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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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GETTING OLD

May 20, 1949

“Getting Old” (aka “Liz Is Feeling Her Age”) is episode #44 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on May 20, 1949 on the CBS radio network.

Synopsis ~ Scanning her old high school yearbook, Liz decides she's old, and everything George does to try to snap her out of it just makes things worse. George tries to convince Liz that she's as glamourous as ever. His tactics misfire so George is forced to hire a psychiatrist.

Note: This episode partly inspired the “I Love Lucy” episode “The Inferiority Complex” (ILL S2;E18) aired on February 2, 1953, which also starred Gerard Mohr as a psychiatrist. In this case, however, the complex is replaced by fear of aging. There is another “My Favorite Husband” episode titled “Liz’s Inferiority Complex” (aka “Liz Develops an Inferiority Complex”) broadcast on February 3, 1951 which uses the notion of inferiority rather than aging. In that episode, the psychiatrist is played by Alan Reed.

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury) does not appear in this episode.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz (above right), a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

GUEST CAST

Gerald Mohr Psychiatrist aka Charley ‘Chuck’ Stewart) also played psychiatrist Henry Molin, who masquerades as Ricky’s old friend Chuck Stewart in “The Inferiority Complex” (ILL S2;E18 ~ February 2, 1953), his only appearance on “I Love Lucy”. In return, Lucy and Desi appeared on his show “Sunday Showcase” that same year. He also made an appearance on “The Lucy Show” in “Lucy and Phil Harris” (TLS S6;E20 ~ February 5, 1968).

One of the few times an actor recreates his role in a television version of a radio script using the same name.

Bea Benadaret (Mrs. Annie Green) was considered the front-runner to be cast as Ethel Mertz but when “I Love Lucy” was ready to start production she was already playing a similar role on TV’s “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” so Vivian Vance was cast instead. On “I Love Lucy” she was cast as Lucy Ricardo’s spinster neighbor, Miss Lewis, in “Lucy Plays Cupid” (ILL S1;E15) in early 1952. Later, she was a success in her own show, “Petticoat Junction” as Shady Rest Hotel proprietress Kate Bradley. She starred in the series until her death in 1968.

This turn as an old lady may have given Lucille Ball the idea to cast her as elderly Miss Lewis on “I Love Lucy”.

EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers, Liz is over by the bookcase, with books spread out all around her.”

Liz tells George her club is having an old book sale. George warns her not to sell any of his book, especially ones he hasn’t finished yet. She finds one with a bookmark and he tells her to put it back on the shelf: some books are too heavy to finish in one sitting.

GEORGE: “What’s the name of it?” LIZ: “’The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore’”

“The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore” was originally published in 1907, the third in a series of children’s books. There were 72 books in all, the first appearing in 1904 and the last in 1979. In 1953’s “The Camping Trip” (ILL S2;E29) Ethel referred to Lucy and Ricky as the Bobbsey Twins. In “No More Double Dates” (TLS S1;E21) they are mentioned again. They were authored by Laura Lee Hope, which was a pseudonym for a series of writers employed by the publisher.

Liz finds a book about how to play mahjong that George forgot to return to the library.

GEORGE: “When was it due?” LIZ: “May 13th. 1936!”

George wants to donate it to the sale, but Liz refuses to handle ‘hot’ merchandise. George sarcastically calls her Pear-Shape.

George is not referring to Liz’s figure, but to the character in the Dick Tracy comic strip named Pear-Shape Tone, who was part of the storyline from April to July 1949. He was a racketeer who would steal jewelry from his wealthier clients, then fence it to make a profit. One of his famous heists was referred to on “My Favorite Husband” in “Anniversary Presents” aired on May 13, 1949.

LIZ: “George, look! On the second shelf! ‘Little Men’ is leaning against ‘Little Women’! Oh, look, George! They’ve had a little pamphlet!”

“Little Women” (1868) and its sequel “Little Men” (1871) are books by Louisa May Alcott. A sequel was titled “Good Wives” (1869) but in America was combined with “Little Women” for publication. A third book (not a pamphlet) arrived in 1886 titled “Jo’s Boys.”

Liz finds the Arbutus, George’s old high school year book from 1929. George was a senior, Liz was a freshman. He reads some of the inscriptions from his friends. The book has a photo of Liz as a Freshman Princess - dimples in her knees.

LIZ: “I used to spend every evening kneeling on two collar buttons!”

Liz suddenly feels very old. She has turned from ‘a flower in the bloom of youth’ to ‘an old stink weed’. She starts to cry and decides to go to bed because old people need their rest.

In the morning Katie the Maid finds Liz gazing at herself in the mirror.

LIZ: “I haven’t felt so old since the day Shirley Temple got married.”

Former child star Shirley Temple married actor (and then Army Air Force Sergeant) John Agar on September 19, 1945, when she was just 17 years-old. At one time, Temple was one of Hollywood’s biggest box office stars. The marriage became troubled, and Temple divorced Agar on December 5, 1949. On December 16, 1950, Temple re-married to Charles Alden Black, a Navy intelligence officer and assistant to the President of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company.

George is concerned about Liz, so he visits a psychiatrist (Gerard Mohr). He tells her to flatter her and make her feel young again.

PSYCHIATRIST: “A few days of attention and you won’t be able to leave her alone without a sitter!”

George comes home and finds Liz in a rocking chair. He has brought her roses and candy. She begins to cry and is immediately suspicious of his motivations for bringing her gifts. She decides to go to her room - alone. George immediately starts to dial Dr. Stewart, humming while he does:

GEORGE: “Little Old Lady young and fair, you’re in everyone’s hair...”

The song “Little Old Lady” was a 1937 hit written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stanley Adams. It was also heard on stage and screen.

Dr. Stewart tells George that it is natural for a wife not to believe her husband. He suggests an outsider flattering her would be more convincing and he has just the person - himself! George reluctantly agrees and decides to say that Dr. Stewart is an old college friend. He will drop by at eight o’clock that evening.

When the doorbell rings, George announces him as Charley Stewart, who immediately takes Liz for George’s daughter. After some flattery, they decide to listen to the radio. Liz says her favorite she is “Life Begins at 80″.

“Life Begins at 80″ was a panel quiz show that aired on radio from 1948 to 1949, before making the shift to television in 1950. In it, octogenarians answered questions sent in by listeners. Jack Barry hosted.

Chuck insists that they play music and invites Liz to dance the Samba. After three hours, Chuck compliments her dancing, but George is getting impatient.

LIZ: “Treatment, George. Treatment!” GEORGE: “It looks more like a treat than a treatment.”

Chuck starts whispering amorous compliments into Liz’s ear just out of ear shot of George. He demands to know what’s going on.

LIZ: “Treatment, George! Treatment!” GEORGE: “What do you know about treatment?” LIZ: “Nothing. But whenever he says it you leave us alone.”

George finally can’t take anymore and tells Liz the truth about Chuck being a psychiatrist, telling him to leave at once. After Chuck leaves, George finds Liz back in her rocking chair lamenting her old age.

Next day the phone rings and Katie answers it. It is George, checking up on Liz, who Katie reports is making out her will.

KATIE: “She’s leaving you to me!”

George has a plan. He’s going to bring home a real old lady - seventy year-old Mrs. Green - to show Liz how young she really is. Katie finds Liz happily singing.

KATIE: “What’s happened to ya? Last night you were Grandma Moses and now you’re Junior Miss!”

Grandma Moses (1860-1961) was an American folk artist who began painting at the age of 78 and is often cited as an example of a person who successfully began a career at an advanced age. In “Nursery School” (ILL S5;E9) Lucy Ricardo is so proud of Little Ricky’s first drawing, she dubs him the next “Grandpa Moses.” The Ricardos had two framed prints by Grandma Moses next to their front door: “So Long” and “The Old Snow Roller.”

Junior Miss is a collection of semi-autobiographical stories by Sally Benson first published in The New Yorker. Between 1929 and the end of 1941, the prolific Benson published 99 stories. She had a bestseller when Doubleday published her Junior Miss collection in 1941. The stories inspired a Broadway play (1941), film (1945), radio series starring the aforementioned Shirley Temple (1942), and television show (1957).

Liz tells Katie that she got a call from the Psychiatrist asking her out on a date. Katie says that since she’s now in a more upbeat mood, she’d better call George and tell him not to go through with his plan. But Liz has other ideas. Since he tricked her by brining home a psychiatrist, Liz will trick him by pretending to be an old lady when she brings Mrs. Green home!

Liz dons a shawl, eyeglasses, a gray wig, and talks with a creaky voice. Mrs. Annie Green (Bea Benadaret) and ‘Lizzie’ sit down for a chat. Whatever question Mrs. Green asks, Liz answers “Penicillin”! Lizzie tells Annie that she can’t dance because she’s got the gout.

LIZZIE: “I can’t dance any unless I get oiled. In my joints, I mean.” ANNIE: “I’ve been oiled in few joints myself!” LIZZIE: “Oh, Annie! You’re a caution! Just cuz ya got snow on the roof don’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.”

Annie tells Lizzie about a hot Bingo game in back of the Blue Bird Tea Shop (which just a front).

ANNIE: “Get your green eye shade and let’s go!” LIZZIE: “I’ll get my wheelchair! We can ride down.” ANNIE: “What model you got?” LIZZIE: “A real hopped-up job; I hooked it to a Mixmaster. I had some speed trials yesterday.” ANNIE: “What did ya make?” LIZZIE: “Fourteen miles an hour and a bunt cake!”

In 1930, the Sunbeam Company introduced the Mixmaster mixer, the first mechanical mixer with two detachable beaters whose blades interlocked. Several attachments were available for the Mixmaster, including a juice extractor, drink mixer, meat grinder–food chopper, and slicer–shredder. The Mixmaster became the company's flagship product for the next forty years.

George has had enough and tells Liz to stop, so she gives up the old lady act. She tells him she’s feeling better, but George lets it slip that he told Chuck to call and ask her out on a date. She’s distraught again and Annie and Lizzie toddle off to Bingo!

#My Favorite Husband #Lucille Ball #Richard Denning #Gerard Mohr #Bea Benadaret #Ruth Perrott #Mixmaster #Grandma Moses #Junior Miss #The Bobbsey Twins #Life Begins at 80 #Shirley Temple #Little Old Lady #John Agar #Gerald Mohr #Bob LeMond #Dick Tracy

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nullset2 · 4 years

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Mother 3 - An In-depth Critique and Review

Ah, Mother 3, how I love you so!

The game which with which I forwent all possible aspirations to healthily integate into normal High School society: imagine walking into a party, people are drinking and being cool, and you ask them if they have ever played a very underground, very deep RPG only released in Japan called "Mother".

Yeah! I know! It's like you're asking to be bullied, and I realized it too late.

But anyway!

Mother 3 is one of the most important games you could ever play --alas, if only it wasn't near impossible to obtain it.

Yet, perhaps this adds to its allure and to the power of its narrative --a narrative which, by the way, I'm convinced is the very actual reason why it will never release formally in the United States.

As time has passed, I've actually become more and more impressed about how relevant the game is to the socioeconomic reality that we are in nowadays. I'm impressed that Shigesato Itoi had all of this in his mind's eye as early as 1996, and that the story was already written down in 1999!

Right now it's been 14 years since it's release on the GBA, but I think that the game is a timeless classic and warrants a playthrough now more than ever. Wanna know why?

Wanna find out?

Part 1. "A Japanese Copywriter's Americana"

The year is 1989 and a Japanese Copywriter --somebody who writes "Catch Copies", which are a sort of a long-form slogan that is very common in Japanese pop culture to advertise)-- by the name of Shigesato Itoi became a fan of the Dragon Quest series of RPGs, which are massively popular in Japan, even to this day. He also loved video games: he's asthmatic, so he recalls only being able to sleep sitting up as a child, and having to occupy his lonely time through asthma attacks playing video games, since he had to sit up and had nothing else to do at night.

His love of RPGs would linger in his mind until 1989 when he had an opportunity to meet with Hiroshi Yamauchi and Shigeru Miyamoto and was offered the opportunity to develop a video game with Nintendo. Harkening back to the endless hours he poured into Dragon Quest, his concept eventually took form by deriving from it. He called the story "MOTHER", as a reference to John Lennon's "Mother", since he is a very hardcore fan of The Beatles. The games have tons of obvious influence by old American films and comics, like ET and Peanuts, which he also loved very much.

For MOTHER, he wanted to explicitly go against the grain, by designing an RPG without "Swords and Magic", which stereotypically most RPGs follow, even from things as minor as to design a protagonist who was weak and vulnerable, asthmatic and without a Father Figure, yet, still heroic through much toil --which reflects Ninten from the original MOTHER for the famicom.

Miyamoto, in his usual taskmaster persona, arranged a team to work with Itoi for the creation of the RPG, by bringing in people from HAL laboratory and APE Inc, and thus MOTHER was born to great Japanese Acclaim. A game which took many risks in its genre, such as eschewing the idea of a separate overworld from navigation in the towns, the subject matter, the movement system and many other things which made it quite Unique. It was so popular that soon after the first project was released, MOTHER 2 started development, involving people from what's currently known as Game Freak and HAL Labs.

MOTHER 2 is a very unique game because it was the very first time that the series attempted to make an incursion in the Americas. Releasing in a big flamboyant flashy box, with a strategy guide and a bunch of goodies included, MOTHER 2 released as Earthbound in the states, a bigger and better version of the vision of the first game. Better graphics, Beatles references, sampled audio, pop culture cornucopia, it's all here and then some!

Famous for its role in technically driving the game, Satoru Iwata, ex-CEO and software developer for Nintendo,7 of Wii acclaim, helped the game meet its 1996 release date. It is known that the original version of the game ran into deep technical issues which the original dev team was not able to overcome. Once Satoru Iwata got involved, the game was reworked to a viable version and released to much critical acclaim. In his own words, he proposed to rewrite the tech that powered the main game. It was a matter of either continuing with the current code and be done in two years, or redoing everything and being done in six months under his vision, he said.

No matter its strong promotion from Nintendo, the marketing got botched, and the game paled compared to the flashy and bombastic magical RPGs of its era, like Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger of all things. So, Earthbound faced a very bad destiny in the states, by releasing to low acclaim, bad review scores and terrible sales numbers --even though it eventually reached Cult Classic status, due to its pure hearted nature, its hallucinogenic themes and characters, and its fantastic spirit over all.

And this game is worthy of discussion by itself a whole bunch because of the ripple effects it had in video game culture in the Western world. Enter starmen dot net. To this date, the epicenter of discussion for everything related to the MOTHER series. There you had me as early as 2002, browsing a half-rendered version of starmen dot net in a dingy computer in some dingy internet cafe in some shitty neighborhood in Mexico, trying to be a part of the discussion and the hype.

To this date, I consider starmen dot net as the non-plus-ultra case for how passionate Internet fan cultures can become.

Flat out, no other fandom has ever came close to the level of dedication, attention to detail and passion to tribute the original creation around which its fans congregate. A massive amount of fan paraphernalia has come out of starmen dot net --yes, even Undertale, 2015 indie darling RPG thing, originally got started on the Starmen dot net forums. People married and even started large, commercially viable enterprises, such as Fangamer.net, the firm which publishes Undertale, from starmen dot net.

...and then... silence...

After Earthbound's 1995 release, we enter a ten year hiatus for the series.

Even though both MOTHER games were incredibly popular in Japan, HAL Laboratory and APE Inc. weren't able to successfully make a jump onto the third dimension for the series come the Nintendo 64 era. They had a demo come the infamous Spaceworld 96, where a bunch of pre-release games for the then called "Ultra 64", which was the codename for the Nintendo 64, were showcased. And lo and behold, we have a sequel to Mother coming out, called Mother 3, the ROM for which has never been found by the way.

I'd love to get a look at the materials in that ROM.

The scarce footage we have available from it exhibits some of the elements we ended up seeing in the final released version of the game, like some of the original music like the Mozart ghost theme, and the DCMC section, albeit in a more primitive low poly way. It is known that both studios weren't very proficient at 3d Game development yet, which was still nascent. This together with other factors, such as the fact that at some point development was moved onto the unreleased-in-America, unpopular 64DD addon, undisclosed factors dropped the game into development hell, which ultimately led to its cancellation in the year 2000.

Plenty of mystery surrounded the now defunct project, to the dismay of a bunch of passionate fans in Starmen.net and elsewhere online. However, it turned out that the valiant effort of the fans, who made a huge amount of effort to campaign for the revival of the series, even mailing fanmail, fanart and other materials to the Itoi Shinbun offices in Japan (a titanical task in the world of the early 2000s).

Fast forward to 2003, and the Game Boy Advance, the little portable console that could, was in its Apex. Due to Satoru Iwata's campaining, it was announced that development on MOTHER 3 would be restarted, this time in 2D, for the gameboy advance. Much anticipation in Starmen.net followed this announcement, since it finally validated its efforts...

Come 2006, once the console was well into its end-of-life, with small nudges to play the game on a Gameboy player if possible, perhaps to try to follow suit with its predecessors, the sequel finally released to much acclaim. But what did Shigesato Itoi have in store for everyone all along? What kind of beast had just been unleashed onto the World?

Part 2. "Of Monkeys and Men"

Mother 3 follows the story of a young boy, Lucas, in a multi-chapter structure, which is novel for the series but not unheard of in the RPG genre. Besides this, the RPG plays very similar to your usual JRPG fare, and basically uses the Ultimately polished version of the MOTHER series' mechanics, groovy backgrounds and all.

The first three chapters of the game follow the perspective of different characters residing in Tazmilly Village as the plot of the game unfolds. The plot is centered around the residents of a peaceful town in an Island in an unspecified location, Nowhere Islands, which in my opinion is an allegory both of Japan and America, moreover with the fact that the game of the logo very clearly has a rising sun covered in metal, in a logo that's an amalgam of two different things which don't match, a subtle reference to the game's undertones to come.

From these residents we come to know the daily lives of a particular family: Flint, a farmer; Hinawa, his wife (a name in reference to Sunflowers, Himawari, her favorite flower), and their twin children, Lucas and Claus.

The game begins in the midst of their idyllic life in the mountains visiting Lucas' grandfather Alec, and playing around with meek dinosaurs which inhabit Nowhere Islands. See, in the world of Mother 3, no violence truly exists, and people have come to live peacefully with each other and nature. There's no such thing as the concept of money, Instead relying on an economy that's mostly based around bartering and hospitality.

However, everyone's lives veer into turmoil once strange alien beings invade, the Pigmask army, an army of big, fat and slovenly creatures dressed in pig-like attire, who seem to have a vast amount of technology and resources at their disposal yet aim for Nowhere Islands for colonization.

The Pigmasks have an as-of-yet unnamed leader, who is demanding them to make everything in the World "bigger, cooler, stronger and faster", and thus they seize Nowhere Islands by force of bombings and a forest fire to use its flora and fauna. And thus, while escaping from the forest fires returning from Alec's home, Hinawa tragically gets killed by a Drago which has been modified to be aggressive against its nature through robotics implanted in it by the Pigmask army.

