#what being essentially a ghost for 16 years does to a shape

[goldenpythontwins]

Being physical is weird. I'm so used to being able to phase through walls because I was just yknow. A soul without a body of its own that happened to be hitchhiking on Gold. So I just. Slam into walls sometimes.

[officialleotolstoy]

Oh Dolokhov Brainrot We’re Really In It Now, aka Dolokhov playlist annotations!

A note on the cover photo: I don’t really like this one but I got tired of looking at men on Pinterest so I gave up. The window symbolizes the rum window and the smoking symbolizes uhhhhh habitual bad life choices idk

Drinking game take a shot every time I say “it’s about the vibes”

Wrecking Ball - Mother Mother

“I break it just because I can”

This is THEE ‘I am going to cause problems on purpose’ song and that is like his entire narrative purpose!! Argue with me about this one I dare you

The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty - Panic! At The Disco

“If you wanna start a fight you better throw the first punch, make it a good one”

Partially its just vibes, I won’t lie. But also the consistent spoiling for a fight is very in character

Shoot to Thrill - AC/DC

“I’m like evil, I get under your skin”

It’s got I Am Morally Repulsive But Also I’ll Steal Your Girl energy which really hits all of Dolokhov’s character traits. And of course the added bonus of gun imagery.

Mr. Brightside - The Killers

“It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this”

I added it strictly for vibes, but then I realized the quoted lyric is very much him @ the Kuragins if you take the reading that he refuses to admit he actually like them but grows genuinely fond of them over time even though he initially got to know them with a lot of ulterior motives.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

“Mama, I just killed a man”

The amount of songs that are on these playlists just for what are essentially your mom jokes since Dolokhov loves his mom so much is a little pathetic. But I’m not wrong! I can’t really put it into words but something about this song has Dolokhov energy.

Feel It Still - Portugal the Man

“Give in to that easy living, goodbye to your hopes and dreams”

A good deal of what I find interesting about Dolokhov is the internal conflict he has of knowing he’s become rather wicked and problematic but also not really trying very hard to change and almost enjoying it so a lot of the songs on here are about that, including this one. The “I’m a rebel just for kicks now” also very much screams Causing Problems On Purpose.

The Bidding - Tally Hall

“I like to take advantage of the bourgeoisie”

His whole role in volume one and two is to take advantage of the bourgeoisie! This song also oozes confidence and a sense of superiority that comes from being better than the sellouts in high society, Dolokhov’s not like other girls uwu (he really is, but I don’t think he would admit that).

Say Amen (Saturday Night) - Panic! At The Disco

“I could be better but baby it’s Saturday night”

Embracing his own wickedness! The idea that he knows he could be better than he is but he doesn’t want to take that opportunity...yeah vibes

Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) - Fall Out Boy

“I became such a strange shape from trying to fit in”

This is the epitome of the “woe is me I need to be purified” phase he goes through when he’s into Sonya. Also “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color” reminds me of Comet Dolokhov’s stupid eyeliner <3

Some Nights - fun.

“So what is this? I sold my soul for this?”

There’s a long stretch of this playlist that just boils down to “Woe is me I need to be purified” crisis hours, because Dolokhov’s oscillation between embracing his own cruelty and trying to be a good person is super interesting to me. This song captures the idea that he’s still having fun and there’s some good there, but he’s also aware that he’s losing himself a bit

Roaring 20s - Panic! At The Disco

“I don’t even know me”

“Woe is me i need to be purified” crisis AGAIN. This song gets more to the annoyance with society as a whole and feeling kind of lost in it

Send Them Off! - Bastille

“Help me exorcise my mind”

“Please purify me 16 year old girl! I’m 27 this isnt creepy at all ahahahha”. I do despise Sonyakhov but this has the vibes of a man feeling his own evil and wanting a woman to fix it. Not a great look.

Easy Days (Demo) - Bastille

“I don’t wanna fall back again, back into the easy days”

Near the end of the “woe is me I need to be purified” phase when he’s kind of drifting back to his old ways and he’s like wait no- wait- and then he does anyway because he’s horrible. I also really like the acknowledgment that his horribleness is easy and pleasant for him, and he has to fight against that (and he loses that fight HDJAJJD).

Undisclosed Desires - Muse

“You trick your lovers that you’re wicked and divine”

This is a Dolokhov/Nikolai song I do not take constructive criticism. Undisclosed desires...not being straight...lots to think about! It feels almost like a corruption arc? Nikolai isn’t corrupted nor does their...fling (?) last very long but Nikolai is obviously enamored with Dolokhov despite him being The Worst so I think this fits. I don’t have enough songs for a Nikolai/Dolokhov playlist so I just add those songs to both of their individual playlists

Thnks fr th Mmrs - Fall Out Boy

“Thanks for the memories even though they weren’t so great”

Also mostly a Nikolai/Dolokhov song. This man has never ended a relationship on good terms, huh. Also. Sighs heavily. “He tastes like you only sweeter” never fails to make me laugh when I think about it in the context of Dolokhov post-duel being like oh?? You’re just a stupid WOMAN Hélène your brother and/or Nikolai is hotter than you :/ which is not exactly what I think happened but it makes me laugh to consider. Dolokhov ur bitterrrrr

Dangerous - Royal Deluxe

“I’ll be the last man standing here, I’m not going anywhere”

I feel like this has the vibes of his cruelty, especially in that bit after the Kuragins have died when he and Petya infiltrate the French army.

Another One Bites The Dust - Queen

“There are plenty of ways you can hurt a man”

He will hurt you and kill you so violently :) It’s about the vibes.

White Wedding Pt. 1 - Billy Idol

“It’s a nice day to start again”

In the exact inverse to his “woe is me I need to be purified” phase, he’s like ok yes i will pick up bad habits again and enjoy them because frick you! I read once that this song is about a relapse into drugs, but I’m making it analogous to his relapse into Terrible Person Behavior after Sonya’s rejection. Also the repetition of the phrase little sister does something for my brain idk, after we know he loves his mom and sister it just fits.

Highway to Hell - AC/DC

“I’m on the highway to hell and I’m goin down”

Like White Wedding, it screams acceptance of his problematicness. He knows he’s cruel and evil and he revels in it. This is the phase we see him in most I think.

Back in Black - AC/DC

“It’s been too long, I’m glad to be back”

I think this plays every time he gets reinstated to an army position he lost by being reckless earlier. Just kidding sort of but listen to this song and tell me it doesn’t have Dolokhov vibes. If you do, you’re wrong <3

Poet - Bastille

“I have written you down now, you will live forever”

This is just here cause he ghostwrote Anatole’s love letters and I think it’s funny. It’s MY playlist and I get to choose the barely relevant Bastille songs

St. Jude - Florence + The Machine

“Maybe I’ve always been more comfortable in chaos”

This one’s more scattered lyrics than an overall vibe. “Each side is a loser so who cares who fired the gun” has duel energy also.

Hey Look Ma, I Made It - Panic! At The Disco

Confession: I hate this song. However, it’s about the about the MOM R U PROUD OF ME vibes (she is. Should she be? Probably not).

Rich Kids - Bea Miller

“It’s never enough for the stuck up types”

The not coming from wealth and having to almost scam your way into being part of the aristocratic scene is very Dolokhov. Also in my mind the rich kid he’s roasting is specifically Nikolai.

Money, Money, Money - ABBA

“It’s a rich man’s world”

I’m not SAYING the wealthy man they talk about is Anatole but - [i am shot]. Scheming and clawing your way up to wealth is Dolokhovcore.

This Is Gospel - Panic! At The Disco

I literally have no justification for this other than that i think modern AU Dolokhov would vibe with it. Look at the amount of eyeliner he wears in Comet and tell me he didn’t have an emo band phase. You can’t.

Trouble’s Coming - Royal Blood

This is not about the words at all, it’s more about the vibes. It just sounds Dolokhovish to me, don’t ask me to explain.

Sleep Alone - Two Door Cinema Club

“They’re just ghosts and they can’t hurt him if he can’t see them”

This gives me post-Kuragins’ death vibes, and I can’t pin down exactly why? I think it’s the idea of being very alone and closed off.

Golden Days - Panic! At The Disco

I can’t put a specific lyric to it but it’s the vibes of looking back on your hedonistic youths with nostalgia and rose-colored glasses. Post-Kuragins’ death vibes again.

Go Get Your Gun - The Dear Hunter

“One foot in the grave, the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell”

All we see of him after the Kuragins’ death is just him being particularly cruel and reckless, almost careless. This feels like it encapsulates that energy.

The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand

“They say you’re a troubled boy just because you like to destroy”

I’m aware that a good portion of this song is about a Christ figure but I’m going to respectfully ask you to ignore that bit and just focus on all the Sketchy Things the guy does instead. Thank you. He does in fact like to destroy things! Señor Cause Problems On Purpose back at it again at krispy kreme, huh.

[thejustmaiden]

I'm not against SessRin as the ship itself, rather I'm against the idea of it being canon. I wouldn't even care if InuYasha was of a more mature genre. Yes, the trope is very popular even in hentai, yaoi and yuri. However, all of these genres are explicitly for adults - the type of audience that are well capable of seperating between fiction and real life, knowing what's wrong and right. Yasahime's still cleary targeted at a younger audience - kids that can still be easily affected by fiction.

Hey, nonnie! I really appreciate the ask. Apologies for the slight delay. 😊

I read what you had to say, and I think you bring up a very valid point that I don't see being discussed enough quite honestly.

Because you're right, Inuyasha is geared towards a younger audience. That explains why it was the very first anime for many of us growing up.

Ironically enough, some of you who like me stayed up late to catch it on TV remember that Inuyasha came out on a network called "Adult Swim" of all things. haha (I gather that had more to do with the occasional foul language than anything else.) Cartoon Network- what Adult Swim is known as during the daytime- shows children's programs and Inuyasha wouldn't have been exactly appropriate on there either.

Now let's take a quick look at the other anime shows I remember that would come out on the line-up along with Inuyasha. Cowboy Bepop and Ghost in the Shell are the first two that come to memory. If you aren't familiar with those, readers, I encourage you to look them up and see how they're described in comparison to Inuyasha. They both tackle some pretty dark and heavy adult themes. Inuyasha, on the other hand, is based off a shonen manga aimed at young teens, boys specifically.

I'm not personally familiar with the yaoi and yuri genres myself, but from what I do know, a lot of their stories center around sexual romance and homoeroticism. Inuyasha may include some romance, but by no means does the author insert explicitly sexual elements into her story. Fans who are mature to handle that kind of content can if they so choose to-- bring on the fan fiction and fan art! But can the series itself be justified in doing so? Well, I hope not since the average Inuyasha viewer is only just a teenager.

You're correct, fiction is capable of influencing and shaping how some kids learn to view and make sense of certain events. I'm going to give you a real life example here. Keep in mind, readers, that this is an extreme case that obviously wouldn't apply to everyone or every situation. The purpose of recounting this tale is to demonstrate that young minds are more vulnerable to the influences around them, be them real or imagined.

Years ago there used to be this internet urban legend called "The Slender Man." In 2014, these two 12-year old girls (so roughly the same age many of us started watching Inuyasha) became obsessed with this fictional character and wanted to prove to everyone he existed. In order to do that, they made up their minds to kill one of their classmates to please him. They ended up stabbing the victim numerous times, but she somehow miraculously survived. The two girls who were found guilty of this crime ended up being admitted into mental health institutions. Please feel free to read up more on this yourself. It sounds creepy, I know, but how the community came together to support the victim and her recovery was a touching ending to such a horrific story.

Like I already mentioned, this was an extreme case that almost resulted in murder. Death, however, isn't the only bad outcome that can occur. Child abuse in all its complex forms is a serious outcome, too. It should go without saying that no child watching Inuyasha should accept the idea of a young girl (like themselves but maybe younger) being pursued later once she's "old enough" by the same male authority figure who was her main protector during their travels. You could tell Rin felt legitimately safe and happy for the first time in a long time while in his company. I also like to wonder if that's because Sesshomaru reminded her of someone she knew before her family was killed. But who really knows? After all, kids are very trusting by nature. Let's be honest, the happy-go-lucky Rin would've followed just about anyone who saved her! It just happened to be Sesshomaru, which of course I'm grateful for. So tell me again, why does this protector-ward dynamic they've got going on need to turn romantic?

Seriously, why are viewers expecting a romance to happen anyway? It's not like we have been given any solid indication to suggest that these two are destined for it. Allow me to explain why I believe that is. Sessrin fans anticipate a romance in their future despite the lack of foreshadowing, because this trope IS popular. (But only in series geared towards adults- like you said, nonnie.) In other words, it's been so engrained in our minds that it's a completely normal direction we should come to expect a relationship between an older man and a young girl/woman to take. So even though it hasn't been hinted at much if at all, it's apparently bound to happen regardless.

A young woman who decides to be with an older man isn't the issue here, BUT there's a fine line and at times the stories we tell will tread that line and test its boundaries. Case in point: shipping Sesshomaru with "Adult Rin" although we've only met and gotten to know her as a young girl up until now. In many instances, adult!Rin supposedly only has to mean she's old enough to bear children. If it was the norm for a girl to have kids at 15 or 16 in Feudal Japan, then that must mean we should not only tolerate it but celebrate it too, right?

Yes, fiction is a creative outlet to explore and push the boundaries from time to time, but we must be careful of what messages we're sending and who the target audience is. Would it really be wise to portray in a positive light a teenage girl getting pregnant with one of the people who helped raised her's babies on a show for teens? That's not my idea of a wholesome family lesson I'd ever want to teach my kids or have them learn elsewhere.

What we're essentially doing is telling the young Inuyasha viewers that it's totally normal to sexualize and romanticize a young girl's future without her say. That it's okay to speak for her and decide that's what her character would want even if we haven't met this adult version of her yet. What about Rin's hopes and dreams? How about we wait to see how she is as a grown-up first before we come to such big conclusions. Wouldn't you say you're jumping the gun a bit, shippers?

Nobody is saying you can't picture it, alright, but to claim it's the only obvious progression- because evidently there must be one for some reason?- of the relationship Rin's formed with Sesshomaru is absolutely absurd. If that's the case, then basically all the other "who's Sesshomaru's baby mama" theories are just as plausible as yours if not more so.

Also, guys, we really ought to stop stating that Sesshomaru will never have the capacity to care for another human being besides Rin like it's a fact. I'm aware that to many the appeal of this ship is that she was the first one to break through that icy exterior of his, so that must translate to a love that transcends and what not. If she wasn't a child he guarded like his own first and foremost, then this ship could have potential. That's not the case though, so moving right along!

Right, so who says his affection towards humans has to stop at Rin? Why can't the mom- if there is a mom- be some new character? That's really not reaching- yes, even for Sesshomaru. Knowing Rin, she's probably the one who introduced them! Plus, it's not like we don't have other canon sources that already show us Sesshomaru coming to the aid of humans. He has saved and protected Kagome on a few occasions that we know of so far, as well as Kohaku. And no, he didn't just protect him because Rin asked him to. Perhaps that was why he did at first, but please give Sesshomaru credit where credit is due. He is not the cold heartless demon we once believed him to be. How else do you think he is capable of activating Tenseiga's powers? Yeah, no, Sesshomaru grew to care for that kid, and Kokahu wouldn't have stuck around him for as long as he did if he didn't believe Sesshomaru didn't have his best interests at heart. Well, in Sesshomaru's own special little way that is. 😆

I got a little sidetracked- my bad! I suppose it's all relevant when you think about it. Alrighty, nonnie, I hope I adressed your ask the way you wanted. Please feel free to drop by again! 🖖

Reminder: Do not plan to engage in discourse on this blog if you are going to be disrespectful. The views I'm expressing aren't "an attack," so there's no need to get defensive and aggressive. I've even had a few Sessrin shippers themselves tell me I make valid points and that I do it in an upright manner. So if you don't believe me, then maybe you'll believe them. Thank you!

[allie1804-fan]

A Doorway is Opened (Chapter 1)

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Some time in the Autumn of 2019

 “Hey Hannah, great to see you”

 “You too”

 “Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

 “Just nervous I guess” Hannah laughed “Silly really after the book tour and interview, you’d think I’d have gotten used to it!”

 “Well this is Keanu Reeves we’re talking about – he’s enough to make even an old pro like me catch my breath! Come on” said Ella, “let’s get this meeting started”

 Ella was Hannah Johnson’s publisher and Hannah had written a book for which Keanu Reeves’ production company, Company Films, was interested in buying the rights. The book chronicled a couple’s journey to having a family through infertility to having their first son followed by three miscarriages before a second son finally arrived. They were due to meet with the actor himself and his partner Stephen Hamel that morning to talk more about a possible deal.

As it turned out, there was no need for nerves. The minute Keanu arrived and introduced himself, he put everyone at their ease. His focus on the work and his enthusiasm for it took the attention off him plus he seemed a little shy himself.

