#with my concept); i made up an ENTIRE COUNTRY. i created cities and towns and a map and fleshed out a whole system of government

[fingertipsmp3]

Me: Okay I have a pretty solid idea for NaNoWriMo that I’m excited to write, great

My demon brain: But what if you wrote something different?

Me: Alright chief, I’ll bite. What’s your idea?

Brain: Wouldn’t you like to know weatherboy [punishes me for asking by removing all enthusiasm for my initial idea]

[witchesoz]

Oz lore: The Great and Powerful (1)

« Oz : The Great and Powerful » is a 2013 fantasy movie part of the Oz universe. And when it comes to the Ozian lore, it is a mess.

You see, this movie was Disney’s attempt at remaking/restarting the heritage of the MGM Wizard of Oz movie, by creating its prequel explaining how the Wizard came to Oz (a green-skinned wicked witch, Glinda travelling in bubbles, that’s all the MGM). However, Disney actually did not had the rights to the MGM movie and thus had to twist things to avoid a lawsuit (with things such as the wicked witch being of a different shade of green than the one used in the MGM movie, or Glinda becoming blond instead of a red-hair). As a result, the movie presented itself officially as a “prequel to the original books” and took inspiration from it (the China Town for example), but this inspiration is sporadic and a thinly-hidden attempt at escaping lawsuits, since the movie is heavily if not almost entirely based on the MGM product.

Anyway, despite all of that, the movie became very famous and unfamous, popularizing a lot of concepts and ideas – especially towards younger generations unaware of the other MGM-related works such as “Return to Oz” or “Wicked”. So let’s dig into this lore, shall we? I’ll divide it into two sections.

Oh yeah, and there will be bits of review-like stuff here and there, because why not throw a review at the same time?

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

I) The Witches

It is not just because the witches of Oz are my favorite part of any lore. This movie relies heavily on the Ozian witches. They are key players to the story, and the movie’s plot is about how they came to be who they were in the MGM movie – we mean novel – we mean neither because ultimately the movie actually doesn’t add up to either the book or the MGM canon, putting it in its own unique chronology that never went anywhere since no sequels were made.

Witches in this movie are… unexplained. We know they exist in Oz, but we actually do not know anything about what they truly are. It is unclear if they are a different species from humans, or if they are humans with magical gifts, but one thing is sure: they are very different from ordinary people. All of them occupy high positions in the Ozian hierarchy. Theodora comments strongly imply that people are naturally afraid of witches (she says that, due to her being a witch, no one ever gave her genuine gifts, wooed her or offered her to dance, making her insanely lonely) – however this is contradicted by Glinda’s subjects behavior, who gladly offer her gifts and are very close and friendly with her, visibly not bothered by her being a witch. So this is up to debate.

We can however establish several common points of witches. All of them are females with magical powers. All of them are tied to a certain element, as which their magic will manifest. All witches have the natural ability to “fly”, that is to say levitate into the air. And each of the witches has a gem with her, that is the source of all of her powers, and breaking it means defeating her. Oh yes, and all their names end in -a. Now, we have three witches in total in Oz:

# Evanora

Evanora is the witch that pretends to be the good witch, but is the wicked one.

Evanora was the Royal Advisor of the previous King of Oz. She was also, unknown to him and to everyone else, a wicked witch. Her presence however was visibly felt already in Oz, since the King (who was also a wizard) made a prophecy: one day, a powerful wizard bearing the name Oz would come from the sky to save the country from the evil and darkness infecting it. However, he died soon after this prophecy. Evanora had poisoned him – and she tricked everyone into believing that the King’s daughter, Glinda princess of Oz, was the murderer of her own father. She banished her from the Emerald City, and publicly made it known that she was the Wicked Witch who caused all sorts of evil deeds across Oz. Except that all these evil deeds were actually done by Evanora herself. She held on the throne of Oz as a “regent”, until the arrival of the Wizard per the prophecy, and thus secured her power as the unofficial ruler of Oz. When the so-called Wizard actually arrived, Evanora immediately knew that he was a fake, just a greedy impostor, but she used it to her advantage, playing along with his lies and forcing him into killing the “wicked witch” by breaking her wand. Thus, she could have gotten rid of Glinda, her enemy, for good. This is actually very interesting here – because later Glinda explains that the “good citizens of Oz” are forbidden from killing anybody, and Glinda herself doesn’t want to kill Evanora for her actions. So visibly, death sentences are not existing in Oz – and so, for Evanora to explain to the Wizard that killing the Wicked Witch is the only way clearly reveals her wickedness.

Evanora, despite being the oldest evil in the room, with a lot of experience, is actually not the most ferocious person. She is a liar and a manipulator who tricked everyone into believing she was the “good one”, including her own sister. She also is shown to never do dirty works directly. She always arrange for other people, her agents or her armies, to kill or attack people for her, and rarely gets into direct fights, except when she is sure to win or cornered. In fact, when she is certain she has no way to win a battle, she cowers and flees before the threats. Evanora also has an obsession with eliminating Glinda – and it is not just because she is the only force of good left and the legitimate heir to the throne. Evanora takes a great delight into publicly torturing Glinda, and she makes several time comments about Glinda’s “pretty face” and how she hates or curses it. I will get back on that later.

Evanora’s gem/power source is an emerald necklace/amulet. Her magic, when raw, takes the shape of green electricity. Outside of her ability to fly, common to all witches, her other powers rely on magical items: she has a red powder that she can use to craft items magically, and a huge crystal ball she can use to spy on anyone in Oz. She has directly under her commands an army of flying baboons (savage and evil versions of the flying monkeys, massive angry baboons with bat wings), and an ensemble of “Winkie guards” (I’ll talk about them later). Note that all of these items of her powers actually belong to the Wicked Witch of the West in the MGM movie. Evanora ends up defeated when Glinda breaks her amulet, which not only deprives her of all powers, but also “removes” an enchantment she cast upon herself. You see, in the MGM movie they explain that “only wicked witches are ugly”. And the rule seems to carry on in this movie – when a witch turns wicked, she becomes ugly. More specifically, the glamorous and beautiful Evanora is actually in truth an old, hunchbacked crone with long grey hair, rotten teeth, a hooked nose and chin, as well as warts (a typical “hag witch” so to speak). Considering this, and how she is visibly displeased by her sister’s wicked “hideousness”, it becomes clear that Evanora’s obsession with Glinda’s “pretty face” is tied to a strong vanity and envy. She clearly resents her for being beautiful and pure, where she is ugly and corrupt.

And here is the ultimate key to understand the character of Evanora – she is actually a Disney witch more than anything. The obsessive vanity dates back to the Evil Queen of Snow White, and her transformation into an old crone also reminds one of this movie – let’s not forget how she uses literally an enchanted apple, like the Evil Queen. On the other side, the use of green electricity reminds of another extremely vain Disney witch: Winnifred Sanderson. And of course, the use of electricity, green color and the flowing dress also reminds one of Maleficent. As a result Evanora, while a great villain, is fundamentally a Disney villain, and the biggest mark of Disney’s attempt at owning the franchise.

In the end, Evanora becomes who would later be known as the “Wicked Witch of the East”, using two of her surviving flying baboons to fly away. It is unknown how she came to conquer the East – in fact, this movie makes no mention of either silver shoes or ruby slippers. But, many have theorized that Theodora possibly helped her sister regain power – since Theodora’s gem is a ruby, and in the MGM continuity the magic shoes are made of ruby…

# Glinda

Glinda the Good. She is clearly based on the MGM movie character, but she is also mixed up with the novel character (for example, she is here Witch of the South, and not Witch of the North). But just like in the MGM movie, she turns out to be the only Good Witch in all of Oz.

Daughter of the previous king-wizard of Oz, she was falsely accused by the treacherous Evanora of poisoning her father, and banished from the Emerald City, publicly denounced as the “Wicked Witch” whose minions caused horrors in Oz. However, Glinda managed to build herself a small kingdom in the South, welcoming people who fled from the disasters of the Wicked Witch, and revealing to them the truth and who the real enemy was. She later is the one who helps the Wizard fulfill his destiny – though he first tried to kill her. Oh yeah and they also kind of fall in love together.

Glinda’s gem is a diamond, located in her silver wand she carries everywhere. Evanora claims that breaking Glinda’s wand would kill her, however it seemingly was a lie, since breaking Evanora’s gem merely deprived her of her powers. Glinda’s powers are associated with the color white and the rainbow. It seems she has a control over either water or air, it is slightly unclear: she uses her powers under two forms. One, as a white fog, to blind enemy or conceal objects. Two, as bubbles – she can create individual bubbles for transportation, and she created a giant bubble dome to protect her kingdom, a magic wall that only lets good-hearted people pass through. To make matters even more confusing, her raw magic actually looks like light, either light glow or light rays. Not just a simple light, but a light that, while mostly white, has some colors of the rainbow in it – in fact its other magic (the fog and bubbles) are also iridescent. This is a nice touch, a nod to how diamonds and prisms can fracture the white light into a rainbow. She also has the ability to fly like all other witches – usually she surrounds herself with a bubble to do it, but she admits it is “just for show” and she doesn’t truly need it.

Glinda is kind, good, moral, charitable, gentle, etc… but she is also a clever girl (well, most of the time). Glinda especially believes in abstract and spiritual concepts, instead of material ones. What I mean is that, for example she keeps repeating that her father might have died, but his spirit and his ideals will live on through his people and those that fight for them. In a similar way, she immediately realizes that the Wizard is not actually a true wizard, but she explains that what the people of Oz need is actually someone to believe to and someone to guide them – the real magic power isn’t important, the most important is the power people put in you.

# Theodora

Theodora is without a doubt the missed character in this story. It is no spoiler now, but she is the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West. And yeah, she is a cliché becoming-a-villain character, very unconvincing and unimpressive compared to the original (in fact Evanora left me more of an impression than her). As Theodora she had at least something interest, but all her becoming wicked is… not interesting at all. At least for me.

So let’s dig in, shall we? Theodora is actually a good witch at the beginning of the movie. She calls herself Theodora the Good and has been fooled by Evanora into believing her sister (which she loves deeply) is the good witch protecting Oz, while Glinda is the Wicked Witch. Note that Theodora visibly knew Glinda beforehand, and in fact Evanora and Theodora have an interesting discussion – Evanora accuses Theodora of “finally” having joined side with Glinda, implying that they were friends or close before, to which Theodora answers that she is on “no one’s side” and her only wish is to bring peace to Oz. In a similar way, when Evanora shows Theodora that the Wizard is not killing Glinda, Theodora is delighted, believing that the Wizard is “brining her back to the light and the goodness”. All throughout the movie, Evanora plays with her sister’s emotions to manipulate her, playing with her naiveté to make herself look good, playing on her jealousy and wrath to make the Wizard look bad... The typical textbook of an abusing older sister. Evanora especially likes to remind Theodora that “deep down” she is wicked, and only pretending to be good, which always enrages her.

Theodora is actually an interesting character when you look at her. She explains to the Wizard that she is extremely lonely, because being a witch, no one ever gave her a gift of their own free will, and no one ever asked her to dance. She also immediately believes that the Wizard is the one foretold in the prophecy. The Wizard uses her extreme naiveté by seducing her, and in his flirty words, Theodora believes that he promised to make her Queen of Oz, aka his wife. This all actually is what put the Wizard in his uncomfortable situation in the first place. We also see that Theodora, despite being a sweet and timid girl, has actually a “temper” – when Evanore makes a disagreeable comment, she gets very angry and momentarily loses control of her destructive powers, something she visibly is ashamed of (and in general, Theodora was the one using the less her magic out of the three). Later, Evanora plays on her emotions: not only does she invent a fake story about the Wizard seducing her and promising her to be Queen, to spark Theodora’s jealousy, but she also shows Theodora the real romance that is budding between the Wizard and Glinda. Theodora is heartbroken, making her cry – and her tears burn her face (I’ll come back to that later), which makes her suffer a lot, but she only considers it as a deserving punishment for how much of a fool she is. She is so overwhelmed with sadness and hate (mixed with the pain of her own tears) that she succumbs to Evanora’s proposition: to bite into an enchanted apple in order to stop her heartache (and thus the painful emotions she feels), and in exchange share the throne of Oz with her sister, banishing the Wizard and Glinda together (Theodora still believes then Evanora is a good witch, but she simply will not let Glinda become the Wizard’s Queen for anything in the world).

Now, I’ll stop there to actually point out something: at first, Theodora might seem like a cliché, flat character. But in fact, when you look at her on a second view, you realize that she is seems to actually suffer from a type of borderline personality disorder. She checks numerous marks: a feeling of solitude and emptiness ; an inability to control your temper and anger resulting in excessive mood swings ; an impulsive behavior resulting in unstable relationships (such as forming in your head a perfect image of someone you love only to realize later reality is different) ; a deep fear of abandonment (here both by the Wizard and her sister)… the only ones missing are the frequent changes in self-image, the stress-related paranoia and the suicidal threats. This already makes her a more disturbed and tragic character. But on the other side, you have to admit that honestly she is quite dumb. The most jarring element was when she used Evanora’s crystal ball to spy on the Wizard and Glinda. She sees how happy, colorful and joyful Glinda’s realm is, she sees that the people are certainly not oppressed and that there are no flying baboons or evil things anywhere. And yet she still believes Glinda is the wicked witch? Come on!

After biting in the enchanted green apple (in a very heavy nod to Disney’s Snow White), Theodora realizes that Evanora tricked her into becoming wicked. The apple first “makes it all clear”, because apparently, wickedness sharpens your mind? Theodora understands Evanora is the wicked witch, not Glinda, and then starts to suffer the intense pains of her “heart withering away”, all emotions and goodness replaced by wickedness and hatred. And, since all wicked witches are ugly in Oz, she turns into a copy of the iconic image of the Wicked Witch of the West: green-skinned, with a hooked nose, yellow eyes and a hooked chin. The movie also added black claws able to leave marks on marble, which is a nice touch.

Theodora’s magic manifests as red fire (she usually throws red fireballs, that sometimes explode upon hitting their target; and she can also teleport herself like a meteor and manifest out of fire tornadoes). She can fly like all other witches, but chooses to do so on a broom (broom which leaves a thick black smoke behind her) – specifically because the Wizard once told her that in his world witches flew on brooms. Her gem is actually a ruby she wears as a ring. Theodora also shows another power the other witches have not: telekinesis (she notably forces the Wizard to dance like a puppet). In fact, Theodora is implied to be the strongest of the three witches, being able to break Glinda’s wall when Evanora could not.

It is established here that Theodora is dreadfully allergic to water – it burns her like acid. To the point her own tears burn her cheeks. However, this is never actually explained. We do not know how or why, and we don’t know if Evanora has the same problem or not. It might be related to her having fire-magic, but the other witches don’t seem to suffer side-effect from their own elemental magics. So… yeah, an unanswered question.

Theodora as the Wicked Witch is basically pure hatred and violence. In fact, she only knows now how to threaten, shout and cackle. Even Evanora is taken aback by how furious and bloodthirsty – where Evanora wants people to flee in terror at the sight of her army, Theodora wants to kill all their enemies without mercy ; Evanora suggests hiding Theodora’s ugliness behind an enchantment, but Theodora refuses because she wants the Wizard to see what “he” did to her ; finally Theodora takes leadership of the “wicked” army and even calls Evanora a “coward” and the “weak one” when she flees in front of the Wizard, while Theodora fights to the last minute.

I also forgot to mention, but quite obviously the witches are color-coded: Glinda is entirely white ; Evanora is linked to green, with touches of black ; and Theodora used to be all red before switching to an all-black outfit.

