#thoughts from the depths of hell [rat edition]

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

fun fact: i rewatched dead apple today and decided to study the architecture and dimensions of draconia (which i estimated in the measurement of Dazais) because i’m clearly a functioning neurotypical member of society

and through my research (if you could call it that) i discovered that there are roughly 1,728 gems in that building

and if we combine that knowledge with the fact that every single gem came from the life of a gifted killed through shibusawa’s fog, that means that number is also shibusawa’s body count. listen to me okay listen to me me that’s the MINIMUM number. the MINIMUM. he could’ve killed DOZENS more than that without even using the fog and we don’t know we’d have no idea okay do you hear me

so there’s some lovely knowledge for you all have fun with your “[insert character] is the most powerful bsd character” theories, this enby hoe could’ve easily killed every gifted in the world if he didn’t get nerfed by russian ratatouille over here i. i think i’m gonna go to sleep now goodnight i

[tviseverything]

So I’m rewatching Glee during this quarantine...

AND THERE HAS BEEN ONE THING IVE ALWAYS HATED ABOUT THIS GODDAMNED SHOW AND IT’S THE LACK OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Let me explain.... the storylines in the show had the potential to set up the character development for each character and they missed it! And the people that had the ABSOLUTE MOST POTENTIAL FOR AWESOME CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT WERE QUINN, RACHEL, SANTANA, AND BRITTANY AND HERE’S WHY... Quinn edition because this is way too long for the other characters... I promise i’ll follow this up with the other ones. (BTW, this took me so long to do because life kept getting in the way but I finally finished it! Please give it a read and let me know if you agree or disagree. I am always open to discussion!! And swipe down all the way to be blessed with a couple of Quinn Fabray gifs!!)

Quinn is the first because let’s think about it for a sec. In the beginning of the series, Quinn was that typical queen bee, mean girl type who was on the cheerleading squad and ruthlessly bullied anyone who got in her way including Rachel. But then life throws her a curveball and she ends up getting pregnant. 

This storyline set Quinn up to learn some very valuable lessons and some harsh truths. For example, Quinn gets kicked off the cheerleading squad after the news comes out that she’s pregnant and she’s kicked out of her home and disowned.

The first season was doing great handling her character development, for example, in 1x15, when the time came for yearbook pictures, Quinn was desperately trying to get back on the squad for the picture but in the end she thanks Sue for making her realize that she’d rather be part of a team that is proud to have her (Glee Club) instead of a team where she only appears to belong (Cheerios). (let me add that this scene also could have set up a slowburn for Faberry because in that same episode, Rachel was describing how school pictures are everything to her and that if she ever became famous, she would want her face in the year book picture and be prepared. Keep this in mind because later on Quinn blackmails Sue into giving up one of the Cheerio’s six pages and giving it to the Glee club free of charge. Quinn didn’t have to do this. Her entire goal was to get back on the Cheerios and not fight for the glee club photo. In fact, in the episode, she didn’t even want to be in it. So why did she do it? For Rachel, perhaps? any way this is about Quinn not faberry so lets get back to it)

Another example from before is she becomes friends with Mercedes. In episode 1x16, Mercedes is forced to starve herself for the Cheerios and in doing so, her blood pressure dropped which caused her to faint. Quinn recognized what Mercedes was doing and sympathized with her. She then helped Mercedes realize that she doesn’t need to be skinny to be beautiful and she is perfect the way she is and she sings a song about it as well while Quinn stands next to her, furthering her message. This episode created a beautiful friendship between Quinn and Mercedes that in later episodes, Mercedes offers her home to Quinn after connecting with her about being bullied and dealing with it. Let’s also add in the fact that this was before the Lucy Caboosy storyline, which in my opinion ruined her character even more but I’m not gonna get into that until later. In that season, Mercedes and Quinn were set up to be a great duo for season 2 but... Where the hell did all of that go???? Did they just completely forget that Quinn lived with Mercedes for a short while and that they bonded over similar experiences??? What the hell??? I would also like to add onto here that a friendship between Quinn and Kurt was a HUGE miss! They would have been an amazing duo!! Along with Mercedes of course. I will talk about this type of stuff in separate post!

ANOTHER example was when in episode 1x13, the truth about the baby’s father comes out which was Rachel’s fault. After drama ensues, Rachel goes to apologize and readies herself for a punch from Quinn, but in a surprising turn of events...Quinn forgives her. The old Quinn probably would thrown multiple slushies in Rachel’s face, call her names and maybe ruin her life. But this Quinn quickly forgave her and told Rachel that she did something that she wasn’t brave enough to do, tell the truth! She forgave Rachel even though she clearly knew that Rachel only told Finn to break them up so she could have him all to herself. This was a very pivotal moment in the series that would show how Quinn emotionally matured after what happened to her. (this scene also would have set up faberry perfectly as well but oh well) 

Anyway, the whole point of this post is about the lack of character development in the series and while everything I just said argues against it...the character development from season one didn’t last very long especially when we start right off the bat in season 2, Quinn rejoins the Cheerios and tries to restore herself to her former glory. I understand why she would want that again but this alone completely destroyed her character development because after learning all the things she had learned while pregnant, she shouldn’t have wanted to go back to that old life again but she did. Add that onto the fact that in order to restore herself to her former glory, she also snitches on Santana about her “summer surgery” Pregnant Quinn wouldn’t have even thought to rat out her own friends but new and improved Quinn did and I HATED IT because of that knowledge. This could have been handled better by probably having Quinn join the cheerios again but have her use her power for good such as, protecting all of glee club from future slushies, made it so the jocks wouldn’t have so much power with bullying, or even set an example for cheerios for how they should act in the school. But instead they pull this shit. 

I’m not finished!! Season 2 and beyond was a DISASTER for Quinn. The writers literally erased all of that character development just so they could create more drama. An example of this is the cheating storyline. Quinn had started dating Sam in the beginning of Season 2 and everything is going well for them until *sigh* Finn came along and convinced her to cheat on Sam with him. THIS IS LITERALLY ONE OF THE WORST STORYLINES ON GLEE. Finn knows what it was like to be cheated on (I know he cheated on Quinn in the first episode with Rachel but we’re not talking about that right now) Finn knows the pain of finding out that you’ve been lied to and betrayed so the fact he even had the AUDACITY to lure Quinn into cheating AGAIN infuriates me deep inside. You would think that after what happened when she cheated the first time, she would learn her lesson...BUT SHE DIDN’T. WTF. THIS RUINED HER CHARACTER EVEN MORE!!!!!! PLUS I HATE ALL THE UNNECESSARY DRAMA THAT STORYLINE CREATED, INCLUDING THE FEUD BETWEEN RACHEL AND QUINN. 

I would also like to talk about the Lucy Caboosey storyline because it is a crucial fact to know about Quinn. The Lucy Caboosey storyline was introduced at the WORST POSSIBLE TIME. I am seriously convinced that Ryan Murphy only wrote that in to create “depth” to Quinn’s character. If they were going to do that storyline at all, then they should have introduced it in the first season or should have created a better plot to accomodate to the storyline. This storyline also didn’t add anything to the Prom Queen storyline. I honestly wish that the writer’s have taken Quinn’s character development from season 1 into account because if they had, then I believe that the Lucy Caboosey storyline and the Prom Queen storyline wouldn’t have existed and these storylines only exist as Ryan Murphys attempt to reverse all of the depth that Dianna Agron gave to the character and make her a basic, self-centered blonde cheerleader and when that didn’t work out... the Lucy Caboosey storyline was there to give Quinn “depth” 

I would also like to talk Quinn’s obsession with winning Prom Queen and taking Finn to the prom (Finn was an asshat in this episode by the way but let’s not focus on him). I really wished that the writers took Quinn’s character development into account because if they had, then Quinn wouldn’t have been reverted back into the 2 dimensional, blonde, cheerleader character like she was at the beginning of the series and she also wouldn’t have had a storyline involving Lucy Caboosey.  Her taking Finn to the prom was a complete bullshit storyline as well because we all know that relationship between Quinn and Finn was only there to drag the love triangle between them and rachel into the next season even though it was very clear that Quinn and Finn weren’t gonna get back together in the first season. 

Also at the end of that season, where nationals took place, there was a scene between Quinn and Brittany and Santana where Quinn breaks down, this should have been one of those pivotal character development moments where she makes a realization about herself and tries to live her truth, but no! She cuts her hair and all is well. 

Before we move on to season 3, I want to talk about the Celibacy Club and religion in regards to Quinn Fabray. As we all know, Quinn was the captain of the Cheerios and president of the Celibacy Club (even though that didn’t last long...whoops) so the theme of celibacy and religion go hand in hand for Quinn. I would have really like to see a storyline of Quinn losing faith in her religion, whether that may be because God decided to make Quinn pregnant and in result get disowned by her family or (in my perfect world) Quinn starts to realize that she might like girls and because of how her family is, she struggles with it. That would have been an interesting storyline to see and it would have tackled the topic of religion as well! I would have liked to see this as an ongoing theme for Quinn throughout the show but of course Ryan Murphy had to be a shitty writer. 

This post became wayyyy to long for my attention span so I am going to break this down into parts. Also I am so sorry that this post is all over the place but I had to write it all down before I lost the train of thought so some explanations might not be as in depth as others and it might not be in order so again I apologize. So I will talk about Quinn in season 3 and the rest of the seasons when she shows up from time to time. 

[sandalaris]

20, 35 for aLiN, 50 and 54 for the writer asks!

Thanks! XD

I answered 54 here!

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

Completely unedited, but a snippet from the Kate-centric, post season 3 fic. (although this has been edited for here because it holds some potential spoilers for later on in the fic and at least one misleading line)

“You need to find a way to reclaim your body for yourself,” Kisa continues as if Richie had never spoken.

“Is that what you did?” Her voice sounds lost and she doesn’t like it, but she can’t stop herself from clinging to the thought that she won’t always be like this, the hope that she can get better.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I had sex with Richard.”

Seth chokes on his drink, coughing loudly into the suddenly silent kitchen. Kate can’t see Richie’s face, can’t take her own stunned gaze from the woman before her, but he must be doing something because Kisa looks past her with a softened eyes and parted lips, before returning her attention firmly back to Kate, effectively ignoring both brothers.

“I cared for him and wanted him. But most importantly I trusted him. Physical connection with someone you trust can be a very powerful thing.”

“I don’t trust a lot of people,” Kate blurts out, clinging to the last part like a lifeline as her cheeks burn.  

“Now hold on,” Seth cuts in, words spilling forth in a rush to take control of the conversation. “Let’s just take a fucking breath before we make any rash decisions here.”  

“Kate?” Richie says quietly, a warning and a question and a promise all at once. And Kate knows, has seen the darkest depths and bright, blinding edges of Richard’s tortured soul, has the taste of it etched into her very existence. 

Kisa must hear it too, because she almost freezes, thoughts shuttering behind her dark eyes as she carefully holds her body in a practiced state of relaxation. Seth’s protests grow louder.

“I don’t think sex is what I need,” Kate says slowly, and the room goes quiet, Seth tapering off from where he’s been holding a one-side argument against the whole conversation with the room at large.

35. Tell some backstory details about one of your characters in your story ________.

Let’s see, who have I not given background details on yet? And that won’t also give away future spoilers....

Scott still sets a party with his lacrosse team in this, but since Kate shows up a day later in this fic than in canon, it happened before she gets to Bethel. Under all that desire for revenge (a lot of which is misplaced anger from being a kept chained up at Narciso’s feet for three months) the core of what Scott wants is acceptance so the party goes a bit different. Scott leaves, for starters, when his hunger starts to threaten his control, snagging a neighbor’s pet and then hiding from the sun at home. So while Scott hasn’t killed quite so many people that Kate personally knows/knows about, he’s still the angry little murder bean he is in canon.

Mild-ish spoilers: Kate’s return to Seth has had positive ripples (Seth doesn’t keep Sonja around, Richie is forced to take off his blinders and see how actions affect other people, Kate has someone else backing her for her confrontation with Scott), because Kate is observant and sees the good in people. But a less-than-positive result is that Freddie’s still all alone in his own journey and will be worse off for it.

50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.

Hmm, gotta think about that.

Probably my weirdest-yet-serious fic is a body swap BtVS fic with the whole scooby gang. I actually wrote a good chunk of it out before I lost it all in a computer death and decided not to rewrite it. It got weird in how I decided it was more of a conscious swap over a soul/body swap and so Xander (who was in Willow) had to figure out how to do the spell to get them back to normal, and Dawn (who was in Spike) had to deal with not having a soul, or rather everyone else had to deal with her not having a soul, etc. I’m sure I’ve probably had weirder ideas, but if I can’t write something for whatever reason (like it being too weird) I typically just leave it be.

I did write a The World Ends TBBT fic, which I suppose can be seen as weird, but I think that has more to do with my love of post-apocalyptic stories. (I’ve written a lot of them, lol)

Less serious, but I don’t know how “weird” it is vs plotless and cliche and an utterly self-indulgent FDtD “fic” (it’s more of an exploration in What If) involving time travel that I’ve never written a single word of, letting it exist entirely in my head, but will also happily ramble away about because, like I said, its a very self-indulgent story and I’ve thought about it a lot.

Happy rambily mess that just skims over it while still being really long:

Post-series!Seth and Kate find themselves at the Dew Drop Inn inside the RV moments before a very human Richie comes in with a very human Scott at gun point. Confusion abounds all around and all seven of them, including past!Seth and past!Kate, end up traveling into Mexico with bickering and arguments and everyone’s confusion over how comfortable and familiar future!Seth and Kate are with each other, but Richie’s the one that notices his brother’s new tattoo and puts two and two together, which leads him to decide that he’s Making That Happen. Future!Seth immediately declares they are not going to the Twister and past!Seth does NOT react well to having anyone, even himself, barging in and trying to take charge and becomes a stubborn irrational bastard over it (they may come close to blows on several occasions). Richie and Scott have a bit of geek out over timelines and alternate realities, and future!Kate decides they still need to go to the Twister but she is going to do everything she can to protect her family.

Once at the Titty Twister they find future!Scott and future!Richie (because my brain went humans at the Inn and culebras at the Twister for semi-justifiable reasons), and a big debate begins on who is going in and who is staying in the RV, which is an entire scene that reveals a lot all around. (Jacob notices future!Kate and Scott’s reaction to seeing him and realize what it means that there’s no future him popping up.)

Before all hell breaks loose, things go a little different, with future!Seth sticking by Jacob’s side and past!Richie still playing matchmaker with his time’s Seth and Kate (no Richie and Kate kiss here, which I actually don’t mind in the show, but for some reason do end up getting rid of a lot in season one AUs. But it just makes sense that a Richie that’s trying to hook a girl up with his brother would not kiss said girl), etc. Once the culebras come out, things go much the same as they did the first time, only this time future!Scott rats out Tanner for being on Carlos’s payrole and future!Kate lets slip that he tried to sacrifice her after past!Kate says that he hit on her, and future!Seth decides the future doesn’t really need him anyways and shoots him.

Future!Seth insists he’s the one who’s going to go into the heart of the labyrinth after past!Richie (who still gets shot and bit, but he expects it this time) since he knows how to handle that shit, and since they don’t need to find Scott this time, the Fullers, Freddie, and past!Seth all end up in a different area that still shows them moments of truth/their past, but makes everyone else witness it too (because self-indulgence!) which gives a nice glimpse of the future and insights.

Meanwhile, future!Freddie left the Dew Drop Inn and is with his family trying to explain what’s about to happen to Margaret and fix his marriage before his past self fucks it up. Because Freddie/Margaret have my heart.

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Code of Brawl

Man... remind me to never talk about having a future Rambling in the works, it’ll instantly fall into draft-hell. But anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk about Arknights in depth for a while now, but I’ve never had much drive to actually finish the damn draft of my initial thoughts a few months ago. I couldn’t tell you why, I just lost the drive to finish the thing. However, with Code of Brawl coming to a close and my thoughts on the event still lingering I think I can use it as jumping off point to actually talk about the game. 

That said, here’s the synopsis.

Arknights is a Tower Defense game for the PC mobile devices placed in the world of Terra, where an infectious disease known as Oripathy ravages the land, slowly turning people to minerals in a slow and painful process. You play as the Doctor, an amnesiac military commander of the Rhodes Island pharmaceutical company who fights against the Infected radicals known as the Reunion. 

