hard as they can because we live in a society where one income just doesn't cut it anymore,"

NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver, the mother of four--Katherine, 13, Christina, 12, Patrick, 10, and Christopher, 6--agrees with Ellerbee: "But Moms aren't using the TV as a babysitter because they're out getting manicures!" says the 48-year-old anchor.

"Those mothers are struggling to make ends meet and they do it because they need help. I don't think kids would be watching [as much TV] if their parents were home organizing a touch football game.

"When I need the TV as a babysitter," says Shriver, who leaves detailed TV- viewing instructions behind when traveling, "I put on a safe video. I don't mind that my kids have watched "Pretty Woman" or "My Best Friend's Wedding" 3,000 times. I'd be more fearful if they watched an hour of local news.That would scare them. They might feel: 'Oh, my God, is somebody going to come in and shoot me in my bedroom?'"

In a move to supervise her own children more closely since her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver scaled back her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and set up her office at home: "You can never be vigilant enough with your kids," she says, "because watching violence on TV clearly has a huge impact on children--whether it's TV news, movies, or cartoons."

This view is shared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior...studies find that children may become immune to the horror of violence; gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems; and resort to anti-social and aggressive behavior, imitating the violence they observe."

Although there are no rules about watching TV in 49% of the nation's households, TV-watching at the Schwarzenegger home is almost totally verboten:

"We have a blanket rule that my kids do not watch any TV at all during the week," she notes, "and having a TV in their bedrooms has never been an option. I have enough trouble getting them to do their homework!" she states with a laugh. "Plus the half hour of reading they have to do every night.

According to the Kaiser survey, Shriver's household is a glaring exception to the rule. "Many kids have their own TV's, VCR's and video games in their bedroom," the study notes. Moreover, children ages 8-18 actually spend an average of three hours and 16 minutes watching TV daily; only 44 minutes reading; 31 minutes using the computer; 27 minutes playing video games; and a mere 13 minutes using the Internet.

"My kids," Shriver explains, "get home at 4 p.m., have a 20-minute break, then go right into homework or after-school sports. Then, I'm a big believer in having family dinner time. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting at the dinner table and listening to my parents, four brothers, and my grandmother, Rose. We didn't watch the news.

"After dinner nowadays, we play a game, then my kids are in bed, reading their books. There's no time in that day for any TV, except on weekends, when they're allowed to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady Bunch, or Pokemon."

Beyond safe entertainment, Shriver has eliminated entirely the option of her children watching news events unfolding live on TV: "My kids," she notes, "do not watch any TV news, other than Nick News," instead providing her children with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and newspaper clippings discussed over dinner.

"No subject should be off-limits," Shriver concludes, "but you must filter the news to your kids."

ABC's Peter Jennings, who reigns over "World News Tonight," the nation's most-watched evening newscast, emphatically disagrees with a censored approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is now 24 and Christopher is 21-- and they were allowed to watch as much TV news and information anytime they wanted," says the anchor. A firm believer in kids understanding the world around them, he adapted his bestselling book, The Century, for children ages 10 and older in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't know of any downside and I've thought about it many times. I used to worry about my kids' exposure to violence and overt sex in the movies. Like most parents, I found that although they were exposed to violence sooner than I would have liked, I don't feel they've been affected by it. The jury's still out on the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of man--from the very beginning, at age 6 or 7. I didn't try to hide it. I never worried about putting a curtain between them and reality, because I never felt my children would be damaged by being exposed to violence IF they understood the context in which it occurred. I would talk to my kids about the vulnerability of children in wartime--the fact that they are innocent pawns-- and about what we could do as a family to make the world a more peaceful place.

Jennings firmly believes that coddling children is a mistake: "I've never talked down to my children, or to children period. I always talk UP to them and my newscast is appropriate for children of any age."

Yet the 65-year-old anchor often gets letters from irate parents: "They'll say: 'How dare you put that on at 6:30 when my children are watching?' My answer is: 'Madam, that's not my problem. That's YOUR problem. It's absolutely up to the parent to monitor the flow of news into the home."

Part of directing this flow is turning it off altogether at meal-time, says Jennings, who believes family dinners are sacrosanct. He is appalled that the TV is turned on during meals in 58% of the nation's households, this according to the Kaiser study.

"Watching TV during dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, explaining that he always insisted that his family wait until he arrived home from anchoring the news. "You're darn right they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they never ate until 7:30 or 8 pm. Then we would sit with no music, no TV. Why waste such a golden opportunity? Watching TV at mealtime robs the family of the essence of the dinner, which is communion and exchange of ideas. I mean, God, if the dinner table is anything, it's a place to learn manners and appreciation for two of the greatest things in life--food and drink."

Jennings is likewise unequivocal in his view of junk TV and believes parking kids at the tube creates dull minds: "I think using TV as a babysitter is a terrible idea because the damn television is very narcotic, drug-like. Mindless TV makes for passive human beings--and it's a distraction from homework!

"My two children were allowed to watch only a half an hour of entertainment TV per night--and they never had TV's in their bedrooms.It's a conscious choice I made as a parent not to tempt them...too seductive..."

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is meant to be. The hard, clear fact is that when kids are watching TV, they're not doing anything else!"

Indeed, according to the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and the Office of Research Education Consumer Guide, TV plays a bigger role in children's lives now than ever before. Kids watch TV an average of14 to 22 hours per week, which accounts for at least 25 percent of their free time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely private, declined an interview to discuss how she and her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury") handle TV-watching with their three teens, two of whom are fraternal twins. But in a written response, she agreed that kids need to be better protected from the onslaught of violence: "I was a visitor at a public elementary school not long ago, and was invited to peek in on a fourth-grade class on 'current events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and write about one of the stories. Two kids picked the fatal attack on a child by a pit bull and the other wrote about a child who'd hanged herself with a belt! They'd all watched the worst blood and gore 'News at 11' station in town. The teacher gave no hint that she was as appalled as I was. My response was to help the school get subscriptions to "Time for Kids" and "My Weekly Reader." People need to be better news consumers. And tabloid TV is very unhealthy for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee readily agrees:"I really do believe the first amendment STOPS at your front door. You are the boss at home and parents have every right to monitor what their kids watch. What's even better is watching with them and initiating conversations about what they see.If your child is watching something terribly violent, sit down and DEFUSE it. Talking makes the ghosts run...and kids can break through their scared feelings."

Adds Pauly:

"Kids," she maintains, "know about bad news--they're the ones trying to spare us the bad news sometimes. But kids should be able to see that their parents are both human enough to be deeply affected by a tragedy like Columbine, but also sturdy enough to get through it...and on with life. That is the underpinning of their security."

"I'm no expert on the nation's children," adds Jennings, " but I'd have to say no, it wasn't traumatic. Troubling, shocking, even devastating to some, confusing to others, but traumatizing in that great sense, no.

"Would I explain to my kids that there are young, upset, angry, depressed kids in the world? Yes. I hear the most horrendous stories about what's going on in high schools from my kids. And because of the shootings, parents are now on edge--pressuring educators to 'do something.' They have to be reminded that the vast majority of all schools in America are overwhelmingly safe," a fact borne out by The National School Safety Center, which reports that in l998 there were just 25 violent deaths in schools compared to an average of 50 in the early 90's.

Ellerbee adds that a parent's ability to listen is more important than lobbying school principals for more metal detectors and armed guards: "If there was ever a case where grown-ups weren't listening to kids, it was Littleton. First, don't interrupt your child...let them get the whole thought out. Next, if you sit silently for a couple of seconds after they're finished, they'll start talking again, getting to a second level of honesty. Third, try to be honest with your kid. To very small children, it's proper to say: 'This is never going to happen to you...' But you don't say that to a 10-year-old."

Moreover, Ellerbee believes that media literacy begins the day parents stop pretending that if you ignore TV, it will go away. "Let your kid know from the very beginning that he or she is SMARTER than TV: 'I am in control of this box, it is not in control of me. I will use this box as a useful, powerful TOOL, but will not be used by it.' Kids know the difference.

"Watching TV," Ellerbee maintains, "can makes kids more civilized. I grew up in the south of Texas in a family of bigoted people. Watching TV made me question my own family's beliefs in the natural inferiority of people of color. For me, TV was a real window that broadened my world."

Ironically, for Shriver, watching TV news is incredibly painful when the broadcast is about you. Being a Kennedy, Shriver has lived a lifetime in the glare of rumors and televised speculation about her own family. Presenting the news to her children has therefore included explaining the tragedies and controversies the Kennedys have endured. She was just eight years old when her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated: "I grew up in a very big shadow...and I couldn't avoid it," she admits. "It wasn't a choker, but it was a big responsibility that I don't want my own children to feel." Yet doesn't her 15- year marriage to megastar Schwarzenegger add yet another layer of public curiosity close to home? "My kids are not watching Entertainment Tonight--no, no, never! And I don't bring them to movie openings or Planet Hollywood. I think it's fine for them to be proud of their father, but not show off about him."

How does she emotionally handle news when her family's in it? "That's a line I've been walking since my own childhood, and it's certainly effected the kind of reporter I've become. It's made me less aggressive. I'm not [in the news business] to glorify myself at someone else's expense, but rather to report a story without destroying someone in the process. A producer might say: 'Call this person who's in a disastrous situation and book them right way.' And I'm like: 'Ahhhh. I can't even bring myself to do it,' because I've been on the other side and know the family is in such pain."

A few years ago, of course, the Kennedys experienced profound pain, yet again, when Shriver's beloved cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was killed in a plane crash, with his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. A blizzard of news coverage ensued, unremitting for weeks. "I didn't watch any of it...I was busy, " Shriver says quietly. "And my children didn't watch any of it either."

Shriver was, however, somewhat prepared to discuss the tragedy with her children. She is the author of the best-selling "What's Heaven?" [Golden Books], a book geared for children ages 4-8, which explains death and the loss of a loved one. "My children knew John well because he spent Christmases with us. I explained what happened to John as the news unfolded...walked them through it as best I could. I reminded them that Mommy wrote the book and said: 'We're not going to see John anymore. He has gone to God...to heaven...and we have to pray for him and for his sister [Caroline] and her children."

Like Shriver, Jennings is personally uncomfortable in the role of covering private tragedies in a public forum: "In my shop, I'm regarded as one of those people who drags their feet a lot at the notion of covering those things," he explains. "During the O.J. Simpson trial, I decided not to go crazy in our coverage--and we took quite a smack and dropped from first to second in the ratings. TV is a business, so when a real corker of a story like Princess Diana's death comes along, we cover it. I think we're afraid not to do it. We're guilty of overkill, and with Diana, we ended up celebrating something that was largely ephemeral, making Diana more than she was. But audiences leap up!

"I was totally opposed to covering John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s funeral, because I saw no need to do it. He wasn't a public figure, though others would say I was wrong. On-air, I said: 'I don't think the young Mr. Kennedy would approve of all this excess...' But we did three hours on the funeral and it turned out to be a wonderful long history lesson about American politics and the Kennedy dynasty's place in our national life.

"Sometimes," Jennings muses, "TV is like a chapel in which we, as a nation, can gather to have a communal experience of loss.We did it with the Challenger, more recently with JFK Jr.'s death and we will do it shortly, I suspect, though I hope not, with Ronald Reagan. It's not much different than what people did when they went West in covered wagons in the last century. When tragedy struck, they gathered the wagons around, lit the fire, and talked about their losses of the day. And then went on. Television can be very comforting."

In closing, Ellerbee contends that you can't blame TV news producers for the human appetite for sensational news coverage that often drags on for days at a time:

"As a reporter," she muses, "I have never been to a war, traffic accident, or murder site that didn't draw a crowd. There is a little trash in all of us. But the same people who stop to gawk at a traffic accident, may also climb down a well to save a child's life, or cry at a sunset, or grin and tap their feet when the parade goes by.

"We are NOT just one thing. Kids can understand these grays...just as there's more than one answer to a question, there is certainly more than one part to you!"

[itnews452]

Should Your Child Watch TV News? Surprising Opinions of Top Anchors

KIDS AND THE NEWS

More than ever, children witness innumerable, sometimes traumatizing, news events on TV. It seems that violent crime and bad news is unabating. Foreign wars, natural disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child abuse, and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the grim wave of recent school shootings.

All of this intrudes on the innocent world of children. If, as psychologists say, kids are like sponges and absorb everything that goes on around them, how profoundly does watching TV news actually affect them? How careful do parents need to be in monitoring the flow of news into the home, and how can they find an approach that works?

To answer these questions, we turned to a panel of seasoned anchors, Peter Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley--each having faced the complexities of raising their own vulnerable children in a news-saturated world.

Picture this: 6:30 p.m. After an exhausting day at the office, Mom is busy making dinner. She parks her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in front of the TV.

"Play Nintendo until dinner's ready," she instructs the little ones, who, instead, start flipping channels.

Tom Brokaw on "NBC News Tonight," announces that an Atlanta gunman has killed his wife, daughter and son, all three with a hammer, before going on a shooting rampage that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a jumbo jetliner with more than 300 passengers crashed in a spinning metal fireball at a Hong Kong airport.

On CNN, there's a report about the earthquake in Turkey, with 2,000 people killed.

On the Discovery channel, there's a timely special on hurricanes and the terror they create in children. Hurricane Dennis has already struck, Floyd is coming.

Finally, they see a local news report about a roller coaster accident at a New Jersey amusement park that kills a mother and her eight-year-old daughter.