 The first thing he’d said on shaking Hannah’s hand was “Hi I’m Keanu,  I really loved your book, I can’t wait to talk to you about it!”

 “Thanks, it’s an honour to meet you. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time”

 At this, a flush rose up, starting from Keanu’s neck and pretty soon turning his face quite a bright pink as he softly muttered his thanks.

 “First thing you learn about Keanu” Stephen joked, “The man cannot take a complement”

 They all laughed including Keanu who covered his mouth with his hand before looking down at his feet.

 “All right, shall we get this meeting started” he said.

 “Can we start with the origins of the story, how much if it is autobiographical? It’s so beautifully raw …..”

 Now it was Hannah’s turn to blush.

 “Thanks, well yes it is largely auto-biographical. I did research too and changed some of the details but it’s essentially my family’s story”

“Wow, I’m sorry you went through all that” Keanu said sincerely. “You did a great job with the pain but also the anger and err, the err”

 “The nasty side?”

 “Yeah I guess” he replied looking a tad embarrassed

 “infertility, baby-loss – it tends to bring out the less balanced side of one’s persoality” Hannah sighed. My husband often referred to it as the dark years!”

 “I can imagine” Keanu said softly and the room went quiet. Everyone knew what was on Keanu’s mind. Even 20 years on, everyone remembered the loss of his daughter to stillbirth.

 “Look don’t worry, I’m not offended” Hannah rushed to reassure him. “I wanted to show the full experience, the light and the dark.”

 The conversation thankfully turned to some of the lighter moments  - even infertility treatment can have some comedy in it after all.

 “I’d have loved to have played the husband but I think I’m too old now unless some of the details about the couple’s ages were altered. Do you have a view on that?”

 “Err well I’ve not really thought too much about it, it came as a surprise that anyone was interested in turning it into a film if I’m honest”

 Hannah could see out of the corner of her eye that Ella was rolling her eyes skyward at this since it didn’t exactly make it seem like the book rights were in demand! Keanu picked up on it and smiled catching Hannah’s eye who blushed and looked down at her hands before adding:

 “I guess the only impact could be on the sense of exclusion that comes from not being part of the club, you know. not having a child at all when everyone else does, not completing your family when everyone else has. That kind of relies on the friendship circle also being at that stage and driving that sense of exclusion. But there are many people who start later or where the husband is slightly older so I don’t see necessarily why it couldn’t work as people tend to be drawn to make friends with others who are at the same stage of life regardless of age.

 “Ok, well if we could make it work, do you think your husband would be willing to talk to me about his perspective?”

 As Ella drew in a sharp breath, Keanu knew he’d said something wrong and looked to Hannah who was momentarily speechless.

 “Erm, sadly no, you’ll have to rely on me for that ….. errr, Mark died, 18 months ago.

 “Oh god!, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, shit”

 “Don’t worry, please don’t worry, it’s not like that fact is all over the back cover. The book was published before his death and we didn’t update the bio with the 2nd edition, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for” she reassured him.

 “Thanks” Keanu said “well even if we can’t make that casting work, I’d still like our company to bring the story to a cinema audience. Would you be interested in writing the screenplay?”

 “Gosh, again that’s something I hadn’t anticipated … but it could be a possibility. Can I have time to  think about it?”

“Sure, I mean we have a roster of writers we can call upon  - I think even if you decide it’s not for you, we’d still want you to consult, would that be OK?”

 “Absolutely”

 The talk finally turned to finances and both Keanu and Hannah held back from the conversation until the meeting drew to a close. As they packed away their papers, Keanu asked Hannah if she’d be free to join him for coffee at the shop across the street from the offices.

 “It’s the least I can do after being so crass earlier”

 “You weren’t crass and you don’t have to do that! Not at all. Anyway wouldn’t you get mobbed out there in public at a coffee shop?”

 “Not at all, I can go about my business day to day as a private citizen - people tend to give me space if they can see I’m busy and especially when I have company – in fact you’d be acting as my personal bodyguard”

 Over at the coffee shop they settled into the booth with their coffees. Keanu encouraged Hannah to have a stab at writing the screenplay.

 “I mean, I bet you didn’t think you could write a novel before and then you did!”

 “OK, OK, I take your point” she laughed. “If I do, would you be willing to look at a first draft?”

“Of course, it would be my pleasure”

They chatted some more. Keanu wanted to see the boys who’d brought such joy to her life. Hannah shared some pictures – the ‘boys’ were now 21 and 16 years old.

“They’re handsome fellows, I can see your eyes in the older one. Do they favour you more or their dad?”

“Their Dad more, especially Josh. He’s the younger one”

“Right - that must be, a mixed blessing I guess”

“Yeah, yeah, yes is it can be. Actually Toby sounds just like him so when he comes home and says “hello” it can throw me for a loop!”

“Wow, I can’t imagine. I’ve never lost anyone that close, I mean where I lived with the person and had that kind of constant reminder of their absence…. unless you count my Dad”

“Your dad died?”

“Well, yeah actually but that was more recent, I meant when I was young, he left. We had been estranged for a long time by the time he died”

“I’m sorry – I’m glad my kids didn’t have that loss – it almost seems more cruel than death, that  he chose to leave I mean” Hannah checked herself  “sorry, sorry – we seem to be making a habit of putting our feet in it don’t we?”

Keanu laughed “no, no, I can see exactly what you mean – and don’t worry, no hard feelings”

Soon after this exchange, they each needed to leave so phone numbers were shared and Hannah agreed to contact him when she had some scenes to share.

Over the next 3 months, Hannah met Keanu in that same coffee shop every couple of weeks or so as she worked on her ideas for the screenplay.  The theme she liked best was that of closed and open worlds.  As she’d navigated infertility and baby-loss, at each stage there had been a sense of being welcomed into a world and then excluded from the next natural place. She hoped a director could capture that sense of being trapped and unable to move forwards somehow.

In their conversations she also tried to explain as best she could the different perspectives of the many people directly and indirectly involved. There was her husband who had wanted to keep the troubles they had in perspective and, especially when they had their miscarriages, to look to the future. Whilst Hannah had needed to wallow in the grief of their first loss in particular, he’d not felt that loss so much. She understood that for her, the future would have looked much different day to day with a new baby. She would have been taking her eldest to kindergarten with a new-born in tow. Yes, he would have been a dad of two but would still be going to work day to day as usual. Her work colleagues had sent her flowers after that miscarriage and he’d been angry. “why are they sending you flowers, nobody died” he’d yelled.    They’d argued after that, the difference in their perspective magnified. But in the long term she’d understood his desire to ‘fix�� things.  She’d been through grief before when her dad had died when she was just 16. She understood the need to wallow and let the grief breathe. His desire to move on felt like an attempt to stifle that but she understood the emotions behind it.

Then there were in-laws also willing things to be normal, not wanting to face the pain, telling her that she should be grateful to have her eldest and focus on him. Hearing that from people who already had 2 or 3 kids and no infertility was a bitter pill to swallow – you only really ‘get it’ if you’ve been there too after all.

He was a good listener and obviously enjoyed the process of empathising  and learning about how other people processed these traumas.

By the end of the year the screenplay was really taking shape but in January their FTF meetings had to stop as Keanu had to go to San Francisco for the Matrix 4 Shoot. They had one more coffee shop meeting in early March before he went to Berlin but otherwise, all connection was via e mail and FaceTime as they were either separated by miles or by the Corona Virus lockdown.  Through the months, their conversations and correspondence helped a close friendship to grow. Hannah felt the clouds of grief lifting and recognised Keanu’s part in that for her due to having the screenplay to focus on and his friendship.

Chapter 2

[atamascolily]

Lily liveblogs: “The Rise of Skywalker,” part three

I end as I began: hopelessly confused about what the point of all this was. (Except for money. I got that part loud and clear.)

Rey just leaves Finn behind, because... friendship, right? Jannah does not have a good opinion of Rey right now, and tbh, I can't blame her. I realize Rey is under a lot of stress, but... her behavior since arriving on this "moon of Endor" has been wayyyy out of line.

Also, Poe pulls up with the Falcon right then, so I guess they got it repaired in record time, lol. Convenient.

Meanwhile, at the Resistance Jungle Base, everyone is sad because Leia is dead. I wonder who's in charge now???

"Goodbye, dear princess." Oh, so she's a General right up until she dies, and then it's back to princess again? I wish the ST would make up its mind about her title.

Oh, I guess Poe is, since he showed up and actually has a rank??

Chewie LOSES IT at the news Leia is dead--I feel you, bud. I feel you so hard.

Kylo tries to look dignified as he broods on the wreckage, but he looks awful. Like a drowned rat, with a convenient lightsaber-shaped hole in his tunic where Rey stabbed him. (She didn't even take the saber with her or drop it into the sea or anything! WHHYYYYYYYYYYY - gimme a reason, any reason, even a stupid one.)

And then Han shows up. Is he a ghost? Is this a memory? Is Kylo hallucinating? WHAT WHAT WHAT IS HAPPENING??? (This would have so much more resonance if we had SEEN how Han's death impacted Kylo earlier on instead of that one confused flashback at the beginning of the film....)

grizzled Harrison Ford looks great, why the hell did they kill him off in the first movie whyyyyyy

Okay, so they answer the question and this is a memory, which is fine, I usually love this trope, BUT it would be hella more effective if we'd seen Kylo arguing/interacting with memories of Han earlier instead of this happening for the first time NOW...

"Come home." Uhhhhhh, I honestly don't know what exactly Leia did, but she certainly kinda abetted killing him. What home does Kylo have now, anyway??

So Han says that what Leia fought for is still around, which is true, but Kylo is ostensibly the supreme leader here, so he doesn't just have to go AWOL, he can drag the FO leadership with him, and what passes for their government, he could SURRENDER and end the war right now. Does he? Of course not. He fucks off all by his lonesome after Rey and Palpatine because... that's all he knows how to do, apparently.

There's a callback that is supposed to resonate but doesn't work for me, because I just can't make myself feel for Kylo at all. Yes, redemption is hard. Yes, you have to work for it. Stop whining and just do it!!

We're supposed to think that Kylo will stab Han again (I guess?) but he turns and throws his saber into the sea. So that's why Rey didn't take it - so he could make a dramatic fucking gesture with it.

Palps is upset that Leia messed up his plans, but whatever. He orders Pryde, who apparently is now in charge of the FO in Kylo's absence, to come to Exegol. Apparently Pryde is a diehard Imperial (and possibly Sith cultist/Palpatine's secret puppet/agent??) I guess. It's never explained, he's just bad. And his name isn't subtle, either.

Palps just wants to burn everything to the ground for... evulz, I guess? I got nothing.

Pryde's star destroyer pops out a giant gun and blows up a planet.... apparently, Kijimi. Why, I don't know. Because they were just there?? Anyway, BOOM. Kijimi literally explodes.

What the actual fuck. How is that EVEN POSSIBLE?? What was the point of building two Death Stars if a Star Destroyer can do that????

Oh, apparently, that was the new model from the "Sith fleet" with a better upgrade. sounds fake, but okay. Poe is not thrilled by this news. The same Resistance member brings him the bad news, so I guess that's her official job??

Poe is genre-savvy enough to know that every ship in the Sith fleet has planet destroying weapons and they're doomed unless they stop the Final Order... which isn't new? I thought there was a countdown to an attack in 16 hours or something. What did they think they were attacking with? I don't even know, this movie is that incoherent.

Rose pops in with a message broadcasting on every channel about the "Resistance is dead. The Sith flame will burn. All worlds, surrender or die"... but given that it's in a language that isn't Basic, there's this one random dude with a beard who translates for the audience... and even though I assume it's meant to be some more commonly spoken language, given that the Sith have their own language in this movie, It makes it seem like this Random Resistance dude understands Sith and... I have questions.

Poe goes to sit by Leia's shrouded corpse because apparently they haven't buried her yet??? I wish Poe and Leia's relationship was more prominent in the movies, because I love the dynamic they're supposed to have, but never actually manifests in any of these movies.

Lando shows up to console him!

"How did you defeat an Empire with almost nothing?" "We had each other."

DAMN RIGHT YOU DID AND THE NEW GENERATION COULD TOO, IF THE WRITERS WEREN'T INTENT ON SEPARATING THEM CONSTANTLY AND MAKING EVERYBODY SUFFER....

Poe decides to make Finn his co-general. I have a lot of feels about this.

Turns out D-O knows all about Exegol because he used to belong to Ochi... that's actually earned, I'll allow it. Hilarious Rey never asked the droid about it  (or any other details of his past, given that she was pretty sure Ochi killed her parents).

Ahch-To! Rey is wearing her hood and I don't know why. She's throwing driftwood into the flaming wreckage of Kylo's TIE and sobbing and... I don't know what's going on here. There are SO MANY REASONS she could be crying, I don't even know.

And she tosses her lightsaber into the sea... just like Kylo did. Parallels. I get it. And just like Luke did to her... She's giving it up because she doesn't feel worthy of being a Jedi because of her heritage, I guess?? (I'm guessing because this movie doesn't explain shit.)

Speaking of which, there's Luke's ghost, right on schedule! I love his snark but it's SO OUT OF LINE given his behavior in the last movie... and the fact that Yoda told him he had to let go of the past and let the books burn. I mean... the fuck???

Rey has this dark throne vision that's driving her, but ironically that's the one vision we don't see in this whole mess.. we have all these OTHER visions instead, I can' teven keep them all straight.

Oh, she's decided to model Luke and fuck off to Ahch-To forever because she feels she made a mistake. that's absolutely the WRONG LESSON from Luke's life, Rey!!

(also, what happened to saving the world? The sith wayfinder? She just conveniently forgot Palpatine was gonna slaughter everybody because she's having heritage angst?????)

Leia not telling Rey about Rey's heritage makes perfect sense when you realize just how much Leia's life was fucked over by the knowledge that Darth Vader was her father--once in ROTJ and again when she got kicked out of the Senate and ostracized in Bloodline.

Luke has Leia's lightsaber conveniently hidden in his hut... so now Kylo/Ben can have a weapon of his own in the upcoming fight, gag. (Really, Rey should use it to make a double-bladed saber, but she won't, sigh.)

The flashback looks like a video game to me. The CGI is not terrible, but doesn't look nearly as real as the rest of the film to me.

Also, I'm forever mad that Leia gave up her saber thinking it would save her son, that is SO AWFUL, especially since IT DIDN'T WORK, HE STILL TURNED OUT EVIL ANYWAY AND RUINED YOUR LIFE.

"A thousand generations live in you now" would have so much more resonance if Rey was an avatar of the Force or a reincarnation of Anakin instead of the metaphorical. (Yes, I know it will be realized literally later on.)

[Just realized that Kylo's obsession with Rey would make TOTAL SENSE if she were an reincarnation of Anakin given how much he idolizes his grandfather!!!]

Whyyyyy doesn't Luke talk here about the revelation that Palpatine is alive? That he and his father failed to kill the Emperor? That Rey has to finish LUKE'S journey, too??? But no, it's all about Leia here.

Rey somehow didn't notice the wayfinder in Kylo's TIE until Luke says "you have everything you need"... I guess? I don't know how she missed it before!!!

And the X-wing rises out of the water like the deus ex machina that it is... somehow still spaceworthy after six years in the ocean. Okay, then.

Apparently, Force ghost Luke can still manipulate physical objects through the Force??? Okay, I can kinda buy that, but... still....

I love how Artoo doesn't even wait for Threepio to get started with the bullshit, he just imports the uploaded memories right away without asking. Normally, I'd be mad about consent, but a) they're married, and b) he's restoring Threepio's personality, so I'm okay with it.

I love how warped and creepy the space is around Exegol.

Also, D-O looks just like a desk lamp.

Oh, so the Resistance follows Rey through Luke's X-wing computer via Artoo. Convoluted, but it works, I guess.

Okay, so time for some technobabble, but there's a navigation tower (the new shield generator) they have to hit for REASONS with a "ground team" (aka strike team). Sigh.

Love the dismissal of the "Holdo maneuver"--which is essentially kamikaze-style suicide. Not a great battle strategy if you want to survive the fight.

Wait, wasn't Poe angsting earlier about how nobody answered their call from Crait back in the last movie? What makes him think this is going to be any different?????

Okay, so all the FO folks on are on Exegol now?? Who is piloting and crewing those Star Destroyers?? Are they First Order or Final Order people? What happened to the First Order? What is the relationship between the First Order and the Final Order? Are they the same thing with two different names?? (But no, there are two fleets, the Sith destroyers are different.) What happened to the First Order then? Does anyone notice and/or care the alleged "Supreme Leader" of the First Order is missing in action??? I'M SO CONFUSED.