That’s about as far as I can go in a single paragraph for main story, but Code of Brawl instead focuses on the eccentric adventures of Pengiun Logistics, side faction of the game that’s a seemingly innocent delivery company with quite the ragtag group in it, consisting of the happy-go-lucky gunner Exusiai, the cold and dismissive swordswoman Texas, the excitable and energetic Sora, and the business-savvy Croissant. All led by the charismatic and multi-talented Emperor. However, as their new intern Bison comes into the fold the group is caught in a series of gang wars and organized crime trying to snuff out the company.

And unlike Fire Emblem Three Houses, that really is the basic plot without me sarcastically building anything up. With that all said, I think I can move on and talk about... 

The Story

The story of Code of Brawl honestly has the best and worst of Arknights writing. I think having a story that focused on a group outside of Rhodes Island was for the better. For all the lore blurbs and archive notes we get, I think Code of Brawl proves just how little Rhodes Island is involved with the world of Terra at large despite it’s apparent reputation as a weird and quirky company with some terrifyingly powerful Operators and lofty ambitions. And while I’m still only on Chapter 4 since I’m grinding out some E2 before moving on, Rhodes Island really does more reacting to random Reunion plans than anything proactive with their goals of curing Oripathy. They feel more like a counter military force to Reunion, and a barely effective on at that given the point of the story I’m at. Code of Brawl, being focused on another group with a more direct conflict and villains, feels a lot more cohesive and interesting, as Penguin Logistics’s goal is to just get Bison through his first day and take out whatever force is harassing them this week. 

Penguin Logistics as a whole is a rather interesting bunch of ruffians and seeing them is gallivant around Lungmen trading blows and bullets with gangsters is a joy to read and see. Seeing some of the inner workings of Lungmen society, seeing a bit of the underbelly, as well as getting to see the cast just have more casual interactions with each other is great. We learn that Sora really is just gay for Texas, and the all of Penguin Logistics has only 3 function braincells with Texas having one and Mostima having the other two.  We get to see that Sora has probably beaten someone to death with her microphone at some point given how willing she is to bar fight. A lot of fun stuff.

And then... there’s Mostima. 

Look, I like this story, I really do, but Mostima really didn’t need to be here as far as the story is concerned. All she does plot-wise is rile up Exusiai, drop some cryptic advice for Bison, shows she knows more powerful than she leads on, and is a bit of a deus ex machina for the end of the plot, and not even by that much. You could had replaced her with Chen, Swire, Hoshigumi, ShiraYuki, or anyone else that would logically be in Lungmen at the time. Hell, ShiraYuki knowing everything a being cryptic about it would at least be in character for her. 

And that’s not to knock Mostima. I actually pulled her in my last ten-pull (didn’t get Waii Fu though, and I’m still salty about that), she’s a pretty good and damn near god-tier once you get her to E2 if some of the guides on her are to be believed, though her kit is a little niche for an AoE caster of her cost. However, as far as the story is concerned she shows a serious issue with Arknights as a whole. That’s its constant need to have half of their characters be mysterious.

Mysterious Characters

So, just to give an example, here is a list of characters in Arknights with a Mysterious Past™. These are characters that either have their archive notes explicitly state their past is unknown, or characters who’s past is implied but but deliberately kept unconfirmed.

With that said...

Mostima

Myrtle

Cuora

Skadi

Specter

Shining

Siege

Projekt Red

Specter

Blue Poison

Lappland

Texas (?)

ShiraYuki

AMIYA

Okay, I’m cheating a little with Texas since she has enough of her past implied, but it’s still technically a mystery as far as the specifics go. But you see my point, right? A lot of characters have a Mysterious Past™, which is a nice shorthand to not go into depth about writing their background. Now, you don’t need to give twenty paragraphs on their backstory, but something would be nice. Keeping things a mystery might be nice for the theory-crafters, but for me it’s annoy as hell to see so many character, so many high-rated that really just have their skills and design to go off of, especially with most the cast overall having a pretty simple background to them that are interesting when you read through the lore blurbs and think about it. Breeze is a former noble that wanted to do more good in the world than throwing money at a problem. Liskarm is a protective friend that joined Rhodes Island to make sure the problematic Franka integrated without problems. Frostleaf is a child soldier that wants to do some good in the world after becoming Infected. Kroos, Beagle, and Fang joined Rhodes Island after getting kicked out of their old jobs. You don’t need to be flashy, but giving answers isn’t an admission of lacking creativity. The hints might be nice for the analysts, but the fans would likely want some answers.

Again, Mostima isn’t a problem, and a lot characters in that list do have some concrete hints about their past. Texas and Lappland are likely a former mafia heiresses and old rivals. Shining was likely a highly skilled mercenary before realizing she could do more good in the world with a healing staff instead of a sword. Siege is likely apart of Londinium royalty, but was either exiled or ran due to political turmoil. But that’s the issue, likely isn’t confirmed. Mostima being a powerful character with a mysterious past just feels like a cop out to me. It’s not bad, but she’s a symptom of what some of the issues of Arknights story is. I’m not asking for AFK Arena-levels of lore, just... an explanation here or there would be nice. 

But anyway that’s my main issue, moving on.

General Gushing

Despite that large critique I have, there’s a lot I love about this story. For simplicity sake, because I’m tired of all the editing, I’ll put it into list form:

Penguin Logistics in general was just a joy to see. Watching them in action and just how laissez-faire they are is hilarious, especially when paired with the straightforward and reserved Bison freaking out over the wackiness. 

Speaking of, Bison made for a very good straight man to balance out all the wild antics of PL. He really kept things from getting too crazy by at least questioning the zaniness, and the point when he finally stops caring and just charges in with a crazy plan of his own just gave me the giddiest of smiles.

Given how they discuss it, PL apparently trade blows with criminals and thugs on a daily basis, and since they’re just a delivery company this implies they likely deliver drugs or other hot cargo the mafia and gangs want... and given Emperor’s personality, that wouldn’t shock me.

Emperor in general is a delight of a character. He’s about as charismatic and wild as his aesthetic makes him look. I would legit whale for him if he ever become an operator.

Learning a little bit about Lungmen culture was fun as well, as little of it as we see. It’s my personal headcanon now that the mafia and general thugs of Lungmen don’t mess with civilians because they’re either a sleeper agent under the Rat King’s protection or they might be a kung fu master in plain clothes like Waai Fu.

Waai Fu and Texas fist fighting in the streets of Lungmen is just hilarious and awesome. I honestly don’t know what that says about either of them. Texas is holding her own against a martial artist with over 10 years of experience barehanded, meanwhile Waai Fu is holding her own against what lore blurbs have implied is the former heiress/hitman of a mafia. All the while drunkards and Texas’s coworkers are egging them on. This is the dumb content I live for.

Save for some of the absolute bullshit of the challenge maps, I found the actual game content to be pretty fair and interesting. The Bullies required good defender placement, a lot of the ranged units focused on targeting the helpful buildings that buffed your characters and increased the operator deployment count, and maps themselves had a few clever chokepoints to work with... At least until they started spamming Fanatics.

Bison actually has a pretty solid kit for a free Operator. He buffs a lot of adjacent units, has a no real weakness, his tools don’t feel niche like Grani or Celycon, overall a great unit. Once I finish E2-ing all my main Operators I might build him next. 

While I have issues with her as a story element, Mostima is a 6-star that has instant utility once you promote her to E2, much like Chen and Siege. This is something I’m relieved to say as a lot of my 6-stars aren’t worth much until you E2 them and I’m still trying to E2 some of my easier units like Cuora and Gavial for Chapter 5 and CC.

That’s really all I have to say on that front. So to close things off...

For the Future

Like I always say in these Ramblings, I don’t like the idea of people prattling on about being able to “fix” or “rewrite” something has already been made. It always comes across as both arrogant and ignorant to me. However, I think it’s completely fair to make requests and suggestions for the future. ‘

That said, I'd like to continue seeing side stories without Rhodes Island’s involvement. Both to see other factions in their natural element and because, frankly, Rhodes Island always feels a little out of place when involved in other stories, or at least more of a distraction than a good element if chapter 2 and 3 are anything to go by. I think a Black Steel side story would be nice. Jessica, Franka, Liskarm, and Vanille getting into shenanigans in Columbia or something sounds like a fun time. Maybe have the leader/high commander of the organization as a new operator and they’re a really powerful Supporter than can buff the party, like a 6-star version of Sora or something that gives operators insane ASPD buffs... I don’t know, something like that anyway. Ideally something a little less wordy than Code of Brawl at least.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say. Next time... I’ll talk about something else. Maybe discuss a manga or something. 

See you all later.

[spadesinglasses]

The Old Guard (Movie)

okay after days and days of seeing the lovely Joe and Nicky just pop up in my youtube recommendation along with the other gay couples. I finally finally got my hands on the movie and found the perf day to watch it.

Okay let’s begin the reaction. Which im actually writing as soon as i ended the film.

First thing first, i was expecting a repeat of the monologue of when they first died on screen again when the scene repeated. Lowkey hurt that it didn’t happen but i can see why.

Second, the betrayal box was shown on the trailer so that was not surprising. Sad that Lala, sorry that’s the character from kinky boots lol, i’m sad about Copley’s character. His reason for betraying Andy and the gang was personally not good enough. 

I can see why Copley would be persistent on having a cure for disease. Anyone who had a love one die because of some uncurable disease would feel that way. Still, i call bs on his naive thinking. A bunch of immortals being handed off to a scientist, AND HE THOUGHT THAT THEY WERE GOING TO BE MORALLY GOOD ABOUT IT? AND NOT TREAT SAID IMMORTALS AS RATS?

Really dude?

Is the history in The Old Guard universe THAT different for ours? Is racism not a thing there? Hilarious.

Sorry I wanted to word the above stuff in a more direct way, but i feel like it’s going to be a bit vile and too much so i’ll refrain from saying it. All i’m gonna say is that Copley was not thinking when he cooperated with a white scientist guy.

My bad way of thinking aside. Let’s get back to the movie.

When Booker first came on to the screeen i felt bad vibes from him. Something about his whole thing was not clicking for him. I knew something was bad was going to happen.

Also a sign that Booker and Copley is going to betray them would’ve been when Copley saw that Nicky had his gun on him. I doubt Copley could see from that far. So unless Booker fed him info, that will be entirely impossible.

Moving on, the bullshit that is mr lex luthor batman v superman edition 2.0 and his ranting in that convention. I knew i’m gonna hate him as soon as he opened his mouth.

One thing i hate the most are villains who justify their medical bullshittery.

We all want for medicine to progress.

We are all aware that science is never morally good. And most of all doctors and scientists has the moral compass of a cookoo clock. 

An immortal plus a scientist will always always equate to fucking hot mess.

I knew Copley is going to have a reason for why he was working with Merrick. Copley was morally good, he really thought he was doing the right thing, hell he worshiped the gang and their results. Its just that for him, he wanted to have a hand on it.

We can all debate whether he has ulterior motives subconsciously. Or whether it was all just about his wife dying. (my side will be that he subconsciously wanted a hand on shaping the future, but it was buried by his want to save people who was suffering what he went through.)

But yeah that connection was solidified when he talked about his wifey.

Now can we just talk about that scene of Joe and Nicky just spitting poems at one another? Right off the bad we were introduced with a soft spoken and soothing Nicky with a snarky Joe and my goooooood when Joe started talking about who Nicky is for him my  heart clenched and I just imagined being the receiving end of both of their romantic gestures. Omfg i would dieeee.

(fun fact, even after watching the trailer and seeing a lot of gifs and edits of that scene, it didn’t click to me that Joe is played by Hot Jafar actor. My friend had to point that out for me to finally get the AHA moment xD. I knew something was familiar about the guy and his voice but yeah xD)

I wish to be sang by Joe and Nicky as they both cuddle me to sleep. Oh to be the middle of that sandwhich ;A; one can only hope.

Oh i also wanted to talk about Nile’s pov with killing. I have no idea how long she had been in the military before “awakening” so im not sure and again this might sound immature, tone deaf or ignorant but, she really joined the military and was surprised that they kill people and taught to deal with it? Has she not heard of the veterans who leave the military filled with ptsd and some other stuff? 

At the very least she looks like a millenial and you’re telling me she has that all sunshine and rainbows point of view of the military? This is like Copley all over again. That ranting was really unnecessary and it didn’t even resolve or whatever. 

I get it she’s young and new. She literally has a family she couldn’t leave just like that BUT all she focused on is the fact that Andy killed a lot of people? REALLY? THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU NOT WANT TO HELP THEM?

Im sorry  that part is just ridiculous for me. At the very least find something better to hang over Andy’s head. Like i dunno colluding with drug people i guess?

OH OH You know what really made me sure that Booker is working for Copley and Merrick? That is when he talked about his son dying of cancer. That moment I was like “Oh yep this is my confirmation. I better prepare myself.”

I want to be thankful that the torture scene was not too much. I hate plots and tropes of scientists and doctor quacks toying with humanity and such because they are always so graphic and just inhumane. Thank god the director is a woman and we didn’t have to deal with unnecessary testosterone bullshitery that most male directors do for their movies.

I was definitely not expecting to feel sad for Booker. When they passed the judgement to him, It was fucking sad. Deserving but nonetheless sad. Booker hated being alone and straight boy has a point when he talked about how Nicky and Joe have one another. But still fucker got my gays locked up, I ain’t treating him nicely after that.

OH THE TWIST AT THE END. IM FUCKING SURPRISED. AND HORRIFIED THAT SHE MIGHT BE THE NEW BIG BAD.

AND BOOKER POTENTIALLY WORKING WITH HER? straight boy really ain’t learning anything huh.

Im excited for the possibility of a second. I’m excited to see more of Quynh and what she can do. I really hope that she ends up becoming a goodie at the end. I really don’t want her to just die as a villain.

Overall. Despite the lack of solid motivations and conflicts and stuff, the movie is very good. I rarely watch action movies because its always testoroney filled bullshits. and just dicking romance but yeah The Old Guard is right up my alley.

Now for the theories i come up while watching.

Disclaimer that I have not or is not going to follow the comics that this movie is based on. I don’t have the interest to do so so if any of my theories is actually canon and has already been talked about before, and is confirmed, please understand that I don’t do in depth research for these posts. This is all just the ranting of a guy who watched a movie. Not a critique that seem to be very abundant here in tumblr.

Theory The immortal 5

I have not kept track on how many immortals are there but my theory is that only 5 immortals are allowed to exist. When Andy lost her immortality she said that its finally her time, that maybe she finally reached her end goal. Does that mean that Nile was not immortal before that time? I would assume so because her family would’ve freaked out right off the bad when she’s a kid and her wounds just close up right in front of them.

So the immortality is not birth given but rather bestowed when one of the immortals reach their end. Im not sure if it’ll be just 5 or so, but there seems to be a give and take situation with the immortality. We also find that it’s not according to who got it first or who’s the oldest since some guy died first before Andy when we know Andy is the oldest. 

uhmm... welps i think i forgot the rest of the theories i have in my head that haven’t yet confirmed by the film lmao.

oh well.

ANYWHO.

I love it i loooooove it

 i wanna be in the middle of joe and nicky or just be see them personally flirt with one another. I would die happily.

[sasskarian]

@systlin can I offer you some inane Din/Cara pining fic in this trying time?

Edit: now on Ao3, because why not - >>link<<

“So. Let me get this straight.” Greef lifts his bad knee with a groan, settling it over his other leg so he can sprawl a little more indolently. Din’s HUD focuses in, shows the elevated temperature in the joint in a dark red, and he turns it off with a flicker of his eye. Greef lifts his glass again, takes a sip, and gestures with it before continuing. “You two. Not together?”

Greef isn’t precisely a friend, but they’d been shot at by Moffs and droids and troopers all the same, which, in Din’s line of work, made for something close enough to friends for a drink now and again.

Besides. Greef had never shorted him on a bounty or passed up choice ones for sordid favors, and aside from trying to kill him that one time, had never really treated him all that badly. And what mando didn’t have an ally turn on him now and again? That hadn’t been personal; just business is a phrase that gets a lot of legwork on The Way.

“Definitely not together,” Cara hisses, slamming her own tankard down and sloshing the oily-looking ale over her white-knuckled hands.

Under the beskar, Din’s neck warms. While true, she didn’t have to sound quite that offended by the notion, did she?

