#the simplicity and familiarity of taking orders and being Great vs knowing that greatness is on the backs of others and wanting

[bonesif]

But in your heart, you just want to be a good little soldier. It's all you know how to be.

Enter commander Farron Vamirel, the painted phoenix.

[ from @exilethegame ]

[scribblewriting65]

Top 5 YouTube Channels

Intro

Communication is a powerful and ever-changing force; especially with the rise of the Internet in recent decades. And no online service knows this better than YouTube. Hosting thousands of channels and millions of videos, no website has sucked away our free time quite like Big Red.

Today I would like to acknowledge 5 of the platform’s strongest creators, in my eyes. Whether it be for their intelligent content or the sheer fun they bring, to me, these guys are some of the best of the best; and proudly hold some of my greatest respect.

Quick disclaimers: This is my first writing like this, and as you know, opinions can change over time; so please lower your pitchforks and know that there are plenty of channels I love. Also, when writing this, I don’t have a particular order in mind (Except for #1). Whether you find your favorite on the bottom, top, or nowhere at all, know that these guys deserve a watch (if my digital mouth has any impact on your choices, that is).

Enough talk though. Onward, to appreciation!

#5: JT Music

Art is mankind’s most unique unifier, and no art brings people together quite like music. Whether it be country, funk, or rap in this pick’s case, you can look just about anywhere for a good time.  And while rock star NateWantstoBattle is a close second in this regard, no musician really does it for me quite like JT.

While most would look at the genre “Video Game Rap” with an upturned nose, those that stick around won’t find anything quite like what Skull and Pat bring to the table. Their weekly tunes always bring a fire to my subscription feed, whether they’re putting me into the role of a badass superhero, or dragging me into the darkest abyss, I can just about always have a good time nodding my head to the beat.

Not only is their work consistently fun, but it’s also wide in diversity, and constant in quality. Hits like Follow Father, No Hero, and Hungry for Another One capture their source material perfectly within a musical context. Even their cameo appearances in tracks like DAGames’ We Want Out and Zack Boucher’s Ultimate Super Smash Bros. Rap steal the show with their wild energy. I always find myself smiling when I find their newest song; getting a small amount of enjoyment even in my less liked tracks.

Consistent fun and passion can be felt in the notes, and I can’t help but rock my skull out when JT Music starts playing.

#4: GameXplain

Games offer a wide variety no matter where you look. No matter if you’re looking for a deep insight into 30 second clips, latest updates on a title, or general thoughts on an event, you can always find something, or someone, explaining the perspective for you.

I’m a funny guy, aren’t I?

GameXplain has certainly explored over the years. From Cool Bits and Missing In Action in the past, to their famous modern Analyses and Discussions, Andre and friends have always hosted an approachable place with a variety of outlooks from its diverse crew, like Andre’s obsession with Stunt Race FX and Ash’s knowledge and love of Mega Man.

Even if you aren’t super into any of their interests, you’ll still find a laid-back but insightful pool of content. Their discussions are a personal favorite of mine, bringing fun, thoughtful ideas to events or ideas occurring in the gaming industry. I can’t help but get caught up in their hype, especially for Nintendo Directs or the annual E3 Show.

Even if I don’t quite understand the excitement that something is receiving, I can always go to these guys for a solid explanation and platform to join the hype train.

#3: Mithzan

It seems that no matter where you go, Minecraft can be found there. Games, books, plushies, animations, even an entire convention; those familiar blocks pervade some space of modern culture. While this space has hosted some incredible creations, simplicity also has its own beauty.

Mithzan uses this simplicity to great effect. With his buddies Ross, Pooki, Jerry and frequent guests, Max is always there to give me a laugh. And while Minecraft holds a variety of fun games like Would You Rather and Never Have I Ever, Mithzan also offers experiences outside of the blocks, like Uno and Dead by Daylight.

Along with the wide content, the experiences and humor are also varied, sometimes employing puns or old-fashioned smack talk, to name a few. Even with the different conversations and games, the fun and heart are always there. Whether he’s playing a wacky or horrifying game, Mithzan is approachable and honest with his style of play.

#2: Mother’s Basement

Appearances can be deceiving, no matter where you look. Assumed bullies are victims themselves, ‘loner’ people are simply introverted, and the most stubborn ones find themselves lost in an unexpected niche. All it takes is a little looking around, and you’ll find a new lesson or friend more often than not.

And what better place to look for insight than in a Mother’s Basement?

While not all people can see the artistry that anime brings to the table, Mother’s Basement brings its potential to the limelight. With weekly insights and discussions on things like how animation enhances an atmosphere or what makes a fight extraordinary in Animelee, the ideas and thought put into these discussions is top-notch.

Along with this, Geoff (the host)’s voice is great support, staying calm but strong, adding great emphasis on major points. He even provides touches of comedy and actual life advice into his videos. I find myself especially entertained with his analyses on My Hero Academia and Fullmetal Alchemist, but Geoff also covers topics like best romantic partners and essential shows to watch (and avoid), and pointing out his reasons why. Even if anime isn’t your style, there are some videos dotted in discussing topics like the nuances of binge-watching in “Is Binge Watching Bad for Us? (Netflix vs. Disney+)” and other media like movies (“Spider-Verse: The Ultimate Spider-Man Movie”) and video games (“Insomniac’s Spider-Man is Truly Superior”).

While it took some time to grow on me, I’m glad to have been welcomed into Mother’s Basement. With plenty of insight and care put into each video, Geoff is just about always a good choice for fun education on how artistic Japanese animation can be.

#1:Fawful’s Minion

The world is full of stories; they’re simply part of human nature. Whether it be fantasy, drama, or comedy, all of us have the potential to weave tales that inspire. And none have inspired me on YouTube quite like Fawful’s Minion.

This mean bean gaming machine has the mouth of a divine artist. His videos always bring a bright smile and incredible awe to me for just how much quality and care goes into each video. Fawful’s Top 10’s have never let me down with their fun, reasons, and pure passion that is tangible in every project.

Not only are the videos fun, but they’re also inspiring too. Fawful’s linguistics is beyond captivating, even partially motivating how I speak and write. Along with constantly being a good time, I’m always inspired to write or gain a storytelling voice whenever I watch an FM video.

And the touches of insight into his personal life give Fawful an air of relatability. Now, I realize I may make him sound like some sort of Shakespearian poet, but he also dispels this through his more colorful language, bringing in modern terms (and curses) and joyful, nearly maniacal at times, laughter and emotion into his speech, making himself grounded and relatable.

Most of all, Fawful’s storytelling skills were, and still are, a big reason why I write and tell my own stories. I want to enrapture others with my words like Fawful does, so he gets a big thanks and respect in my book. Balancing fun, humor, emotion, and creativity, Fawful’s Minion has made a goon out of me, running towards the goal of becoming a true storyteller.

Outro

If you made it here, thanks for sticking around! I wanna maybe try these sorts of blog/list posts more often, so tell me what you think! If you like this and want to see more, feel free to check out my AO3 Page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribbleWriting65. I hope you enjoyed this little list, and I’ll see you next time!

[pass-the-bechdel]

Homicide: Life on the Street seasons 1-2 full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

7.69% (one of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

20.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female? 

Five (season one episode three ‘Night of the Dead Living (16.66%), episode six ‘Three Men and Adena’ (11.11%), episode eight ‘And the Rocket’s Red Glare’ (15%), and episode nine ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ (11.11%), plus season two episode one ‘See No Evil’ (12.5%)).

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty. Five who appeared in more than one episode, one who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixty-eight. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, nine who appeared in at least half the episodes, and five who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Surprisingly good, even progressive for a show from the early nineties. There are some very self-aware considerations of race, gender, and sexuality, and clear distinctions between what is considered ‘depraved’ and what is merely ‘alternative’ (distinctions which modern-day conservatives twenty-five years later seem to still be struggling with). The place where the hammer of judgment falls hardest is on any cop who allows personal prejudice to interfere with their work (average rating of 3.15).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent. To some fans, the first season is undoubtedly the best of the series, and it is certainly true that the show in that initial raw form achieved a beating heart of idiosyncratic realism that future seasons rarely - if ever - matched. That, really, is the highest praise one might levy; at its best, the show feels like reality. There have been many pale imitations of H:LOTS since its heyday, but no equals.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

I know, I didn’t do any individual episode posts. I didn’t accidentally publish this review without posting the other ones first: I decided not to write individual episode posts for this show. To be honest, I don’t love the decision, and if I ever do summary-posts-only for a show again, it’ll be under very special circumstances, because it’s really not ideal and there’s a good reason I chose the individual-episode-posts format for this blog in the first place. The only reason I’m pushing against my better judgment and doing summary-posts-only for this show is because, frankly, I think there are only maybe three people on tumblr who ever watched H:LOTS. This is possibly my favourite show in the world (top three, for sure), but it has been largely lost to the memory of history, and it’s also not generally in the habit of giving me a lot to talk about in the context of this blog, episode by episode. It has some good fodder - some fantastic fodder, even - but if I broke it down one episode at a time I fear I’d end up with a Hell of a lot of posts without a lot of content, and with even less of an interested audience. So, I’m gonna cut to the chase, and just do season summaries, touching on the good (and the bad) content in collective instead of stretched over 122 episode posts. My apologies to the three people who wish I would draw this out. 