[pennyserenade]

tags: nameless oc x javier peña, nameless oc x javier pena, angst  rating: e ( explicit ) warnings: smut, language. word count: 3k+ summary: marriage requires sacrifice; theirs takes a little more than most notes: i definitely did steal the title of this chapter from the original scenes from a marriage and you know what? i’d do it again. anyways, thanks for reading and i hope you enjoy this installment! if you want to be tagged in this series, just shoot me a message or fill out my taglist form that’s available on my masterlist (pinned post). original gif by: @javierpcna​

the art of sweeping things under the rug

scene two, scenes from a marriage 

Wedding bands can vary in weight depending on the sort of week you’re having, she finds. Conveniently light, sometimes--nearly invisible, as if intertwined with oneself--and then, impossibly dense at others. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, she tells herself, but she’s on no throne, and there is no crown. It’s just her and Javi, and the elopement that tied them together. 

The ‘70s had faded silently into the ‘80, and it’s easy to feel in love when the future looks promising. Well--maybe promising is too generous of a word for what they had felt then; perhaps uncertain is better. It wasn’t the sort of uncertain that fills one with dread either, the kind that leaves them in the dark with no flashlight. No, it was the uncertainty that felt good; the sort that made them think whatever was offered in the decade they’d not yet painted with plans was going to be great. It was promises of catching Pablo, promises of a promotion, promises of a proper marriage in the country they’d come to love in their own separate and shared ways. It was realists sharing one optimistic view in a world that seemed so void of them, and now, as she sits at the dinner table in her apartment, looking at the thin band on her finger, she wonders if they’d rushed into it

Her mother told her a mal tiempo, buena cara. In bad times, keep a good face. Just grin and bare it, wait for the uneasiness of the life they were living now to trickle into the marriage she anticipated, but she isn’t sure what sort of marriage she was anticipating. She had understood that there were going to be hardships, but she had welcomed them then because she thought they were going to be hardships they would endure together. They weren’t doing a very good job at the together. 

It isn’t that she doesn’t love him. She has an unwavering love for him, but the absence of his being in her life has begun to create a festering wound in her heart. She’s torn between asking him to never leave again—to quit it all and stay wrapped in bed with her, pretending the horrors outside of their utopia didn’t exist—and saying nothing at all. Grinning and bearing. 

He’s a good man. A great man, actually. He’s gentle, funny. A little too stressed for his own good most of the time, and a bit grumpy until he settles somewhere, but he’s exactly what she needs, and everything that could break her if he so wanted it, too. And she knows he never would want that, but she isn’t sure he knows he can either, because if he did, then he was tiptoeing dangerously close to that line. 

Sighing, she shakes her head, dismissing it all. 

The afternoon has begun to fade into the evening, and the cool summer wind blows a gentle breeze into her home. Javier said he wouldn’t be working late at the Embassy tonight, and she had told him she’d cook dinner, but the eagerness that had overtaken her then had been worn by the sight of his wedding band on her dresser. It was the thing that made hers seem so heavy. The thing that made her want to cry, really, and it was so silly, but she could not help the angry ball of frustration and confusion that formed at the sigh of it, or the way it had turned into the lump in her throat. 

She yearns for the days when it was just fucking—the way they hadn’t exchanged anything personal so nothing could be personal. She misses the way he would call her, flustered, at all hours of the night and the way she’d always open her door for him, and they’d kiss passionately and fuck roughly and explore each other over and over. 

But really, she doesn’t want that, either. She doesn’t know what she wants. 

She hears the jangle of keys, hears the latch open, but she doesn’t turn to meet him. Instead, she’s lit a cigarette, and she’s staring out the window, looking at how the sun shadows the town. She puffs away at the cigarette and he says nothing when he enters. He just throws his keys on the counter and then moves quietly over to her, hands falling to her tense shoulders. She hates the way she leans into him too; how effortlessly the anger ebbs.

She looks up at him, and he smiles gently. He looks worn, as though he’s fighting something that she won’t learn until the early hours of the morning, when he’s spent from spent from sex and the general excitement that paints all of his days. Javi is interesting in that way—not emotionally stunted, but hesitant. 

“You didn’t make dinner?” he asks while pushing her hair away from her neck, pressing his lips there quickly. He nuzzles against her for a beat, taking in her scent, feeling the warmth of her against him in gratitude. He is spent, and he’s wanted nothing more than to come here. Doesn’t even really care that she’s not made him dinner, just said it to hear her. 

“I didn’t,” she responds, more softly than she likes. Her heart is tender for him, kind naturally because his being warrants it. She wants to yell, but she can’t because she loves him so goddamn much. 

“S’okay,” he mumbles. Javi moves away from her, slipping off his jacket and sitting it on the chair. “We can order something later if you want.”

She nods, putting out the cigarette. “When do you have to go back in?”

“Six tomorrow morning. What about you?”

“I took tomorrow off.”

His eyebrows furrowed, “¿Por qué?” 

“Because,” she shrugs. “Only so much depressing material you can write until it starts to wear you down.”

“You know I said—“

She cuts him off. “I don’t want to live off your paycheck. I know what you said but I’m happy doing what I do. Just—“ she pauses, struggling to think. “—not all of us can give our lives over to the cause all the time.”

She meant that, meant that entirely, and knows he feels it by the way his features settle into a look of pure nothingness. Stoned face, giving nothing. She’s sorry for it, but can’t say it. He doesn’t ask for her to. 

“Cruelty doesn’t look so good on you, baby,” he tries to tease, but it comes out flat and serious. She bites at her lip, and turns her head to the window, back to the city, trying not to cry. 

“Are you angry with me?” 

He’s a good detective, isn’t he?

“Javi, I don’t want to fight.” 

“You are angry with me.”

She sighs heavily. “No, I’m not.”

“You are, and I wish you’d just say why.”

“It doesn’t even matter, Javi,” she dismisses it with a simple shrug of her shoulders. “You’ve been at work all day and—“

“Is it because I work so much?” he interrupts. 

“Goddamnit, Javier, I’m not fucking angry with you!” she shouts. Shouts like she is angry with him. Silence ensues and she wants to crawl in a hole and disappear completely. 

“You left your wedding ring,” she admits quietly, half out of remorse, half because she can’t stand the way he’s looked down at the table and not looked back up. Or how he sits like he’s torn between fleeing and staying. “But it really doesn’t matter, and I don’t know why it bothers me so much because I know you...you don’t mean to hurt me.”

“No,” he shakes his head. He still does not look at her, focusing on a line in the table. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Javi, I said it didn’t matter.”

“But it does.” He finally looks up. “It matters if it makes you angry with me. I left it because I forgot, that’s all.”

“I said it doesn’t matter.”

“You never fucking fight me.”

“There’s no reason for it,” she replies. 

“There is reason for it.” 

“Javi, please. I don’t get you for very long and this is not how I want to spend it.”

“Stop doing that.” 

“What?” Confusion paints her features. 

“Running from it. Fight with me.”

“Why do you want to fight so fucking bad? When you’d turn into such a fucking masochist.”

She feels that lump in her throat again, feels the way it wants to give way and lets it all go the way he’s requesting. Fills the bitterness creep into her system the way she hates. 

“I’m not a masochist,” he replies, “You’ve obviously got shit to say, so say it.”

“Fuck you, Javi,” she chokes, blinking back tears now. She definitely did not want this. 

She gets up to move, but he grasps onto her wrist. 

“Don’t run away,” he repeats. He’s angry too. 

“Let me go,” she spits out spitefully. He has such a loose hold on her that she doesn’t even need his permission to escape from it, but it’s the concept more than anything. He does let go, but she doesn’t move. 

“I didn’t want to fight with you.” 

Her cheeks begin to heat with anger, and it’s the worst sort of anger, the kind that makes her sob because she can’t contain it. It’s an anger that feels unfair, and she can never beat it; the tears begin to fall rapidly. 

Sympathy tugs at his heart; his steely resolution falls as quickly as it has come up. “I know,” he acknowledges. “We’ve got to fight, sometimes, though.”

“I know, but I don’t want to. I only see you two days a week and I don’t want to spend one of them yelling at you,” she confesses. “All I want you, Javi. Is that so much to ask?”

It’s his turn for shame to fill him. He knows why that can’t be—knows it’s because there’s things she can’t know and having her in a building full of DEA agents comprises the both of them. She’s in danger just wearing that wedding band on her finger; God forbid any of those fucking narcs ever found out they were married. He shouldn’t have done it, married her, but he could not help it; a sort of selfishness that was not uncharacteristic had pushed the boundaries within him, and he decided the good outweighed the bad. But, maybe it didn’t. 

He stands and envelops her frame in a hug. She sighs into his chest and wraps her arms tightly around him. She only wants to make him happy and to be happy with him. Why did it seem so hard? When this all began, it felt so easy, so nice and now it felt hard. 

Javier kisses her softly, just a peck and she feels lighter because of it. As he goes to pull away, she pulls him closer again, pressing their lips together. He responds, a hand resting on her hip and the other on the small of her back, holding her against him. She initiates a deeper kiss, swiping her tongue against his lower lip. They stand like this for a few minutes, kissing and basking in the presence of each other the way they’d both desired. 

It is Javi who pulls back from their kiss, needing air and wanting to take it further—just not here. In the beginning of their relationship, when it was just fucking, sex felt something they had to do everywhere; on the couch, on the table, on the counter, in the shower, on the ground, even in front of the window. And they still did that, still let spontaneity sway them, but they’d settled into more comfortable routines too. He liked fucking her in their bed, the one thing they always agreed was undeniably both of theirs wherever it resided. It was their bed so as long as they both fell there to sleep. 

He doesn’t even have to speak, just nods his head in the general direction, before she’s tugging him along. 

She sits down on the bed and peers up at him, eyes still red from the tears. He feels awful about it, but doesn’t have it in him to say it. Can’t, for some reason. It’s lost between his brain and his tongue, but it finds its way out through the gentle way he presses her onto her back and lets his lips kiss her everywhere. He kisses her face, her lips, then her neck, and then he goes further, pushing her shirt up and pressing his plush lips against the newly exposed flesh. Then he then he’s undoing her pants, kissing the spot where her panties usually begin. He offers her a mischievous grin, and she smiles back at him. 

“You really didn’t want to fight, did you?” 

She shakes her head. “No, you fuck, I didn’t,” she laughs. 

He continues his trail down her body, and she lifts her hips so he can remove her pants. Javier presses his lips on her hips, on the flesh directly above the pubic bone. Then, he presses them on the inside of her thighs, teasingly slow when he gets closer to her core, and she whines out of protest when he spots. Her eyes flicker down to see why, and when her eyes met his, he presses his tongue against her clit. A moan escapes her and she grasps onto the bedspread. Javi is encouraged by this, swiping his tongue against her folds, dipping his tongue into her, tasting her—really, truly admiring every part of her—before pressing his tongue back onto her clit. He begins to suck gently, and she writhes without control beneath him. A trained expert at this now, he anchors her down by wrapping an arm around each thigh, holding them in place. 

“Javi—“ she manages to say, just as the tension begins to build in her stomach. “Oh Javi, baby, faster.” 

He obliges and she is quick to find her release in a matter of seconds. Javi remains in between her thighs, licking up her arousal. He’s gotten good at this, knows the way she likes it, knows how to do it even when she can’t tell him.

She carts a hand through his hair, tugging gently, and he removes his lips from her finally. Despite her worn state, she’s quick to rise and meet him, uncaring about her arousal on his face as she presses their lips together once more. He kisses her back with more need than he previously had, his jeans feel tighter and more constricting than usual. 

“I want to ride you,” she whispers against his lips, and he nods eagerly. Her fingers work at his belt, and then the button of his jeans, hardly making it past the zipper before she slides her hand into his pants and palms his already hard member. He winces against her lips and she can’t help but grin; this is her Javi. This is the marriage she wants. 

“Te amo,” she says, beginning to tug at his jeans. He assists her, pushing them down all the way. 

“Take off your shirt,” he demands, tugging at the fabric. She obeys him, throwing the shirt in the same place his pants fell, before he tugs her closer to him. A gasp falls from her lips as she mounts him, the warmth of his length agonizing so close to her heat. She reaches between them, lining his cock up to her entrance. Eyes connect as she fills herself with him, and his mouth falls open, desperate to moan but too choked by the feeling of her around him. She moves slowly, not wanting to release the warmth of him yet in favor of forming a steady pace to ride him. Javi, however, is growing increasingly aroused beneath her, and can’t help the way he guides her on his cock. “Please,” he begs, brown eyes dark with desire. She nods, and they move together, her hips following his hands instructions. 

“Fuck,” he breathes out, watching the way he slides in and out of her. “I’m not going to last much longer, baby.”

Distracted by her own desire, she merely nods his confession, grinding herself on him until she fills the beginnings of another  orgasm, the sweet release inches away. He doesn’t lift her from himself now, wanting to savor this feeling for a few moments longer. “Te amo,” he finally responds back, a deep groan releasing at the way she squeezes around him. She grinds against him, and he lets her, allowing his finger to undo the bra they’d both been too eager to take off as she does. It falls slowly down her chest, and as soon as it exposes her nipple, he’s quick to wrap his mouth around it. This earns a throaty moan from her, and she swears her orgasm isn’t ever going to end. 

He pulls the fabric down her arms completely before turning them over, never leaving her once. He is desperate now, denied his orgasm too long, and the heat is pooling viciously in his stomach. He thrusts roughly into her, a whine emitting from her lips when he does, but she lifts her hips to meet him the second time he does it. 

“Faster, baby,” she encourages, and he presses his fingers into her hips so hard that he’s certain the skin will bruise as he thrusts into her for the last time. 

He slides out of her, and with a few more rough tugs on his cock, he’s releasing on her stomach. He wants to lay beside her, flat and lifeless as his lugs play catch up (it’s the fucking cigarettes, but he can’t stop them), but he resists the urge. He leans towards the bed stand and grabs a handful of tissues, wiping himself and her clean of his cum. She lays still, watching him intently, a soft, appreciative smile embedding in her features. 

“I miss you a lot, you know,” she says. He throws the tissues away in the bin across the room, and she takes in his frame; admires the way his back looks, the broadness of his shoulders, even his ass. He’s a good looking man, on top of everything, and she’s happy to be his wife. She just wishes it was easier. 

“I do know. I miss you too.”

He slides back into bed, uncaring of his nakedness, and she uncaring of hers. He pulls her bare body against him, and she wraps a leg around her hip. She traces his lips with her finger and he takes her hand, kissing the palm of it. 

He loves her, loves her so goddamn much that the guilt of the wedding ring on her dresser eats away at him. It bites and bites because the way he’s so casually lied about why he left it, acted as if it wasn’t deliberate. Doesn’t want to tell he’s afraid they’ll find out if he doesn’t, doesn’t want to have to worry about if she’s okay anymore than he does already. He calls her every night, checks in at the same time so he knows nothing is wrong, and she knows he does this, but there’s a thousand things she doesn’t see. A thousand things he doesn’t want her to see, either, like the way he left the wedding band because he’s afraid or the way he drives past her house every night before he goes to his, just to ensure it’s still there, even though he knows it is. Doesn’t want her to see the anxiety that fills him every time he hears about a bombing or the way he can’t sleep when he goes away. He wants their marriage to be perfectly normal, wants it all to be perfectly normal. Colombia deserves to be a country where marriages don’t feel this hard, and that’s all he wants to give her, but he can’t. 

As she lays against him, she can feel the tension in his body, knowing by the way he holds her a little too firmly that he’s thinking about something. She wants to ask about what, but she doesn’t want to spoil the moment. 

They’ve both become experts at sweeping things under the rug—at sacrificing—and neither of them knows whether it’s good or not, but they’ll continue to do it. Lie causally in order to protect, not address the pain and disorder, just for moments like this, moments that feel entirely like their own. Moments that make them feel married and dedicated to one another. 