A new notice pops on the HUD: the kid—he never had settled on a name for him, had he?—gurgles sleepily, pulling the thin blanket over his head with a vague hand-wave. Ever since the little womp-rat had tried stealing the Crest for the second time, Din counts the pricey motion sensor security system as one of his best purchases to date, and it lets him keep an eye on his kid while he’s out.

He tunes back into the not-so-friendly argument in time to hear Greef splutter. “You trash talked while holding hands! If that’s not flirting, I’m a kowakian monkey lizard.”

“It was arm wrestling, not holding hands,” Din points out mildly. His own drink sits in front of him, untouched since sitting down; neither of his companions seems to find the mostly-symbolic tank odd in the slightest.

“And there was nothing flirty about it!” Cara says, and she is some shade of magnificent, with her eyes flashing dark brown fire and a flush riding high on her cheeks. She looks about one more teasing jab away from throwing a fist in Greef’s face and for one amused moment, Din entertains himself with how that fight would play out:

Cara has the speed and raw strength to take Greef to the floor, and with her economical, no-punches-pulled style, she’d have him begging for air or death inside of forty-two seconds. If that. She doesn’t so much fight as simply brawl her way through whatever obstacle dares set foot in her path, and damn if it isn’t some sort of fascinating. There’s a joy in Cara Dune when she fights that calls to the manda inside him, a flash and sizzle that tells him if Cara put her mind to it, she’d make a hell of a mandalorian.

He might kind of like that, if she'd ever stop running long enough to actually look at him.

But she hasn’t, and probably won’t, and Din isn’t exactly in the habit of making himself so vulnerable to every strong, capable fighter that stumbles across him. He definitely has never pined in his entire life, and isn’t about to start now. Even if Carasynthia Dune is as mandokarla as beings come.

“Sure,” Greef says. He salutes Cara with his glass. “I’ll believe that when you aren’t helping him raise a kid and getting all chummy with the mandos.”

The sound that comes out of Cara’s mouth is about fifty percent outrage and fifty percent embarrassed horror, and completely entertaining. Din laughs to himself as Cara doesn’t, as he’d thought, launch herself over the table but aims a vicious kick at Greef’s chair that sends him skittering backwards on two legs. Even after he falls to the ground with a painful thud, Greef shoots her a smirk and says something about going native that has Cara hauling him up by his jacket to snarl in his face.

***

“Little shit still sleeping?”

Din doesn’t jump when Cara looms out of the shadows, blending into the moonless Nevarran night; his HUD has 360 degree motion detection, and he’s usually got an eye on her anyway.

“Growing fast,” he replies softly, one nerve-simulated gloved fingertip stroking along the little one’s ear. “And eating everything in sight.”

“So I see.” Cara arches a brow at the small, furious imprints of baby teeth on the metal crib. For all her I don’t do babies talk right before things went to shit with Gideon, the strong lines of her face soften when the kid turns over and snuggles into a baby-sized pillow. “Maybe you should try some flash-frozen meat to keep him from gnawing on your ship. One’s gotta be cheaper than the other.”

Din points behind him at a chest that easily reaches his waist: Fresh Naboo Jella Gorgs; flash frozen for that perfect crunch!

“Huh. Don’t you just think of everything.” She reaches down, brushing a knuckle across the kid’s cheek, and a knot of tension Din refused to pay attention to in the depths of his stomach loosens. Most people wouldn’t forgive someone for choke-holding them, especially when she was almost two full meters and the kid was maybe a fifth of her size. But there was nothing but baffled affection in her face and Din settles his newest purchase—a small, raggedy stuffed doll with armor loosely, and inaccurately, based on mando designs—in the corner of the crib before nodding to the galley.

They’ve done this half a dozen times or more since Gideon and IG-11. Whiling away long hours while the Crest diagnostics run, while Din cleans his guns and Cara sharpens a knife with a wicked curve. While they wait, even still, for the other shoe to drop, for Stormtroopers to rush the ship or Gideon to rise from his grave yet again.

Din doesn’t look at the angled lightsaber hilt tucked in the bottom of his weapons cache, and Cara knows better than to ask about it, when she stops pretending to not see it. Until he decides what to do with the Darksaber, it’s just going to sit there and be patient.

The silence that falls between them in these slow, lazy hours is usually companionable, sometimes holy, and only broken by the sounds of bodies in chairs and a sleeping baby. Tonight, though, there’s a wire of tension strung between them, plucked taut with every overly-aware breath and movement. He wonders, idly, who’s going to break it first.

[thisguyatthemovies]

War as entertainment

Title: “1917”

Release date: Limited release, Dec. 25, 2019; wide release, Jan. 10, 2020

Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Jamie Parker, Nabhaan Rizwan, Adrian Scarborough, Daniel Mays

Directed by: Sam Mendes

Run time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Rated: R

What it’s about: During World War I, two British soldiers are given a seemingly impossible task – swiftly deliver a message to a commander in enemy territory to call off an attack that would result in thousands of casualties, including the brother of one of the messengers.

How I saw it: From time to time, a group, usually made up of young people, will set up cardboard shelters on some lawn and spend a night or two in them, doing what they can to simulate homelessness while raising awareness of the issue. It’s a worthy cause and noble effort, but those participating (presumably) eventually will return to comfortable homes. That they can do that means they, despite their efforts, in no way can recreate the desperation felt by those who have nowhere to go. Homelessness is more than a lack of physical shelter; it also is a lack of hope.

I thought about that after watching Sam Mendes’ highly praised World War I movie, “1917,” an adventurous bit of entertaining filmmaking that would seem, on the surface, to put moviegoers right there among British soldiers during Operation Alberich on the Western Front. Mendes’ film follows (literally) two British soldiers, Lance corporals Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), who are entrusted with swiftly getting a message across enemy territory to a commander who is to call off an attack because it is believed to be a part of a German trap. Unless they get there in time, thousands of lives will be lost, including that of Blake’s brother, Lt. Joseph Blake (Richard Madden).

This being a military mission, they encounter resistance and many reminders of the horrors of war, and they do so through breathtaking point-of-view camerawork in (through the magic of digital editing) two long single takes. Mendes’ film does not make any overt statements about war, nor does he hide the more gruesome aspects of it. But his film is – dare I say it? – fun, a thrill ride of a war movie that is a visual spectacle. And that serves as a reminder that war might be hell, but that’s easy to say from the comfort of a theater seat with a bucket of popcorn balanced on your lap. War can’t be replicated on a screen, no more than homeless can be replicated by those with shelter spending a night in a box. We can walk away from a movie like “1917” and any number of Hollywood war stories before it thinking that war is terrible, but, gosh, it sure is entertaining when you aren’t being shot at or blown up.

No doubt Mendes knew that going in, and perhaps that’s why he made a movie that stresses entertainment in a simple story of brotherhood and courage that neither glorifies nor condemns war. This is a story about two people at a specific point in time more so than a broad statement about death on the battlefield.

Watching Schofield and Blake is a bit like watching someone play a first-person military video game. We follow them through bunkers, muddy fields and craters filled with corpses and rats, the enemy’s underground shelter and open meadows that would be peaceful in a different time. Adding to the video game feel, they must deal with a series of situations and stay on schedule. “1917” is not big on plot. The drama lies in whether they can complete their mission and save lives, and whether Blake’s brother still is alive and the two can reunite.

The two leads are outstanding, especially MacKay, a soldier who doesn’t seem to have much of a family life back home and thinks so little of a medal he earned that he trades it for a bottle of wine just because he was thirsty. MacKay is equally adept at handling the role’s physical demands and the roller-coaster emotions, including when he meets a young French woman (Claire Duburcq) who is caring for someone else’s baby. Andrew Scott has a brief but fun turn as a hard-drinking lieutenant. Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch make solid cameo-like appearances as military officers.

The real stars here, though, are Mendes (who co-wrote with Krysty Wilson-Cairns based on stories told by Mendes’ paternal grandfather) and cinematographer Roger Deakins, noted for his work with the Coen Brothers and a previous collaborator with Mendes, mostly notably on the 2011 James Bond movie “Skyfall.” A scene that takes place a night, lit mostly by flares and fires, is stunning visually, as is Schofield’s encounter with the young French woman. The scenes come back-to-back mid-movie and take the aesthetics of “1917” to a level rarely reached in any movie about any topic. Frequent Mendes collaborator Thomas Newman is likely to garner his 15th Oscar nomination of the film’s score, which mostly bubbles and rumbles under the action until swelling during the nighttime scene and battlefield action near the climax.

War’s awfulness can’t be overstated. Many of Hollywood’s filmmakers have done what they can at recreating the gruesomeness, and many have made films that made important political and social statements during their time. “1917” takes a different tack, a visually engaging story of heroism told uniquely but without heavy commentary. It’s a fun ride when viewed from a theater seat.  

My score: 93 out of 100

Should you see it? Yes. It might not be much in the depth department, but it is engaging entertainment of the highest order.

[confideinmylions]

task no. 1-A :ｔｈｅ ｆｏｕｒｔｈ ｗａｌｌ 

an interview with tara “terra” markov

part one: no memories

[RIGHT BEFORE THEY WATCHED] take a look at the cover art and title. what do you think you’re about to watch? do you think you’re going to like it?

teen titans? oh! oh oh oh! this is based on a comic, right? i’ve only started to see some of their stuff recently. their, uh... dc? i don’t know, i’m a marvel girl myself. but i’m sure i’ll like it! i like superheroes and every thing. plus, this team looks like it has some sick ladies. though i hope, since like... they’re teens there isn’t some teen drama bullshit going. balancing superhero and civilian life is all fine and dandy, but i want some action!!

did you enjoy watching it? would you watch it, if more content came out?

i did! i really liked it! they really balanced like... comedy and drama? kinda? i don’t know. i weirdly liked how they have no civilian identities. they’re just... always the teen titans. even when they go out for pizza. ( she laughs. ) i don’t know if they could make more? it had like... a definitve ending? like, i don’t really get why they brought terra back for the finale, but like... i do kinda get it? like with the show ending, its sad but you gotta move on? kinda? i don’t know. i feel kinda bad that the terra chick got like... a season arc... but starfire didn’t. like we see these glimpses of her past life! and like! we could’ve had more of that!! so much more!! but whatever. it’s a good show. i’d rewatch it.

who is your favorite character? how about least favorite? who do you think is overrated and under-appreciated? who deserved better?

beast boy is the obvious fave. he’s funny. you get glimpses of, like, his duality. but he’s funny. and his friendship with cyborg, is just like... the best. i also loved starfire. her innocence and just like... genuine kindness made me really happy. but beast boy is still top.

uh... there’s like a lot of characters that come and go... recurring is slade. obviously. he’s like a typical villian. not really all that interesting. i liked the hive and even mad mod a lot more as villians. slade’s too damn serious. fuck him. if i have to choose a least favorite main titan, i don’t know. probably robin. he’s also too serious, but at least he has his moments.

overrated? uh... maybe robin... a part of me wants to say raven, but she probably had one of the best season arcs, so she get’s like major props for that. like she would’ve been my least favorite character. so! moody! smile for once! but like her season makes me... get her a lot more. like i get it. and robin is just a typical leader. he’s nothing special. also he does some shitty stuff and people seem not to care.

underrated would either be starfire or... maybe cyborg. starfire is kinda shown off as like this ditzy alien sometimes who robin kinda has a crush on, but like fuck that. her innocence and kindness isn’t a weakness and she can clearly kick anyone’s ass. and she didn’t even get her own season... cyborg is just never recognized for his sheer genius. whatever, he’s the literal cyborg thus he’s the tech genuis but like... if i were made part robot, i wouldn’t know any of that shit. give that boy some credit.

uh... starfire definitely deserves better, in terms of her use in the show. in terms of like... what happens to them... terra? maybe? she’s gets like a seaon arc but the titans go from like really pissed at her betrayal, which like, rightfully so. really rightfully so, but then try to pull the “we’re still your friends! you don’t have to be this way!” like fuck ooooofffffffffffff. everyone’s in the wrong here. if slade didn’t take control of her body slash powers, i would be surprised if she would still have sacrificed herself. also, how the hell did that turn her into a statue? like what’s up with that?

as a viewer, did the ending satisfy you? why or why not?

like i said, i don’t get the whole episode being like... beast boy stalking the terra-lookalike. that was weird. i get the message of like moving on and things changing, but... i don’t know how else you would have ended it. they didn’t like... have to use the girl beast boy had a crush on to portray the message. i’m sure there’s other ways to get the same thing across, but it kinda works, i guess. i’m a little sad it had to end in the first place.

do you have any unpopular opinions about any characters, story arcs, etc?

um... i really liked starfire. like, yeah, they could’ve given her more depth but i think that just comes from her lack of a season-long arc. like we only see glimpse of her tamaranian life, and they’re kinda far and few between. 

who are your favorite couple(s) to watch? how about least favorite?

i don’t really... like actively ship characters. i like the depth of relationships and i love love love friendships, especially complex ones but... romantic stuff can just get in the way. that being said, i’m happy like there’s not too many romantic subplot. 

my favorite is... i really liked watching the innocent relationship between beast boy and terra. do i think beast boy should have stayed, like, obsessed with her? no. of course not. but i liked their dynamic. it’s like a first real crush kind of thing. terra isn’t used to like... people actually sticking by her. like being her friend at all. and beast boy is funny! people rather thing he’s so funny! so it’s no wonder he had a little crush on her back! it’s cute, i guess.

robin and starfire! ugh! like, whatever, i get it. there has to be like one couple on the team i guess, but snoozefest. she kisses him for like knowledge. get over yourself, birdboy. and in that... movie thing... uh, whatever, i don’t care about your romance! give me action and friendship. that’s what i’m here for. thanks.

what do you think of TERRA? be honest.

i can... see myself in her a bit. she’s cool, but so so so so so so so dumb. she jumps to conclusions, doesn’t really listen to anyone. she’s super distrustful. i don’t think she like... knows... how to have any sort of relationship. it’s not super explained. it’s just like... hinted she doesn’t have a home and is like a wanderer. i don’t know. she’s cool, albeit i don’t know if they needed to keep using her for beast boy development. 

if you could give TERRA any piece of advice, what would it be?

girl needs to be more patient. like it’s so damn obvious that you don’t have control of your powers. it’s not that fucking hard for the team to see that shit. beast boy didn’t rat you out. nobody ratted you out. don’t just fucking run away, god.

part two: memories and realization

how does it feel knowing you’re a piece of entertainment for millions of people?

... shitty. i don’t need people seeing my dirty laundry.

do you still feel like your canon actions, thoughts, and feelings are your own?

i mean, yeah. i remember why i did what i did. i... didn’t think i could trust anyone. i wouldn’t even say i trusted slade. i mean, okay, yeah. i did. i’m the idiot that trusted the main villian. i’m dumb, i never denied that, but... i did what i did. i probably would’ve done that even if i wasn’t uh... a cartoon character.

if you could say anything to your fans and / or creator, what would it be?

i know i’m dumb! i get it! let it go! i didn’t want to be used to torture beast boy either! he deserved better! he didn’t deserve my bullshit! i agree! but c’mon!!! be a little nicer...

how do you feel about being a main or minor character? in your opinion, is your portrayal accurate, or were you painted to be a certain way?

i was like a main character for a season. i’d argue. i was with em for a while. a long while, but they obviously existed a long time before and after me, so that’s accurate. i’m just glad i got like... a sympathetic edit. like it showed my redemption, and i definitely didn’t deserve it. i deserved the game show backstabbing bitch edit, for sure.

what was the hardest memory of yours to watch unfold on screen?

the whole... ( she’s struggling to find the words. ) the like... date with beast boy. that whole... thing. the deed was kinda already done when bb gave me the ( she lightly chuckles ) the mirror box thing he made and asked me out. i, obviously, said yes. eventually. i just wanted to get him out of titan tower. i didn’t want him to get hurt. in hindsight, i really didn’t want anyone to get hurt. but i really didn’t want bb to get hurt. and it was a really fun night too. i was about to own up to everything i did! really! i was! but then slade just had to show up and... i wasn’t proud of what i did! but then beast boy said... “slade was right... you don’t have any friends...” and... and i didn’t really have a choice anymore? did i?

what are some things you didn’t know about yourself / your loved ones before watching this? ( like something that happened that you didn’t know about )

i, uh... i didn’t know uh... the whole little memorial the titans had for me. or like bb’s little speech. ( she can’t help but smile. ) maybe if i knew that i wouldn’t have like... straight up disappeared.

what moments do you wish were never shown to the world?

they didn’t show a lot. i probably would’ve preferred if my, uh, “date” with beast boy. like they needed to show my, like... whatever. it helped with the plot but i really wish that whole night was more private.

looking back, do you have any regrets? or decisions you really wish you hadn’t made?

uh, yeah, no shit i have regrets. beast boy didn’t tell the titans anything. i just jump to conclusions. all of my bullshit could’ve been avoided if i didn’t leave in the first place!! i’m an idiot! i own up to that. i only went down hill from there. i realized my mistake too late. i shouldn’t have listened to slade and i should have trusted the titans lot more. 

what do you think of how the other characters, your peers, saw you as a person?

they were always kind to me. i mean, until i betrayed them, but then they like kinda showed me some mercy and then after i died they were really nice about remembering me, but yeah. they definitely didn’t have to like... honor my sacrifice. i deserved to have perished after what i did to them. they needed need the whole... “a teen titan. a true friend.” thing. 

you have one chance to defend or justify any of your actions. go ahead.

i’m not defending anything i did. what i did was wrong. i eventually knew that. that’s why when i, er, woke up, i refused to face the titans again.