Also worth noting as we segue into actually discussing the show: I’ve combo’d seasons one and two here because they’re only nine and four episodes long, respectively, and they are frequently packaged together (my DVDs put them all in one box). Sometimes the two seasons are actually labelled and sold as ‘season one’, and season three is consequently labelled ‘season two’, and so on, but I have avoided that unnecessary act of confusing streamlining to refer to them as they were intended and presented when they aired. There are immediate differences to be noted between the first nine episodes and the four that comprise season two: the beige colour-grading of the first season (sometimes so desaturated it almost looks like it’s in black and white) has been lifted to a more vibrant look, and the cases are a little more sensational/unusual than season one’s primarily drab and simple murders. That drab simplicity was what made the first season arguably the best, the key to its realism: murder is rarely an art, rarely complicated, rarely cleverly committed or cleverly covered up. Most of the cases in the first season are lifted directly from real-life cases depicted in journalist David Simon’s non-fiction novel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the exploration of the Baltimore Homicide Department upon which the show is based. Sensationalism or strangeness are not often part of the first season because they are not often part of reality, and the show is about the job, not the cases. It’s about the life, the people who have to dig into the ugliness of murder, and the way they deal with that, the world that their work shapes around them. I’m not normally a fan of cop shows for the way they wallow in gratuitously sick ideas, always searching for a ‘hook’ to make the crime they depict interesting by being more awful, more grisly, more voyeuristic than anything you’ve seen before. In a word, more sensational. I’ve also made no secret on this blog of my sincere disdain for so-called ‘gritty realism’, because it is commonly wildly unrealistic, and just an excuse to tell stories about horrible people being horrible to each other while the show tries to insist that that’s just how people are. Homicide’s avoidance of sensationalist narratives and its reliance on realism-for-realism’s-sake allow it to avoid the common pitfalls of both cop shows and try-hard ‘gritty realism’. It was a shake-up of the standard tv formula that almost had the show axed after one season, and which led to that ridiculously tiny second season as the network grappled with a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-winning series that was just never designed to be a big ratings winner. What made Homicide great was also what the network slowly squeezed out of it over time as they tried to shape a more traditional cop show, and it’s why no matter which season a fan chooses as their favourite, you can pretty much guarantee they won’t choose the last one. But, we’ll get to that. For now: seasons one and two.

The obvious thing we have to talk about (it is why we’re here, after all) is the ladies. Or, the lady, singular. This is not a female-heavy show, but there is at least one solid reason for that: the presence of only one female homicide detective is not a piece of token inclusion for the show, it’s an accurate reflection of the dynamics of the real-life Baltimore Homicide Department at the time. It’s an important reality here, because it’s something which significantly impacts that single female detective’s life: Kay Howard, as a character, is forced to interact with the conspicuousness of her womanhood on a regular basis. To its credit, the writing does not define Howard by her gender and she is able to have a personality and be a detective first and foremost instead of being ‘the woman, who does woman things, handles woman cases, and talks about being a woman all the time while the male characters feel compelled also to mention her femaleness whenever they notice what a woman she is, which is always’. That said, her gender is something that Howard cannot escape from in her context, something which inevitably sets her apart. This is brought up in particularly notable ways in ‘A Dog and Pony Show’, the only episode that passes the Bechdel (and does so more than once), in which Howard comes down hard on young female officer Schanne. Howard’s partner Felton calls her on it, suggesting that she hates other women, and Howard insists that the reason she is tougher on women than on men is because she expects more from them. As the only female homicide detective in town, Howard feels a strong pressure to represent her gender with conduct beyond reproach, and she takes it as a personal slight when she encounters other women whom she perceives as letting the team down, or of being appointed to their positions to satisfy quotas rather than earning them through merit. Later in the same episode, Howard and Felton have an awkward moment when Felton says he’s not even remotely attracted to her, and Howard pushes him to be honest - not because she wants him to be interested, but because she’s offended by the thought that he has stripped her of her gender in his own mind in order to perceive her as ‘just one of the guys’. Howard’s relationship with her womanhood is rife with contradictions; she is both proud of it, and dogged by internalised misogyny. She wants to be recognised as a woman with merits, but she also doesn’t want her gender to hold sway over her career or be treated as notable. She wants to represent a strong example for other women, but she also hates the expectation. And despite herself, she still wants to believe she’s attractive to men and retaining a traditional feminine appeal, at the same time as dressing in masculine attire and forgoing most of the trappings of traditional femininity. She is caught in the web of imposed societal expectations vs her identity as an individual who cannot be so plainly defined, and she doesn’t want to conform, but she does want to belong. In similar or different forms, it’s an impossible situation that is awfully familiar.

Though she only ekes some Bechdel action out of the one episode, Howard does interact with other women variously, though they all either have no name, or they talk about men the whole time - there were a lot of almost-passes, and some of them very strong gender-relevant  interactions, too: Howard and the therapist Kerry Weston discuss Howard’s relationships with men in terms of dealing daily with crimes largely perpetrated by men and against men, and what that means for her in also trying to form romantic attachments to men (obviously, the conversation fails the Bechdel, but it is insightful observation of the position Howard is in as a heterosexual woman in a male-dominated field), and in ‘Night of the Dead Living’ (an all-around great episode for every character), Howard has a conversation with the (unfortunately nameless) cleaning lady about the lack of funding for medical research into women’s health issues and the relationship between that and the lack of women in congress (she also has multiple conversations with her sister Carrie over the phone in that episode, but those don’t pass the Bechdel either since we only hear Kay’s side). Being the only major female character around doesn’t completely define Howard’s character, nor does the show position her in complete isolation from other women in order to tell the story of her conspicuous womanhood; there’s a good balanced recognition of gender within the narrative, and though it doesn’t score well in the raw statistics, it does do nice things for the content rating and for the messages being communicated to the audience. The complexity of Howard’s relationship with her female identity has a sad, truthful ring about it, and it’s a reflection on society and its habit of treating women like they have to sink or swim on behalf of their entire gender. It’s good stuff.

As for the non-female portion of the show, i.e. the bulk of it: I’m still pretty impressed. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t acknowledge the show’s honest and thorough representation of Baltimore as a predominantly black city, and the navigation of racial issues, tensions, and prejudices - both within and without the police force - factor significantly in the tapestry of the series (season two’s ‘See No Evil’ and ‘Black and Blue’ are prime examples). Another episode that I was particularly impressed with for its sensitive handling of content was ‘A Many Splendored Thing’, in which Bayliss and Pembleton investigate the erotic asphyxiation death of Angela Frandina, whose sexual habits are an affront to straight-laced Bayliss. Bayliss’ reactions to the particulars of Angela’s life - including working as a phone-sex operator, and frequenting a local BDSM club - range from hilarious oh-golly innocence to the decidedly un-funny taint of bigotry, as he implies that people who enjoy consensual but ‘dehumanising’ acts are sick in the head, and that Angela can’t have been a good person if she was a part of that lifestyle. Pembleton gives Bayliss a thorough wake-up call in a magnificent speech about virtues and vices, advising Bayliss to get his head out of his ass and stop pretending to live on some pure moral high-ground from which he cannot conceive of the natural variance in human behaviour. The only character who is really judged by the narrative is Bayliss, and his closed-mindedness is exposed as a dangerous precedent and declared unequivocally wrong. It’s a refreshing stance, especially for something which, in the early nineties, was even more of a poorly-represented fringe element than it is now. This episode and a few others also include measures of queer representation in an off-hand, judgment-free fashion, extremely notable in context since the AIDS epidemic was still in full-swing at the time. It’s pretty significant, for a show which is almost as old as I am. 

Other good things: the episode ‘Three Men and Adena’ in season one, aka the episode that single-handedly saved the series from the chopping block by being an Emmy-winning triumph of every possible element of film-making, and, oh, maybe objectively one of the single best episodes of television ever made. No big. Likewise, ‘Bop Gun’ in season two, which utilised the late Robin Williams in a gut-wrenching dramatic performance and consequently saved the series from the chopping block a second time, allowing it to finally start running full-length seasons as of season three. Respect, for the somewhat bizarre decision to use Ned Beatty’s Bolander - this guy:

- as the romantic contender for the series, warts and all as he variously self-sabotages and talks himself out of testing the waters of the dating pool for the first time since 1970; any thoughts of including romantic subplots for titillation are banished when you’ve got ‘The Big Man’ Bolander raging around, and thus those forays into awkward relationships are strictly character pieces, and all the better for it. And points, also, for healthy acts of support between men, toxic masculinity be gone; most notably, Crosetti with his recently-injured and bedridden friend Thormann, who is struggling to adjust to the changed world of his disabilities. Thormann is angry and despairing, declaring himself ‘not a man anymore’ after he loses control of his bowels in his bed; “It’s a natural thing that’s happening here,” Crosetti reassures, soothing Thormann’s embarrassment as he steps in to help his friend clean up, holding his hand and rubbing his back with the gentle patience of a parent. Crosetti was my first favourite character on this show, outstripped by others in the end, but beloved in his time. This review is going live on the 2nd of September for me, but it’s still September 1st in the USA, and therefore, the second anniversary of the death of Jon Polito, our dear Crosetti. This one’s for you, Jon.