Okay, it makes sense that Poe is in an X-wing given he's a hotshot pilot, but he's also a general, and... I'm so confused about the tactical aspect of that, but fine, whatever. Also, Artoo is in the X-wing with him instead of BB-8, who I thought was Poe's droid (to the point of reaming Rey over injuring him earlier in the film!!!) WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE???

we're baaaaacck in the creepy sith ruins just like the beginning of the film, but so much has happened that my brain has fried and so the parallels are not as compelling as they could be.

WHEN DID THEY PICK UP JANNAH?? Has she been there the entire time and we just didn't see her until now, or did they stop back at Endor's moon along the way??? I'M SO CONFUSED!!!

Finn has " a feeling" where the ship is... it's the Force, why are you teasing us like that. LET HIM BE A JEDI.

Okay, I actually really like the fact that all the FO deserter stormtroopers from Endor are using their mounts so their enemies can use the tech against them. That's poetic justice right there. And also, epic cool. Good thing all the ships are still in the atmosphere... (nobody's wearing masks like Finn did for the Kijimi pickup)

I don't know how there is lightning in a fucking underground pyramid, but 10/10 for aesthetic, I love it.

"Grandma, it's me, Anastasia"--oh, wait, never mind.

The reveal that Rey is in a giant arena is hella creepy, even though it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Where do all these people come from? What do they do? Where do they live? What do they EAT?? Are they born Sith? Brainwashed Sith?? Cultists? Clones??? I NEED ANSWERS HERE.

Palpatine dangling in his creepy metal arm-thing is a lot like GLADoS from Portal.

So... Palpatine can possess the person who kills him in anger??? Explains a LOT about how he treated Luke, actually. And why it was so important that Anakin finish him - one, because Anakin's body was failing, and two, because he did it for love.

Love the aesthetic of the flickering lights for added creepiness and nothing is quite real. Even if it makes no sense. My id knows what it wants, okay??

Jannah and Finn teaming up for the battle is great, BB-8 actually gets to do something for once, and I love Jannah's crossbow.

Oh, now Palps is going to monologue about Rey's parents, while telling us no interesting details whatsoever. Sigh.

HOW THE FUCK DID KYLO GET TO EXEGOL AGAIN????????????????? she left him stranded in the middle of a frikkin' OCEAN... and he just knows how to get back to Exegol without the macguffin,.... how....?

(yes, I know he's supposed to be "Ben Solo" again, but so far there has been zero explanation in the film itself, so I'm just gonna keep calling him Kylo.)

Okay, there's a TIE fighter next to the X-wing, but... where did he GET IT?????????

That "ow" is priceless. I watched that sequence twice.

(clearly Kylo has not been exploring ruins much recently.)

Finn explaining to Rose that he's going to sacrifice himself for the cause, exactly like she wouldn't let him do in the last film... and Rose goes with it. Okay, then.

Now Kylo has to fight his own boy band... who were secretly following the Emperor's orders the entire time (?) THE ENTIRE FIRST ORDER WAS LITERALLY A FRONT TO KEEP KYLO REN DISTRACTED AND KYLO TOTALLY BOUGHT IT. I... have questions, but I actually admire the sheer audacity of this.

Kylo fighting said knights would be way more emotionally engaging if we a) knew anything about them, b) had seen any interactions between Kylo and the knights earlier, and c) gave a shit, but none of those happened, so we don't.

Kylo and Rey have some sort of Force bond communication thing that is super vaguely filmed so it's hard to understand wtf is actually happening. Rey tosss her saber back and... Ben pulls it out behind his back.

what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK

I won't say that wasn't forshadowed, because it kinda-sorta was. I will just say that this movie has NEVER EXPLAINED HOW THEY CAN DO THAT or talked about it at ALL, just treats it like a fact, and I... have questions about how reality can be bent that way even if you are a Force dyad or whatnot.

So Kylo's fight with the knights parallels Rey's fight with a bunch of Imperial guards and it's so hard to care. Th timer says there's still a half an hour left, how is that possible???

So... it's okay to stab people as long as you do it with the properly colored lightsaber, I guess???

Kylo shows up, he and Rey exchange Meangingful Looks, they raise their sabers, Palps zaps them and slurps up "the lifeforce of your bond" and uses it to grow younger, whatever the hell that means ughhhhhhhh please let this be over soon.

Did he know they were a dyad before? Is THIS his real plan? I'm so confused and I have no idea wtf is going on.

RIP Snap. I guess I should care more about you, but I don't think you're mentioned in any of the other movies, so... *shrugs*

Poe has a meltdown but.... Lando shows up AGAIN to give him a pep talk, and also a fleet. Like seriously, Lando gets results, if he'd been running the Resistance, the war would be OVER by now.

Is the "Nice flying, Lando!" Older!Wedge?? I think so. I hope so, anyway.

Zorii shows up too, to fight and also insult Poe over the comm... I guess she's upset about Kijimi being destroyed? (Or maybe not given how she was so eager to get off it???)

Palps tosses Kylo into a pit, which... given that Palps survived, maybe not the best plan if you wanted to actually kill him.

Then he shoots force lightning through the hole in the arena into the sky and... zaps all the new fighters.

Well.

Okay then.

Rey wakes up and... reaches out to the spirits of past Jedi for help. (Apparently, Palpatine doesn't care about her killing him now, because he's young and healthy again, so it's okay to kill her? I guess he can always try again with another grandkid, lol.)

Also, it's funny how Rey is a Palpatine and blood is sooooo important and scary and destiny until someone's trying to diss her and then she's just "a scavenger girl". And by funny, I mean terrible. Sigh.

"I am all the Sith." I don't think the Sith, by the nature of their existence, can embody their predecessors the way that the Jedi can. I mean, to be a Sith is to be alone, and there is that whole Rule of Two business if that's still canon now. I mean, unless the Sith literally eat their masters and thus become them? But it seems a little late for THAT detail.  

But it's okay because Rey's embodying all the Jedi this time (and has TWO sabers, lol) and she turns Palpatine's Force lightning back on himself and he turns into a crisp. You'd think the Sith Lords would have worked out a defense against that, since that's how Mace Windu scarred him in the first place, but okay then.

The entire arena crumbles. All the faceless cultists are crushed by falling rock. Pryde goeth before the fall. Lando rescues Finn and Jannah before Poe can. All the star destroyers are stranded because the command ship is gone and start blowing up.

Anyway, Rey collapses in the ruins. Finn senses her fall. but Kylo climbs out of the pit and cradles her in his arms. (ewww ewww ewwwwwww NOOOOOOO) and cradles her to his chest [gross gross grossssssss she's dead and can't consent and I can't decide if that makes it grosser or not, she's never let him do this while she was ALIVE fuckkkkkk]. He finally lets go and then places his hand on her stomach, and ughhhhhh I have so many issues with this I don't care if he's reformed, he's been stalking for three films, this is NOT OKAY and does the Force healing trick, and...

literally he could have just put a hand on her forehead or shoulder, which I would still hate, but would be less creepy than this.

Rey wakes up, puts her hands on his, sits up, startled and... doesn't say anything, doesn't even flinch, and smiles. "Ben."

and she kisses him. I knew this was coming. I still hate it.

he smiles, falls over, and dies. Like, literally, it's like Rey's kiss murdered him. I'm a terrible person, I know, but I really can't mourn him.

Kylo's body vanishes (Leia's stayed intact, damn it!) proving I guess that he was good after all?? I thought only special people learned the vanishing trick??? Leia's body vanishes right at the same time, and... I don't get it, I really don't.

Maz apparently skipped the final battle to watch over Leia's corpse and I.... definitely don't get it.

was Leia possessing her son this whole time? What. Just. Happened??????

Rey flies away in Luke's X-wing under her own power, and... "Red Five is in the air again," says Finn. People are rising up all over the galaxy, though against what, I'm not clear, and the skies are suddenly clear, implying that the Emperor was warping the weather with his darkness.

We see Star Destroyers blowing up behind Cloud City and on the FOREST moon of Endor with the Ewoks and I just... never knew they were there??? Were they connected to the rest of the Fleet somehow (like the Katana fleet in Legends??) Where did this come from?? Wicket and his son are clearly satisfied, though why they think anything's going to change is beyond me. And was the First Order oppressing them? Why didn't we see any of their fleet when our protagonists were IN THAT SYSTEM AND SO WAS THE OSTENSIBLE SUPREME LEADER???

Another Star Destroyer crashes on Jakku, so literally NOTHING HAS CHANGED THERE, LOL.

Back at the Resistance Jungle Base, everyone cries and hugs, Poe and Zorii have a moment that goes nowhere, Poe's arm is somehow in a sling (???) There's a very brief lesbian kiss, but it gets even less screen time than Rose Tico, so again, don't think that counts as representation, but nice try.

Maz gives Chewie Han's medal from Yavin and... where the hell did she get it??? Leia's corpse??? Creepy!!

Jannah comes up to Lando and asks him where he's from, and when Lando asks the same question, she say she doesn't know. "Let's find out." Wow, that's way more interesting than most of this movie!

Rey hugs Finn and Poe and I... just... it's the tearful hug of "wow, we've all been through a lot of trauma since we last saw each other and also I was a jerk and threw you across the sea with the Force to get you out of my way and I abandoned you without saying goodbye to isolate myself on an island in the middle of nowhere until my ghost mentor reminded me I could save the day".

ButWeDon'tHavetimetounpackThatNow.jpg

Rey takes the Falcon to the Lars' moisture farm on Tatooine with BB-8. No one is in sight. This is an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, not a shrine to the Legend of Luke Skywalker. Rey slides down the sides on a piece of metal and into the courtyard. She wraps up Luke and Leia's sabers and... we cut to her back up on the ridge near the droid garage, using the Force to bury them in the sand.

Then she pulls out her own saber and it's yellow-bladed and looks like a double quarterstaff (although I only saw the top blade ignite). What she should have had this entire movie.

There's a random woman with an eopie there, who... came over to investigate? there is literally NO ONE ELSE FOR MILES. HOW????

The woman asks who she is, and we have callbacks to that earlier conversation on Pasaana. Rey hesitates, sees Luke and Leia's ghost on the horizon, smiling their approval and says "Rey Skywalker". The movie ends with her standing  watching the double sunset... alone except for BB-8.

Wow, she's literally come full circle from being alone in the desert with a droid to being alone in a different desert with the same droid. What the fuck.

Cue triumphant music and credits.

Oh, and I just realized we never found out what was so important for Finn to tell Rey about... so that went nowhere. I assume it's "he can use the Force" but apparently that wasn't important enough to ACTUALLY INCLUDE, sigh.

Did Rey fuck off to Tatooine to be a hermit? Is she going back to her friends? Is she going to train the next generation of Jedi? How will she keep the cycle from repeating? Is it broken? Is Palpatine really dead this time??? How does she feel about Kylo/Ben?? Is HIS ghost still around stalking her, too? Why did she take the Falcon? Doesn't it belong to Chewie now? Why didn't the rest of the gang come with her???? I'm so confused.

This was even worse than I had anticipated, and I came into this with super-low expectations. This wasn’t bad in a “bad B-movie kind of way,” this was bad in the “nothing makes sense, it’s all jumbled blur, I am numb and cannot begin to care” kind of spectacle.  I cannot imagine watching this in a theater. No wonder the critics savaged this. 

[sallyface-incorrect]

The Struggles of Having ADHD

- Only Being able to sleep either 2 hours or 16, there’s no in between. I am legit typing this at 3:02 am because I can’t sleep and I haven’t slept that much and it sucks. Summer is for sleeping, not for stress.

- Not being able to remember basic information about someone like their name, but being able to remember that they once told you that their great great aunt had a mole on her foot the shape of Texas. True story btw, sorry Amber.

- Feeling like your being rejected if your friend can’t make it to hang out with you because of family reasons. RSD is a bitch. Like the tiniest thing can make you feel rejected. Ie, your mom telling you not to be so loud, someone asking why your sneezes are so loud, someone asking you to return their pen, etc.

- Having your medication ware off/forgetting to take it and being the most annoying bitch in the galaxy. I once went on a school trip and my meds wore off and I ended up spending the 2 hour bus ride back annoying the guy who was trying to sleep in front of me, again, I am so sorry Max.

- IDK if it’s just me but, chewing on literally everything. Bottle caps, paper, fabric, rubber (my favorite), and much more. I used to get punished all the time for chewing on things I wasn’t supposed to. Nail biting is also a big thing. And so is hair chewing.

- Being told “You’re too smart to have ADHD”. Well Susan, I have a neurological devolpmental disorder, I’m not retarded.

- Either giving too much information or not enough when in conversation, and also bringing up really irrelevant things in the conversation like, I know we’re talking about the Louisiana Perchance but can I tell you about this one time it rained and I saw a snail?

- Being botherd by loud and/or repetitive noises. Pen clicking and high pitched sirens make me want to scream. They suckkk harder then Travis wants to suck Sal’s dick. And the worse is when people think you’re weird or that you have a problem with them for asking. I understand you like to click your pen and I’m so sorry it’s just so loud...

- Being afraid of your friends rejecting you. Again, RSD is a bitch. Like you’re afraid that one day your bestie will get up and leave and never come back and it’s all your fault and you suck and ughhhhhh. You’re also afraid their s/o / parents hate you and one day they’ll convince them to just leave you.

- Medication is a godsend but it’s also problematic. The stuff that I take fucks up my sleep schedule, my appetite, and make me tired and nauseous. It also gives me headaches and belly aches :(

- Either being so hungry that you also eat everything in your fridge or being so not hungry that even the concept of food disgust you. And sometimes, you even throw up because food is so gross and you’re gross and all that gross is inside you and eww.

- Intense, powerful migraines. They get worse in the winter months. Last year I took almost a week off of school because my migraines got worse and worse and worse and I couldn’t do it.

- Having no measurement of personal space or how to physically interact with someone. I just said hi, do I hug you, do I high five you, idk? Like idk how many potential friendships I’ve fucked up because I was too handsey.

- Being really particular about the type of clothing I wear. I love LOVE long sleeve shirts/ sweatshirts/ sweaters/ hoodies and shorts. I also love to wear socks around the house. I hate HATE wearing socks with shoes though, it makes me anxious. I also hate wearing certain types of pants. I literally only have 2 - 3 pairs of pants I’ll wear because pants sometimes feel like a tent and I hate that.

- Not being able to loose weight. I’m not fat, or chubby, I mean I have abs for God’s sake! It’s just that I have thick ass thigh I h a t e and I wish I could just get rid of them but my medication prevents me from loosing all that weight. On the bright side, I can eat a lot and not gain weight either.

- Having certain little routines you can’t skip. For example, every morning I must shave my legs and brush my hair or the world will end. I also must have all the doors and windows closed or else I’m gonna scream.

- Also idk if this is a problem for anyone else but doors and windows being open. I can’t stand it, I mean please, I don’t care that you’re just coming up for 1 thing but p l e a s e for the love of g o d, close the door that leads to upstairs. Having it open just isn’t right.

- Hyperfixiating on something for soo long that you forget to do basic hygiene like shower, use the bathroom, brush your hair, brush your teeth. It can get you in really big trouble but at least the job is done.

- Having a comfort item. Like I have this stuffed lamb whose name is “Lambchop” but I call “Lambie” and I sleep with them each and every night and carry them around the house with me when I’m home and if I’m upset I NEED to cuddle them bacuse it’s the only thing that will make the world go away.

- Being insanely good at certain academics and shitty at others. For example, when I was in 5th grade I was reading at an undergrad level and had the ability to understand science concepts a senior would be learning but my math was at the level of a second graders.

- Idk how to describe it but like, doing movements half way and the forgetting about them. Like this one time I was at a piano recital and I went to reach for something and forgot what I was reaching for so I just kinda held my hand up in a grabbing motion for half a song and then forgot about it until my mom reminded me to put it down.

- Not being able to understand that people don’t want to hear about your hyperfixiation. I’ve had 2 cases of this in my life, my “ghosts are definitely really and now this is my only personality triat” and my “I’m not a weeb but Tokyo Ghoul is so good now let me tell you all about the plot.” (Tokyo Ghoul gang REPRESENT)

- Having 3 different moods, hyperactive, normal, and cold. Like you’re normal most of the time but sometimes you’re sooo hyper that your an entirely different person, or sometimes you’re sooo distant you’re a different person too.

- Not being able to identify your emotions very well. Like, this guy just told me that my dad and my bestie are asshole who deserve to die in a fire, what am I feeling? Am I sad? Angry? Scared? Do I think this is funny? Am I gonna laugh? Cry? Idk, throw hands? Or the dreaded crush. Do I have feelings for this person or do I just want to be really good friends? Do I hate them? Love them? Am I gonna cry the next time I see them? Last time we hung out was fun but idk???

- Also like I mentioned, romance/sexuality is hard. Last time I dated I dated this guy I really liked, or at least I thought I did. We dated for three months before I blew it off because he asked to put his arm around me and it was weird when I said yes. Also sexuality. Idk if this is a problem for anyone else or just my bisexual ass. Like it’s so hard and I really like guys but hey, girls are hot. And like I like guys more than girls?? Sometime it makes me feel really fake.