[IF YOUR MUSE DIED IN CANON] what was it like to watch your death unfold?

i mean... i sacrificed myself... it was literally my own doing... i knew what was going to happen. okay, maybe i didn’t i didn’t expect to turn into a statue. i also didn’t expect to like... get turned back to normal... so did i really die?

remember the advice you gave yourself in part one. are you going to follow it?

anxiety and self-doubt are two very powerful drugs. i think i’m a little more patient now... but yeah. also i still find it hard to trust people. so who knows if i’ve actually grown. whoops?

[hamletstudy]

[1/100] - // 7.18.19 // death’s head hawkmoth 

So I’ve been kind of emotional as of late. I was jarred into remembering about the ghost of the knight that guarded Jenna Heap’s bedroom after seeing a photoset with a description that listed various ways how ghosts could exist or reasons why they would linger: and that those paired with strong emotions never did fade away. For some reason, this triggered the floodgates: and I found myself weeping over a knight whose name I can’t even remember. I just know that he was fond of silly jokes, and often made terrible puns. He presided over the princess’ bedroom as he had for all of the other princesses before her, and when the castle was being overcome with dark magic thanks to Simon, her brother gone rogue: he made a spirited (spirited!) attempt to defend her. There’s something about that sweet wholesomeness in a paternal figure that really made me bawl, especially when he’s clumsy about it and sometimes taken for granted when Jenna is in a snit.

I keep hearing the whip poor will birds. The tiger lilies that’d been shorn and placed into a glass to dry out and die have long been disposed of, mulched back into the earth, maybe- buried like compost in little piles in the rich loam. They call in a peculiar sort of way, against the other bright birdsong that lights up in early morning and continues until late evening, when the sun falls from the skies: a repeated end noise that makes it sound as if they’re speaking to you. 

I haven’t heard, or seen any black birds: crows, ravens, red winged black birds, and I’m worried that the mortal offense of the SUV nearly running them over made them a little more cold, indifferent: I hadn’t had any of them call at my usual alarm hours. I can understand. Or perhaps it’s just that I’m growing up- after all, a coming of age, a loosening of the bonds of childhood: plunged into new plumages and new eras coming alighting down on feathers not so glossily inky.

I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Mike reacts to medical dramas as of late- I think it’s just that weird, parasocial coziness of having someone more informed than I am explain as we go along, a sort of false learning that I nod and smile at while idly digitally collaging in the background. Speaking of digital collaging, I forgot how soothing that is for me. It’s the perfect way to go about it. The internet has limitless resources, all of the ways to edit it you could want- without any of the mess of glue, shakily trimmed edges from damaged hands, and no worrying about the bulk or tearing if you choose to arrange them in a particular way.

I’ve been feeling isolated. I feel like I know some things approximately, and not very many concretely. The sheer variation of plants around here is comforting, in a distracting sort of way: but the birds are beginning to haunt me. They’re there when I wake up, jarred from sleep- they’re there when I’m trying to go to bed. They’re always there. The greenery seems so far apart from me: almost too exhausted to take in the variation. It all seems like so much work. 

It feels like I’m perpetually exhausted. My body seems to want eight hours of its own accord, regardless of the timespan that this falls into. I’m sick of being eaten alive in my own house. The walls are infested with biting bugs: my shoulders and back are livid and red, and I’ve expressed pus from several of them, including on my face and fingers myself. Blood spattering down my face has become almost commonplace.

My hair is a lot more biddable when it’s not being run through the daily stress of being washed three times with enough shampoo to drown a rat in. I’ve killed one black spider that was already curled up and twitching after I trod on a curtain, and one fly that took entirely too long to die. I’m a terrible shot with a towel. I like running my hands through my bangs. The way that it looks as if I’ve a particularly short, boyish cut is really pleasing. I think the bang running is a self soothing habit borne of nervousness, though. Sometimes I pull at my hair in frustration. It’s annoying to try to sleep with it all bundled up into a bun, but even in the cooler depths of the basement- which due to the odd placement of a hilly slope, is really the ground floor, it’s hot as hell. And giant mosquitos live down there. Alongside the black widow colony that set up residence and that I spotted first, as well as swaying, white thick strands of webbing that had gotten all tangled up and coarse.

Found a book that I forgot that I had lent, that I had owned. The sparkly triangles on the cover are soothing. The heft of the book, the cut of the pages. The softness of its supine spine. I cried when I realized it was a book about a woman in my shoes, who had chosen to be furiously happy in spite of her circumstances. Perhaps to spite them. I could only bring myself to read a single chapter. She’s high energy: a lot to process. Even in text I’m an introvert, worn out and exhausted by interactions, even of the parasocial kind.

I tested all of the toilets in the house when we first moved, and ranked them in order of how likely I thought that I might break them, hilariously. The one assigned to me is the one that I thought worked the best, even if it’s cold: and positioned weirdly, it’s tiny, everything lined up: window, you, mirror. You watch others watching yourself, blinds a thin separation. It’s kind of hilarious in a metaphorical sort of way.

I took a bath for the first time in maybe a year, maybe more- and it felt like a religious experience. I wept at being held. I wept at the sensation of being loved, of something that I longed for and missed and hadn’t had the time or chance to in so long. My body hurt, less. I could forget myself, suspended tenderly in the suds. I cried. I stayed in the bath until it ran cold, and pulled myself out hesitantly, gingerly. I wanted to stay. I stayed for the better part of two hours, wrinkling all over. I cried until I couldn’t tell where I ended and started.

The cold winds in combination with the random mechanical sounds and various airplanes flying overhead, with a wet edge to the air can make night seem particularly foreboding. I’m cranky. I’ve been a lot more on emotional tenterhooks as of late. I’ve found myself living according to waiting around for others, on their whims- and I don’t like that. It’s something that I need to address again. It’s the malaise of not having a concrete, solo project to pour all of my attention into.

I swing between wild extremes. If I was an astrologist in any earnest capacity, I would blame it on my gemini moon and libra aspect to my sun sign. Because I don’t believe in astrology, and at most think it’s an amusing short hand to quickly communicate with others about ourselves that at best: has social value, rather than scientific, I chalk it up to a lack of structure and order in my routine, all over the place eating and times, weirdly bunched up water intake, and being sweaty and hormone fluctuations and blood loss out the wazoo.

There was still beach sand inside of my pen, when I took a closer look at it, after a moment of startled fear and confusion as to why the texture was so different on it. Summer draws ever closer to an end and it paralyzes me. I’m horrified by the passage of time, and this time, that deep dread and anxiety about it started as early as the very first week of July. I really hope that this doesn’t start becoming a trend. It strikes me that it probably won’t have the opportunity to, considering the odd placement of summer in the higher echelons of education. 

Going into a new city, dealing with new circumstances and faces and navigating it all pretty much after being tossed into the deep end- terrifying. Being stranded in the concrete jungle without a scrap of greenery, other than the tall pink tree in whose bowers I saw a peregrine falcon slaughter a pigeon and rip it to shreds one summer? Terrible. But then, even now- the nature here drives me to distraction. I can’t really enjoy it. I wonder what part of me lost the ability to do that, to sit simply in the world and let it wash over me in deep, abiding comfort.

The cold grayness of the city is depressing, the soot and grime of it settles into your bones and after awhile even the warmth of summer, or the rattling heater can’t make me feel any better about the black, sooty snow churned into a slushy slurry beneath your feet. And the stairs! It’s just the shift of newness. It’s not entirely unknown grounds. It’s a place I know well by night and summer and the neon, shifting quality of holidays. Not so much in its every day to day. But I think it’ll be alright. Its always been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a home city, throughout all of my turmoil brewing years.

I think a part of it is deep grief that’s been stirred up again by contact I didn’t expect. I think a part of it is the sharp hurt at realizing that my importance in others’ lives is not the same as theirs in mind. I know logically, that just calls for a readjustment, a tuning in dialing: but having the curtain pulled back on it aches all of the same. The things we do for the people we love, not knowing if they love us in the same ways, in the ways that matter.

I haven’t been able to bring my pen down onto the paper. I finger the frilled edge from where I ripped pages out, scoring down with a pair of splayed open scissors, I smell the perfume, heady and rosy and floral, and sweet, so sweet- mellowing out the sharp printer’s ink, still a cloud that gets thrown up, a scent of beauty and warm summer beach sand, eating melted icecreams and lying in white, clean sheets snuggled against the blue silky pillowcases that I love so much- and I can’t bring myself to mar it. I don’t know what to do with it. I want to make a safe space, a familiar place: a private sanctum before, to have a place to retreat to, a concept of safety, a place to head back to when I am unsure and lost and questioning, but I can’t bring myself to. A part of me wonders if it is because I am punishing myself for all of the things I cannot bring myself to do, out of that paralyzing fear of indecision, and learned helplessness.

It’s something that bites at me constantly: where do I stand in others’ eyes? Sometimes it surprises me, the unwavering support revealed in a pithy, half of a joke remark. Sometimes it punches the air out of my lungs, a twisting hurt at realization: and smothering it underneath, because no one told you to feel like that. No one ever said that they felt like that. You had just assumed, and sometimes- your assumptions are wrong. Sometimes you are wrong. You walk around with grief in your eyes, tangled in your hair, hands shaking from holding all of it, dripping from the corner of your mouth like the spit and snot and tears that cut tracks down your face: like the baying hounds fighting over territory two doors down.

But whose fault is it, really? You’re the one who put it there.

I read something that struck home. It isn’t naive to expect people to appreciate your love. It was an empty, generic platitude, and yet somehow it was as comforting to see as being wrapped up in my favourite blanket and eating my favourite chocolate cake. I know that I eat to self soothe. I know that it’s a problem. These days, my hands are gnawed down bloodily raw, I am anxious, trembling, walking through my days with generalized anxiety and fear and wanting to cry. I find myself crying at little to no provocation. I feel like a vessel of water filled to the brim: the top bulging with surface tension. One drop and I rupture, I shatter- the elasticity only goes so far. I spilleth over.

I’ve been listening to a lot of country music. I’ve been listening to a lot of indie pop music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Russian pop music, because I was trying to find a ringtone for Sascha’s father in the thing I’m writing with my friend. I found myself crying, shoulders heaving, shoulders trembling over an Ed Sheeran song, of all things: at the idea of being able to put it all on someone else, put it into their hands, let go of that weight and be held for a little while, just to be taken care of. I feel as if that’s what I truly want, underneath all the hysteria and the raw, rough edges: to be loved, and to love in turn. Sometimes I run across songs that chafe at me: make me feel seen, exposed, a throbbing wound barely held back by the lightest layer of skin, the blood flushing the surface: that you aren’t alright. And I don’t think that I am alright.

I find myself crying myself to sleep these days. It makes me sad in an abstract sort of way, for myself, for the fact that I am crying. The winds remind me of when I was a child, and spoke to the wind: fully believing that it was a man, it was named Zephyr, that he pushed and carried my tiny body down the windy round about, that he made tiny cyclones and leaf circulations where I waved twigs at: the sensation of being held and caressed by the wind, hair gently tousled and pried loose. It feels as if a little part of my past has come back to haunt me. I feel as if I am a dwelling of ghosts. I feel as if I am a collection of all that has happened to me, rather than what I have done. I question what exactly I have done.

It’s bizarre what changing the quality of light will do to you: the sky seems flat and gray, and the world similarly dulled and muted for it: the skies are yellow. The umbrella is a stark, sharp red: the extended wood light overtop, weathered, cracked, grey. I want to take a power washer to it.

I want to write a book some day. Who doesn’t? Why? I promised the woman who kept me writing, inspired me to continue to- she said that she expected, in the easily gracious way of absolute faith, to see a dedication in the front cover’s page to her. I don’t know what I want to write about. I don’t know. I sit here for hours sometimes, paralyzed by indecision, unable to make a choice: unable to commit to even the most meaningless of things. Paper or pen. Fridge or room temperature. This identical pen, or the other? Phone or computer? What to hold in my pockets? What to eat?

I feel like I’m slipping into bad habits. Last summer I starved myself thinner. People noticed, complimented me: told me to keep up the good work. I’ve put all of it back on and then some, and I’m disgusted at being recognized. There is an ache in wanting to be seen, and the revulsion in that actually transpiring. It is central to the experience of womanhood. This summer I find myself indulging in comfort foods at hours when the night haunts me: oven soft chocolate chunk cookies, pizza folded over on itself, chocolate cake with creamy frosting, burgers with red onions that make my mouth smart and hurt but God, they’re good. I’ve been drinking a lot of water. I’ve been taking my iron pills. I’ve been trying to see if I have been getting enough sleep. Learning to be gentle with myself is a process.

I’m a woman now, not a girl. No longer the feral wild child, haunting the clover fields and picking through for red budding gowns, laughing with delight at monarchs high up in the sky: symbolic for a livening of the senses, a quickening of breath: the heart thrumming and racing with enthusiasm at learning that the wonders captured on the glossy ink page were real, and here in this life too: but a tired eyed, hollowed out woman. A woman who can’t find solace in the outdoors, who shies from the biting insects, who expresses pus and dribbles blood, spurting out onto mirrors, so tired. I have lines from frowning, now. I have lines carved in lightly where my eyebrows scrunch and furrow. I wear my unhappiness writ across my face, even when I don’t want to be. The monarchs haven’t come this year. They haven’t in many.

The first anniversary of the worst day of my life harkens: and I dread it. Immediately after is one of the most hysterical belated birthday gifts possible, a little nod of absurdism from the universe. Emotional whiplash. It’ll be a year soon. A year into the unknown, stumbling forwards into the future: time doesn’t wait for anyone, doesn’t slow down, doesn’t stop: even as we crawl forwards, haul ourselves on worn down fingernails. And wasn’t it good? Wasn’t there good in it, after all? Even if you didn’t know to anticipate it? Didn’t know what to look forward to?

I’m a very tired young woman, who has been harangued by death all of my life. I think that I’ll live a little longer, as far as the odds go. Someday I will love the things that I love again. For now: I cry when it washes over me, and try to hold onto the idea that it’ll be alright.

[jeroldlockettus]

Freakonomics Radio Live: “Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon.”

Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner test a memory athlete’s skills. (Photo: Lucy Sutton)

Our co-host is Grit author Angela Duckworth, and we learn fascinating, Freakonomical facts from a parade of guests. For instance: what we all get wrong about Darwin; what an iPod has in common with the “hell ant”; and how a “memory athlete” memorizes a deck of cards. Mike Maughan is our real-time fact-checker.

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is an edited transcript of the episode. 

*      *      *

As you know, Freakonomics Radio is primarily an interview show, based on extensive research, in which we explore various issues, often quite complicated ones, in some depth. But we need a break from that now and again. Don’t you need a break from that now and again? Of course you do. And so, may we present the following episode of Freakonomics Radio Live — not recorded in some somber radio studio, but in a pub, in front of a live audience. It’s a little game show we like to play, called Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. It’s got the same D.N.A. as Freakonomics Radio, but in reverse.

If you’d like to attend a future show or be on a future show, get tickets here. We’ll be in New York on March 8th and 9th, at City Winery; and in May, we’re coming to California: in San Francisco on May 16th at the Nourse Theater, in partnership with KQED; and in Los Angeles on May 18th at the Ace Hotel Theater, in partnership with KCRW.