Nintendo was never this riveting.

"Dinner's ready!" shouts Mom, unaware that her children may be terrified by this menacing potpourri of TV news.

What's wrong with this picture?

"There's a LOT wrong with it, but it's not that easily fixable," notes Linda Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning news program geared for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and gore on TV is NOT good for kids and it doesn't do much to enhance the lives of adults either," says the anchor, who strives to inform children about world events without terrorizing them. "We're into stretching kids' brains and there's nothing we wouldn't cover," including recent programs on euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book- banning, the death penalty, and Sudan slaves.

But Ellerbee emphasizes the necessity of parental supervision, shielding children from unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, there were terrible images of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids wanted to know if they were safe in their beds. In studies conducted by Nickelodeon, we found out that kids find the news the most frightening thing on TV.

"Whether it's the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a downed jetliner, or what happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your children, over and over again, that they're going to be OK--that the reason this story is news is that IT ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. News is the exception...nobody goes on the air happily and reports how many planes landed safely!

"My job is to put the information into an age-appropriate context and lower anxieties. Then it's really up to the parents to monitor what their kids watch and discuss it with them"

Yet a new study of the role of media in the lives of children conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that 95% of the nation's children ages 8-18 are watching TV without their parents present.

How does Ellerbee view the typical scenario of the harried mother above?

"Mom's taking a beating here. Where's Dad?" Ellerbee asks.Perhaps at work, or living separately from Mom, or absent altogether.

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are working as hard as they can because we live in a society where one income just doesn't cut it anymore,"

NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver, the mother of four--Katherine, 13, Christina, 12, Patrick, 10, and Christopher, 6--agrees with Ellerbee: "But Moms aren't using the TV as a babysitter because they're out getting manicures!" says the 48-year-old anchor.

"Those mothers are struggling to make ends meet and they do it because they need help. I don't think kids would be watching [as much TV] if their parents were home organizing a touch football game.

"When I need the TV as a babysitter," says Shriver, who leaves detailed TV- viewing instructions behind when traveling, "I put on a safe video. I don't mind that my kids have watched "Pretty Woman" or "My Best Friend's Wedding" 3,000 times. I'd be more fearful if they watched an hour of local news.That would scare them. They might feel: 'Oh, my God, is somebody going to come in and shoot me in my bedroom?'"

In a move to supervise her own children more closely since her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver scaled back her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and set up her office at home: "You can never be vigilant enough with your kids," she says, "because watching violence on TV clearly has a huge impact on children--whether it's TV news, movies, or cartoons."

This view is shared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a powerful influence in developing value systems and shaping behavior...studies find that children may become immune to the horror of violence; gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems; and resort to anti-social and aggressive behavior, imitating the violence they observe."

Although there are no rules about watching TV in 49% of the nation's households, TV-watching at the Schwarzenegger home is almost totally verboten:

"We have a blanket rule that my kids do not watch any TV at all during the week," she notes, "and having a TV in their bedrooms has never been an option. I have enough trouble getting them to do their homework!" she states with a laugh. "Plus the half hour of reading they have to do every night.

According to the Kaiser survey, Shriver's household is a glaring exception to the rule. "Many kids have their own TV's, VCR's and video games in their bedroom," the study notes. Moreover, children ages 8-18 actually spend an average of three hours and 16 minutes watching TV daily; only 44 minutes reading; 31 minutes using the computer; 27 minutes playing video games; and a mere 13 minutes using the Internet.

"My kids," Shriver explains, "get home at 4 p.m., have a 20-minute break, then go right into homework or after-school sports. Then, I'm a big believer in having family dinner time. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting at the dinner table and listening to my parents, four brothers, and my grandmother, Rose. We didn't watch the news.

"After dinner nowadays, we play a game, then my kids are in bed, reading their books. There's no time in that day for any TV, except on weekends, when they're allowed to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady Bunch, or Pokemon."

Beyond safe entertainment, Shriver has eliminated entirely the option of her children watching news events unfolding live on TV: "My kids," she notes, "do not watch any TV news, other than Nick News," instead providing her children with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and newspaper clippings discussed over dinner.

"No subject should be off-limits," Shriver concludes, "but you must filter the news to your kids."

ABC's Peter Jennings, who reigns over "World News Tonight," the nation's most-watched evening newscast, emphatically disagrees with a censored approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is now 24 and Christopher is 21-- and they were allowed to watch as much TV news and information anytime they wanted," says the anchor. A firm believer in kids understanding the world around them, he adapted his bestselling book, The Century, for children ages 10 and older in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't know of any downside and I've thought about it many times. I used to worry about my kids' exposure to violence and overt sex in the movies. Like most parents, I found that although they were exposed to violence sooner than I would have liked, I don't feel they've been affected by it. The jury's still out on the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of man--from the very beginning, at age 6 or 7. I didn't try to hide it. I never worried about putting a curtain between them and reality, because I never felt my children would be damaged by being exposed to violence IF they understood the context in which it occurred. I would talk to my kids about the vulnerability of children in wartime--the fact that they are innocent pawns-- and about what we could do as a family to make the world a more peaceful place.

Jennings firmly believes that coddling children is a mistake: "I've never talked down to my children, or to children period. I always talk UP to them and my newscast is appropriate for children of any age."

Yet the 65-year-old anchor often gets letters from irate parents: "They'll say: 'How dare you put that on at 6:30 when my children are watching?' My answer is: 'Madam, that's not my problem. That's YOUR problem. It's absolutely up to the parent to monitor the flow of news into the home."

Part of directing this flow is turning it off altogether at meal-time, says Jennings, who believes family dinners are sacrosanct. He is appalled that the TV is turned on during meals in 58% of the nation's households, this according to the Kaiser study.

"Watching TV during dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, explaining that he always insisted that his family wait until he arrived home from anchoring the news. "You're darn right they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they never ate until 7:30 or 8 pm. Then we would sit with no music, no TV. Why waste such a golden opportunity? Watching TV at mealtime robs the family of the essence of the dinner, which is communion and exchange of ideas. I mean, God, if the dinner table is anything, it's a place to learn manners and appreciation for two of the greatest things in life--food and drink."

Jennings is likewise unequivocal in his view of junk TV and believes parking kids at the tube creates dull minds: "I think using TV as a babysitter is a terrible idea because the damn television is very narcotic, drug-like. Mindless TV makes for passive human beings--and it's a distraction from homework!

"My two children were allowed to watch only a half an hour of entertainment TV per night--and they never had TV's in their bedrooms.It's a conscious choice I made as a parent not to tempt them...too seductive..."

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is meant to be. The hard, clear fact is that when kids are watching TV, they're not doing anything else!"

Indeed, according to the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and the Office of Research Education Consumer Guide, TV plays a bigger role in children's lives now than ever before. Kids watch TV an average of14 to 22 hours per week, which accounts for at least 25 percent of their free time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely private, declined an interview to discuss how she and her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury") handle TV-watching with their three teens, two of whom are fraternal twins. But in a written response, she agreed that kids need to be better protected from the onslaught of violence: "I was a visitor at a public elementary school not long ago, and was invited to peek in on a fourth-grade class on 'current events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and write about one of the stories. Two kids picked the fatal attack on a child by a pit bull and the other wrote about a child who'd hanged herself with a belt! They'd all watched the worst blood and gore 'News at 11' station in town. The teacher gave no hint that she was as appalled as I was. My response was to help the school get subscriptions to "Time for Kids" and "My Weekly Reader." People need to be better news consumers. And tabloid TV is very unhealthy for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee readily agrees:"I really do believe the first amendment STOPS at your front door. You are the boss at home and parents have every right to monitor what their kids watch. What's even better is watching with them and initiating conversations about what they see.If your child is watching something terribly violent, sit down and DEFUSE it. Talking makes the ghosts run...and kids can break through their scared feelings."

Adds Pauly:

"Kids," she maintains, "know about bad news--they're the ones trying to spare us the bad news sometimes. But kids should be able to see that their parents are both human enough to be deeply affected by a tragedy like Columbine, but also sturdy enough to get through it...and on with life. That is the underpinning of their security."

"I'm no expert on the nation's children," adds Jennings, " but I'd have to say no, it wasn't traumatic. Troubling, shocking, even devastating to some, confusing to others, but traumatizing in that great sense, no.

"Would I explain to my kids that there are young, upset, angry, depressed kids in the world? Yes. I hear the most horrendous stories about what's going on in high schools from my kids. And because of the shootings, parents are now on edge--pressuring educators to 'do something.' They have to be reminded that the vast majority of all schools in America are overwhelmingly safe," a fact borne out by The National School Safety Center, which reports that in l998 there were just 25 violent deaths in schools compared to an average of 50 in the early 90's.

Ellerbee adds that a parent's ability to listen is more important than lobbying school principals for more metal detectors and armed guards: "If there was ever a case where grown-ups weren't listening to kids, it was Littleton. First, don't interrupt your child...let them get the whole thought out. Next, if you sit silently for a couple of seconds after they're finished, they'll start talking again, getting to a second level of honesty. Third, try to be honest with your kid. To very small children, it's proper to say: 'This is never going to happen to you...' But you don't say that to a 10-year-old."

Moreover, Ellerbee believes that media literacy begins the day parents stop pretending that if you ignore TV, it will go away. "Let your kid know from the very beginning that he or she is SMARTER than TV: 'I am in control of this box, it is not in control of me. I will use this box as a useful, powerful TOOL, but will not be used by it.' Kids know the difference.

"Watching TV," Ellerbee maintains, "can makes kids more civilized. I grew up in the south of Texas in a family of bigoted people. Watching TV made me question my own family's beliefs in the natural inferiority of people of color. For me, TV was a real window that broadened my world."

Ironically, for Shriver, watching TV news is incredibly painful when the broadcast is about you. Being a Kennedy, Shriver has lived a lifetime in the glare of rumors and televised speculation about her own family. Presenting the news to her children has therefore included explaining the tragedies and controversies the Kennedys have endured. She was just eight years old when her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated: "I grew up in a very big shadow...and I couldn't avoid it," she admits. "It wasn't a choker, but it was a big responsibility that I don't want my own children to feel." Yet doesn't her 15- year marriage to megastar Schwarzenegger add yet another layer of public curiosity close to home? "My kids are not watching Entertainment Tonight--no, no, never! And I don't bring them to movie openings or Planet Hollywood. I think it's fine for them to be proud of their father, but not show off about him."

How does she emotionally handle news when her family's in it? "That's a line I've been walking since my own childhood, and it's certainly effected the kind of reporter I've become. It's made me less aggressive. I'm not [in the news business] to glorify myself at someone else's expense, but rather to report a story without destroying someone in the process. A producer might say: 'Call this person who's in a disastrous situation and book them right way.' And I'm like: 'Ahhhh. I can't even bring myself to do it,' because I've been on the other side and know the family is in such pain." Read more here ข่าวไอที

A few years ago, of course, the Kennedys experienced profound pain, yet again, when Shriver's beloved cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was killed in a plane crash, with his wife, Carolyn, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. A blizzard of news coverage ensued, unremitting for weeks. "I didn't watch any of it...I was busy, " Shriver says quietly. "And my children didn't watch any of it either."

Shriver was, however, somewhat prepared to discuss the tragedy with her children. She is the author of the best-selling "What's Heaven?" [Golden Books], a book geared for children ages 4-8, which explains death and the loss of a loved one. "My children knew John well because he spent Christmases with us. I explained what happened to John as the news unfolded...walked them through it as best I could. I reminded them that Mommy wrote the book and said: 'We're not going to see John anymore. He has gone to God...to heaven...and we have to pray for him and for his sister [Caroline] and her children."

Like Shriver, Jennings is personally uncomfortable in the role of covering private tragedies in a public forum: "In my shop, I'm regarded as one of those people who drags their feet a lot at the notion of covering those things," he explains. "During the O.J. Simpson trial, I decided not to go crazy in our coverage--and we took quite a smack and dropped from first to second in the ratings. TV is a business, so when a real corker of a story like Princess Diana's death comes along, we cover it. I think we're afraid not to do it. We're guilty of overkill, and with Diana, we ended up celebrating something that was largely ephemeral, making Diana more than she was. But audiences leap up!

"I was totally opposed to covering John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s funeral, because I saw no need to do it. He wasn't a public figure, though others would say I was wrong. On-air, I said: 'I don't think the young Mr. Kennedy would approve of all this excess...' But we did three hours on the funeral and it turned out to be a wonderful long history lesson about American politics and the Kennedy dynasty's place in our national life.

"Sometimes," Jennings muses, "TV is like a chapel in which we, as a nation, can gather to have a communal experience of loss.We did it with the Challenger, more recently with JFK Jr.'s death and we will do it shortly, I suspect, though I hope not, with Ronald Reagan. It's not much different than what people did when they went West in covered wagons in the last century. When tragedy struck, they gathered the wagons around, lit the fire, and talked about their losses of the day. And then went on. Television can be very comforting."

In closing, Ellerbee contends that you can't blame TV news producers for the human appetite for sensational news coverage that often drags on for days at a time:

"As a reporter," she muses, "I have never been to a war, traffic accident, or murder site that didn't draw a crowd. There is a little trash in all of us. But the same people who stop to gawk at a traffic accident, may also climb down a well to save a child's life, or cry at a sunset, or grin and tap their feet when the parade goes by.

"We are NOT just one thing. Kids can understand these grays...just as there's more than one answer to a question, there is certainly more than one part to you!