This is scene two from a marriage.

tagged: @filthybookworm​ 

[mst3kproject]

Kingdom of the Spiders

Yep, this is the one with William Shatner in it.  It was directed by John ‘you really undermine your authority when you put Bud in the middle of your name’ Cardos, who did the same job for The Day Time Ended and Outlaw.  It’s also available on Rifftrax, so I think we’re fully qualified for EtNW status… but if you need one more returning star, we have of course the much-maligned Mexican Red-Knee Tarantula.

The Shatmeister is Dr. Robert Hansen, the vet in these here parts. He’s not sure what caused Mr. Colby’s prize calf to suddenly fall sick and die, so he summons help that arrives in the form of Dr. Diane Ashley, an expert on venomous animals.  She quickly determines that the area is being invaded by huge, pissed-off tarantulas!  The over-use of pesticides has forced the spiders to evolve, and they’ve become social hunters with a more concentrated and deadly venom.  In large numbers they’re capable of taking down cattle, dogs… and maybe even humans.  The soundtrack consists of terrible country songs, all of them by the same guy you’ve never heard of.

As 70’s Nature’s Revenge movies go, Kingdom of the Spiders is… adequate.  It’s not remarkably bad, but there’s nothing particularly creative or interesting in it, either.  The direction is nondescript – none of the shots are visually striking, but anything artsy would be out-of-place in a film that’s intended to look as down-to-earth as the farmers and cowboys that populate it.  There’s a county fair that stands in for the Fourth of July Weekend from Jaws, and a ‘spider hill’ that serves as the Smaller Shark, but both of them are mentioned and then just kind of go away, rather than fulfilling any role in the plot.  They’re there for the same reason as the love triangle, because movies are supposed to have those.

The love triangle is what’ll make you hate Shatner’s character. Dr. Hansen seems dedicated to his work and he’s kind to his neighbours, but he’s an absolute ass to women. He seems to have a thing going on with his dead brother’s widow, Terri, which is very Claudius of him, but he rejects her almost violently when she accidentally calls him by her husband’s name. In one scene he teases that he might marry her himself, and then a day later he’s bringing Diane by to introduce her, which results in Terri fleeing to the kitchen to cry.  The impression we get is that he can read her signals, he just doesn’t give a shit.

He’s a jerk to Diane, too.  He asks her on a date moments after saying he has to go see ‘his girl’ that afternoon.  It turns out he’s referring to his four-year-old niece, but he didn’t clarify that until after he asked Diane out, which can only mean he deliberately led her to think he wants to cheat on somebody with her.  Later when he wants her attention, he runs her off the road and basically kidnaps her for dinner with him, and then he drives her car after she’s angrily told him not to.  He teases her about her feminism and makes her open beers for him… and of course this is supposed to be Twu Wuv.

Like a lot of useless love triangles in a lot of useless movies, this one is resolved when the third party dies.  Shatner therefore doesn’t have to choose – if Terri had lived and he’d chosen Diane instead, she might have decided to reduce Hansen’s time with her daughter Linda, whom he clearly adores.  With Terri dead, he gets Diane and the child all to himself.  Terri was nothing but an inconvenience, and is summarily disposed of.

I did like Diane, though.  She comes across as kind of a snotty bitch when we first meet her, but she warms up fast.  My favourite part of the movie is when she sees a gigantic tarantula crawling out of a drawer at her hotel room, and she immediately picks it up, pets it, and tells it it’s pretty!  How could I not like this lady?  Apparently actress Tiffany Bolling got the role mostly because she was willing to do that while their first choice, Barbara Hale (of The Giant Spider Invasion) was not. She deserved way better than to be William Shatner’s love interest.

The unfortunate thing about this sequence is it, and a couple more in which Diane happily handles the spiders without harm, rather undercuts the idea that they’re supposed to be aggressively seeking out human prey.  There are other scenes in which we watch humans run around madly, screaming and flailing, while the spiders merely sit there not doing very much.  Worst of all are two separate sequences in which a fatal accident seems to result not from spiders attacking people, but from people freaking out because a spider was in a vehicle!  It makes the whole movie feel like an over-reaction.

I do realize this may be my personal reaction, rather than the average one… somebody who’s actually scared of spiders might find this completely horrifying.  But… you know spiders move at like one mile an hour, right?  The Creeping Terror could catch them.  Just go get in your car, and drive away.  It would have worked for the sheriff if the crowd hadn’t slowed him down!

Moving along – the characters of the Colbys, a farming couple who’ve poured everything they have into their herd of cattle only to see their livelihood destroyed, are people we can pity but we know better than to get attached to them.  The opening scene is Mr. Colby bragging about how his calf is a shoe-in for first prize, and you know right away that he’s destined to lose everything.  The series of tragedies that ensue for the couple are all similarly telegraphed.

At the end we see a terrible matte painting depicting the entire town draped in spiderwebs.  This looks so bad it’s actually difficult to figure out what we’re seeing, and I’m not at all sure what it’s meant to tell us.  Diane had talked about the spiders ‘migrating’, implying that they’re just passing through.  So are we meant to think that now they’ve killed everyone else, the spiders have moved on and our so-called heroes can escape?  Because there are no actual spiders in the image, just their webs.  On the other hand, Diane also talked about spiders storing their food by wrapping it in webs.  So are they gonna come back to eat everybody later?  But it’s just a spiderweb… the humans can rip it apart and go.  Did the characters win, or lose?  Are they going to live or die?  The movie just runs out of ideas and ends.

This is a bit of a shame, because the core idea here is kind of neat.  The spiders have become monsters not because chemicals or radiation has mutated them, but because evolution did.  Diane explains that over-use of pesticides has done two things: one is to create DDT-resistant spiders in the same way as misuse of antibiotics creates drug-resistant bacteria.  The ones that can tough it out survive and produce similarly tough offspring.  Second, the pesticides have killed off the spiders’ usual prey, forcing them to turn to alternative sources of food.  Spiders with more potent venom are better able to kill large prey – as are those that work together.

I actually like this better than the idea of monsters made by pollution.  The toxic monster genre can’t really be about nature striking back because the creatures in it are truly un-natural.  When it is evolution that makes monsters, that is nature demonstrating that it is more powerful than we are.  It’s also more realistic, I guess, though only in a movie-science-y kind of way.  It’s not very plausible that the spiders could evolve so fast – the major changes in their behaviour would probably take many, many thousands of generations – but at least we know that evolution is a thing that happens, whereas exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals just kills stuff.  Too bad the concept seems to make for terrible movies.

Unfortunately, if the movie’s point is supposed to be that nature is tougher than us, the vague ending kind of undercuts it.  As I mentioned, we don’t really know if the protagonists are going to live to see another day.  Diane says that if insects turned on humanity we wouldn’t last long, but at the end the main characters are still alive.  There are movies in which an open ending is perfectly appropriate, but in this one it just feels incomplete.  If I were writing this, I would have the humans escape to another town or city, onto to find that the spiders have gotten there first.  That would be a little cliché, but it would make the point that while minor victories are possible, in the end the battle of man versus nature can only have one winner.

Kingdom of the Spiders is fairly well-known as a ‘bad movie’, and I expected I would either love it or hate it, but in the end I did neither.  I dislike Shatner’s characters rather strongly, but I’ve seen worse, and he’s not as stilted here as he is in some of his work.  The rest of them are okay.  The music sucks but it’s pretty forgettable, as opposed to things like The Sad Mushroom Ukelele Anthem that crawl inside your ear and nest there like a botfly larva (if you don’t know what that is, do not google it, I refuse to take responsibility for what you’ll learn).  I think a big part of the problem for both this and other spider movies like Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo and Arachnophobia is just that live spiders don’t make good actors.  You can’t direct them.  It’s really hard to take something seriously as a threat when it’s just kinda wandering around.

Speaking of Arachnophobia, apparently producer Igo Kantor believed it was a deliberate ripoff of Kingdom of the Spiders.  He didn’t do anything about it because, and I quote, “you don’t go and sue Spielberg.” That’s a good enough excuse, I suppose, but I bet he and the makers of Parts: the Clonus Horror would have a lot to commiserate about.

[thelastchair]

Powder Magazine

(Written by Sam Cox - December 28, 2020)

Growing up in Montana, my winter free time was consumed by skiing. Big Sky was the destination when I was barely old enough to walk. Eventually we made the move to Bozeman and Bridger Bowl became my second home. During the early years, my family made the trek to a handful of Warren Miller movies when they were on tour in the fall and Snow Country was the magazine subscription that landed on the coffee table. I was vaguely aware of Jackson Hole, Snowbird and Squaw Valley and my father would occasionally regale me with tales of skiing (read Après) in Germany when he was in the Army. At some level, I already understood that there was something special about Bridger, but realistically, my sphere of outside influence was quite small. Christmas of 1989 turned my entire world upside down. My aunt and uncle are longtime Salt Lake City residents and Brighton skiers. Typically they would send a package each year with the customary cookies, toffee and a card. However, this year they sent two VHS tapes and a magazine - Ski Time, Blizzard of Aahhh’s and a copy of Powder. Things would never be the same for me. Scot Schmidt became my hero, Greg Stump was taking skiing into uncharted territory and above it all, Powder created an eloquent voice for our sport and was the fabric that held things together. Even at my young age, everything that I’d intuitively sensed before was distilled into a potent desire to devote myself to the simple pursuit of being a skier.

Johan Jonsson, Engelberg, Switzerland - Photo: Mattias Fredriksson/POWDER

Powder was founded in Sun Valley by the Moe brothers in 1972 as an annual portfolio of The Other Ski Experience. After several years of running the magazine, Jake and David Moe sold Powder to the owner of Surfer Magazine. A repurposed aircraft hangar in San Juan Capistrano became the new home of skiing’s most prestigious publication. Over time, there was an ebb and flow to the size of staff and cast of characters, each person leaving their unique mark. For decades Powder weathered corporate acquisitions, office relocations and the constant metamorphosis of the ski industry - never losing its voice, Powder remained the benchmark. It was a source of creativity, inspiration and a defacto annal of history. For many it was also a shining beacon, a glimpse into a world filled with deep turns and iconic destinations - even if this world could only be inhabited inside the constructs of your imagination.

My story and the impact Powder had on the direction I would take is hardly unique. The magazine left an indelible impression on countless skiers. When the news broke this fall that operations were being suspended indefinitely, a heartbroken community took to social media to pay homage to the magazine and how it changed their lives and in some cases, careers. This is my version of a tribute and it’s definitely not perfect. In order to gain some perspective, I reached out to former staff members - a collective I admire and respect. It’s an attempt to articulate the essence of Powder, capture its influence on the skiing landscape and give credit to the people who made it come to life. 

Bernie Rosow, Mammoth Mountain, CA - Photo: Christian Pondella/POWDER

HANS LUDWIG - The Jaded Local

“Skiing has always been really tribal and one of the last vestiges of having an oral history. Powder was a unique concept, because they weren’t really concerned with the family market. They were just concerned about being really into skiing. Growing up in Colorado and skiing moguls, my coaches Robert and Roger were featured in the early Greg Stump films. Being in their orbit, I knew a little bit about skiing culture and what was going on out there, but didn’t have the whole picture. The Stump films resonated with me, but Ski/Skiing Magazines didn’t really do it for me. Powder was the door that opened things culturally, it was the only entry point before Blizzard of Aahhh’s.”

“Something that nobody gives Powder credit for, is sponsoring the Greg Stump, TGR and MSP movies and giving them full support right from their inception. It legitimized those companies and helped them become one of the catalysts for change and evolution in skiing. Ultimately this change would have happened, but at a much slower pace without the support of Powder. Getting support from Powder meant they’d weeded out the posers and kooks and what they were backing wasn’t something or someone that was “aspiring” they were a cut above.”

“Powder brought a lot of things into the mainstream, raised awareness and helped to legitimize them: Jean-Marc Boivin, Patrick Vallencant, Pierre Tardivel, telemarking, monoskiing, snowboarding, the JHAF, Chamonix, La Grave, Mikaela Shiffrin, fat skis pre McConkey, skiing in South America….the list goes on.”

“I had some rowdy trips with Powder. Writing “Lost In America,” I went Utah-Montana-Fernie-Banff-Revelstoke via pickup truck, only backcountry skiing and camping in the mud. It was a month plus. I did another month plus in Nevada, which was after back to back Jackson and Silverton. Total time was two plus months. That was fucked up, I was super loose after that whole thing. So many sketchy days with total strangers”

“People forget that Powder was around long before the advent of the fucking pro skier. Starting in 1996, the magazine was in the impact zone of the ski industrial complex. There is limited space for content each season. It was a challenge to balance the pressure coming from the athletes and brands to cover something that was going to make them money vs. staying true to the Moe brothers original intent and profiling an eccentric skier, a unique location or even fucking ski racing.”

Full Circle - Photo: MJ Carroll

KEITH CARLSEN - Editor

“When I was young, Ski/Skiing didn’t do anything for my spirit, but Powder lit me up. It ignited a passion in diehard skiers and gave them a voice and community. It was focused on the counter culture - the type of people who rearrange their lives to ski. This was in direct opposition to other magazines that were targeting rich people, trying to explain technique, sell condos or highlight the amenities at a ski area.”

“Skiing has always been my outlet and mechanism to get away from things in life. My two talents are writing and photography, so I enrolled at Western State with the direct goal of landing an internship at Powder. Even at 19, I had complete focus on the direction I wanted to take. If it didn’t work out, my backup plan was to be a ski bum. 48 hours after graduating, I was headed to southern California to live in my van and start my position at Powder. When the decision was made to close the magazine, it was really personal for me. Powder had provided me direction in life for the last 30 years and I needed some time to process it. In a way, it was almost like going to a funeral for a good friend - even though it’s gone, the magazine lives on in all of us and can never be taken away.”

“It was, and will always remain, one of my life’s greatest honors to serve as the editor-in-chief for Powder Magazine. It was literally a dream that came true. I’m so grateful for everyone who came before me and everyone who served after me. That opportunity opened literally hundreds of doors for me and continues to do so today. I owe the magazine a massive debt of gratitude. Every single editor was a warrior and fought for the title with their lives. They were doing double duty - not only from competition with other publications, but the internal struggle of budget cuts, staff reductions and trying to do more with less. Powder never belonged in the hands of a corporation. The magazine spoke to an impassioned community and never made sense to an accountant or on a ledger.”

Trevor Petersen, Mt. Serratus, BC - Photo: Scott Markewitz/POWDER

SIERRA SHAFER - Editor In Chief

“Powder celebrated everything that is good and pure in skiing. It highlighted the old school, the new and the irreverent. The magazine also called bullshit when they saw it. It was a checkpoint, a cultural barometer and an honest reflection on where skiing has been and where it’s going.”

“My involvement with Powder came completely out of left field. I was never an intern or established in the ski industry. My background was strictly in journalism, I was a skier living in Southern California and editing a newspaper. I knew that I wanted to get the fuck out of LA and Powder was that opportunity. It was a huge shift going from my job and life being completely separate to work becoming my life. Literally overnight, Powder became everything - friends, connections and part of my identity. It derailed my trajectory in the best possible way.”

Brad Holmes, Donner Pass, CA - Photo: Dave Norehad/POWDER

MATT HANSEN - Executive Editor

“Keith Carlsen was a man of ideas, he had tremendous vision and influence. He came up with the ideas for Powder Week and the Powder Awards in 2001. In some respects those two events saved the magazine.”

“Powder was the soul of skiing and kept the vibe, it changed people’s lives and inspired them to move to a ski town. As a writer I always wanted to think it was the stories that did that, but in truth it was the photography. Images of skiing truly became an art form, 100% thanks to Powder Magazine and Dave Reddick. Dave cultivated and mentored photographers, he was always searching for the unpredictable image from around the world and pressed the photographers to look at things from a different angle.”