- Really enhanced weird hearing. I know at least 80% of my classes drama because I have superhearing and I’m a literal hearing god bow down, bitch. I can hear the smallest of sounds and such, but for some goddamn reason I can’t understand how loud I’m being.

- Extestensial nihilism and just being cool about it. Like, dude, idk if there’s a god out there? I’d like to think there’s some sort of Devine power and we have a purpose but idk, we probably don’t have a purpose. I mean, we’ll be forgotten after we die anyway unless we’re Tom Holland. And love probably doesn’t exist either and it’s only stigmatized by movies and books and media and we’re all gonna get married and be miserable for ever and such. But like does it really even matter? In the end we’re all alone so go off I guess.

- Being really sensitive to smell. Certain smells drive me through the roof. For example, I have an extreme fish allergy and even smelling the slightest hint a salmon can give me a migraine so intense I think I’m dying. Or essential oils. Ughh I hate those. They send me through the roof.

- Being able to remember something you heard in a YouTube video you watched back when you were nine but not being able to remember when you birthday is some days because it really be like that.

- Being really good with little kids. Idk if everyone is like this but I am very childish myself and little kids love me. I have at least 3 little boys in 1st - 3rd grade who think I’m their girlfriend and 8 little girls in kindergarten - 5th grade who think I’m their big sister, it’s really sweet.

- Always apologizing is a big thing for me. When I was a child I used to get in trouble for saying sorry when I did anything and that carried to teen hood. Last year at my dance class my teacher noticed this and tried to help me break my habit god bless you Christine.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk bois. ADHD sucks but I know you can do it👌🏻

[prorevenge]

Steal our money and abuse your children? Good Luck with life.

I would just like to put this out there that while I still am a minor, this culminated only last year. Also, I am based outside the US, Canada and Europe, so perhaps some laws may differ. I also suck at languages. Sorry if it gets too long. NSFW tag is needed for details further on. This is a new account, so there will be people who call this fake, and I apologise if this comes off as so.

During the 2008 financial crisis, my father had (ironically) received a promotion based on a project that had rolled out worldwide a few months ago. While his salary only received an increment upgrade, he received a healthy stock bonus (I think that is what they called). As a form of celebration, he decided to buy the apartment we were (and still are living) in and give it a fresh coat of paint (i.e. renovate the house completely). He bought it at well below the market price and the previous owner was more than happy to get the home of his hands so that he could pay off the loan on it. All done and said, my father looked around for a renovator who would work at a reasonable price.

He eventually found one who was ready to do the work at a fraction of the cost the others were doing it at, and after settling on designs and material choices, we moved out of the house and into a service apartment while they began to do the work over 6 months. Now, my father is a very naive person. He believes in the good every being, and will give everything if it means it will help you. The renovator, who we shall name as James, seemed a pitiful character at first. He claimed to be severely overworked by the owners, and had been looking for a way to set up his own business. He non directly was insinuating that my father lend him some money, but, as it was the midst of the financial crisis, my father assured he will try his best to help James out.

Over the 6 months, my younger sister and I got very close to James' two children; twin sisters (Violet and Bella) who were of my age. We would meet often at the local playground, while my father and James would discuss how to help James out with his idea for a business. My father would always recommend a lender, but James would always refuse, stating some bullshit excuse about how he does not want to be tied up. Eventually, my father gave in, and scrubbed together $10,000 to help James bankroll his own renovation business (which in hindsight makes no sense because how do you set up a renovation business with only $10,000). James was very grateful for this and promised to return the money back, and my Father had a contract created with the help of a lawyer, and both James and him signed it.

After the 6 months was over, we moved in. The house was in a great condition, and us kids loved it. But strangely, right after we picked up the keys from James, we never heard a word from in. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and finally months into years, and yet we could never trace James or his kids (he had no wife), and my father did not get his money back, which was a severe strain on us for a year and a bit more. We lodged a police report, but found that this was only one amongst many cases that were against James, and the name and details we had received from him were fake. They were ghosts.

This really depressed my father, because it opened his eyes to the type of people that were around him, and the fact that even if he wanted to look for the good in people and help them, he would always be taken advantage of, regardless of whether it was in the office or in social life.

Fast forward a few years to around March of 2017, and I had just entered the final two years of my schooling education. At the time, I was 15, while my classmates were between 16-17 (I skipped a grade when I was younger, and thus, will still, legally, be a minor when I graduate this year). During the first day of orientation, I picked out two familiar faces in the crowd, that at first I could not put my finger on who they were, and this was strange because I had been in this school for many years and could easily recognise anybody. It took me a few days, and looking at them carefully during classes, to realise that the two new girls who had joined were Violet and Bella themselves, albeit with completely different names and in a bad shape. I approached them at first, thinking they would recognise me, but they never did (and had), and were kind of apprehensive the first few weeks. They did not make many friends at school.

But over time, I managed to get through their armour, and, while they were still not entirely comfortable with me, it was miles better than how the rest of the school treated them. And this was when I actually got a good look at how they had turned out. There were many scars on their hands, any time parents or family were mentioned in the conversation, they basically turned off and went ghost white, and if a boy came even within 2 metres of them, they would turn as white as a sheet or become very agitated. The school counsellor had also notice this, and asked their parents (James essentially) about this, but he played dumb when asked questions and claimed he did not know why these were occurring (just a note, I found this out later but added it here because it helps the flow of the events). I realised something was horribly wrong nearly the instant I saw them but this confirmed it.

Over the same time, my friends and I tried to include them in as many activities as possible, and we took as many pictures with them (and every time somebody took out a camera they would shudder) as possible under the guise of memories, but I mostly kept them as evidence because I had a feeling this was not a good story. It is also important to note I had not told my father that James' children were in my school as it would only trigger bad memories for him and I did not want him to go through the same phase again.

After collecting these pictures, my friends and I made a beeline for the counsellor. The pictures showed in greater details the type of scars that the two sisters had on their hands and feet, which aren't visible in school uniform as our uniform consists of long pants and a full sleeve shirt. I am pretty sure the counsellor and us had a good idea where these scars had come from, but the pictures only was not really great evidence to James arrested, but it was enough to have our country's CPS equivalent get involved. And let me tell you, these guys do not mess around. They have their own division of military trained "police" officers and are relatively well funded, will go to any lengths to thoroughly investigate a case, and will ruin your life if they even doubt you.

After submitting the pictures, and learning a case was opened, we were not involved in much else as we were still minors. That was, until a few months after (December of 2017), when my friends and I were pulled out of class by the principal, and were taken to the local police station were a representative of CPS was waiting for us. They were very polite, and wanted to know more information about the case. Apart from what were in the pictures, and what we gave, my friends could not provide much else. Neither could I, but I saw the representatives eyes light up for a second when I mentioned about who the father was and how he had cheated our family. But apart from that, we did not hear much after that, other than they might need us as witnesses (I am sorry if this comes off as wrong but this is what I recall) if the case proceeds onto court.

Some weeks later (January of 2018), my father received a call from the police to come down for the case on James (I don't think it was ever closed due to the sheer magnitude of number of cases against James). Apparently they had let him know that there was a new lead on where James might be and he might be needed later on. They also let him know that CPS was on the case too, so he should expect a call soon on them for their case on James (I think they now believed that James was behind the scars). My father had known by know that I had gone to the counsellor with pictures of Bella and Violet being potentially abused, as the principal had called him up on the day CPS had pulled me out of class for an interview, so he had fully expected this, and was seething with anger because a man he had thought to be good had stolen his money and abused his own daughters.

After that, I do not know what happened for a long time. Bella and Violet remained in school, more drawnback than ever, and my friends and I were not contacted any more. Until one day, around June of 2018, just before we broke for summer, when they were met outside of school by a representative of CPS. I was a close friend of them by now, so I was walking with them to the bus stop, when we were met by the representative. He asked me to continue on, as he had to ask them a few questions. I moved on, fully expecting what was to happen. It didn't take long.

Around end September of 2018, CPS contacted my father and I, as well as my friends, regarding the case, They needed some things (I could not go that day as I had been hospitalised for a compound fracture), so my father went for the both of us (he could sign for me as I was still a minor and he was a legal guardian). When he came back, he was truly shocked. It turns out the problem was far more than I expected. My father had signed an NDA, as had my friends, and even though I had been involved, I could not get much out of them except that my friends and I had started something huge.

Come December 2018, and finally I found out just what we had started. The entire article was printed in the papers (James, Bella, Violet, my friends and I, and my father were not named due to a gag order to protect the identity of the victim; other than us lot, nobody else in the school or society, to my knowledge, knew who the children in question were).

Bella and Violet had not only been physically abused by James with the use of pipes and belts, but they had been raped by James multiple times, and their reaction to the camera, which I mentioned earlier, was due to the fact that James had been recording his rapings of his Bella and Violet, and had been trying to sell them to snuff sites on the dark web. In addition to this, he had cheated nearly 15 victims (including my father) out of nearly $200,000.

The book was thrown at James, mainly due his treatment of Bella and Violet, as well as due to another incident which had happened when he was being arrested, but I will not mention it because it, on its own, will give away where I am from. He was given multiple life sentences, no chance of parole, and was also given another punishment that is not used in other countries, but I will not mention it because it identifies where I am, but I am guessing the smart people here will be able to find out just what it is anyway.

I am also pretty sure the people in prison will do not take kindly to child rapists, so he is in hell. Which is good. Because that is all he deserves.

I do not know where Bella and Violet are, they were pulled out as soon as court proceedings began.

(source) story by (/u/TakeRevengeAsALiving)

[ucflibrary]

Hispanic Heritage Month, established in 1988, runs from September 15 through October 15. It recognizes and celebrates the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans have made to the United States. Florida in particular has a strong Hispanic legacy including the oldest inhabited city in the U.S., St. Augustine, which was founded in 1565 by the Spanish. UCF will also celebrate our new status as a Hispanic-serving institution which means more than 25% of our enrolled students identify as Hispanic.

 Join the UCF Libraries as we celebrate our favorite Hispanic authors and books. Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured Hispanic Heritage titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 16 books plus many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

Costa Rica: a global studies handbook by Meg Tyler Mitchell and Scott Pentze This work is a fascinating guide to one of Latin America's most stable and progressive nations, examining the country's development, unique features, and the challenges Costa Ricans face in the 21st century. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Cuando era puertorriqueña by Esmeralda Santiago La historia de Esmeralda Santiago comienza en la parte rural de Puerto Rico, donde sus padres y siete hermanos, en continuas luchas los unos con los otros, vivían una vida alborotada pero llena de amor y ternura. De niña, Esmeralda aprendió a apreciar cómo se come una guayaba, a distinguir la canción del coquí, a identificar los ingredientes en las morcillas y a ayudar a que el alma de un bebé muerto subiera al Cielo. Pero precisamente cuando Esmeralda parecía haberlo aprendido todo sobre su cultura, la llevaron a Nueva York, donde las reglas —y el idioma— eran no sólo diferentes, sino también desconcertantes. Cómo Esmeralda superó la adversidad, se ganó entrada a la Performing Arts High School y después continuó a Harvard, de donde se graduó con altos honores, es el relato de la tremenda trayectoria de una mujer verdaderamente extraordinaria. Suggested by Kryslynn Collazo, Scholarly Communication

 El mar y tú : otros poemas by Julia de Burgos Published December 28, 1981 by Ediciones Huracan, one can feel the solace of the waves as her poem gently comforts you. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

 Futbolera: a history of women and sports in Latin America by Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel Futbolera charts the rise of physical education programs for girls, often driven by ideas of eugenics and proper motherhood, that laid the groundwork for women’s sports clubs, which began to thrive beyond the confines of school systems. It examines how women challenged both their exclusion from national pastimes and their lack of access to leisure, bodily integrity, and public space. This vibrant history also examines women’s sports through comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Hija de la fortuna by Isabel Allende Hija de la fortuna es un retrato papitante de una epoca marcada por la violencia y la codicia en la cual los protagonistas rescatan el amor, la amistad, la compasion y el valor. En esta su mas ambiciosa novel, Isabel Allende presenta un universo fascinante, poblado de entranables personajes que, como tantos otros de la autora, se quedan para siempre en la memoria y el corazon de los lectores. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

 Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation...and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she's not sure she can trust, but who may be Alex's only chance at saving her family. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buenda family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction. Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

 Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution: the making of Cuban New York by Lisandro Pérez More than one hundred years before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 sparked an exodus that created today’s prominent Cuban American presence, Cubans were settling in New York City in what became largest community of Latin Americans in the nineteenth-century Northeast. This book brings this community to vivid life, tracing its formation and how it was shaped by both the sugar trade and the long struggle for independence from Spain. New York City’s refineries bought vast quantities of raw sugar from Cuba, ultimately creating an important center of commerce for Cuban émigrés as the island tumbled into the tumultuous decades that would close out the century and define Cuban nationhood and identity. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junto Diaz Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.

Suggested by Kryslynn Collazo, Scholarly Communication

 The Costa Rica Reader: history, culture, politics edited by Steven Palmer and Iván Molina This essential introduction to Costa Rica includes more than fifty texts related to the country’s history, culture, politics, and natural environment. Most of these newspaper accounts, histories, petitions, memoirs, poems, and essays are written by Costa Ricans. Many appear here in English for the first time. The authors are men and women, young and old, scholars, farmers, workers, and activists. The Costa Rica Reader is a necessary resource for scholars, students, and travelers alike. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 The Line Becomes a River: dispatches from the border by Francisco Cantú For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line. Suggested by Kryslynn Collazo, Scholarly Communication

 The Other Side = el otro lado by Julia Alvarez These same qualities characterize her poetry—from the “Making Up the Past” poems, which explore a life of exile as lived by a young girl, to “The Joe Poems,” a series of beautifully sensual and funny love poems that celebrate a middle-aged romance. The collection culminates in the poem of the title: the twenty-one-part epic about the poet’s return to her native Dominican Republic, and to the internal affirmation of the conflict and the last one that the trip caused. Innovation and bold invention, the interaction of sound, the senses, and the rhythm of two languages, all characterize Julia Alvarez’s art in transforming precious memory into unforgettable poetry. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

 The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken. This collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother's ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead--punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco It is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency―but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man―Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring. A propulsive, sensual tour de force, The Best Bad Things introduces Katrina Carrasco, a bold new voice in crime fiction. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers. Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

 The Poetry of Pablo Neruda edited by Ilan Stavans This selection of Neruda's poetry, the most comprehensive single volume available in English, presents nearly six hundred poems, scores of them in new and sometimes multiple translations, and many accompanied by the Spanish original. In his introduction, Ilan Stavans situates Neruda in his native milieu as well as in a contemporary English-language one, and a group of new translations by leading poets testifies to Neruda's enduring, vibrant legacy among English-speaking writers and readers today. Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 3 June 2019

Quick Bits:

Batman #72 essentially gives a bit of recontextualization for what has been going on during the series, giving a summation of events, in this third part of “The Fall and the Fallen” from Tom King, Mikel Janín, Jorge Fornés, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles. It’s all right, with some glorious artwork as always, but it kind of feels like we’re treading water here.

| Published by DC Comics

Bettie Page: Unbound #1 builds on what’s come before and the magic of her unicursal hexagram pendant, but you needn’t have read anything previously as this first issue does a good job of weaving in the relevant information to inform this adventure. I quite like what David Avallone, Julius Ohta, Ellie Wright, Sheelagh D, and Taylor Esposito have been doing long term with Bettie Page and this is another fun start to the next chapter, blending Lovecraftian horror with a jaunt through pastiches of Dynamite’s current properties.

| Published by Dynamite

Birthright #36 returns from the trade break with the start of the next stage in dealing with the weakening walls between realms and what terrible things may happen as magic keeps building up on the threshold of our world. The artwork from Andrei Bressan and Adriano Lucas remains absolutely stellar as they, Joshua Williamson, and Pat Brosseau continue one of the best fantasy adventure series that strangely keeps flying under the radar.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Black Cat #1 is a highly entertaining debut, leaning hard into history and heists, with three tales spotlighting the Black Cat and the Black Fox. Jed MacKay pens two of the tales, one in the present illustrated by Travel Foreman, one in the past by Mike Dowling, both coloured and lettered respectively by Brian Reber and Ferran Delgado, that play stylistically off one another as they build up the respective crews and show them in action. There’s also a very cute two-page heist with cats by Nao Fuji.

| Published by Marvel

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #5 begins a long dark night for Xander’s soul as he’s struggling with overcoming the demon trying to take control as a vampire. Great bits building what he means to Buffy and Willow. David López takes over line art duties here, and it’s definitely a change, darker and scratchier than what’s come before, but it suits the raw emotion of the story.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Captain Marvel #6 begins a tie-in to War of the Realms with Carol and Natasha trying to find Doctor Strange in South America. It’s a fun start to this story from Kelly Thompson, Annapaola Martello, Tamra Bonvillain, and Clayton Cowles with a Freaky Friday twist as they try to stop Enchantress.