[ospreys-watch]

Bird’s Eye Review: Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Video game adaptations tend to not do very well as feature-length films, mainly due to the length of most games being far too long to squeeze in the extensive details and lore many games entail. As such, game adaptations of any kind often tend to do better as graphic novels or animated series (i.e. Persona 4: The Animation or Netflix’s Castlevania). And with the absolute travesty that was the trailer for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog film (I honestly don’t know if overworking the animators to redesign the title character will save that movie), I admittedly had some reservations when I sat down to watch Pokemon Detective Pikachu on Sunday. However, the general response from my friends who had seen the film had been very good, and the response online even better.

I think what partially saved this film was that it was only covering the plot of a single game in the series’ 20+ year history; a Nintendo 3DS title with the same name, that wasn’t all that connected to the main series. The plot of the film (and game) centers around Tim Goodman, who teams up with a talking, wise-cracking Pikachu to discover what happened to his father Harry, who supposedly died in a car accident. However, the Pikachu has no memories of its past, with its only clue being Harry Goodman’s address stitched into its hat. It should be noted that the premise and some other plot points are the same between the game and film, but most of the characters are different to include a bit more diversity. From here on out, I’ll only be discussing the film.

When Tim goes to his father’s apartment (and meets Pikachu), he encounters and (stupidly) opens a mysterious vial containing a purple chemical; as he opens a window to air out the room, unknowingly causing a group of wild Aipom to go on a temporary rampage and attack the pair. This begins the investigation of a second plot point—a strange chemical compound called R being produced to drive pokemon mad. It becomes clear that Harry was also investigating this R, as when Tim and Pikachu manage to find a lead and encounter an underground pokemon fight club (Ryme City, where the film takes place, does not permit pokemon battles, normally a staple of the game series), the club owner recognizes Pikachu—and doesn’t take kindly to its return.

There’s so much I want to discuss about this film, but I’ll begin with the pokemon themselves—they’re fleshed out beautifully in this film, as if they actually belong in the scenery, affected by lights, shadows, water and other aspects of their environment. There is a scene early on where Tim is licked by a Lickitung, and saliva appears on Tim’s face right beneath the massive CGI tongue. Later scenes seamlessly blend CGI pokemon attacks with special effects, such as fire and water. Human actors are impacted by animated characters very clearly, though I feel like in some cases the movements were a big exaggerated. Pikachu’s fur is shown as short and fuzzy without seeming to be too much; Charizard’s scales have full detail, and even details of an electrical burn from a previous battle. The pokemon characters are a seamless blend of human and animal, visibly changing expression and showing that they’re not beneath instincts (such as when Pikachu is scratched on the chin and begins tapping his foot like a dog). My favorite pokemon depiction in the film, however, is Mewtwo. Heeded in-universe as one of the most powerful pokemon in existence, the genetically-created psychic type is shown as a blend of highly intelligent, yet still an animal at its core. It communicates telepathically, and I absolutely love the way they blended the audio for Mewtwo’s voice, using two voice actors, one male and one female—Mewtwo is a genderless pokemon, so this was a very nice touch. It’s clear the people who worked on the film were people who loved the series and wanted to be as loyal to it as possible.

The human characters were, honestly, a bit flat, but nothing terrible. Tim, played by Justice Smith, is a cynical adult who gave up his dreams of being a pokemon trainer and hasn’t spoken to his father in years, harboring a sort of resentment toward him—he at one point in the film states it sometimes felt like his father, who lived in Ryme City while Tim was cared for by his grandmother (his mother had passed), cared more about pokemon than his own son—this can sometimes be a sentiment shared by children whose parents work demanding jobs, or travel frequently for work. Lucy, played by Jessica Newton, is an okay character, but at the same time, I feel like she looks too young to be an adult character (that’s just a personal thing, though). To be honest, she reminded me a lot of Hilary Duff during the Lizzie McGuire era—and that’s a bit young. But that’s really a minor gripe; other than that, Lucy’s a nice supporting character who proves herself to be useful to Tim without falling into the “sexy lamp” category (i.e. she has enough of a presence on the screen where she can’t just be replaced with a sexy lamp—look that test up if you’re curious), not to mention having her own ambitions that happen to coincide with Tim’s.

Naturally, the one who steals the show is Ryan Reynolds as the titular Detective Pikachu. He’s crass, overconfident, and a good foil to the much more strait laced Tim. It’s pretty clear he’s pulling a lot from his role as Deadpool in 2016’s titular Deadpool, but that doesn’t make him any less funny in the role.

Now, at this point, I want to talk about a few things in the film that bugged me, or I felt were worth noting. They’re relatively minor, but they are spoilers, so they will be down below the Read More.

[[READ MORE]]

I feel like the dialogue was a bit weak in some areas; most noticeably in the scene where Mewtwo speaks to Pikachu before merging Harry with him. Mewtwo simply states that “not all humans are bad.” I understand this is a children’s movie, but Mewtwo is a highly intelligent creature, and is highly likely the same Mewtwo from Pokemon: The First Movie, who said the famous line, “The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” I simply feel like “not all humans are bad” could have been said in a more sophisticated way. On the subject of Mewtwo, I understand he’s a powerful pokemon, but the idea of him being able to merge humans and pokemon seems a bit out of his range of abilities as a psychic-type.

The other issue was with Ryan Reynolds playing the actual father at the end of the film. Ryan is far older than he looks, but his youthful appearance did not work for him in this film—he simply looks too young to be the father of an adult son.

The villain’s motive, to merge people and pokemon to advance humankind, is a bit more complex than the typical, “take over the world” plot—the villain is an old man, confined to a wheelchair, who wants nothing but strength, and uses Mewtwo’s body and DNA (to produce the chemical R) to achieve that end. I have seen some arguments that the film is ableist because the villain is disabled. I just don’t think the film set out to be that way, and calling it “ableist” may be going a bit too far—granted, I am not physically disabled, so I can’t speak for anybody whatsoever.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I highly recommend it—the people who worked on the film made it clearly as a love story to the decades-old series that’s inspired and entertained millions of players since its inception, and their hard work and research shows, from subtle dialogue hints (Pikachu says “Arceus” instead of “God” at one point, referring to the godly pokemon), to references in the environment that are there and gone in the blink of an eye. It’s a good film that’s worth a watch, with a decent mystery and plenty of action.

Gotta catch ‘em all, indeed!

[madat-55]

Virna have you read the telegraph interview of Liam? What do you make of it?

Hello my Anon and of course I wasted 15 minutes of my life reading through the latest BS that “Liam” sold us!

To tell you the truth, my Nonnie, I was expecting the usual “Cheryl and Bear promo”, but this was…. unimaginable! For me, the party started when I read the following sentences: “he plods through the office, saying hello to everybody in the building individually, and in most cases remembering something about them: that they beat him at Fifa last time he dropped by, so they must have a rematch before he leaves“. The interview was given in his management offices in London, where the employees apparently spend their work hours playing FIFA or other computer/XBOX/Playstation/Nintendo games and they get to keep their job. Now why didn’t the rest of us find such a job? 

As you can understand, everything I read after this, I simply considered it redundant! From the “on his left arm, a scale depiction of Cheryl’s eye, that appears to follow you around the room as he gesticulates. ‘It’s so my missus can always keep an eye on me,’ he likes to say about that one“ (if you notice the wording, he didn’t say that in this interview, but they use it as a “quote”), which I would normally question as to “why does he NEED the missus to keep an eye on him? Is he being naughty?”, to the “My place was on the floor with the dog, there was no space on the sofa“, as his “assigned” place being on the floor, ergo he was on the same level as the dog, and the self-esteem issues that this sentence alone shows, I realised it is simply part of the official narrative.

Same goes for the ‘scarred kidney and the miraculous recovery” narrative which premiered in the Ben Winston interview, causing great mirth to Zouis (who hailed is as a load of BS!) and made a come-back here. Now since we know that Liam used to train as a runner for the 2012 Olympics I simply have to ask that: if Liam had kidney problems, how on earth did he train and how did he follow the specific diet needed for such training? And how did this kidney suddenly recover on his own? Was this a tribute to the Start trek movies (Star Trek IV: the Voyage home) whre the doctor had given a patient a pill and “she grew a new kidney”???

So, sorry my Nonnie, but this “heartfelt interview” didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Cause if you think that the fake personalities attributed to all 5 Boys is news, then you haven’t read the SONY emails that were leaked and were very analytical about these profiles. And the worst part is that it depicts Liam as  “charity case” pleading for sympathy (woe is me!) and as a total moron…

I can assure you that Liam is neither; he is a very clever and self-asserted young man who was (psychologically) able to sing publically at 14 and at the same age he managed himself and he was addressing his fans. All that it remains is for the “real Liam” to be allowed to make an appearance and unfortunately, the way things are going (the contracts and the long-term closeting etc) I don’t see this happening any time soon…

P.S. I always include my comments in my tags and I included a few when I reblogged the interview but I didn’t bother to waste more time on it.

[aion-rsa]

Avengers: Endgame - Different Versions of Marvel Comics' Infinity Gauntlet Story

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Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are only two of the many different takes on Thanos' epic Infinity Gauntlet story.

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The culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has arrived with Avengers: Endgame, where the greatest Marvel superheroes tangle with Thanos the Mad Titan, following up on the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Since showing up at the end of the first Avengers movie, it’s been pretty apparent that Thanos would be scouring the cosmos for the Infinity Gems/Stones so as to do an adaptation of the hit early '90s miniseries Infinity Gauntlet.

The comic has become rather iconic in Marvel history and it made sense that they’d spend the better part of a decade building towards it. As we now know, they didn't take to the source material all that closely. Sure, there was no crushing on Death or appearances by Adam Warlock, but it very much drew from that well. It's to be expected. Infinity Gauntlet is a storyline that’s been retold, adapted, and twisted in all sorts of ways since first appearing nearly 30 years ago.

Here are all the different variations of Thanos and Adam's Excellent Adventure.

INFINITY GAUNTLET (1991)

We’re going full spoiler on this.

As a follow-up to the two-part story Thanos Quest, the Mad Titan Thanos has control of all six Infinity Gems and is essentially God. Mephisto hangs around to feed his ego, while naturally plotting to overthrow him. Thanos also has his so-called granddaughter Nebula hanging around, stuck in a catatonic zombie state because Thanos is a jerk. Since Thanos wants to win the love of Death herself, he uses the Gauntlet to wipe out half of the universe. 50% of all living things simply vanish, including a big chunk of the superheroes. Adam Warlock is reborn and goes to the remaining heroes, coming up with this awesome plan of going to Thanos’ space home and punching him in his stupid scrotum face. This is really a swerve because he plans to have them all killed off as a distraction so Silver Surfer can sneak by and steal the Gauntlet off Thanos’ hand.

Meanwhile, Thanos’ whims have caused Earth to drift away from the sun, making it colder and colder by the hour. Odin and all the other heavyweight god types on Earth are blocked off from interfering. As a way of making Death jealous, Thanos uses the Gauntlet to create a mate in Terraxia.

read more: The Weirdest Thanos Moments in Marvel History

Mephisto suggests that Thanos hold back against the heroes to impress Death, so he scales it back a lot, which gives the heroes a 1% chance. As hard as they try, they still lose horribly and are killed one-by-one by Thanos and Terraxia. After Captain America goes full-on badass and stares down Thanos, Silver Surfer flies in and misses his mark completely. About then, all the galactic heavy hitters – the tapestry of the universe itself – show up. Thanos goes back to full power and makes mincemeat of them all. He transforms himself into a form that’s one with the universe, which leaves his physical Gauntlet out in the open. Nebula takes it and steals the power, reverting everything to how it once was...except for the part where she still has all the power.

Thanos teams up with Warlock and a couple of the more powerful heroes, ultimately defeating Nebula when Warlock takes control of the Soul Gem and shorts it out a bit, causing Nebula to drop the Gauntlet. A fight breaks out and Warlock comes out wielding the Infinity Gauntlet, swearing to use it wisely. Thanos fakes his own death, but is later seen living a quiet life as a farmer.

So that’s Infinity Gauntlet Prime. Let’s see how other writers and mediums have messed around with the formula.

Read Infinity Gauntlet on Amazon

WHAT IF THANOS CHANGED GALACTUS INTO A HUMAN BEING? (1992)

What If #34 was a humor-based issue of the series and while most of it is painfully unfunny, the opening seven-page short story is humorous and even a little bit uplifting in its own weird way. No joke, this is actually my all-time favorite comic book story.

As Thanos fights the cosmic entities, he decides to get creative when dispatching Galactus. He transforms him into a human being and sends him down to Earth. Galactus awakens naked in a trailer park, forgetting who he is while being a 100% facsimile of Elvis Presley! A single mother named Gertrude takes him in and thinks he’s the real deal with amnesia. She explains everything about Elvis to him and while he still has no memory, he trusts her and decides that he is indeed the King. He swears to do good with this second chance by not getting involved with the pitfalls of fame, such as drugs.

read more: The 100 Best What If Moments in Marvel History

Also, the comic features the million dollar line, “Ma’am, the hunger gnaws.”

Galactus gets back into music, trying to stay on the down low, but soon people take notice and we’re about to get the second coming of Elvismania. Right as he’s about to see to the public, Galactus is confronted by Adam Warlock, now in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. He wills Galactus his memory, but the Eater of Worlds doesn’t want to return. He’s found a better identity as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and chooses to stay with Gertrude and her son, giving both Galactus and Elvis Presley’s legacy a second chance.