There's an unused cutscene in the game's ROM data where Hinawa, instead, dies by bomb explosion...

...yeah, I'm just... gonna let you process that one by yourself ;)

The Drago left a fang in the middle of her heart, which is recovered by one of the Tazmillians and provided back to Flint along with a fragment of her crimson dress. Besmirched and angry, Claus, the festier one of the twin children, sets out to try to hunt the drago and achieve revenge, but he goes missing... Flint embarks in search of Claus and to kill the drago, and thus the first chapter of the game concludes, with the implication that Claus has gone missing...

With Lucas' family torn to shreds and The Pigmasks invading Tazmilly, it seems that we're in a situation ripe for disaster.

Chapter 2 follows Duster's adventure, which runs in parallel (as every other chapter will) to other chapters' stories. Duster is the last heir in a bloodline of Cat Burglars whose abilities are not in use anymore given that Tazmilly has no more commerce or crime. However it turns out that the Pigmask invasion puts his skills back in demand to infiltrate Oshoe Castle and retrieve an artifact which the Pigmasks are after and which Duster's family is the guardian of. The nature of the artifact in Oshoe Castle is as of yet unknown, however it is implied that it is important to the fabric of Tazmilly village.

At Castle Oshoe, Duster meets a mysterious princess, Kuma-tora (which translates literally to "beartiger", in allusion to the dichotomy of her existence, since she is very... masculine in attitude and refers to herself with, yes, male pronouns, perhaps anticipating identity politics by 14 years at least), who is also after the artifact in the Castle, the Hummingbird egg. The chapter ends with the Hummingbird Egg going missing, and a mysterious peddler of goods arriving into town, while Kumatora and Duster's father realize he has gone missing...

Chapter 3 follows the adventure of a little Monkey, Salsa, which gets flown into Nowhere Islands to perform a job. This is a novelty in a town where the concept of a job doesn't exist as of yet, however, the peddler of goods is going to need a lot of hands if he wants to fullfill his vision. The peddler, Fassad (which is a tongue in cheek way to say "facade", right?) promises to all residents in Nowhere Island eternal happiness if they buy his newest product, the "Happy Box", a television-like contraption which glows with a warm light and which people are attracted to and engrossed by. For this, he introduces the concept of money and swindles people his way, convincing them that this is the way to go and promising them excitement and benefit if they listen to him.

Salsa delivers Happy boxes throughout the whole chapter, and gets shocked, even in the middle of the night, if something goes wrong with his job or tries to escape due to a shock collar implanted by Fassad. However, he runs into Kumatora and Wess, Duster's father, and they ploy together to free up Salsa and mess up Fassad's forceful takeover of Oshoe Castle, when Lucas shows up with several dragos in tow and fights against the Tank invasion of Oshoe Castle.

(A foreign animal being introduced into a new society with the express intent of exploiting it to propel forward a commercial enterprise by toil... geez, I dunno, where have I heard that one?)

From Chapter 4 Onwards the game adopts a more conventional JRPG scheme, through a timeskip which happens literally two years in the future. In this future version of Tazmilly, money (Dragon Points) and ATMs are now existent, similar to other Mother games. The game follows Lucas' adventure through a now-modernized and industrialized technologically advanced Tazmilly, trying to retrieve the "seven needles" from the island, which are soon enough shown to be a source of great power that the pigmask army is also after and to which Lucas must try to get to first due to a calling by mysterious beings which inhabit Nowhere Islands, the Magypsies. With a lot of emotional moments, such as Lucas having visions of his Mother in the middle of a field of Sunflowers, we follow the adventures of the party as they infiltrate the pigmask ranks and gather information about its nature and intentions.

It is then discovered that the pigmasks are commanded by a Masked leader, who dominates the power of thunder through a tower which was built in the middle of the town and which strikes anybody down with thunder if they overstep the Law and Order that the pigmasks have implemented. The party fights this masked leader in bouts while exploring the world and reuniting with a now missing Kumatora and Duster, who are found to have settled as employees in a Nightclub called "Club Titiboo".

Eventually, through his travels, Lucas gains an artifact from Mr. Saturn, the inhabitants of a special region in Nowhere called Saturn Valley and which has been passed down through all three Mother games, called the "Franklin Badge". When equipped, this item allows the bearer to become immune to lighting attacks and reflecting them back.

The party soon discovers that the world is inhabited by an special elder race, existant from before the creation of Tazmilly village and who know more about everything going on with the invasion, called the "Magypsies", a race of transexual, magical creatures who help Lucas discover the fact that he has Psychic abilities, also known as "PSI" within the MOTHER canon. He uses these to proceed further in his adventure to pull the seven Golden Needles, the first of which Fassad was attempting to get to, in the Courtyard of Oshoe Castle.

Lucas moves into a city called "New Pork City" in the conclusion of the game, which is a town built by the pigmasks completely in the honor of Porky, full of all sorts of Pigmask paraphernalia and amusement. It is found that the seventh and final needle is inside humongous tower in the middle of the city, the Porky tower.

Moreover, it is also revealed that the Pigmask army is led by Porky, known as "Pokey" in the American localization of Mother 2, Earthbound. Pokey is shown to have developed into a tyrant as an adult, with unlimited lust for blood and power, who used Doctor Andonuts' Phase Distorter after the events of Earthbound to mess around with the unlimited realities and dimensions it gave him access too, as a petulant child does with a video game. Once he got kicked out of every other possible reality due to the chaos he created, he found the Nowhere islands and decided to mess with it.

The climax of the game comes around Chapter 7, when the now fully-developed party runs into Leder, one of the original Tazmillian villagers, a lanky and really tall person who never spoke, not a single word, in the game until now. Leder is revealed to be the only person who knows what is the true nature of it all: tazmilly village is the remanider of civilization once the world of Mother 2 collapsed by cataclysm. A flood wiped away everything and the very last remainder of people who survived fled to nowhere islands in a big white ship and settled there, willingly forfeiting all technological advances and knowledge of the world into the Hummingbird egg, the artifact that Duster's family protected in Oshoe, a device which wiped everyone's memories, with the intent of undoing civilization and living back in a peaceful village-like state again.

It is revealed that when all seven needles are pulled, a supernatural power on which the island is built will be awakened. This supernatural power is revealed to be a Dragon by Leder, who had to be subdued by the ancestors of the Magypsies so people could live in Nowhere islands as their last resort. Whoever pulls out the needles which keep it in slumber will pass the intentions and nature of their heart onto the dragon. Thus, Lucas must be the one who pulls out the last needle instead of Porky or the masked man, in hopes that a second cataclysm like the first doesn't happen again.

After making their way through all the pigmask defenses, Lucas and Co. face off with Porky, who is now a bedridden, pathetic man. Doctor Andonuts from Mother 2, appears here, and is revealed to have developed a solution to contain Porky, the Absolutely Safe Capsule, which is a capsule which once it's sealed, it can never be opened again, trapping whoever is inside forever in a parallel universe where only them exist. The party is successful in locking Porky in the absolutely safe capsule, so, porky is not hurt by the end of mother 3, instead, he just has been locked away forever in a place far away from everyone else --perhaps, providing the ultimate form of comfort that a personality like his would seek after.

At the end of the game, Lucas and Co. face against the masked man, who is revealed to have been Claus all along, who, brainwashed with Pigmask ideologies, is hellbent on drawing out the final needle to awaken the dragon. Lucas and Claus face off in an emotive fight, where they suddenly remember each other and how friendly they used to be with each other... and moreover, their Mother. Claus strikes Lucas with thunder in a final murderous attempt before snapping out of the Pigmask brainwashing. But since he had the Franklin badge on, the attack is reflected and mortally strikes Claus, who, in his final moments, finally remembers Lucas...

The ending of the game is open ended, without showing much of what happened once the seventh dragon needle was released, so the ending of the game is subject to interpretation. However, it is heavily implied that, since Lucas was the one who released the needle, the dragon, once awakened, did not destroy Nowhere islands and instead led to a regeneration of existence.

Part 3. "A Musical-Adventure"

One of the pre-release materials for the game called it a "Musical" adventure, and I think this is completely warranted: the musical beautifulness of Hip Tanaka, famed Nintendo composer and long-time MOTHER music autheur, is joined by the expertise of Shogo Sakai, who gave the soundtrack a more mature, sample-based vibe, compared to the early two more "chiptuney" soundtracks in the series. The songs are all-time favorites of mine, and I still the soundtrack every so often given all of its mystique, its eclectiness and curiosness.

But the musical aspect to the game doesn't stop here: as an addition to the mother series, the battle system has now been changed to become rhythm-game based instead of simply turn based. If the player attacks an enemy during a battle, it is possible to strike additional damage as long as the player continues to press the attack button in rhythm to the background music in upwards of 16 hits. A full combo is incredibly effective and plays a nice fanfare if executed correctly.

As an enthusiast of rhythm games, this premise captivated me from the get-go and it works wonders, functioning as a breath of fresh air to the way overplayed mechanic of turn-based combat, which has existed since the 80s. It also provides a certain nice feeling to combat, given how every character has their personal musical instrument, with lucas being a guitar, Kumatora being an electric guitar, Duster being a bass, and Boney, Lucas' pet, being... barks.

Besides this the mechanics from Mother 2 are translated almost completely: every character has a rolling HP and PP counter, which rolls down over time as an airport display instead of immediately as in other RPGs. This may seem minor, but it adds an amazing element of strategy to the game, since it is possible to recover an ally from mortal damage if a healing PSI is executed against the clock before the counter hits 0.

Besides this you got almost completely conventional standard JRPG fare, with the character being able to move in eight directions in the overworld, with the addition of a run button, preemptive attacks and overpowered kills. Once you start facing enemies in the overworld, the first one to attack can be decided depending on the angle that the enemy was approached with: sneak up on an enemy from behind and a green swirl will display, which means that you get to attack first; if an enemy sneaks behind you, you'll see a red swirl and they will attack first instead. Otherwise, a gray swirl will display, which follows conventional order according to your stats.

Part 4. "WE WANT MOTHER 3, REGGIE!"

...Mother 3 will never be released in America.

This may be too dramatic of an opinion to have but I see no other alternative. For the most of fourteen years, Nintendo of America's head honcho Reggie Fils-Aime was requested to release and distribute the game in the americas, and for twenty years the request fell on deaf ears, citing commercial inviability, potential copyright infringment and many other reasons.

But I think the main reason that the game will never be localized is because Mother 3 was a passion project, pushed for by people with personal involvement in the series and very special sensitivities about it. Shigesato Itoi and Iwata were personal friends. The game appeals to japanese tastes and touches on issues and subjects that the American population is very politically sensitive to.

For example, in chapter 6 Lucas and the party experience a bad trip because they eat hallucinogenic mushrooms in a swamp. This leads to Lucas having visions of his family in a very bad light, with implications of violence and abuse, to try to get at the players' deepest sensitivities. Even the name of the real player is used here.

I think that it's impossible that nintendo will release a game which openly involves Hallucinogenics no matter its innocent exterior. This is the kind of subject in media that Japanese audiences usually handle better than American audiences.

Besides this, the game has very clear allusions to accelerated capitalism, anti-capitalism, colonization, slavery, transexuality and the changes and chaos they have brought onto the world, which is a tough subject to tackle in the Americas, which is still part of an ongoing, vicious culture war.

Particularly, I adore how the game even tries to convey its points through the Sound Test, of all places. Mother 3 has a collection of music pieces, which are available on demand within the game itself. Of those, there's a music piece which is a remix of Pollyanna, the Mother 1 theme, which is present throughout the series, in an nod to the previous games in the series. The hallway where this plays is full with mother references and it expects the player to sit down and watch passively all the references in order.

But this is meta, amazingly enough. The hallway is located in the final section of the game, before facing Porky, who is presented as the effigy of vicious capitalism in the game. As if he left them in his palace just as collectibles, things to be purchased or acquired.

The name of the song which plays during this sequence? "His Majesty's Memories". Subtle.

Nintendo is a company which tries to keep its image clean and sterile, so it can be used broadly for a variety of projects, usually with family friendly intent behind --and even more so in the US.

However, Nintendo has a history of risky bets with Mature content, which has become even more glaring lately: you got Eternal Darkness, Astral Chain, Bayonetta, No More Heroes, the disappointing Metroid Other M... this together with the fact that most of their target audience is of age now, could, at least remotely, mean that, perhaps, Mother 3 releasing in some manner in the future, localized in English, could happen: however, this is not happening at least the way I see it.

Once the game was released, there were several different campaigns online to try to gather Nintendo's attention: a 10k signature strong petition was completed among several other things, and if this hasn't lead to results... I don't know what will.

Part 5. "No Crying Until the End"

Mother 3 is a beautiful, engrossing and captivating game which is hidden away under a cutesy exterior. Its complex themes and characters are evoking of deep human truths which call out to us and ask us to reflect on things and the way we're living. Of strong pedigree in its series and with a superb musical production behind it and a mastermind of writing, MOTHER 3 excels at what it sets out to do.

When the game released, the game had a "Catch Copy" written for it by itoi himself, which called the game "Strange, Funny and Heartrending", and I think this is a beautiful way to bring everything full circle. Itoi wrote on the Advertisement that if you wanted to cry because of Mother 3, you should save it until the end. And those three words are a fantastic way to close off this review: if you want a game that will provide you with bizarre and laugh out loud moments one second and tear-jerkers the next, Mother 3 is the game for you.

And the game is just so poignant... to this date not only do I think it's one of the most expressive and well done pixel-art based game, I still find myself impresse at how much I can connect with the characters through small, cutesy sprites and pastel color pallettes, lack of Unreal engine and RTX graphics card be damned. Themes of grief, missing a loved one who's gone, the feeling of loss of identity due to accelerating social and economical change, how tyrannical political figures establish themselves and change communities, sexual and identity politics and how the modern world was to have shaky and voraginous sexual identities become commonplace... it's all there, and masterfully, tastefully expressed, without that icky feeling of "agenda"ism that you can get sometimes from Hollywood productions when they try to hamfist tropes and "messages" down people's throats. You know that feeling? I hate it when it happens in movies or shows I'm watching just to have a good time, and then I get some succint propaganda.

But MOTHER 3 is a kind beast, trying to reach to your heart and directly speak to the mind of the player. It tries to show us what it thinks of modernity and to make us seriously ponder what the frick is up with all of this shit, and thinking it has kept me for the last 14 years, and I anticipate another 20 ahead of me. And you can join me in reflecting about this...

Or maybe you can just go back to your happy box. Whichever way you choose.

#works #review #mother 3 #gba #game review #shigesato itoi

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ofmaeves · 5 years

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hey y’all!! my name’s hope and i’m from the est. i’m trash and depressed so bare with me lmao. this is my daughter maeve! i’m very excited to bring her in here. and if you’d like to plot with her pls like this or shoot me a message !!!

florence pugh. cisfemale. she/her. ／ maeve kelley just pulled up blasting soulmate by lizzo — that song is so them ! you know, for a twenty-three year old author, i’ve heard they’re really -sensitive, but that they make up for it by being so +compassionate. if i had to choose three things to describe them, i’d probably say ink stained hands, the smell of coffee, and silk sheets. here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble !

growing up

maeve was born to irish immigrants. her parents are wealthy in their own right, her father’s father is a famed chef and he followed in his footsteps. her mother is a world renowned oscar nominated actress. maeve is the middle of three children, all girls. each are about 2 years apart.

maeve was close with her sisters growing up, and the family bounced from city to city a bunch. her father was always opening up new restaurants and her mother was going back and forth for filming. the three young girls were either with one of the parents or with a nanny.

maeve was always the more artsy of her siblings. her older sister was following in their father’s footsteps, and her younger sister was drawn to sports. but maeve felt drawn towards neither of her parents careers, she was drawn to a pen and paper.

by the time she was ten she’d written her own children’s book. though it’s never been published, the original copy sits in her office in a shadow box along with letters from publisher’s she’s been sent.

maeve was constantly writing, which tended to get her in trouble. she would be writing when she should be paying attention in class, so her teachers often called her out on not paying attention. she’d be sent to the main office, only to be brought back to class because she did, in fact, understand what was going on in the classroom.

maeve wound up spending most of her time in the principal’s office as a kid because some of her teachers were mad how good her grades were when she clearly wasn’t paying attention. they thought the only way this could be happening was that she was cheating. which, she wasn’t.

eventually, her parents decided to pull maeve from school at the age of eleven and brought in someone to home school her because it was worth the effort.

in fact, this helped maeve and her sisters, since they decided that all the girls should be home schooled as it would help the family while they were moving around and they could really move around as more of a unified family.

maeve was struck with an idea when she was twelve and started writing a novel. she never thought it would get anywhere, but with the help of her tutor and talking it through--and the old family connections didn’t hurt--maeve was a published author at the age of fourteen.

rise to stardom

maeve’s book ( searching for something ) affectionately nicknamed by her ( a tail of being found ) was published by a big publishing house. and before she knew it, it rose to the new york times bestseller list. her small novel about mermaids and discovering your identity when you don’t know who you are skyrocketed to one of the best selling books of the year.

her publisher began pressuring maeve to write a sequel, and of course the girl didn’t want to say goodbye to the story. but she didn’t have a clear idea for what the new story would be. in the mean time, as she struggled to come up with an idea for her sequel, maeve wrote a short novella insert about one of the side characters. it quickly became a fan favorite, and people wanted more of the story.

finally, maeve knew what she wanted to write for the sequel, so she began writing.

by the time maeve was sixteen, the book was being auctioned for movie rights. she sold the rights on the condition that she would be involved in the process from beginning to end. maeve wanted people to love the movie as much as they loved the book, and she didn’t want hollywood to take over everything. she knew how easily that could happen.

maeve became a co-author of the script for the film and she was able to watch the audition tapes. maeve wanted to be proud of what happened, and though she was just sixteen, the filmmakers were easy to work with and respected her thoughts.

of course, not everything was able to work out. but maeve was there all the way to make sure things were as good as they could be.

the film came out on january 20th, two weeks before the sequel came out.

the spotlight dimmed

maeve had been in the spotlight due to her parents, but at the age of seventeen she was famous in her own right. she didn’t get that, since she was just an author. but she was stopped by people to sign copies of her books and to discuss if there would be another book.

it was scary for her, she’d never really experienced that herself, save for a couple of people who had used her to get to her parents when she was younger. and it was wild, she began to get anxious about going out into the world and put herself out there.

she cracked under the pressure, and began self destructing when she was seventeen.

her publishing firm dropped her after a scandal came out regarding her and a famous actor--pictures popped up all over the internet. and maeve, who had once been held as one of america’s sweethearts and someone to watch, was dropped cold.

maeve didn’t know how to handle this, so she went into hiding. she moved to boston and lived under a completely different name.

she fell in love and got herself back on track with her life and eventually wound up finding a small independent boston publishing house who took on her new book.

it was a quasi memoir, based on her own struggles but focused on a male protagonist. it was originally to be published under her fake name ( cecily james ) but at the end of it, maeve decided to use her own name for the new novel.

people were hesitant to read the book, after all of the scandal around her, but she was two years completely sober at that point and eventually people read it.

the book wasn’t as popular as her old fantasy and adventure stuff, but it was popular. people loved the fact that she got real and raw in the text. some reviews said that it was something akin to reading a personal journal throughout the novel’s pages. peppered with her own experiences and fictional scenarios, maeve was back in the spotlight.

so she moved away from boston after another year and began working on a new novel. except, there was something going on with her.

she was pregnant, and didn’t have any idea at the time.

a baby changes everything

maeve moved back to los angeles to be around her family, only finding out she was pregnant after arriving back there. she had already broken up with her ex and things hadn’t gone well, so she didn’t think showing back up or contacting him and telling him about the pregnancy would be such a good idea.

however, if you do the math, it’s pretty obvious who’s baby it is. but maeve has always been tight lipped about the baby.

she threw herself into her own work, focusing on coming up with a new idea. a new fantastical world, which she’s already published two books in this series. she’s not telling anyone when it ends, because she’s not entirely sure herself.

maeve wants to let the world she’s created guide her through its story, she doesn’t want to set any sort of idea for what may have happened.

maeve gave birth to a baby girl ( avery blake ) on october 15th. her daughter is currently going to be three years old this october.

it’s rumoured that there’s talks of her new book series being made into a movie, but she’s not legally allowed to say yet if it is ( it will be ).

random factoids

maeve always has a book with her. she likes to read whenever she’s in the middle of something.

she also always has a notebook and a pen with her, just in case inspiration strikes her.

she was the baby in a movie her mother was in because one day the baby didn’t show up, and maeve happened to be on set. it was the one time she acted, and she doesn’t remember it at all.

maeve loves movies, and can recite some of her favorites from heart.

on the other hand, she was never really a big tv watcher.

maeve’s favorite candy is twizzlers.

she can play the piano and guitar, and sometimes finds herself singing along to songs on the radio without ever really paying much attention to it.

has been sober since she was seventeen and a half.