“It sounds cliche, but writing a feature about Chamonix was the highlight for me. Sitting on the plane, things were absolutely unreal. I linked up with Nate Wallace and the whole experience from start to finish was out of my comfort zone. Ducking ropes to ski overhead pow on the Pas De Chèvre, walking out of the ice tunnel on a deserted Aiguille du Midi right as the clouds parted, late nights in town that were too fuzzy to recall. The energy of the place taught me a lot. I didn’t have a smartphone and there was no Instagram - I had time to write, observe, take notes and be present with who I was and with the experience. As a writer it didn’t get any better.”

“The true gift of working for Powder, was the once in a lifetime adventures that I wish I could have shared with my family, I was so lucky to have had those opportunities. It almost brought tears to me eyes.”

Peter Romaine, Jackson Hole, WY - Photo: Wade McKoy/POWDER

DAVE REDDICK - Director of Photography

“Just ski down there and take a photo of something, for cryin’ out loud!”  “I’ve found that channeling McConkey has been keeping it in perspective. Powder’s been shuttered. That sucks. What doesn’t suck is the good times and the people that have shared the ride thus far and I’m just thankful to be one of them. There’s been some really kind sentiments from friends and colleagues, but this must be said - Every editor (especially the editors), every art director (I’ve driven them nuts), every publisher and sales associate, every photographer, writer, and intern, and all the others behind the scenes who’ve ever contributed their talents get equal share of acknowledgment for carrying the torch that is Powder Mag. There’s hundreds of us! No decision has ever been made in a vacuum. Always a collective. At our best, we’ve been a reflection of skiers everywhere and of one of the greatest experiences in the world. It’s that community, and that feeling, that is Powder. I’m not sure what’s next and I’m not afraid of change but”  “There’s something really cool about being scared. I don’t know what!”

Scot Schmidt, Alaska - Photo: Chris Noble/POWDER

DEREK TAYLOR - Editor 

“Powder was the first magazine dedicated to the experience and not trying to teach people how to ski. It was enthusiast media focused on the soul and culture. It’s also important to highlight the impact Powder had outside of skiing - today you have the Surfer’s Journal effect where every sport wants that type of publication. However, prior to their inception, everybody wanted a version of Powder.”

“Neil Stebbins and Steve Casimiro deserve a lot of credit for the magazine retaining its voice and staying true to the core group of skiers it represented.”

“Keith Carlsen is responsible for the idea behind Super Park. This was a time when skiing had just gone through a stale phase. There was a newfound energy in park skiing and younger generations, this event helped to rebrand Powder and solidify its goal of being all inclusive. Racing, powder, park, touring - it’s all just skiing.”

Joe Sagona, Mt. Baldy, CA - Photo: Dave Reddick/POWDER

JOHNNY STIFTER - Editor In Chief

“What did Powder mean to me... Well, everything. As a reader and staffer, it inspired me and made me laugh. I learned about local cultures that felt far away and learned about far away cultures that didn’t feel foreign, if that makes sense.”

“But I cherished those late nights the most, making magazines with the small staff. Despite the deadline stress, I always felt so grateful to be working for this sacred institution and writing and editing for true skiers. We all just had so much damn fun. And it didn’t hurt meeting such passionate locals at hallowed places, like Aspen and Austria, that I once dreamed of visiting and skiing. The Powder culture is so inclusive and so fun, I never felt more alive.”

Doug Coombs, All Hail The King - Photo: Ace Kvale/POWDER

HEATHER HANSMAN - Online Editor

“Powder is a lifestyle and an interconnected circle of people. It’s about getting a job offer at Alta, opening your home to random strangers, locking your keys in your car and getting rescued by a friend you made on a trip years ago. Through the selfish activity of skiing, you can create a community of people you cherish and can depend on through highs and lows.”

Ashley Otte, Mike Wiegele Heli, BC - Photo: Dave Reddick/POWDER

The contributions of so many talented individuals made the magazine possible. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who shared their experience at Powder with me. Also, I want to thank Porter Fox and David Page for crafting inspiring feature stories that I enjoyed immensely over the years.

After the reality set in that the final issue had arrived, a void was created for generations of skiers. I’ve been focused on being thankful for what we had, rather than sad it’s gone. It’s a challenging time for print media and I wholeheartedly advocate supporting the remaining titles in anyway you can. In a culture driven by a voracious appetite for mass media consumption and instant gratification - I cherish the ritual of waiting for a magazine to arrive, appreciating the effort that went into creating the content and being able to have that physical substance in my hand. Thanks for everything Powder, you are missed, but your spirit lives on.  

Captain Powder - Photo: Gary Bigham/POWDER

[cinemavariety]

Cinema Variety’s Top 25 Favorite Films of the Decade

This past decade has been a monumental ten years for the state of cinema. To think that there were actually still video rental stores all around the country, to almost becoming nonexistent, is statement enough to show how vastly audiences have changed the way they consume media. Through much thought and careful deliberation, the following 25 films are my personal favorites of the decade and are what I think best represent all that indie, international and arthouse cinema had to offer over the past ten years. Honorable Mentions: Shame Green Room A Ghost Story The Lost City of Z Knight of Cups 20th Century Women Jackie Blade Runner 2049 The Lighthouse Ingrid Goes West A Hidden Life

#25 - Suspiria (2018) Dir. Luca Guadagnino

“It’s only hours afterward that Guadagnino’s film will cohere for you and yield its buried treasures: the bonds of secret sorority, the strength of a line of dancers moving like a single organism, the present rippling with the muscle memory of the past. It’s so good, it’s scary.”

#24 - Call Me By Your Name (2017) Dir. Luca Guadagnino

“The final beats of Guadagnino’s adaptation galvanize two hours of simmering uncertainty into a gut-wrenchingly wistful portrait of two people trying to find themselves before it’s too late.”

#23 - American Honey (2016) Dir. Andrea Arnold

“Part dreamy millennial picaresque, part distorted tapestry of Americana and part exquisitely illustrated iTunes musical, “Honey” daringly commits only to the loosest of narratives across its luxurious 162-minute running time. Yet it’s constantly, engrossingly active, spinning and sparking and exploding in cycles like a Fourth of July Catherine wheel.”

#22 - Post Tenebras Lux (2013) Dir. Carlos Reygadas

“Some metaphors score and some miss, but this is leap-of-faith cinema: the rewards entail some risks.”

#21 - The Revenant (2015) Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

“Pushing both brutal realism and extravagant visual poetry to the edges of what one customarily finds in mainstream American filmmaking, director/co-writer Alejandro G. Inarritu, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and a vast team of visual effects wizards have created a sensationally vivid and visceral portrait of human endurance under very nearly intolerable conditions.”

#20 - Her (2013) Dir. Spike Jonze

“What begins like an arrested adolescent dream soon blossoms into Jonze’s richest and most emotionally mature work to date, burrowing deep into the give and take of relationships, the dawning of middle-aged ennui, and that eternal dilemma shared by both man and machine: the struggle to know one’s own true self.”

#19 - Annihilation (2018) Dir. Alex Garland

“A shimmering example of what Hollywood sci-fi can achieve when the aim is high, Annihilation is a gripping, mystifying adventure and proof that a transportive experience is more rewarding than a story with clean-cut resolutions.”

#18 - The Neon Demon (2016) Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

“Spectacular, gross and delicious (so unsavory it’s almost sweet), the film is more proof of Refn’s mastery of his trash aesthetic and more fun than anything this indulgent and empty-headed has any right to be.”

#17 - Waves (2019) DIr. Trey Edward Shults

“Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.”

#16 - Mother! (2017) Dir. Darren Aronofsky

“Mother! is something truly magnificent, the kind of visceral trash-arthouse experience that comes along very rarely, means as much or as little as you decide it does, and spits you out into the daylight dazzled, queasy, delirious, and knock-kneed as a newborn calf.”

#15 - Melancholia (2011) Dir. Lars Von Trier

“The vision is as hateful as it is hate-filled, but the fusion of form and content is so perfect that it borders on the sublime. Melancholia is a remarkable mood piece with visuals to die for (excuse the pun), and a performance from Dunst that runs the color spectrum of emotions.”

#14 - Song to Song (2017) Dir. Terrence Malick

“Any number of sequences find feelings both externalized and hidden intermingling within the same shot, continuing in a subsequent image that carries the impression, the feeling, without replicating the exact tenor of what has just been seen. They exist simultaneously as certain backstories and what motivations they may inspire delicately unfold. Malick has found a way to translate how a familiar song has the ability to transport you back to a particular time and conjure a specific set of emotions. Whatever he’s been exploring over the past few years pays off here.”

#13 - If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) Dir. Barry Jenkins

“What Jenkins gets most right—what astonishes me the most about this film—is Baldwin’s vast affection for the broad varieties of black life. It’s one of the signature lessons of Baldwin’s work that blackness contains multitudes. In some ways Beale feels less like a movie than a well-staged, meticulously shot play; a period piece that floats beyond its specific time and place and into the realm of allegory.”

#12 - Samsara (2012) Dir. Ron Fricke

“Simply put, Samsara tells the story of our world, but onscreen, it is so much more than that. A darker and more ambitious meditation on impermanence, Samsara relies on blunt force and unforgettable imagery, overcoming the hazy logic of Fricke's editing to earn your awe.”

#11 - It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012) Dir. Don Hertzfeldt

“A highly original and utterly enthralling film that touches on staggeringly expansive themes - more typically expected in the work of master auteur and persistent award-winner Terrence Malick, than from animations. An existential flipbook and a heartbreaking black joke: stickmen have never looked so alive.”

#10 - Upstream Color (2013) Dir. Shane Carruth

“You may not be able to figure it out, but that's part of the point of this sensually-directed, sensory-laden experiential (and experimental) piece of art that washes over you like a sonorous bath of beguiling visuals, ambient sounds and corporeal textures.”

#9 - Hereditary (2018) Dir. Ari Aster

“It’s a supremely effective gauntlet of supernatural horror that’s also, at blackened heart, a grueling domestic drama about how trauma, resentment, and guilt can seep into the roots of a family tree, rotting it from the inside out.”

#8 - Spring Breakers (2013) Dir. Harmony Korine

“Spring Breakers seems to be holding a funhouse mirror up to the face of youth-driven pop culture, leaving us uncertain whether to laugh, recoil in horror, or marvel at its strange beauty. Full credit to Korine, who sustains this act of creative vandalism right through to the finish. Spring Breakers unfolds as a fever dream of teenage kicks, a high-concept heist movie with mescal in the fuel tank.”

#7 - The Master (2012) Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

“Two things stand out: the extraordinary command of cinematic technique, which alone is nearly enough to keep a connoisseur on the edge of his seat the entire time, and the tremendous portrayals by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman of two entirely antithetical men. Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own.”

#6 - Interstellar (2014) Dir. Christopher Nolan

“It’s a bold, beautiful cosmic adventure story with a touch of the surreal and the dreamlike, and yet it always feels grounded in its own deadly serious reality. An exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human.”

#5 - The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) Dir. Derek Cianfrance

“A brilliant, towering picture, The Place Beyond The Pines is a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight. The movie succeeds both as a high-stakes crime thriller as well as a far quieter and empathetic study of angry, solitary men proves that Cianfrance has a penchant for bold storytelling and an eye for performances to carry it through.”

#4 - Black Swan (2010) Dir. Darren Aronofsky

“A full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd. It centers on a performance by Natalie Portman that is nothing short of heroic. This is, no doubt about it, a tour de force, a work that fully lives up to its director's ambitions.”

#3 - Drive (2011) Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

“From the beginning, it's clear this is not a standard-order action film. It takes its characters as seriously as its chases, shootouts, and fights. Drive dynamically merges a terrific film noir plot with a cool retro look. It's an unapologetically commercial picture that defies all the current trends in mainstream action filmmaking.”

#2 - Blue Valentine (2010) Dir. Derek Cianfrance

“Cianfrance and his actors, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, have not made a cold or schematic film. They aim instead for raw emotional experience, one that's full of insight into the ways a relationship can go astray, but mostly feels like a slow-motion punch to the gut.”

#1 - The Tree of Life (2011) Dir. Terrence Malick

"The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. I wrote earlier about the many ways this film evoked my own memories of such time and place. About wide lawns. About a town that somehow, in memory, is always seen with a wide-angle lens. About houses that are never locked. About mothers looking out windows to check on their children. About the summer heat and ennui of church services, and the unpredictable theater of the dinner table, and the troubling sounds of an argument between parents, half-heard through an open window.”

[simtrospective]

Just some thoughts about my new save while I plan how I want to fulfill the last request in my inbox. I thought I’d write every thing down because it might help me think if I read it all back. I made it an entry you can see for those who enjoy super lengthy sims minutia. If you read this and have opinions or thoughts about where I could go with my ideas, please do share those opinions/thoughts with me!

1.) I have a family set to live in Glimmerbrook and a few ideas for the other residents there and the world’s overall vibe (I’ve not yet made the other families, nor renovated the world). I don’t care about ~spellcasters so my idea was to have at least one of the main families be immortals, and rivals with the family I’ve created already, who may themselves be immortal or half-immortal or not at all immortal but who will know that the other family is, and--whatever, who knows. Not the point.

The point is, I was making a few updates to my New Save Plans and while rereading everything, saw and thus remembered my idea to make Glimmerbrook into a vacation world/transcendentalist paradise. Recalling that plan, I still like it, and now I’m not sure what to do about anything there.

Issues:

Glimmerbrook and Granite Falls feel similar. I don’t want nor need two woodsy vacation areas.

Glimmerbrook has roads designed for vehicle travel. It’s not private and seems more “active” than I want a vacation world to appear, consistently. I’d also hate to lose some of the locations as isolated residential lots.

Where will I put the family I’ve already made? They were supposed to have a peacock farm!

2.) Never mind why it took so long for me to come up with a concept for Selvadorada; I’m suddenly super into giving it a 1930s Havana vibe--actual jungle notwithstanding--and moving it from the vacation worlds into the regular playable worlds. I’ve done the adventure playthrough already and it’s not going to fit into my new save so I’m not concerned with losing/avoiding that.

I want to move at least one world into the vacation world to make up for this swap, not counting Glimmerbrook since I’m undecided about that, and I’m thinking it’ll be Sulani. I actually love Sulani as a world (my mains lived there for a while) but it doesn’t make sense to me that there’s no beach vacation spot + I’d like to leave it wide open, fun, and with a relaxed vibe. I don’t want to disrupt the natural terrain. Super basic, open-plan, two-room rental properties + beaches + one place to get food/drink + one place (maybe the same place as the food/drink spot) to drink, dance, and... flirt, and that’s it.

I do (did?) have plans for Miss Sulani and Mr. Sulani and a whole thing, but I think I can still execute some of what I want. I mean... townies, etc., generate when you visit any world, including a vacation one, so I can just visit Sulani, let the townies generate to ensure they’re tied to Sulani, and then replace them with what/who I want, right? I guess? Yeah? Yeah.

Issues:

Actually... none? 99% sure I’m going to make Sulani a vacation world. 100%. 100% sure!

I never played the conservationist storyline or whatever the heck it is. I could still do that. Take a seven-day vacation in Sulani and clean the beach? I’ll have a few young, 1960s/1970s sims. A vacation to clean the beach = serving/volunteering in the Peace Corps? That was ~so hot back then. Now I get to name the sims version of the Peace Corps, so that’s fun.

3.) Let me get this straight: You’re concerned with leaving Sulani relatively untouched but want to slash and burn Selvadorada so you can have a nightclub? Interesting.

Actually, having thought about this more, I went back and looked at the pictures I took of every emptied world and I don’t see 1930s Havana working out in Selvadorada. I am now super not into this concept and don’t know what to do with Selvadorada, all over again. I still love the 1930s Havana concept and want to use it, though.