WHAT THE--?! #24 (1992)

Marvel’s lesser-known humor book from the early '90s once featured a Mad Magazine-style spoof of Infinity Gauntlet called “The Infinity Mitten.” Thermos and his advisor McFisto go on a double-date with Death and Taxes, but Thermos is disappointed that Death has no interest in him. Using the Mitten, he removes half of life in the universe...except on the first try he accidentally just removes everyone’s lower half. Earth’s heroes go after him, but brute force isn’t enough. After talking over various ideas to remove the Infinity Mitten, they go with challenging Thermos to strip poker. They all lose and die of embarrassment.

read more - Complete Guide to Marvel and MCU Easter Eggs in Avengers: Endgame

The cosmic beings show up to throwdown, but Thermos points out that he’s an atheist and they all vanish. Silver Surfer (or whatever his parody name is) starts whining about all the death he’s seen, causing Adam Warlox to finally snap at him for being such a downer. Warlox shoots him with a revolver, which Thermos steals and uses on Warlox and McFisto.

Thinking that killing off an entire universe of heroes and villains is enough, Thermos is shocked to see that Death is now dating Nintendo's Mario. Death explains that her new boyfriend is killing off the entire comics industry by himself!

WHAT IF THE SILVER SURFER POSSESSED THE INFINITY GAUNTLET? (1993)

I absolutely love this issue and would have liked a variation of this as the actual ending of Infinity Gauntlet instead of what we got. Surfer succeeds in snatching the Gauntlet from Thanos’ hands. First thing he does is set everything back to normal. Then he sends everyone back home except Warlock and Thanos, who he keeps as advisors...but really as witnesses as he makes the universe a better place. He starts off with the well-meaning moves you’d expect. He eliminates disease, hunger, soothes hatred (a Kree and a Skrull are shown greeting each other happily), and even makes Death into a more alluring figure instead of something to be feared. Then he goes to Hell to see if Mephisto would be cool being remade into something a bit more pleasant, but Mephisto instead starts a fight. Surfer vaporizes him and goes back to his home to think about stuff.

read more - Avengers: Endgame Ending Explained

Warlock and Thanos go to Doctor Strange because, boy howdy, Surfer’s going nuts with all that power. Strange figures the best way about this is to summon Surfer’s old flame Shalla-Bal to talk some sense into him, especially since Surfer’s thinking of removing randomness completely and giving the universe complete order. Arguments and fighting happen, but seeing Shalla-Bal so hurt brings Surfer back to sanity. He uses the Infinity Gauntlet’s power to destroy itself – and seemingly he and Shalla-Bal with it – but we discover that the two of them are secretly alone on a paradise planet of their creation to live the rest of their lives in secret.

As everything returns to normal, Thanos stands alone, holding up the scrapped remains of the Gauntlet. With a smirk, he says, “So close. Oh, yes... So very close.”

MARVEL SUPER HEROES (1995)

In a follow-up to X-Men: Children of the Atom, Capcom released a one-on-one fighting game called Marvel Super Heroes, which is loosely based on Infinity Gauntlet. In it, you control a hero or villain as you gather the Infinity Gems from your opponents, working your way to fighting Dr. Doom and then Thanos. Upon meeting him, Thanos will steal your Gems and complete the Infinity Gauntlet before the final battle. While there isn’t much story in the game, it definitely stays loyal to the comic in ways. For instance, Thanos’ battleground is his base from Infinity Gauntlet, where you can see the likes of Thor, Nova, Drax, Scarlet Witch, and She-Hulk frozen in stone as Mephisto and Death idle in the background.

read more: The Legacy of Marvel vs. Capcom

The game is kicking rad if you haven’t played it, letting you unleash the power of the various Gems in battle, each giving you a different ability. The console version includes playable versions of the bosses, as well as Anita, the emotionless little girl from Capcom’s Darkstalkers series.

Here are the various endings based on the different characters defeating Thanos:

Anita: Simply uses the Gems to free the heroes from their statue forms. Nothing else.

Blackheart: Is asked to hand it over from his father Mephisto, but Blackheart turns on him and chooses to rule reality.

Captain America: Reverts the heroes to normal. Then pals around with Thor and throws the Infinity Gems into a black hole so nobody can use them.

Dr. Doom: Bitches out Thanos and rules the Earth with the Infinity Gauntlet. Yeah, they don’t get very fancy with this one.

Hulk: Reverts the heroes to normal. Thanos wants to die, but Hulk leaves him begging. Hulk goes on a second honeymoon to Vegas with Betty, but he chooses to get there by leaping with Betty holding on for dear life.

Iron Man: Reverts the heroes to normal. Considers using the Gauntlet, but then refuses. Later, he’s bummed to discover that his nervous system problems are gone. He selfishly used the power after all. Cap tells him not to worry about it.

Juggernaut: Is ready to grab the Infinity Gauntlet and get his vengeance on Xavier. Suddenly, Adam Warlock pops in to take it away, thanking Juggernaut for saving reality and then sending him back to Earth. I hate Adam Warlock.

Magneto: Creates a second moon around Earth and makes it a permanent home for mutants, finally separating himself from the humans. He is the eternal ruler of New Avalon.

Psylocke: Reverts the heroes to normal. She returns to the mansion, thinking about how she has experienced being molded to the will of others before and would never, ever do that to another person.

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Shuma-Gorath: Absorbs the power of the Infinity Gems and grows in size, allowing it to feast upon reality itself.

Spider-Man: Reverts the heroes to normal. Goes home to Mary Jane to find out that he’s going to be a father. This is a lot less uplifting when you remember that this game was released during Clone Saga. Ugh.

Thanos: Has two separate endings. Either he chooses to become one with the cosmos as the true ruler of the universe, or he gives up the power and lives on as a farmer.

Wolverine: Reverts the heroes to normal. He realizes that he could use the power to find out about his past, but refuses. Instead, he leaves the X-Men to find the answers himself.

Thanos would return in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, still with the Infinity Gauntlet, but the game lacks anything resembling a coherent storyline. Then in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the Gauntlet is treated as a red herring as Thanos is more interested in fashioning Ryu's dark energies into a Satsui No Hado Gauntlet so he can kill (or at least hurt) Death.

MARVEL SUPER HEROES: WAR OF THE GEMS (1996)

You would think that this would just be a lesser incarnation of the one-on-one fighter I just talked about, but no. This Capcom release is more of a sequel to the side-scroller beat ‘em up X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse. In it, you play through with your choice of Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Iron Man. Coincidentally, Iron Man’s select portrait is just a picture of his sprite from the arcade game. Go figure.

The game is one big mishmash of both Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War, which makes sense, considering Infinity Gauntlet wasn’t really filled to the brim with villains to fight. Here, you get to fight evil doppelganger clones of various heroes, like Hawkeye, Vision, Sasquatch, Iron Man, etc. At first you search for the various Infinity Gems, trying to stop the likes of Magus and Dr. Doom from getting their hands on them, but Thanos gets the last one. After going through Nebula, you face Thanos and...well, it doesn’t really have the same dire sense of danger when he isn’t at full godhood. At least in the arcade game, he’s got all six Gems. Here, he has one against your five. That’s hardly impressive.

read more - Who is in that Important Avengers: Endgame Spoiler Scene?

I guess Thanos has the Reality Gem because literally all he does is cause fire to burst from the ground and summon a closing stone wall. That’s it. He’s slow as molasses and his death throes feel like they take an hour.

Afterwards, Adam Warlock takes all the Gems for himself and sends everyone home. Feeling the need to give this epilogue some filler, they ask if Earth will ever truly be safe. When all your enemies move like snails, Earth isn't in that much danger, I suppose.

WHAT IF THE IMPOSSIBLE MAN OBTAINED THE INFINITY GAUNTLET? (1998)

So you know that part where Silver Surfer tries to swipe Thanos’ Gauntlet? It almost works in the sense that he removes the glove, but he fumbles and drops it. It’s then grabbed by none other than the annoying shape-shifter of the cosmos, the Impossible Man! Although Thanos is no threat to him, he does basically pee himself once all the cosmic beings show up. He escapes with Surfer and points out that he’s totally capable of handling the burden of wielding the Infinity Gauntlet. To prove his point, he brings Surfer to Zenn-La, his lost home planet. He’s reunited with Shalla-Bal and all should be good, but Surfer can’t help but feel that things aren’t quite right.

He’s summoned by Galactus because although Impossible Man’s claimed to be about using the Gauntlet justly, he’s in the middle of exacting revenge on Galactus for eating his home world of Poppup way back when. Surfer fights him and loses, but convinces him to do the right thing by pointing out that he can just rebuild Poppup and return all its people. Galactus agrees to help, but due to plot device BS, Poppup can only be created at the expense of the fake Zenn-La. Surfer ultimately goes along with it because while he can never accept his fake world as real, Impossible Man is too oblivious and simple-minded to really question his.

read more: What's Next for the MCU in Marvel Phase 4?

Poppup is reborn, the Poppupian race is reborn, and Impossible Man gives up his power to the Elders of the Universe. Everything seems fine, but then Surfer realizes that the Poppupians are all purple and green versions of heroes and villains, fighting it out like a bunch of goofs. He looks on in horror while a purple and green Forbush Man waves at the reader from behind his back.

WHAT IF: NEWER FANTASTIC FOUR (2009)

A little backstory on this one. Jeff Parker and Mike Wieringo were working on a What If issue about the New Fantastic Four (Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider) remaining as a team. Unfortunately, Wieringo passed away during the making of it, so they had various artists finish the book in his place as a tribute. Even if it wasn’t such a heartwarming sentiment, What If This was the Fantastic Four? is an excellent comic to read.

This is the sequel, which asks what would happen if Infinity Gauntlet happened in a timeline with the New Fantastic Four, except that Ghost Rider is wiped out of existence from Thanos’ power and is replaced by Iron Man. Their first meeting with Thanos doesn’t go so well, since Hulk’s attempt to intimidate him with how strong he is in relation to his anger causes Thanos to wipe out a chunk of the Milky Way and state, “And I’m not even angry.” The omnipotent Thanos also separates Hulk and Banner out of curiosity and his desire to show off. During all of this, Wolverine notices how Mephisto is able to steer Thanos around with his words.

Like in regular continuity, Adam Warlock brings up his awesome plan of, “Do what I say and don’t ask questions so you don't know that I’m using your horrible deaths as a diversion,” but this time it doesn’t fly. As Stark puts it, “I don’t [know what I’m doing], but I don’t think he does either.” When they go at Thanos, Wolverine is the only one with a plan. He chooses not to fight Thanos and instead badmouths his partners while talking Thanos into thinking that Mephisto is trying to horn in on Death. Thanos buys this lie and vaporizes Mephisto. Wolverine worms his way into position as Thanos’ new right-hand man and explains to the other Fantastic Four members that he hopes that Thanos will reward his loyalty by forcing Jean Grey to love him.

read more - What is the Sound in the Avengers: Endgame Credits?

Thanos continues to effortlessly defeat all challengers, even when Iron Man creates a suit of armor out of a fallen Celestial. Wolverine talks up how Thanos hasn’t even physically touched Death and that love is all about contact. Thanos gets all flustered because it isn’t proper, but Wolverine eggs him on to just touch her face. As the nervous Thanos reaches out to do so, Wolverine chops his arm off with a smiling, “Sucker!” and has successfully cut off his source of power.

Hulk punches Thanos out, Spider-Man uses the Gauntlet to put everything back the way it was, the Gauntlet is given to the Watchers to guard, and Bruce Banner becomes an honorary Watcher. Free from being one with the Hulk, he lives in the Watchers' citadel for the rest of his life, practically bathing in the vast knowledge available to him.

Too bad they didn’t keep going with What If: New Fantastic Four stories. They were only two issues, but they were a lot of fun.

WHAT IF: SECRET WARS (2009)

This one only sort of counts. Thanos only gets one mention, but the story is more of an alternate history companion piece that makes a couple parallel references to the original story. In Secret Wars, Dr. Doom was able to siphon off the powers of Galactus and the Beyonder, making him nigh-omnipotent. In this reality, he keeps the power and fully defeats the heroes. He easily conquers Earth, all while leaving all the heroes alive and using his power to make sure Sue Storm’s pregnancy (which resulted in a miscarriage in regular continuity) is a healthy one. He leaves the world a utopia and flies into space. The thing to take away from this story is that at his heart, Dr. Doom is not a ruler, but a conqueror. That’s why he’s ruled the world no less than three times in regular continuity and always left it behind for the sake of struggle.

His attempt to take over various alien empires is met with resistance, so he wipes out all who oppose him. Then he seeks out even more power by slaying the Elders of the Universe and stealing the Infinity Gems. With the Soul Gem, he enters Hell, frees his mother, and kills Mephisto (which he says would only be temporary, since he’s the Devil and all). Next on the agenda is taking out the only beings higher than him on the food chain: the Celestials. The fight lasts 407 years (!) and in the end, Doom is supreme, albeit with the Infinity Gems destroyed.

During the battle, a shockwave knocked Earth out of orbit, much like in Infinity Gauntlet. Doom sees that life will eventually come to an end. Without a second thought, he uses the remainder of his cosmic power to set the Earth back in place and save the planet. The final scene shows, fittingly enough, that he’s become a farmer, freely appearing with no faceplate. He no longer feels ashamed of his scars and plans to rebuild his rule from the ground up, fully understanding the true potential of mankind.

Personally one of my favorite Dr. Doom stories.