#excess:intro #how long does it take one hope to write an intro? a long time and i'm still not entirely sure if this is all of maeve's story #lord it's long my b

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habitatforhufflepuffs · 6 years

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Opinions

If it isn’t obvious already, spoilers for Crimes of Grindelwald ahead. Also I apologize for how longwinded this is. I just started typing and before I knew it, I had a novel. Bare with me.

First off, I would just like to say that I absolutely loved the movie, like LOVED. I don’t think it’s possible for me to watch a movie that takes place in the wizarding world and not love it.

That being said, I had a few issues, minor ones though. I’ve been seeing a lot of reviews floating around where people are complaining about the fact that the entire movie felt like a set up for another sequel, whereas the first one felt like an actual standalone movie, but like, of course it did??? The first one set up the universe this franchise is going to take place in so obviously it’s a full story. The second one is now setting up the overarching plot that’s going to take place over the next four movies so like obviously a lot of it is going to be exposition of characters and isn’t going to conclude the storyline seeing as each movie isn’t taking place one a year like the HP movies did.

If I had one actual complaint, it would be that there was A LOT going on at once. Which like, I get it because there’s so many characters to introduce that are going to be important moving forward. It was just a lot of new characters introduced in a short period of time that needed backstories and explaining all at once. As well as, what, like four separate plots happening all at once that all merged together by the end of the movie? Which like yeah I get it, it was just a lot to follow. I did go on to read the screenplay of the movie that just came out, and it was a bit easier to follow than the actual movie, so I 10/10 would recommend reading that. Especially the scene where they’re in the Lestrange family mausoleum, and maybe it was just me but I found the screenplay a little easier to follow what was going on than the actual movie which is weird?? Maybe the movie will be easier second watch through.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the whole Credence is Leta Lestrange’s long lost brother?? Just kidding no he’s not?? But wait who is he then?? scene because like it was a lot to follow all at once trying to understand who the shit was related and how. Especially considering you’ve got 3 siblings from 3 different sets of parents & then you find out there’s a fourth child that was switched with one of them??? Which again, read the screenplay, it’s easier to follow when you can read full names and go at a slower pace and everything.

As for the plot twist/cliffhanger at the end, I’m very interested to see where that goes moving forward. I’ve seen many people that think Grindelwald was lying to Credence to gain his trust seeing as he was obviously lying in saying Dumbledore wanted him dead. But I don’t really think that’s the case. Solely because I can’t see them doing the whole “Credence is Leta Lestrange’s brother, psych,” thing only to then turn around and then go, “Credence is Albus Dumbledore’s brother, psych,” immediately following. It would just be kind of ridiculous to have Credence’s parentage revealed only for it to be a red herring twice.

I’ve also seen a lot of people trying to explain how it wasn’t possible for Credence to be Dumbledore’s brother. I will also say now that after a minimal amount of googling, it 100% is possible, if he’s his half brother only. In this movie (as confirmed by the screenplay), Credence was born in 1901 and was being transported to America in this year. We know Dumbledore’s mother died in 1899, and was killed by Ariana, therefore he can’t be her son. But it’s unknown what year his father died in, just that it was after 1890 in Azkaban. Now, obviously it’s kind of a weird thought but it’s 100% possible that somehow Dumbledore’s father Percival sired another child after he was imprisoned in Azkaban via another woman and that that child is Credence. How Grindelwald knows about this, I have no idea. Especially considering that not much time passes between FB1 and FB2, and he was in custody at MACUSA between the two movies. As well as how Credence ended up in America and Leta ended up back in Britain I’m not exactly sure. But it is completely possible.

That being said, a bunch of people have pointed out that how is it possible that Dumbledore had another brother that has somehow never been mentioned before now, even though HP takes place after FB obviously. If I had to guess, and it breaks my heart to say this, I’m assuming Credence doesn’t survive the FB franchise because if he died, and Aberforth didn’t know of his existence, then it would make sense why he’s never been mentioned. Dumbledore wasn’t exactly open about Ariana, so it would (plausibly) make sense that Credence was never mentioned. Kinda weird, but still plausible.

One thing I’ve seen EXCESSIVE amounts of complaining about is the McGonagall cameo. Which like, yeah I get it, it breaks canon. But there’s TONS of people that aren’t aware of McGonagall’s backstory seeing as it wasn’t in the HP books, and even if it were, there was a HELL of a lot of information from the books that never made it to the movies (I’m looking at you, Peeves). So like, just let it go and leave it be??? If you’re gonna be nitpicky about canon you could also argue that they made James & Lily way older than they should’ve been in the movies & technically McGonagall would’ve been 46 the night that they died, but in the movies when she’s at the Dursley’s with Dumbledore she looks WAY older than that. So like, just think of the Pottermore information as part of the book universe and the FB movies as part of the movie universe???

Also there was a lot of people I saw that were pissed off that they didn’t make it clear enough that Dumbledore was gay, and that were mad that the story didn’t put enough focus on his feelings toward Grindelwald, which I’m sorry I have to call complete bullshit on. This is only the second instalment of a five movie series and Dumbledore & Grindelwald didn’t even share any scenes together. What did you want?? Dumbledore to cover himself in glitter and strip of his shirt to reveal a tattoo that says I love Gellert???? The Mirror of Erised scene alone couldn’t have made it any clearer that Dumbledore is gay and was in love with Grindelwald. The look of pain on his face alone every time he said he couldn’t make a move against Grindelwald made it VERY CLEAR that there were feelings involved. Also, “we were more than brothers.” What the fuck else could that have meant???? They took a goddamn blood oath that they wouldn’t fight each other. There’s still three movies to go in delving further into their relationship, obviously we’re not going to get the whole story in the second movie. So to all of the people saying it wasn’t clear enough, fuck off.

As far as the movie as a whole, I LOVED IT. Even if it did have too many plot lines happening at once, I still absolutely loved it. The new characters they introduced were fantastic (I’m kind of in love with Theseus). The new creatures they introduced were FANTASTIC. (somebody buy me a kelpie, and also, BABY NIFFLERS!!!!!). Jude Law was an absolutely perfect Dumbledore. Even Johnny Depp as Grindelwald was super unsettling and did a great job. The opening sequence of Grindelwald breaking out of captivity with the Thestral carriage and the final sequence with Grindelwald’s blue magic against everyone else’s fire were phenomenal. And as much as some people didn’t like the ending, I personally love that Credence and Queenie ended up on Grindelwald’s side (and it makes complete sense why to me too) and I’m super excited to see where that goes from here on out. I loved that everyone lost someone in one way or another too. (Newt & Theseus lost Leta, and Jacob & Tina lost Queenie and Nagini lost Credence to Grindelwald) Everyone’s split on different sides and it definitely sets emotional stakes for everybody moving forward.

I loved how merciless Grindelwald was too & how powerful they made him. Like he’s chained up in prison and being transported by like twelve aurors and still manages to escape??? finds a baby in the house he took over??? who gives a shit, kill the baby??? he’s goddamn fighting off like ten fully trained wizards at once in the final sequence of the movie BY HIMSELF and is winning until the IMMORTAL BEING that’s 500+ years old shows up, and we’re only in the second movie of five. The final battle sequence in HP was a conclusion of 8 movies & Voldemort’s struggling to fight against one seventeen year old wizard that never even finished school??? Grindelwald is badass as hell. (also, a villain that vapes projections of the future, what more could u want??)

Also, the nostalgia that hit me like a fucking truck when they first panned over Hogwarts and Hedwig’s theme kicked in???? Also young Newt??? Also Leta Lestrange is sick as hell, and I’m not convinced she’s dead yet.

Basically I’m super into Theseus and Dumbledamn, and I need 2020 to come faster, right now. If anyone wants to scream with me, please shoot me an ask, I need someone to rant to. None of my friends share my excessive HP obsession. Also, I kind of want an entire movie of just Newt taking care of his creatures tbh.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#fb #the crimes of grindelwald #discourse

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schraubd · 6 years

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David's Personal Top Ten Video Games

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It is a personal list, reflecting the games that have stuck with me the most over the years. I'm not enough of a gamer to claim it is anything comprehensive, and it has a strong bias to the sorts of genres that I like. Nonetheless, I'd stack these games against any that have been made in my lifetime. Anyway, without further adieu ....

Honorable Mentions:

Portal 2: How can a game with virtually no “dialogue” (if that means conversations between two characters) have some of the best spoken lines in all video game history? I have both the original and a capella versions of the Turret Opera on my iTunes (yes, I have “Still Alive” as well).

Railroad Tycoon II: A brilliant simulator that makes you actually feel like a turn-of-the-century robber baron (by far, the game is most fun to play when set in the late 19th century). If every man goes through his “trains!” phase, this was mine. As in real life, I am not good at playing the stock market.

Horizon: Zero Dawn: Robot dinosaurs! Incredibly, Horizon: Zero Dawn takes a core concept that sounds like word association from an over-caffeinated twelve-year boy and makes an entirely serious game about it—and it works. It works so well, in fact, that I loved it despite the fact that the plot and entire world-building background centers around my single greatest phobia (no, not that—being alive for the extinction of humanity).

10. Sid Meier’s Gettysburg: I find it odd that very few games have sought to replicate Gettysburg’s spin on an RTS—focusing combat around regiments rather than individual units and prioritizing morale over raw numbers. But the thing I like best about Gettysburg—and sadly it’s mostly unique too—is in how it concentrates on controlling territory (and terrain). Many RTS games, for me, might as well have a blank screen over 80% of the map between my base and my opponent’s base. You build up your force, and then try to swarm your opponent before he or she swarms you. But in Gettysburg, the goal of missions is not “wipe out your opposition”. It’s to capture and hold a ridge, or dig in and hold an exposed farmhouse.

My only critiques are that I want this game to be bigger. I want it to encompass dozens of map spanning the entirety of the Civil War. I want to be able memorize even more obscure Union and Confederate generals and wonder if they really were “mediocre” or if that was just a game balance decision. The random battle generator is okay, but this game screams for user-created expansions which I’ve never been able to find.

9. Crimson Skies: A pulpy fun flight simulator taking place in an alternate history 1930s where America has fractured and Zeppelin travel rules the day. The game doesn’t hesitate to lean into its concept (phrases like “broad” and “floozy” abound), and it does a great job world-building in a relatively short period of time. Somehow, I could meet an enemy “ace” for the first time in the middle of a mission and yet still feel like we had a history of epic dogfights together of which this was only the latest. Meanwhile, each of the locations the game takes you to (Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, Hollywood, the Rocky Mountains, and New York City) are a blast and a half.

A sequel, High Road to Revenge, was released on Xbox and leaned a little too hard into the arcade-y elements (power-ups, automatic evasive maneuvers with the press of a button, and so on). But the original PC game was just right—planes flew exactly like how someone who knows nothing about planes thinks planes fly, which is just perfect. You felt like an ace pilot because of your skill (even though behind the hood the game is really holding your hand). Piloting a gyrocopter through half-built New York City skyscrapers, or a prototype single-engine through the Hollywood "O", is great. Doing it to evade local security, then doing a loop and turning both guns on them -- well, that's the cat's meow.

8. Mass Effect (Trilogy and Andromeda): As far as I’m concerned, the definitive space opera (even muscling out Halo). Fabulous voice acting (listening to Martin Sheen play evil Jed Bartlett is one of the great joys of my life) and memorable plot lines pair with a morality system that at least inches away from “basically decent person or utter asshole.” The universe feels genuinely alive, like there’s an ecosystem and civilization that you’re very much apart, but also moves in your absence.

I can’t really separate out the core trilogy games from one another (each sequel seemed to simultaneously step slightly forward and back), which is not I think an uncommon position. What may be more uncommon is that I think Andromeda stands right in there with the core series. Yes, it was disappointing that it took us to a brand new galaxy and only gave us two new species (while eliminating many of the more backgrounded Milky Way aliens). But I was much more disappointed that there will be no DLC or sequels to continue the story and tie up loose ends.

7. N and N++: There can’t be any serious controversy that N is the greatest Flash game ever made. While Flash demands simplicity, N is not so much simple as it is elegant. It is the perfect balance of speed and control, thoughtfulness and twitch-trigger reflexes, serene relaxation and butt-clenching tension. Once you master the floaty physics and the unique enemy styles, you will truly feel like a ninja—stripped to its core essence and deprived of all the usual but unnecessary bells and whistles. A virtually unlimited supply of levels guarantees you endless gameplay.

And so it is unsurprising that N was one of the rare flash games that made a successful jump to a full true game (in the form of N++), one that has a strong claim on being the greatest platformer ever made. The developers were wise not to disturb the basic formula: run, jump, and slide around a level, dodge obstacles and traps that will kill you instantly, reach the exit. Repeat ad infinitum. But N++ adds just a splash of additional flavors and spices into the mix. A perfect trip-trance soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly (and may single-handedly stave off keyboard-smashing frustration). A few new enemy types that deepen the game without ruining its austere grace. And perhaps most importantly, it adds a bunch of extra, semi-secret challenges (which can be used to unlock still more levels) waiting for the very best-of-best players.

Of all the games on this list, I might be in absolute terms “best” at N++ (there are a non-trivial number of levels in the game where I have a top 100 or even top 10 score on the global leaderboards). And yet there is not the slightest chance that I will ever perfect this game, or even come close to it. Nor is there any chance I will become permanently sick of it. A simple concept, executed brilliantly. The perfect N++ level is also the perfect description of the game.

6. Final Fantasy IX: The question was never whether a Final Fantasy game would make this list, only which one. I’ve long had a soft-spot for FFIX, which I feel is often overlooked inside the series (in part because even on release it seemed players were already looking ahead to the Playstation 2). Yet it’s hard to find fault in Final Fantasy IX as an emblem of a straight-forward JRPG. It has a moving story, fun gameplay, beautiful music, loads of quests to do and places to explore, a fabulous supporting cast (Vivi might be my favorite Final Fantasy character ever written), and a lead character you don’t want to punch (*cough* Final Fantasy X).

Final Fantasy IX is often described as “nostalgic”, and despite the fact that it was only the second game in the series I had ever played, I got that feeling instantly. Try listening to the soundtrack for “Frontier Village Dali” without feeling a little melancholic. You don’t even have to have played. But I recommend that you do.

For the record, my ranking of Final Fantasy games that I’ve played goes: IX, VII, XII, XV, X, XIII.

5. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: One difficulty in judging games within a series is how to compare an earlier game which still had some rough edges but represented a quantum leap forward versus a later game which didn’t do anything super-novel but tweaked the formula to perfection. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Now, for me, this is an easy call for idiosyncratic reasons—I played AC:B before AC II, and so I experienced the former as both the perfected model and the quantum leap forward as compared to the original game. But I respect that for those who played the series in order, this is a harder call.

What should be easy for anyone is to agree that together, Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood represented the AC series reaching its full potential. Ezio continues to be the best protagonist the series has seen to date. Renaissance Italy likewise is the ideal setting for both AC’s vertical and horizontal platforming elements and its shadowy-conspiracy/secret-history plotline. As a franchise, Assassin’s Creed really launched the parkour/open-world exploration genre, and Brotherhood was the first game where every single element of what that genre could be came together. Other more recent games have been tons of fun (Black Flag and Syndicate are I think highlights), but these two games are the reason this series is so iconic.

4. Might and Magic VI: The same problem posed by AC2 versus Brotherhood emerges with Might and Magic VI and VII—except here, I did play them in order. Like the previous entry, I do think that VII ultimately improves upon the formula set out in Might and Magic VI. It’s more versatile, has more replay value, a touch more balanced (and that’s not getting into ArcoMage) … all in all, probably a better technical game.

But Might and Magic VI is for me iconic—it may well be the first RPG I’ve ever truly loved (and given the way this list is stacked in that direction, that’s saying a lot). Virtually all the things that characterize what I love in games today, it had in at least skeletal form. Open world exploration? Check: It was the first game where I felt like I was a true pathfinder—meticulously crawling over every corner of the map to find each obscure bandit’s cave and goblin fortress. To this day I still have the lay of the land in Enroth basically memorized. Overly detailed worldbuilding text to read? Absolutely: my obsessive-streak came out in reading every single artifact description, conversational option, and quest backgrounder (it is canon that Enroth, and the entire planet it resides upon, was blown up in a magical explosion—a fact I’m still resentful towards 3DO for long after it disappeared into bankruptcy). Slight genre-bending? The splash of Sci-Fi onto the fantasy setting was delightful to discover for someone who had never played any of the prior entries in the series. And some of the music—well, the White Cap theme is a thing of beauty, and on my computer “Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ” is still listed as “Church Dungeon Music.”

3. Heroes of Might and Magic III: If comparing earlier, more revolutionary games against newer more polished ones presents a problem in the Assassin’s Creed and Might and Magic series, it presents no trouble at all in Heroes of Might & Magic. That’s because the third installation in the series both represented a huge jump forward from what came before and is unquestionably the best entry in the overall sequence.

Sure, some of the expansions are a bit goofy, but they still work—sharpshooters and enchanters are massively overpowered, but they’re generally used in missions that would otherwise be impossible. But the main campaign is fabulous—a surprisingly intricate and interwoven plot that bridges Might and Magic VI and VII compliments outstanding strategy gameplay. And that doesn’t even get into the acre of standalone maps provided, plus countless more available on the web thanks to a map editor so intuitive, even I can use it (I’m terrible with map editors).