I looked at a few real life reference pictures and while I can see 30s Havana working with much of eastern Windenburg, I’m still really into eastern Windenburg as post-war Europe. “Europe” is broad, yes, and Windenburg will “be” multiple countries in one, but I don’t want to go even broader here and pull from multiple geographic regions around the globe, plus I’m already combining various cities into Oasis Springs, too, and so want to limit the “combining” approach. I looked at my world pictures again, and... Magnolia Promenade, though definitely not perfect, is the best place to put “Havana.” I think I can make it work, though, so that’s what I’m going to try to do!

Issues:

Magnolia Promenade was intended to be a Coney Island-Atlantic City boardwalk hybrid, another concept I want to keep. So... where’s that all going to go? I think it could work in Willow Creek, but with so many other lots there, the [boardwalk] will not be isolated in the way that I want it to be, though spreading it across the four side-by-side Crawdad Quarter lots + putting the attractions (Ferris wheel, carousel, etc.) in that closest 50x50 lot is certainly a workable option. Ugh, I don’t know, this needs more consideration.

4.) Forgotten Hollow and Newcrest are just...

Forgotten Hollow--to repeat myself--is getting a 20s-30s vibe, a Weimar Republic vibe, a German expressionist cinema vibe. It’s getting a seedy nightclub cabaret venue. Fine. Great. But what else is going to go there besides that? I’m not interested in multiple sims who fit into this world; I already have one done, I don’t think I need more than four others, and I don’t think I want to play a household of them so what else can fit into that world that makes sense/is “justifiable” within my gameplay? Just a deco church? Even with the cemetery, that can’t be the only cemetery in my save; that’s weird. Some hippie OD’s in Del Sol Valley and gets buried in Forgotten Hollow? The smiling milkman from Brindleton Bay has a cute life and eventually dies of old age surrounded by his grandchildren and gets buried in Forgotten Hollow? I mean, once, okay, maybe ~an “average” sim has a secret~ so that their ultimate resting place is a creepy, foggy, Germanic crypt, but, also... no. That milkman idea’s a good one, tho, right? Ah, shit.

Last I updated my plan document, I shifted my Newcrest plan to Evergreen Harbor and started kicking around the idea of making the three neighborhoods into the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the... Have-Somes, I guess, because it might make for some interesting storylines despite that I don’t want to use this game to play out class inequity/inequality as a constant theme. I can have some sims be total assholes to sims who are different than they are or who don’t live in the tony part of town, but, like, all of them are going to act like that? All of them except one? And then, let me guess, a rich sim and poor sim fall in love and sneak around because their respective families blah blah blah

But, then, what on earth to do with Newcrest? It’s so... boring. I hate the 50x40 lot. Even the 40x30 lots feel too big where they are. I hate the layout. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the location of the water nor where the hospital-looking, officey-looking deco building is, and the reasoning behind the placement/existence of those big-ass rocks behind one of the Ridgeline lots, nor how any--any--of it works together in individual neighborhoods/the whole world. I understand it’s basically Willow Creek all over again but it suckssss and it’s too open-ended and this is from someone whose first move in every neighborhood she’s ever played in this entire series is to bulldoze everything.

Since I’ve changed direction in Willow Creek--let’s say I’ll put my boardwalk there for the sake of the rest of this sentence--I could shift my suburbia ideas to Newcrest, I guess, maybe put a library there and a (deco) high school. In another save, I tried to build the world up using Baltimore/Baltimore Harbor as inspiration and it was okay for a little while, I guess, but ultimately I didn’t achieve what I wanted and it was so boring to play there, even when I liked the sims I was playing.

Issues:

Again, Forgotten Hollow and Newcrest are just :P

So. More thinking to do. More planning to do.

Boy that’s a lot of words over a silly little game XD

[kyndaris]

Parables of Our Times

Right after finishing a very high-octane, action-heavy title, I thought it best to slow down and try my hand at a game that had tickled my curiosity for a good long while. Considering how much I enjoyed Gone Home, Tacoma and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, it came as a surprise when I finished Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture with very mixed feelings. Instead of falling in love with a quaint English town and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the people that had lived there, I was tempted after an hour or so of play to stop and try my hand at something else.

I can’t rightly pinpoint what exactly about the game, from developer The Chinese Room, did not sit right with me. After scouring the internet, I feel like it must have been the pace of the game and the lack of objects that could be interacted with. From the very beginning, it felt as if the playable character moved at a snail’s pace. Other titles that might be considered ‘walking simulators’ in their own right felt faster, or were perhaps more dense. Even holding down R2 did not elevate how slow I moved around the world. In fact, the speed was also detrimental to my desire to explore and see more of the town I found myself in. Why bother heading to a particular point of interest if it took forever and a day to reach it and head back to the critical path?

Additionally, the lack of objects that could be picked up and studied also served to dull my interest. In fact, other than with doors and the occasional radio, the only other thing that I could interact with were strange globules of light that required the controller be tilted either left or right. The controls for this, in particular, did not seem very intuitive and the prompt at the beginning did not anchor in my head until I found my third ball of light. 

What I did like were the revelations about each named character and the other individuals that lived in the town. Whether that was Wendy trying to meddle in the love lives of her son and his previous beau (as well as her disdain for his American wife), to the interactions between Jeremy and those that attended his church.

While the conversations proved illuminating when it came to understanding the many different individuals that lived in Yaughton, Shropshire, I feel like it was a missed opportunity that other ways to tell the story were not included.

The mystery behind the disappearing populace - supposedly a sudden influx of Spanish influenza - did prove to be intriguing. After exploring the first area, it was clear that this was something more. The tissues covered in blood and the recording made by the local physician only served to heighten the possibilities of what was truly going on. As the story continues, the player learns that a strange phenomenon may be the actual cause. Fearful, Stephen Appleton calls on the government to spray nerve gas over the entire town to stop the spread of this alien contagion.

In many ways, the quarantine that surrounded the town is reminiscent of our current battle with COVID-19. Locked in our homes, unable to venture overseas or even cross state lines has proven a difficult enterprise for many. And like some of the characters in the game, there have been the occasional individuals that have tried to sneak past borders or lied to authorities their actual movements in order to be allowed sanctuary in another state or city.

Fortunately, we have yet to be turned into dust and sucked up into a glowing pattern of light. Whether it’s meant to be considered an alien or a concept of faith is unclear. What is strange in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is that only humans were infected. Birds and cows simply dropped dead. There was no dusting a la the Thanos Snap in Avengers: Infinity War. 

Speaking of which, Stephen feared that the contagion of light had traversed the phone lines and had spread outside the valley where the town of Yaughton was located. If that was the case, who is the playable character? Are we also a ball of light? After all, I had no feet or hands. I hardly heard any indication of footsteps. Yet, somehow, I could still get trapped on random geometry in the environment.  Alas, a mystery to solve another time.

On the other side of the spectrum of games that I managed to finish quite quickly was The Walking Dead: The Final Season. After the whole debacle of Telltale shutting its doors due to unsustainable business practices and the game initially being released on Epic Games Store, I wasn’t quite certain if I would ever see Clementine’s story through to completion. Yet, fast forward a year or two and I managed to purchase it on Steam.

Clementine has always had a special place in my heart. After looking after her while playing as Lee Everett, I had watched as she grew up in a world that was very different from our own. Each subsequent game only seemed to further paint a grim and bleak future for humanity after the zombie apocalypse and I feared something terrible would happen to the little girl I found nestled in her tree house, waiting for her parents to return home.

In The Final Season, several years have passed and Clementine is in her late teens. With her is AJ, the son of Rebecca and a very precocious five year old. He seems incredibly mature for his age and behaves basically like a rebellious teenager. Except, of course, that he still has a very black and white view of the world. Shoot monsters in the head. Food and bullets are good. Clementine is the best.

What felt different in this title, rather than the ones before, is that after an encounter at an old railway station, Clementine is welcomed to a small community that is largely run by kids. Or, at the very least, teenagers that have also lived through the traumatic beginnings of the apocalypse. There are no adults - for many of the teachers abandoned these troubled youth at the first sign of danger. And instead of trying to prove herself in a world full of adults, Clementine is able to interact with people her own age or younger. Coupled with looking after AJ, she is the one that needs to be responsible and make sure that AJ doesn’t grow up to become a completely jaded ten-year old.

The narrative of The Final Season is centred around the Erikson Boarding School and the students there. Leader of the small group is Marlon, voiced by none other than Prince Noctis himself, Ray Chase. Violet and Louis came next in import. Then came Willy, Aasim, Ruby, Mitch, Omar and Tennessee. Oh, and mustn’t forget Brody. Voiced by Hedy Burress (or Yuna from Final Fantasy X)! 

Interacting with this gaggle of kids was refreshing. Instead of suspicion, Clementine and AJ were met with curiosity. While Ruby might not have liked the fact that AJ bit her, or his eating habits, it was very easy to like each character and not have to dwell on what each person’s agenda was and wondering if they would betray the group.

Alas, Clementine’s good deed in trying to find more food leads to Brody freaking out when Clementine mentions meeting a scavenger also looking for food: Abel. The climax of the first chapter ends with the discovery that raiders have previously taken two members of the Erikson Boarding School kids and may have returned. But before Marlon could atone for his crimes, he is shot dead by AJ. Plot contrivances somehow allowed the five year old kid to pick up the gun that Marlon dropped by his feet, sneak up behind him and shoot him right in the head. Don’t ask me how.

The next two chapters proved excellent in building up the tension of confronting the raiders, one of which was Season 1 Lilly. I knew the instant that I had to once again select my choices from the previous titles that she would be making a reappearance. After all, she was a plot thread that had yet to be neatly tied into a bow. And despite everything - like the hardening of Clementine and making her a ruthless survivor - I could not order AJ to shoot the conniving ex-military woman.

In fact, I played Clementine as I did most of my other characters when it comes to role-playing games. Emphatic and desperately trying to make the right choices. 

While the story did feel a little cliched with many familiar beats, I did feel strongly invested in trying to pass on everything I could to little AJ. In that, The Final Season felt like it came full circle with Clementine getting bitten and faced with the dilemma of turning or allowing herself to be killed. Rather than repeat what happened in the first season of The Walking Dead, however, the epilogue shows Clementine surviving her leg been haphazardly chopped off with an axe covered in walker guts.

How did she not manage to bleed out? Did the other kids manage to find her in the barn and free both her and AJ? How did she not die from infection?

Like many mediums that are set after the apocalypse, the humans here are hardy and tenacious. In a world where many of us are struggling with a pandemic that does not appear to be seasonal and with long-lasting symptoms that can affect individuals months after the initial diagnosis, it does feel like we’ve entered a nebulous stage of despair. Whole countries have been shut down, re-opened and sent straight back into lockdown when numbers have climbed. With summer approaching in Australia, it feels like the worst may have passed. But for the rest of the world in the northern hemisphere, winter is coming. With it comes the additional risks of normal flu and cold. 

But what The Walking Dead: The Final Season left me with, despite how glum a zombie outbreak would bring, is that there is still the chance for hope. Of creating a family and living instead of surviving. 

Even when society has collapsed and most have returned to old bartering systems or looking after their own crops, there is still light at the end of the tunnel. 

[witchesoz]

Oz Lore: The Great and Powerful (1)

« Oz : The Great and Powerful » is a 2013 fantasy movie part of the Oz universe. And when it comes to the Ozian lore, it is a mess.

You see, this movie was Disney’s attempt at remaking/restarting the heritage of the MGM Wizard of Oz movie, by creating its prequel explaining how the Wizard came to Oz (a green-skinned wicked witch, Glinda travelling in bubbles, that’s all the MGM). However, Disney actually did not had the rights to the MGM movie and thus had to twist things to avoid a lawsuit (with things such as the wicked witch being of a different shade of green than the one used in the MGM movie, or Glinda becoming blond instead of a red-hair). As a result, the movie presented itself officially as a “prequel to the original books” and took inspiration from it (the China Town for example), but this inspiration is sporadic and a thinly-hidden attempt at escaping lawsuits, since the movie is heavily if not almost entirely based on the MGM product.

Anyway, despite all of that, the movie became very famous and unfamous, popularizing a lot of concepts and ideas – especially towards younger generations unaware of the other MGM-related works such as “Return to Oz” or “Wicked”. So let’s dig into this lore, shall we? I’ll divide it into two sections.

Oh yeah, and there will be bits of review-like stuff here and there, because why not throw a review at the same time?

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

I) The Witches

It is not just because the witches of Oz are my favorite part of any lore. This movie relies heavily on the Ozian witches. They are key players to the story, and the movie’s plot is about how they came to be who they were in the MGM movie – we mean novel – we mean neither because ultimately the movie actually doesn’t add up to either the book or the MGM canon, putting it in its own unique chronology that never went anywhere since no sequels were made.

Witches in this movie are… unexplained. We know they exist in Oz, but we actually do not know anything about what they truly are. It is unclear if they are a different species from humans, or if they are humans with magical gifts, but one thing is sure: they are very different from ordinary people. All of them occupy high positions in the Ozian hierarchy. Theodora comments strongly imply that people are naturally afraid of witches (she says that, due to her being a witch, no one ever gave her genuine gifts, wooed her or offered her to dance, making her insanely lonely) – however this is contradicted by Glinda’s subjects behavior, who gladly offer her gifts and are very close and friendly with her, visibly not bothered by her being a witch. So this is up to debate.

We can however establish several common points of witches. All of them are females with magical powers. All of them are tied to a certain element, as which their magic will manifest. All witches have the natural ability to “fly”, that is to say levitate into the air. And each of the witches has a gem with her, that is the source of all of her powers, and breaking it means defeating her. Oh yes, and all their names end in -a. Now, we have three witches in total in Oz:

# Evanora

Evanora is the witch that pretends to be the good witch, but is the wicked one.

Evanora was the Royal Advisor of the previous King of Oz. She was also, unknown to him and to everyone else, a wicked witch. Her presence however was visibly felt already in Oz, since the King (who was also a wizard) made a prophecy: one day, a powerful wizard bearing the name Oz would come from the sky to save the country from the evil and darkness infecting it. However, he died soon after this prophecy. Evanora had poisoned him – and she tricked everyone into believing that the King’s daughter, Glinda princess of Oz, was the murderer of her own father. She banished her from the Emerald City, and publicly made it known that she was the Wicked Witch who caused all sorts of evil deeds across Oz. Except that all these evil deeds were actually done by Evanora herself. She held on the throne of Oz as a “regent”, until the arrival of the Wizard per the prophecy, and thus secured her power as the unofficial ruler of Oz. When the so-called Wizard actually arrived, Evanora immediately knew that he was a fake, just a greedy impostor, but she used it to her advantage, playing along with his lies and forcing him into killing the “wicked witch” by breaking her wand. Thus, she could have gotten rid of Glinda, her enemy, for good. This is actually very interesting here – because later Glinda explains that the “good citizens of Oz” are forbidden from killing anybody, and Glinda herself doesn’t want to kill Evanora for her actions. So visibly, death sentences are not existing in Oz – and so, for Evanora to explain to the Wizard that killing the Wicked Witch is the only way clearly reveals her wickedness.

Evanora, despite being the oldest evil in the room, with a lot of experience, is actually not the most ferocious person. She is a liar and a manipulator who tricked everyone into believing she was the “good one”, including her own sister. She also is shown to never do dirty works directly. She always arrange for other people, her agents or her armies, to kill or attack people for her, and rarely gets into direct fights, except when she is sure to win or cornered. In fact, when she is certain she has no way to win a battle, she cowers and flees before the threats. Evanora also has an obsession with eliminating Glinda – and it is not just because she is the only force of good left and the legitimate heir to the throne. Evanora takes a great delight into publicly torturing Glinda, and she makes several time comments about Glinda’s “pretty face” and how she hates or curses it. I will get back on that later.