Of course, there are a few little quibbles I can raise with the show, and it would be pointless for me to bother with any of this if I didn’t go ahead and raise them. Howard having a prior romantic entanglement with Tyron feels like a needless cliche, and perhaps one of those season two concessions meant to make things seem ‘sexier’; the show is better than that. Kerry Weston uses the example of female seagulls observed to form lesbian bonding pairs as an analogy for why ‘birds of a feather shouldn’t always flock together’, and it doesn’t feel like it’s intentionally homophobic, but it sure does come across that way anyway. Munch is a primarily comic-relief character, and good at it, but his volatile relationship with his girlfriend Felicia (who never appears onscreen) has disturbing shades about it that are never quite clear enough to be soundly condemned, and the general comedic attitude surrounding Munch and his delivery of any and all information regarding Felicia rubs me the wrong way. All things considered, these are pretty small-fry complaints (and almost completely contained within season two, jus’ sayin’), and in that sense they’re pretty reaffirming of the quality of the show as a whole. The characters are realistically flawed - sometimes very deeply flawed - but not horrible people, just struggling, just trying their best, sometimes ignorant of their ignorance, sometimes pushing back or lashing out in the wrong directions. They are forgivably flawed because they are realistic, and it makes them easy to engage with even when you disagree with them; the core humanity is eminently recognisable. It doesn’t seem like it should be hard to achieve that realism, and yet, here we are. Watching Homicide: Life on the Street, a show without equal, even decades after it began.

[zonamievents]

ZoNami Analysis: The Orange Island Arc and First Impressions!

Hello everyone! Welcome to my new series of posts, where I discuss every Zoro and Nami moment to have ever occurred in the entire series of One Piece. Any scene can merely be friendly, but perhaps we can uncover a hint of something more between them as we go through it all? Let’s find out on this journey together!

Also, I am aware that koukihime has done a similar series on her website, zoroxnami.weebly.com. However, I wanted to perform my own analysis of Zoro and Nami’s relationship, so please bear with me if there are any accidental similarities. Thanks!

Today’s topic is how this ENTIRE arc solidifies Zoro and Nami’s relationship moving forward. First impressions are important, and though Oda-sensei likes to play with how we preceive someone vs how they really impact the story in later arcs, the simplicity of the beginning of the series tells us a lot about how these two are meant to be critical players in the Mugiwara crew, and in each other’s lives.

Picking up from where we left off, Zoro has just stepped in to save Nami’s life from Buggy’s crew! Nami is in great disbelief to find that an infamous pirate hunter like Roronoa Zoro is actually the other half of Luffy’s pirate crew.

As she stands there mistified, Buggy questions if Zoro has suddenly appeared to take his head. Though Zoro tells him that isn’t the case, Buggy instigates a fight and in a matter of seconds, it seems as though the pirate captain was taken down instantaneously. Disappointed and confused, Luffy, Zoro and Nami can’t understand why his crew starts laughing after their boss’ defeat, only for Zoro to learn that not only did he underestimate Buggy, but…

Buggy also has a Devil’s Fruit that allows his body to separate at will.

Luffy, Zoro and Nami know they need to escape, but the situation looks rather grim. However, leave it to Zoro - who now has a stab wound in his left side - to flip an entire canon over and aim it at the Buggy pirates!

After the canon shoots, it is Zoro AGAIN with his inhuman strength lifting the cage that Luffy’s stuck in and trying to carry him down off of a rooftop and onto the ground! Nami is just in awe as she follows them, and though she apparently knows the name ‘Zoro’, it seems she is unaware of just how powerful he truly is.

Nami starts to lose her wonderment when Luffy later picks a fight with ShuShu the dog. But she still brings Luffy the key to the cage so he can get himself free. Defeated for the moment, Zoro sleeps off his injury while Luffy gets himself into even more trouble! Zoro is woken up when Buggy fires another one of his Buggy Balls at the building, and somehow survives the impact so he can join the fight once again!

As the story progresses and the two crews face off - with Nami finally agreeing to ‘cooperate’ with the Straw Hats - Buggy faces off against Luffy, and Cabaji challenges Zoro. At one point in their battle, Cabaji intentionally aims for Zoro’s wound from earlier, and Nami calls him out for such a cheap trick.

And she calls him out on it again, but the third time Cabaji tries to attack his wound, Zoro not only blocks him, he decides to make that particular injury seem a little less interesting…

...by cutting himself! It disturbs even Luffy that he does this, but the tactic works and Cabaji is now focused on the overall fight rather than targeting Zoro’s obvious weakness. Of course, this only makes Nami worry about him more.

Nami leaves the scene shortly after that to go and get the map of the Grand Line that was most likely lost in the explosion. She sneaks off and promises to join up with Luffy and Zoro again if they manage to survive. However, the fight ends up being so engaging that she watches it from the distance before achieving her goal!

After avoiding an enraged Buggy when she steals his treasure - and after Luffy’s inevitable victory against Buggy - Nami groups up with Luffy and the sleeping Zoro and as he wakes up, Zoro says he doesn’t think he can walk. To which Nami replies…

And that’s the major highlight, or theme, of this arc: Luffy and Zoro are meant to show off how powerful they are together, and just how otherworldly their strength can be. Even though this is a Zoro and Nami-centric post, I just want to point out that everything mentioned above happens in order and nothing plot-centric is skipped over. A great deal of Nami’s impression of this crew revolves around her reactions to Zoro’s heroism and just how brutal he can.

But what does this mean for ZoNa?

Why summarize this entire arc and say that it’s worthy of more love from the ZoNa community?

What does the Orange Town story really highlight for us ZoNa fans!?

It shows us that this is where Nami realizes how integral Zoro is to not only the crew, but her survival too. It isn’t meant to impress us as the reader because we’ve already met Zoro - this entire meeting is meant to wow Nami into feeling safe with them.

Before she became a Straw Hat, Nami traveled the seas alone. Why bother getting any sort of outsider involved in her village’s problems? Her willingness to join the crew wasn’t simply because of her dream, but it was because she knew that she needed them to stay alive if it meant she ever encountered someone like Buggy again. Remember, Nami explicitly states in this arc that she thought Devil’s Fruits were nothing more than a myth that pirates tell themselves. For her to see both Buggy and Luffy in action in the East Blue - which she knows is statistically the weakest of all four - means that Nami needs some strong partners in crime if she plans to finish her mission of saving Cocoyashi.

Given her methodical nature, it’s only logical to tag along with such irrefutably strong men to guarantee success. And that’s the perfect way to highlight yet another ‘opposites attract’ aspect of the ZoNa relationship!

The Left Brain vs The Right Brain.

It’s a concept most of us are familiar with: each half of your brain specializes in a specific area of your personality. If you’re more instinctive than strategic, you’re Right Brain is probably your dominate half. If you prefer to plan out your day rather than letting events unfold as they will, than you’re a Left Brain thinker. At first glance, some would call Nami emotional and spastic, but us fans of the character can agree that she is one of the most intelligent and well thought out members of the Straw Hat crew.

Zoro, on the other hand, is a reactionary character. Where Nami would try to concoct a solution, Zoro would prefer to make his own based off of what he feels is best. Though a stone-cold type of character, even his choices in battle come from training that taught him how to hone his instincts in order to guide his body to dodge attacks and execute strikes successfully.

Now, why does this matter?

Because neither one of them is solidly using only one side of their brain.

Together, Zoro and Nami create a proper middle ground - known as the Wise Mind in the example image above - that create a viability for each other. Where one lacks, the other exceeds expectations. Both are impressive characters, but what we get from this arc is the root of Zoro and Nami that truly show the significance they bring out in one another based off of their mere functionality.

In the very first post of this series, I talked about how Nami was the navigator and Zoro works as a protector; this first introduction they have clearly provides the foundation for Nami’s perception of Zoro as the person she ends up relying on the most from here on out. Essentially, their relationship works itself into a very popular theme: the Beauty and the Beast.

If you look at Belle from the Disney version of the tale, she is smart, well-read and cunning. She knows when it’s time to run away and when she needs to step up to the plate, to risk her life for either her father or for the Beast himself. She yearns to have more than the life she leads and it causes her to seek adventures beyond herself. Though her wits can get her into trouble sometimes - and even put her at odds with the Beast - she manages to to prove herself as a worthy partner to stand next to the Beast.