As a result of all of this, Heroes III is maybe the only game on this list that can compete with N++ regarding infinite replayability. This is fortunate, because—given the fact that Heroes III was a full-budget release and was not supposed to be “simple”—it ages incredibly well. Even the graphics hold up (no need for that remastered remake—which doesn’t even include the expansions!).

2. Witcher III: As you may have noticed, this list has a strong bias towards RPGs. My preference is toward “Western” RPGs (which have a go-anywhere/do-anything exploration mentality) compared to “Japanese” RPGs (which are more linear and story-driven), but Witcher III does an incredible job of synthesizing the best of both. It has a huge open world to explore, one that feels alive and dynamic—but there is also an incredibly rich story filled with deep, well-written characters (of which Geralt—the player character—is but one).

Gameplay-wise, Witcher III really hits the perfect balance. I simultaneously felt like the biggest bad-ass in the room, but also like a single slip in concentration or bit of overconfidence and my corpse would unceremoniously end up at the bottom of whatever cave I was in. But Witcher III particularly stands out in how it subverts certain common RPG tropes. You are a hero, but you’re not particularly well-liked. You’re a powerful warrior, but you’re still ultimately treated as a pawn in larger political machinations. Your interventions do not always save the day, and sometimes don’t even make things better. If a mission starts with a villager worrying that their beloved has gone missing, nine times out of ten that person has been devoured by a monster well before you ever get there. While many games claim to place the hero in difficult moral dilemmas, Witcher III is a rare case of following through (some games might give you the choice to let a trio of witches eat a group of kids whom you recently played hide-and-seek with, but few make it so that might actually be the more moral of the options in front of you). There’s even a quest where you help a knight rescue a lady in distress from a curse, then lecture him that he’s not entitled to her romantic attention as a reward (talk about a timely intervention in the video game genre!). Over and over again, the game reinforces the message that being really powerful and doing “the right thing” isn’t enough to fix a fundamentally broken system.

Most impressive is the emotional impact that Witcher III dishes out. Sometimes this is a result of rich character development that pays off over the course of the entire game (as in “The Last Wish” quest). But sometimes it shows up in even relatively minor sidequests—the epilogue of the “Black Pearl” quest was one of the more brutal emotional gut-punches I’ve experienced in a video game. Ultimately, this was a game where one always felt like each character was a person—they were imperfect, they had their own interests, hopes, dreams, strengths and foibles, and while you were a little better with a sword and gifted with some preternatural abilities, you were still only one player in a much bigger narrative. As a result, Witcher III might well be, in my estimation, the perfect RPG.

Oh, and Gwent is ludicrously addictive. Let’s not forget that.

1. TIE Fighter: I don’t think this list has a particularly “modern” bias. Still, there’s something impressive about the number one game on this list also being the oldest by some measure. TIE Fighter originally came out in 1994, and the definitive Collector’s Edition was released in 1995. It is, to this day, one of the best games ever made. And that’s not a retrospective assessment. Star Wars: Tie Fighter holds up even played right now.

For starters, it is one of the few elements of the Star Wars universe to get the Empire right. I’m not saying that the Empire is the real protagonist of the series. I am saying that they wouldn’t view themselves as evil—as much as naming spacecraft “Executor” and “Death Star” might suggest otherwise. TIE Fighter is quite self-assured in presenting you as being a force for law and order in the galaxy, battling not just seditious rebels but pirates, smugglers, and other anarchic forces that threaten to tear civilized life apart.

Let’s start with something often overlooked in TIE Fighter: the music. It’s probably the only context that the phrase “kick-ass MIDI soundtrack” makes sense. But that’s not even the half of it. The iMuse system dynamically and seamlessly arranges the musical cues to reflect what’s going on around you in the mission—you can literally follow important mission updates (e.g., a wingman being shot down, or reinforcements arriving) simply by the way the melody shifts. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anything quite like it since. To this day, the number that accompanies an incoming enemy capital ship fills me with exhilarated dread.

Gameplay-wise, TIE Fighter is almost shockingly rich. The core mission requirements are challenging, but by no means out of reach. But embedded in each level are a series of secondary and secret bonus objectives. These unlock a parallel plot of the Emperor’s Secret Order—but always present a brutal risk/reward calculus. That’s not unrelated to the fact that you’re often flying, well, TIE fighters (not noted for their durability)—but the challenge extends well beyond physical peril. TIE Fighter actually gives you an “invincibility” option if you want it, and yet even with it on some of the later missions and bonus objectives will strain every piloting skill you’ve ever developed.

Most importantly, the secret objectives usually are more involved than “blow up everything in sight.” They reward initiative and exploration. Maybe your primary mission objective is to destroy a rebel space station. But just before it goes down, you spot an escape shuttle fleeing the station. Take it out? Maybe—but maybe the occupants are VIPs best taken alive. So you switch to ion cannons and disable it for capture. Yet that extra time you just spent has given the rebels enough breathing room to summon reinforcements—now an enemy cruiser is bearing down on you. Take out its missile launchers and clear path for bombers while praying that your own Star Destroyer will arrive soon to back you up. All on the fly. All while dogfighting starfighters, dodging mines, giving your wingmen orders … it’s insanely, beautifully chaotic.

Did I mention this is all happening in 1995? 90% of games released today don’t have that kind of depth or spontaneity. In terms of playability, replayability, and just plain fun, TIE Fighter stands alone, and unchallenged.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2HbDTEl

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another-chorus-girl · 7 years

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“Erik House” Chapter 8

It was Crawford's turn on the parlour's pipe organ. Since there had been previous disputes over the instrument constant use, they’d had to make up a scheduled allowance of sorts for its use.

His hands caressed the keys as music filled the room.

Kerik took a seat by Lewis and Warlow, watching the older Merik play.

"Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation. "Darkness wakes and stirs imagination, "Silently the senses, abandon their defenses. "Helpless to resist the notes I write, "For I compose the music of the night"

As Crawford sang aloud, Kerik raised a brow from beneath his mask. "I've heard you lot sing this a hundred times, why does his sound different?" Kerik asked

"This was an earlier version he wrote, no one else knows it." Warlow stated.

"Close your eyes, for your eyes will only tell the truth. "And the truth isn't what you want to see"

Crawford continued to sing.

"In the dark it is easy to-"

"AAH OHH!"

Crawford's hands faltered on the keys as the organ groaned in protest. Kerik and the other Merik's looked around for the source of the strange noise.

Crawford continued playing, seeming to ignore whatever had just happened.

"Close your eyes start a journey to a strange new world, "Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. "Close your eyes and let music set you fr-" But Crawford was interrupted yet again.

"Bathing beauty, "Take a look at....YOU!"

They heard the strange sound coming from above them.

"Sweet musics throne! What is THAT?!" Kerik asked.

The other two Meriks glanced uneasily at Crawford, whom they could see was clenching his fists.

"Bathing beauty, on the beach "Bathing beauty, say 'Hello!' "Whatta cutie! "Whatta peach! "Bathing beauty, watch her go!"

They heard it coming from the third floor.

Crawford stood, storming down toward the stairwell.

"Uh oh," Lewis vocalised turning to Warlow. "Go find Jones, NOW"

Kerik scratched his head, "I don't get it. I thought the only one he had a problem with was that talentless tenor Gerik."

Lewis shook his head, "Think about this: if you were the debuter of a show and years later another story comes and throws all of that character development you worked so hard on out the window for vaudeville trash how would you feel?"

Not waiting for a reply the Merik followed Warlow as he made a beeline for Jones room. Dragging Karimloo and Mauer along as well, they found Jones and hustled up to the third floor.

"Dots? Dots? DOTS? DOTS?! DOTS!"

Mr. Y had been sent a copy of the latest dress rehearsal for Phantasma's opening act back in America by Giry.

He mused Dots made much more sense than Checks.

Suddenly he heard a pounding on the door. Confused he stood opening the door to see Crawford fuming, the older Merik looked as though he were going to have an aneurysm.

"What seems to be the problem, monsieur?" Mr. Y asked cautiously. Gerik had already told him about the ambush this man and the others had established.

"The problem is whatever that insufferable caterwauling is!" Crawford scowled,

Mr. Y sighed, "Now I know what you're going to say-"

"Oh do you now? I've composed symphonies, let music consume me day and night, did the impossible and completed my masterpiece. And you have the gall to insinuate that years later THIS is what comes from the same composer that wrote 'Don Juan Triumphant?!'" Crawford ranted. Despite the height difference the Merik seemed to tower over the much taller man with his outrage. "

Fortunately the others were able to pull Crawford back before he could reach for the lasso and risk doing something rash.

Karimloo held Crawford back pinning his arms back.

"Unhand me this instant!" The older Merik demanded, it was rare to see him fuming so. Almost frightening even.

Jones attempted to calm his friend down, helping lead the Meriks out of the room. "Now now, there's no need for anymore violence-we’ve done enough of that in the past. Just calm yourself Crawford, remember your blood pressure-"

"TO HELL WITH MY BLOOD PRESSURE!"

Mr. Y then made a mental note to sound proof the room that day forward. --

The carriage pulled up to the house's main gate, a lone figure stepped out thanking the driver.

The man had been advised this was the right address to find the masked man. Having been told the door would be left unlocked, he turned the doorknob.

"Erik?" He called. "Erik, you're a poor host playing this game of hide and-AHHHHH!"

From upstairs the shriek could be heard even up on the third floor.

"Allah above! What nightmare have I been thrown into?!" The Persian man gaped, entering a parlour room finding not one but five masked men. While they're masks and appearances differed from Erik, they held a similar air of sophistication and dominance.

Carpenter and Gaines stared quizzically at the man.

"Who...is he exactly?" Gaines asked. “I feel like I should know him?”

Capenter shook his head, "I'm not sure. But I feel like we're missing something very important?"

Lerik stared blankly at Daroga, whom was babbling rather fast in Persian. This man seemed familiar.

"I know that language anywhere!" Trotting down the stairs Kerik made a beeline for the parlour. "Really! All this time I thought you were never going to-"

But the novelised man paused when he saw the dark skinned man.

"Wait, you're not Nadir. You sound like him, but somethings not the same." His yellow eyes looked the man up and down. Daroga shuddered inwardly as Kerik smirked. “Hmm”

"I say stop hounding him, all of you!" The others whipped their heads toward the sound of Erik's voice as he slowly trudged up the basement stairs.

"E-Erik?" Daroga said, marching over to the masked man. "It...It is you right?"

Erik swatted Daroga's hand away as he rolled his golden eyes.

"Of course it's me you great booby!" The full masked man said as if it were obvious. "Now come along! I need you to take a look at something."

Following him down the stairs, the Persian man hesitantly glanced back at the others whom stared right back as he went down to the basement floor.

"I still want to know who he is!" Gaines blurted out. -- Kerik felt Ayesha rub up against his leg mewing up at him as he played.

"It's my turn," Warlow noted to the novelized man.

"I'm almost finished, don't get your bowtie in a twist," Kerik teased

"You said you were almost finished ten minutes ago!"

Reading the Epoque with one leg crossed over the other, Panaro sat with Soot peacefully curled up in front of him.

As Ayesha continued mewing, the labradoodle's head perked up. The dog stood and trotted over to Ayesha in curiosity. he Siamese stared up at the new, giant, fluffy presence. Soot was massive in comparison, but Ayesha did not scare easy and the labradoodle was no threat.

"Hey," Kerik picked Ayesha up, noticing the dog as well. "Leave my little lady alone."

Panaro turned his head, "Oi, my dog wouldn't hurt a hair on your cat. Let him be."

Soot sat watching the cat with wide, dark eyes. He scooted closer, sniffing her face.

Ayesha didn't seem to like her personal space invaded and reached out. Neither Kerik or Panaro could suppress a chuckle watching a five pound Siamese boop a large labradoodle playfully on the nose.

Several miles away, the Daroga heaved a sigh leaning over the table.

"So there were six of him?" Nadir asked,

He nodded as the other Persian man shuddered.

"Lord, one is difficult enough." Nadir shook his head, reflecting back on Kerik's outragous antics.

Ledoux silently nodded, agreeing with the other two men, Lerik could be quite the handful despite the man not uttering a word.

"Another round gentlemen?" The bartender asked. Everytime the three Persian men got together here, it seemed to be under stressful circumstances. He wondered often what troubled these men so. Perhaps it was family related.

"It's on me tonight," Nadir declared, "I feel somewhat responsible for not warning you prior to your visit."

Ledoux made a series of hand gestures and leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped together.

"He apologises as well," Nadir explained.

The three men raised a glass.

"To a maskless Erik free evening," Daroga toasted.

"Here here," Nadir agreed, Ledoux remaining silent but clinking his glass with a curt nod.

On the other side of the pub, the Persian men failed to notice Destler glancing in their direction quizzically.

"Another monsieur?" The lady asked, breaking Destler's concentration as she took his empty glass.

Shrugging his shoulders and turning back to his latest composition Destler nodded.

"Please," He answered, continuing his work.

-The version of “Music of the Night” Crawford sings is from the promo video for the musical back in 1986. As far as I’m aware there arn’t many Phantoms that have sung this version, or at least I haven’t heard any.

-Crawford’s hatred of LND is slight Actor Allusion as it stems from an interview Michael did a few years ago. While he didn’t directly say he hated the sequel when asked he didn’t seem to like the idea of Phantom continuing when the ending was just fine the way it was.

-The Dots and Checks remark is due to the OLC recording of LND has Meg wearing a checkered bathing suit at the finale of “Bathing Beauty” whereas the Australian version (and the version my Mr. Y comes from) used dots.

-Michael Crawford stands at 5′10 wheras Ben Lewis stands at a whopping 6′2 (many of the popular Phantoms are fairly tall, Crawford is an exception and Wilkinson at 5′8)

-Yes Daroga (Leroux), Nadir (Kay), and Inspector Ledoux (1925 film) are three seperate men as the Eriks and Christines are separate.

#Erik house AU #PotO #phantom #erik #Erikcest #phandom #Daroga #LND #love never dies

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ramajmedia · 5 years

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Will Smith’s 10 Best Movies, According To IMDb | ScreenRant

Often called the most charismatic actor working Hollywood today, Will Smith is one of the last of a breed of movie stars who can do it all. His career as an actor was never something that Smith took lightly and, much like comparable superstar Tom Cruise, he built his roles carefully. The result has been a long career at the top, with far more hits than misses. His movies appear to only get better, and more beloved, the older he becomes. Smith provides one of the best qualities a star can possess: the impression that their best work is always still ahead of them.

RELATED: 10 Best Spielberg Movies Ever, According To IMDb

Here’s Will Smith’s top ten highest rated movies on IMDb right now.

10 Men In Black 3 (6.8)

Will Smith’s last appearance, so far, in the long-lasting media franchise that he helped to forge was the most expensive of the series but also the highest grossing.

It would be easy to think that appreciation was a gimme for the beloved Men in Black series, especially for a movie that was seen as a comeback after the disappointment of the previous movie a decade prior. But Men in Black 3 genuinely remembers the aspects that made the original movie work so well and reconfigures them to feel new and exciting for an audience fifteen years down the road from that initial success.

9 Bad Boys (6.9)

The debut of Michael Bay as an action director, and Will Smith as an action star, would change both men’s careers and the face of Hollywood forever. The buddy cop comedy with Martin Lawrence was big, loud and stylized beyond reason. It was a perfect vehicle for a world that didn’t yet know Smith as a leading man in movies and still associated him with his musical persona, popularized by The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. (Which was still going at that time.)

RELATED: Will Smith's 10 Most Memorable Characters, Ranked

Bay and Smith would reteam eight years later for the similarly beloved sequel, with the belated third installment slated for a 2020 release.

8 Independence Day (7)

Released less than two months after the final episode of Smith’s defining TV hit The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the monster success of Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi spectacle secured Smith as not just a bankable action star in major Hollywood movies but an actor with a whole new career lying ahead of him beyond the Fresh Prince persona and the world of music.

Independence Day also, crucially, demonstrated Smith’s abilities as a team player. The movie was by no means all about him but he was still able to shine while playing one member of an ensemble and one half of his buddy pairing with Jeff Goldblum’s character.

7 Concussion (7.1)

It may seem odd for an actor so closely associated with action blockbusters, but Will Smith’s most popular movies seem to be his smaller dramatic roles. Even when, like Concussion, they’re largely unloved by critics and the box office, relatively speaking.

RELATED: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 5 Best & 5 Worst Episodes, According To IMDb

Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu in the movie, a Nigerian-American physician credited with the discovery and exposure of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in professional American football players and its resulting health issues. The movie chronicles both Omalu’s struggle for acceptance and respect as a Nigerian in America and his clash with the NFL over his research.

6 I, Robot (7.1)

With the possible exception of the next movie on our list, 2004’s I, Robot is the most unashamed star vehicle for Smith as a leading action hero in his IMDb top ten.

RELATED: 14 Sci-Fi Movies With 0% On Rotten Tomatoes (And 6 With 100%)

Its connections to the collection of Isaac Asimov stories from which it takes its name is tenuous, at best, and the movie contains wall-to-wall product placements but it’s hard to feel unsatisfied when you’ve seen Will Smith blowing away robots with a machine gun. Part whodunnit, part cyberpunk epic, I, Robot is relentless in its goal to entertain the audience by any means necessary.

5 I Am Legend (7.2)

The third movie adaptation of Richard Matheson’s seminal post-apocalypse novel of the same name had been cooking for over a decade before it made it to the big screen, with Smith originally being attached to star in an earlier production, directed by Michael Bay, that inevitably fell through. (If you think that sounds weird, wait until you hear about the one before from Ridley Scott and Arnold Schwarzenegger.) It certainly wasn’t without its problems, demonstrated quite well by its two completely different endings, but the idea of spending a few hours alone with Will Smith in New York was clearly too good of an offer to pass up for audiences.

RELATED: Kevin Smith's Movies, Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes

I Am Legend’s continual script problems mattered a lot less when it became obvious that Smith could improvise his own dialogue, or just say nothing at all, and still be hugely compelling.

4 Enemy Of The State (7.3)

Tony Scott’s paranoid thriller sees Smith play a successful lawyer who becomes embroiled in the coverup of a government assassination via a random encounter with an old acquaintance. It sounds like the perfect set up for a classical thriller but Enemy of the State is far more new school than old school and it’s because of this that it still strikes a chord today.

For all the outdated technology that plagued most 90s movies, Enemy of the State was one of the decade’s many action thrillers that were remarkably ahead of their time. In 1998, the movie depicted the NSA engaging in surveillance practices that would be vehemently denied until Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing in 2013. Today, they’re generally accepted as fact.

3 Men In Black (7.3)

Loosely based on a comic series from the early 90s, Barry Sonnenfeld’s sci-fi action buddy comedy spawned a verifiable media franchise that’s lasted up until today with sequels and a spinoff. The original movie was another demonstration of Smith’s power as a team player. He stole the movie by himself without it being structured all around him.