*      *      *

Stephen J. DUBNER: Good evening. I’m Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio Live. Tonight we’re at Joe’s Pub in New York City. And joining me as co-host is the University of Pennsylvania psychologist and author of Grit, our good friend, Angela Duckworth.

Angela DUCKWORTH: Hi, Stephen. Hi, everyone.

DUBNER: Hey, Angela. So happy to have you back. Angela, here’s what we know about you so far. We know that you are founder and C.E.O. of the Character Lab.

DUCKWORTH: Correct.

DUBNER: That you are a MacArthur Genius Fellow who has advised the White House, the World Bank, N.F.L. teams, and more.

DUCKWORTH: Previous White House, but yes.

DUBNER: Previous White House. That was the — Truman?

DUCKWORTH: After Truman, before Trump.

DUBNER: Anyway, great to have you back on the show. Please tell us something we don’t yet know about you.

DUCKWORTH: I was born in Cherry Hill, N.J., home to the very first real mall in America.

DUBNER: Were you a mall kid?

DUCKWORTH: I was a total mall kid. Every time I go to a mall with a food court, I feel like I’m home again.

DUBNER: I have always had a theory — I’ve never been able to substantiate it — the secret to success in life is massive consumption of Orange Julius during teenage years.

DUCKWORTH: That is correct.

DUBNER: What did you do at the mall?

DUCKWORTH: Wandered around and around and around until my parents picked me up.

DUBNER: Because you had grit!

DUCKWORTH: Maybe that was the seed of the idea.

DUBNER: Angela, it is so nice to have you here to play Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Here’s how it’s going to work: Guests will come onstage to tell us some interesting fact or idea, or maybe just a story. You and I can then ask them anything we want. And at the end of the show our live audience will pick a winner. The vote will be based on three simple criteria. No. 1, did the guest tell us something we truly did not know? No. 2, was it worth knowing? And No. 3, was it demonstrably true?

To help with that demonstrably true part, would you please welcome our real-time fact checker, Mike Maughan. Mike is Head of Global Insights at Qualtrics, and he’s a co-founder of 5 for the Fight, a campaign to eradicate cancer. Mike, we know Qualtrics calls itself an “experience-management company” and that you’re always doing interesting research there. What have you learned lately?

Mike MAUGHAN: So we’ve done a series of pain indexes looking at different industries and the experiences that people want. I think the most interesting one is a hotel pain index where we found that a third of guests who frequently stay at five-star hotels have cried because of a bad hotel experience. I think that probably says a lot more about the demanding, fragile, unresilient, non-gritty state of spoiled people than it does about anything else.

DUBNER: All right, then, Mike, it is time to play Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Would you please welcome our first guest, Colin Jerolmack. So Colin, I understand you are a professor of sociology and environmental studies at N.Y.U., which sounds like an interesting combination. I’m ready, as are Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan. What do you know, sir, that’s worth knowing, that you think we don’t know.

Colin JEROLMACK: I would like to ask you: what animal is most responsible for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution?

DUCKWORTH: Finches.

DUBNER: Well, we’re supposed to say the finches, and you’re going to tell us the finches were not —

JEROLMACK: Everybody thinks it’s the finches. And the thing is, the finches of course were — they have these different beaks. Some are short, some are long, some are curled, some are straight, depending on which island they were on, and they evolved these different beaks to be able to eat the seeds and the fruits that vary by islands. But Darwin didn’t figure that out when he was on the H.M.S. Beagle — he didn’t figure that out till decades later. He thought that these were different birds that were somehow related, but he didn’t think that they were the same species.

DUBNER: So you’re here to tell us that Darwin wasn’t so bright.

JEROLMACK: Well, it took him a couple decades to figure it out.

DUCKWORTH: But there is an animal that did inspire him, right?

JEROLMACK: Yes.

DUCKWORTH: And it is not the big turtle-like things that are not turtles but they look like turtles?

JEROLMACK: No we’ve gotten further away.

DUBNER: Is it a fast animal?

JEROLMACK: I would say medium.

DUBNER: Is it a delicious animal?

JEROLMACK: I’m vegan, so I’d say no.

DUCKWORTH: Is it a bigger-than-a-breadbox animal?

JEROLMACK: No.

DUCKWORTH: Smaller than a breadbox.

DUBNER: Is it a breadbox?

JEROLMACK: No.

DUBNER: Alright, tell us what the animal is.

JEROLMACK: The pigeon. The humble, lowly rock pigeon that we see outside this very studio. So, Darwin kept pigeons for 12 years or more, and he was fascinated by them, because you could breed them. And there were so many different breeds. In Victorian England there was hundreds of different breeds of pigeons. But the idea at the time was that all these different breeds came from multiple species. So he bred them and wanted to figure out how plastic they were, and over generations he discovered that if you mix them all together, you get the same pigeon that was walking around on the street. He thought these must have all come from the same species, not multiple species.

If some of you may remember, if you actually read The Origin of Species, this is why he spends the first 70-plus pages on pigeons. And he gently guides you through all the variation, all the different breeds, how tall you can make them, how fat or small you can make them. And then he hits you with the bombshell and he says, “If I can do this breeding pigeons in just a couple of years, imagine what Mother Nature could do over millions or hundreds of millions of years.” And he says Mother Nature is the selecting hand, right? So first he says, “I’m the artificial hand of breeding,” but Mother Nature is the selecting hand.

DUCKWORTH: So why is this amazing fact so unknown? Like, what — finches are just too — they’re sexier than pigeons?

JEROLMACK: Pigeons got a bad rep. Pigeons are — I think if I were to ask people what they think of pigeons, many people say, “I think they’re rats with wings,” or, “I call them rats with wings,” as if they thought of that themselves. But to be honest, I’m not totally sure because I ask my class, “Who’s read The Origin of Species?” and they all put their hands up, and I say, “What are the first 50-70 pages about?” and nobody—

DUCKWORTH: That’s because they didn’t read it

JEROLMACK: I think the real answer to your question is that nobody’s actually read The Origin of Species.

DUCKWORTH: I think that’s probably the answer.

DUBNER: So can you tell us more about how popular pigeons were in Darwin’s day, and to what end? They were used in obviously messengering, but were they used in warfare, and all this kind of stuff?

JEROLMACK: Definitely. So yeah, during the time that Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, there was something of a pigeon craze in Victorian England. People were breeding hundreds of varieties — they had shows like the Westminster Dog Show. And they still have these today actually, they’re just not as popular. The Queen of England kept pigeons, still has a racing pigeon loft today. So everybody had pigeons and was breeding pigeons and making fancy pigeons as ridiculous as the clothes that people were wearing. And actually, when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species and gave it to his editor, the editor said, “Man, this stuff about pigeons is amazing,” and people loved pigeons so much—

DUBNER: “Let’s just make a pigeon book.”

JEROLMACK: That’s what he said. Just get rid of speculative stuff about evolution, and if you make this just about pigeons, it will be a coffee table book. Everybody in England will buy it and it will be a bestseller.

DUBNER: So what you’re really here to tell us is that the publishing industry is exactly the same today as it was then.

JEROLMACK: It hasn’t changed much. That’s right.

DUBNER: When was peak pigeon?

JEROLMACK: Probably around that time, late 1800’s, early 1900’s. So what happened after that is, we used to actually love pigeon crap. We domesticated pigeons 5,000 years ago because their feces was such valuable fertilizer. And then we also realized you can eat them — so squab, if you’ve ever eaten squab, that’s pigeon.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, that’s pigeon. God!

JEROLMACK: And then, as Stephen alluded to, they served as messengers. Genghis Khan sent pigeons throughout his empire to send messages. Also, Reuters was launched on the back of pigeons, on messenger pigeons. But then after the turn of the century, nitrogen fertilizer replaced pigeon feces, chickens replaced pigeons, you could breed them much fatter, much quicker. And obviously we don’t need them for messages anymore, either. So they’ve kind of become, from society’s terms, useless.

DUBNER: If they can do all that stuff — carry messages by having a homing instinct, if nothing else — are we to assume that they’re relatively smart, especially for birds?

JEROLMACK: Yeah, they’re not bird-brained. You’d be surprised. Pigeons pass the mirror test. There’s very few animals that pass the mirror test.

DUCKWORTH: What’s the mirror test?

JEROLMACK: Looking at oneself in a mirror and understanding that they’re looking at themselves.

DUCKWORTH: So walk me through — a pigeon is in front of a mirror. How do you know that the pigeon knows that it is itself?

JEROLMACK: You put the animal to sleep, and you put a red dot on its forehead, and then you notice if it does things to try to get rid of the red dot. Like pecking at it — so the pigeon will peck at the mirror and kind of shuffle about and do things that indicate that—

DUCKWORTH: To get the red dot off of its mirrored image.

JEROLMACK: Yeah. I could tell you some other things that make them rather intelligent. So they can be trained to tell the difference not only between cubist and impressionist paintings, but between a Monet and a Picasso, or if you’re giving them some other Cubist or Impressionist painting, but that is not a Monet or a Picasso.

DUBNER: So, would you call yourself a pigeon advocate?

JEROLMACK: Yes. They got me tenure.

DUCKWORTH: It’s not bad.

DUBNER: Alright. So I don’t expect an honest answer from you on the following question, but: how do you know that the pigeon is actually so smart — as opposed to being the bird that was popular and therefore was trained a lot? Could I take a seagull, could I take a dove, etc.?

JEROLMACK: And do what?

DUBNER: Train it to carry messages.

JEROLMACK: Oh gosh, no. Come on. Are you serious? No way.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, a dove? Isn’t a dove — it’s like a pigeon.

JEROLMACK: So, I’m glad you brought that up, because this actually gets the Stephen’s question about the bad rap that pigeons have.

DUBNER: So a dove is all peace and purity, and a pigeon is a garbage eater.

JEROLMACK: That’s right. And there’s many languages that don’t even have a different word for pigeon and dove, and a lot of — if you’ve ever gone to a wedding or to the Olympics and they release doves, these are white homing pigeons that will leave and fly away and go back to the owner who’s bred them and trained them to fly. I argue that a lot of religious iconography of Jesus as the spirit descending — Jesus could have been a pigeon. We don’t actually know whether that was a pigeon or a dove.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, fire up your Google. We’re going to need to know if Jesus was indeed a pigeon. Let me ask you this: Why are they the one bird that I know of at least that walk among us in cities?

JEROLMACK: Yes. So first of all, in terms of literally walking, they’re ground feeders. That’s why they walk and they don’t hop — birds that hop mean they feed in bushes or flowers or trees. Pigeons are ground feeders. So pigeons were the first bird to be domesticated, over 5,000 years ago. And as I mentioned, we domesticated them for agriculture, for the fertilizer, and to eat them. But they’ve actually co-evolved with humans — when we moved to cities, we brought pigeons with us. They, at this point, have been living in cities since cities were around.

Today, unfortunately with climate change and urbanization, species basically have two routes: they go extinct or they survive, and the survival route usually means adapting to living amongst people and actually changing your evolutionary trajectory, and pigeons have done that. They are generalist eaters, so they — we leave a lot of garbage around, tons of garbage around for them to eat, and they can pretty much eat almost all of it. And we feed them as well, and because their natural habitat is actually cliffs and rocky ledges, even in terms of walking amongst us — I like to call them pedestrian animals — they literally walk on the sidewalks and sit on benches and ledges because they prefer them to grass, shrubs, or trees. It’s more like their native habitat.

DUBNER: Has anyone ever seen a baby pigeon?

DUCKWORTH: Yes, I have. I saw one growing up on a window ledge in a hotel a few months ago. Why do you ask that question?

DUBNER: Because I’ve never seen a baby pigeon. Tell us a little bit about pigeon family life. Do they — are they monogamous-ish? Honestly here’s what I thought, when I first moved to New York years ago: I would see pigeons all over, but never babies or even adolescents. But I somehow imagined that pigeons would be a couple. I don’t know if they are. And they would — when they were with child, they would go to the ‘burbs and have the kids there and then the adults would come back when they wanted to go to the theater.

DUCKWORTH: Send them to good schools, and they can ride their bikes.

JEROLMACK: That’s an interesting hypothesis. You’re not entirely wrong in terms of they actually do what I think at least many humans aspire to: they mate for life and they’re monogamous. And they’re also pretty good on gender equality. They both sit on the eggs, and they both feed the young. If you’ve ever seen pigeons that appear to be kissing, the male is actually throwing up into the female’s mouth to demonstrate that he can produce the crop milk to feed the babies.

DUBNER: That is sweet.

JEROLMACK: That seals the deal. She’s like, oh yeah.

DUBNER: But what about from birth to adulthood? Where are — why don’t we see the young?

JEROLMACK: It’s kind of hilarious if you get to see it. The mother and the father will sit on the baby until it’s fully grown. So they don’t fledge the nest.

DUBNER: They are like people, actually.

JEROLMACK: Yeah, they don’t fledge until they have gone to college and come back home. I’ll give you a tip if you would really like to find baby pigeons: any time you’re walking pretty much anywhere, but say particularly under an awning, listen for these really high-pitched squeaks, and that’s a baby pigeon. And if you listen and look around, you’ll find them.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Colin Jerolmack has been telling us much more about pigeons than I ever thought any of us would want to know, and I personally found much of it fascinating. I believe him because he—

DUCKWORTH: He’s a tenured professor at N.Y.U. He’s like a professor of pigeons.

DUBNER: And also, he’s got khakis and a braided belt, and I there’s something about that that just says verity.

JEROLMACK: I got to thank my wife for that.

DUBNER: So I find no reason to distrust anything he said. But you’re the man with the Google over there.

MAUGHAN: So, a few things — you don’t have your wife to thank for a braided belt. You should be mad at her. No. 2, you said that pigeons were like humans because they’re monogamous and mate for life. That’s not true. Humans don’t do that.

JEROLMACK: Oh I see. I said humans aspire to that.

MAUGHAN: Next, you and Angela were debating which animals are the sexiest. Just a quick warning: don’t Google that on your work computer. So a few things. It’s not very helpful, but a publication called City Lab New York City said that this city is believed to have between 1 and 7 million pigeons. Really great range there, so thank you.

It’s interesting to know that in the past 20 years in China, there’s been an amazing boom in young money, and this self-made billionaire crowd has chosen pigeon racing as their sport of choice. The most expensive champion racing pigeon sold for almost half a million dollars.

Lastly, I just want to say you all know Crocs, the little rubber shoe. So I think it’s important to recognize that pigeons are a lot like Crocs, they’re more functional than they appear, but still super weird to have with you in any situation.

DUBNER: Thank you, Mike, and thank you Colin Jerolmack. Would you please welcome our next guest, Ben Orlin. Hi there, Ben. It says here that you are a math teacher and author of the new book, Math With Bad Drawings, so I’ll assume you’ve got something a little math-y to tell us tonight. The floor is yours.

Ben ORLIN: Yeah, that’s right. My question for you is: who’s likeliest to buy lottery tickets?

DUBNER: Is this another finch-pigeon — we’re supposed to say, “Low-income people who squander too much money on this ridiculous, state-supported racket where they skim 40 percent off the top and then leave you with your shallow winnings to weep in your latte that you’re also buying and shouldn’t be.”

MAUGHAN: Stephen, how do you really feel?

DUCKWORTH: I think the lotteries are evil. Don’t they prey upon people’s lack of numeracy, effectively, right?

DUBNER: The other thing that I don’t like about lotteries, just since we’re getting it out there—

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, do it. Go for it.

DUBNER: —is that if you play the slots, what’s the rake on a slot machine? You’re a math guy.

DUCKWORTH: It’s very small.

DUBNER: Seven percent, maybe?

ORLIN: Yeah, I think it’s in that range.

DUBNER: A parimutuel — you go to a horse track, the track is maybe taking 12, 14 percent.

ORLIN: Yeah, maybe closer to 20, but yeah, in that range.

DUBNER: But the state — what’s the average for state lotteries?

ORLIN: Close to 50 percent — 40 percent or so.

DUBNER: So you’re here to tell us something, however, within this —

DUCKWORTH: Diabolical system —

ORLIN: Yes, so I’m a math teacher, so it’s not my place to decide how the state should cheat people out of their money. But who are they cheating out of their money? It turns out, actually, so the state where the most lottery tickets are bought is Massachusetts, my home state — a lot of very educated, wealthy people in Massachusetts. And it turns out, Gallup did a poll, 2016, so not that long ago, and people making more than $90,000 a year are actually likelier to buy lottery tickets than people making below $36,000 a year.