On the other hand, we can look at the Beast himself. He’s very stern, off-putting at times, despite the kind-hearted individual inside. Though others may comment on his brash personality, the Beast stays true to himself but starts to warm up to the idea of having Belle around. The Beast even saves Belle more than once and her respect for him grows when she sees how selfless he can truly be. He isn’t the easiest characters to love in his own story, despite being a clear protagonist. He always has his own goal in the back of his mind and thinks about how it involves the lives of those around him. He’s also the first to tell you he isn’t ‘a fool’.

There is a fantastic, oldie but goodie fanfic written by SF Kitty called “Beauty and the Beast: One Piece Style” from 2006 that shows how fans of ZoNa have picked up on the notion that there are evident ties to this Disney couple, and for good reason! It’s a popular concept that has worked out for many other fictional couples, because each couple acts as the other half to their partner - like the Left Brain meeting the Right Brain to make a Wise Minded couple! And though this arc is summarized simply in this post, I believe that the intention of this story allowed for Zoro to show off his beastly attributes to a rather shell-shocked Nami, just like the Beast does when he saves Belle from the wolves in the Disney adaption of the tale.

Mind you, Nami isn’t as smooth as Belle when she comes back to help Zoro and Luffy, but the similarity exists and that’s good enough for me! 

[popcultureliterarytutor]

Symbolism Over the Garden Wall

It’s hard to make it through an English class without talking about symbolism at least once. In my own high school experience, we studied this literary device in-depth using Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I remember hating the unit because I didn’t care about the general plot of the book at all. As a result, I also didn’t care about exploring the symbolism within.

One of the fastest ways to kill someone’s interest in a tough topic like symbolism is to set them up with a novel they end up hating. So instead, let’s explore this element through pop culture in order to get a better understanding of it and how authors use it to enhance the stories they craft.

Many literary techniques (including this one) lend themselves well to mediums outside of text-based mediums like novels. You can find them in comics, cartoons, movies, video games and even in paintings. For simplicity, I’m mostly going to use the words “author” and “creator” interchangeably to speak about the brilliant minds behind these works, but keep in mind that this applies to any storyteller in virtually any medium.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of this literary device, let’s focus on the 2014 Cartoon Network miniseries Over the Garden Wall. This delightful miniseries contains a lot of great examples of symbolism in its 10-episode run.

Spoiler Alert: If you have not experienced the pleasure of watching Over the Garden Wall in its entirety yet and plan to, I recommend that you stop reading this exploration and go watch it right now! Serious spoilers ahead! Watching Patrick McHale’s imaginative work for the first time is a fun ride, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.

Having said that, let’s begin.

What is Symbolism?

Before we can delve into an analysis of Over the Garden Wall using symbolism, we need to define it. In it’s most condensed form, let’s call it “the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.” That definition comes from Literarydevices.net, a handy website for all of your literary device needs.

In other words, authors take an idea or feeling and represent it with a person, place, or thing. It’s a way to liven up your writing, and offers creators fun ways to give a wink to the discerning reader by giving them additional insight to better enjoy the work with.

Movies use this device frequently. Ever notice that rainy scenes in movies such as Mulan or The Hunchback of Notre Dame often pop up during sad moments? Likewise, if you see a picture of a dove at a rally, you can recognize it as a peace rally. Nobody told you. You just knew somehow. We know things like this without being told because these are common symbols. Rain popularly symbolizes sorrow, and doves symbolize peace.

Symbolism Vs. Metaphor

Make sure that you don’t confuse symbolism and metaphor. Symbols are specific objects, seasons, animals, or characters (pretty much any noun) that represents something else, often throughout a work (but not always). Metaphors tend to be a lot more short-term, comparing two unlike things for the sake of making a point. An example might be “your eyes are the deep blue sea,” which makes the point that someone’s eyes are extremely blue and seemingly endless, but doesn’t cause their eyes to represent a concept or idea. Some metaphors do run a bit longer.

Common Symbols

In order to easily convey ideas without directly stating it in their writing, many creators use common symbols that already have a widely recognized meaning attached to them. The appearance of a dog often symbolizes friendship and loyalty, a flood of light might signify understanding or goodness, and winter represents death (remember this one for later!). These symbols are easily recognizable to a wide range of readers.

Take a look at this example: you’re enjoying your favorite novel or comic, when you come across a character “with a fire always blazing in their eyes.” You know that they do not literally have fire burning in their eyes every time you see them (that would hurt!). Instead, you search your stored knowledge of symbolic meaning (either the knowledge already in your brain, or what you found in a dictionary of common symbols and realize that the fire in this person’s eyes may represent ferocity, determination, anger, or evil. Which one does it represent? Well, you just need to keep reading and find out! The character’s actions will show you more about what that fire means.

These common symbols make it easier for writers to get meanings and concepts across without the need to develop a new symbol that their reader needs to figure out. Unfortunately, that does mean that when you first start exploring this device, you may find yourself frequently looking up the common meanings.

A few popular ones include:

Dogs: loyalty, friendship, obedience

Wind and storms: turbulent or violent (negative) emotion, adversity

Water: cleansing, origin of life, regeneration

Purple: royalty, wealth

Oak trees: strength, wisdom

Rose: budding youth, romance, potential, fragility, beauty

Specialized Symbols

What often makes this literary device complicated for beginners is that authors create new symbols in their works that hold meaning only within that work. Additionally, that symbol might have a deep life lesson attached to it, or it might just symbolize something important to fully understanding the characters or story. These symbols don’t retain that meaning when the same object appears in another story. (Love Rise of the Guardians? Keep an eye out for a post on a specialized symbol from the film, coming soon!)

Sometimes, creators directly state the meaning of a specialized symbol. You will see examples of this shortly. Other times, they only imply what it stands for. You can figure out the meaning by analyzing the scenes in which it appears and how characters interact with it.

You Know What They Say About Beauty and the Eye of the Beholder

Many times, audience interpretation of a symbol differs widely. A person’s own personal experiences might change how they view a symbol. Cultural background also changes the meaning of symbols.

In a similar way, applying different literary lenses can change the meaning of symbols as well. We aren’t going to delve into that labyrinth right now, though! That’s an easy place to get lost, and we don’t have nearly enough time to explore symbolism AND literary theory.

Is symbolism always intentional? I don’t believe so. I think that sometimes, authors include items in their stories that have specific meaning to themselves, or serve a specific purpose in the story, and the audience finds their own meaning in it.

Let’s Try It!

Got all that? Awesome! Let’s further explore this literary device by taking a look at Over the Garden Wall.

If you want to try your hand at figuring out a few of the symbols in the miniseries yourself first, go watch it again and analyze these symbols as they appear: seasons, the price of a ferry ride, the Dark Lantern, Edelwood trees, and the Beast. Come back and see how you did!

Seasons

Let’s start with a common one. If you’re somewhat familiar with this literary device, you might have picked up on the symbolism of the seasons (which hint at what’s happening to the brothers long before the 9th episode reveal). We meet our heroes wandering the woods in fall. In fact, most of the show takes place in the fall, only turning to winter in the last few episodes as everything quickly goes from bad to worse. (Here is your final spoiler warning. There is no turning back after this.)

Fall, the waning of warm growing seasons, commonly represents the waning of life. It comes into play when a character nears the end of their days. This winds up being true for the brothers, who are unknowingly drowning as they wander the Unknown.

In Babes in the Wood, fall gives way to winter when Greg strikes out on his own to face the Beast after Wirt runs out of hope. At this moment, the boys find themselves locked in a losing battle with death. Winter commonly represents death, the closing of life. If you made it to the end of the last episode and wondered what would have happened if they did not defeat the Beast, wonder no longer.

The Price of a Ferry Ride

There’s another symbol that hints at what is happening to the boys long before the audience becomes privy to the events of that Halloween. Remember when Beatrice convinces them to visit their dear old Unkie Endicott? They need money to ride the ferry so that they can get to Adelaide’s house.

Needing money to ride a boat isn’t particularly enlightening, until you examine the amount of money they need. A ferry ride costs two cents. Two coins, which they earn from Mr. Endicott.

Fans of Greek mythology might notice an ominous connection between this and the price of riding across the River Styx. In Greek mythology, the dead require two coins in order to cross the River Styx and enter the land of the dead. People laid coins on the eyes of the deceased so that they could pay the boatman.

In the end of this comedic adventure, Greg throws their coins into a deep fountain, and they sneak onto the ferry instead. It makes you wonder, did Greg’s poorly planned act of defiance save their lives?

BONUS: This is also an example of an allusion, which is a reference to people, places, events, and even other works and ideas.

The Dark Lantern

Now, let’s take a look at a symbol specific to Over the Garden Wall: the Dark Lantern. The lantern represents blind belief driven by hope. We don’t discover this meaning until the fourth episode, but looking back, we can see evidence of this from the beginning.

We first see the lantern in the possession of the Woodsman. He calls it his “lot in life, [his] burden to bear,” explaining to the brothers that he walks the woods finding Edelwood trees to keep it lit. He sounds like he hates this task, which makes it easy to wonder why on earth he keeps doing it every day if it’s such a burden. We get the sense that something drives him to do so, but we don’t know what.