RELATED: The 10 Most Bizarre Weapons In Sci-Fi Movies, Ranked

The overall strength of the cast, coupled with Danny Elfman’s hugely memorable score and Rick Baker’s Oscar winning special effects, cemented Smith as an actor who was more interested in being recognized for good movies than just recognized as a movie star.

2 Seven Pounds (7.6)

Another example of a critically-unloved small-scale drama from the lower half of Smith’s box office rankings that has only grown in popularity since its release, even potentially becoming identifiable as a cult movie.

Seven Pounds is a small-scale emotional drama that’s gained popularity and interest over the years since its release almost certainly because how unusual it is for a Will Smith movie and because of its more mysterious attributes. With key information being revealed slowly throughout the course of the movie, leading to a shocking conclusion.

1 The Pursuit Of Happyness (8)

It’s not difficult to see why Smith’s portrayal of real-life entrepreneur Chris Gardiner during a time of great financial struggle and homelessness has resonated with so many since its debut in 2006. The performance would earn Smith his second Oscar nomination and prove a huge hit at the box office on release but the message of determination in the face of overwhelming hardship has only grown more relatable over time.

The Pursuit of Happyness would also mark a significant change in Smith’s onscreen star persona as he became no longer the only Smith on screen. His son, Jaden, making his debut in the movie.

NEXT: 20 Interesting Facts About Will Smith And Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Marriage

source https://screenrant.com/will-smith-movies-imdb-best/

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daleisgreat · 5 years

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30 Years of Genesis: Going 30 Years Playing No More Than 30 Minutes of Sonic

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Sega Genesis in North America. I had such a nostalgia trip reliving my memories of the GameBoy while crafting my recent GameBoy 30th Anniversary piece, that it only seemed fitting that Sega’s iconic 16-bit platform gets the same honors of recounting my memories with it. If you are looking for a more authoritative historical piece on it I recommend either Phoenix IV or Console Wars. The former is a strictly informative recounting of the history of the system while the latter is an entertaining retelling done in the form of a novel after days of interviews with everyone involved. The following are my own personal experiences of playing the Genesis over the past three decades.

I remember first encountering the Genesis while spending either Thanksgiving or Christmas 1991 over at my older sister and brother-in-law’s house. I was only eight at the time, and remember being perplexed at the black gaming box and the thought that there could somehow be other systems than the good ‘ol NES. I did not subscribe to any gaming magazines at this point and I think I was still about a year away from experiencing Sega’s deluge of combative commercials against the SNES. During that holiday season of ’91 I recalled playing the first Streets of Rage on the Genesis with my little brother nonstop the couple days we were there. I remember being blown away by how superior it was graphically to what I experienced with other NES brawlers before like Double Dragon. We only got up to the stage where we faced off against the dueling karate sisters who kept whooping us and neither my brother nor I had the skills at the time to get past. The next year or two the only times I recall playing the Genesis were at my sister’s for the holidays or the occasional store kiosk. I remember my brother-in-law picked up other games we played regularly like ToeJam & Earl, Buster Douglas Boxing, Toxic Crusaders and PGA Tour Golf. I dug all of them, especially ToeJam & Earl where I had no idea what was happening half the time with its unorthodox level structure and item pick-ups, but loving the co-op gameplay, stylish graphics and its funky beats at the time. Brief memories of store kiosk play from the early 90s consisted of being horrible at the original Sonic the Hedgehog because it was too fast for my childhood noggin’ to comprehend. I also recall being confused at early editions of Madden Football at store kiosks because when I would press buttons to hike the ball ‘Audible’ would appear on screen and then eight or nine-year old Dale had no idea what that meant compared to easier pick up and play NES pigskin games I was conditioned to.

Until Christmas of 1995 I probably played no more than about 10 Genesis games all together. I was more aware of the system by that time thanks to reading magazines more regularly at that point and hearing from classmates who had the system, but until that point I was pretty loyal to my NES still (I did not get a SNES until late ’96). For the Christmas season of ’95 my best friend at the time who coincidentally lived three blocks away from me, Rich, received a Genesis and that was when I got a lot more hands-on time with its extensive library of titles. Rich and I shared a lot of similar game interests which at that time was a ton of sports games, fighters and action/brawlers. For the next several months I was over at Rich’s for countless sleepovers and going nuts with fighters like Mortal Kombat II and Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal Boxing. Real Deal Boxing blew away Buster Douglas Boxing with more authentic boxing gameplay and an insanely thorough career mode where we would take a created boxer and move him up the ranks as champion until his skills gradually weakened with age to force his retirement. We absolutely ate up the sports games at that time. We played what seemed like an infinite amount of Madden NFL ‘97. A much wiser 13-year old Dale was no longer befuddled by the intricacies of Madden and we had so much fun with it. We would create many players to deck out our teams and keep running blitzes to try and injure the players because there was an intense bone-breaking injury sound effect that we ate up. It was like the equivalent of Favreau and Vaughn going nuts in Swingers when they made Gretzky bleed in NHLPA ‘93.

Mutant League Football was another favorite of ours that made that injury sound effect in Madden child’s play. EA also made MLF and it was the equivalent of NFL Blitz at the time with larger-than-life mutants and animals literally killing each other on the field with over-the-top hits. It was possible to force a team to retire due to killing off too many of its players which was always our desired objective! If you have not played its spiritual successor follow-up, Mutant Football League on PS4/XB1 I give it the highest of recommendations because it perfectly capture the sensation of the Genesis game while bringing it up to contemporary standards. We also played a lot of EA’s violent driving game, Road Rash II. Being able to race motorcycles and knock out your competition with chains and nightclubs while trying to evade the cops seemed revolutionary when playing it for the first time! We later discovered EA’s take of Road Rash on rollerblades in the awesome rollerblade stunt/racing game Skitchin’! Fun fact about Skitchin’ is that the competitors you race against have gnarly nicknames like ‘Thrasher’ and ‘Jackal’ and thus in ’96 was the origin of how I came up with what wound up as my online handle but at the time was my radical Skitchin’ username, ‘Gruel’ to blend in with the rest of the pack and have stuck with it all these years later!

After spending several months devouring a good dozen or so Genesis games with Rich, it did not compare to the summer of ’96 when Rich signed up for the Sega Channel! I remember it launched in 1994 and seeing commercials for it at the time where it seemed too good to be true where for about $15/month would net the user a Genesis cartridge that would connect to a cable line and get the Genesis online streaming access to a rotating 40-50 Genesis games a month. That is right, decades before services like OnLive and Playstation Now, the Genesis did streaming gaming back in ’94 and it worked like a charm! Check out this pristine archival footage of the menus to see how it all worked. Sega Channel essentially was what Xbox Game Pass is today, and I am surprised to hear how little it is discussed when people reminisce about the Genesis. We discovered so many new games this way and for that entire summer I was over at Rich’s about three to four days a week binging on Sega Channel games until Rich’s dad got on my case because I was over so often. I remember discovering new sports games on there like the innocuously titled Super Volleyball that we became somehow addicted to and the surprisingly awesome Tiny Toons ACME All-Stars that had its own killer spin on arcade basketball and soccer that it played like NBA Jam but filled with crazy Tiny Toons power-up attacks. Sega Channel is what additionally exposed me to co-op games like General Chaos, the Streets of Rage sequels and Gain Ground and classic single player games like Shadowrun, Comix Zone and Vectorman that Rich and I took turns trying to keep progressing through. Sega Channel also was my first exposure to the classic Bomberman franchise with many nail-biting rounds played of Mega Bomberman! It came as no surprise to me when I finally bought a Genesis a few years later in 1999 that the first games I hunted down for it were those same games I first discovered on the Sega Channel! In April of 1999 shortly after I turned 16 I got my first after-school job and after a few paychecks I went to Wal-Mart to determine what should be one of the first games to buy on my own! This was around the time when Majesco re-released the third, mini-sized Genesis model at a discount price of around $30. I was legit stunned at that price for a brand new system, even if it was for a ten-year old platform at that time I could not help but instantly snatched it up!

If you read my GameBoy special from several weeks back you will recall my lamenting over its lackluster wrestling games compared to the superior ones on the 16-bit platforms. On Genesis, Rich and I played way too much Royal Rumble on the system. Other wrestling games I picked up for the Genesis over the years was the inferior predecessor to Royal Rumble in Super Wrestlemania. While I had a blast with Rumble way back when, it regrettably does not hold up well all these years later with its over-reliance on a button mashing grapple meter that obliterated thumbs that I have no idea how I tolerated at the time. Saturday Night Slam Masters was a unique wrestling game from Capcom. It is essentially Street Fighter II in a wrestling ring, complete with victory taunts, Mike Haggar from Final Fight in its roster and even has a few wrestling moves sprinkled in! I loved how they had over-the-top laser light entrances and larger-than-life character sprites at the time, and I recall enjoying the Genesis version more than the SNES. There was nothing else like it since, and on occasion I will still throw it in every couple of years. I continue to hope one day Capcom will release its sequel, Ring of Destruction in a random collection of arcade games because it never got a home port all these years later.

Sports games ruled on the Genesis! Pictured from clockwise at top left is Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing, NHLPA '93, Super Volleyball and Tiny Toon ACME All-Stars I mentioned some of my favorite sports games for the system above, but it really needs to be emphasized how big sports games were on the Genesis. Both Sega and EA pumped out a seemingly endless line of sports titles for the system. I remember getting into silly speculation with Rich over how much extra memory that yellow tab on the EA carts allowed EA games to play better. For hoops titles I got my NBA Jam and Live fix on SNES, but on the ‘ol Genny my go-to basketball games were the oft-forgotten NCAA skinned version of Jam in College Hoops. I occasionally also threw in the hand-me-down street ball version of NBA Jam in Barkley Shut up Jam. I loved Madden, but Sega’s Joe Montana line of gridiron games were just a notch or two below too. For baseball, Sega’s World Series Baseball titles were in a league of its own when it came to gameplay and presentation with its larger-than-life hitter/batter perspective. For hockey EA’s NHL line was/is legendary! About four or five years ago my friend Derek gave me a ring to come over for some impromptu random gaming and he never played much Genesis before so when he got over I had the Genesis hooked up and laid out all my games for it and of that night we had the most fun playing a few rounds of NHL ‘94. At that point it was a 20-21 year old game and it still held up as one of the best hockey games of all time.

For brawlers I loved the Streets of Rage games, but I think it is my secret shame that I have yet to complete a single one. That must one day change! I did love the exclusive Genesis TMNT game, Hyperstone Heist! It was right up there with Turtles in Time and every couple of years my friend Matt and I make it a ritual to plow through that game. After many attempts we also conquered the Genesis port of the awesome arcade brawler, The Punisher! It does not have as friendly of a continue system as Hyperstone Heist so Matt and I had to learn to play a little more conservatively and not rely on mindless button mashing. It felt gratifying to have all that hard work pay off and beat The Punisher….until we got a copout ending screen of text saying ‘Now play like the Punisher and try hard difficulty.’ We did not, but I wound up looking up the ending several years later and at least Capcom made it worth your while because it had a far more intricate ending than many other brawlers at the time. The one Genesis brawler that always had our number was Captain America and the Avengers. It is a lot of fun to play, but it does not allow that many credits and by setting ourselves up with the max lives and continues that game was still a beast, and even playing conservatively and having so many attempts we only managed to make it to the final boss, The Red Skull, only once. Let us fast track to about a little under 10 years ago when a co-worker approached me about being interested in buying his Genesis/Sega CD/32X along with a couple dozen games. He was saving up to pay off his upcoming wedding and he gave me a list of everything he had along with prices for everything he wanted going by what he saw off eBay auctions. I did some price researching of my own and made him an offer of around $250-ish for the ‘tower of power’ and about 20 games combined for all three systems. Looking back I accidentally lucked out with that offer because it was only a couple years later when 8/16-bit prices on the used market took a huge jump. I never had a must-have desire for a Sega CD or 32X, but there were always a couple of games I wanted to play on them that I eventually hunted down. I liked the versions of WWF RAW, Doom, Virtua Racer and especially Virtual Fighter the most out of my dozen 32X games. I recall as a then 10 and 11 year old being disgusted by early polygonal console games like Star Fox and Virtua Racer and was more on board with FMV games being the future, but remember being a little taken aback by Virtua Fighter indicating that there may be something to these 3D polygons. The 32X version is a surprisingly faithful version to its arcade counterpart.

I need to dive into my SegaCD games more one of these months. I hunted down all the must own titles for it like the Working Design RPGs, Shining Force CD, enhanced versions of Amazing Spider-Man and Batman Returns and Snatcher which I hope to one day knock off my gaming bucket list. Regrettably now my only SegaCD games I invested a decent amount of time into are WWF Rage in the Cage (essentially Super Wrestlemania but with some FMVs and a bigger roster), Slam City with Scottie Pippen (a abysmal FMV-based street hoops title) and the underrated SegaCD exclusive brawler, Prime. I am a huge Ultraverse comic nut and I ate up Prime on SegaCD since it was the only game released featuring characters from that comic book line before Marvel acquired them and cancelled all their books within a couple years (yes, I am still bitter over it). It is only one player, but Matt and I spent a few attempts taking turns at beating levels until we finally vanquished it. We even had an attempt thwarted when Prime was loading the final boss battle when a flipping blackout halted our progress! As memorable as that moment is I will instead forever associate Prime with its unrivaled and unforgettable opening theme music (seriously….give it a listen!). I need to give a shoutout to the official handheld Genesis, aka the Nomad! My brother surprised the hell out of me one year with it for a birthday present. My favorite Nomad memory is my brother getting hyped for getting his own version of Genesis Shadowrun and I told him I would come over and bring my Nomad and my version while he played on his television and we could both start off our own new game and exchange tips and hints in a friendly rivalry type of way. I think my brother must have gotten the Genesis version of Shadowrun mixed up with the completely differently designed SNES version because he tried to run around aimlessly and gun down everything which is not how you want to play the Genesis version. We were planning that day out for weeks and I remember being stunned after about 15 minutes when I was starting to sink my teeth back into Shadowrun’s cyberpunk action-RPG brand of awesome when my brother out of nowhere went ‘screw this, let’s play something else!’

As I wind down I want to give many thanks to Sega for keeping the Genesis relevant throughout this century with its gratuitous re-releases of physical and digital collections. I have no idea why, but I keep on buying them for the convenience of having them for the latest system. It started with the Sega Smash Pack on DreamCast seeming like a killer value in 2001 for 12 games for $40. Then a few years later on PS2 I snatched up Sega Genesis Collection which seemed like an even better value with just over 30 games for $30! Then in the 360/PS3 era along came Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection which offered 40 games for $30!! Sega also sold a lot of the games ala carte via each console’s digital storefronts. Then last year we got Sega Genesis Classics on Xbox One/PS4 with 50 games for $30!!! The last several years Sega also has been licensing out to At Games to release their own pre-programmed Genesis mini console with dozens of pre-installed games. I held off on getting those after hearing how awful its emulation and shoddy production quality is, but after hearing how Sega finally decided to manufacture their own Genesis Mini themselves this fall and handed off the emulation duties to the acclaimed emulation studio M2, I could not pre-order fast enough! I have no idea why I keep deep diving down this well, but hats off to Sega for keeping me coming back again and again! Similarly with my GameBoy flashback piece, I had an unorthodox experience with the Genesis. I was not a hardcore Sonic or Phantasy Star player like the average Genesis owner. If you ask me any day of the week my answer to what my favorite Genesis game is, it could be either The Punisher, Madden NFL ‘97, Shadowrun, Hyperstone Heist, NHL ‘94 or Skitchin’. That is another thing that made the Genesis great was its mammoth library of diverse titles so there was no doubt something for everyone! With that I will put the kibosh on this look back of my favorite moments with the Genesis as I anxiously await for my pre-order of the Genesis Mini to arrive in a few months! Want more Genesis Love from me in Audio and quasi-video form? I was looking through my hard drive archives and a decade ago while I was still doing my videogame podcast, On Tap, we did a special 20th anniversary special on the Genesis where my co-hosts and I reminisce about the Genesis. I went ahead and uploaded it on YouTube so if you want even more Genesis takes then click here to give it a listen! Also recorded throughout 2009 from the On Tap archives was installments from our history of comic book videogames series. In this next episode I uploaded to YouTube is the second part of series where we breakdown every single comic book licensed game on the SNES and Genesis! My co-host Matt and I did thorough research for this episode and played almost nearly every single comic book game from this era in preparation for the episode to give the most up to date research and to see if these games (of which a vast majority are beat-em-ups) still hold up. Click here to give it a listen! My Other Gaming Flashbacks GameBoy 30th Anniversary

#videogames #genesis #Sega #mega drive #punisher #madden #nhl 94 #skitchin #shadowrun #teenage mutant ninja turtles #hyperstone heist #captain america and the avengers #evander holyfield #world series baseball #prime #tiny toons #streets of rage #toejam and earl

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10oclockdot · 8 years

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The Appendies, 2016

Since I enjoyed doing it so much last year (here), I thought I’d come up with some extra categories to append to Oscars again this year. Here they are, the Appendies for award year 2016:

Second-Best Picture (best mainstream narrative not nominated for Best Pic) American Honey Silence 20th Century Women Jackie Nocturnal Animals Kubo and the Two Strings Hail, Caesar! Toni Erdmann Elle

Best Unique or Artistic Production (this is a category which the Oscars awarded only once, to Murnau’s Sunrise, and it needs brought back) Toni Erdmann The Lobster The Fits Swiss Army Man The Handmaiden Christine / Kate Plays Christine [nominated as a diptych] A Bigger Splash

Worst Snub (awarded to the worst omission in any Oscar category besides best picture. Your additions are very welcome here.) Weiner and Cameraperson not being nominated for Best Documentary Love & Friendship getting no credit for its screenplay Isabelle Huppert not being nominated twice for Best Actress (Things to Come) (but hey, if that's not allowed, we should still find room for Annette Bening (20th Century Women)) No best original song nom for that one from Sing Street? Directing, writing, and acting nominations for Toni Erdmann Production design for High-Rise

Timeliest Movie The Purge: Election Year Denial Weiner Hell or High Water I, Daniel Blake I Am Not Your Negro (special recognition for the Tom Hanks "Black Jeopardy" sketch on SNL)

It was a good year for comedy, so why not Best Comedy? The Edge of Seventeen Hail, Caesar! Hunt for the Wilderpeople Toni Erdmann Weiner Don't Think Twice Love & Friendship Swiss Army Man Sausage Party

Best Scene or Moment (I accept that I could’ve nominated a slew of different ones here; I welcome your suggestions) Kevin and Chiron on the beach in the moonlight in Moonlight The final long scene of La La Land Leaping from one gravity to another in Arrival The long flashback with Albinoni's Adagio in Manchester by the Sea The cut from Doris Day to the lynching photos in I Am Not Your Negro The deconstruction of the Lawrence O’Donnell interview in Weiner The meltdown and the falling snowpack in Cameraperson The God debate in Hail, Caesar! The silence of Auschwitz in Denial

Best Line (ditto previous category) "If you must blink, do it now." in Kubo and the Two Strings "In moonlight, black boys look blue." in Moonlight "You get to see him out in the world, as a person. I never will." in 20th Century Women "A long time ago your ancestors was the Indians, until someone came along and killed them, and broke 'em down made you into one of them. A hundred and fifty years ago all this was my ancestors' land. Everything you could see, everything you saw yesterday. Until the grandparents of these folks took it. And now it's been taken from them. 'Cept it ain't no army doin' it, it's those sons of bitches right there. [*points at Texas Midlands Bank*]." in Hell or High Water "I'm just the back-up." in Manchester by the Sea "Abbott is death process." in Arrival "How are you going to be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist? You’re holding onto the past, but jazz is about the future." in La La Land (the film's only good line, since it's the only line that diagnoses the film's pathological nostalgia and points out the menacingly ahistorical atavism of denying jazz its politics and insisting it return to a hermetically-sealed moment of “purity”) Most any of James Baldwin’s words in I Am Not Your Negro, including: “White people are astounded by Birmingham, black people aren’t. They are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars.” or “No other country in the world has been so fat and so sleek and so safe and so happy and so irresponsible and so dead.” or “I don’t know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions.” or “You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves.” or “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America. It is not a pretty story.” I can’t choose just one from Hidden Figures either. Your call.