SUPER HERO SQUAD SHOW SEASON 2 (2010)

The wacky cartoon series based on the toys with the creepy smiles is a fun enough diversion. The second season of the show is all about the Infinity Gauntlet with the first half of it being based on Thanos’ quest to get all the Gems. Thanos is voiced by Jim Cummings, meaning he sounds like pretty much every Jim Cummings voice you’ve ever heard. Interesting thing here is that Thanos has Nebula captive and he refers to her as his sister. So if you’re keeping score, she’s his granddaughter in the comics, daughter in the movies, and sister in the cartoon.

The whole Death concept is forgotten about here and Thanos is purely out for galactic power for the sake of being an evil overlord with galactic power. In the episode “Fate of Destiny,” he gets the full set of Gems and the Super Hero Squad goes on the attack. They are soundly defeated (mostly thanks to Thanos’ reality-warping catchphrase, “DO OVER!”), as are Dr. Doom and his underlings. Thanos is then challenged by the Silver Surfer, who is wielding the Infinity Sword, the ultimate weapon of the first season’s finale. Thanos challenges him to a winner-take-all fight, which Surfer accepts. When they shake on it, Surfer pulls off Thanos’ glove.

Unfortunately, the Infinity Sword has been slowly corrupting Surfer over time, so having the Infinity Sword AND the Infinity Gauntlet drives him over the edge. He sends his former teammates spiraling through the multiverse, giving us children’s cartoon adaptations of 1602 and Planet Hulk. Also, he knocks Earth out of orbit, making it increasingly cold. For the remainder of the series, he’s the main villain.

In the finale, “The Final Battle! (‘Nuff Said!)” The Dark Surfer is challenged by the team of Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Hulk, Wolverine, Falcon, and Thor. Surfer chooses to split himself into six beings for his own amusement. Each Surfer is powered by a separate Gem, but the heroes have figured that each one is capable of countering a specific Surfer based on their own abilities/personalities. For instance, the Mind Gem has little effect on Hulk and Wolverine’s surliness is able to overpower the Soul Gem. With the help of Ronan the Accuser, they defeat Silver Surfer and get all the Gems together.

It’s not over until they find where he hid the Infinity Sword, leading to a final battle between Iron Man and Dr. Doom, where they accidentally destroy both the Sword and the Gems. The resulting explosion fixes the universe, including Earth, and all is well. Surfer’s back to his senses and willingly accepts his Kree imprisonment. No longer able to get his revenge on the Surfer, Thanos decides to go hang out at a chicken farm instead. Cute.

SUPER HERO SQUAD: INFINITY GAUNTLET (2010)

Around the time of the second season’s debut, they released a video game tie-in where you go around fighting enemies with two heroes at a time. In the story, Iron Man and Hulk are picking up some new boots for Thor’s birthday. The boots get mixed up with Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet and wackiness ensues. Eventually, Thanos gets all the Gems. The duo of Iron Man and Scarlet Witch are able to defeat him, but then Silver Surfer swoops in to steal the Infinity Gauntlet. Corrupted by its power immediately, he does away with Galactus and, like in the cartoon, splits into six versions of himself. While Spider-Man sits this one out, the other twelve heroes pair up and fight the various Surfers one-by-one.

Once defeated, Surfer comes to his senses. He and Iron Man throw the Infinity Gems and Infinity Sword into a rift in reality, taking care of that problem. Meanwhile, all the villains are busy fighting each other. Iron Man figures to just let that sort itself out. The heroes celebrate Thor’s birthday, but it turns out his boots have been enchanted by Loki to make Thor dance for an eternity. Iron Man and Hulk search for the receipt so they can return it.

AVENGERS AND THE INFINITY GAUNTLET (2010)

This out-of-continuity story is a reimagining of Infinity Gauntlet as an all-ages comedy book. With the ultimate power of the Gauntlet, Thanos wipes out half of life in the universe for the sake of seeing chaos reign and the survivors destroy each other. The remaining heroes only know the where of the threat’s source and not the who or what. Sue Storm puts together a team of Ms. Marvel, Hulk, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Dr. Doom bursts into the room and after a fight where he takes down everyone on his own, Doom offers to join the team. Their transport is US-Ace, the star of the forgotten 80s comic US-1.

The real treasure of this miniseries is watching Dr. Doom interact with the uncouth US-Ace. Especially when they visit the space trucker’s parents, who run a space diner. Ace’s mother bullies Doom into making everyone sandwiches, which is amazing.

Once they come across Thanos near the end of the third issue, they all get thrashed. He’s only stopped thanks to US-Ace driving his space truck into him thanks to his truckopathic link (Doom grumbles, “Oh Lord, he has a name for it...”). The act knocks off the Gauntlet and while Doom eventually gets his hands on it, it doesn’t work. Turns out he’s a perfect Doombot created by Doom to be released into the world if he were to ever go missing for whatever reason, such as, say, half of the universe's population magically vanishing into thin air. Spider-Man stops Thanos from getting the Gauntlet back on his hand and then uses its power to wish for a universe where Thanos never had the Gems in the first place.

Spider-Man ends up back on Earth where he’s the only one who remembers the entire adventure. He isn’t too broken up about it, but he wishes someone else out there would remember what he did. Elsewhere, Thanos plots his eventual revenge by sketching Spider-Man’s head into the ground, then adding an X over it.

I’m just bummed that despite having a million characters in Avengers: Infinity War, we don’t get to hear Dr. Doom sarcastically respond to US-Ace with, “What a colorful turn of phrase. Perhaps you will regale us with more of them over a ‘mess of biscuits’ later.”

Read Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet on Amazon

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE: SEASON TWO (2015)

Ugh. So, once upon a time, there was this badass Avengers cartoon that people really liked. Then they canceled it and replaced it with Avengers Assemble, which I guess is still a thing. Anyway, much like Super Hero Squad Show, the second season is about Thanos and his quest to acquire the Infinity Gauntlet. By the halfway point, he has it and he loses in an incredibly embarrassing way.

Iron Man has Arsenal, a robot built by his father that can absorb energies and is programmed to protect Tony at all costs. After Thanos imprisons the Avengers with magic rock hands from the ground, Arsenal just walks towards him. Thanos -- with control over time and space and so on -- shoots lasers at him. Iron Man explains that Arsenal is able to absorb such a thing. Knowing this, Thanos' strategy is to SHOOT LASERS HARDER because holy shit. Arsenal yoinks the Gauntlet off Thanos' hand, freeing up the Avengers to beat Thanos into mush.

Then Arsenal becomes Ultron because reasons.

Oh yeah, there was a digital pinball game based on Infinity Gauntlet too, but I have no idea how to even write that up. I watched footage of people playing it and couldn’t make heads or tails of what the hell is even going on.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and will never not love that Impossible Man/Roddy Piper panel. Read his other articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

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Gavin Jasper

Nov 18, 2019

Avengers: Endgame

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[sage-nebula]

I was talking with @ryttu3k earlier about how I imagine that, whenever I write Pokémon fic, a lot of the products and series that we have in our world exist in their world too, only with the names changed so as to a.) avoid copyright, and b.) suit the world that they live in. (The exception to this is Nintendo games, since we have canonical evidence that Nintendo consoles exist as-is in canon, and Mario is mentioned by name when checking the SNES in the first gen games.) A few examples of the different series / bands / products / et cetera that I’ve come up with and referenced in my Pokémon fics over the years are:

My Little Ponyta: Friendship is Magic

FaceSpace (later changed to FateBook because a social media site known as FaceSpace actually exists now)

Immedigram

Dragoniteforce

Zubatman

Captain Unova

Assassin’s Deed: Sisterhood

Grass-types vs. Zombies

Robot Rapidash Attack

The Liepard King (later changed to The Pyroar King when Gen VI was revealed)

Doctor What

Pokémorphs

And so on and so forth. When I was driving home tonight, though, I realized something else, and that something else was---

Okay.

So sometimes, I don’t have to change the titles of the movies / shows / what have you, even if the subject would change. So for instance, The Fox and the Hound could still be The Fox and the Hound, only in the Pokéworld Tod would be a vulpix and Copper would be a growlithe. (And Ash Ketchum, age five, would cry for at least an hour before Delia could calm him down at how emotionally devastating that movie is.) So with that in mind, it’s entirely possible that the Dreamworks Dragons movies exist in-universe too, and that they’re even still titled How to Train Your Dragon, given that there are dragons in the pokéworld. It’s just that, well, the dragons in-series would be replaced with dragons (as in the species, not just the type) from the pokéworld.

With that said, consider:

There’s no equivalent to a night fury in Pokémon (yet >_>), so consider that perhaps, in the first movie, Toothless is a charizard instead. All the human characters are the same, the plot of the movie is the same, and so likewise, the plot of the second movie is the same as well. The first movie is released, it’s a big hit, everyone loves it, it becomes Lizardon’s favorite movie and Alan likes it a lot as well. (He, as you can imagine, very strongly understands Hiccup’s feelings regarding Toothless.) Everyone’s happy.

But then . . .

The second movie comes out. Perhaps the second movie is made after the events of canon, releasing maybe a couple years later. And when the second movie comes out---well, if you’ve seen it, you know. In our version of the movie, when Toothless leaps over Hiccup to shield him from the bewilderbeast’s attack, the ice broken when Toothless goes into his “alpha mode” and breaks it. His scales are still black, but he has bright blue glowing streaks. He gained this form specifically to protect Hiccup, as pointed out by Valka. Many (including myself) have joked that he mega evolved.

So, in the pokéworld version of the movie . . . what if he did?

Maybe it wouldn’t be explicitly stated to be mega evolution in terms of the movie, but in this version, when charizard!Toothless dives in to save Hiccup, he ends up breaking the ice by being Mega Charizard X. That’s how he challenges Kyurem (I imagine Kyurem would be the bewilderbeast here---it makes sense) for the position of alpha. And it’s glorious and amazing and perhaps, in terms of narrative, a sort of artistic license taken if there were no stones and it wasn’t purposeful---but regardless, they very clearly animated a Mega ‘Zard X, there’s no doubt about it.

And that’s great and wonderful and Alan and Lizardon feel even more emotional about this movie than the first (for obvious reasons), but---

As it happens, the producer and director et all gave interviews about this movie. And in one interview they reveal that they actually went with the decision to have charizard!Toothless mega evolve after seeing footage of Alan and Lizardon during the League / Flare arc and feeling inspired by their bond. Specifically, there’s that scene during the final battle that’s only on screen for a split second where there’s this huge blast and Lizardon---while mega evolved---is shielding Alan with his wing. And perhaps, somehow, Jessie and James had managed to capture that (not realistic, perhaps, but w/e), and the director / producer saw that, and were inspired, and did it. When they reveal this they laugh a bit awkwardly because by this point Alan is probably already Champion of Kalos, but hey! Even more reason to be inspired, right? Especially since he does still have Lizardon.

Alan and Lizardon are kind of floored when they hear this, but perhaps Manon is hanging out with them at the time, and she excitedly starts swatting his side (not enough to hurt, of course, just enough to get his attention / show her excitement) and says, “They made a movie about you!!”

“They did not make a movie about me,” Alan says.

Manon flails her hand at the screen. “Yeah, they---they just said they did! They made a movie about you and Lizardon! That’s amazing, Alan!”

“The movie is not about me and Lizardon, it’s about something completely different---”

“It’s not---!”

“That one part was just inspired by us.”

“Oh come on!” Manon says. “They totally made a movie about you! That’s so cool! I wonder how I can get them to make a movie about me and Hari-san. That would be cool, wouldn’t it, Hari-san?”

“Rima!” Hari-san agrees.

Alan probably gives up arguing that the movie is about him and Lizardon at that point (even though it isn’t), and Manon and Hari-san probably go off to see what they can accomplish that would inspire someone to make a movie about them, but the point is, if these movies exist in this universe, imagine if things happened like that, just imagine it.

I don’t know about you, but I think the idea is pretty cool, indeed.

[hidekari]

Eguchi Takuya’s Photobook Q&A

Text and photos in this post are taken from Eguchi Takuya's first photobook MEET. Feel free to use (linking back isn’t necessary but appreciated!)

Also, please take my translations with a grain of salt m(_ _)m

Let’s hear it from Egu, 29 questions and 29 answers (+1)

Having turned 29 years old, we’ve received answers from 29 questions!

A hardworking person will not always bear fruits. But a person who bears fruits would always be a hardworker.

01. Is there a reason behind your name? [My parents] wanted to cultivate a variety of things within myself, and that a lot of hopes were put into it, so I heard.

02. What do you think is your personal best quality? The fact that I'm able to live on properly without any regrets.

03. An unexpected weakness of yours? I'm weak in the morning, I suppose.

04. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Drink water.

05. What is your favorite movie? It's hard to choose the best, huh? For now it's Shin Godzilla. I used to like Godzilla a lot when I was little, so you can say that I've been hooked for a long while.

06. What is your favorite book? In the past I was obsessed with reading Kero Kero Chime which was serialized in Ribon.

07. What is something you cannot live without? Sake.

08. What are thing/s you always have on hand? A ballpoint pen. Since it became necessary for me to annotate scripts on site, this item is an absolute must. If I'm here with my ballpoint pen, I’ll be able to do my work!

09. What is something you really want right now? Either a car or a Shin Godzilla figure (lol). I'm torn between the 990,000-yen scale figure or a car. People around me have been saying that I better get the latter though (lol).

10. Tell us a smartphone app that you'd recommend? There's this card game app called Hearthstone -- it’s free, so I’d recommend everyone to check it out. Women might find it hard though.