Evanora’s gem/power source is an emerald necklace/amulet. Her magic, when raw, takes the shape of green electricity. Outside of her ability to fly, common to all witches, her other powers rely on magical items: she has a red powder that she can use to craft items magically, and a huge crystal ball she can use to spy on anyone in Oz. She has directly under her commands an army of flying baboons (savage and evil versions of the flying monkeys, massive angry baboons with bat wings), and an ensemble of “Winkie guards” (I’ll talk about them later). Note that all of these items of her powers actually belong to the Wicked Witch of the West in the MGM movie. Evanora ends up defeated when Glinda breaks her amulet, which not only deprives her of all powers, but also “removes” an enchantment she cast upon herself. You see, in the MGM movie they explain that “only wicked witches are ugly”. And the rule seems to carry on in this movie – when a witch turns wicked, she becomes ugly. More specifically, the glamorous and beautiful Evanora is actually in truth an old, hunchbacked crone with long grey hair, rotten teeth, a hooked nose and chin, as well as warts (a typical “hag witch” so to speak). Considering this, and how she is visibly displeased by her sister’s wicked “hideousness”, it becomes clear that Evanora’s obsession with Glinda’s “pretty face” is tied to a strong vanity and envy. She clearly resents her for being beautiful and pure, where she is ugly and corrupt.

And here is the ultimate key to understand the character of Evanora – she is actually a Disney witch more than anything. The obsessive vanity dates back to the Evil Queen of Snow White, and her transformation into an old crone also reminds one of this movie – let’s not forget how she uses literally an enchanted apple, like the Evil Queen. On the other side, the use of green electricity reminds of another extremely vain Disney witch: Winnifred Sanderson. And of course, the use of electricity, green color and the flowing dress also reminds one of Maleficent. As a result Evanora, while a great villain, is fundamentally a Disney villain, and the biggest mark of Disney’s attempt at owning the franchise.

In the end, Evanora becomes who would later be known as the “Wicked Witch of the East”, using two of her surviving flying baboons to fly away. It is unknown how she came to conquer the East – in fact, this movie makes no mention of either silver shoes or ruby slippers. But, many have theorized that Theodora possibly helped her sister regain power – since Theodora’s gem is a ruby, and in the MGM continuity the magic shoes are made of ruby…

# Glinda

Glinda the Good. She is clearly based on the MGM movie character, but she is also mixed up with the novel character (for example, she is here Witch of the South, and not Witch of the North). But just like in the MGM movie, she turns out to be the only Good Witch in all of Oz.

Daughter of the previous king-wizard of Oz, she was falsely accused by the treacherous Evanora of poisoning her father, and banished from the Emerald City, publicly denounced as the “Wicked Witch” whose minions caused horrors in Oz. However, Glinda managed to build herself a small kingdom in the South, welcoming people who fled from the disasters of the Wicked Witch, and revealing to them the truth and who the real enemy was. She later is the one who helps the Wizard fulfill his destiny – though he first tried to kill her. Oh yeah and they also kind of fall in love together.

Glinda’s gem is a diamond, located in her silver wand she carries everywhere. Evanora claims that breaking Glinda’s wand would kill her, however it seemingly was a lie, since breaking Evanora’s gem merely deprived her of her powers. Glinda’s powers are associated with the color white and the rainbow. It seems she has a control over either water or air, it is slightly unclear: she uses her powers under two forms. One, as a white fog, to blind enemy or conceal objects. Two, as bubbles – she can create individual bubbles for transportation, and she created a giant bubble dome to protect her kingdom, a magic wall that only lets good-hearted people pass through. To make matters even more confusing, her raw magic actually looks like light, either light glow or light rays. Not just a simple light, but a light that, while mostly white, has some colors of the rainbow in it – in fact its other magic (the fog and bubbles) are also iridescent. This is a nice touch, a nod to how diamonds and prisms can fracture the white light into a rainbow. She also has the ability to fly like all other witches – usually she surrounds herself with a bubble to do it, but she admits it is “just for show” and she doesn’t truly need it.

Glinda is kind, good, moral, charitable, gentle, etc… but she is also a clever girl (well, most of the time). Glinda especially believes in abstract and spiritual concepts, instead of material ones. What I mean is that, for example she keeps repeating that her father might have died, but his spirit and his ideals will live on through his people and those that fight for them. In a similar way, she immediately realizes that the Wizard is not actually a true wizard, but she explains that what the people of Oz need is actually someone to believe to and someone to guide them – the real magic power isn’t important, the most important is the power people put in you.

# Theodora

Theodora is without a doubt the missed character in this story. It is no spoiler now, but she is the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West. And yeah, she is a cliché becoming-a-villain character, very unconvincing and unimpressive compared to the original (in fact Evanora left me more of an impression than her). As Theodora she had at least something interest, but all her becoming wicked is… not interesting at all. At least for me.

So let’s dig in, shall we? Theodora is actually a good witch at the beginning of the movie. She calls herself Theodora the Good and has been fooled by Evanora into believing her sister (which she loves deeply) is the good witch protecting Oz, while Glinda is the Wicked Witch. Note that Theodora visibly knew Glinda beforehand, and in fact Evanora and Theodora have an interesting discussion – Evanora accuses Theodora of “finally” having joined side with Glinda, implying that they were friends or close before, to which Theodora answers that she is on “no one’s side” and her only wish is to bring peace to Oz. In a similar way, when Evanora shows Theodora that the Wizard is not killing Glinda, Theodora is delighted, believing that the Wizard is “brining her back to the light and the goodness”. All throughout the movie, Evanora plays with her sister’s emotions to manipulate her, playing with her naiveté to make herself look good, playing on her jealousy and wrath to make the Wizard look bad... The typical textbook of an abusing older sister. Evanora especially likes to remind Theodora that “deep down” she is wicked, and only pretending to be good, which always enrages her.

Theodora is actually an interesting character when you look at her. She explains to the Wizard that she is extremely lonely, because being a witch, no one ever gave her a gift of their own free will, and no one ever asked her to dance. She also immediately believes that the Wizard is the one foretold in the prophecy. The Wizard uses her extreme naiveté by seducing her, and in his flirty words, Theodora believes that he promised to make her Queen of Oz, aka his wife. This all actually is what put the Wizard in his uncomfortable situation in the first place. We also see that Theodora, despite being a sweet and timid girl, has actually a “temper” – when Evanore makes a disagreeable comment, she gets very angry and momentarily loses control of her destructive powers, something she visibly is ashamed of (and in general, Theodora was the one using the less her magic out of the three). Later, Evanora plays on her emotions: not only does she invent a fake story about the Wizard seducing her and promising her to be Queen, to spark Theodora’s jealousy, but she also shows Theodora the real romance that is budding between the Wizard and Glinda. Theodora is heartbroken, making her cry – and her tears burn her face (I’ll come back to that later), which makes her suffer a lot, but she only considers it as a deserving punishment for how much of a fool she is. She is so overwhelmed with sadness and hate (mixed with the pain of her own tears) that she succumbs to Evanora’s proposition: to bite into an enchanted apple in order to stop her heartache (and thus the painful emotions she feels), and in exchange share the throne of Oz with her sister, banishing the Wizard and Glinda together (Theodora still believes then Evanora is a good witch, but she simply will not let Glinda become the Wizard’s Queen for anything in the world).

Now, I’ll stop there to actually point out something: at first, Theodora might seem like a cliché, flat character. But in fact, when you look at her on a second view, you realize that she is seems to actually suffer from a type of borderline personality disorder. She checks numerous marks: a feeling of solitude and emptiness ; an inability to control your temper and anger resulting in excessive mood swings ; an impulsive behavior resulting in unstable relationships (such as forming in your head a perfect image of someone you love only to realize later reality is different) ; a deep fear of abandonment (here both by the Wizard and her sister)… the only ones missing are the frequent changes in self-image, the stress-related paranoia and the suicidal threats. This already makes her a more disturbed and tragic character. But on the other side, you have to admit that honestly she is quite dumb. The most jarring element was when she used Evanora’s crystal ball to spy on the Wizard and Glinda. She sees how happy, colorful and joyful Glinda’s realm is, she sees that the people are certainly not oppressed and that there are no flying baboons or evil things anywhere. And yet she still believes Glinda is the wicked witch? Come on!

After biting in the enchanted green apple (in a very heavy nod to Disney’s Snow White), Theodora realizes that Evanora tricked her into becoming wicked. The apple first “makes it all clear”, because apparently, wickedness sharpens your mind? Theodora understands Evanora is the wicked witch, not Glinda, and then starts to suffer the intense pains of her “heart withering away”, all emotions and goodness replaced by wickedness and hatred. And, since all wicked witches are ugly in Oz, she turns into a copy of the iconic image of the Wicked Witch of the West: green-skinned, with a hooked nose, yellow eyes and a hooked chin. The movie also added black claws able to leave marks on marble, which is a nice touch.

Theodora’s magic manifests as red fire (she usually throws red fireballs, that sometimes explode upon hitting their target; and she can also teleport herself like a meteor and manifest out of fire tornadoes). She can fly like all other witches, but chooses to do so on a broom (broom which leaves a thick black smoke behind her) – specifically because the Wizard once told her that in his world witches flew on brooms. Her gem is actually a ruby she wears as a ring. Theodora also shows another power the other witches have not: telekinesis (she notably forces the Wizard to dance like a puppet). In fact, Theodora is implied to be the strongest of the three witches, being able to break Glinda’s wall when Evanora could not.

It is established here that Theodora is dreadfully allergic to water – it burns her like acid. To the point her own tears burn her cheeks. However, this is never actually explained. We do not know how or why, and we don’t know if Evanora has the same problem or not. It might be related to her having fire-magic, but the other witches don’t seem to suffer side-effect from their own elemental magics. So… yeah, an unanswered question.

Theodora as the Wicked Witch is basically pure hatred and violence. In fact, she only knows now how to threaten, shout and cackle. Even Evanora is taken aback by how furious and bloodthirsty – where Evanora wants people to flee in terror at the sight of her army, Theodora wants to kill all their enemies without mercy ; Evanora suggests hiding Theodora’s ugliness behind an enchantment, but Theodora refuses because she wants the Wizard to see what “he” did to her ; finally Theodora takes leadership of the “wicked” army and even calls Evanora a “coward” and the “weak one” when she flees in front of the Wizard, while Theodora fights to the last minute.

I also forgot to mention, but quite obviously the witches are color-coded: Glinda is entirely white ; Evanora is linked to green, with touches of black ; and Theodora used to be all red before switching to an all-black outfit.

[sureivy]

is that HALSEY? no, that’s just IVY CALDER. SHE is TWENTY-FOUR years old and is an EMPLOYEE AT DON’T FRET & PAWS 4 LOVE. rumor has it they’ve been in town for FOUR MONTHS / TEN YEARS. on a good day, they’re CREATIVE & VERSATILE. but watch out! they can also be IRRESPONSIBLE & VOLATILE. TRIGGER BANG BY LILY ALLEN (FT. GIGGS) plays in my head whenever i think of them. can’t wait to see them around springhill!

hello my pals ! i’m amy ( 20 // est // she/her ) and i am super excited to be here! we also over here bringing back a fairly old muse (i,, apparently,, play her during election years,,) with a couple of tweaks, so we love that for me! also! pls forgive me if this is lowkey disorganized, we’ve been in and out of airports all day! can’t wait to contract that sexy corona!

QUICK FACTS:

full name: ivy rose calder

date of birth: may 2, 1995

*does not perfectly reflect the below big three zodiac chart because that’s too much math

zodiac big three: taurus sun, pisces moon, aquarius rising

gender & pronouns: cis woman & she/her

sexual orientation: bisexual ( preference for women bc we luv that for her but we also luv leaving things open to chemistry )

education: high school diploma

enneagram: 7w8?

mbti: enfp

moral alignment: chaotic neutral

positive traits: creative, versatile, passionate, compassionate

negative traits: irresponsible, volatile, impressionable, hedonistic

BACKGROUND INFO:

triggers: brief implied sexual abuse, suicide, a lot of death talk?, drug abuse ( desoxyn ), overdose

ivy lived the first eight years of her life in newark, nj. she had a mere family of three – her mother, a model-turned-stay-at-home-mom, her father, a politician, and herself. she was much closer to her mother, but she and her father were close at night.

when her mother finally found out about this, she wasted no time in taking ivy’s father’s side. what a good mom! instead, ya girl was already getting in touch with cps herself... but wow... it was gonna ruin his career in politics :\

“Now, one thing I lerned from Storys is, when something big is about to okur, a riter will go: Then it hapened! This tells the reeder: Get Reddy. Here I go: Then it hapened!” - fox 8

then it happened!

humiliated, clearly never getting a platform back, and absolutely bitter, ivy’s father killed himself before being sent to prison. 

Very Tragique™

ok. so. to distance themselves from the poor memories, but to save money, ivy and her mother moved to springhill, temporarily sharing ivy’s aunt’s apartment while her mother began collecting enough money to buy an apartment of their own and keep it.

during this time, ivy was seeing a lot of people and she didn’t know why! they asked questions about her mental health, but she didn’t know why! i mean, totally not traumatic, right?

yes. instead of managing communication well, she became very fascinated by the concept of death. she had many questions about it, she, a youth, had some extended conversations with clergymen about it –– she never killed any animals, god forbid, but she was absolutely fascinated when she ran across them.

SO CLEARLY THAT WAS ALSO TRYING TO BE DEALT WITH.

ok, i’m gonna skip ahead a little. now in teen years and still fascinated by death, but in a healthier way!, and no longer in therapy because... like... that costs a lot of money!

she dealt with it the best she could. became enamored with music... because why wouldn’t she? some covers here and there, some originals here and there, living that youtube lyf, but not expecting anything to come of it. just liked validation! mood!

she also dealt with it the worst she could! became enamored with drugs! naturally, it started out small. some weed, some lsd, some molly –– you know, just drugs that you don’t typically think of as addictive. although her grades suffered, it was harmless enough...

upon graduating high school, she figured... no college. instead, with barely any money to her name, she was like “i... will go to new york... and i will become famous.”

and she did! she did go to new york! she found a few sketchy places that didn’t charge much for a few nights as she began networking - both socially and “i would like to be known for music” (i literally just forgot the word for networking like..... employment wise.... y’all i’m so dumb). when she’d made some friends, she began crashing on couches that were not quite as sketchy! 

but :\ she did meet these friends in sketchy places :\ and they were like “ok here r some new and more addictive drugs for u to try!”

what she wound up abusing using the most was desoxyn. it kept her awake, it kept her focused, it even shed a few pounds to create an excellent figure! what wasn’t to love! 

i mean it’s literally a prescription methamphetamine,,, when abused,,, literally almost exact same effects as meth,,, but when meth mouth, skin lesions, acne, etc aren’t occurring as a side effect? who was she to care!

20, she released an actual ep with the help of a super cool friend who made everyone call him puppy mills! wow! things were excellent! it wasn’t necessarily seeing mainstream traction, but there was a decent enough following! enough to release an album at 22!

perfect timing, btw! desoxyn was starting to become too expensive for puppy to afford and trying to fake having such a severe form of adhd that desoxyn would be prescribed as opposed to something like ritalin or adderal when it’s literally illegal to prescribe in some countries now?? too hard :\ but the money from the album helped her and puppy!

*olaf vc* puppy died. *end vc*

she was there for it too. she thought it was just a freak-out, took a LITTLE too much, but not OVERDOSE worthy... then he l i t e r a l l y died. and it was a painful death!