Best Picture Ten Years Ago (a chance to look back and get it right this time) Children of Men The Departed The Lives of Others Flags of Our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima [nominated as a diptych] The Host United 93 Volver The Cats of Mirikitani [I'm going to champion this one until I die, probably]

(We could also do Best Unique or Artistic Production 10 years ago: Pan's Labyrinth, The Fall, Borat, Paprika, Taxidermia)

Biggest Disappointment (not the Razzie for Worst Picture, just a movie that should’ve been good or great (by some standard) but failed to be) Passengers Loving Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Snowden The Birth of a Nation The Girl on the Train Miss Sloane The Man Who Knew Infinity

Best Style High-Rise The Handmaiden A Bigger Splash Nocturnal Animals Arrival Sunset Song

Best Casting (aka Best Ensemble Cast) Don't Think Twice Manchester by the Sea Hidden Figures 20th Century Women Sing Star Trek Beyond?

The possibility for further categories is nearly limitless. Like: Best Sequel, Remake, or Re-Imagining Best Compilation Soundtrack (a category which the Oscars have long needed, in order to honor films like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, or the better work of Tarantino or Scorsese, or anything Randall Poster worked on), Best Shot (which would probably go to one of the long takes in La La Land), Best Cameo (it’s like supporting actor, but even smaller, for stuff like Ben Stiller's walk-on in Don't Think Twice or even Donald Trump's line in Weiner), Best Object (like those teeth in Toni Erdmann or the police novel in Neruda) Best Physical Performance, Best Gesture, Best Ending, Weirdest Picture, Best Genre Picture, Most Surprising Role, Worst Nomination (recognizing the least deserving nominee out of all the Oscar nominations, like La La Land's screenplay)...

And so on. Use these for commercial-break filler at your Oscar party? Enjoy!

#appendies #academy awards #academy award #oscar #oscars

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roverwater · 8 years

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What I read: Stars Like Cold Fire

I first entered science fiction through the Heinlein portal and owe my love of of space adventure to those early books. Author Brent Nichols nails the feel of those stories in Stars Like Cold Fire, his latest book on Bundoran Press. An effortless, compelling read from a prolific new Calgary writer, it deserves its place on your bookshelf beside your favourite classics.

Laid-back and friendly as all get-out, possessed of a dry, deadly-bulls-eye-accurate wit that doesn’t come through in email exchanges, Brent is worth seeking out at any writer/book events he may be attending. Until you can, read this. Brent was kind enough to tell us a bit about Stars Like Cold Fire.

• This is classic old-school space sci-fi. Did you make a conscious decision to write that kind of book, or did it just spill out naturally? And in terms of your own literary influences, where did this come from?

I didn’t really have a particular style in mind as a goal when I started writing Stars Like Cold Fire. I grew up reading Robert Heinlein and similar authors; I always loved adventure stories set in outer space. When the seed of an idea came along, that was the soil in my brain where it grew. I wasn’t aiming for old-school, I was just showing my roots.

• In the future you depict, China has a history as one of the original space superpowers. You took some time to map out how some culture from Earth as we know it today still exists in life among the stars. Tell us a bit about the thought process behind that.

Much of the science fiction I grew up with was written by white American guys, and it reflected their point of view. I grew up in the Seventies and Eighties, reading stuff that was written in the Fifties and Sixties, and in those days not many people were really challenging ethnocentrism. It felt perfectly natural to assume that North American culture would dominate humanity’s future.

Cultures rise and fall, though. When I try to imagine the galaxy in four or five hundred years, assuming we’ve managed to reach the stars, I can’t assume that white Anglophones will always lead the way. I don’t know what the future holds, but it won’t be a straightforward extrapolation of mid-twentieth-century North America projected forward.

I can easily imagine a future where China has played a major role in the exploration and colonization of space, so I brought that into the book. I wanted to explore issues of discrimination and reverse discrimination, to explore the evolution of racism, and to do it without an assumption that white people will always be at the top of the power structure. I think racism will be with us for a long time, but I don’t think it will look the same as it does now.

• You do a great job of setting up conflict for Jeff Yi, from a variety of angles. Tell us about that from a story-building perspective.

When the premise of the story occurred to me, it happily included all kinds of built-in conflict, which made things easy for me as a writer. I knew that I wanted conflict on two main levels, namely the big external conflict of interstellar war and the personal, human-level, largely social and emotional conflict of an officer with a crew that resents him. The beautiful thing about war stories is that they inherently contain both kinds of conflict. Soldiers face all the practical challenges and danger of combat, and they face the interpersonal challenges of working as part of a team under stressful conditions.

On a half-unconscious level I sifted through a lot of the stuff that my ten-year-old self thought was cool in novels and in episodes of Star Trek and I went looking for organic ways to fit it all in. Ship-to-ship combat. Man-to-man combat in the corridors. The prolonged, quiet tension of an inexperienced officer stuck with a resentful crew. An assassination attempt. Courtroom drama. Space elves who can kill you with their minds. Identical twin Russian stripper assassins. I never found a way to fit in the space elves or the stripper assassins, but the rest of it is in there, and it all feels like it belongs.

• Among other things that you need in this kind of novel, you power your spacecraft with the Rasmussen Drive. Give us a little insight into setting up the science of this novel.

Modern science tells us that faster-than-light travel is inherently impossible, which gives a kind of carte blanche to a science fiction writer. No one can point at an author’s FTL engine and say, “That’s not how REAL faster-than-light engines work!” I think of Rasmussen engines as plot-powered. How do they work? They work as I need them to work.

I didn’t want to deal with the limitations of sub-light travel, and I didn’t want the hassle of things like time dilation. My characters don’t age more slowly as they travel, which is something that happens as you approach light speed. Since the Rasmussen Drive is faster than light, it’s immune to the phenomena of sublight physics.

Good space opera contains technology that’s a bit hand-wavy. Warp bubbles, hyperspace, wormholes, that sort of thing. Rasmussen engines are part of that tradition. They put the ship into N-Space, where it can travel at many times the speed of light. I didn’t want instantaneous travel, because I wanted my characters to be stuck together on a small ship for a long journey. A Rasmussen drive lets you cross several light years in a day, because that’s what suited my plot.

• You’re working on sequel to this for Bundoran Press. What can we expect?

By the end of Stars Like Cold Fire Jeff Yi is still on a fascist hit list, so the same pressures that led the admiralty to give him command of a guppy are still in place. Jeff will get a new ship, just about as small as the last one, and a (mostly) new crew. His nation is at war, so he’ll have a dangerous new mission.

As far as personal journeys go, I want to respect the fact that he’s gained in wisdom and experience and acquired some hard-won confidence as an officer. I won’t have him repeat that arc. Instead he’s going to face new challenges, new stresses, with a new crew, as he goes deep behind enemy lines.

• What else are you working on? Is most of what you write in this vein, or do you explore other kinds of fiction at all?

Currently I’m working on the sequel to Stars Like Cold Fire, tentatively titled The Light of a Distant Sun. Look for it in independent bookstores in September 2017, or at When Words Collide.

Lately I’ve focused my attention on military science fiction. I’ve just completed a self-published trilogy called The Hive Invasion, under the pen name Jake Elwood. I’m happy to say the trilogy is doing really well right now on Amazon. I’ve written science fiction in a few sub-genres, and some sword and sorcery as well as some steampunk. My successes have all come from military science fiction or space opera, though, so that’s where I’ll be focusing for the next little while.

Go here to find this book and learn about Brent:

Jake Elwood’s author website: JakeElwoodWriter.com

Books by Jake Elwood on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jake-Elwood/e/B012QJVUWE/

Stars Like Cold Fire at Bundoran Press:

http://www.bundoranpress.com/product/1/Stars-Like-Cold-Fire

http://www.bundoranpress.com/product/3/Stars-Like-Cold-Fire-(ebook)

Stars Like Cold Fire on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQQBPKE/

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Sakura Wars Interview – Revitalizing a Legendary Series and Localizing For The West

July 10, 2020 1:32 PM EST

DualShockers spoke with the Sakura Wars team at Sega, discussing the creation of this modern PS4 entry, the western localization process, and much more.

Sakura Wars. Sakura Taisen. These words bring forth many feelings for quite a number of people both in and outside Japan. The mix of Japanese Adventure games, Dating Sim, Steampunk, Theater, Mecha, Fantasy and much more has changed anyone who has met its path. Whether you’ve actually experienced the franchise yourself, or only gazed at it from afar, it’s one of the most iconic series Japanese pop-culture has to offer. It’s never too late to try out the series either, and the newest entry on PS4, Sakura Wars, demonstrates this perfectly.

Three months after the game’s launch in the west, DualShockers had the opportunity to speak with the Sakura Wars development team at Sega: Localization Producer Andrew Davis, Director of Sakura Wars Tetsuya Ootsubo, and Jacob Nahin, Senior Communications Manager.

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars on PS4 brings in a new cast of characters and takes place over ten years after the latest game. These are all big changes story-wise. Could you tell us more on the choices behind this decision?

Tetsuya Ootsubo, Director of Sakura Wars: A hallmark of the Sakura Wars series is that each new entry shows the passage of time since the previous ones, so one of our ironclad requirements was that any sequel would take place in the same timeline after the events of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love.

Then, once we had settled on the idea of a soft reboot with (nearly) all-new main characters and cast, it made sense to let a bit of time elapse since So Long, My Love, so that players could seamlessly absorb the world without the need for any particular preconceptions or knowledge of the old games. At the same time, by keeping Sumire Kanzaki as a major character, we hoped to delight longtime fans and establish a firm connection to the older titles.

Iyane Agossah: What kind of struggles did you encounter when striving to make this entry fit for both newcomers and longtime fans? We would love to hear one specific anecdote in that regard, such as which new character was the hardest to create in order to please both sides.

Tetsuya Ootsubo: For this game, we enlisted a variety of artists to contribute to the character designs. The challenge was to maintain each creator’s individual quirks while still achieving a unified look for the game world. To that end, we asked animator Masashi Kudo to create the 3D character models based on the 2D concept designs.

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars on PS4, like past games, do not include extensive RPG elements such as money and shops, equipment and skill trees. Did you ever think about adding these kinds of RPG elements in the series?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: The key concept behind the Sakura Wars series is fostering communication between the characters and becoming stronger through the bonds that you forge as a result of that communication. Thus, our intent is for players to focus primarily on how they’re interacting with the other members of the troupe and enjoy the sense of being the captain of a team.

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars on PS4 ended up not receiving an English dub for its localization. Could you tell us more on the reasons behind this decision?

Andrew Davis, Localization Producer: Andrew Davis, Localization Producer: For every title we bring out in the West, we have to assess beforehand what scope will be possible from a business standpoint. Obviously, if it’s a well-established series, we can be more confident that sales will justify a larger localization budget, but in the case of Sakura Wars, we were starting with the barest foothold in the West. Since we had to make sure every dollar counted, we considered our options carefully and determined that the best use of our resources would be to expand our text language options and forgo English voiceover for this game. Because of this, we were able to offer text alongside the English in Spanish, French, and German.

As a series grows its fanbase, the possibilities broaden as well. It took a while for the Yakuza series to really find its audience in the West, but with the success we’ve seen in the past few years, we were able to start producing English VO for recent games from that team, like Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise and Judgment. I would certainly love to see a similar arc for Sakura Wars!

Iyane Agossah: The localization of Sakura Wars focuses on adapting Japanese terms such as honorifics instead of keeping them in the script. Could you tell us more on this decision?

Andrew Davis: That’s a good question! Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong. As a localization team, we always discuss this and other questions of style at the beginning of a project to establish what will fit best with each game. For some franchises like Persona or Yakuza, set among complex power structures in a modern-day Japan, it’s been useful to apply honorifics like -san, -senpai, -chan, or -sensei, as once players get over the hurdle of figuring out how they’re used, they can pick up contextual clues regarding who has authority over whom.

We did consider this for Sakura Wars as well, since of course it’s set in Tokyo. That said, given all the demons, steampunk, airships, and libromancy, we also knew this still have many elements of a period fantasy story. Additionally, the character relationships were pretty straightforward, so it didn’t seem like honorifics would add a lot of information that wasn’t already clear from the context. Ultimately, it seemed to fit the narrative best to localize into naturalistic English and sidestep some of the more explicitly Japanese details. So, for instance, I’m sure some players noticed that in the Japanese VO Sakura often calls Seijuro “Sei nii-san”, signifying that he’s an older male close friend from back when they were little kids. We opted to render this as simply “Seijuro”, the way a native English speaker would approach it.

Iyane Agossah: In Japan, this new entry is titled Shin Sakura Taisen. Could you explain why you decided to go for a simpler title in the West? Hypothetically speaking, if the first game gets localized later on, could it earn a subtitle, such as Sakura Wars: Origins ?

Andrew Davis: Heh, this was actually a very lengthy discussion! In Japan, of course, the original series (and its spinoffs) flew under the Sakura Taisen banner, and since this new game was meant to be a soft reboot to bring in both old and new fans, SEGA of Japan settled on Shin (New) Sakura Taisen to signify a fresh start.

We considered many options, such as “Shin Sakura Wars” (but “Shin” doesn’t signify much if you don’t know Japanese), “New Sakura Wars” (but it’s a bit unwieldy in English), “Sakura Wars: [various subtitles having to do with romance]” (but that doesn’t communicate that this is a new starting point accessible to all players, and as we played more of the final game we grew to understand that the romance aspects were only one part of the experience)…

Ultimately, since the Western footprint for the old series was so thin, we decided to present it with the simple, catchy title Sakura Wars, even as we acknowledge that this could foster confusion when talking about the older series. As for your other question, it’s still too early to say whether we’ll have a chance to revisit any of the older games and give them their first Western releases, but yes! I would imagine we would have to consider adding a subtitle for any official rerelease of the first game, if only to distinguish it from the PS4 game.

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars The Animation aired in Japan and is simulcasted in the West. Can we expect more adaptations related to Sakura Wars on PS4 to be localized? Such as the manga and novel adaptations.

Andrew Davis: I’d certainly love to see more Sakura Wars media make it to the West! However, SEGA of America generally only handles video game publishing, so an interested party would need to reach out to the appropriate licensor in Japan.

Iyane Agossah: As Sega previously mentioned the wish to bring more games to PC, could we expect Sakura Wars to get ported to PC via Steam or Epic Games Store? What about other consoles such as Xbox and Switch?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: We certainly want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy the Sakura Wars series. We’re actively researching where the most demand exists for the games and weighing what steps we can take to make other options a reality.

Iyane Agossah: In the past, the very first Sakura Wars game had a spinoff game released on Game Boy. The series also had a puzzle game spinoff series based on Columns. Would you be interested in developing similar spinoff games for this new entry?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: We’re focused right now on getting as many people as possible to play the new Sakura Wars game. However, we would love the chance to work on a spinoff title for people who want to explore the world more and engage with the characters they like.

Iyane Agossah: Seeing Sakura Wars on PS4 has several bonus costumes and soundtrack DLCs, could we expect more DLC in the future? And would it be in the form of additional costumes, or could we get new story content?

Jacob Nahin, Senior Communications Manager: We have a costume / planned release of loungewear planned for release sometime around the fourth of July.

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars as a series has a small presence in the West thanks to the old anime adaptations and the localization of Sakura Wars V on Wii. And now, Sakura Wars on PS4 is a new page of the history of the franchise in the West. Could you share with us your impressions regarding the recent reception of Sakura Wars on PS4, and the series as a whole, in the West?

Andrew Davis: We’re really thrilled by the public and critical reception! It’s great that we can finally make a significant push into the West and let more fans discover the unique, comforting atmosphere of Sakura Wars as a series. People have responded really well to the art style, the personalities of the cast, the musical score, and the quirky blue-skies setting.

In fact, we’ve been analyzing and digesting the critical reviews (as we do regularly for all our titles), and one sentiment that’s come up over and over, even in the otherwise negative reviews, is how utterly charming the whole game is. I collected quote after quote talking about how the game feels “cozy”, it has “tons of heart”, and “it’s hard not to fall in love with everyone you meet”. I think we all need a dose of comfort amidst the pain and chaos of 2020, and I’m planning to report to the dev team that Western players appreciate Sakura Wars being the home of good vibes.

Iyane Agossah: Seeing Sakura Wars on PS4 was localized only a few months after its Japanese release, can we expect possible future entries to be localized as swiftly?

Andrew Davis: While it can be a challenge sometimes to start on localization while the game is still in development and parts of the script are in flux, we also know it’s friendlier to fans (and often better for the game’s success!) when we’re able to bring out a game in the West as close as possible to the Japanese release date. Scheduling for any future titles will depend on the individual circumstances, especially given the disruptions hitting many sectors of the game industry worldwide, but we’d certainly like to get our localized editions out as quickly as we can!

Iyane Agossah: The majority of the games in the series are still Japan-exclusive. Could they be localized in some way, in order to make the series better known in the West?

Andrew Davis: The old games are beloved classics in Japan, and if possible, we’d love the chance to revisit them and allow Western fans a chance to discover what made them special. We don’t have any specific plans at the moment, but fingers crossed!

Iyane Agossah: Sakura Wars as a series has few but dedicated fans in the West, and is particularly popular in Asian countries such as South Korean and China. Both countries had their own mobile Sakura Wars games as well. However, certain themes depicted in the Sakura Wars series, such as the Taisho Era and the military themes, can be controversial in the West, South Korea and China. Do you have some comments to share in that regard?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: What makes the world of Sakura Wars so special is the blend of steampunk aesthetic with certain aspects of the real-life Taisho Era of Japan, a time when the traditional culture of Japan was starting to mix with cultural influences imported from the West. We would never condone anything that would harm someone in the enjoyment of this milieu, and during development, we took extra caution to consult with people of all the regions we planned to release the game in, in an effort to avoid ethical missteps.