DUBNER: Do we call 90 and above high income, or we call that middle-high? What do you want to call that?

ORLIN: I’m impressed, I think 90 is pretty good.

DUBNER: You are a math teacher. But you would call 36 pretty good too as a math teacher, would you not?

ORLIN: 36 is below national median.

DUBNER: Okay. So you’re saying more people in that bracket were —

ORLIN: Yeah, that’s right, people who are higher income are actually likelier to play than people who are low income, and similarly, people with bachelor’s degrees are actually likelier to play the lottery than people with no college education.

DUBNER: So you’re saying that this general idea that the lottery is disproportionately popular among lower income is not quite right.

DUCKWORTH: So how many lottery tickets are they buying?

ORLIN: Yeah, that’s a good question. So Gallup doesn’t have data on that. In the same sense also that if someone making $36,000 a year buys a lottery ticket, and someone making $100,000 a year buys a lottery ticket, the person making less has just spent a much larger percentage of their income on lottery tickets. So even if they’re buying the same number, we can still call it a regressive tax.

DUCKWORTH: So wait, let me just make sure I understand. You’re saying that people who make a lot of money buy more tickets per person on average.

ORLIN: They’re more likely to participate, yes. Per person, I’m not sure. But more likely to buy a ticket, at least.

DUCKWORTH: More likely to buy a ticket.

DUBNER: And what share is that? Let’s say 90 and above. Are we talking 30, 60 percent? Where are we?

ORLIN: It is basically about 50 percent, across pretty much every income group.

DUBNER: And then $36,000 and below —

ORLIN: So yeah, we’re looking at 46 percent or so. So it’s not a huge difference. When it comes down to it, about half of people play the lottery.

DUCKWORTH: That itself is — half of people play the lottery?

DUBNER: But play the lottery means what, one ticket in the past 12 months?

ORLIN: Yeah, it’s played in the last year. Although, if you look at Massachusetts, that’s the state where we have sort of the highest spending, it’s about $800 per person per year. So the average person is buying two lottery tickets a day — that’s probably not evenly distributed. I don’t think — I mean I don’t know, unless my wife has been sneaking off and buying way more lottery tickets than I think.

DUCKWORTH: Wait. The average Massachusetts citizen is buying $800 of tickets per year, or the average person who is buying a ticket —

ORLIN: So the total amount spent, if you divide by the number of people in Massachusetts, you get $800 per year. Yeah.

DUCKWORTH: $800 per year!

ORLIN: Yeah.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this. Let’s just pretend that Angela and I have decided that we think playing the lottery is a bad idea.

DUCKWORTH: Let’s pretend.

DUBNER: Let’s just pretend that. But then, let me introduce — let me just say well, let’s say the expected value is very low, relative to what I can do with a dollar, $10, elsewhere. But what about the entertainment utility? Has anyone ever measured that? Do we have any idea?

ORLIN: I mean, the measure of entertainment utility is that people keep doing it and they seem to do it very gladly and in great quantity.

DUCKWORTH: It could be — people could be buying tickets because it’s fun, or they could be buying tickets because they are legit thinking that they are going to win the lottery and that they’re gonna be lucky.

DUBNER: Let’s say this, Mr. Math Teacher. Let’s say that Angela I change our mind. We think, “Hey, we’re going to play the lottery because we think we can win because we know a smart guy named Ben Orlin, who’s a math teacher who’s interested in the lottery, and he can help us not cheat, but cheat.” So what are some things that we could do to increase our chances of winning? For instance, I’ve read that — let’s say you have a pick of numbers that go from zero to 100, that if you pick numbers above 31, let’s say, that at least if you do win, that you’ll have a bigger payout because so many people play their birthdates, for instance. Does that work?

ORLIN: Yeah, this is true. So there are certain numbers, numbers that show up on fortune cookies, or numbers that are birthdates. It’s not a good idea to pick those. Because if you win on that number, you’re going to be sharing with all the other people who had that fortune cookie.

Stephen, you mentioned expected value, which I think — someone who’s taken a probability class or a math class, I think the assumption is, expected value is sort of what you should be looking at. So right now, for example, the Mega Millions just went up to the highest it’s ever been, $1.6 billion right now. Expected value is basically just the long run average — if you are to buy tons and tons and tons of tickets, how much would the average one be worth? So for Mega Millions, there’s only about 300 million possible tickets. It’s worth $1.6 billion. So the average ticket should be worth more than $5, and they only cost $2. So in theory, it sounds like a good idea. The problem is, if you go out and buy a ticket you’re going to just lose your $2.

DUCKWORTH: Why don’t you just buy every possible combination?

ORLIN: Right. So this is very hard to do with Mega Millions. It’s actually happened in 1993, the early days of state lotteries. Virginia — the prize went up all the way to $28 million because no one had won it for a while. There were only 7 million tickets for $1 each. There was actually a syndicate, a group of people in Australia, who said, “Okay, we’ll just buy them all, that’s the easy money right there.” Which sounds like easy money but it’s not that easy to go and buy seven million lottery tickets.

DUCKWORTH: Oh that’s right, because you have to go to so many delis.

ORLIN: So what they did — this team in 1993 placed a lot of big orders with grocery store chains and convenience store chains. But even that didn’t work out that well for them — there’s actually one chain that had to return $600,000 to them for tickets they weren’t able to print. By the time of the drawing, 7 million tickets out there, they had actually purchased 5 million of them. So there was a two-in-seven chance they were going to wind up losing all that money.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, well then what happened?

ORLIN: What happened was, two weeks went by, and the state knew that they’d sold the winning ticket, but no one could find it, because they had 5 million tickets they needed to look through. And then about two weeks later they surfaced and they did win the money. The state lottery commissioner was furious and issued this sort of — like a villain at the end of a heist movie as though he knew he’d been beat but he swore he would never get beat that way again. And actually since then it’s become much harder to do those kind of bulk purchases. Most states have passed laws against that. And if you wanted to try it on Mega Millions right now — if you could do it it’d be great to get all 300 million tickets, but there’s just no feasible way to do it.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Ben Orlin is telling us that pretty much a lot of people love to play the lottery, and it’s not what we expect in terms of income. What more can you tell us about that?

MAUGHAN: So, here are a few things that are more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery: giving birth to identical quadruplets. Getting killed by a falling coconut or having a vending machine fall on you. And the kicker, you’re more likely to be elected president of the United States. But we’ve already shown that anyone can do that.

DUBNER: Thank you, Mike, and Ben Orlin, thank you for playing. Would you please welcome to the stage Kate Sicchio. Kate is an assistant professor of dance and kinetic imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. Kate, why don’t you tell us something we don’t know please.

Kate SICCHIO: Sure. I can tell someone’s emotional state when they’re using their smartphone just by looking at them without seeing what’s on their screen or what they’re reading. How?

DUBNER: By how hard they’re weeping?

SICCHIO: No.

DUCKWORTH: Without looking at their face, and without seeing what’s on their phone?

SICCHIO: Correct.

DUCKWORTH: From their body posture, is it from that?

SICCHIO: Getting there. Yeah.

DUBNER: Does this have to do with what you do professionally?

SICCHIO: Yes.

DUBNER: You are a professor of dance and kinetic imaging — what is kinetic imaging? We’ll start there.

SICCHIO: So kinetic imaging is like media arts

DUBNER: That is a way more impressive word for it. Cause I’ve always thought, media arts, ugh, but kinetic imaging—

SICCHIO: Right, it’s exciting.

DUBNER: So you observe their movements, and because you’re a dance professor you can tell how they’re feeling?

SICCHIO: Yeah.

DUBNER: Oh, okay. Bingo.

SICCHIO: So in choreography, we have different tools of analysis. And in particular there’s this thing called the Laban Effort Graph. And what it does is, it allows you to look at movement in three different categories. One is time: is the movement sudden or sustained? One is space: is the movement direct or indirect? And another is force: is it strong or light? And when you combine these three things you start to get gestures — so a strong, sudden, direct movement is a punch. Right?

DUBNER: So when I punch my phone, you know I’m feeling —

SICCHIO: I know you’re angry.

DUBNER: I wouldn’t have figured that out without my kinetic imaging degree.

DUCKWORTH: But that’s the thing. Like with the phone, I mean, how much range is there when people are on their phone?

SICCHIO: Right. So one of the things we do a lot on our phone is, we do things like mindless surfing. Well, that gesture is what we call a flick. So it’s indirect and light and sudden, right? And that means that yeah, you’re not really being conscientious, you’re not paying that much attention, you might be bored.

DUCKWORTH: So what does sadness look like on an iPhone, in terms of my using it?

SICCHIO: Usually sadness is like, light, but it’s usually more sustained. Right? And it’s usually indirect.

DUCKWORTH: So not quite a flick.

SICCHIO: Right. Not quite a flick. One of my favorite ones is Tinder. So when we’re using Tinder, we’re doing this really careless gesture. And of course that’s where you meet people to hook up, not someone you’re going to care about in the future.

DUBNER: So do that gesture again, because that’s good for radio. And give me something that’s the opposite of that.

SICCHIO: Right. So another app that I use is one called a Hotel Tonight, and in order to book your hotel —

DUBNER: That sounds not that unlike Tinder to me.

DUCKWORTH: They go together.

SICCHIO: But to book your hotel you have to do a very direct, sustained movement. It’s much more of a commitment to get your hotel room than to find a date. You have to actually trace the shape of a bed on the phone. So it’s this really direct movement that you have to do in order to purchase.

DUBNER: Are there practical applications of this observation?

SICCHIO: Yeah, I think that you could make things more direct and more sustained so people would think about it more. Maybe we want news apps to be more like that, so people are actually careful about what they’re reading and thinking about what they’re digesting in terms of the content.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Kate Sicchio is saying that you can tell how people are feeling by looking at how they interact with their phones — true?

MAUGHAN: Yes. So we hear that Tinder is this hookup app, right, because it takes so little effort, and you’re just swiping left and right. Now, that may be true at the beginning of a relationship, but it doesn’t tell us a ton about what it takes to get into a relationship. Because by the time people are able to actually meet and hookup, they will have had to have engaged in some more committed behavior like texting, phone calls, et cetera.

What appears is that it’s not necessarily the results of how much effort someone takes throughout the time to get together, physical or otherwise, but rather it’s how the relationship starts. Something that may indicate what that means for us, The Atlantic has reported that couples who cohabitate before marriage tend to be less satisfied and are more likely to divorce. So the issue with Tinder may not be the human movement overall, but rather what the human movement says about the desire for commitment from the very beginning of the relationship.

DUBNER: Angela, does that make sense to you?

DUCKWORTH: I mean I think that when you say that people who live — maybe I’m taking this personally. But anyway, why would someone who lives together with another person be more likely to — is it divorce, is that the fact?

MAUGHAN: Yes. As a certified non-marriage counselor — I think the idea is that if things start out without a deep level of commitment, then the research shows that we’re less likely to stick to it. You’re the person that studies grit, passion, and perseverance, so I’m not going to fact check you on whether people stick with things or not.

DUCKWORTH: So I’ll just say this: whenever you find a correlation, like people who drink Diet Coke live — like, you have to worry as a scientist that like, lots of things are correlated with the decision to live together, and those may be the things that are driving the marriage statistics also. So what we really need is an experiment where half the people get assigned to live together before they get married —

DUBNER: Let’s do this half of the room.

DUCKWORTH: Right. And then we’ll know.

MAUGHAN: Speaking of spurious correlation, though, I do think it’s important to note that the number of people who die becoming tangled in bedsheets almost perfectly correlates with per capita cheese consumption.

DUBNER: Mike, thank you so much for that, and Kate, thank you for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.

*      *      *

DUBNER: Before we get back to the game, we have got some FREAK-quently asked questions for Angela Duckworth. You ready to go?

DUCKWORTH: I’m ready to go.

DUBNER: You are best known for having written the book Grit. The Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League have a new mascot called Gritty. Was that your doing?

DUCKWORTH: Okay, that was 100 percent not my idea. It’s awful. Have you seen it?

DUBNER: It’s like an orange alien.

DUCKWORTH: No, I had nothing to do with it.

DUBNER: Do you know if the people who invented and named Gritty are fans of yours?

DUCKWORTH: I do not. They have not been in touch.

DUBNER: Do you think it’s a dereliction-of-royalty issue for which they have not been in touch?

DUCKWORTH: I am not suing the Philadelphia Flyers for their use of the word gritty because I don’t think I — can you own a word? I don’t think you can own a word, can you? Do you own Freakonomics?

DUBNER: I do own Freakonomics. Angela, I know you’re working on a new podcast about the work of the Character Lab, which advances the science and practice of character development. Why a podcast?

DUCKWORTH: So I think it’s the case that people like these things that they’re listening to where they get to actually talk to people like Stephen Dubner, and I thought, maybe there are a lot of parents out there and teachers who would like to talk to me about the science of how kids grow up to thrive.

DUBNER: And lastly, a family grit question: Can you give an example of something particularly un-gritty that someone in your family has done?

DUCKWORTH: Well, okay, a certain person would like throw themselves into various projects like metal detecting and then like stamp collecting, and then vending machines, and weight lifting, and like one thing after the other. And when you do that, then you’re not being gritty.

DUBNER: I didn’t know vending machine was a hobby.

DUCKWORTH: It can be. Short lived, it turns out, in this case.

DUBNER: Angela Duckworth, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. It is time now to get back to our game. Would you please welcome our next guest, Philip Barden. Philip is a professor of evolutionary biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as well as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. So that sounds very promising. What do you have for us, Philip?

Philip BARDEN: So, what does a hell ant and an iPod have in common?

DUBNER: May we in turn ask you what the hell is a hell ant?

BARDEN: Yeah, well, that’s a whole — okay, so that’s a decent question. So I work on fossil ants. That’s my niche. This is about as myopic as you might think you could get. Turns out there are as many fossil ant species as there are fossil dinosaur species.

DUCKWORTH: If that helps.

BARDEN: And among the oldest fossils that we know about, about 100 million years old, trapped in amber, are these ants called hell ants. And they have all these bizarre adaptations that we don’t see in any modern ants and in fact no modern insect. So what we see is these big scythe-like mandibles that jut out of the face and come up towards the forehead.

DUBNER: A mandible is a jaw?

BARDEN: The jaw, yeah, exactly, the jaw, the mouthparts. Modern ants have mouthparts that articulate horizontally. So if you take your arms and you kind of go to hug somebody, it’s sort of like that. This would be if you took and put your elbows together and you kind of went to jut yourself in the forehead with the tips of your fingers. Those are hell ants, right? Hell ants, it turns out, Dlussky, who’s this Russian paleo entomologist, named the genus for the first time in the 90’s, Haidomyrmex — haido meaning Hades, and myrmex, which is Greek for ant. And the common name is hell ants.

DUCKWORTH: Why hell ants? Other than, it was good branding.

BARDEN: It was just real spooky cool, just badass thing to name an ant.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, it was branding. It was just a badass name for a species of ant.

BARDEN: Exactly. Yeah, hado-myrmex, it just sounds — really truly, I mean, there are 13,000 species of modern ants, and this is the — it sort of breaks the mold.

DUBNER: And your question was what do a hell ant and an iPod—

BARDEN: —have in common. I should say one other thing, which is that there are some hell ants that also have horns that come out of their forehead. We named one last year — we named it after Vlad the Impaler. And the reason is this: we C.T. scanned it, we looked through X-ray imaging, and found that these ants actually looked like they sequester metals into the middle of this paddle. What we think is happening is to prevent themselves from running themselves through their own forehead, they’re actually capturing prey and puncturing them and drinking their hemolymph, which is insect blood. So that’s why we named it after Vlad the Impaler.

DUBNER: Were they the size roughly of modern ants?

BARDEN: They were about a centimeter — so like your pinky.

DUBNER: So how is it possible that an ant that tough didn’t make it?

BARDEN: Well this gets into the thing — I’ll just give it to you.

DUBNER: Give it to me.

BARDEN: So, one of the reasons why we think that hell ants went extinct is potentially because — and they are extinct, and all their close relatives are extinct — because they are too specialized. They effectively painted themselves into a corner. some of the evidence that we have strongly suggests that they specialized on prey that also went extinct. This is an interesting thing in evolution, right, where we get into these scenarios where your adaptations work really, really well until all of a sudden the bottom drops out and they don’t. And they actually persisted for about 21 million years. We know about them from amber in Myanmar, France, and Canada.