| Published by Marvel

Criminal #5 begins “Cruel Summer”, which Ed Brubaker promises to possibly be the longest arc yet, kicking off an investigation into a woman running from an abusive affair. Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips give us an intriguing start to this arc through a sad sack private investigator in Dan Farraday 

| Published by Image

DCeased #2 continues the destruction of the DC Universe through a “not zombie” zombie plague. Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Stefano Gaudiano, Rain Beredo, and Saida Temofonte are telling a great horror story here, with some big casualties wiped off the board pretty quickly.

| Published by DC Comics

Deadpool #13 is another War of the Realms tie-in, dropping Deadpool into Australia to tackle Ulik and his trolls. It’s a decent start from Skottie Young, Nic Klein, and Jeff Eckleberry with some funny Wade/Blind Al moments and Wade trying to convince the Australian heroes of his worth as an Avenger.

| Published by Marvel

Deathstroke #44 is part one of “RIP”, with Priest, Fernando Pasarin, Ryan Winn, Jeromy Cox, and Willie Schubert kicking it off with Slade’s funeral. Some interesting bits of possibility as to who might pick up the Deathstroke mantle.

| Published by DC Comics

Descendent #2 continues this conspiracy-laden thriller from Stephanie Phillips, Evgeniy Bornyakov, Lauren Affe, and Troy Peteri. This one’s a bit heavy on the shadowy organization being shadowy and light on explanation, but there are still some entertaining character moments.

| Published by AfterShock

Eclipse #16 brings this series from Zack Kaplan, Giovanni Timpano, Flavio Dispenza, and Troy Peteri to a close. I find it kind of funny that the reason for the solar activity and underlying state of the world aren’t answered, but that’s been part of the through line of this final arc, focusing more on the characters and the heart that keeps people going.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Fallen World #2 continues this wonderful exploration of the new state of 4002 AD by Dan Abnett, Adam Pollina, Ulises Arreola, and Jeff Powell. The threat of Father-possessed Bloodshot in horrifying and the future is looking pretty bleak. Also, I think this is some of the best artwork I have ever seen from Adam Pollina. He’s really giving it his all for this series and it shines through on the page.

| Published by Valiant

Giant Days #51 deals with the fallout of McGraw’s loss as we head towards the end of the series. The shift in behaviour for Esther to more responsibility and adult attitudes also seems to be a sign that John Allison is giving us that the end is near.

| Published by Boom Entertainment / BOOM! Box

The Green Lantern #8 is one of the weirdest Green Lantern/Green Arrow team-ups you’re going to come across. With awesome demons from Liam Sharp.

| Published by DC Comics

Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1 gives us a trio of tales and a framing story, focusing on the other heroes who were sucked into oblivion in the first issue, and where some of them have ended up now. Great work from all of the creators involved and hope to see them usher more stories of the characters.

| Published by Marvel

Incredible Hulk: Last Call #1 is another of the 80th Anniversary specials, this time reuniting the classic Hulk team of Peter David and Dale Keown for this one-shot. It’s an interesting tale of Bruce wanting to kill himself and an old co-worker of Betty’s trying to talk him out of it.

| Published by Marvel

Justice League #25 concludes “The Sixth Dimension” from Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sánchez, and Tom Napolitano. Gorgeous art as always, and an interesting bit of the League being more than the sum of their parts to choose a different way. There’s also a prelude for the “Year of the Villain” even from James Tynion IV, Javier Fernandez, Hi-Fi, and Napolitano and it’s a little grim. While they were gone, the world has been doomed.

| Published by DC Comics

Meet the Skrulls #5 brings this excellent series to a close, with hints of something even bigger than a Skrull invasion lurking within the Marvel Universe. Robbie Thompson, Niko Henrichon, Laurent Grossat, and Travis Lanham have provided a taut thriller through this series, but also shown that the tightest bonds in the field are really with your family.

| Published by Marvel

Savage Avengers #2 continues slowly bringing together the team in the Savage Land, along with revealing the long time Conan villain pulling the strings. It’s bloody, violent, and great. Mike Deodato Jr. and Frank Martin are making this look gorgeous.

| Published by Marvel

Stronghold #4 goes in some very interesting directions as Michael and Claire escape from the Stronghold’s clutches and go searching for the Apostate. Some absolutely marvellous artwork from Ryan Kelly and Dee Cunniffe, with some great repeated variations on layouts as Michael cycles through different lifetimes.

| Published by AfterShock

Uncanny X-Men #19 catches us up with what’s been going on with Emma Frost since her X-Men: Black story across Astonishing X-Men and the beginning of this series, and, well, it’s also bleak. And there’s more death. Also a reminder that the Vanisher’s name is Telford Porter. TELFORD PORTER.

| Published by Marvel

War of the Realms #5 is kind of a mess of pieces, I don’t recommend anyone trying to reconcile appearances and locations in this book with any of the tie-ins, but on its own, it’s one hell of a gathering storm for the finale. Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson are unparalleled here with the artwork. It’s drop dead gorgeous.

| Published by Marvel

Witchblade #14 slips back to the present to deal with what happens after Alex and co. get ported off to the future. I love how Caitlin Kittredge, Roberta Ingranata, Bryan Valenza, and Troy Peteri are presenting this, rather than just leaving us confused in the future.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Young Justice #6 concludes “Seven Crises” with some answers, kind of, but not any particularly satisfying ones, more just a bunch of hand waving. Which is not to say this isn’t good, Brian Michael Bendis, John Timms, Gabe Eltaeb, and Wes Abbott deliver a very entertaining excursion into Gemworld, with some funny moments and great action. It’s just that the questions about how and why any of this is happening or who these versions of the characters are and out of which continuity remain.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Other Highlights: Age of X-Man: Prisoner X #4, Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III #2, Beasts of Burden: Presence of Others #2, Black Hammer ‘45 #4, Dead Man Logan #8, Domino: Hotshots #4, The Dreaming #10, Elvira: The Shape of Elvira #3, Female Furies #5, Hashtag Danger #2, Hotel Dare, Jim Henson’s Beneath the Dark Crystal #10, Jughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica #2, Marvel Action: Avengers #5, Marvel Team-Up #3, Noble #18, Old Man Quill #6, Paper Girls #29, Red Sonja #5, Ronin Island #4, Section Zero #3, Shadow Roads #8, Sharkey: The Bounty Hunter #4, Six Million Dollar Man #4, Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #9, Star Wars: Age of Rebellion - Luke Skywalker #1, Star Wars Adventures #22, Thumbs #1, Tony Stark: Iron Man #12, Vampirella: Roses for the Dead #4, Volition #6, War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery #4, War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas #3

Recommended Collections: Avengers - Volume 3: War of the Vampires, Captain Ginger - Volume 1, Cemetery Beach, Cloak & Dagger: Agony & Ecstasy, Die - Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, The Dreaming - Volume 1: Pathways & Emanations, Hack/Slash Omnibus - Volume 6, Impossible Incorporated, Maxwell’s Demons - Volume 1, Mind MGMT Omnibus - Volume 2, Mirror: The Nest, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars Adventures: Destroyer Down, The Thrilling Adventure Hour - Volume 2: Residence Evil

d. emerson eddy is all thumbs.

[mcdougallunitedinpride]

Baptized in Terror or in Grace?

Baptized in Terror or in Grace?

by Gary Simpson

Call to Worship

One: Today we remember Jesus baptism.

All: In baptism, our Creator calls us

to use love to free people from hate.

One: In baptism, we celebrate being one in Christ

No longer are we divided by identity.

All: No longer citizen or immigrant.

No longer slave or free.

No longer rich or poor.

No longer male, female, other.

No longer straight or LGBTQ.

We are one in Christ Jesus.

We welcome and celebrate all.

Making all one in Christ.

One: Baptism the Spirit anoints us for ministry

Anoints us to embody divine love.

All: Today, the body of Christ  

remembers and celebrates all.

One: Let us worship God and celebrate each other!

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (KJV) And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not;  John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:  17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.

21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

Baptism becomes baptism when God is present.  According to both Martin Luther and Augustine, “Without the word of God the water is simple water’ and is not baptism.(1)  The empowering of the Spirit is what makes the simple act of getting wet a baptism.

There are a number of different meanings of the word baptize.  One Bible commentary in my library states that there are about 20 meanings for the word.(2)  Some people emphasize meanings that relate more to water or more to immersion.  I tend to emphasize more symbolic and more spiritual meanings.  In baptism, we identify with Christ, with Christ’s death, with Christ’s resurrection.  The most important meaning of baptize has almost no connection with water.(3)  There is a sense in 1 Corinthians that the children of Israel were baptized into Moses.(4)  In the Exodus narrative, the children of Israel did not get wet.  They crossed the red sea on dry ground.  The Egyptians were the ones who got wet that day.(5)  James Dale wrote a book about John’s baptism.  He describes baptism as taking place when the “character, state or condition” of an object is changed.(6)

A case can be made that Jesus’ baptism was unique.  John the baptist baptized people in a ‘baptism of repentance’.(7)  Jesus’ baptism was not like the baptisms normally conducted by John the baptizer, because Jesus was not repenting.  Baptism signifies submission to God, allegiance to God’s will and inclusion with the restored people of God.(8)  Through baptism, Jesus shows that He is in alliance with God, with the will of God and with humanity.  Perhaps, in some way, Jesus’ baptism was an example for us and was a marker showing a change in Jesus from being a Jewish carpenter to being a powerful Jewish teacher.  

Jesus was probably about 30 years old when He was baptized.  Verse 23 is not part of the lectionary reading.  In verse 23, we learn that Jesus was roughly 30 years old when He started his ministry.  Priests were supposed to be at least 30 years of age to be installed in ministry.(9)  Because Jesus is the high priest for humanity, it makes sense for Jesus to start His ministry at about 30 years of age.

John the baptist’s ministry is not one that I find particularly attractive.  A description of his ministry makes me think of some of the street preachers in Edmonton, who stand on a box and yell into a public address system that everyone needs to repent or they will be doomed to hell.  I try to scurry past them, in an effort to protect my ears from the loud preaching.  In fact, I am not sure that I would want to be seen to have any association with John the baptizer's ministry.  Depending on the translation, John the baptist called people a generation of vipers(10) or a children of vipers.(11)  In fairness to John, he might have been calling the scribes and pharisees the children of vipers.  We get that sense from Matthew’s Gospel.  The religious leaders might have been present only to witness the baptism,(12) not to gain spiritual blessing from John the baptist.  I wonder if they were there to see if John was preaching heresy.  I am still left feeling that no matter how you slice it, either being told that your parents are poisonous snakes or that you are a poisonous snake is not a compliment.  To John the baptizer, the people he was calling a generation of vipers were the descendants of the snake that deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.(13)

John's comments indirectly challenge racism and challenge ultra nationalism.  And I am not sure if John won any friends among the Jewish nationalists of his day.  In verses 7 and 8 of this chapter, he reminds the people that being children of Abraham is nothing to brag about.  He essentially says that God can create good Jewish people from stones.  I am wondering how well his message would be received by a room full of people wearing Make America Great Again hats.  Nationalists might find John’s message that God does not care about your national identity or your skin color a bit unsettling, possibly even a little jarring.  In John’s personal theology, being Jewish did not place you in a special position above other people.  He saw a need for Jewish and non-Jewish people to repent.  John’s message to Jewish people was that being Jewish did not exempt people from judgment and that “racial privilege meant nothing” to God.(14)

John the baptizer seemed to have good ethics.  He told tax collectors to only collect the taxes that they were supposed to collect.(15)  He informed Roman soldiers that they were to be content with their wages, do not blackmail people and do not be violent.(16)  While his ministry impresses me as being harsh and insensitive, he was popular.  Crowds appeared to follow John.(17)  And for some reason, Jesus came to John to be baptized.  Perhaps, Jesus wanted to be baptized by John, because they appear to have been relatives.  According to Luke Chapter 1, Mary, Jesus’ mother, was related to John’s mother.(18)

One of my favorite Bible commentators is William Barclay, a Biblical linguist and scholar.  He translated the New Testament and wrote the popular Daily Study Bible commentary, which covers the entire New Testament.  His commentaries are so good that they can be used as a devotional book.  William Barclay comments, “Nowhere does the difference between John and Jesus stand out so clearly because, whatever the message of John was, it was not a gospel. It was not good news; it was news of terror.”(19)  At Jesus baptism, a dove descended upon Jesus.  The dove symbolized purity and harmlessness.(20)  In the presence of a ministry of terror, the dove, a symbol of peace, comes down from the heavenly.  A harmless, life-giving, hope-filled ministry that touched hundreds of millions of people in the last two thousand years took flight on the wings of the dove.

There is a reason why I am giving this background.  Jesus baptism is in no way diminished by the fact that He was baptized by John.  Some people who attend progressive churches and many LGBTQ people have suffered a lot at the hands of blunt ministers, harsh churches, demeaning church doctrine.  If you were baptized, confirmed, ordained or served in a church system that hurt you or that hurt others, your call to be a person of faith or your call to ministry is not diminished by that church.  You are more than your past.  Like Jesus, you can have a powerful ministry and you can be a powerful force of good news, despite the frightening messages of churches.

The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as the one who fulfills John’s prophecy that there is a better, a greater, a more significant spiritual leader coming.  John indicates that this person who comes after him is so much better than John is that John is not even worthy of untying his sandals. Slaves typically untied sandals.(21) The early followers of Jesus would have understood that John the baptizer was saying that he is not good enough to be Jesus’ slave.  A spirituality of terror is not worthy, is not fit to be the slave of a spirituality of hope and peace.  The bad news gospel that condemns people based on their identity is not worthy of tying the sandals of the Gospel.

Jesus submitted to being baptized by a person who was a bad news minister, so that we would not have to submit to bad news belief systems, so that we could hear good news, the Gospel.

There is tremendous power in stories, so I am going to share a story, as I conclude.  Ken Wilson, author of A Letter to My Congregation, tells the story of his daughter, Grace.  His daughter was in a science class, which was taught by a devout Catholic teacher.  A student asked the teacher what he thought of homosexuality.  The teacher replied that homosexuality is morally disordered.  Grace looked over and saw a boy, who identified as gay, starting to cry.  To Grace’s credit, she stood up and said, “Well, both of my parents are pastors, and I don’t know what they think about this, but I know that Jesus accepted all people!”  Through tears, the teen said, “Grace, you’re my hero!”(22)  And I believe that day a gay teen was baptized in God’s love.  That day Grace lived up to her name.

My prayer is that many people in the city will be baptized in God’s love through people who are part of this church.  And that they will say, “Your church, is my hero!”

God is a lot like Grace and God calls us to be like Grace!

Today, you are declared grace incarnate, grace wrapped in flesh, grace that baptizes many with love.  Amen.  

Notes

(1) Cited W.H.T. Dau. “Baptism (Lutheran doctrine),” ISBE, I, 395 in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.”  Bible.org.  04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018.  <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(2) J. Vernon McGee.  Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee.  (Pasadena, California:  Thru the Bible Radio, 1998) ebook.

(3) McGee.  (1998) ebook.

(4) 1 Corinthians 10:2-5.

(5) McGee. (1998) ebook.

(6) James W. Dale. Johannic Baptism. (Waucona, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993, vi), cited in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.”  Bible.org.  04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018.  <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(7) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(8) Walter J. Harrelson, et. al, eds.  The New Interpreter’s Study Bible.  (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2003), 1858.

(9) See Numbers 4:3.  “Adam Clarke Commentary.”  Study Light.  n.d.,  17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/acc/luke-3.html>.  This point is also made in the Barnes Bible Commentary.  “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>. 

(10) Luke 3:7 King James Version.

(11) Luke 3:7 William Barclay’s New Testament.

(12) Good News Study Bible.  (New York:  American Bible Society, 1993), 1297.

(13) Lane T. Dennis, et. al., eds.  ESV Study Bible.  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway, 2011), 1953.

(14) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(15) Luke 3:12-13.

(16) Luke 3:14.

(17) Luke 3:10 indicate crowds were asking John the baptist questions.

(18) Luke 1:36.

(19) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(20) “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>. 

(21) Good News Study Bible.  (New York:  American Bible Society, 1993), 1379.

(22) Ken Wilson.  A Letter to My Congregation:  An Evangelical Pastor’s Path to Embracing People who are Gay, Lesbian and Transgender in the Company of Jesus.  (Canton, Michigan:  Read the Spirit Books, 2014), 41.

[angrbodic]

Coloring in grey scale

So, hey, this is somewhat of a tutorial for those curious about some of my coloring and blending. I made this especially for anyone younger than me and is exploring digital art, but this is also for others who are curious about what I do. I love reading other artist’s comments and looking at their WIPs, so why not.