The answer doesn’t appear until the end of episode 4, Tales of the Dark Lantern, when the Beast reveals that it contains the soul of the Woodsman’s daughter. At this point, we can determine that the Woodsman burns Edelwood to keep the lantern lit in order to preserve his daughter’s soul. But the details surrounding this are a little unclear. Will preserving her soul eventually lead to something, or does he just try to keep her soul going without any hope beyond that? Viewers might also wonder how the Woodsman knows that it contains her soul at all. Anyone who has read the comics released after the original airing know the answer to this one. He believes simply because the Beast told him so. He has no other evidence.

At this point, the lantern develops its symbolic meaning of blind belief driven by hope. The Woodsman blindly follows the belief that keeping it lit will protect his daughter’s soul, and he doesn’t appear to have a plan beyond simply keeping it lit.

Fast-forward to the ending of the tenth episode, The Unknown. Here, we see Wirt faced with a choice: let his brother die, or take on the job of lantern bearer and keep Greg’s soul safe in the same way that the Woodsman tried to preserve his daughter’s soul.

At first, it seems like Wirt will accept this task to save his brother. But he isn’t the kind of person to blindly follow hope. He’s proven himself to be the kind of person who either gives up entirely, or presses on and succeeds through pure muster. Given this, taking the blind hope offered by the lantern isn’t even a real option for him. He immediately questions this salvation offered by the Beast, and realizes what is really happening with that lantern in a way that the Woodsman could not.

After declining to follow hope blindly, Wirt finds the strength to free his brother and leave the forest. He also returns the lantern to the Woodsman, giving the man the option to continue following blindly or to move his life forward. The Woodsman, having seen someone else do the same, finally finds the strength to surrender his burden. Leaving behind the futility of preserving the lantern’s flame frees the Woodsman and allows him to return to life, where he finds an unexpected surprise waiting for him.

Sometimes, symbols hold more than one meaning within a work. In the fourth episode, before we learn about the trapped soul, we find out that the people at the inn all associate the Dark Lantern with the Beast. They say that whoever holds this item becomes the Beast. This shows that to the characters, the lantern symbolizes the Beast, a dark entity that they may not fully understand, but everyone knows to fear.

BONUS: Symbols can also show a parallel between two elements of a story in order to give the audience a deeper understanding of what’s really going on. There’s a great example of this in the first episode. The Woodsman calls the lantern his lot in life, his burden to bear. At the end of the episode, he tells Wirt that while the lantern is his burden, finding a way out of the woods is Wirt’s.

Knowing that the lantern represents blind belief driven by hope, we can conclude that Wirt’s search for a way to get out of the woods is equally futile and blind. Wirt possesses no knowledge of what will happen when he gets out of the woods; he simply wants to get out. As long as he focuses solely on this task, he can’t find the exit and runs into one deadly obstacle after another.

Edelwood Trees

The Edelwood trees are a more straightforward symbol, once we learn that they are the souls of people (specifically children, but we can presume that they can be anyone given how nervous the Beast makes the people at the inn) who have lost all hope and taken root in the woods. Thus the Edelwood trees represent lost hope.

These trees serve as fuel for the Dark Lantern. Looking at the symbolic meaning, lost hope can fuel blind belief driven by futile hope. The Woodsman lost his hope of reclaiming his daughter from the Dark Lantern long ago. As a result, he feeds it lost hope in order to perpetuate his scrap of hope that he can sustain her soul forever.

The Beast

As mentioned earlier, symbols go beyond objects, seasons, or animals. They can also be characters. The Beast symbolizes surrender after losing hope, which I’ll call despair for simplicity. His one objective throughout is to cause people to lose hope in order to keep his flame lit. He subsists on lost hope.

At the end of The Old Grist Mill, the Woodsman tells the brothers more about the Beast. He says “the Beast cannot be mollified like some farmer’s pet. He stalks, like the night. He sings like the four winds. He is the death of hope. He steels the children. And he’ll rule…”

The man’s despondent description pretty accurately depicts despair in real life. People can’t just magic away such a deep, painful emotion, despite popular belief to the contrary. It sticks with a person, often crushing any other positive emotions that try to worm their way in, effectively snuffing out any other hopes that that person carries. Additionally, despair seems to lurk everywhere, just waiting for someone to come along for it to cling to. For some, this happens as a result of a painful event in their lives, and for others, it comes alongside things like depression or PTSD.

Pulling it All Together

Figuring out the symbols is just half of the work. Next comes the critical thinking part, or the analysis. The audience can combine what they learn about the symbols with events in the work to pull together a lesson, or just a deeper part of the story that gives them more details.

Analyzing Over the Garden Wall, it can be said that the show demonstrates the cost of blindly believing in something you desperately want to be true. People need hope, but that hope often needs to be realistic to some degree. When people blindly follow something that they want to be true like the Woodsman, they block out parts of their lives and risk falling into an unending rut. Similarly, not having any hope can lead people to sad existences, and often times sad endings as well. A person might not literally turn into an Edelwood tree, but the real life consequences are pretty similar.

Ultimately, Wirt and Greg find their way out of the woods because they manage to break away from blindly following a path because they hope something good will come of it, and manage not to lose their own hope in the process. If they did not overcome these obstacles, they likely would have drowned.

But Wait, There’s More!

One of my favorite things about literary analysis (and perhaps what can make it difficult to figure out at first) is that there are usually multiple ways to interpret symbols and meanings within a work. As long as a person has sufficient evidence for their claims without outright ignoring other elements of the work, they could argue a completely different point than the person before them.

Let’s do just that!

I have one more symbol for you, and looking at this symbol could change our analysis of the story.

The Garden Wall

The title of the show gives us a great example of symbolism as well. The 10 episodes don’t really make it clear where the title of the show comes from. Sure, Greg and Wirt jump over a wall on their way to Potsfield, but it isn’t a garden wall. Similarly, they dive over a high wall to escape the police officer, a move that ends up starting their journey into the Unknown, but this isn’t really a garden wall either (though an argument for this being the garden wall can be made, which I do address later). So where does this garden wall come in?

The comics can help provide an answer to this. If you have not read these yet, I highly recommend them. In these playful comics, we learn more about the Woodsman’s story, and find out just why he believes the Beast’s lantern contains his daughter’s soul. But I’m not here to spoil that for you. Instead, I want to take a look at the life he shares with his daughter before tragic events lead into the situation we see in the animated miniseries.

They live in a comfortable little cabin in the woods which they work hard to maintain. A garden wall rings the cabin to mark the boundary of their property. The wall also becomes a boundary for the Woodsman’s daughter when she is told not to go beyond it, showing her the limits of her explorable space outside of the cabin in order to protect her from the dangers that lurk beyond.

Many families create similar boundaries with their children in real life. Parents often set limits on where their kids can go in order to protect them from dangerous unknowns. For children growing up with walls around their family gardens, the garden wall often becomes that boundary. Everything on the other side of that wall is mystery, wonder, fear, unknown. Sound familiar?

Given this, the title turns the series into an exploration of this childhood unknown beyond that safe home boundary and all of the perils that may lie therein.

Adding this symbol changes our analysis a bit. Now, we could say that in Over the Garden Wall, we see what could happen when someone journeys beyond the boundaries of their world. That person may encounter hardships that they have no reference for handling, and need to respond accordingly.

If they start blindly following a path with the hope that things will get better with no proof that they will, nothing will change for that person and they may be ruled by despair. Similarly, if they let themselves lose hope completely, they will be consumed by despair. Only by finding a balance between recognizing false hope and maintaining hope can that person ultimately overcome the hardship and continue forward.

Both analyses are pretty similar, but ultimately have different meanings depending on what the viewer picked up on and felt most strongly about.

BONUS: The title of the show can also be seen in this way: In Into the Unknown, we see Wirt and Greg enter a cemetery called the Eternal Garden. From there, they jump over a wall to escape the police officer that drives in to investigate the “witches gathering” and accidentally frightens off all of the kids. The other side of the Garden’s wall ultimately leads them to falling into the water and nearly drowning. This does not diminish the symbolic meaning of the wall as a representation for the barrier between known and unknown, but it does create an object within the show to pin the symbol to.

I Challenge You (But Not to a Duel)!

Enjoyed learning about symbolism? Ready to try it yourself? Good!

I highly recommend checking out one of these great stories and trying your hand at analyzing symbols. I’ve highlighted a few symbols in each example to focus on, but didn’t list them all. Keep your eye out for others within the story if you want to up the challenge level!

Good luck, and no cheating! Share your experience in the comments below.

Ender’s Game: Games

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Wands (and no, I don’t mean…), the Sorting Hat, the Sorcerer’s Stone

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief: Games

Hunger Games: The 13 districts, tracker jackers, sunflowers

Starwars: Clothing (specifically, Luke’s and Vader’s)

Halflife: Freeman’s crowbar

Tangled: Color symbolism (look at their clothing colors), the mobile above her crib (especially the bluebird)

Wall-E: The plant, the Lido Deck, and the Hello, Dolly VHS

Mass Effect 3: The little boy (you know the one)

Portal games: Cake (this symbol transforms throughout the story!)