11. Are there people who influenced your life, and why? It'll be Onosaka Masaya-san, a voice actor. In the end I aimed to become a voice actor like him after all.

12. Are there things you’re worried about recently? I have no savings! I’m the type that thinks, what if I die tomorrow? I often strive to have nothing left, so I end up using all the money I earned... Another thing is going to the toilet frequently. I think I must’ve been drinking too much (lol).

13. Something embarrassing that you can think of right now? Even though there's a lot of those, when I first became a voice actor… I recorded my own voice into this self-published radio. Something like that (lol). Everyone had those days, don’t they.

14. Are there moments that rises your tension the most? That would be whenever I go drinking, huh? Of course when I'm performing, my tension rises, but that's a given, isn't it.

15. How do you cope with stress? This would also result to drinking (lol), but stress isn't really something I experience in this line of work. Since I'm able to do whatever and express various emotions through the microphone, it's a non-stressful thing.

16. Is there something you've been secretly invested in? I want a car, even though I'm not familiar on the maintenance and how-to’s. But then we all have to start somewhere.

17. One thing you have that others don't? Umm… my height! (lol) That would be something others won't be able to beat easily right.

18. Is there a time where your life changed significantly? If so, what came out of it? I was 18 years old when I entered a vocational school in Tokyo. Up until now I'm a person who depends on others; but at that moment when I started to live alone, it really was a time where it came to my senses that I have no choice but to do things myself.

19. At what point of your life you felt that you really entered adulthood? When I was 20 years old, I rented my own space and paid my own electricity bills!

20. Moments in your daily life that makes you the happiest? When I get to sleep. The moment I lie down in my bed and say “good night,” it really is the best kind of feeling! I'm as good as Nobita when I sleep (lol).

21. Are there any strange dreams that happened recently? Apparently, I became a hero of a light novel. The story revolves around myself as a new voice actor - suddenly there were these Four Heavenly Kings appearing as the sound directors, in which they threw me into various scenes, though I got accepted in the end. When I woke up, I was shook. (lol)

22. What did you play when you were a child? I played the Super Nintendo Gameboy. I got so hooked into playing it. My personal favorite was Dragon Quest VI though I also played Chrono Trigger and Mariokart.

23. What is your favorite saying? A hardworking person will not always bear fruits. But a person who bears fruits will always be a hardworker. Well, isn't that a story on why I would always buy lottery tickets (lol).

24. What would you do if you were given a week off? The fact that I'm able to have a week off would make me restless (lol), but I'd like to go abroad!

25. If you weren't a voice actor, what would you be doing now? A freeter (lol). Since it was my dream in high school to become one. I longed for that kind of freedom. Even so, the essence of being able to do what I want (in my work) hasn't changed up until now.

26. Say something to yourself 10 years ago! You're good living the way you are! I'd say that you continue living as is, alright.

27. Is there something you want to try in the future? Even though it's horrible, I want to try drawing manga and things like that. If it was to become an anime and I'm put in charge, I want to handle the casting by myself and various other things!

28. How would you express Eguchi Takuya in one word?

Perverse.

29. When you see the number '29' what do you immediately think of? Meat, huh? Since I like meat (lol).

+1. A word to your 30 year-old self! Let's start saving money!! Even though it's hard to go full-on saving mode suddenly, do it little by little first…

TL notes (and personal ramblings)

Freeter refers to someone whose livelihood depends on part-time work, usually taking multiple at one time. 

Four heavenly kings refers to the four Buddhist gods that watch over the world, which gave a threatening aura to Egu’s strange dream - I don’t know why I’m laughing as I imagine him trembling as he wakes up, lol.

29 refers to Meat Day in Japan (2 = Ni / 9 = Ku, if combined it becomes Niku = Meat!)

In case there are people who didn’t get the reference in #20, it’s Nobita from Doraemon, who proclaims himself as a sleeping expert. xD

The word Egu chose to describe himself is 天邪鬼 (Amanojaku) which is a demon in Japanese folklore, but in terms of behavior, someone that goes against the accepted behavior. I chose to translate to “perverse” in a way that Egu is someone who has a mindset that usually counters the mainstream. As seen from his “creations” and personality-wise, he likes to stand out from what’s expected of the industry. which is why I love him so much

Speaking of his creations (aka kimoi doodles) in relation to the thing he wants to try in the future, he actually did it! Starting March 2017, he’ll be penning a 4-koma manga in Dengeki Girls Style (you can read the first installment here). Entitled Eguchi Takuya’s Concept Planet, his purpose is to give another perspective to everyday topics from his own fair share of experiences. Congrats Egu~ now we shall see for the anime part...

I’m not lying (nor is Egu) about the 990,000-yen Shin Godzilla figure that he wants, because it exists.

Thanks for reading! (ﾉ・∀・)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

I’ll be translating this long personal interview from his photobook too, just give me some time. 7 pages hahah rip me and my still mediocre jp reading skills

[gaijinginger]

Arrival/Day One

When Japanese tourists visit Paris, a significant number of them experience severe panic attacks due to the extreme contrast between Paris as it’s depicted in Japanese culture and Paris as it actually is. All too often they get off the plane, and realize the city they’ve always known as being synonymous with romance and wonderment is actually just as loud, rude and dirty as the next million-person metropolis. Apparently this occurs so often that there’s an actual medical diagnosis, aptly dubbed “Paris Syndrome” (no joke, google it).

As I sat on my first flight leaving Boston on Tuesday night, I couldn’t help wondering if I would experience my own “Tokyo Syndrome” upon touching down at Narita airport. After a childhood spent watching Studio Ghibli films, an adolescence spent playing Nintendo, Sony & Konami video games, and, recently, an affinity for Akira Kurosawa movies and Neon Genesis Evangelion, I was legitimately concerned that my rosy perceptions of the city and Japan at large would be summarily shattered when I arrived. I’m very happy to say they weren’t. Obviously Japan isn’t completely the caricature I had of it before arriving, but that’s a good thing.

I arrived in Japan at around 9AM Tokyo Time (about 8PM EST), and after spending an hour in customs, acquiring my Train Pass, Subway Pass, and pocket wifi station (the most crucial purchase I’ve made thus far, I might note), I took my first bullet train into Tokyo. From there I made my first foray into the labyrinthine complexity of the Japanese subway system (significantly streamlined by Google Maps), and emerged in Kuramae, a relatively quiet (but still extremely densely populated) residential neighborhood where I dropped my bags at my first hostel, dubbed “MyCube by MYSTAYS Asakusa Kuramae” (the first of many examples of strange Japanese English I’ll probably cite on this blog).

It’s worth noting that my hostel is a “capsule hotel,” meaning that my hotel room is essentially a 6'x4'x5’ (that’s L*W*H for you numbers people) cube with a TV, a bed, and a locker beneath it where I store my luggage. For the claustrophobes among you that probably sounds like hell, but so far I’m a huge fan. Once you get your luggage unpacked and feng shui-ed, it’s quite cosy!

Once I dropped off my bags at the hostel, I made my way over to the nearby Akihabara neighborhood. Like Boston, Tokyo is a city of neighborhoods, but at a far greater scale. Akihabara is essentially the gaming and Anime district. I’m a huge fan of the former, but have honestly never really understood the latter outside specific (read: very very good) movies & shows like the aforementioned Studio Ghibli and Evangelion. Aside from that, it’s all weeb (a derogatory term used to denote westerners with a fixation for all things Japan, namely Anime) stuff to me. Akihabara looks like Times Square if you replaced all the surfaces that aren’t covered by screens with more screens. To borrow a phrase from Mike Daisey, it looks “like Blade Runner threw up on itself.” Massive billboards and LED displays clog every surface, and the streets are lined by girls in skimpy maid outfits (Japan’s fixation with girls in uniforms is still something I’m trying to wrap my head around; nearly every girl I’ve seen under the age of 18 has been dressed in a literal “schoolgirl uniform” and it’s really really really weird…) faux-flirt with passerby in attempts to lure them into “Maid Cafes,” where lonely Japanese men pay young attractive girls to pretend to be interested in them. While I try to keep an open mind when experiencing other cultures, this particular aspect of Japan stands out to me as being plain old sad and weird. Needless to say, Akihabara was quite a vibe for my first afternoon in Tokyo.

From there, I proceeded to a nearby Ramen shop and had American ramen ruined for me, forever. Like getting Pizza in Rome or Poutine in Montreal, it’s one of those things where trying the real thing makes all the imitations that much worse. The shop was set up like a bar, with the patrons sitting at a long counter behind which the owner of the shop worked away in the kitchen. Perhaps the best part of the meal was discovering a custom that’s apparently very common in Japanese restaurants; when you enter the restaurant, the entire staff greets you in unison, and when you leave, they thank you in similar fashion. Sitting and slurping my ramen, punctuated by the “Arigato Gozaimas!!”es for each and every patron leaving has been one of the more memorable experiences I’ve had so far.

After that I went back to my hostel, and fell asleep at around 4:30pm. Try as I might to sleep on the plane ride, I’m still wrestling with jet lag as I write this. Thank God for Tylenol PM and Coffee (separately).

This morning, I woke up at around 5. After sitting in bed watching Japanese TV for about an hour, I went downstairs and took advantage of my hostel’s continental breakfast, eating no less than two plates of eggs, ham and croissants, one bowl of cereal and three cups of iced coffee.

After that, I went to go check out Senso-Ji, the biggest shrine in Tokyo. Dozens of teeming streets lined with tiny shops selling all manner of Japan-centric trinkets give way to a huge inner plaza home to several large temples filled with huge paper lanterns, bells, massive paintings and silk screens. I got there at around 8AM, so it was pretty vacant. There’s apparently a huge festival going on there this weekend, and the TV in my hostel cube is currently broadcasting live from there as I write this.

After Senso-Ji, I made my way over to Tokyo Skytree, the tallest structure in Japan. Up until 2010 that honor was held by Tokyo Tower, another massive space-needle style structure on the other side of the city, but in classic architectural-weenie-wagging fashion the Skytree now beats it by about 1,000 feet. It’s so tall that at one point, the elevator to the top was going over 500 MPH. I know because it said so on a display inside. The view from the top was nothing short of spectacular, a 360 degree panorama of the entire city, which goes on as far as the eye can see. For what it’s worth, the Tokyo Metro area is the most populous metro area in the world (which seems like kind of a big deal). At the top of the Skytree, you don’t need the Wikipedia page for Tokyo to know this. You feel it, strongly, from the density spread out below you. It’s humbling to say the least.

From the Skytree, I walked over to the Edo Tokyo Museum, which covers the entire history of the Tokyo region in exhaustive detail from prehistory to the present. Perhaps the most interesting part of this visit was the section of the museum dedicated to the Second World War. Being the only westerner (let alone the only American) in a room filled with somber Japanese people reading about the thousands of people killed in the US firebombings of Tokyo was quite the experience, and I felt a significant degree of guilt-by-association. School taught me we were the “good guys,” (and don’t get me wrong, we were) although it’s exhibits like this one that remind me that war is always shades of grey.

After spending a few hours in the museum, I walked over to Komagata Dozeu, an institution that’s been serving up Dozeu, fish simmering in soy sauce served in a small iron cauldron over hot coals, since 1801. There are no chairs; everyone sits on small pillows on the floor in classic Japanese style. Needless to say it was the perfect follow-up to learning about pre-modern Japan at the Edo Tokyo museum.

That brings us up to the present; it’s about 7pm Japan time and I’ll probably head back out soon to find some food and take in the local nightlife, something I was woefully unable to do last night. The neon-studded nights of Tokyo are the stuff of cyberpunk legend. Hopefully I can be this thorough going forward in recounting my exploits! Thanks to all reading this for sharing in my adventure!

[savetopnow]

2018-03-25 22 GAME now

GAME

Attack of the Fanboy

Xur Exotic Items and Location in Destiny 2 This Week

A Way Out Review

God of War goes Gold for PS4

New ESO Expansion Will Take Players to Summerset

PlayStation Top Console in February but Nintendo Switch on Record Breaking Pace

Brutal Gamer

IDW’s Transformers universe comes to an end this summer in Transformers: Unicron

Battlezone: Combat Commander (PC) Review

More Mirror Universe action prepped for Star Trek: The Next Generation- Terra Incognita

Black Hammer: Age of Doom #1 (Comics) Review

DST’s Avengers: Infinity War Minimates are hitting stores

Game Banshee

Dauntless User Interface Update Preview

State of Decay 2 Video Interview

Soldak Entertainment's “Hardcore Game Name” Mutations Explained

The New World Interview

Mike Laidlaw on Dragon Age IV and Departing BioWare

Game Informer

Super Replay – Killer7 Episode 4

Dying Light: Bad Blood Combines PvP And PvE For A Different Take On Battle Royale

Report: Leaked Overwatch League Rulebook Includes Some Weird Stipulations

Level-5 Teases Large-Scale RPG Set In The Modern Day

PUBG Celebrates One-Year Anniversary With Footage Of New Map

Game Watch

Hearts of Iron 4 Multiplayer Desyncs – What to do?

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Review

Ion Maiden Secrets Guide - Blast Processing, Disrupted Service and Nukage Nightmare

We're Giving Away 5 Copies of Action-Adventure Beast Quest - And It Couldn't Be Easier To Enter!