Another reminder: if you’re looking for my artwork, please follow @rainbow-illness and not this blog. All of my finished stuff goes there; usually, my works in progress (WIPs) or Angry Doodle Corner go here. Sometimes I use this blog to repost my art, but that is my official art blog, no this one. Not unless you like nonsensical posting and metal, then have at it. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to hit me up, I love talking about art.

So I can’t always sit down and talk about my processes and how I go about doing them, but I was able to sit down and take some screencaps while I was working on my iPad Pro. Using the iPad is actually my first choice to draw on because of the convenience of carrying it around like a sketchbook, whereas my laptop isn’t always easy to carry around--it’s a big laptop. While I use my iPad, I also like to go back and correct things, recolor, re-proportion, or spend more time privately working on a drawing. I have my iPad with me, all the time, so I’m out in places usually like Starbucks doing this. I also struggle with pretty bad PTSD and agoraphobia, so having my iPad out with my headphones on gives me an excuse to put my mind elsewhere to calm down.  My family just usually looks at me and goes “oh, she’s working on her art again”; I did this as a kid, too, only with sketchbooks.

I do not have a Cintiq either, though I would absolutely love one. This laptop is capable of using a stylus, but I think I need a better one to do it with. All I’m using is a cheap Wacom Bamboo tablet that I’ve had for five years, that’s it. Everything I’ve done on this blog has been on a small surface. So if you’re just dabbling into art, don’t beat yourself up for having the small stuff, I’ve worked with small stuff and still do. The only thing I have that’s not small is, well, the space and processor on my laptop are much faster than any other laptop I’ve owned, bought especially for graphic design classes and my artwork. 

So, that being said lemme just forewarn some of you guys. My artwork is all done in two to three layers! Yes, you read that right! Why? When I was 16, I didn’t have a Wacom tablet to mess with, so I had to use a mouse and learned from there. When I turned 18, I got my first Wacom tablet while working my first official job and the family computer didn’t have a good processor. So when I got my first official laptop, it was basic and not made to run anything beyond the web browser and such, it could barely handle Photoshop. It did, however, run Paint Tool SAI with no issue (which is why I still prefer it over anything I use), it just couldn’t handle more than five layers. After losing my drawings constantly and not being able to do anything in the prized software I’ve been eyeing since my Sophmore year of high school, I found a workaround with it. 

And that’s what I’m going to write about here. With that in mind, no, you do not have to limit your layers! I’ve taken traditional art classes so my first instinct is to literally paint over my stuff like I would on a canvas. If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have to! Yes, I am nuts. 

That being said, let's do this.

If you haven’t taken traditional art classes, that’s cool! I’m going to be using some art terms you haven’t heard of, but you definitely will when you take your first ever drawing class. These terms are foreground, value, negative space, contour, and weighted line (I’ve seen it called line weight too). For the more experienced art students who are likely groaning over that stupid contour practice from that book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, I’m sorry, guys. Newbies, you are going to know this. 

And you are going to hate it. While I still hate it and, yeah, my eyes are rolling into my skull right now just even talking about it, there are some useful practices in here that I... actually use. Who would have thought? At least we’re not talking about still lives.

Anyway, here’s what I’M going to say that some art teachers will not tell you but I want anyone to read this to know:

- Do not obsess over your drawing to look exactly like your reference. Just don’t. Forget this completely, worry about it later or don’t even worry about it at all. This is your style, your interpretation.

- Digital art is hard. Art is hard! Practice makes perfect and you learn over time just by studying (looking at) other pieces of art. It took me like well over 10 years to find my own little niche and I’m still playing around with coloring styles. I have a lot.

- If you’re just starting to draw with a tablet of any kind, play around with it. My first official program was a cheaper version of Paint Shop Pro and when I first got it when I was 14, I sat around and experimented on layers to see what it would look like. Explore!

- When you start drawing figures or faces, try not to think of it as, well,  face or a figure. Reduce it to basic shapes, like squares, triangles, and circles.

Greyscale can establish light source, value, scale, and negative space.

I don’t always use greyscale for my art, but when I do, I appreciate it because it makes my life easier. For example, Alphonse Mucha’s pieces here from his “Slav Epic”.

Chances are, you’ve seen Mucha’s art nouveau on prints, fanart, fabrics, and all of that. But Mucha did so much more and he is a huge influence on me for a reason. By the greyscale we see here, we can see foreground/subject with each illustration. Mucha is using value (that’s shadow) to emphasize this, in addition to negative space (background) to draw you in, just by using black and white. Notice how the other subjects don’t have such a powerful contrast and light source versus the other, especially the woman on the left. Mucha made his art pop by his understanding of contrast.

For this first part of this entry, I’m going to be using Papa Emeritus II from “Ghost”... who is a good example of how to draw faces, too. Huh. Regardless of what drawing program you’re using, keep your opacity low, at 50%.

Simplicity at its finest

Instead of focusing a lot on Emeritus’ face, I’m going to focus on the negative space behind him. I’m using this to define his figure. This is a good picture because of the stark contrast, though, it’s a little tricky because it is really contrasted and you can’t see where the light source really is. But that is okay!  I am going in and just using this negative space, the contour of his head and torso. Before I even think of a face, I want to softly go in and use black (or grey) to fill up that negative space. Keep it simple and work your way up.

After I lightly fill in the negative space around him, I can start lightly going in and establish his face by blocks of shadow.  And this is why Emeritus II is such a good example for this kind of work. I don’t usually start going in and drawing eyes, I rely on the shadows of the face to see where their eyes, ears, lips, and such lie. 

Here’s another example (though, it’s old):

This is in my maroon style underpaint, which is what I post most of the time. For their faces, I just used basically eye sockets to start working on their faces, like Papa Emeritus II down below. Again, this dude is a great example.

Here is where it may get a little funky.  I created a new layer and set that layer to Multiply, still keeping that opacity low. Since I have no light source and I just want to create a really dramatic lighting, I made a vignette with a simple airbrush tool.  

With that little vignette, you can create a new layer (unless you’re me, I just merge it down because of that constant fear of nonexistent software crashing) and I’m using the color pick tool to go back and forth to start using greys to really get into Emeritus’ face, especially his wrinkles. I’m painting over it constantly, switching back and forth between a paintbrush tool and color pick tool to blend. Again, keep your opacity low... unless you’re me and you’re feeling adventurous. You’ll also notice here that I have more than one photo reference. I use several for a lot of my art, so I encourage you to do the same. I had no idea what his jaw looked like, so I grabbed a second photo. Now that I have a better idea of where his hat ends on his forehead and how his nose looks, I start doing a weighted line.

Weighted line and Contour

Now is the dreaded talk. Of contour.

Welcome to Drawing I hell. This cursed image is from the book “How to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain” and if your teacher does not talk about this in your first drawing class, I am going to eat my hat... I have a hat lying around here somewhere. ANYWAY, the contour line exercise is basically you just using a neverending line for a drawing. I don’t know who drew this (and tbh, thanks a lot for every single boring assignment I’ve done in drawing classes), but this guy used contour lines for his drawing. I’m having war flashbacks over here, but I managed to find an art teacher’s page talking about different types of contour. My god, they are evolving.

Going back to our dear friend Papa Emeritus II, I used weighted line to start adding in little shadows to his face.  Weighted line goes hand in hand with contour; it is a great technique to not only add details, but add little bits of shadows.

This is a simple example; the thicker line is adding to the shadow of the apple, giving it value!

Papa Emeritus II is such a good reference... I used him as inspiration for King Melwas here.

Gwenhwyfar is also a good example of weighted line. Gwen is essentially a very, very pale character. In contrast to Melwas, who is in darker clothing, Gwen is soft, she is the focal point in this drawing. For the little pieces of her hair, the corner of her lips, eyelashes, and her fingertips, I used a weighted line to establish these things, otherwise, Gwen is so pale, she’ll easily be washed out completely.

This drawing of Alice, which I’m still messing around with, is another example of how effective a weighted line can be with depth. The lines I added into her face, eyelashes, creases, hair, and fingers add those little details since everything I’ve done before like Papa Emeritus II was so soft with a low opacity on the brush settings.

Layer masks and curves

There are two ways you can color greyscale images.

You can do this by going into Layer > Adjustment Layer > Curves (this is how it looks like in Procreate).

This gives you a neat ol’ base color! I am playing around in the blues, adding soft hues of blue in their figures and the white in this picture can either turn blue, cream, or even green. You don’t have to use Blue, you can use any of the other colors. For me, I’m always drawn to blues. Another cool thing to play around with is Color Balance, which is underneath the same function as Curves.

But if you don’t have any of these, you can add a new layer, and do Multiply.

The only drawback to this, of course, is how destaturated (the lack of color) it looks. And yes, that’s an issue you will have and I did run into this while doing this. How I combat this is using additional layer masks. Believe it or not, Alice here was once at a grey scale, looking even more desaturated than Gwen.

For Alice’s face, I went in and use:

- Soft Light because she needed more peach and roses in her skin. Omri’s original drawing gave her a light rose blush so I wanted to do the same.

- Overlay to mask out the black lines from the greyscale I had.

- Lighten which I used to make her lips pinker, her apron’s shadows lighter, and parts of her hair brown.

The same went for Gwen, who is, again, very pale. But while she’s supposed to be pale, I didn’t wash her out completely. To add more saturation, I used a combination of Soft Light over my Multiply layer and Overlay to start working at the highlights on her hair, nose, and shoulder. 

This little walkthrough isn’t as visual as I like, but with limited software like Fire Alpaca, GIMP, or Paint Tool SAI that don’t have the abilities of Photoshop in terms of color correction and playing around with colors, I really encourage you, readers, to play around with these tools. Using the color picker back and forth, especially after using layer masks, gives you an ability to mix and blend colors. The reason why I work with greyscale or a maroon under paint is that you can create brilliant colors and make a new palette; the trick is to constantly mess around with them. I never go in and flat out color anything, with the exception of things like “angry doodle corner” which is basically what I call my lazy drawings, drawings where I’m just honestly goofing off with.

So in summation...! Or me trying to summarize this.

 Experiment and explore with layer masks and adjustments. Whoever says that using these tools isn’t real art, they’re wrong. And please don’t ever be afraid of using references of any sort!  Alphonse Mucha is saved ten times over on this computer.

[aion-rsa]

Best Movies Coming to Netflix in April 2021

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When 2021 began, many movie lovers were hopeful April would be the month of the rebound. James Bond was scheduled to (finally) return at the beginning of the month, and Marvel’s Black Widow was waiting at just the end of it. This of course did not happen.

Nevertheless, for those looking for more bite-sized distractions over the usual binging blur on streaming services, there is still relief coming on Netflix. While all of the below movies are relatively recent, chances are you haven’t seen any of them in a long time, if at all. So sit back, relax, and find out the best options to Netflix and chill this April.

Insidious (2011)

April 1

As the movie that arguably ushered in the horror movie renaissance of the 2010s—or at least cemented the Blumhouse Productions formula—Insidious has become strangely overlooked. This is probably due to director James Wan and star Patrick Wilson refining this style to even greater success a few years later with The Conjuring. Nevertheless, Insidious is a creepy delight, one which reworked Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist for the 21st century with its vision of a haunted house in suburbia. The logline, though is what really made this scary: it isn’t the house that’s haunted… it’s your son. With their lad pursued by a demon from a place called “the Further,” a father (Wilson) and mother (Rose Byrne) will have to confront some repressed supernatural trauma and team-up with Lin Shaye’s marvelous ghost hunter. Just beware the Woman in Black.

Legally Blonde (2001)

April 1

Legally Blonde remains the best kind of comedy: one that’s as socially relevant as it is fun. The feminist comedy about a “sorority girl” who decides to go to Harvard Law School to get her ex-boyfriend back became an immediate classic when it hit theaters in 2001. Starring Reese Witherspoon as protagonist Elle Woods, and based on a book of the same name by Amanda Brown, Legally Blonde came out at a time when most pop culture feminism took the form of Strong Female Characters who had to be traditionally masculine in order to be taken seriously as female role models.

Legally Blonde, by contrast, gave us a character who not only didn’t have to give up her femininity to be seen as smart, competent, and powerful, but whose exhibition of those qualities stems from her femininity. The film would go on to launch several sequels (one theatrical and one straight-to-home video release), with another one in development, plus a musical. But the original movie’s cultural legacy lives on far beyond that.

The Pianist (2002)

April 1

We cannot in good conscience recommend this movie without noting the film is directed by the reprehensible Roman Polanski. If that is a deal-breaker, please move on. However, there is a powerful piece of cinema here, and in a subject matter the director is all too familiar with: the Holocaust. Starring Adrien Brody in the role that won him an Oscar, the film provides a searing biographical portrait of Władysław Szpilman, a Polish classical composer of Jewish descent. After the Germans invaded his homeland, Szpilman is confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, where he first continues performing for Polish radio and then spends the last two years of the war in hiding, evading Nazi detection and death in the concentration camps. It’s unforgettable for those who can watch.

Yes Man (2008)

April 1

This Jim Carrey comedy based on a memoir by Danny Wallace sees a buttoned up businessman make a covenant to say ‘yes’ to every opportunity he is presented with. While it’s structurally pretty similar to his earlier hit Liar Liar, this is good-natured, classic Carrey which might just provide some much needed escapism during these dark times. The director is Peyton Reed, who went on to make Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and although the story—essentially a romance co-starring Zooey Deschanel in manic pixie dream girl mode—is formulaic, Reed brings a pace and energy that keeps it buzzing until the end.

The Master (2012)

April 15

Paul Thomas Anderson’s deliciously opaque satire of Scientology (or sympathetic love letter to the misled?) has new poignancy in 2021. With its depiction of a traumatized veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) falling for the bait of a charismatic charlatan (Philip Seymour Hoffman), it rings truer than ever. It also still features bizarrely fascinating performances from both Phoenix and Hoffman, with the latter being particularly bombastic as a science fiction writer who’s become a profit. It’s never really clear if he believes his own line of BS, but what is obvious is the one to really watch out for is Amy Adams as Hoffman’s lethally smiling wife.

Crimson Peak (2015)

April 16

Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro took things back to the late 1800s for his Gothic romance film Crimson Peak. This horror-tinged drama stars Mia Wasikowska and Tom Hiddleston as star-crossed lovers, and Jessica Chastain as Tom’s conniving sister and lady of a haunted castle in the English countryside. Like a Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe flick from the ’60s, Crimson Peak begins as an unlikely love story but soon devolves into a nightmare come to life for Wasikowska’s Edith, who discovers that there’s more to her new husband, his sister, and their home than meets the eye. 

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While not quite on par with del Toro’s other films from a narrative perspective, Crimson Peak is a masterclass in atmosphere and spooky imagery. The movie is less a jump scare-heavy cheap thrill and more of an unnerving slow-burn. It may feel a bit dated to modern audiences, but those who like a good haunted house story will find plenty to love in this picture.

Rush (2013)

April 16

A little bit Ford v. Ferrari before Ford v. Ferrari was a film, Rush is a surprisingly underrated biopic from director Ron Howard. With its traditional Hollywood filmmaker operating at top performance, Rush provides a highly dramatized portrayal of a rivalry between two Formula One drivers, British wheelman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), and Austrian driver Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). In real-life, the pair began as good drinking mates on the Formula Three circuit before becoming superstar rivals at a higher level between 1973 and ’79. The film tracks their speed, bravado, and sometimes horrific crashes with steady doses of adrenaline. And hey, it stars Thor and Baron Zemo!

Synchronic (2020)

April 16

Synchronic is the fourth and most ambitious film yet from the directing-writing-producing (and sometimes acting) team of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. The pair have explored the grip of addiction and the passage of time in all of their features to date, and this sci-fi/horror hybrid continues with those themes. Anthony Mackie (the MCU’s Falcon) stars as Steve, a New Orleans paramedic who learns he has six weeks to live just as he and his partner Dennis (Jamie Dornan) respond to a series of bizarre deaths linked to a new designer drug called Synchronic. What the drug does and how it affects the two friends personally propels Steve on a mind-bending, frightening, yet ultimately compassionate journey, told extremely well here with strong performances and shocking imagery. 

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[gameplayandtalk]

Tetris Effect: Connected - Review

2020 hasn't been the greatest year for... well, humanity. But it is shaping up to be a great year for Tetris players.

The last decade has had some ups and downs as well: Tetris Ultimate from Ubisoft was destined to be the new mainline Tetris game of choice, but was plagued by issues early on and failed to excite the fanbase. The popular “Tetris Friends” website was phased out in the middle of 2019, leaving a hole in the multiplayer online scene. Then there are some bright points: Tetris 99, the collaboration between Arika and Nintendo, brought Tetris into the battle royale scene for Nintendo Switch players free of charge (as long as you had an online membership.) Fan-made Tetris “inspired” clones (essentially Tetris in all but name) such as JSTris and Tetr.io have also sparked a resurgence in the online multiplayer scene with robust customization options and stat-tracking.