The Scarlet Letter: Light and darkness, the scarlet ‘A’ (this symbol transforms too)

Lord of the Flies: The conch shell, the Beast

Gathering Blue: The color blue

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Janie’s hair, plants, seasons

Have a favorite game, comic, show, movie, or book you’ve found symbolism in? Share it in the comments! You can also connect with me on Twitter at @Popliterature, or send me a note!

And as always, if you have a literary device you want to know more about, or a game, comic, show, or movie that you want to see make an appearance on the blog, leave a shout-out in the comments!

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 61a: Vlogbrothers (Economics)

Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where we explain WTF happened in 2016 through 100 recommendations.  Today I want to go into the direction of education and talk about the youtube channel Vlogbrothers by Hank and John Green.   John Green btw is basically living my fantasy life.  There is a weird hatedom for them which doesn’t seem to come from anywhere, I personally find John to be a little sanctimoniously revisionist in terms of Crash Course, but I really like both of them.  The only time I get annoyed is with their consistant plea for reasonable discourse, which I think runs into the problem of “What if their beliefs are inherently unreasonable”.  Now most of Vlogbrothers s just them talking to each other about random shit,   not really important to us, but there are a few selection of videos I think it is very important for us to talk about.  On John’s side, the economic videos and on Hanks the “Summing up X conflict” videos.   I am doing the former now and the latter....later.  Because a major problem with American political discourse is that we keep hearing people talk about certain subjects but don’t actually understand them beyond a vague sense of “Yeah, that thing”.  For example, I am sure most of you are familiar with the concept of the National Debt, the US is in debt, we have a debt problem, oh good god we need to cut funding for everything (except the military) because of all this debt problems we are having, austerity measures for the win.....

    Well...no.  The US does have a debt problem, but it isn’t the way we imagine it, because most Americans don’t really understand how governments deal with debt vs. people dealing with debt.  Also people don’t understand the difference between debt and deficit.  You also might be under the impression that “CHINA OWNS ALL OUR DEBT” which no, it owns a lot and that is a problem, but this isn’t like what often happens to post colonial countries.  

    So again goverment debt isn’t an inherent bad thing, you need debt to function in a modern economy.  In fact in many ways, the US is doing great economically in terms of interest and debt and the only way we could fuck with that is if we put unstable autocratic people in office who shake global faith in the.....oh shit.

Also follow up video, the actual American debt problem is explained here and why in economics trust is so important in regard to debt.  Also remember, the US actually has a special unique relationship to debt no other country has because we are the only superpower, so when our credit rating went down (thanks Ted Cruz for the goverment shutdown which accomplished nothing) our debt got cheaper.  Like seriously, if Congress knew WTF it was doing and we had a reasonable tax policy rather than ignoring all the revenue the rich can offer, we could fund basically anything, its absurd.  Back in the 50s Corporate tax rates went from 50% to 80% btw.  

Also people don’t know how the Budget works  here. 

Or what the Stimulus Package actually is here 

And a little thing on the oil industry here 

     Also republicans keep talking about Greece and the shit Greece gets up to, and they were wrong.  Here is a good summery of when debt is good and isn’t good using Greece as an example here

  Follow up on Austerity and the problems in the Eurozone here 

Also Republicans love to talk about taxes but they basically assume that you don’t actually understand how taxes work, and that leads to the whole Tax is theft nonsense, it is good to understand how actual taxes work and what is capital gains.  This one is done by Hank rather than John because the truth defies simplicity.  And also this is one of the main reasons why rich people pay less taxes.  

So have you noticed a pattern here?  There are decently complicated issue that require a little bit of education before you can appreciate what these terms mean and what the implications are of various actions, and if you don’t make that effort, you are left with a mess of misunderstandings.  And then you take those ignorant misunderstanding and vote republican who capitalize on the fact that you don’t understand these issues and use you’re ignorance to promote their agenda.  And that is why you should never trust people who want to use folk wisdom for complicated economic institutions and political systems, because often the solutions are counter intuitive.  Like why socialized healthcare is actually very good from a capitalist perspective. 

Or this one on the minimum wage and why raising the minimum wage is actually good for the economy (mostly).  Here  

Actually Healthcare is one of those giant issues that people are affected by and care about but don’t understand like...at all.  So if you are confused about WTF is going on with Obamacare, some good resources 

American Healthcare Costs here 

Looking at Obamacare’s results (Even more relevant right now) here 

A good look at what the Healthcare Reform debate is here 

And talking about the numbers on the Wage Gap and Racism here and here 

Mass Incarnation summed up here 

Bullshit Climate Change fallacies here 

Bullshit fallacies on Gay Marriage here, and a religious defense of it here

Also there are a lot of misunderstanding of how capitalism works here  Remember, there is a difference between begin a capitalist and a supply side economics.  

    Basically the more you study these issues you realize how vital is it to have people in power who actually understand them and are interested in solving these problems, but instead have a political class who both are trying to avoid dealing with these problems and deliberately confusing the issues in order to make money for their donors.  

       If you want another example of how if our leadership actually cared they could solve so many of these problems like say..the Penny, which is not an issue where there is a debate and would save the country millions of dollars, see here, here and here  (last one is just there to show how dumb this is).

Or Puerto Rico an obvious issue that isn’t solved because again, congress here 

Best rebuttal tothe “obama is a muslim” claim here 

And finally the entire way we talk about Islam is utterly wrong here and the way we understand middle eastern politics utterly undermines our War on Terror policies.  

Oh and also Vaccines nonsense here 

I think that we should listen to incoherent John Green Rambling about how being misinformed about numbers actually costs more money than spending (though Seniors don’t vote Democrat any more and the situation has been reversed).  

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[voymedia1]

The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging Facebook Ads

The start of 2018 saw Facebook announce that it would make significant changes to its News Feed algorithm, which emphasized posts from friends and family.

Some publishers claim that the change has resulted in their website traffic being cut in half, while even those that didn’t quite see that steep of a drop still suffered significant decrease in traffic.

Although this forced publishers to diversify their social media marketing approach, to some, the draw of Facebook’s 2.23 billion monthly active users is too much to pass up on.

This is why publishers’ Facebook strategies has shifted to Facebook Ads.

Below is a guide on how to best leverage Facebook Ads, how to cut through the advertising noise and be seen by the right audience, a list of the best practices, and examples of brands that have enjoyed Facebook Ads success.

Why Facebook Ads?

Facebook’s massive 2.23-billion audience base comes with its drawbacks. With more and more brands turning to Facebook Ads, publishers have been forced to be smarter in their ad strategies on the platform.

While it’s become more challenging, there’s still no denying the vast opportunities presented by such a large user base. And with more creative Facebook Ads formats being introduced regularly, brands are given plenty of tools to help them stand out from the advertising noise.

Why it’s great for your e-commerce biz

Unlike other ad platforms that’s centered on demand fulfillment (like Adwords), what Facebook does is generate demand – making it a great tool for e-commerce.

This unique value proposition (potential to generate curiosity, interest, and eventually, sale) is applicable both to previous and existing customers, and those who would’ve otherwise not known about your brand.

In the US alone, retail ecommerce sales worldwide is projected to reach $3.4 trillion by 2019. Facebook’s ability to become a virtual theater for your products, and how it can bring value to your audiences’ lives is why every e-commerce brand should cultivate a strong presence on the platform.

Types of Facebook Ads campaigns

The type of campaign you should choose is dependent on which stage of customer awareness you identify your audience to be in. Facebook’s Ads Manager breaks these three stages into campaign objectives.

Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/facebook-campaign-objectives-750×664.png

As pointed out by Big Commerce, when you choose an objective, Facebook optimizes your campaign for a certain result/goal, while also determining how your ads will be delivered to your desired audience.

Awareness stage

This is when your audience is just starting to learn about your products. As such, engaging new audiences is the main goal.

Facebook’s brand awareness ad type is designed to reach people who are more likely to be interested in your brand/products. This ad type is optimized for views by people in a particular niche or audience.

Reach ads, for its part, are designed to show your ads to the maximum number of unique viewers within the duration of your campaign. Some of the options you have for this category include boosting posts and promoting your page. 

Consideration stage

Essentially, this stage is when people know about your brand and are in the process of deciding whether they want to purchase from you or your competitors. Also referred to as the lead generation stage, this is also the stage when you need to foster relationships with potential customers.

Ads for people in this stage are designed to accomplish things like:

Increasing website traffic

App installs

Video views

Downloading content

Even responses

It’s important that you focus on building longer-term genuine engagement with your audience, and not just commit to making a sale. Using the platform to educate and engage will go a long way towards building customer loyalty—something far more valuable than making incremental sales from ads.

Conversion stage

While the main goal in this stage is to get revenue-generating activities, this is also when you want a potential customer to take action. The beauty of Facebook ads is it tracks all of these conversions, making remarketing for later on that much easier.