“oh wow! maybe prescription meth isn’t super cool after all! shucks!” but that was also an opening?? to visit death herself?? like... she didn’t necessarily want to die (sort of), but she wanted... an answer to the question that had plagued her her entire life... so she was like “ok hope i die then someone revives me but if i die then :\ i guess i die!”

did not die. but also did not get a satisfying answer to her question. the only way it would’ve been truly satisfying? if she had been dead for longer than a minute - then it would’ve given a definite answer! because the answer she received was just nothingness which, while peaceful... is it true?

she tried to detox alone, what because rehab is a business, and it... only... sort of worked. she would be clean for a few weeks, then fall back in, then clean for a few weeks, then fall back in. whenever she wasn’t just naturally focused and awake, or whenever what she was focused on was the past, she would fall back in.

i mean, a side effect is memory loss, so win/win!

she made the semi-wise decision to move back to springhill. wisest would’ve been to just move to a town/city she had absolutely no memories in, but better than moving back to newark!

so... without much to show, and with an unreliable streak, she knew she wouldn’t be able to start looking for much of an occupation – but she still needed money! so she began working at don’t fret out of a love for music, then began working at the animal shelter after completing training.

the main training was, of course, for putting animals to sleep.

FULL CIRCLE.

ah yes. how she pretends it’s healthy... even tho there are studies and statistics relating suicide to veterinarians and shelter workers who euthanize animals... ah yes.

has been back for four months now. love that. do not know how to finish this.

TL ; DR:

born in newark. moved to springhill at 8. childhood trauma that she is still carrying causes fascination with death. “i love music.” moved to ny at 18 because realistic. childhood trauma also causes dependency on desoxyn. releases an ep and an album. does not become famous, but they both have decent traction. moves back after an overdose. relapses... often. now sells records and puts animals to sleep. miss american dream since she was 17, amirite?

PERSONALITY / MISCELLANEOUS INFO:

one person one week, a totally different person the next.

wants to please people, but also wants to be her own person? it’s a whole deal!

in spite of her slight icarian incident, she still hopes to maybe one day become a real musician and performer. until then, we selling records and saying ‘goodbye’ to sweet animals!

can truly flip like a switch in interactions! does love ruining things for herself! almost always feels bad after bc :\ damn :\ alright :\

i’m very bad at these sections i really hate that i always include them!

is still avoiding healthy coping mechanisms. love that for her.

favorite movie is, unironically, the bee movie. favorite horror movie is cats.

SO GOOD at memorizing random lines or trivia. could probably recite literally all of who’s afraid of virginia woolf? other than that?? her memory is so bad. hate drugs for that :\

she uses her hair to express herself! (that sounds really boring.) ...she uses her hair to express herself!

but no. seriously. wears the black shag weave the most, followed by the blue/yellow combo ( we stan the badlands aesthetic ). occasionally forays into other colors and styles when money permits, but it’s usually gonna be one of those two!!

was an envy on the coast stan in high school which makes an inappropriate amount of sense.

will go out and steal the dumbest shit when she’s drunk. has a history of stealing chickens.

once again: hate that i always include these!! feel free 2 j consult the personality parts in the quick facts!!

CONNECTION IDEAS:

ok we gonna list some general ones for right now! all are open to multiple people unless there’s an asterisk by it!

close friends –– moonie, teagan,

ride or die

childhood friends –– moonie,

bad influence ( mutual or her on them ) –– veronica ( mutual ),

good influence ( them on her ) –– presley, hayden, gabrielle,

exes ( can be from high school or something like that if based in springhill, can be from 20s in new york if based in new york )

fwb –– trent,

will they, won’t they –– presley,

someone who knew her music ( can be neutral, a fan of it, or hate it afhkjsl ) –– presley, moonie, teagan, indiana, 

will also possibly be sending in some wanted connections for things that are! more specific!

truly anything!! also up to brainstorm and/or look at yours if you have them!!

UPDATE: i have created a wc page so we luv that for me.

OK. like this or hmu if you’d like to plot!

[berniesrevolution]

Food coops, housing coops, credit unions, and other such institutions are sometimes referred to as the “solidarity economy.” How do these institutions relate to working-class power? Do they offer working-class people some shelter or respite from capitalism? Do they perhaps even “create the new world in the shell of the old”? Nick Driedger and Eric Dirnbach, two veteran members of many institutions of the solidarity economy, debate these points.

Eric: We all noticed this recent article about the campaign for “postal banking,” where United States Postal Service branches would offer much-needed banking services for folks who lack access to bank accounts.  The USPS actually used to do this up until the 1960s, and other countries still have it. This would obviously be helpful for many low-income people, who are forced to pay high fees at check cashing stores, and of course Wall Street banks hate the idea because they don’t want the competition. Unfortunately, according to the article, the national credit union association allied with the banks to lobby against it, which was news to me.

Now, I’m a member of a credit union and a fan of the concept. Financial institutions owned and run by their members are a great alternative to handing over our money to the standard, capitalist banks and increasing their power over us. Credit unions are in principle more accountable to their members and their communities, and have policies that are much more progressive than banks. And yet they took this bad stance against postal banking, deciding to protect their turf, just like the capitalists.

This reminded me of the recent Organizing Work exposé about bad labor practices and union-busting at a number of food cooperatives. I’m also a fan of food coops and have been a member of several, and those practices are extremely disappointing. Another problematic example is the Mondragon coop network in Spain, which I think is really impressive, but also incorporates a second-class tier of international workers who are not member-owners and who have even gone on strike against the coop.  

Overall, these are examples of “solidarity economy” organizations behaving like capitalist enterprises. The solidarity economy can be described as a network of organizations and practices like worker coops, housing coops, community land trusts, food coops, credit unions, time banks, community gardens and other entities that are alternatives to capitalist businesses. A segment of the left, and I would include myself here, believes one strategy (along with others like union organizing) to help transition beyond capitalism is to grow this economy in opposition to capitalist practices and prefigure the better socialist world that we want. A hundred years ago they called this idea the “Cooperative Commonwealth.” But these examples of bad, non-solidarity politics undermine that ideal.

Nick: In the article you mention, we see an example of an arm of the United States government being called on to provide a new public service. The City of Cleveland specifically called on the United States Postal Service to provide banking services through post office outlets. These calls are also coming from grassroots campaigns among postal workers’ unions in the USA and Canada, who want the government to expand services, better serve rural communities and undercut payday loan companies, which are often the only way for many working people to cash their paycheques, at exorbitant rates.

I am a member of four different consumer cooperative businesses, and had my first job at one of them. The United Farmers of Alberta is an institution where I live. At one time, it was a political party, and for a number of years, a long time ago, it was the government of the province. I am a member and buy feed for my chickens and ducks there, and when I was sixteen they gave me my first job. It had benefits and clear hours and a job description. It paid head and shoulders above what most businesses in rural Alberta will pay a teenager.

I am also a member of my small town’s credit union. The manager of this credit union is a big player in the local United Conservative Party.  I pay my insurance through The Cooperators Insurance. The manager of this coop was our New Democrat (social democratic party in Canada) representative in the provincial government that just fell in Alberta a couple of months ago. In the past, I have voted for left candidates for the board at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a camping supply consumer coop popular in Canada) who wanted to push for stronger ethical purchasing guidelines and support the cause of Palestinian rights.

Cooperatives in Western Canada are political and there is politics inside of them. They are often on their local chambers of commerce, and there is both a left wing inside the cooperative movement as well as a very strong right wing.

Where I live, coops are also a part of the local history. My family in a Saskatchewan farming community have worked for generations at a consumer cooperative simply called “The Co-op,” which provides groceries and fuel in many communities. In many rural communities in Western Canada, no one would have electricity if not for early rural cooperatives. Later, government services followed, like Alberta Government Telephones (which was privatized in the 1990s). Often coops would establish services that would be picked up as public services later. The words “Cooperative Commonwealth” have a deep resonance with people and a history here. Even a lot of conservatives consider the history of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) a history working people and farmers can be proud of on the prairies.

Eric: That is a fascinating history and I’d love to learn more about coops in rural areas. Clearly coops were organized over the years to meet the needs of rural residents. Agricultural supply and electrical coops are great examples of this. More modern examples are the internet service coops.

I’m more familiar with coops in an urban setting.  I’ve lived in my housing coop in New York City for about ten years and was just elected to the board, so I’ve been thinking about this place a lot. Morningside Gardens, with almost 1,000 apartments in six buildings, was founded in 1957 and has a pretty rich history of cooperative activity, with many committees, clubs and other organizations formed. Folks started a cooperative workshop for woodworking and ceramics, a nursery school and a retirement service in the 1960s, which are all still running.  The retirement service allows senior residents to age in-place and not have to move to a nursing home.

Members here have also been involved in community-issue organizing for decades, such as supporting local libraries, fighting for good subway and sanitation services, and campaigning for better local zoning to restrict luxury condos. Residents have formed several babysitting coops over the years. A theatre group was formed in the 1980s which still exists. In the last few years, several buildings have started a “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” mutual aid program, which is like an informal timebank where folks help each other with household tasks.

We had a food coop for over 30 years; that closed in the 1990s. I spent some time reading our old newsletters to learn about it and write up a history. The food coop members advocated for better consumer protection and product labeling laws in the 1960s and 1970s when the entire grocery industry was against more regulations. The coop also supported the United Farm Workers grape boycott and the Nestle baby formula boycott. In the 1960s, it started a credit union, which lasted for 15 years, so low-income members could have access to loans they couldn’t get at a bank. The coop also helped start at least two other food coops nearby, with funding and technical assistance. It made a small profit in most of its years and often returned a rebate to the members, thus keeping money in the community and out of the hands of a billionaire grocery boss.  And it was a union shop. One of my neighbors worked as a bookkeeper there in the 1970s and 1980s and still gets the union pension today.

All this seems really positive to me and was enabled to a large extent by the cooperative setting. Of course, some of this activity could happen in a similarly-sized apartment complex of renters, owned and managed by a landlord, but a lot of it wouldn’t. Bosses and landlords monopolize power, decision-making and wealth. Workplace and tenant unions fight to expand worker and tenant power, of course, but ultimately the boss or landlord still owns the property and extracts the surplus value and rent. The process of people running their own key institutions requires a lot of volunteer work, but this cooperation I think builds skills and confidence and creates more opportunities and the desire to work together on other projects.

Now, I don’t want to overstate the situation here; this isn’t Full Communism. Of course there have always been folks who see it as just a nice place to live and are less engaged in its internal life and politics. And capitalism has intruded on our utopia. The coop was “limited-equity” for decades, meaning that apartments were priced at below market value to keep them affordable. This was because our coop originally received tax breaks and other assistance arising from the 1949 Housing Act, which was intended to create affordable housing (and has a complicated history).  Then there was a contentious, long-running debate starting in the 1990s where a majority of residents voted to shift to market-rate pricing over time.  

(Continue Reading)

[edge-lorde]

original vampire bullshit 4. final!

i got to the orcs. it is done. felt good to write this but now i must sleep. will link to 1-3 tomorrow. EDIT:  part 1 here   PART 2 HERE  part 3 here

This next part may be a bit disjointed because at this point in time, I have not fully realized why the vampires of this world would be doing some of these things. I have no idea if this is even remotely efficient way of running a war effort. But this is MY pretend. The holes that i cannot fill will be taken care of by the concept of cow tools for now.

Blood farms. What are they? 

I have already written about how vampiric control works in free, normal countries. Those are the norm because vampires do not actually care enough about human societies to actually try to run them. But what happens when they do try to take more direct control? Typically these look like walled or very remote pieces of country with a small town in the middle. The vampires themselves typically still do not try to be enforcers of strict rules or be in direct leadership positions. There will still be human organization with the vampires off to the side somewhere with tables and lists of things they want this population to accomplish. Classically this is how much blood needs to be taken to sustain the patron vampire clan, who needs to give it next, and how to keep everyone healthy enough to do this. Quality of life in these places is usually fairly good, because the vampires see themselves as farmers and they need their crop to be healthy enough to harvest and also because they don't care about control as much as they do complacency. As much as they can, vampires try to make these places nice enough that people will not want to leave. They do this by providing enough resources so that there is nothing to fight over and by keeping their human populations extremely isolated so that there is nowhere that a human who wanted to leave could think to go. There must be enough space in these places that if some humans want to break off from the others they can, but not so much that the vampires can't find them. 

Now time for a little thought experiment. Imagine a specific vampire clan. A large one, with ties to the government of a powerful country. A branch of this clan decides that they want to build a vampire run health research facility. The goal of this would be to find an alternative to human blood that vampires could use instead so they could finally have they’re perfect floating vampire utopia in the sky. This sounds like a great idea to everyone. They set out to find a site in order to do this, but they want it to be vampire only, obviously.  So they decide to make it its own deal and have it be in conjecture with a blood farm, the concept of which already exists. This means it should be in an isolated place. 

They weigh their options and pick somewhere perfect. They begin construction. They wall off a section of forest and fill it with lots of domesticated plants and animals and build many nice places for humans to live. They build the research facility and begin the process of filling their blood farm population. They gather hundreds of babies and toddlers from both adoption agencies in their country of origin and from the existing communities in the place they decided to build. This place may not technically be part of their human country, but there are no other vampires claiming it so that makes it free real estate, right? The vampires gladly offer to let these existing human communities voluntarily integrate themselves into their overall workforce, but it seems that not all of them want to do this. That, and it really is better for blood farms to start without any ties to the outside world. This is why they primarily want children who don’t know how to speak yet, so they can be raised communally within the new city walls and taught a constructed language so they won’t have anything in common with the local humans and wouldn't be able to speak with them even if they did come across each other. It really is better just to make a clean break like that so there won't be drama later on. If the locals really have a problem with that then they really shouldn’t be allowed into the larger facility area either. And the vampires only use force to protect themselves. 

Flash forward a bit and what's this? The vampires human country is at war with with this other human-only conglomerate population thing? And the home country refuses to admit wrongdoing? In fact the larger vampire clan refuses to admit there is a ‘war’ going on at all? 

This war is very long and drawn out. Most of vampires weapons to be used against humans are bio-based. They begin conscripting the humans living in this blood farm (and others) as soldiers because the main country refuses to acknowledge the war. The focus of the research facility moves from health to military based. They begin to develop more soldiers at faster rates. They go from drafting existing humans to cloning and splicing perfect soldiers and create a separate class of human living in the blood farm. There are now civilians, which are the base population and do not leave the main blood farm unless it is to work at the facility, and soldiers who are raised from birth to fight in this war. 

The vampires build more facilities, they're getting good at it. The war goes on. Its less organised now, the enemy has been greatly weakened by the vampires bio-weapons but they have allies. The vampires are super paranoid about letting their super soldiers out into the world. They are terrified that the enemy could be catching up to them in terms of bio-tech and be creating their own super soldiers from their soldiers DNA, or by creating their own bioweapon diseases that could infect one of their own. Through that patient zero, their entire human population could in theory be wiped out, which would essentially end the war. The soldiers also take too long to make for them to make sense. The artificial womb is invented, that increases productivity but they still need to be trained from birth. Ways of pre-aging soldiers so they are ‘born’ as adults are invented, but they are useless and dont know how to do jack shit. Ways of implanting muscle memories and other knowledge and skills begin to be researched. 

It happens. The vampires army experiences a blow in the form of a counter bioweapon. Many soldiers die. They become barred from going back into the main blood farm population areas. The war effort slows. The vampires don’t leave but there is little left of the enemy human population left. After they had their success killing of the soldiers they retreat and try to rebuild for a while. There is an uneasy truce. 

The vampires do not stop their developing though. They realize they've been doing a lot of extra useless stuff with them that they didn't need to, once they realize they can make all training obsolete. They lie low for awhile. Turns out these new soldiers can be made pretty fast, like a full grown, fully trained soldier born in less than 10 months from nothing fast.  