Another bright spot (like, REALLY bright — think lens flares and supernovas) was Tetris Effect, a VR Tetris experience. It’s safe to say nobody really asked for it, but there it was, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t simply Tetris with a new coat of paint though: Tetris Effect had plenty of new modes that kept veteran players coming back.

In Tetris Effect, the main single player campaign known as “Journey Mode” featured a new signature mechanic: the “Zone Meter”. This meter charges up as you clear multiple lines or perform combos, and once activated, the action freezes on-screen, allowing you to rack up as many line clears as you can before the meter runs out. Instead of disappearing, the finished lines sink to the bottom and glow. The resulting clears are named depending on the number of lines cleared, such as Octotris (8), Decahextris (16), Perfectris (18) and the very-difficult-to-achieve Ultimatris (all 20 rows). Unless you’re working your way from the bottom to the top, you will quickly run out of room as the clears push your board out of playable range, meaning your placement to achieve an Ultimatris must be perfect.

This board clearing mechanic, along with other great new single-player modes such as Purify, solidified Tetris Effect among fans of all types who had previously seen it all. However, Tetris Effect had no real multiplayer mode, and when Tetris 99 arrived on the scene about four months later (seemingly out of nowhere), it grabbed the spotlight in a big way.

Now, almost two years after Tetris Effect was initially released, Tetris Effect Connected brings back everything that made the original great, along with some of the most innovative multiplayer the series has ever seen. And the long wait was so incredibly worth it.

Let’s get the unfortunate news out of the way: People who already own Tetris Effect on PS4 or the Epic Store release on PC won’t be able to play Tetris Effect Connected on the legacy versions until the summer of 2021. In another casualty of timed exclusives, you will need to play Tetris Effect Connected on either Xbox One (and above) or on PC via the Microsoft Store, where Tetris Effect is appearing for the first time. Yes, just in time for the Xbox Series X/S launch.

I can’t imagine fans of this game will want to drop full price again to play it on a different platform, new modes or not. Luckily, the game is included with Xbox Game Pass as well as its PC counterpart. PS4 owners will likely be stuck shaking their fists until Summer, but for those of us who have already been playing on PC, I really recommend you go with this option and just install it again. Xbox One and new Series S/X users have absolutely nothing to lose.

Getting “Connected”

The centerpiece of Tetris Effect Connected is the new “Connected” mode. This mode actually isn’t competitive at all, but cooperative. While this isn’t the first time a version of Tetris has adopted a co-operative mode (Tengen’s version of Tetris for the NES and Tetris the Grandmaster 2’s Doubles mode come to mind), this mode is balanced in such a way that avoids that overbearing “too many cooks in the kitchen” feeling. Teams of three are matched together to take on several AI controlled bosses named after zodiac signs.

The action starts with each of you controlling your own boards, trying to charge a shared meter between the three of you by making clears. As you do this, the AI is charging its own meter that hits all human players with various status effects. These can range from things as simple as dropping random junk onto your screen, all the way to making your entire playfield temporarily invisible. Oh, and it is as hard as it sounds (Luckily, you can still see about where your piece will land in relation to the board thanks to the still visible “ghost piece”). Nevertheless, this is what tends to wreck most Connected players, if limited online experience up to now is any indication.

Your best chance against these zodiac-themed killer CPUs is to get your shared meter up to full charge and enter this mode’s spin on the “Zone” mechanic. The music motif will ramp up and prepare you to get in the zone, which happens automatically within a few seconds of maxing out the meter. Then, your boards collapse down, leaving no gaps in the columns, and all player boards are combined into one giant board.

The objective, much like elsewhere the Zone mechanic is used in the game, is still to clear as many lines on the board as you can, but this is much harder considering the now huge width of the board, and the fact that each player takes turns placing their own blocks. The first time you see it, you’re likely to feel completely stunned, but it’s important to keep dropping blocks. You’re likely to get a few third wheels on your team who take all the time in the world looking for the perfect spot, but the perfect placement rarely exists. The best strategy is just to keep moving, and if someone does accidentally foul up your progress placing over a gap, there are shining purple blocks randomly given out to the players that will push down all columns under them to iron out the kinks in the board. You’ll likely have to get your meter back up several more times to make each AI boss top out, so it’s important to stay diligent.

If that wasn’t enough, log in during what the game calls a “full moon” phase. Tetris Effect players might remember that on Saturdays, playing “Effect Mode” games online had a special collaborative leaderboard feature for a subset of the game’s many special modes, and if enough people sent in their high scores, a special goal would be met. Tetris Effect Connected also has a special feature for you on Saturdays: Connected Vs. mode. This time, a fourth human player takes the place of the boss AI character. Human bosses are even harder to take down, and there are special unlockable avatars for players who can rack up boss wins with the different types of zodiac characters.

Of all the modes on offer, “Connected” seems to take it home: Co-operative Tetris play has rarely been tried, and yet it just works here. The shared torment of all the status effects raining down on you and your teammates, combined with the rush of taking turns completing a giant board, brings about a feeling of camaraderie that is unmatched. That is, when you’re not yelling at the slackers to “JUST DROP IT SOMEWHERE!” You’ll also have, like in all modes, a letter grade and stats waiting for each player after the match, to show just how much you were carrying your team. It’s as competitive as co-op can get.

The game’s take on the standard “versus” mode is also something you can’t get anywhere else. You’ll be sending garbage to your opponent like usual, but you’ll also be building up a zone meter to use against each other. This mode is named “Zone Battle”.

Admittedly, the first time I saw the zone mechanic in single-player, it was charming but felt a bit supplementary. However, nailing a Perfectris in a match against another player (I’m sure some are crazy enough to try an Ultimatris in a heated match, too) is akin to the rush of pulling off a “Fatality” in Mortal Kombat. The feature makes so much more sense in this context. When you hear your opponent beginning a zone attack, going a note up the scale each time a line is cleared, you know something big is coming, and you’d better have something to counter it, preferably starting your own zone attack. Being a master at traditional versus Tetris isn’t a guarantee you will succeed here, as a well-timed and effective zone attack can quickly change the tide of battle.

The last two modes are Score Attack and Classic Score Attack. This might be what ends up sealing the deal for most Tetris maniacs. Amazingly, Classic Score Attack feels just like watching a match of Classic Tetris World Championships on Youtube. With the help of CTWC veteran Greentea, the developers were able to adapt the feel of NES Tetris to Tetris Effect, while still being its own thing.

It’s important to know just how different Tetris is between these two generations. In modern Tetris, the pieces are handed out in what is known as “7-bag”: You’ll get some configuration of the seven pieces randomly dispersed and then handed out again. This means another long block is never more than 12 pieces away. No such thing in classic Tetris: the pieces can feel truly random here, and you could be waiting forever in what competitors call “droughts”. Your longest drought will be counted up and presented at the end of the match along with your rate of “Tetris” clears as a percentage, among other info.

Obviously, there is no holding pieces, but also no hard-dropping (instantly dropping your piece), and your pieces will lock into place nearly as soon as they hit another piece. Most important to remember is the dramatic difference in scoring between “Tetris” clears and all other line clears. As the game gets faster, “Tetris” clears are worth more and more. It’s good to start stacking for Tetris’ early and often if you want to win. All of this is made even more foreboding by the spine-chilling remix of the classic theme.

If you wanted the feel of competitive NES Tetris at home, you would have to set up two systems and tube TVs back to back, whereas this mode truly brings the experience home by counting up the points for who is currently in the lead and by how much. It was wholly unexpected for Tetris Effect to try to tackle classic Tetris, but they completely nailed it. If this sounds like hell, and you’d rather be setting up Triple T-Spins, the regular Score Attack is also available to settle the score with other players.

As far as complaints are concerned, matchmaking in the “Connected” mode seems to have dropped off since launch. This is perhaps because tackling the hardest modes is best suited to a proven team of online friends.

Also, as of this writing, in both score attack modes, the game has been designed to let a winner continue playing even after the loser has topped out and is no longer able to play. This is leading to a lot of people closing the game out of impatience, as they have no other option but to let the winning player keep playing while they watch for the final results. If a topped-out player does this, the remaining player does not get credited a win, and their score ranking also goes down! I’m hopeful this will eventually be fixed, but in the meantime, be sure to top out once a losing player is no longer able to play. This is the best way to ensure that they will not try to disconnect and essentially take the win from you.

Another concern is more a request to developers for future updates than a warning for players, although it can be both. As I mentioned, it has become increasingly difficult to get matched up in the “Connected” mode. It’s easiest to find players at the first difficulty level, the only one available upon first entering the mode. However, some of these beginner players don’t seem to understand that your move once entering “the zone” isn’t complete until hard-dropping the block. I realize that some might not even know the default button for this, so from a design perspective it would be best to prompt players how to drop their block (along with the button assignment), especially if their move has taken an excessive amount of time. This will move the action along for the other players.

I would also like to have seen a multiplayer take on “Purify”, the game’s garbage clearing mode where you are tasked with clearing as many purple blocks as you can before the infection spreads. However, what is here is such a surprise.

Tetris Effect Connected is a labor of love by Tetris fans for Tetris fans, much like the many fan games out there. Certainly Tetris 99 was an upheaval of what people expected from Tetris, but thanks to this game and the popularity of CTWC and fangames, a complete resurgence of the game has finally been cemented. I may be preaching to the choir at this point, since most people reading probably already know of Tetris, but if it’s been a while, time to check back in. It’s better than ever to be a Tetris fan, and it seems we are here to stay. To those angry about double-dipping, yes, it is unfortunate. If you do take the plunge, however, I think you’ll be extremely pleased. I’m also confident the game will only get better from here on out!

See you on the battlefield. Thanks for reading!

Hi-Res Screenshots

[disappointingyet]

This is a list of my favourite films of the year. That sounds like a simple statement, but in some quarters the long-running arguments about what is and isn’t a film got very heated in 2017. Even the year bit of that can get very messy.

But for at least this one last time, I’m keeping things simple: these are the films I enjoyed most out of the ones that were released in UK cinemas in 2017.*

There were plenty of films I didn’t see: some I wanted to but didn’t get round to – Colossal is the one that stands out. Others I just wasn’t drawn to – Detroit, Dunkirk (give money to Christopher Nolan and he’ll only keep making movies) and the critically adored Call Me By Your Name (the super-annoying title probably didn’t help).

There were lots of movies I did see and like, though, and that’s what we’re here to talk about…

*This decision was made simpler because I didn’t love any of the films that Netflix streamed without even giving a token cinema release, which included Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected) and Sundance favourite I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. The best of the bunch was The Incredible Jessica James.

1. Manchester By The Sea

Back in October 2016, I wrote: ‘If a better film is released in the UK in 2017, I’ll be very impressed.’ Well, I have been impressed by the excellent movies below on this list, but none of them beat Manchester By The Sea as far as I’m concerned. In outline, it sounds like nothing special: a story of some grim stuff happening to a fairly ordinary family, in particular a bloke who likes to pick fights in bars and his teenage nephew. But writer-director Kenneth Lonergan turns the ingredients for a predictable drama into something very special, not least by lacing this grief-laden story with lots of (appropriately) funny moments.

Full review here

2. The Handmaiden

A lot of the films on this list are fairly light on plot, so if you want a movie with scheming, counter-scheming and deception, not to mention pretty costumes, sex, cherry blossoms, perviness (its 18 certificate is richly earned) plus differing Korean views of their Japanese occupiers, this is the one. It’s directed by Park Chan-wook, best known for Old Boy, and loosely based on Sarah Waters’ Victorian-set melodrama Fingersmith, which turns out to be perfectly suited to Korea in the 1930s.

Full review here

3. Certain Women

Resolutely low-key collection of three slightly overlapping short stories set in wintery Montana. It’s a character piece, with Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and (the excellent, previously little-known) Lily Gladstone leading each segment. Director Kelly Reichardt knows exactly who these women are, and how the place they live shapes them. It seems modest at first, but it stuck in my mind long after flashier films had faded away.

Full review here

4. Moonlight

So much of what I read about Moonlight made it sound so much less interesting than it is. Around awards time, you could have easily formed the impression it was a heart-tugging issue movie, not helped by the campaign to get Naomi Harris an Oscar (‘Look! Pretty woman getting grubby to play junkie skank!’)**

What makes it a remarkable film – and it is a remarkable film – are the extraordinary cinematography and the telling of the story via often fragmentary scenes, and how little is explained, at least until the much more conventional, even theatrical (and thus slightly disappointing) final segment. Great moviemaking is about the how, not the what.

Full review here

**The classic awards-season tendency to grade performances by perceived difficulty points led to people talking about Harris rather than the way better Janelle Monae.

5. The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki

Lovely, bittersweet based-on-real-life tale of Mäki, a small man who was Finnish boxing’s big hope in the early 1960s. It’s not really a boxing film, more a story about two decent young people trying to work out what they want. Which probably doesn’t sound like the most gripping core of a film, but it works. My favourite Finnish film of the year, narrowly shading…

Full review here

6. The Other Side Of Hope

Why should social realism be the only way of looking at problems like the refugee crisis? Aki Kaurismäki brings his taste for dramatic lighting, deadpan acting and vintage rock’n’roll to this story of a young Syrian braving bureaucracy and street racism in Helsinki. Less funny than most Kaurismäki films, but I found it very moving.

Full review here

7. Spider-Man: Homecoming

I’ve had enough of super heroes on screen – Marvel’s The Defenders on Netflix was the last straw. I’m voting for a moratorium on them*** and gangsters. So it took a lot to persuade me to see yet another Spider-Man reboot. ‘Don’t think of it as an action movie, think of it as a high-school comedy,’ said my friend Jess, and she was right. It’s nimble and funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously – the best surprise of the year.

Full review here

***I’m totally prepared to believe that Thor: Ragnarok is enjoyable in a bonkers, proggy kind of way, but I’m not risking it. Too many people insisted Captain America: Civil War was good.

8. The Death Of Stalin

After dealing with the (by comparison small) monsters of the Blair era in The Thick Of It, Armando Iannucci turns to the worst – by at least one measure – men in history: Beria, Molotov and Uncle Joe himself. 

I don’t think by portraying the farcical nature of the days after Stalin’s death the film is disrespectful to all those who died. I think humour has always been part of how we confront the horror. 

The Death Of Stalin has the best ensemble cast of the year – Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Jason Isaacs giving the performance of his career as Marshal Zhukov, and – best of all – Simon Russell Beale as Beria. And, crucially, it’s definitely a film, not a bit of TV that has snuck on to the big screen.

9. Daphne

Essentially, a classic US indie movie transplanted from Brooklyn to Walworth. The title character is a pretentious and self-centred 30-year-old failing to get her life together – she’s just like women I used to meet at parties in south London 10 or 15 years ago. That could make for a dull film, of course, but the writing, the feel for the place and Emily Beecham as Daphne make it funny and involving.

Full review here

10. After The Storm

Once promising writer with a gambling problem becomes low-rent PI and uses his new skills to keep tabs on his ex. If you think you can imagine how this film goes from that description, you’re probably miles from Hirokazu Kore-eda’s typically patient, generous-spirited and occasionally funny family drama.

Full review here

11. A Ghost Story

Or that one with the white-sheet-with-eye-holes phantom. A Ghost Story is definitely a film you either buy into or you don’t, an austere tale about grief and loss. I did, and found it sad and moving and pleasingly different. 

Full review here

12. Neruda

It’s a playful movie about a playful title character – the Chilean poet and dilettante politician during his dramatic time on the run from the authorities –  but Neruda has a melancholy underlying mood that rises to the surface as the film goes on. It’s a smart, complex and entertaining film.

Full review here

13. The Florida Project

A group of small kids living in a low-rent long-stay motel have adventures and misbehave a bit. And that’s mostly it, with a few dips into the struggles of the mother of one of the kids, plus a sense of the endless patience and generosity of spirit of the motel manager (Willem Dafoe, the sole big name in the cast). What’s impressive is the way Sean Baker maintains a tone that manages to dodge both ‘look at what grindingly terrible lives poor folk lead’ and being a whimsical adorable-kids-running-wild picture. It does drag a little about three quarters of the way in, but the ending pulls it back.

14. La La Land

First it was an instant masterpiece that was going to change the game, then it was a deflating bubble as the haters managed to shout louder than the lovers. So which take on this nostalgia-soaked showbiz musical do I agree with? Well, there are problems with the film – mostly to do with director Damien Chazelle’s continuing attempts to foist his rotten ideology of music on the rest of us via his movies – but I think the people who were swooning were closer to the truth than the raspberry blowers.  

Full review here

15. Lady Macbeth

Bracingly bleak and at times hard to watch, this is very much in the anti-heritage industry counter-tradition of British period dramas. It’s about the rebellion of a young woman against a grim arranged marriage in Victorian Yorkshire, a struggle that makes strange and grim turns. Unpleasant, but an impressive and memorable piece of filmmaking.