The Best Surviving Mars Mods

Gematsu

Level-5 CEO teases MMORPG-scale 20th anniversary title

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy arcade version announced

God Eater: Resonant Ops opening movie

YU-NO remake coming to Switch, PC

God Eater 3 to be released for PS4 and PC, second trailer and first gameplay

IGN

Fortnite: Week 5 Battle Royale Challenges

Beat Far Cry 5 Before Even Seeing the Title Screen

Updated: 30 Tips to Become a Pirate Legend in Sea of Thieves

Ni No Kuni 2: How to Open Locked Treasure Chests

How to Find Chickens, Pigs, and Snakes in Sea of Thieves

Niche Gamer

Yu-No Remake Heads to Switch and PC

Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded Western Launch Dates Set for July 2018

Monster Prom Hands-on Preview – Delightfully Disturbing

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is Shaping Up Nicely in New Gameplay

Dying Light: Bad Blood Hands-on Preview – Battle Royale (But Also Zombies)

Nintendo Life

Talking Point: What Games Are You Playing This Weekend

Super Mario Happy Meal Toys Are Coming Back To The UK This Summer

Feature: Aiming For The Stars With OPUS: Rocket Of Whispers Developer SIGONO

Review: Gekido Kintaro's Revenge (Switch eShop)

Video: Grab A Cuppa And Enjoy 15 Minutes Of Little Dragons Cafe Footage

PC Invasion

Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom PC Technical Review and Options

Futuristic racer GRIP rollcaging its way out of Early Access this year

Budget Cuts finally gets a release date

Epic releases Paragon Assets for free

HTC Vive Pro prices revealed and original Vive price dropped. Pre-order now

Playstation Blog

PlayStation Blogcast 285: Like Father, Like Son

The Drop: New PlayStation Games for 3/27/2018

Share of the Week: Portraits

Q&A: Cory Barlog Talks God of War Origins

Kratos and Atreus: It’s All in the Family

Reddit Gaming

How players communicate in MMORPGs

Hmmmm...

My 11 year old daughter found Bioshock and my 360 today....she's 5 hours into it and tells me its the best game ever.

The best gaming-related graffiti I've ever seen

My friend :why would you need a 3d printer. Me:

Xbox News

New Preview Alpha 1804 System Update – 3/24/18

Next Week on Xbox: New Games for March 26 to April 1

This Week on Xbox: March 23, 2018

The GTA Online: Southern San Andreas Super Sport Series

Highlights from Microsoft at GDC 2018

[raisingsupergirl]

The Cost of New Experiences

Here I am, sitting next to my five-year-old daughter. We're headed home to MO after a trip to see her cousins in Colorado Springs. She's flipping through a magazine, munching on some Craisins®, oblivious to the fact that we're flying two miles above the ground and our only protection from imminent death is a one-inch piece of glass. I guess ignorance is bliss… Then again, the fact that she's flying this young in the first place probably means that she's less ignorant than I was at her age. And her sister, who's only two, is sitting across the isle from her, watching The Lion King on an iPad, also completely unaware of everything going on around her. What an age we live in, huh?

I don't feel old, exactly. It's just that so much has changed in the few short decades since my birth. I was about six years old when Santa brought my family a Super Nintendo, and my first thought was that there were too many buttons. I was around ten when we got a Nintendo64, and my first thought was to stop myself from puking because the "camera" moved 360 degrees around Mario, and it was the trippiest thing I'd ever seen. And then, in middle school, my family got an actual computer, and the Internet, and everything changed. Sure, it was dial-up, but I didn’t know any different (ignorance is bliss, remember?). The possibilities were endless. I could download songs (about one song per hour) and burn them directly onto CDs. I could also log on to Yahoo Instant Messenger and literally chat with Hollywood movie stars and European supermodels (in hindsight, they may have been other kids acting out these exotic personas, but I hadn't yet learned that everything on the Internet wasn't true…).

When I turned sixteen, my parents bought me my first cell phone (an indestructible Nokia that came with the best game ever—Snake), and within a year, I knew how to send text messages. And when I went off to college, I was introduced to a cutting-edge, mind-altering technology known as a "LAN party" (aka plugging multiple computers into the same network via Ethernet cables and playing games of Halo with dozens of other people at the same time. You've never seen so many rockets launchers). But do you want to know the sad thing about that epic progression of science throughout my childhood? All of it—every video game, downloaded song, and text message—could fit onto the iPad that my two-year-old is watching right now. And that's just the start of it.

My kids have eaten sirloin steak and sushi. They've traveled north, south, east, and west across the country. My oldest learns ballet and Spanish on YouTube. And now they both know what it's like to fly in an airplane. These are just a few of the things that I had no idea about until I was three or four times their age, and to them, they're just normal parts of life. And, to be honest, I'm not sure if I should be happy or terrified.

Since my career requires me to work with high schoolers on a daily basis, I know the new struggles they're going through. Snapchat and e-cigarettes are ruining lives. Everything is documented on the Internet, and kids have panic attacks when they can't find their cell phones. There's this inescapable interconnectedness that's changing the way we think and operate, and it's coupled with growing pressure from parents, coaches, and schools that make it impossible for a kid to ever, well… be a kid—carefree, whimsical, and unproductive on a level that's absolutely crucial for developing creativity and confidence. But, hey, at least they have all of the best stuff.

This past Saturday, it was almost sixty degrees in Colorado Springs, so we were able to take the families to Garden of the Gods, a truly awe-inspiring park and trail system that winds through towering rock formations that no picture can do justice. Both of my kids loved the experience, and my five year old asked a lot of questions about things like the rock climbers and the staggering size of the formation. I have no doubt that the trip expanded her mind and sparked ideas that will help her grow. On top of that, she got to see her cousins, and my wife got to see her sister (along with the rest of her family that flew out with us). It really was great, but a part of me couldn't help thinking, "Couldn't we save thousands of dollars and hours of travel time by getting together in Missouri and just video chatting with our Colorado family?"

I guess that makes me sound pretty awful. But I can't help it if I like the comfort of my home—the comfort of Missouri. I've lived in Virginia. I've been all up and down the East Coast. I've been to Nevada. I've been to Florida and Mississippi. I've been to Cancun and Denmark. But there's no place like home. The ground feels different. The air smells different. Nature sounds different. I've had a lot of experiences, but Missouri is where my heart is. And I'd be perfectly content taking staycations for the rest of my life. You know, if it wouldn't be incredibly unfair to my wife and kids.

You see, I know that I love Missouri because I've experienced other places. I know I love greasy cheeseburgers and medium-rare steaks, but I also love sushi, Korean beef, crab cakes, and pad thai because I've had the chance to try them. I put my faith in Jesus because I've taken the time to (continuously) study and consider other religions, beliefs, and claims that all fall short of what I've found in Christianity. Sometimes, I take my past experiences and education for granted. I'll explain something to my kids that goes completely over their heads, and I don't understand why until I consider that there's a whole missing section of life that they just haven't gotten to yet. During our Colorado Springs trip, my five year old didn't understand why the bags of potato chips looked like they were ready to explode because she hasn't learned about atmosphere, air pressure, or altitude (though I may need to retake some classes, because I thought it would be a good idea to do a 45-minute cardio workout at 6,000 feet…). She didn't understand why she shouldn't run around and play with her cousins even though the Tylenol brought her fever down and made her feel normal again because she hasn't taken biology or physiology yet. And she didn't understand why she got spanked for lying because she hasn't seen how destructive dishonesty can become.

There's so much she has yet to learn, and every experience sheds a ray of understanding on an otherwise dark and mysterious world. Not every experience will be a good one. Some will scare. Some will scar. Some will threaten to push her down ruinous paths. But there is so much good to learn as well, and even the "bad" stuff will help her grow as long as she has a head on her shoulders and a daddy at her back.

And so, we're about to touch down in St. Louis, and stewardesses are glaring at me to put my laptop away. My daughter is now sleeping on my shoulder, and I'm a lot happier about the money we spent to go out and see family in a place truly unlike any other on Earth. Life is about experiences. It's about seizing opportunity and growing from it. It's about spreading love and compassion born out of those experiences, not hiding from them or hording them. We are created to live, to celebrate the complex and majestic world that God created for us. Whether that's on a small scale or a large one, we should appreciate every moment. Because, when it comes down to it, we will leave it all behind someday, but the memories that we created will continue on in those with whom we chose to live life.

[danielphowley]

8 must-have toys from New York Toy Fair 2018

You better believe there are a ton of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” toys.

The New York Toy Fair is the ultimate kid and kid-ult’s dream. Thousands of the newest toys destined for store shelves in 2018 fill the cavernous Jacob K. Javits Convention Center ready and waiting to be played with… or propped on a stand never to be touched.

This year’s show included everything from tie-ins for the year’s biggest movies including “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” as well as board games, toy cars and others.

It’s a massive show to explore, but of all of the toys on display at Toy Fair, here are the eight coolest.

Marvel Hero Vision

Not the author wearing the Iron Man Marvel Hero Vision set.

It’s never been easier to become Iron Man with Hasbro’s (HAS) Marvel Hero Vision augmented reality helmet. The kit, which will cost $49.99 when it goes on sale this spring, features an Iron Man-style helmet and smartphone mount. Download the Hero Vision app for your iPhone or Android device, slide it into the mount and place the mount in the helmet and you’ll be looking at the world through Tony Stark’s eyes. A band that wraps around your hand transforms into one of Iron Man’s gauntlets in AR and allows you to fire at bad guys as they come flying toward you. Just don’t run around with this thing on.

Fisher-Price Think & Learn Rocktopus

The Fisher-Price Think and Learn Rocktopus is a great way to teach your kids the basics of making music. Just make sure you’ve got a solid pair of headphones.

Fisher-Price wants to help get your child interested in music. And to do that, it’s encouraging your kid to make as much noise as possible with the company’s Think & Learn Rocktopus. This educational toy lets your tot create music using special pods that she can drop into the Rocktopus’ arms. Instruments range from drums and guitars to horns and maracas. The Rocktopus also features three different play modes including Math, Music and Game. It’s a fun toy that’s sure to keep your kids entertained and your medicine cabinet running low on aspirin when it hits the market for $59.99 this fall.

Barbie and Crayola Confetti Skirt Studio

Now your kid can give Barbie a stylish skirt and you get to clean it up.

Barbie, the queen of fashionistas, has rocked everything from poodle skirts to her own astronaut uniform. And now your child can design the very clothes this 11.5-inch multi-talented, dynamo wears to her heart’s content. The Barbie and Crayola Confetti Skirt Studio lets your kid punch out their own confetti (which definitely won’t make a mess of impossible to pick up pieces) and use washable Crayola markers, Washi Tape and stickers to turn Barbie’s outfit into a masterpiece fit for the runways of Milan or a jumble of colors and stickers. It depends on how talented your kid is. The Barbie and Crayola Confetti Skirt Studio lands on store shelves this fall for $39.99.

Hot Wheels Corkscrew Crash Track set

The Hot Wheels Corkscrew Crash Track set will satisfy your kids’ need to smash things without making a huge mess.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the vast majority of you have owned at least one Hot Wheels car in your lives. And I’m going to go even further and guess that you’ve probably smashed it into everything possible for fun. Because, well, that’s half the joy of owning a Hot Wheels car. Hot Wheels knew that much when it introduced its first Criss Cross Crash Track years ago, and now the miniature car maker is rolling out an updated version of its collision system called the Corkscrew Crash Track. As its name implies the set includes three corkscrew loops so you, er, I mean, your kid, can launch their favorite Hot Wheels cars at each other for hours at a time. The Corkscrew Crash Track will be available this fall for $44.99.

DOS

Watch out, UNO. DOS is coming for your card game crown.

Not content with ruling the world with its UNO card game, Mattel (MAT) is upping the ante with its new game: DOS. No, this is not a joke. Mattel is bringing out a card game called DOS in which you must yell DOS whenever you get down to two cards. This is the real world.

DOS involves both colored and numbered cards, unlike UNO, which also includes actions that can be matched. DOS is coming to a table near you this spring for $5.99.

MECARD

MECARDs transform from vehicles into battle bots.

Mattel is bringing one of South Korea’s most popular battling games to the U.S. when it releases MECARD in the U.S. this spring. The game includes miniature cars and trucks that you roll over special cards. When a vehicle hits the card, it instantly transforms into a battle robot. Like similar fighting card games including the Pokémon Trading Card Game, MECARD cards have their own on-card stats that indicate the kinds of powers you’ll have for the match. MECARDs will be available in three game packs, a deluxe assortment will cost $14.99, while a jumbo assortment will cost $19.99. The Mega Dracha, an enormous vehicle that transforms into a dragon will cost $44.99 when it launches this fall.

Nintendo Labo

Nintendo is on such a roll, it’s managed to make cardboard amazing.

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Labo isn’t new to the show, but it was still one of my personal highlights of Toy Fair 2018. The cardboard creativity set allows players to build their own accessories for the Switch console and then play games with them. Items include a fishing rod that you can use to reel in on-screen fish, a piano that you can use to play music and a massive backpack you can strap on to play as a robot and stomp and punch on-screen buildings and vehicles. Then there’s the Labo Garage, which allows you to create new ways to interact with your labo including doing things like building a vending machine or making a rubber band guitar.

It’s hard to adequately describe how satisfying it is to build out Labo kits. What’s more, the cardboard Nintendo used to create the Labo templates is both sturdy and easy enough to bend and manipulate to your needs. The Labo Variety Kit and Labo Robot Kit launch April 20, and will cost $69.99 and $79.99, respectively.