DUBNER: So what they have in common with the iPod is, they were too specialized and we don’t need them anymore.

BARDEN: Perfect, nobody buys iPods anymore.

DUBNER: Okay, so they’re a species that went extinct because, you’re arguing, of overspecialization, they were tough. There were certain prey that they could beat up, but otherwise they weren’t whatever, good enough to go on. But what about — aren’t there like — what good is the platypus for? Is that not a specialized thing and why is it still around?

BARDEN: Well, so anything that is around today, it’s working, right? We always think about evolution as being this sort of game of winners and being the best or whatever, and it’s really just the best in that moment in time, in that particular slice. Right? So everything, including humans today. Right? If you put two humans two billion years ago, there is no oxygen in the atmosphere, game over, it’s hard. And in fact something like oxygen turns out to be another thing that sort of changed the game. So the earliest life on our planet — oxygen was catastrophic for it. There was no oxygen in the atmosphere. And then we start to get photosynthesis. All of a sudden having that adaptation of being anaerobic, that is, surviving without oxygen, becomes really terrible. And now we have this big massive extinction event because of something like oxygen. Now of course we all love oxygen. But it turns out that wasn’t really the case in the beginning.

DUCKWORTH: So let me ask you a human-centric question.

BARDEN: I don’t think about humans.

DUCKWORTH: So are we over-specialized or are humans the opposite? Because we can learn anything.

BARDEN: Humans are incredible generalists. This is one of the reasons why we are highly, highly successful. And in fact — I’m just gonna bring it back to ants. And the reason why I bring it back to ants is because they are —

DUCKWORTH: Because you study ants.

BARDEN: Because I study ants, and they are my comfort zone. But really, they are tremendously successful, and in many places they outweigh the biomass of all vertebrates, including humans, in some environments. And the most successful ants are also generalists, right, so they can capitalize all kinds of resources. They don’t rely just on one particular food source. And humans are very much the same way, although we have some other kind of funny things going on, this culture thing. And the ability to rapidly pivot.

DUBNER: Aren’t modern ants said to be quite social?

BARDEN: They are, they’re all eusocial, exactly. Yes.

DUBNER: And do you think that part of the hell ant’s problem was a lack of some kind of socialization?

BARDEN: This is a great question. So, we thought about this. We really thought that maybe it was that the earliest ants really weren’t social, and they were actually out-competed by their highly communistic counterparts who are alive today. And in fact, what we’ve found is that that’s not the case — the earliest ants, including hell ants, are highly social. There’s no such thing as a solitary ant. All 13,000 species today and all 700 fossil species so far as we know all were social. So, for example, if you look at all the different amber deposits in Earth history, starting at 100 million years ago, ants never make up more than one percent of all insects in amber, and yet we find many aggregations of them together. We calculated on the back of a napkin — we’re not mathematicians — but we figure that it’s something like one in a trillion. The idea of finding 20 worker ants in one piece, when you have less than one percent abundance.

DUBNER: Are high or low income ants more likely to buy lottery tickets?

BARDEN: There should be an ant lotto.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this. Will science and technology allow you to bring back the hell ant? And if so, whose picnic would you send it to?

BARDEN: Oh, this is a great question. So, not biologically, no. But, in fact, where I am now, we have some great industrial design students — we have C.T. scanned these and we’re now modeling them, we’re digitally bringing them back to life to figure out how the mechanics of these would work.

DUCKWORTH: That is cool.

BARDEN: Yeah, this is a great tee-up, by the way, for N.J.I.T., where I work now, and I do not have tenure, and I’d like to have tenure. And we’re also printing and constructing giant molds that are motorized, so we can use these for outreach, we’re taking them to schools and museums, potentially for museum exhibits also, because we really don’t think about insects as part of the fossil record, but they are. Today, 75 percent of all species that exist are insects.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Philip Barden has been telling us about the extinct hell ant. What do you have to add?

MAUGHAN: So I think a lot of people here misunderstood — when you say hell ant, we all think about our aunt from hell who is always trying to set us up.

DUCKWORTH: That’s just your aunt from hell.

MAUGHAN: So ants have lost a lot of things over the years — they lost the Impaler. They don’t have lungs, they don’t have ears, they can’t swim. They do have two stomachs. It’s interesting to see though that ants have lost a number of things, we as a culture of lost many things, some good, some bad, we’ve lost answering machines, pagers, Velcro wallets. We no longer have decent politicians. We’ve lost MySpace, which was a terrible tragedy. And if you haven’t yet lost Nickelback, do yourself a favor.

DUBNER: Thank you Mike. And Philip Barden, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Would you please welcome our final guest of the evening, Livan Grijalva. Livan works in data analytics here in New York. He is a memory athlete, and currently holds the title of fifth best memory in the United States. I would like to apologize to our audience that we could only get the fifth-best memory athlete in America. But Livan, that sounds awesome and I can’t wait to hear what you have to tell us, so the floor is yours.

GRIJALVA: So, have you ever been sitting in your living room on the couch and you remember that you need to get something from the kitchen? You get up, you walk to the kitchen, and as soon as you get there, you just completely forget what it is. So my question is, why does walking from one room to another cause you to forget?

DUCKWORTH: Because you are — like place memory, right? You are activating the memory representation in one place and that has all these cues, and then you go to another place and those cues are absent?

GRIJALVA: That’s basically it. So it’s something called the doorway effect.

DUCKWORTH: Sorry, I’m a psychology professor.

DUBNER: No, that’s really good.

GRIJALVA: What happens is, when you’re sitting on your couch, you are thinking of something and you inadvertently, maybe you’re looking at the T.V. or you’re looking at the shelf and that idea somehow gets tethered to that location. So as soon as you walk to the next room, when you’re no longer looking at that, you seem to have forgotten what that is. And what happens is, as soon as you sit back down on your couch, it just comes right back to you, which is actually what memory athletes do in a way. We use a technique called the Memory Palace, where we place information that we want to memorize in specific locations in different rooms, and then we’re able to recall them later on like that.

DUBNER: And you said it’s called the doorway effect?

GRIJALVA: The doorway effect.

DUBNER: Meaning you pass through and you lose it. Hey, can I just ask you, my thought before Angela figured it right out was, I thought of something I think it was Arthur Conan Doyle once said about how the memory is like an attic, and if you fill it up with junk, then when you have something valuable to put in it, you don’t have room. And what it made me think of is, if you walk into another room, you’re just hit with all the new stimuli there, and they somehow hurt your being able to summon the memory because there’s only so much RAM that we all have going on. That’s not an issue?

GRIJALVA: Actually, I love Sherlock Holmes, so I know that quote really well, and what I thought was really interesting was that he’s saying that your brain has a limited amount of space, which believe it or not, I mean, as far as these memory athletes are concerned, we can pretty much memorize large, large amounts of information. I don’t think anybody — if there’s any scientific studies that show that there is a limit — like, this person has hit the limit of it all they can memorize. So, while it’s sort of true, I don’t know if that’s exactly it.

DUBNER: Just a side observation: you say the phrase “memory athlete” as if we think that is athletic.

DUCKWORTH: Takes training, right? Takes practice.

DUBNER: I’m not saying it’s not, but I’m curious, was that said originally in jest and it got real?

GRIJALVA: No, that’s a very good question. Mnemonist is another name for it, but I guess, yeah, we just call ourselves memory athletes or mental athletes.

DUCKWORTH: So I want to know more about this thing that you do — so can you give me some examples of things that you’ve memorized or competitions that you’ve been in?

GRIJALVA: Sure. So there’s lots of competitions all over the world every year. And basically people like myself get together and they try to memorize as much information in the shortest amount of time possible. So some of the events are, let’s say, memorizing hundreds of random digits, binary digits, names and faces, abstract images, lines of poetry. And one of my particularly favorite events is basically memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards in under five minutes if possible. So it’s basically after all these events, scores are tallied up and then you get a champion.

DUBNER: So you’re obviously very good at this. I’m curious, do your fellow competitors — do you all pretty much use the same methods?

GRIJALVA: They pretty much do. As I was mentioning before, the memory palace is the main technique that we use, which is an ancient Greek technique where you basically construct places in your mind. So at a smaller level, you might imagine your apartment as a memory palace. You might imagine your front door as a location No. 1, and you walk through and your living room would be location No. 2. Your kitchen could be location No. 3, the bathroom No. 4, and finally your bedroom, No. 5. So what you’ve done is, you’ve created a mini journey that you can close your eyes and walk through it. So on a much larger scale, this is what memory athletes do. We just have hundreds and hundreds of palaces and different ones, yeah.

DUCKWORTH: Are they real, or are they imagined palaces?

GRIJALVA: So they can be either one. I tend to like to use real locations. I just came back from Ecuador. So on my trip, I tried to stop in a few different museums and stuff like that and try to build memory palaces along the way. But I also used to play a lot of video games, first-person shooters, so I would actually take the environments in the game and also turn those into memory palaces. Basically anything that you can imagine yourself in. It’s so much easier though if it’s real places — like humans are really good at navigation. So it’s pretty easy to build palaces wherever you go.

DUBNER: So you actually go to new places in order to create memory palaces from them afterwards, yes?

GRIJALVA: Yeah. And usually I will take notes or take photographs of different places. It makes it so much fun too, because you could actually close your eyes and be in these places. A lot of times when I’m memorizing in competitions, it’s so strange but also really relaxing to be able to walk through all these places in your mind.

DUCKWORTH: So why do you do this? I actually admire this. Very gritty. But what do you get out of it? And do you think you’ll still be doing this 10 or 20 years from now?

GRIJALVA: So I originally was a magician, so I would do a lot of stuff with cards. And obviously as magicians we pretend to memorize a deck of cards to do tricks, but then I found out people were actually memorizing them, and I thought to myself, “Well, as a magician, as somebody who loves cards, I have to be able to do this.” So I started training myself to just do that. But it turned out it was so much fun to actually be able to do this. Just being able to achieve faster speeds. The first time I ever memorized a deck of cards for a magic trick, it took me three hours. Now it takes me 32 seconds. I mean, the sheer amount that you can cut down is just so interesting. And even four years into competing, I’m still finding that there’s things about the brain and how memory works that I didn’t know before.

DUBNER: Can you just give us an example of, let’s say, a deck of cards memorizing. And obviously you don’t have them — or do you have a deck of cards on you, by chance?

GRIJALVA: I do. So I can give an example, because unfortunately, seeing a memory competition is not that exciting. It’s just a bunch of people sitting there with headphones and dead silence as they run through.

DUBNER: So just imagine how exciting it will be to listen to people seeing a memory competition.

GRIJALVA: So basically what it is is, the technique — I already mentioned the memory palace. In my mind I have a location that I’m set to go when I want to memorize. Cards are abstract. It’s hard for you to remember them because they have no real meaning. So what we do is, we turn every card into somebody or into something that’s more meaningful. So in the technique that I use, I’ve turned every card into a person and an action associated with it. So let’s say the 10 of hearts is Homer Simpson.

DUBNER: Because why?

GRIJALVA: So originally — this is the hard part. Building the system requires things — you have to sort of make it up. Like here’s an easy one. So the six of hearts is Michael Jordan, and that one makes sense because Michael Jordan won six championships, and I say he’s got a lot of heart. So it’s very easy for me to memorize that. The ace of spades is James Bond, and I think of the highest card in the deck as being James Bond when he plays poker. So, some of them are easy to associate.

DUBNER: Okay, so each memory athlete creates their own mnemonic for each card. Correct?

GRIJALVA: Yeah. There is a slight variation. So my system, like I was saying, uses two cards. So let’s imagine that — I mentioned that the ace of spades is James Bond and the 10 of hearts is Homer Simpson. So if I was memorizing — if the cards were in that sequence, let’s say ace of spades, 10 of hearts, I would take my first location. Let’s imagine the front door. And I would take the first card, the ace of spades, and imagine James Bond standing at the front door. But the second card is the 10 of hearts, Homer Simpson. But it also gets confusing because later on, when I’m remembering it, I’m like wait a minute. Was it James Bond and Homer Simpson, or Homer Simpson and James Bond? So what we do is, we modify the technique to create a hierarchy. So the first card is the person. The second card would be an action. So it would be James Bond drooling, which is an action that Homer Simpson does. So if it was the other way around, if was 10 of hearts, ace of spades, it would be Homer Simpson drinking a martini.

DUBNER: And you do all that for 52 cards in how many seconds?

GRIJALVA: So my current competition best is 34 seconds. My personal best is 32 seconds.

DUBNER: What do you think you can do right now?

GRIJALVA: I’m not sure, I’m a little bit out of practice.

DUBNER: Do we shuffle them?

DUCKWORTH: I feel like we should shuffle them.

GRIJALVA: So we’ll do about half the deck, only because regurgitating 52 cards might be a little boring. I’m going to try to go through a few of them and see what we get.

DUBNER: Angela, should we narrate a little bit? It’s very dramatic. There’s a man on stage looking at cards.

MAUGHAN: You’re making this so hard for him.

GRIJALVA: So you can verify that I got them right. So first, I’ll say the cards and I’ll say what I’m looking at. So the first card should be the nine of spades, which would be a girl that I know named Lily. The second card should be the seven of spades, which would be a samurai sword. Then it’s the ace of hearts, which is Johann Sebastian Bach, with a nine of diamonds drinking tea, the next card would be the six of diamonds, which is a friend of mine called Six, who is freezing, so it should be the five of hearts. Then it’s Old Boy from the film Old Boys, so it should be the seven of diamonds, followed by the ace of clubs, which is hanging upside down. Then it should be the four of diamonds followed by the six of spades, I believe, then the queen of spades, six of clubs, nine of hearts, five of clubs, eight of hearts, two of hearts, 10 of — Homer Simpson, so it should be the 10 of hearts, doing yoga, which is Queen of Diamonds, followed by Clint Eastwood spray painting, so it should be ace of diamonds, four of hearts, followed by Sharon with sheep. So it’s three of spades, jack of hearts, followed by — this is Reggie Miller doing — so it’s the king of spades. Is he eating spinach? Five of spades? Jack of spades, five of spades. Is that all?

DUBNER: So, that was remarkable. I’ve read about people who do exactly this, and it’s impressive, obviously, when you read it. But that was absolutely remarkable. Thanks for doing it for us.

GRIJALVA: Thank you.

DUCKWORTH: Can I ask you this: which is more important to you, beating the four memory athletes who are ranked higher than you, or beating yourself?

GRIJALVA: I’ve actually — when I first started I didn’t know any of the memory athletes. So I thought to myself, I’m going to come in and I’m going to try to beat everybody. Because at the time, the U.S. wasn’t very well ranked among the world. Like the top countries were, I think, China and Germany. But by coincidence, the same time that I started competing, two other friends of mine — now they’re friends, but two other athletes started competing as well, and they were so, so great that right now the No. 1 guy in the U.S. is also the No. 1 guy in the world. So the U.S. now holds the record for being the best country with a memory athlete as it were.

DUCKWORTH: America is great again.

DUBNER: I have a question for you, Livan. What does this phenomenon, the original phenomenon we were talking about, the doorway effect, or just the way you’ve learned to control memory or to build memory — what does this suggest for people with memory loss? Is there anything clinical-ish, therapeutic-ish that it suggests?

GRIJALVA: Well, that’s kind of interesting because at the same time people make the joke a lot of times that I should never forget anything. And if anybody who knows me, knows that I have a pretty average memory when I don’t pay attention to things. The reality of it is that these techniques are so specialized that this is what I use for a deck of cards. I could practice this for hours and be really, really fast at a deck of cards. It won’t translate to being fast at numbers. I would have to specialize and train just at numbers. I teach a class, and what I try to tell people is basically, you practice these things and when you understand them, you’re able to use them in your day-to-day life. So it’s a really great way to kind of stay in shape, but unfortunately these techniques are very, very specialized for what it is that you want use. There’s no magic key that if you practice this it will improve your general memory.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Livan Grijalva has not only showed us how to memorize part of a deck of cards, but told us a lot about memory and memory athletes. Care to tell us if everything checks out?