Iyane Agossah: Sales-wise, did Sakura Wars on PS4 meet your expectations in Japan? In Asia? In the West?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: We first would like to extend our warmest thanks to everyone who has bought the game. We’re continuing to coordinate with teams in each of our sales regions to work on expanding the user base.

Iyane Agossah: Many fans who played Sakura Wars on PS4 mentioned they’d like the game to be fully voiced. Have you considered releasing an enhanced version of the game or DLC adding full voice acting?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: We’ve heard similar requests on our end as well. Currently we don’t have any specific plans for this kind of addition, but we are giving these ideas some consideration.

Iyane Agossah: While Sakura Wars on PS4 marks a new beginning with a new cast of characters, many fans would like to see the old cast again. Did you consider the option to bring back the old cast in some way? Like a non-canon spinoff, where the old and new cast would crossover?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: Indeed, the old characters still exist in the world of PS4 Sakura Wars, and not just Sumire Kanzaki. We understand that longtime fans have a great deal of attachment to the old cast, and we would very much like to bring them back for all the fans in some form or another.

Iyane Agossah: How would you feel about featuring Sakura Wars in console crossover titles, such as a console entry in the Super Robot Wars series?

Tetsuya Ootsubo: We do love to see Sakura Wars characters make appearances in crossover titles. Here in Japan, they have turned up in a number of collaborations already, and if we have the opportunity in the future, we would be thrilled to include them in additional tie-in/crossover games.

Iyane Agossah: Do you have a message you’d like to share with the Western fans of the Sakura Wars franchise?　

Tetsuya Ootsubo: Up until now, the Sakura Wars series hasn’t had much of an active presence in the West. And yet, despite that, there are still dedicated fans all across the globe, which is why we’re thrilled that we could deliver a localized version of the newest game to these fans. This game is a proper sequel set in the same chronology as the previous games, but even if it’s your first exposure to the series, we think you’ll have a really fun time, especially if you have any interest in Japanese anime culture, or even if you merely had your curiosity piqued by the unique, exciting period setting of Taisho-era Japan.

Sakura Wars is currently available on PS4. You can read our thoughts on the game through our review and our latest coverage. I would like to thank once again Tetsuya Ootsubo, Jacob Nahin, and Andrew Davis for answering our questions, along with Jordan and all the Sega PR team.

July 10, 2020 1:32 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/sakura-wars-interview-revitalizing-a-legendary-series-and-localizing-for-the-west/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sakura-wars-interview-revitalizing-a-legendary-series-and-localizing-for-the-west

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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What Dick Tracy 2 Would Have Been

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The character of Dick Tracy has been around since 1931, appearing daily in newspaper comic strips almost continuously since his debut, and achieving a level of popularity during his heyday that few other characters could aspire to. In just his first 20 years of existence, there were four Dick Tracy movie serials, four feature films, a TV series, and countless items of merchandise.

But many modern fans know the character best thanks to his portrayal by Warren Beatty in 1990’s big budget summer blockbuster movie. That film attempted to kick off a wave of Tracymania unseen since the 1940s. It never quite took hold.

Despite being one of the highest grossing movies of 1990, and garnering a slew of Oscar nominations, Dick Tracy was a victim of expectations. The film that had once been envisioned as a gritty ode to 1930s gangster movies became a giant blockbuster with a merchandising bonanza meant to rival the previous summer’s Batman. Despite that onslaught of publicity, the movie didn’t instill enough faith in Disney executives to move forward with a franchise.

But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plans for a sequel at one point. Dick Tracy screenwriters Jack Epps, Jr. and Jim Cash did have ideas for what Dick Tracy 2 could have been. While no script was written, Epps had some ideas, and he recently told us all about them.

“I met with Warren,” Epps says. “I had an idea of of how to do Dick Tracy 2, which was a big jump in time like the strip. What [Dick Tracy creator] Chester Gould did as you read through it, he has big jumps in time and he mirrors the culture, he deals with the war, he deals with the ‘50s, he deals with the ‘60s.”

The sequel would have seen a roughly ten year jump in time, featured an older Junior, and put Tracy in the midst of World War II.

“The sequel [would have been] something around munitions and war secrets,” Epps says “I probably would have gone to factories, because I was always amazed at how America turned into this armament industry. We had no weapons manufacturers before the war began, and by the end, we were a juggernaut, turning out planes in two, three days and things like that.”

To be clear, there were no plans to put Warren Beatty in uniform and send Tracy overseas to join the war effort on the frontlines. Dick Tracy 2 would have been strictly a domestic wartime affair.

“We probably would have dealt with some of that imagery of [manufacturing] plants, the size of [the war effort], and airplanes,” he says. “Not going over to Europe or anything like that, but trying to do it at home, more spy and espionage.”

Unfortunately, the villain who would have best fit the bill for Dick Tracy 2 was killed in the first few moments of the original movie.

“We blew a lot of the villains in the opening scene of Dick Tracy,” Epps acknowledges. “I know the Brow was in there, otherwise, it would have been the Brow. We just would’ve gone to Gould, because his work was so good.”

Movies

Dick Tracy: The Long Journey of the 1990 Blockbuster

By Mike Cecchini

In the original Dick Tracy comic strip, the Brow was a Nazi spy operating in the United States by the name of Alfred Brau. The Brow first appeared in the June 13, 1944 strip, at the height of the US involvement in World War II. He aided and abetted the enemy via spying and sabotage for the next three months of the series before meeting his end on Sept. 24, 1944…by being impaled on an American flagpole.

Putting Tracy in a wartime setting and defending the homefront was exactly what Max Allan Collins did when he wrote one of two sequel novels to the film: Dick Tracy Goes to War, in 1991. But that was merely a coincidence.

“We’d never had any conversations with [Collins],” Epps says. “I did have a conversation with Chester Gould at one time, but no. When you’re doing a project, we’re hired to do it, so we’re not going to reach out to other people…you get all sorts of issues with ideas and rights and all that sort of stuff, so you’ve got to be very careful about that. But Chester Gould wrote Dick Tracy as dealing with spies, and the Brow was the big spy guy in the series. So my interest in that as a potential sequel was based on the series, which I had read.”

Not only was there no sequel, but Tracy has since been strangely absent from screen adaptations of any kind. Among other things, a live action TV series with none other than Bruce Campbell in the title role was vetoed as rights issues to the character between Warren Beatty and Tribune remain murky.

But inevitably, the most famous cop in all of fiction will find his way to the screen again. The question is how would he be received in our current moment as American society reevaluates communities’ relationship with policing. It’s a challenge that anyone hoping to revive Tracy for a modern audience will have to face.

Movies

Why Dick Tracy 2 Never Happened

By Mike Cecchini

“There’s a lot of issues raised about how police are being depicted and not looking at a nuanced picture of them. Police in the movies are always right and never wrong.” Epps says. “So I think an evolution of the character that reflects the times we’re in, the times that we’re hopefully moving forward to. It’s just a matter of how is Tracy part of our world today? We have to take a new view of him in terms of culturally how we’re going to deal with him. That becomes a problem maybe in terms of doing a detective story from the past right now, unless you’re going to actually put it in historical context.”

Epps does offer this advice to anyone trying to tell new stories with the character.

“I think the biggest question is who is he now? What does he do? And what does he represent in this day and age? Who is Dick Tracy of these times right now? And what does that mean? So much of Tracy was just his relationships and also it was cutting edge, because that was part of what Chester Gould was dealing with. So is that still part of Dick Tracy today? It asks a lot of questions that have to be answered.”

As far as we know, there are no live action Dick Tracy projects in development, but hopefully the next time the detective hits the screen, some of these questions will be addressed.

The post What Dick Tracy 2 Would Have Been appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thecosydragon · 5 years

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My latest blog post from the cosy dragon: Guest Post: Andrew Joyce on ‘Self-Promotion, Self-Confidence & Reflection’

Self-Promotion, Self-Confidence & Reflection

I want to welcome back today author Andrew Joyce. We’ve worked together extensively in the past, including two interviews (2015 & 2016), a spotlight and another guest post! I’ve asked him to talk a bit about his history in terms of promoting his novels and staying true to his own writing self.

My name is Andrew Joyce and I write books for a living. Rosemarie has been kind enough to allow me a little space on her blog to promote my new book, Mahoney. She thought it might be interesting to any new writers out there if I talked about my journey in general and the publishing business in particular.

I sold one of my first short stories and it was published in an anthology of short fiction entitled The Best of 2011. Since then I have written seven books. Several have become best-sellers on Amazon and two went on to win awards in their genres.

My first book, Yellow Hair, was a 164,000-word historical novel. And in the publishing world, anything over 80,000 words for a first-time author is heresy. Or so I was told time and time again when I approached an agent for representation. After two years of research and writing and a year of trying to secure the services of an agent, I got angry. To be told that my efforts were meaningless was somewhat demoralizing, to say the least. I mean, those rejections were coming from people who had never even read my book.

“So you want an 80,000-word novel?” I said to no one in particular, unless you count my dog, because he was the only one around at the time. Consequently, I decided to show them City Slickers that I could write an 80,000-word novel!

I had just finished reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for the third time, and I started thinking about what ever happened to those boys, Tom and Huck. They must have grown up, but then what? So I sat down at my computer and banged out Redemption: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in two months. I had them as adults in the Old West. Then I sent out query letters to literary agents.

A few weeks later, the chairman of one of the biggest agencies in the country emailed me. He loved the story and suggested a few changes. They were good suggestions, and I incorporated some of them into the book. We signed a contract and it was off to the races, or so I thought. But then the real fun began: the serious editing. Seven months later, I gave birth to Huck and Tom as adults. The book went on to reach #1 status in its category on Amazon (twice) and won the Editor’s Choice Award for Best Western of 2013. And just for the record, the final word count was 79,914.

My readers really enjoyed the book. So I ended up writing two sequels, one of which reached #5 in its category on Amazon. Then I turned my attention to my first novel, the one I couldn’t sell to an agent. I whittled it down from 164,000 words to 132,000 and published it myself. It won Book of the Year from one outfit and Best Historical Fiction of 2016 from another.

Okay, now that I’ve conveyed my bona fides, I think I’ll tell you what I’ve learned along the way. It might help you with your writing career or it might not. I hope it does.

The first piece of advice I received from a fellow writer (while I was writing my first novel) was that the process of writing is what’s important. Not the dreams of becoming a best-selling author. Not the certainty that Hollywood would come a-knocking on my door, begging me to let them turn my book into a movie. No, what is important, according to my friend, is the act of creating.

Of course, I did not believe him. I was going to be the next Stephen King, and I was already (figuratively speaking) picking out a tuxedo to wear to the Academy Awards. I was not going to self-publish. I was going to get an agent and get published by one of the Big Five Publishing Houses.

I did everything I had to do. I spent ten hours a day, seven days a week sitting at my computer, writing. When the book was finished, I spent ten hours a day sending out query letters to agents. When the book was rejected because of word count, I wrote another, shorter novel. When it was accepted and published, I spent ten hours a day sending out emails (over 3,000) to book bloggers (each addressed to the blogger by name, and that takes a lot of work) requesting an opportunity to write a Guest Post for the purpose of marketing my book. Then writing the Guest Posts took up another serious chunk of time. To date, I’ve written well over three hundred Guest Posts (another of which can be found right here on The Cosy Dragon). At first, the rate of return was not much. But once I worked with a blogger, they were more apt to respond positively when I came to them for help in marketing my next book.

Side note: Even Stephen King has to market his own books. He puts aside $200,000 of his own money to buy advertising for each book he writes.

Now, ten years later, this is what I can tell you: My friend was right, plain and simple.

My agent and I have since gone our separate ways. His client roster included some of the most famous authors in the world who, combined, sell millions of books a month. Understandably, he was more focused on them than me, so I set out on my own.

I love writing. I used to hate editing, but now I like it. And I really hate marketing. This kind of marketing is okay because I’m writing. Before I wrote my latest novel, I came to a decision. I was going to write Mahoney for myself. I had a story I wanted to tell and I wanted to tell it in my own way. I didn’t care if the book sold or not. It’s a long story (171,000 words). I was told time and time again that I should make it into a trilogy. But that’s not what I wanted. I ended up doing it my way and it worked out pretty well.

This post has gone on a little bit longer than expected. So, I better wrap it up. Here’s my advice for all you new or aspiring writers:

Sit down at your computer and write. Let the words flow. You have to have the fire in the belly. Turn off the TV. Better yet, throw it out the window.

Write for yourself. Enjoy the process.

If you want, try to get an agent. But do your homework. Learn how to write a killer query letter. And never approach an agent until your book is finished and 110% edited!!!

There’s a lot to be said for self-publishing. Here’s an article you should check out.

Read, read, and then read some more. Read everything you can get your hands on! Reading to a writer is as medical school is to a doctor, as physical training is to an athlete … as breathing is to life.

NEVER, EVER RESPOND TO A NEGATIVE REVIEW. Do so at your own risk.

That’s about it. Good luck in your endeavors.

Andrew Joyce August, 2019 Gloucester, Massachusetts

About the Author

Andrew Joyce left home at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. He wouldn’t return from his journey until years later when he decided to become a writer. Joyce has written seven books. His first novel, Redemption: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, was awarded the Editors’ Choice Award for Best Western of 2013. A subsequent novel, Yellow Hair, received the Book of the Year award from Just Reviews and Best Historical Fiction of 2016 from Colleen’s Book Reviews.

Mahoney

In this compelling, richly researched novel, author Andrew Joyce tells a riveting story of adventure, endurance, and hope as the Mahoney clan fights to gain a foothold in America.

In the second year of an Gorta Mhór—the Great Famine—nineteen-year-old Devin Mahoney lies on the dirt floor of his small, dark cabin. He has not eaten in five days. His only hope of survival is to get to America, the land of milk and honey. After surviving disease and storms at sea that decimate crew and passengers alike, Devin’s ship limps into New York Harbor three days before Christmas, 1849. Thus starts an epic journey that will take him and his descendants through one hundred and fourteen years of American history, including the Civil War, the Wild West, and the Great Depression.

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khelinski · 6 years

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Duval St.

I started this ‘Wastin’ Away’-semi sequel back in 2013. 1,000 words into it - I then got stuck in pesky writer’s block. For whatever reason at the time, I couldn’t get my thinker to keep the story going. I then placed it to the side - and went on to write the \m/ novel (not a bad trade-off).

From time to time, I would pull the story out, dust it off, and attempt to continue with it. Again, for whatever reason - I kept getting stuck with it.

Putting together the stories/pieces of writing for ‘Black Clouds & Silver Linings,’ I played around with the idea of reviving this piece exclusively for the book.

Proud to say, I finally finished it. 8-)

It’s not exactly how I pictured it 4 years ago (then again, my life/head was quite different 4 years ago). And I originally did not have a particular Key West doll featured in the story. I think that might be the missing puzzle piece to why I kept getting stuck.

Anyways - enjoy...

***

Once upon a time, there was a happening place in the Key West Island of Florida called Wastin' Away. It was founded by a rocker name Jim ‘Buffett’ Hill. He had a crazy idea of turning one of his anthem songs into a family restaurant/bar. People thought he was nuts. But he had the last laugh when Wastin' Away's turned up in every tourist city in the world. Jim Hill's wealth exceeded everyone's expectations, but he knew Wastin' Away would appeal to the masses, up until the day Jim Hill died. Like all great companies founded by revered men/women, Wastin' Away turned into corporate America until there was nothing left but novelty and history. Companies do not thrive on nostalgia, just current profit. So all the Wastin' Away's around the world slowly got bought out by various companies. No one wanted to touch the Wastin' Away brand name, just the restaurants/bars.

The pink exterior building, standing tall on good ol' Duval Street in Key West, was the only Wastin' Away left, that was, until the last manager couldn't keep it running anymore. He was devastated, as he found life and love in Wastin' Away years ago.

Even though Duval Street's history pre-dates Jim Hill's Wastin' Away, the closing of the beloved restaurant took a big hit for locals on Key West (not to mention all the hurricanes that kept rockin’ the port). Sure enough, other businesses started closing down until there was nothing left but one lousy hole-in-the-wall bar. Soon that closed down, which then resulted to the port; Key West was known for, to close down.

The Key West Island turned into a ghost town, Duval Street being in the middle of its desertion.

Our adventure began years later...

The Doll

The palm trees chhh in the breezy air as the sun sets toward the ocean water. A perfect evening for an audience to awe at, except, there was none. No one witnessed the beautiful sunset, except a male doll, that was sitting against a palm tree nearby. The doll was out of place in the designated spot, but was a resident of Key West. His original residency was 534 Eaton Street. At some point in time, 3501 South Roosevelt Boulevard became his home. Now, the doll’s home was all of Key West. No one knew how the doll got around, for the doll was just a doll, dressed as a sailor. And no one was around to wonder how the doll got around.

Only three noises filled the air: the sound of the ocean waves splashing in the water, chirping of birds, and the palm trees chhh in the air.

The doll looked on to the spectacle in front of him. He had a smirk on his face. The doll was 40 inches tall and stuffed with wood wool. His skin, though faded for the doll is an old doll, was beige.

A bird flew by and landed near the doll. The doll didn’t move. The bird did, chirping to the doll, to the air, to anyone. A naked eye would’ve missed it entirely, but the doll’s head moved ever so slightly. That spooked the bird enough to fly away. The doll’s smirk doesn’t leave his face. The smirk never leaves his face.

Remember That Place?

No one had walked along Duval Street in quite some time. There was never any reason to. Everyone migrated north without a proper send off to the island. It was as if a zombie apocalypse occurred and nothing survived except a few obscure wild animals and birds. The island itself had not been closed off from the public. The public just had zero interest in the island, except wanderers every now and then; people who will try to scrape whatever quick buck they could find.

Not too far away, a car approached the deserted street. An old and rugged Pontiac Vibe (the last of the line of Vibe’s, before GM folded Pontiac) stopped mid-half toward the empty docks. A faded ‘UNHURRY’ bumper sticker is proudly placed bottom right corner back window. Underneath the back window resided a Michigan license plate. A couple (male/female) sat in the car and was in complete glory with what they were seeing. A CD of Ellie Goulding was heard from the stereo speakers in the car.

They didn't say anything for quite a while. They just sat there, eye-balling what once was Duval Street. Finally, after what seemed like the duration of a movie running time, the girl spoke:

"This is exactly what my dad had described to me. The layout. And the feeling. Can't you feel it? He used to tell me all the time, 'it's not just a street - it's a state of mind.' I used to think he was crazy. But now I can sense it."

"Yeah. It's a shame the party didn't last," the fellow sitting next to the girl said.

"Hey man, its 5 somewhere!"

The girl sitting in the driver's side, tapping her fingers to “Dead in the Water” with all sorts of excitement built up, went by the name Hope Martin. She has her own television show on the TLC network called, Remember That Place?, a reality TV program that rediscovered old business's and landmarks that once existed.

Her cameraman/fiancé, Guy Perry, who traveled with Hope wherever Hope wandered off to, sat next to her in the Vibe.