Some of the things you’d want to accomplish during the conversion stage include:

Increasing conversions on your website

In-app sales (You can use to integrate your catalog in your page, using catalog sales ads to promote your products).

Increasing store visits (You can target people nearby and entice them to visit your brick and mortar store by offering incentives).

8 Ways To Optimize Your Facebook Ads For Better Conversions

Use high-quality images

You’re competing for people’s decreasing attention spans, so you would want to make sure that you use high-quality images. You don’t want to get noticed for the wrong reasons. Note that highly-saturated colors usually do well in standing out against Facebook’s white background.

Make sure to track results as well. There are studies that found significant differences in how varying image styles perform, depending on the audience. Learn from those insights and adjust accordingly.

Use correct specs

Facebook’s recommended image width is 600 pixels. Take note of this to avoid having your images resized. You may have high production quality images, but if they get resized without you realizing, it may take away from the desired effect.

Minimize text

Of course, you’d want some form of text, but perhaps you should stray from putting them in your images. AdParlor found that ads featuring images without copy produced click-through rates that were 40 percent higher among women, and 54 percent higher among men.

Source: https://1d6uol1756s63dcmhp5yd8og-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Copy-vs-No-Copy.png

Focus on grabbing attention

There are many factors that would go into what makes an attention-grabbing ad. You can, however, start with looking at what your competitors are doing to give you an idea of how to stand out and to see what works with that type of audience.

Refresh creatives

Make sure that you present your target with fresh images (particularly if you’re targeting the same audience for an extended period). Audiences tend to get familiarity blindness when they’re presented with the same image again and again.

When you notice your engagement decreasing, it could be a sign that it’s time to change up your creatives. You should also look into the best times to place your ad on Facebook, so you can increase your brand’s reach.

Utilize compelling headlines

These days, compelling means something that not only resonates with your audience but a headline that’s simple and uses direct language.

Source: https://1d6uol1756s63dcmhp5yd8og-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Discount-vs-no-discount-1024×459.png

Little tweaks can make a big difference, as when it saw ads that didn’t mention a specific discount produce higher click-through rates compared to those that did.

Unique value proposition

Tell them exactly what makes your products unique, and what distinct value they can add to your audience’s life. It could be as simple as having a lower price point, or it could be the cause you’re supporting. Whatever it is, make sure you communicate your unique value proposition.

Stay on brand

Using a consistent color scheme, tone, and visual style across all your channels not only makes your brand more recognizable, it also breeds trust. A Facebook Ads image that’s also in your landing page is one way to accomplish this.

Winning Facebook Ads examples

Amazon

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/amazon%20newsfeed%20litter%20box.png?t=1535953746959&width=496&name=amazon%20newsfeed%20litter%20box.png

E-commerce giant Amazon’s simple, yet highly effective approach to event ads ticks off a number of boxes for successful Facebook Ads.

Its combination of warm colors, white space, and directional lines does a great job of guiding audiences’ eyes towards the featured product. It is clearly targeted towards cat lovers, has a clear CTA, and as a bonus, even shows an honest rating of the product for that crucial social proof.

As noted by HubSpot, if you’re an e-commerce company, you can build a list of holidays and special events in the calendar year that can be related to your products. You can then align those that match with certain ongoing campaigns.

Allbirds

Source: https://i.gyazo.com/7141f53709f8a8162e4b9f4886257ccc.gif

Allbirds also uses simplicity to stand out with this short video.

While most ads use flashy imagery to catch audiences’ attention, Allbirds went the exact opposite with its use of white space, clear focus on the subject, and subtle movement that suggests that comfort their shoes provide. The text in quotation also suggests social proof, while the offer of free shipping and returns provides added value.

Winc

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Club%20W%20FB%20Ad.png?t=1535953746959&width=330&name=Club%20W%20FB%20Ad.png

Winc’s retargeting ad is intended for those that have browsed wine-related content. And if you’re interested in wine, it’s hard to pass up the deal Winc provides. Apart from the steal of a deal, they also entice clicks by offering an additional discount on customer’s first orders.   

Takeaway

With the death of organic reach, Facebook Ads has become a highly-competitive space. But while you may not get it right on your first try, the in-app analytics and insights the platform provides allows you to learn from what works and what doesn’t. If you’re able to glean insights from the data and adjust your strategy accordingly, you’re bound reach your goals.

What types of Facebook Ads have you used? How would you like to utilize it going forward? Let us know in the comments section.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging Facebook Ads appeared first on Facebook Advertising Agency | Facebook Marketing Company.

from Facebook Advertising Agency | Facebook Marketing Company https://voymedia.com/ultimate-guide-facebook-ads/

[adamgdooley]

I want IoT in my business! But where do I start?

“We need IoT!”, “Tell us more about your IoT offering”, “When can we have IoT?”

These are some of the soundbites that I get asked a lot from our clients.

From my experience, the technology is way ahead of the needs of most of the organisations that are trying to evaluate and implement it. Many organisations I speak to just want to implement a small-scale IoT project – but where do they start?

That’s why I’ve written this blog. To help guide you through some of the key questions you really should be asking yourself as a business before you endeavour on this journey.

For those unfamiliar with the term “IoT” or “Internet of Things”, it is probably one of the most popular buzzwords at the moment. The Internet of Things is essentially about connecting multiple devices together over the internet, and letting them talk to us, applications and each other. For example, your smart TV can be considered an IoT device.

Other common examples include home heating and energy consumption monitors such as Nest and Hive, which allow you to monitor and adjust your home environments via your smart device.

So you think IoT could really help your business, but where do you start?

To answer this question, let’s use a hypothetical example.

Let’s say that you’re a company that needs to monitor noise in hotel rooms in order to save your guests from loud neighbours and improve their stay.

So, embarking on your IoT journey you immediately have some decisions to make.

What am I monitoring and where?

Starting nice and simple, what’s the value you need to record and how is it measured? For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that the value is ambient noise and that it’s measured in decibels as a decimal number.

The ‘where’ in this case is easy too, as it’ll be a hotel room.

We can also assume that it’s a non-hazardous environment (you can easily source IP-rated sensors for hazardous ones too).

How frequently do I want to capture my data?

So at first glance, this should be a simple question too. Not so fast. A lot of decisions you make here will impact your solution further down the line. Generally I’ve found that customers are always tempted to go overboard. Do you really need to record data every 15 seconds, or would every 5 minutes suffice?

It’s key to think here of your end goal. As a rule you want the absolute minimum to achieve your business objective. In this scenario, whether we know in 15 seconds, or after 5 minutes is generally irrelevant. In more mission-critical scenarios, these timeframes could be unacceptable, but they’re just fine for our hotel example.

The reason why the method and frequency of data collection is important is all down to power. How much juice is your IoT device going to need to run and how is it going to be supplied? Do you have the ability to provide mains power to your IoT device, or does it need batteries? Then you’re into the calculation of total cost of ownership (TCO) since batteries need replacing. That also means people to replace them too!

The easiest rule of thumb here is to think that the more quickly you capture and report data from a sensor, the more complex the calculations you’ll need to put in place on the device. The more complex the calculations, the greater the amount of power you’ll need to run it. This subsequently means that your batteries will deplete much faster.

Again, think here in terms of the minimum output you need in order to achieve your business objective and then scale up from there.

How am I going to communicate this data?

This is where the real fun begins! You’ve got your data from your IoT device at a frequency that is acceptable – but how are you going to access it? Looking at traditional communication methods, you could select from Ethernet, WiFi and even 3G/4G data sims (yes – just like the one in your smartphone). Similar to the power consideration for your sensor, some methods of data communication require a lot more power than others.

On top of those listed above, there are several networks and protocols specifically designed to allow for low-bandwidth and low-power traffic that you may be less familiar with. Spend some time taking a look at LoRa, Sigfox, and NB-IoT  (these are far too broad a topic to be covered here in detail). Each of these can get your data from A to B in a different fashion with different caveats.

When choosing a communication methodology, I would recommend you consider a few factors before you commit to an infrastructure.

First up, in terms of the size of your data, will you be sending large or small packets of data? In this example our noise reading is fairly small, so we don’t need high bandwidth.

Next up, how far is your data going to travel? Is it from the sensor directly to your application or does it go through a hub? If it goes through a hub, what is the distance between the sensors and the hub? How is the hub going to communicate with your application?

For our hotel example, we’re going to install a hub that all of our IoT devices communicate with via the LoRa protocol, which then connects to our application. This means that our devices can be fairly low power and focus on sending data to the hub only, meaning that any calculations can be completed on a higher-power hub device with mains power elsewhere.

Where and how am I going to store it?

Great – so our hotel has had its noise sensors installed. We now know the noise levels in our hotel rooms as the hub can send this to us on a regular basis. But where should the hub be sending this data to and how should it be stored?

There are numerous services available from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft specifically designed for data ‘ingestion’ from IoT devices. In simple terms, they expect massive amounts of fairly uncomplicated, low-bandwidth data. You should be able to find information on these online pretty easily.