MAUGHAN: So for years, golfers and cheerleaders have been mocked mercilessly for calling themselves athletes. You’ve just handed them an amazing gift. A couple of substantive things: we learned from Colin Camerer on this podcast a while back that one of the keys to memory is curiosity, because it enhances the encoding process, which is one of the three stages of memory, which are encoding, storage, and recall. So this idea that we’ve talked about of the Doorway Effect happens when we change locations, and therefore remove triggers that help us in the recall stage. So it’s encouraging to know that we’re not crazy when we walk out of a room and forget what we were doing. Interestingly, like all things in life, it turns out that to increase your memory function, you’re supposed to get sleep, exercise, and eat a healthy diet. So in other words, it’s probably not worth doing what it takes to improve your memory.

DUBNER: Mike, thank you. And Livan, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. And can we give one more hand to all our guests tonight? I thought they were fantastic. Thank you. It is time now for our live audience to pick a winner. Tough one, so good tonight. Would you please take out your phones and follow the texting instructions on the screen. So who will it be?

Colin Jerolmack, with “In Praise of Pigeons.”

Ben Orlin, who told us about lottery misperceptions.

Kate Sicchio, using choreography training to spy on people.

Philip Barden, the unfortunately over-specialized hell ant.

Or Livan Grijalva, with memory and the Doorway Effect.

DUBNER: And our grand prize winner tonight — thank you so much for telling us all about pigeons, Colin Jerolmack. To commemorate your victory, we’d like to present you with this Certificate of Impressive Knowledge. It reads, “I, Stephen Dubner, in consultation with Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan, do hereby vow that Colin Jerolmack told us something that we did not know, for which we are eternally grateful.” That’s our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you didn’t know. Huge thanks to Mike and Angela, to our guests, and thanks especially to you for coming to play “Tell Me Something …

AUDIENCE: I Don’t Know!”

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know and Freakonomics Radio are produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Alison Craiglow, Harry Huggins, Zack Lapinski, Morgan Levey, Emma Morgenstern, Dan Dzula, and David Herman, who also composed our theme music. The Freakonomics Radio staff also includes Greg Rippin and Alvin Melathe. Thanks to our good friends at Qualtrics, whose online survey software is so helpful in putting on this show, and to Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater for hosting us.

The post Freakonomics Radio Live: “Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon.” appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/tmsidk-duckworth-2018/

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

vox vox for tumblr sexyman or something i dont go here

[funnythingshere0-blog]

A World of Pain: The Definitive Ranking of Coen Brothers Movies

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/a-world-of-pain-the-definitive-ranking-of-coen-brothers-movies/

A World of Pain: The Definitive Ranking of Coen Brothers Movies

I suspect that the Coen brothers would not regard a ranking of their films with much respect. I can picture the blank and yet ambiently displeased expression on their faces upon being told that some schmuck has thought long and hard about slotting The Man Who Wasn’t There ahead of True Grit. Nevertheless, their work compels an organized mind. For nearly 35 years, the duo from Minnesota have been making movies that celebrate and undermine genre, thumbing their noses at convention and trends, and exploring the meaninglessness of existence with the depth and absurdity worthy of the cause. Joel and Ethan Coen’s 18 films—including The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the anthology Western debuting on Netflix this week—represent one of the truly unified American accomplishments in the arts. They are responsible for virtually no dull movies—none sloppily made, none for the paycheck. Though they feature movie stars and often rely on familiar storytelling modes, they are sui generis. Each one is a low-key event for cinephiles, a well-earned snack.

So why rank them? Because their standing evolves over time. My personal list breaks apart and reconstitutes with each new movie, opening tributaries and creeks in its path. Their patterns are familiar, working with a regular stable of genius craftspeople, among them composer Carter Burwell, cinematographer Roger Deakins, production designer Jess Gonchor, and editor Roderick Jaynes (a non-person imagined by the Coens, who edit their movies themselves). Film history changes with each of their movies—self-reflexive works reinterpreting old stories and creating new formats often in the same film. You can feel a lifetime’s worth of films (and books and mythology and religion) inside their work. And they are always destroying and rebuilding their inspirations.

Given their constancy‚ it’s easy to forget that the brothers have been at it for quite some time—Buster Scruggs continues a streak across nearly four decades in which no more than three years have passed without a new Coens flick. Joel turns 64 this month and Ethan is 61—the same age as Tommy Lee Jones when he appeared, gravely, in No Country for Old Men. Hopefully there are many more films to come. But, as they say, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you.”

The only unchanging aspect of any Coens ranking—about any perception of them, really—is the position of the infamously disliked remake of The Ladykillers: dead last. We start there.

18. The Ladykillers (2004)

I still don’t know what happened here. Tom Hanks, who was practically born to deliver the Coens’ wry, furiously odd dialogue, plays career crook Professor G.H. Dorr like Yosemite Sam gone to grad school. This remake of a 50-year-old British Alexander Mackendrick comedy has clever notes but no center. It’s one of the only—maybe the only—Coens films with no subtext. (It’s also one of the rare films from the brothers with significant parts for black actors.) Tonally, this just isn’t their milieu—though in fairness, I’m not sure black-comedy-thriller-heist is one many people could pull off. It’s the only one I never return to.

The MVP: Irma P. Hall The Key Text: The Ladykillers (1955)

17. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

There isn’t much I remember from this, one of the Coens’ few contemporary-set stories, about a wily divorce lawyer (George Clooney) and the woman who’s one step ahead of his every move (Catherine Zeta-Jones). But that “Objection!” T-shirt, worn by Paul Adelstein’s Wrigley, is one of the funniest sight gags the brothers have ever put on screen. It’s a fitting metaphor for the whole enterprise, which feels obsessed with rat-a-tat rom-coms of the ’40s and ’50s, including Born Yesterday and the acid-tongued Hepburn-Tracy films, without saying all that much about them. Intolerable Cruelty is a series of objections lobbed back and forth between quarrelling lovers. But the Coens themselves aren’t lovers—as you’ll see from this list—even when love is the primary subject of their emotional annihilation. They’re not fighters either. They just sort of stand in the corner and make fun of everyone.

The MVP: Richard Jenkins The Key Text: Bringing Up Baby

16. Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Funny movie. It’s aging well—one part period-piece satire, one part inside baseball, with a dash of Russian conspiracy. Were this, say, a Ron Howard movie, it would be harkened as a thrilling reinvention, a masterful ode to old Hollywood with a fondness for Busby Berkeley musicals. For the Coens it was just fine. This is the burden of success—reinvention and homage is no longer enough.

The MVP: Ralph Fiennes The Key Text: Gold Diggers of 1933

[embedded content]

15. True Grit (2010)

It’s notable that the Coens’ two remakes are among their least inspired works. Not that True Grit is unsuccessful—on the contrary, it stands as their biggest box office hit by a wide margin and earned 10 Oscar nominations. However, it won none, a rarity for a film with that many nods. And maybe that explains something about True Grit—it rights the wrongs of Henry Hathaway’s original, more faithfully adhering to Charles Portis’s revisionist Western, elegantly capturing the author’s crooked tongue and deft way with dialogue. It also features my single favorite line reading of any Coen brothers film. But the parts are greater than the sum.

The MVP: Hailee Steinfeld The Key Text: Once Upon a Time in the West

14. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Can a movie be an exceptional achievement and a failure at the same time? This somewhat troubled, rewritten, achingly zany screwball comedy has some of the Coens’ highest highs (like this bravura sequence) and also has pacing problems you almost never encounter in a Coens movie. It’s cowritten with the filmmaker Sam Raimi, who gave Joel his start working as an assistant editor on The Evil Dead, but is also notably the last time they shared a writing credit on a movie they’d directed. (It was also written many years before production began.) Three years removed from the critically acclaimed Barton Fink, you can feel the brothers reaching for something both sillier and more grand. Mission accomplished on the former, at least.

The MVP: Jennifer Jason Leigh The Key Text: Sweet Smell of Success

13. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

A Bogart movie for Nietzsche freaks. This sumptuously photographed black-and-white potboiler slowly roils until it evaporates into a faint mist of delusion and regret. It’s probably the least rewatched great Coens film, and deserves more attention.

The MVP: Tony Shalhoub The Key Text: In a Lonely Place

12. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Overwhelmed at the time of its release by its blockbuster soundtrack—remember when 8 million people paid money to listen to Depression-era bluegrass?—this is perhaps the most obvious of the Coens stories. Which is to say, it’s based on Homer’s greatest Greek epic and Preston Sturges movies. Closest in tone to Raising Arizona, O Brother has lost some of its resonant iconography over time. (Though George Clooney’s wide-grinned mug still haunts my dreams.) Twenty years on, it feels like a vibe more than a movie. There are worse fates.

The MVP: T Bone Burnett The Key Text: The Odyssey

11. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

An odd duck, with purpose—these six individuated short stories comprise the Coens’ first project for Netflix and they’ve used the streaming giant’s willingness to spend on great filmmakers’ passion projects to intriguing effect. Though the concept of death unites all of the stories—and most of the Coen brothers’ work, frankly—each is a stand-alone in its own right. My favorite is a nearly wordless, man-alone fable about greed and survival featuring a dirtied, white-bearded Tom Waits. This is minor Coens, if such a thing exists, but better to have it and luxuriate in its meticulous design than to watch, say, Outlaw King.

The MVP: Tom Waits The Key Text: Lonesome Dove

10. Burn After Reading (2008)

This movie has more to say about Russia, Trump, international conspiracy, local buffoonery, self-importance, and doxxing culture than anything you’ve read in The New York Times this week. It’s also funny.

The MVP: Brad Pitt The Key Text: The Parallax View

9. Raising Arizona (1987)

Here’s Roger Ebert on Raising Arizona in 1987:

I have a problem with movies where everybody talks as if they were reading out of an old novel about a bunch of would-be colorful characters. They usually end up sounding silly. For every movie like True Grit (1969) that works with lines like “I was determined not to give them anything to chaff me about,” there is a Black Shield of Falworth, with lines like “Yonder lies the castle of my father.” Generally speaking, it’s best to have your characters speak in strong but unaffected English, especially when your story is set in the present. Otherwise they’ll end up distracting the hell out of everybody. That’s one of the problems with Raising Arizona.

Whoops!

The MVP: Holly Hunter The Key Text: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

8. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A winning film about losing. The authors of history aren’t just victorious, they’re tireless. They never stop winning, or telling about the wins. But life is filled with Llewyn Davis-es, too—self-sabotaging talents and self-regarding assholes who look for ways not to succeed for fear that it might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Or maybe just worried that they’ll have to hang out with winners. This is a hugely perceptive movie about the journeys that come with a life searching for artistic purpose, and the vanity of the artists. It’s easily the best of the late-period Coens, an encomium to a gorgeous moment in American musical history and a subtle entry to a lost New York. And also a takedown of that nostalgia.

[embedded content]

The MVP: Oscar Isaac The Key Text: Alice’s Restaurant

7. Blood Simple (1984)

As first efforts go, this one will make you rethink that screenplay you’ve been noodling with. Their work with Raimi gave the Coens (and their cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld) a sense of how to balance the ghoulishly violent with the darkly comic. But rather than the undead unleashed from hell, this story finds our monsters in the heart of Texas. It might be the best noir of the 1980s, barring Body Heat. And it set a template for the future: good guys can be killed, bad guys are even worse than you think, and the worst things happen to the most ethically ambiguous people. In a world that trembles before God, the Coens control the fates.

The MVP: M. Emmet Walsh The Key Text: The Postman Always Rings Twice

6. Barton Fink (1991)

Barton Fink is a persuasive allegory about the rise of fascism, a compelling mock-vision of the Hollywood travails of playwright Clifford Odets, and a terrifying exploration into “the life of the mind.” But it’s also a chilling movie about what happens when you move to Los Angeles. You are alone, more isolated than you’ve ever been. When you meet a hero, they inevitably turn out to be a genius, although a completely self-destructive genius. When you make a friend, they want to eat your time, and sometimes even your life. When you try to do your work, you become consumed by your inadequacies. When you go outside, it’s so bright. It’s a helluva town. Stay a while.

The MVP: Roger Deakins The Key Text: The Big Knife

5. No Country for Old Men (2007)

It’s a Western and a bag-of-money movie. But it’s also the best monster movie of the century, and as close to pure horror as the Coens are likely to get. Though there are routinely cataclysmic spiritual themes embedded in their movies, even the comedies, there’s something fascinating about how grounded they chose to make Cormac McCarthy’s most accessible novel. What could have been a movie about Satan—in the form of the bolt stunner–wielding Anton Chigurh— often feels more like Frankenstein or Jaws, movies about unstoppable killing machines moving through the world, tearing apart our very idea of existence. It’s haunting, in the way a car crash can be.

The MVP: Javier Bardem The Key Text: Jaws

4. Fargo (1996)

Every community deserves a Marge Gunderson—smart, sensible, decent, and in charge. In other words, a hero. There aren’t many heroes in the Coens’ filmography. And this one isn’t wearing a cape or cowl. Fargo, like Blood Simple before it, is unvarnished—it is shot in unflashy movements, observant of details, marking patterns of speech and disquiet in rooms. But Marge, played by Joel’s wife Frances McDormand in an Oscar-winning turn, is what catapulted the Coen brothers out of the respected category and into the realm of major American filmmakers. While it’s ultimately a satisfying crime thriller, with a load-bearing score from Carter Burwell, it’s a kind of movie miracle that it was nominated for Best Picture. Watching a film like this—at an impressionable age—stand beside conventional nominees like The English Patient, gave me hope and faith in awards ceremonies. It was misplaced. But love for Fargo never has been.

The MVP: Frances McDormand The Key Text: In Cold Blood

3. Miller’s Crossing (1990)

Call me tomorrow, this might be no. 1 then. Rival gangs, love triangles, shoot-outs, convoluted lingo, dames, goons, sharps, bosses, and the big blank sitting at the center of it all. This is a dense, circuitous film, with dead ends and false fronts all around. It isn’t hard to understand, per se—just difficult to fully absorb in one sitting. It demands multiple viewings, over many years. I’ve always seen Miller’s Crossing as a movie about figurative fathers and sons—Leo and Tom, Caspar and the Dane, Tom and Bernie, Caspar and his fat-faced boy. But it’s also about the way we hide love from each other—Mink, Bernie, and the Dane; Tom, Leo, and Verna. It’s an endlessly deep movie that also happens to feature a seven-minute tommy gun sequence straight out of a Cagney movie. The high and the low. Originality sitting comfortably with referentiality. In other words, a Coens classic.

The MVP: Carter Burwell The Key Text: White Heat

2. The Big Lebowski (1998)

The best damn movie of the 1990s. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

The MVP: John Goodman The Key Text: The Long Goodbye

1. A Serious Man (2009)

I like to rewatch the Coen brothers’ films late at night, so when I inevitably ask myself, What am I doing with my life? at their conclusion, I know I’m probably not the only person in the world asking that question. That is never more true than when I watch A Serious Man, the most hilarious apocalyptic prophecy or the scariest comedy ever made. It’s a little hard to know which one the Coens are angling after, if it isn’t both at the same time.

A Serious Man has always been regarded as the Coens’ most autobiographical film, set in their native Minnesota in 1967, even if it opens with a prologue about a Jewish demonic spirit in 19th century Eastern Europe and ends with the most horrifying final shot of the century. But the personal is polemical in this movie, a mortal testament to what religion, science, and practicality cannot provide us with. In a blackened, empty universe, sometimes there’s no point in shouting about getting stuck with Santana, Abraxas. Just accept it.

The MVP: Michael Stuhlbarg The Key Text: The Old Testament

Source: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/11/15/18096572/coen-brothers-movies-ranked-ballad-buster-scruggs-fargo-big-lebowski-millers-crossing-barton-fink

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

petition to let everyone in bsd (especially people like kenji, ranpo, aya, etc) say the fuck word. everyone who rbs is getting their url added onto a shitty not-actually-legal contract so we can pretend we’re formally emailing asagiri with our complaints

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

“lmao what the fuck is a sanity” -nikolai, probably

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

au where mushitaro and fyodor actually half got along and regularly went out to cafés together on wednesday afternoons to work on their own projects in each other’s silent company. they’d both always get black coffee, not because they enjoy it, but because they base their own order off of what they think the other’s would be. they internally judge the other for also ordering black coffee because honestly fuck professionalism they’d both rather just be drinking the sugariest thing on the menu

[well-dressed-sewer-rat]

just recieved a book on dragonology and its the exact red of the dragon from dead apple. i am THIS close to making a shibusawa cosplay do you UNDERSTAND