It was Guy’s idea of visiting the joyful EYS Theater in Buena Heights, MI, which was the location of the mass murderer Norm Loomis. Loomis was infamous for killing random people and stuffing their body parts in theater seats.

The EYS episode earned Remember That Place? ratings and an Emmy (TLC was smart to save that EYS episode for a season finale). Since then, Remember That Place? had been a top rated show on TLC, upstaging Here Comes Honey Boo Boo in her 20s, 49 Kids and Counting, and Say Yes to the Dress in the Ghetto.

Hope Martin gained the power to travel wherever she wanted to go. All expense covered by TLC, of course. She had 4 delightful seasons on the air, and was finishing up her fifth season finale with a place she had been saving: Duval Street. Ever since she was a little girl and had heard her dad ramble and rave about the Key West Island/Duval Street/and Wastin' Away, her intentions of launching the show was to cover Duval Street.

Hope turned off the car's ignition and got out of the car. Guy followed suit. He walked around the car and grabbed Hope around his arms. They stood still, Guy cuddling Hope, and watch the tail end of a picture-perfect sunset that you would see featured in a tropical calendar.

"So we sleep in the car tonight?" Guy asked.

"No. We will drive back to the motel. I just wanted to see the sunset. Tomorrow, we will explore the street. My priority is the dock, lighthouse, and Wastin' Away. We will shoot the day after. I know we usually shoot as we explore, but this is special to me, you know."

Guy knew alright. He had been hearing about Wastin' Away ever since they met seven years ago as they both were finishing their Journalism degrees at Columbia College in Chicago. At first, they both despised each other (annoyance started with the classes they unintentionally took together). But then they realized their chemistry when they both had to do a project together. Romance blossomed soon after.

Hope ended up getting an internship one summer, following the My Strange Addiction crew around (Hope suggested to TLC that Guy could freelance as a camera man, TLC took her suggestion). Hope then turned the My Strange Addiction ratings around by having an entire season focused on people's strange addictions to fads (the Stuck in the Twilight Saga episode earned TLC an Emmy). TLC was quite impressed by Hope's natural (and journalistic) approach, they gave her freedom to create her own show. Remember That Place? was born.

Guy never wanted to be involved with the reality TV mishmash. His dream was to be part of the camera magic over at CNN. But when things started to move quickly for Hope and her success at TLC, he felt obligated to stay with Hope. They both got paid very well and he still was able to at least experience part of his dream of traveling the globe. After the success of the first season of Remember That Place?, Guy proposed to Hope. They were still undecided when to get married. Hope's mom kept pushing the matter, but neither Hope/Guy was ready just yet. There were still lots to see/do before they tie the knot.

Once the night skies emerged after the sun made its final bow to the two audience members, the couple got back into the car and drove to their motel, which was located ten miles away from the island.

Neither of them noticed the out of place doll that sat against the palm tree near where their car was parked. Had they noticed the doll, they would have also noticed the doll had moved on its own from one palm tree to another.

Hope and Guy got into their cheap motel room, fooled around for a bit, took a shower, and fooled around once again (young love). The TV was on (but muted) with a bold Breaking News banner to the bottom right of the TV screen. A caption read:

"PIRATES ATTACKS AGAIN IN CARIBBEAN SEA.”

Footage of a recently attacked Disney Magic cruise ship and sound bites of the latest attack filled the TV screen. But Hope/Guy doesn't pay attention to the TV. They continued to fool around until they both fell asleep in each other's arms. The muted news broadcast continued until late at night, when an informational kicked in, selling the latest and greatest unnecessary Universal Migrate products to the gullible American masses.

Wastin' Away

The pink exterior was not so pink anymore. The color faded to an ugly brownish-vomit color. Hurricanes over the years took the beauty away from Wastin' Away, giving the name of what once was a popular hot spot, new meaning.

The plane across Wastin' Away was mostly disassembled...

Hope and Guy stood in front of Wastin' Away, holding hands.

"Soooo, do you want to go in, or admire the run-down place some more," Guy asked.

"My dad never took me to see where he met my mom, where they fell in love, where he worked most of his life. He always talked about this place, and had plenty of pictures to show me. Seriously, this is the first time I've been here, Guy. Understand?"

He nodded his head in agreement.

"There's something I want to check out first. Follow me," Hope said as she tugged Guy's hand she was holding.

They backtracked to a lighthouse, which hasn't been in operation since the island was vacated. If there were no boats to dock, there was no point in a lighthouse. Who was going to maintain it anyhow, if there was no one on the island?

Hope spotted what she was looking for, a palm tree on the beach near the lighthouse. She walked toward it. She still was holding Guy's hand. She lets go and examined the bark on the tree. She saw what she wanted to see. She pointed at it. Guy leaned forward and saw what appeared to be a carving that read:

K.M. ♥ L.F.

Guy noticed Hope crying. He wrapped his arms around Hope. He knew how important this trip/episode was for Hope, but didn't realize how hard it would be for her. She had been so gung-ho about doing the Wastin' Away episode, but this wasn't just a random place to film.

Once she controlled her emotions, they walked slowly into what used to be Wastin’ Away. It was nothing at all as Hope’s dad described it to be. It didn’t even represent a restaurant/bar.

There was a big open space that occupied the inside of the ruined building. There was no sea salt scent that Hope could tell. Instead, there was a mixture of mold and nature. Hope still was crying, but her tears were controlled with some minor sniffles. Guy kept asking Hope if she was all right. She shook off her emotions and turned on her investigative work mode.

They walked through room after room. Much like the front house of the restaurant, there was no representation of what her dad kept romanticizing about. It was a wonder how and why Hope’s parents even fell in love with each other at the same place Hope was currently looking at.

Hope strolled into the back office. Even the desk, file cabinets, the safe – everything was raided. There were a few framed newspaper articles that were hung on the wall. Hope glanced at each one. The first article was an old article about the grand opening of Wastin’ Away, with a few quotes from Jim Hill. The second article was a travel review about Wastin’ Away. The third article had nothing to do with Wastin’ Away. It was an exposé about a fellow that quit his job in Orlando and walked across America.

“Random,” Hope said to herself.

She didn’t notice that while she was looking at the framed newspaper clippings, there was a century old doll sitting against the wall across from her. The doll slowly tilted its head from the left to the right. The dolls eyes were always staring with interest wherever the doll was staring at. In this case, the doll was staring at Hope with great interest. The doll hadn’t seen company around in years, with the exception of wild life. Hope was a lot more interesting to look at than wildlife.

Hope turned around without looking at the doll, and walked out of the office. She found Guy, whom found a beat up menu from the restaurants former years. Guy kept chuckling over the prices. Whenever you go out to eat, just remember that prices will always be cheaper years ago.

Guy handed the menu to Hope. She grabbed it out of his hands and looked it over without commentary. She nodded her head, and placed the menu back on the ground. She then sighed and said:

“This is harder than I thought.”

“We’ve…you’ve…this show has built up to this moment here. The whole show is about forgotten places. Most of the places we filmed at were in ruins already. It just so happens, Wastin’ Away has a more personal touch. That will make this episode extra special.”

She nodded her head in agreement. She knew all this. She prepared herself mentally for this. But emotionally, she was a wreck. She has been a wreck for years. If her dad hadn’t died from a heart-attack during the filming of the second season of the show, she would have covered Wastin’ Away sooner. But then she stalled. And stalled. And stalled.

They tackled a dozen places. Freestyle Music Park aka Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The Land of Oz in Beech Mountain, North Carolina. Rosewell, New Mexico. 112 Ocean Avenue - Amityville, NY 1170. Castle Rock, Maine. They roamed wherever they could – leaving Wastin’ Away for yet another episode, season, year. Once the inevitable came, that Hope couldn’t avoid Key West any longer – she woman’ed up – putting on her big girl pants, and pressed on. But she knew deep down inside her sappy emotions – this would be a hard one for her.

They walked back to the car, got in, and drove off. Guy had Outsider’s Vengeance Untitled blaring in the stereo, an oldie but a goldie. They both took turns with each other’s music choices – an arrangement most couples make that have contrasting music tastes. Hope enjoyed pop. Guy preferred rock ‘n’ roll. They sometimes argued which was better (and those arguments can get brutal), but they often compromise after make-up sex.

As they drove off, they didn’t notice a worn out ship porting near the docks. They also didn’t notice the doll, sitting next to the pink exterior Wastin’ Away building, eyeing the incoming ship. A naked eye might’ve noticed that the doll’s smirk widens. If the doll had any thoughts, its current thought would be, “things are about to get more interesting around here.” But dolls don’t have thoughts. Dolls were just dolls. Right?

Guy and Hope, in their ‘unhurry’ Vibe, drove to a near-by Publix, bought some unhealthy array of snackies and wine-coolers. Once they arrived at their motel room, they partied down and fooled around. Hope’s nerves calmed down during the angst and young love exploit. Neither one of them knew (or could predict) that this would be the last time they would be having sex together. Had they grasped the tragic realization that one of them would be dead the next day, they would have gotten in their car and drove away – far, far away.

Unlucky fate had other plans under its fateful sleeve.

While they were cuddling each other in bed (for the last time), some miles away, the doll that doesn’t have thoughts because the doll was just a doll, walked toward the ship, getting a closer look. The doll that dressed as a sailor might’ve looked out of place given the circumstances. Normal circumstances of a doll walking upright by itself are not normal by normal standards. Abnormality was the new norm here. The doll’s thoughts, if the doll had thoughts, kept going back to the question of why the ship was here, who was on the ship, and when will the nice looking couple come back. Of course, dolls don’t have thoughts.

This doll did.

Sloppy Joe’s

Residing on 201 Duval Street was Sloppy Joe’s. Was, being the operative word. Other than Wastin’ Away - Sloppy Joe’s was the happenin’ place of Key West. It was founded on December 5, 1933. One of the most famous patrons of Sloppy Joe’s was writer Ernest Hemingway. The old man loved the sight of the sea, to have and have not the sun rise over the water as he had a couple of cold one’s at good ol’ Sloppy Joe’s. Fast forward many years later, Sloppy Joe’s installed a live webcam feed 24/7 – so anyone that needed a Key West fix – they could go online and watch weird lookin’ peeps hover around the happenin’ place called Sloppy Joe’s. Fast forward many years later, Sloppy Joe’s was just an abandoned worn out building.

Hope wanted to film there first, to capture what used to be a place with a heavy amount of traffic, turned into a ghost town. Guy aimed his camera at his fiancée, and filmed her walking through the remains of Sloppy Joe’s. Like Wastin’ Away, the establishment was hardly recognizable – with looters taking whatever they could get their hands on through the years it was abandoned. Hope doesn’t add any commentary. Usually the sound bites were added on during post-production/editing.

They walked into Sloppy Joe’s while filming, they didn’t notice a group of men with guns that were following them. The group of men with guns surrounded the ruined Sloppy Joe’s. While surrounding the building that was once named Sloppy Joe’s, the group of men with guns didn’t notice a doll that was following them. Though the doll was just a doll, the doll had discovered that these men with guns were not a friendly bunch. The doll that was just a doll dressed as a sailor witnessed a rape and a killing aboard the ship the night before. The doll that was just a doll had seen a lot of spooky moments in its long history of its existence, but nothing as gruesome as a rape and a killing. The doll that was just a doll didn’t like the sight of such sick perversion. The doll that was just a doll didn’t know what the word, perversion, meant. But the doll that was just a doll knew these men with guns were bad news. The doll that was just a doll wasn’t too far off from the truth. These men were bad news, right down to their very bones. They were pirates.

They had no affiliation to any particular nation, for they were a forgotten band of men. They had no ties to any political agenda, for they were equal opportunists: they hated everyone. Some of them were white. Some of them were black. They didn’t speak of any distinct language; for their tongues were a mixed-match of English, Spanish, and Creole (they understood each other very well as they communicated in different languages in a single sentence). A few years back, they stole a ship and continuously attacked cruise ships. The Navy and the Coastguard haven’t been able to catch them, for they attack quickly, kill swiftly, pillage efficiently, and select one or two unlucky souls that they rape (and kill) later onboard their own ship. They’ve successfully used the Key West port as their harbor, since there hasn’t been any activity in the area for years.

Until now…

Duval St. Dead

Guy had his camera aimed at Hope. Guy walked backwards out of Sloppy Joe’s as he was filming Hope. Neither of them noticed the pirates surrounding the building. Neither of them noticed the gun aimed at Guy’s head. Neither of them noticed the gun that was aimed at Guy’s head, blasted a bullet. Hope didn’t notice a bullet that went through the back of Guy’s head, and into the camera that aimed at her direction. But she noticed the loud BANG, and a near-second later, Guy falling down. Guy’s camera dropped to the ground as he plopped, headfirst. Blood was gushing out of the back of his head like lava out of a volcano.

Crying. A universal human emotion. Every human being at certain points in their life, cried. And every child cried often. A baby cried, on average, two hours a day. That decreased as the baby grew from infant, to child, to teen, to adult. Still. Every human being has cried. And the crying often looked the same, sounded the same, and felt the same. A deep heavy feeling overcame you. Mostly out of pain (physically or emotionally). Tears started dripping from your eyelids. Your facial expression changed. Your body was about to pour out an outburst. Your nose produced a yucky liquidly substance. Your mouth exploded with an ear-piercing wailing.

Hope started going through the motions (and emotions) of crying, but her body jolted to sheer shock as a loud explosion erupted from the docks half a mile away. The pirates, that would take such pleasure out of a single, lonely, abandoned female in the middle of nowhere, ignored such prospects and they all took off toward the location of the loud noise.

Hope knew her chances of survival were slim to none if she stuck around and mourned the loss of her fiancé. She glanced at him one last time, tears (and sweat) coming down her face in equal measure. She bolted, running as fast as she could to her Vibe. Once she got inside, she put the key in the ignition, turned on the motor, and slammed on the gas pedal. Her wheels squealed as her car quickly vanished away from the Duval St. Dead. Her ‘unhurry’ Vibe was in a real damn hurry.

Lady Gaga “Hey Girl” was blasting in the stereo. Hope didn’t react to the music at first. Then as she approached the bridge leading out of Key West, she turned off the radio. Tears were still pouring down her face.

The music was off, but she could still hear the song with imaginary lyrics in her head. Lady Gaga was singing:

“HEY GIRL, GUY MET LEAD!”

Florence Welch was singing:

“HEY GIRL, HE GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD!”

They both were singing the chorus together:

“HEY GIRL, NOW YOUR MAN IS DEAD!”

Hope parked at a near-by gas station, and cried. The vibe in her Vibe was somber, grief, and the added bonus of WTF on the side. As Hope’s hopeless feelings poured out, she didn’t notice that she had a passenger in the back seat of the car. The passenger was just a doll. But clearly, this was not just any doll. No doll in the sad history of dolls was capable of the things this doll had accomplished. Well, with the exception of Annabelle, or Mandy, or Sheriff Woody, or Chucky.

The doll that was just a doll caused the pirates’ ship to explode. No explanation to how, since no one was around to see such an occurrence (and the doll was just a doll, after all).

Robert

Myths and legends surrounded the existence of the doll that was just a doll. Some of it was true. Some of it wasn’t true. The doll itself never knew how it came to be. One day, the doll was enjoying a nice, grey day in Germany at the turn of the century. The next day, the doll traveled all the way to the Sunshine State (not by choice) – which looked quite grey between the months of May to August.

The doll had been coined with the name, ‘Robert,’ because it was owned by a man that were, you guessed it, coined with the name, ‘Robert,’ but the doll that was just a doll never considered itself Robert. In fact, the doll never took it upon itself to be referred to as anything other than a doll.

There may have been a few alleged casualties around the doll’s presence – but the doll didn’t have anything to do with such tragic circumstances. It was all circumstantial, and after all – the doll was just a doll!

After the man that was coined the name, ‘Robert,’ passed on (not by the doll’s hands, if one pondered such sick thoughts), the doll had been housed (and showcased) in a glass case for all the public to see. The doll never understood the appeal of its own existence. Sure, it moved its head ever so often, and did things no doll could do (with the exception of Amanda, or Harold, or Joliet, or Buzz Lightyear, or André Toulon’s Blade).

The doll was never truly evil, just misunderstood. He was a misfit toy in the scheme of things. Okay, so he could move, and walk, and widen its smirk, and giggle, and occasionally wreck havoc if a picture was taken of the doll without the doll’s permission.

The doll leaped out of the seat of Hope’s Vibe and crawled underneath the passenger seat. Wherever Hope was going, the doll wanted to partake. He had been a Key West resident longer than most, and longed to get away. But a doll that was just a doll can’t go wastin’ away, can it?

This doll could.

Hope

At first, Hope’s hopeful future seemed hopeless. Once she got her nerves together, she called the police and reported a murder in Key West. The police arrived at the scene, arrested the group of pirates that was loitering in the area. They had no identity on them. The news media tried to find dirt on them, but there was none. Prior to their piracy, they had no backstory of any kind to fulfill the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows.’ There was just the ‘whens’ and the ‘wheres,’ which made it quite a spectacle when they went on trial for their crimes. Hope was invited to the trial, but declined.

Hope drove all the way back to her hometown in Michigan. She arrived at her childhood home in Buena Heights, got inside to greet her mom, hugged her, and cried for 3 solid hours with no intermission.

The next day, she had quit TLC. Her show was canceled soon after. Guy’s body was shipped back to his hometown: Shermer, Illinois. There was a funeral for him a week later. Hope was too much of a wreck to attend.

Hope never quite recovered since her trip to Key West. All her father’s tall-tales of margaritas, palm trees wastin’ away

chhhhhhhh

in the wind, and cheeseburgers in paradise contrasted to the bloodshed she witnessed firsthand. Not even therapy could get the sight of Guy getting shot in the back of the head, and watching his lifeless body collapsed into the ground, with his camera falling out of his hands first; out of her mind. There was some shit seen so fucked up to fathom, it cannot be unseen. She would sometimes wake herself up in the middle of the night, screaming after the repetitive nightmare, only to see Guy with a bullet in his head, standing near her bed.

After some time, she did get better. She took a job at WDIV channel 4 local news in Detroit. She did grunt work reporting, at first. Behind the scenes stuff. Then she got brave enough to ask if she could do some on-the-scene reporting. Her credentials were enough for the station to agree with no protest.

Hope’s first on-camera (and on-location) reporting: a bizarre zombie incident at the Dime-a-Dozen retail store in her hometown. But that’s a bloody fun adventure for another time and place.

The Doll

The doll got out of Hope’s Vibe as soon as she arrived in Buena Heights. She never noticed a strange doll walking upright with a sailor getup down her neighborhood. Nobody, in fact, noticed the doll strolling along the street.

The doll looked on to the many wastin’ away tales it was about to partake in. And oh yes, that doll had many fun times – with some causalities on the side (not by the doll, of course – because, well, the doll was just a doll).

But that’s also a bloody fun adventure, for another time and place.

February 1, 2013 – June 26, 2018.

#duval st.#Wastin' Away #black clouds & silver linings

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