If I could make one recommendation when deciding your data processing and storage strategy it would be paths. A path is the route our data needs to take once it hits your application.

For our hotel example, we want to know relatively quickly (every 5 minutes or so) if a room is really noisy. In this instance we could automate sending a message to the TV system in the room to turn it off, or ask our porter to knock on their door. We also want to know average noise levels per room and potentially some information that can enrich our booking process. For example using the data to evaluate the average noise levels to be expected from a family vs. an individual. This could enable the booking of ‘quiet’ rooms – leading to improved customer satisfaction.

In IoT terms, the time to analyse, interpret and provide feedback is directly correlated to the path of data transmission. Paths can be ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ depending on the speed and frequency the data within them is being accessed. A ‘hot’ path describes lots of data being accessed quickly, and a ‘cold’ path describes data that is generally stored for a longer period of time and accessed less frequently. In the above example we have a ‘hot’ path (the 5 minute notifications) and a ‘cold’ path (the summary management information).

Think about your paths when receiving your data, as certain tools will be better suited to the job!

What analysis do I want from it?

On our ‘hot’ path we want to know if the noise breaks a specific decibel value, let’s say 80db. On our ‘cold’ path we want to calculate ongoing average noise levels per room, hotel and time of day.

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[dillatont]

Soundtrack Review: Rakuen

Welcome back! Another month means another review, so here it is. The original intent of these reviews was to focus on new releases, and for the first time, I can happily say that I've done that this month. The indie RPG Rakuen came out on May 10 after a years-long development that was created predominantly by just one person, Laura Shigihara. (Yes, that story should sound familiar: See Stardew Valley, Undertale, etc.) Shigihara already has experience in the video game industry, but not as a programmer. Rather, she has composed the music for a number of games, most notably the cute/dark soundtrack for the original Plants vs. Zombies game. She's decided since then to branch out, and has created and released her first game, Rakuen.

So, what does a game created by a composer actually play like? Well, I don't know, actually. I haven't played it yet. But...I want to. And the reason that I want to is that Shigihara's soundtrack is stellar. It is so good, in fact, that I am intrigued to play the game specifically because of the music. (Also, it has good review scores so far, but I'm about the music first and foremost)

I don't say that lightly. For me, that kind of soundtrack doesn't come around very often. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

What I do know of Rakuen's gameplay is this: it's story and puzzle-driven, with the setting of the game taking place both inside a hospital (where a young boy stays with his mother) and a fantasy dream world where the boy, with his mother by his side, grows to know the local creatures as he helps them solve their issues. The issues and characters in the fantasy world mirror the real-world inhabitants of the hospital, so the boy is in fact using the fantasy world to impact the real-world hospital.

That information is relevant to the soundtrack, because it's important to note that this game is driven by the story. The music here functions as a means to tell that story, rather than just simply acting as catchy background music. There's nothing wrong with catchy background music, mind you. I love a lot of game soundtracks for their catchiness (New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Mario Kart come to mind), but this is not one of those soundtracks. And that's okay, honestly. There's a place for that kind of video game and that kind of soundtrack in this world.

So, how is the story told? First and foremost, it should be noted that there are quite a few vocal tracks in the game (somewhere on the order of 10 occur during the 75-minute soundtrack). Each of these tracks advances a specific piece of the story, and they interlock in some very interesting ways (more on that later). Beyond that, though, the tone quality of the music is partially responsible for evoking the sense of interest that builds the more you listen. Each track is crisply orchestrated, with melodies standing out prominently in each piece of music, and with a quality of sound that indicates to the listener where their attentions should be. Further, there is just something about Shigihara's music that is different from much of the rest of the video game industry. She lets the instruments (and voices) speak clearly and with minimal percussion backing, so you spend so much more time listening to the melodies and harmonies present than the "beat", or any of the electronic fuzziness that you get with, say, an old-school NES soundtrack or even a newer Game Boy Advance soundtrack.

Of course, there are thematic elements to the music, too. Nearly all of the vocal tracks makes another appearance (or multiple apperances) elsewhere in the soundtrack in instrumental form. While this is a fairly common compositional device both in and out of video game soundtracks, it cannot be overstated how effective it is here. When you hear familiar themes popping up again and again, it constantly brings you back to the story, and that heightens the listening experience. While I think that many game composers do this, I do think that some are guilty of bringing back the themes a little bit too subtly, or transformed in such ways that make them completely unrecognizable to everybody except the composer. The balance of that is just right here, in my opinion. You know when a theme has popped back up, but you never feel like you're being hit over the head with it.

Which, to be quite frank, could be said for a lot of the game's music. This soundtrack is something that I don't see a lot in video game soundtracks: subtle. The more I listen, I hear little touches that were clearly carefully and painstakingly crafted, but that are not obvious on the first or second listening of the soundtrack. An example of that occurs with the vocal themes I mentioned earlier. My understanding of the story is that there are five portions of the game, each of which is tied to the young boy's interactions with another character in the hospital. At the end of each segment is a vocal piece that tells more of the game's story. At the end of the soundtrack, a particular track (Mori no Kokoro) takes all five of these vocals and places them on top of each other. My jaw dropped the first time I heard it, both because of the audacious simplicity of the connection, and, perhaps more importantly, how well they interspersed on top of each other. I listened to it a few more times, trying to figure out why it worked so well. My jaw dropped a second time when I realized it: all five melodies ended on the same note, in perfect unison, at the same time. I went back and listened to each piece individually to make sure it hadn't been some sort of editing trick. It had not. The five compositions, performed by three different singers, had been in the same key signature the entire time, with all ending on the same note, as had become clear in Mori no Kokoro. It's this kind of craftmanship that I'm referring to when I say that this soundtrack is excellent. To plan that out so carefully while still making sure that the pieces don't sound ALIKE shows just much attention to detail is present here.

Compositional devices such as those aren't technically anything revolutionary here, but they feel fresh because of how carefully crafted each piece of music is within this soundtrack. To be frank, that's an incredibly rewarding experience from a listening standpoint, because you realize with each listening of the soundtrack that there is just so much more to it than you possibly could have realized. It also leaves you more invested emotionally in the music.

That's yet another strength of this soundtrack. It holds some genuine emotion within it. Even without understanding the full story....you get it. I was surprisingly and absolutely wrecked my first time through the soundtrack when I got to a track near the end titled "Mom Broken". It somehow managed to pack more sadness and pathos into a 24-second track than most RPGs can manage in an entire story. Moments like that, even though they are hard, are what help make this soundtrack so enjoyable to listen to. You realize that each track is leading you through an emotional journey, and that you aren't really sure how that emotional journey will resolve...and more importantly, you realize that you shouldn't care, because it's a journey worth being on.

******************* Top Tracks in the Game: 

Mori no Kokoro + all 5 component pieces My Home is Underwater (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQV5eG-HtMw) The Monsieur's Tea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-eP0d7fFLc) Flowers Forever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F30fWsI1X5o) These Gray Walls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgUNZV6nqWs)

The game has a wonderful mix of tracks, and one of the faster ones, Morizora's Cave, is notable for having a darker sound, despite the quick tempo. It's a neat effect that Shigihara has previously used in Plants vs. Zombies (if you haven't listened to "Loonboon", you are seriously missing out!), and it's great to see it make a re-appearance here. The Monsieur's Tea is just fun, and a nice (rare) use of low brass in a soundtrack. I'm sure I could spend a long time listening to this one without complaint, and I hope it was used in a major area within the game. Meanwhile, Flowers Forever, to me, stands out because it's a delicate minor key instrumental representation of a later love song, "Yours", that is one of the game's main vocal themes. Hearing it done in this way....well, I just have to know what happens in the story. It's got too much care put into it to not have something to say. Meanwhile, These Gray Walls is illustrative of another point: how do you showcase the complex set of emotions that come with time spent in a a hospital? I'm not exactly sure how to process it, but something like this is a good place to start. You hear pieces of the various emotions and moods (sadness, happiness, boredom, and some many others) that surely pervade such places.

Weakest Tracks in the Game: I shouldn't have put this feature into my reviews. I can't do it here. I just can't. Everything here feels like it's there for a specific purpose or reason, and it doesn't seem like any filler is present. Nor do I hear any obvious compositional mistakes. There's nothing that I skip as I listen through the soundtrack. You know the saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link? This here is a REALLY strong chain.

OVERALL: 9.5/10

I can find few faults within the music for Rakuen, in short. It's very well constructed technically speaking, it holds an emotional connection with the audience (even those like me who haven't played the game yet), it's a reasonable length, and [?????]    . If there's any critique, it might just be that there aren't any "earworms" along the lines of what Shigihara has previously done with "There's a Zombie on Your Lawn" from Plants vs. Zombie. But, boy, is that a small critique. If you are looking for a pure, genuine, emotional video game music listening experience that incorporates a lot of vocals, piano, and strings.....this is absolutely the place to start. It is a delightful breath of fresh air, and you will surely appreciate the sort of thought and care that was put into creating this project. It is absolutely, without question, worth your time to check out, and I would highly recommend it.