Jurassic World figures and dinosaurs

Mattel’s Jurassic World drone lets your kid fly a pterodactyl of their own.

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is coming to theaters this summer, which means you can expect what will feel like an endless stream of marketing hype. Luckily, part of that will also mean some sweet new toys. Mattel’s new line of “Fallen Kingdom” figures include 3.25-inch characters and dinosaurs, which means your kids’ mini Chris Pratt and T-Rex will be to scale, making for improved playing experiences. Character figures are priced at $7.99 a piece, while the Jurassic World Roarivores will cost $14.99 a piece.

Naturally, there’s also the Pterano-Drone, a drone with a pterodactyl on top, to make it feel like you’re flying your own dinosaur ($119) and the Power Wheels Jurassic World Dino racer, which at $259.99, will set you back a pretty penny. But come on. You love your kids, right?

More from Dan:

What to do when you’re hacked

Hackers are using victims’ computers to mine cryptocurrencies

Nvidia is scrambling to graphics cards to gamers amid crypto boom

Twitter needs to do a better job of explaining how we got duped by Russia

Consumers lost $19.4 billion to cybercriminals in 2017

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn

[dawnajaynes32]

Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction

[Call for Entries: The International Design Awards]

Raymond Larabie, known for creating ubiquitous futuristic and sci-fi fonts, has been involved with type since he “was about five years old” and was using type at that early age as well. His experience with typography, especially when it came to the hands-on-use of Letraset, helped him understand how typefaces looked, and how typography worked. By the mid-1980s he edited fonts and made his own fonts on his first computer, doing everything on a TRS-80 in bitmap. He eventually graduated to the Commodore Amiga.

Neuropol was created in 1997 and was used for the logo for the Torino Olympics in 2006. It’s been updated and expanded a lot over the years and also comes in a more buttoned up X style. The truncated arms were inspired by a malfunctioning vectorbeam screen on an old Tempest arcade machine.

Larabie earned a Classical Animation Diploma at Sheridan College in Oakville, and went on to work as an art director in the video game business working on games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super NES (SNES), as well as the Playstation and Playstation 2. During that time, he maintained his love for type and type design, and made free fonts, releasing them on the Ray Larabie Freeware Typeface of the Week website. This soon became Larabie Fonts. In 2001, he started a commercial font venture, and quit his job two years later to work on fonts full-time.

Influenced by Letraset at age five, Larabie says his own Letraset sheets got “used up decades ago,” in the mid-1980s. “I wonder if younger readers realize that fonts were once something that you’d buy and they would get used up. These are replacement copies of catalogs because I wore the originals to shreds. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with this stuff as a kid.” Photo by Raymond Larabie

Inspired by the Pinto Flare typeface, Larabie created his own groovy version called Pricedown. You might also recognize it from Grand Theft Auto‘s wordmark. “I worked for Rockstar at the time but they weren’t aware that they were using a font which was created by one of their employees before the company existed.”

Larabie moved to Japan in 2008, where he operates Typodermic Fonts. Larabie provided a behind the scenes look at his design process for HOW readers, and answered questions about his work and his influences.

How Raymond Works

Step 1

“When starting a new typeface, my first step is to draw a few heavy sample characters to establish dimensions and sidebearings.”

Step 2

“Once I’ve got a few sample characters for the heaviest weight, I add a weight axis and design a light version of those characters. This way I can test interpolation, alter the x-height, sidebearings and width, then note the scale percentages—afterwards, I delete the light test characters. I’m using a uniform line width since this will be an interpolation target which will be thrown away later. I usually use an interpolation of between 10 to 20% of the heaviest weight as my extra-light so it retains some of flavor of the heavy weight.”

Step 3

“One by one, I add completed heavy characters, making sure each one harmonizes with the existing characters. I don’t draw them in alphabetical order but I try not to leave the hard letters like a and e for last. The interplay between f,r,t,z is particularly difficult so they should be drawn all at the same time to make sure they work together. There’s no separate spacing phase—I’m adjusting and thoroughly testing the spacing for each character as I go.”

Step 4

“Next I create composite accented characters and finish the rest of the character set. I use a set of reduced height accents for the capital letters and more generous ones for the lowercase.”

Step 5

“After lots of testing and minor adjustments, I’ll create kerning classes and create all the kerning pairs. It’s important to spend a lot of time setting up the kerning classes. Not only does it make the kerning process much faster but it reduces the possibility of error and omission.”

Step 6

“Now it’s time to create the light interpolation weight. I’ll use the notes I made earlier to make everything narrower, decrease the x-height and pad the sidebearings. I’ll also create a quick, disposable outline version to use as a guide in the background.”

Step 7

“Next I’ll complete all the light characters. I need to adjust the sidebearings on thin characters like lowercase L, I, 1 etc. The accents no longer line up so they all need adjustment. The kerning will need to be done all over again. Some pairs won’t need adjusting but they’ll all need to be checked.”

Step 8

“Next, I experiment with the interpolation and make adjustments to refine the middle weights—it’s a bit like pulling strings. You can see how I need to cut away a piece of the Q so the tail goes through only on the lighter weights. This stage can involve a lot of manual cleanup and vector surgery. Now I decide which weights I’m going to export. Then I fill in the style names, do some autohinting, more testing, more adjustments and I’m done.”

Q&A with Raymond

Q. What inspired you to create your own type design foundry?

I like to call it a font company. Foundry makes it sound like I work with molten metal.

What’s behind the name? What does Typodermic mean, and why did you go with that name?

During the indie font gold rush near the turn of the millennium, font puns were in short supply so I jumped at that one as soon as I thought of it. I used it as a font name first and later a company name. “For font junkies” is my slogan but I thought of that much later.

What software do you use for finalizing, editing, and producing the font files, and why do you use it?

I use FontLab Studio because it’s been the dominant type design tool in Windows for almost two decades. On a Mac there are several other viable options but in Windows, if you want to create interpolated typefaces, it’s the only way to go.

What prior font software did you use, before the tools you currently use?

I used Fontographer but then stopped using it because it hadn’t been updated for close to a decade. I miss the vector drawing in that one but without interpolation, it’s a no-go.

When you started out as a type designer, who or what motivated you to get into type design, and why?

It was the emergence of type design tools. I was making fonts as soon as I got my first computer, a TRS-80 in the early 80s. But there was only so much you could do with those old bitmap editors. The urge was still there but dormant until I got my hands on Fontographer in 1996.

Larabie calls Conthrax “a techno typeface that’s designed to hide in the background” and he strived to make it look technological without being loud and flashy.

The average person who looks at your type catalog might see a strong science fiction influence. How has sci-fi shaped your typographic tastes, and the type designs you make?

When I started in the late 1990s that category was underserved. You’d see that style in logo designs but not much as typefaces. I think now, techno is considered a legitimate category but not long ago, that style of type was passed off as Microgramma or Bank Gothic clones. I do love sci-fi and video games and that’s definitely an influence. The choice of going square is often an attempt to make type that harmonizes with our environment. We live in a high-tech, rectilinear world. When I started seeing my techno fonts used on consumer electronics, it guided me more towards those sorts of projects.

Typography has a prominent place in many science fiction comic books, films, and cartoons. What movies or comic books get the typography right, in your opinion, and why?

Sci-fi type like in Robocop (1988), Star Trek the Next Generation (STNG), or Demolition Man were amped up versions of popular type styles in the times they were made. The STNG typeface feels like a late 1980s software company logo—perfect for the times. Sci-fi type often fails when it regurgitates old sci-fi ideas. We’ve seen decades of the Blade Runner line gap trick. It was a stark vision of the future in 1982 but maybe we should be extrapolating the visuals of today to develop new visions of the future.

Something that constantly annoys me is the use of Bank Gothic to imply “futuristic.” Bank Gothic was designed in 1930 and was based on a popular sign painting style from around 1900. It was the kind of thing you’d see on rail cars, gravestones, stock certificates etc. When I see it, it looks very old-fashioned to me so it’s a bit like seeing a Model-T Ford in a sci-fi future. Famous movie examples: Moon, Terra Nova, Edge of Tomorrow, Battlestar Galactica, Hunger Games, Falling Skies, Jumper and several Stargates. I think Bank Gothic is often chosen because it’s a square font that a lot of people already have on their computer. It’s not a bad font by any means but it’s very American, circa 1900 to me.

  When it comes to your process, do you begin working directly on paper during the initial design phases, or do you go right to the computer, and what benefit does that method of working provide?

I usually don’t use paper at all. I jot down notes as I’m working such as sidebearing numbers and accent offsets. I feel like the design of each glyph should be as open as possible so they can be formed by their neighbors. If I decide what glyphs are going to look like ahead of time, I can paint myself into a corner. A far more useful visual aid is to keep a reference photo on my desktop wallpaper or pinned to my cork board—usually not of anything typographical but more of a thematic image. For one job, I needed to create a tough, military looking typeface so I pinned a picture of a Humvee to my board. To me, that’s more useful than sketching out the alphabet. Even if I don’t use visual reference, there’s some kind of doctrine I can use to help me make decisions. Otherwise, I tend to smooth the edges down until the typeface has no character.

You offer a lot of free fonts, as well as fonts that cost money. Why so many fonts for free?

It’s promotional. Those free font sites get so much traffic. I’ve had over 60 million downloads from DaFont alone. The free fonts can lead to sales of web, app and eBook licenses or other weights like heavy or ultra-light.

What are your best-selling paid fonts?

Korataki is a techno font commissioned for the Mass Effect game series that’s always done really well. Meloriac is mixed case, extremely bold geometric sans which has been a steady seller. Conthrax is a more recent success. It’s a squarish, soft, ultramodern deliberately sedate.

What are your most frequently downloaded free fonts?

Coolvetica. It’s downloaded almost twice as much as the next one down the list. Then there’s Steelfish. That was a bit of a dud until I spruced it up a few years ago. I’ve been constantly going over the old ones and freshening them up or rebuilding from scratch. Then Budmo, Neuropol and Pricedown.

The Budmo typeface, influenced by marquee signs.

What type designers, foundries, or visual culture do you look at for inspiration these days, and why do you look at that work?

I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I try to avoid looking at design blogs, or anything tagged as typography. I feel like it’s a bit like visual dieting. It’s not just what I look at, it’s what I don’t look at. And more than ever, as a species, we’re all feeding from the same visual trough. An example of a recent tangent was diving deep into the world of reel-to-reel tape decks and obsolete audio cassette formats, strange auto-reverse mechanisms. If you don’t swerve, you’ll end up making the same typeface someone else already made.

In addition to offering your fonts through your own site, they can be found at fonts.com as well as Fontspring and other sites. What advice would you have for the budding type designer, who wants to get their fonts picked up by those distributors?

When you’re developing your typeface, you should try to imagine the kind of customer that’s going to purchase it. Give it some kind of reason to exist. It’s not enough to make an attractive or interesting typeface. It’s fine if you want to get experimental but those sites aren’t the place for that sort of thing. They’re like department stores rather than galleries. For example, if you’re making a font that looks like neon lights, you can look at what’s available and think about the kind of customer who might need one. What kind of projects would they use it for? Is there something missing in the current selection of neon light fonts?

Korataki was commissioned by Bioware for the Mass Effect game series.

Some of your influences, such as the TRS-80 and 1980s pop culture, are also found in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg has made into a feature film. You’ve got such a deep catalog of future-forward and sci-fi fonts. Leading up to Ready Player One’s release, if we see a 1980s renaissance—and especially one with sci-fi and gaming influences from that era—what new creations can we expect to see from Typodermic Fonts?

I think the console games of the 1980s and 1990s have been well fetishized—the aesthetic is well known. Younger generations have developed a visual style based on that type of look but it’s based on a relatively narrow view on games in the 1980s. There’s an aspect of gaming that’s been largely ignored and is in danger of being lost forever: microcomputers. While some people were playing Atari and Nintendo in the living room, the rest of us were at desks, patiently waiting for games to load from cassettes. Those types of games haven’t been popular with collectors and they’re often ignored. Cassettes and floppy disks fail—manuals and packaging get thrown in the trash. Some of the Japanese microcomputers like MSX, NEC PC Series, X-1, FM-7 had specific technical limitations that created their own unique visual style. A lot of the console game franchises we know and love started off on these systems before people played them on their living room game consoles. Many microcomputer games that were released in this era will never be recovered. A few years ago I made Rukyltronic which was a tribute to 1980s UK microcomputers like Beeb and the Speccy. That’s the kind of thing I’ve got my eye out for and it’ll inevitably make its way into my upcoming typeface releases.

Where do you see type design heading in the future?

Typography has a fashion cycle so you’ll see the same kinds of typefaces come and go. But when they cycle back each time, new ideas will be applied and they’ll required upgrading as user expectations keep getting higher. Things like optical scaling which will compensate for the environment. What makes a typeface perform better in small print on a smartwatch is different from what works best on a billboard and it’s not just the weight. In the 1990s, a basic character set with a few accents and stock mathematical symbols was the norm. Typefaces rarely came with more than regular, bold and italics. Now we expect a weight range, more language coverage, cohesive symbols and OpenType features galore. Also, new font technology will allow us to finally produce convincing handwriting. I think some of the innovations required to make Arabic writing work properly will provide us with some interesting tools. Once type designers have access to these tools, who knows what we’ll come up with?

Edited from a series of online and email interviews. Captions for Neuropol, as well as Toxigenesis type design process provided by Raymond Larabie. Check out Typodermic Fonts online and follow Larabie on Twitter and Instagram.

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