Full review here

16. Blade Of The Immortal

‘Blood-drenched’ would be an understatement when it comes to this gleefully violent supernatural samurai tale in which an almost unkillable ronin is hired by a young girl to revenge her father’s death. If it doesn’t match up to veteran director Takashi Miike’s kinetic 2010 masterpiece 13 Assassins, Blade Of The Immortal is still full of staggering set pieces. Not for the squeamish.

Full review here

17. I Am Not Your Negro

In a variant on the title of this blog, I’d describe this documentary as kind of unsatisfactory yet powerful. It’s got a curious premise: it’s an ‘adaptation’ of a book that was only vaguely started: James Baldwin’s look at the meaning of the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. 

The result is a slightly rambling wander through what Baldwin wrote and said about black lives in America. The clips of Baldwin on TV and at the Oxford Union are electrifying. The chunks of his writing are beautifully read by Samuel L Jackson in a warm, wise deep oak-aged voice than sounds precisely nothing like either Samuel L Jackson or James Baldwin. 

Dropped in around the place are news stills from the last couple of years by way of saying, ‘Yes, Obama made it to the presidency, but otherwise things are still fucked.’ That’s a bit clumsy and crude. What makes the film is Baldwin himself – a great writer (I’m still annoyed that someone nicked my copy of The Fire Next Time in 1991) but also a figure who confounds our condescension of past times: here was a black gay man who was an international public intellectual in the 1960s.

Best old films I saw on the big screen

Scarface

Not every rapper’s favourite movie – this is the terrific 1932 original, a ripped-from-the-headlines account of the rise of a ruthless Chicago gangster that’s as electrifyingly urgent as current organised-crime dramas are weary. 

Full review here

Un Flic

Jean-Pierre Melville, whose career stretched from the 1940s to ’70s, made some of my favourite films ever – Bob Le Flambeur, Le Samurai, Army Of The Shadows – and the BFI showed all of them in a splendid full retrospective this autumn. Of the ones I’d never seen before, my favourite was Un Flic, his last film, a bleak, minimalist film in which a laconic, sadistic cop (Alain Delon) slowly gets on the trail of a heist crew. Moody, stylised and very cool.

Full review here

The Cobweb

Over the top, and unashamedly so, Vincente Minnelli’s undervalued mid-’50s melodrama is set in a psychiatric clinic, has a great cast and a plot in which the choice of a set of curtains causes all manner of scheming, bitching and betrayal. 

Full review here

La Vérité

An uncharacteristically meaty role for Brigitte Bardot is at the centre of this courtroom drama from Henri-Georges Clouzot. BB plays a beatnik girl on trial for murder, but what made her do it and can a patriarchal justice system treat her fairly? I suspect this felt dated when it appeared in nouvelle vague-era Paris, but it seems pretty relevant now.

Full review here

Salesman

Extraordinary documentary about a group of travelling salesman doing their damnedest to flog absurdly overpriced Bibles to low income Catholics in a late 1960s US where the Age of Aquarius most definitely isn’t in effect.

Full review here

And DYB’s films of:

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

[seeingisknowing]

FOR SHE SAID, ‘’I HAVE NOW SEEN THE ONE WHO SEES ME.’’’:

Seeing and being seen in Trevor Paglen’s ‘From ‘’Apple’’ to ‘’Anomaly’’’

‘She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘’You are the God who sees me’’, for she said, ‘’I have now seen the one who sees me.’’’ - Genesis 16:13

__

‘Machine-seeing-for-machines is a ubiquitous phenomenon [...] all this seeing, all of these images, are essentially invisible to human eyes. These images aren’t meant for us; they’re meant to do things in the world; human eyes aren’t in the loop.’ - Trevor Paglen

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In Genesis 16, we read about Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah and Abraham, expelled to the desert. During her wandering, she is met by ‘The Angel of the Lord’, who reveals to her that she is pregnant with Ishmael, the first son of Abraham. The name she gives to this voice in the wilderness is El Roi (meaning, The God Who Sees Me), crying out, ‘’I have now seen the one who sees me.’’ This is perhaps an interesting segway into Trevor Paglen’s latest installation at the Barbican’s Curve space, ‘From ‘’Apple’’ to ‘’Anomaly’’’, in which we, like Hagar, are confronted with the question of what it means to live under the gaze of a new moralizing, omniscient Other. No longer Genesis 16’s El Roi, but AI. This is what we are being shown - the one who sees us. 

The work consists of 30,000 individually printed images laid out in around 200 labelled categories, against the wall of the Curve. Each is taken from ImageNet, a public database of over 14 million images, in a further 22,000 categories, fed to AI programs, in order to teach them how to recognise patterns and objects. Paglen’s show comes as part of the Barbican’s Life Rewired series, ‘exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything’, following the larger ‘AI: More Than Human’ exhibition, from earlier this year.  His installation reads as a sort of impressionistic mapping out of this faction of ImageNet’s data; beginning with ‘apple’, at the closest end of the wall, the labels ascribed to the images begin as essentially inoffensive, mostly dealing with elements from nature - it starts as quite beautiful even. Images in groups like ‘ocean’ and ‘sun’ hit the wall as little spurts of blue and yellow, almost like a sort of giant Jackson Pollock painting. But as we carry on through the space, and the categories become more and more associated with human life, the wall comes to resemble more and more a catalogue of evil; ‘Klansman’, ‘segregator’, ‘demagogue’, etc. What is so interesting, and at the same time so haunting, about Paglen’s work here is the juxtaposition of all these categories, that range from ‘tear gas’, to ‘prophetess’, to ‘apple orchard’, pointing towards the kinds of invisible constellations between points that AI programs are drawing and redrawing all the time - the implication being, perhaps, that if we were able to map these constellations for ourselves, and understand the apparently nonsensical connections made between some of these images, as Paglen’s installation here seems to attempt, at least in part, to do for us, we might be better able to trace the outline of our particular moment in history, as jagged and unfriendly as it may be, that each of us will be forced to find some way to share with one another. 

The central question of the installation however, is maybe much more lucid, and has to do with the ownership and interpretation of images, and how AI programs negotiate this all the time, working with ever expanding amounts of data about the world, and the lives of us who live in it. This work of categorisation has a necessary ideological weight to it. As Bourdieu puts it:

‘The capacity to make entities exist in the explicit state, to publish, make public [...] what had not previously attained objective and collective existence [...] people’s malaise, anxiety, disquiet, expectations - represents a formidable social power [...] In fact, this work of categorisation, ie. of making explicit and of categorisation, is performed incessantly [...] in the struggles in which agents clash over the meaning of the social world and of their position in it [...] through all the forms of benediction or malediction, eulogy, praise, congratulations, compliment, or insults, reproaches, criticisms, accusations, slanders, etc. It is no accident that the verb ‘’kategoresthai’’, which gives us our ‘’categories’’ and ‘’categoremes’’, means to accuse publicly.’ 

Paglen’s installation engages with this in two senses. First, it ‘makes public’ the network of images and signs that are exchanged and classified by AI programs all the time - a network of images that exists and grows almost entirely behind our backs, yet concerns even the most private details of our lives, as we submit these things to the internet, as the means by which we increasingly construct our social worlds, and the identities with which we move through them. Secondly, the work reveals the biases with which these AI programs understand patterns and objects - many of the categories into which the images on Paglen’s wall are grouped carry a great deal of ideological weight. How is it exactly that this ghost in the machine differentiates between a ‘heathen’ and a ‘believer’? How does it identify a ‘traitor’, a ‘selfish person’, or a ‘bottom feeder’? All of these are genuine image categories from the installation. What we are presented with is the notion that AI is not restricted to simple pattern recognition, for example, recognising an image of an apple as an apple, because of its colour, shape, proportions etc, but that also, on account of having human creators, who pass on their own moral and ideological baggage, AI programs must also make moral and ideological judgements. So then, if technology not only has access to datasets so large that virtually nothing is out of bounds, approaching a sort of functional omniscience, (a fact revealed to us perhaps most pointedly by the global surveillance disclosures regarding the NSA in 2013; Senator Rob Wyden said in an interview: ‘You can pick up anything. Surveillance is almost omnipresent, the technology is capable of anything. There really aren’t any limits.’) and at the same time, is not only capable of making moral judgments, but perhaps incapable of doing otherwise, what we are faced with is a moralising, omniscient Other.

If this is the case, as Paglen’s installation seems to suggest, then like so many of the questions raised over the relationship between mankind and AI, this is not a new question, but an old theosophical question, repackaged as a technological one. If it is true that we are living under the gaze of a machine unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, then let us return to the situation of Hagar - a criminally overlooked and often misunderstood figure in the Old Testament; as Žižek notes, ‘She sees God himself seeing, which was not even given to Moses, to whom God had to appear as a burning bush. As such she announces the mystical/feminine access to God.’ The nature of this ‘seeing’ has a distinct relevance to our situation - Nielson, writing on this particular episode in Genesis reminds us that the Hebrew word ‘ראה’ (‘see’) ‘signifies not only the actual ability to see, but also a recognition of what is seen’ In other words, for Hagar seeing is knowing, just as being seen means being known. Therein lies the crux of Paglen’s installation, which reminds us that, like Hagar, we too, in allowing ourselves to be seen, are also being known - the lurid nature of many of the categories, and images that fill them, on the wall of the Curve, which range from the pornographic (‘fucker’, ‘hunk’, ‘artists model’), to images of profound hatred, (‘klansman’, ‘segregator’) reveal to us the lowest parts of ourselves, the messiest and the cruelest and the most private. I use ‘us’ in the broadest sense here, the ‘us’ that includes both ‘us’ as a species, and ‘us’ as individuals - both the universal and the particular. These AI programs, quietly feeding on ever growing sets of data, have surpassed the point of basic pattern recognition, and have learnt the kinds of terrible secrets that rumble from the deepest caverns of the human heart. We are no longer merely seen, but known.

Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, writing on ‘Whether any created intellect by its natural powers can see the Divine essence’ (Question 12, Article 1), notes: 

‘If [...] the mode of anything’s being exceeds the mode of the viewer, it must result that the knowledge of the object is above the nature of the viewer.’

This kind of encounter, with an ‘object [...] above the nature of the viewer’, is always transformational, even more so when that same object looks back at us. For Hagar, that object is God, and that transformation is a matter of awe, and a matter of faith. The question is, in what way will we transformed by our own encounters with AI, as a very different ‘object above the nature of the viewer’ (in the sense that it has the capacity to work with more data than any of us can comprehend), as it returns our gaze. The hope must be that AI, in collecting all this data about us, and about our lives, can serve as a kind of mirror, through which we might learn to better see the whole scope of our shared situation - the fact, revealed to us in Paglen’s installation, that these programs come loaded with moralistic and ideological biases, far from undermining this effort, is what gives lends this project any kind of potential, because what this means is that what is shown to us by AI in way is not just the nature of the world as it is, but the nature of the biases through which we have chosen to see it. In Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno writes:

‘Perspectives must be produced which set the world beside itself [...] alienated from itself, revealing its cracks and fissures, as needy and distorted as it will one day appear in the messianic light.’

Perhaps this is the best AI can do for us, and what Paglen’s installation can do for us, that is, not only reflecting back at us the most inconvenient parts of ourselves, but also the lies we might have constructed to hide from them, or to hide them from us. If AI has any kind of liberational potential, it relies on our ability to raise our encounters with it to the level of the mystical and transformational; not in seeking to understand it, but questioning how it might understand us, and by seeing ourselves in the third person in this way, hoping to see ourselves as we are - to see the world we move through, and have constructed for ourselves, as it is, remembering always that, as it was for Hagar, so it remains for us: seeing is knowing.

[taule]

Ghosts of Kolga manor etc

I took lots of pictures, but I will get to them later and hope to manage to post some on Instagram. I just want to write this down first, before I forget any more details. 

My mom and I went out of town on a short trip on Saturday. Both on the occasion of the marvellous weather (until about 7 pm), and this annual event called something like Day of Forgotten Manors. It’s basically to introduce the history of some of our many manor complexes across the country. Our picnic basket packed, and stuff together we headed East, out of town. Kolga as our destination, we drove around in the area, enjoying the landscape on the way. 

The Kolga manor complex is currently privately owned by a woman that my mother goes to the Art Academy with so that’s one of the reasons we settled on that particular manor out of the rest. But it had been years since either of us had gone there, and I realize now how scrambled my own memories of it were. The estate which was first founded in the 13th century as a management manor for a chloister is a huge complex, and I believe to this day remains the largest manor in the territories that constituted Livonia, originally spanning well over 50 000 hectares of land. The main house was built in its current form during the 16-17th century, the second floor being completed in 1820. The guide told us that sometime in between during one of the World Wars it was also used as a hospice by the Polish who stole it bare of the paintings, furniture and anything else valuable they could move. For hundreds of years the complex remained in the hands of one family, and it even survived relative bankruptcy by selling off some land and two satellite manors. But then came Soviet Russian rule and destroyed this continuity like it did everything else. 

There was a tour with a local guide every full hour. Our guide was a local historian that I believe works at the on-site museum, so she was very knowledgeable about the history and the style influences to a great detail. And as we were lucky to be the only two people there for the tour at that time, we got a private walk-through.  There is a restaurant on one half of the first floor, and now that I think about it, we weren’t at all taken to the second half, so I also don’t know what was there. So we headed straight up from the front hall, but not before stopping at this massive central column.

She said that according to hear-say two of the male workers of themanor were walled into it, alive. The laziest and the most diligent worker. That is supposedly the origin of the phrase we use a lot - “Harju average”. Meaning that you may be either outstandingly good or bad, but it’s all clumped together into the general average of the Harju county. And nothing stands out from it, because other people’s mediocrity will bury anything outstanding. She mentioned that the spirits of the two men can be sensed aorund the house. And at first I thought she just said it jokingly.

The floor plan revolves one straight, central corridor. The rooms on the front side of the building are in a better state and so we could walk through them, seeing the terrible marks that have been left on them, through decades of abuse and neglect, now one the way to being mended. It’s when we had gotten to the ladies’ parlor on the left side of the stair hall that she threw out a probe and I saw that she was serious about any ghost stories she might tell. 

This is essentially what I wanted to get to with this long ramble about the history, the ghost stories.

Ulvi, our guide, said that even though it was considered to be a happy home for the family, and that it had a very pleasant atmsphere, the family was plagued by paranormal occurrences as long as they lived there. And so have been the people that have occupied it after them. The master of the manor, count Carl Magnus Stenbock was a man with psychic abilities, something that could make him very uneasy. And now it’s his own ghost that is said to be sighted on the grounds in the form of a pleasant older man, walking in the park.

Through the original family’s time at the manor, there had been sightings of an apparition resembling a lady in a fancy grey gown that went all the way back to a few centuries ago, and that her appearance would signal an great approaching change, such as a birth or a death.

There is a hall through the second and third floors in the left end of the main building. It was used as a home chapel by the family. And in there a girl in a white dress with a candelabra can be seen. And supposedly the light of the candles can be seen passing behind all the 2nd floor windows as she runs from the chapel to the library on the other end.

From there we moved to the Hall of Ancestors. The formal main hall of the manor which once had enormous paintings on its walls and now bears the miserable scars of looting by foreign soldiers. It was light and calm in the daylight, but supposedly is much different at night. This is where the Devil’s feast takes place, or so sho called it. Because it occurred many times that late in the evening when the family was getting ready for bed, the sound of hooves and a the wheels of a chariot could be heard outside on the gravel. Then footsteps coming up the stairs, and into the hall. Followed by the sounds of a merry feast. Each time it stopped at midnight. At other times, horrible screams or howls could be heard from there.

Following that, at the right end of the building is the library. That’s the place where a young redheaded woman can be seen. She does not like men however, and is known to bite the ones she dislikes. But those bittem would see their end one year from the date. And her victims are said to total 64. Something that creeped me out a little, I must say.

And as we were standing in the library Ulvi uncomfortably glanced at the ceiling saying that we will not be going upstairs to the 3rd floor. She then aked staright if I believe in the paranormal, and satisfied with my answer she said that they don’t take tourists there because of the floors that are in some areas unsafe to walk on. But also because that is the darkest and most menacing part of the whole complex. A 3rd floor bedroom above the library. A place so scary that when the Stenbock family still lived there, the femail guests were never allowed to sleep there and it was generally off limits, if there were still spare rooms elsewhere in the manor. She said that at night when people would go to bed, they would close the door, only to have it yanked open, and from the door, a dark misty shape crawled into the room. It had supposedly even been shot at, but to the shooter’s astonishment the bullet just fell on the carpet, just bounching back from the black mass.

Much creepy. Standard Estonian manor experience, it would seem.

PS: Tumblr was a bitch and refreshed thepage before i was able to save my post so i had to start again. So i’m like too fed up to go back and edit it too, so just there….