But everything is quiet now. They are almost left to themselves as long as they don’t leave their facilities. This is what they wanted all along. But it's a matter of pride now. The vampires do not want to make peace with their human enemies now. They made a fool of the clan and used their own tech against them and never conceded. The land they live on is still not claimed by any vampire clan-- except for them. They will live to see these humans brought down now even if it takes a thousand years. They have all the time in the world. Its been at least a hundred since the war has begun. 

The vampires plan their next move carefully. They do not want to directly subject their home country to another war again. They would still rather humans would just take care of their own affairs. The ideal situation would be if another human population would just sweep in and finish the job. They had been made out to be monsters in the last war and they didn't like that at all. They knew that if they were to send out more soldiers like they did before, the enemy will know right away that they are to blame. What they needed was a scapegoat. 

I never mentioned this before, but other kinds of hominids currently exist/existed within living memory of this setting. Just roll with it for a second. The vampires decide what they need is for a new group to enter into the picture, one that everyone can agree is bad. Worse than vampires my a mile. Worse than the old stories told about them. Worse than any enemy they've faced before. An enemy that could be the enemy of all enemies and unite all others against them. The vampires would join this fight too, if necessary, meanwhile they would continue to manufacture this new enemy in secret. They would continue to do so until all their enemies were overwhelmed and forced to join up with the larger vampire run country for protection. It would be awkward at first, but what is the enemy of your enemy but a friend? 

In order to do this these new soldiers would have to look different from the old human soldiers. And they would have to act different too. They would have to strike terror into the hearts of all who came across them and be able to back up their threats. 

So the vampires thought to themselves what was the most terrifying enemy they could think of and it came to them-- Unaffiliated vampires. They have none of the reasons to value human or vampire life the way any natural being should and a reason to kill. Working off this framework, they set about finding ways to instill the perfect frame of mind into their future soldier experiments. In tandem with this, they began collecting odd features developed within their human experiment populations and began splicing them together. Next they began building great cylinder vats that could grow hundreds of these new soldiers at a time, as well as places to house them that were NOT near their precious blood farms. 

They planned to pack their heads with all they needed to know and no more, and supply them thinly enough to make the human towns enticing targets. All that, and a little bit of green dye was more than enough to make any human think these new creatures had nothing to do with them. Now all they needed was a name......

[vanitygrxxx]

Vanity. Seems like a dated word and an old concept that has never been more prominent before today. What does vanity mean in a world of social media, cellphones and perpetual exposure? What does vanity mean in a world of lax morals and little dignity? What is dignity? What are morals? What are lax morals? Are they a bad thing? Who sets the bar? Everything is up for debate. Is it immoral to be so into yourself? Why is it frowned upon by some but glamourised by others? And if today’s world is characterised more and more by shameless vanity should we just all embrace it? Or should we be more critical of it? Is it an inherent thing that we learn to suppress due to societal standards or are we conditioned into it through societal pressure?

These are a few of my concerns and questions on the matter of vanity and to be honest I haven't been able to answer any. And to be even more honest every answer seems right. Depending on one’s point of view of course. In my case, my background and upbringing are a somewhat unorthodox mix of traditionality and forwardness that have made my confusion on the subject even more intense. My parents were raised in the rural town of Sparta, Greece. Greece, where I’m from, has always been a deeply traditional country that even though considered part of the western world, it has deeply rooted middle eastern influences that can be considered as more conservative. It has also been characterised throughout the years by a core dispute between communist and right wing parties and their respective followers which is still very prominent. Therefore the country itself is a nation defined by a series of conflicts and contradicting mentalities. However, the ‘westernisation’ that we espouse as a nation calls for an open-mindedness and progressiveness that Greeks were not eased into. And that has definitely created a sort of conflict for my peers and me. Because we are a generation that has grown up with the ideals and ethics of our parents and grandparents, family being a very strong institution in Greece, but with the need to keep up with current trends and norms and be more open to change. Moreover, carrying the weight of an ancient civilization that has shaped the entire humanity, we are expected to honour that heritage by adhering to expanding our intellectual capacities and disregarding superficiality. Therefore, it strikes me as odd and troubling when I see any greek girl my age posting pictures on instagram of her face accompanying it with a misspelled inspirational quote in english just to project a certain image of herself and simultaneously downplay the vanity angle by easing it with a ‘meaningful’ message. This is a common occurrence that is truly baffling to me which highlights the vast disparity between truth and image. This is also a recurring theme in many ancient greek written works such as the Odyssey; the concept of «είναι και φαίνεσθαι», the difference between reality and appearances.

On the other hand however, I wonder, am I just being an overly critical, contemptuous, angry person? I could cut people some slack. At the end of the day is vanity so bad? It has existed since the dawn of time and has been the driving factor behind many achievements I am sure. After all how can we distinguish vanity from self-love, ambition and confidence? They say be comfortable with your looks, love the skin you're in, but when does loving yourself become a little too much? These are questions that constantly trouble me and to which i have tried to give answers multiple times but to no avail.

Greek artist’s alter ego Anna Goula shown above is a trash pop singer who mocks contemporary Greek performers.

The most obvious and early tale of vanity is that of Narcissus. Enamoured by his own reflection but not being able to realise his feelings towards himself, he was burned by the flame of his own passion. This myth gave its name to what we now know as narcissism, the overt admiration of ones self and looks and their self-idealisation. Vanity, on the other hand, started off as a term referring to the futility and ephemeral nature of life and material things, however it has mostly become synonymous to narcissism and egomania in current times.

One very prominent example of how the social and cultural dynamics surrounding vanity have drastically changed over the past  few years is the rise of the Kardashian aesthetic and the reign of instagram culture. Kim Kardashian has almost single-handedly rendered shameless vanity an acceptable if not desirable trait, and has even managed to capitalise on it by not only using it to expand her followers which in turn translate into more money but by also publishing a book full of her selfies, titled ‘selfish’ and rightfully so. I think that current instagram culture has a lot to give when it comes to insight on the matter and probably more so when it comes to ordinary people rather than celebrities.

Kim Kardashian’s aforementioned book.

I am also interested in how female artists like Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin explore the female image and sexuality in their photography, which could provide insight coming from either a pro or anti vanity point of view. I also once attended a talk by Juno Calypso, a young photographer who explores the issue of vanity, self-worship, the futility of beauty and its attainability at any cost, through her site specific performances and photographs. Her pinky pastel aesthetic also alludes to stereotypical explicit femininity and seamlessly blends the past with the present. I would certainly like to look at artists like that whose strong aesthetics are a source of debate and inspiration.

Juno Calypso’s Honeymoon Series.

I would also like to look at Yorgos Lanthimos, the only famous Greek director who is currently the pride and joy of Greece due to his accolades. Even though I have only watched some of his movies in fragments, I was surprised by his distinct aesthetics and concepts when I saw a magazine editorial he shot with Taylor Hill. The young model is posing in her underwear in her grandmothers utterly traditional home, resulting in an unusual but very real and gritty visual, that speaks volumes to Lanthimos’ greekness. I would definitely want to explore his earlier movies more in depth, more so because of his exploration of greek social and familial dynamics rather than his exploration of vanity, but at the end of the day aren’t they both related?

Lanthimos’ shoot for V magazine.

Last but not least, I would like to look at how vanity is related to fetish and explore their relationship to fashion and cinema. Looking at collections and runways from the 90s by Thierry Mugler, the sheer theatricality of the models, the way they have been directed to essentially perform instead of simply carry out a catwalk and of course the clothes, inevitably bring to mind dominatrix-y aesthetics. Of course latex also plays an important role in forming that aesthetic and is a big part of the fetish notion which is worth looking into.

Thierry Mugler’s fashion shows.

I believe that all the works I have done so far have more or less included the element of vanity and body ideals in one way or another. Combining latex with traditional victorian hoop skirts was a way for me to explore the relationship between the traditional and the contemporary and examining the dynamics between the conservative and the sexual. I also tried to explore that relationship in my manifesto project, where I looked at my upbringing and more specifically my rural roots and the agricultural background of my family and tried to explore the gap between the aforementioned traits to the more ‘liberal’ and modern upbringing I had in the city. I also tried to explore that relationship in two linked performance/photography pieces I did last year, combining again my traditional background to my sexuality and self-admiration; one was set in my grandmother’s house while the other one was set in a temporary stay sex hotel in Athens. I feel like my experience so far with latex and pvc will prove useful, at least as material exploration and experimentation are concerned and will pave the way for me to explore further the notion of vanity and fetish through their material realisations.

My ‘Portrait of a millenial’ project, set in Priamos sex hotel in Athens. I placed objects like family photos, christian icons and doilies from my grandmother’s house and did traditionally ‘grandmother’ things like crossword puzzles as if I were in my own home.

Second part of my ‘Portrait of a millenial’ project. I made a revealing burlesque costume and wore it around my grandmother’s house to highlight the difference between the sexual and the flamboyant and the religious and traditional.

[evwuniverse]

SL Exploration: Ville De Coeur (Small French Inspired Village)

Today we're taking a mini-adventure to a small European village called "Ville de Coeur" this is a primarily English-speaking sim that has French architecture and culture. If you're looking for a place that is both nice for photography and gives you a small taste of France, then you have come to the right place. This little village can be found in the "Destinations" tab of your viewer under "International" which means this area gets a lot of traffic. This is a place I'd consider checking out as it also mainly meshes and keeps up to standards with Second Life's graphics advancements otherwise known as going fully mesh. While exploring this little village you'll find that the demographics of users that you'll find here are normally 35 and older. However, now and then I've run into someone who is around their late 20s early 30s. If you find someone younger here, for the most part, their either exploring, looking for a place to do photography, or just have an old soul. To be fair, this sim appeals to anyone and everyone even though it attracts older and mature individuals so don't let this frighten you away from the overall concept and amazing community this little town has to offer. There is so much to do, always someone to talk to, and from what I've experienced thus far no drama (I normally try to find places with little to no drama, because who wants their Second Life experience ruined by other peoples issues?).

Ville de Coeur as told by one of the users who own a gallery within walking distance from the entrance of the sim is 7 connected full sims. I'm mainly focusing on the main area as this was mostly what I explored but will be sure to explore the rest later and compile a detailed post on it. This area is very pleasing to the eye, relaxing, romantic, and overall a lighthearted atmosphere. There are always people here and from what I've experienced everyone is extremely friendly in the area. There isn't one person that I've questioned as far as their motives, everyone just wants to talk, relax, and enjoy the scenery. There are a lot of dance balls, poses, and snuggle areas as well as a small café by the docks. There are residential areas where those who want to be on the sim can live and enjoy more of the community. I wouldn't say this is much of a come and go destination… if you come here you come and stay and explore everything. The French theme is seen everywhere with mimes lining the streets, churches, the French flags above the market corridor and cobblestone streets. In a sense, if you're into old architecture it reminds me of an older France then today's rendition of the country. 

Meeting new people:

As I’ve stated, this sim is filled with so many friendly people my first visit into this area a gentleman was sitting by the dock with some coffee and a bottle of wine in a small little café created area. He welcomed me in and then asked me if I wanted to join him for a little bit if I'm honest I had to leave not long after he invited me over to chat and hang out with him. I felt bad because he was so nice about it and talked to me about the community. He explained, that he owned a small gallery in the area which is where I asked if it was real life photos displayed in Second Life or more along the lines of Second Life photography and photo editing. His gallery is Second Life photography there is nothing wrong with that as I take photos of all my adventures and then of course post it onto this blog. I will be joining him on a small walking tour of some point in the small village and community. 

I've come here at all hours of the night so I could type up a genuine and true portrayal of this sim it required me to pop in quite a few times to be able to do so. In the end, if you're looking for a drama-free place to meet new people and make new friends this is probably the perfect place to be. There is so much to do from walking around with a walking tour either with someone or alone to hanging out on the beach and partying in the small gazebo with a bar, seating, and dancing, there is so much to do. Also, if you love randomly dancing consistently throughout a city like you would find in a Broadway show when in a small city or village than you will appreciate all the dance orb rezzers throughout the entire sim. This is a perfect place for romance as well as it's a very enjoyable place to be with that special someone. There are a lot of couple's activities and dancing is for more than one person as well as some of the specific walkers. What I love the most about the people here is they don't have a hidden agenda. You might get someone saying you're pretty or attractive, but they aren't going to try and de-robe you in bed within the next hour of talking to someone. Everyone here has values and isn't the type to cause drama from what I've experienced the 8 times I've visited this area. The people who are here are here to be a part of a community and have fun by surfing the waves, dancing, virtual drinking, etc. Sex is not the primary thing on most of the peoples' minds here so it's a nice escape from the rest of Second Life. 

Scenery:

When exploring if you can't tell this sim is made from a French theme then you might want to re-evaluate what you can and cannot see. The theme of this village Is to connect it with an older version of France. Which of course is one of the most romantic countries in the world. The area is lined by the French flag in banners throughout the main sim of this area to a small gathering area with a water fountain. Which by the way is a super nice touch with the cobblestone streets, if I'm honest the area reminded me of how Charles Dickens in his literature describes his surroundings in 1800s England. It's very beautiful and I feel literature enthusiasts and historians will appreciate this area! There are shops everywhere but ahead of time, I'll explain that a lot of the shops here are mainly older Second Life outfits that aren't mesh. But to be fair I still have some outfits like those in my inventory some things just never get old even when everything moves forward. It's nice to support small businesses though so don't let that throw you off from looking around. There aren't any roads throughout this sim it's all paths and walking areas so don't be ready to bring out your Lamborghini's and other cars you bought on the Second Life marketplace.

There is so much to do there are sitting areas, you can swim, surf, sail, drink, dance, you name it you can do it on the beach except be fully nude. This isn't a nude beach if you want to be nude on a beach there are sims specifically for that sorry my beautiful nudists out there. Right next to it which I explained in the "meeting people" section of this post is the small little shack where you can drink, sit, and dance in an outside bar-like setting. Right next to it is a small swimming area it's a pool with a beautiful gazebo where I took a photo of my avatar. It was such a pretty section I just had too! There aren't couple swimming animations but it's there if you want to take a dip in the pool instead of the beach. 

Everything about this sim matches the theme perfectly. There’s also a residential area if you’re looking to live in this small community to find out more about this please visit the Ville de Coeur website at https://villedecoeur.online/ where you can find more information about the community, events, and residential areas.

To conclude, I enjoyed my time here in Ville de Coeur and plan to visit more in the future. The scenery is gorgeous, and you can do pretty much anything in a beautiful setting. There's so much to do and it's just overall a super appealing area with so many kind people in the area to chat with and enjoy your time with. With so much to do, I would come to explore the beauty of this sim and how well made it is. If you have any more questions or want to know more about the sim please visit their website at https://villedecoeur.online/ until next time...

[k-itsmaywriting]

Vessels (AI/Android!AU)

CONTENT WARNINGS: body modification, body horror, vehicle incidents

“No problems, Master. She still hasn’t had any severe malfunctions.”

Obi jumps onto the sidewalk just as a horn blasts in his ears. He turns over his shoulder to watch the truck trailer swerve around the corner in the shadow of blinding blue and purple lights, driver flipping him off.

“And her productivity?”

He enters the small apartment building and climbs to the second floor, fishing for his keys in his coat pocket.

“Lower than usual.” He huffs lowly as shoves the key into the lock and turns it. “I’ve never seen Shirayuki take so many naps before.”

The door opens and Obi stills in the entrance. In the living room inside, the hem of a dress and a stocking foot slip behind the kitchen wall. Shirayuki calls, “I’m almost ready, Obi! Just let me close the kitchen window!”

“But she seems to have woken up while I was at work. She’s as energetic as ever now...”

“That’s good. We can’t have her fall behind on her work much more, or brother would be more than unimpressed.”

“Well, she texted me earlier that she’s feeling well enough to be back at work tomorrow. And I’m off the clock now too, so if you’ll excuse us, Master,” he says, voice chipper, “my best friend and I have a night out to get to.”

He hangs up, just as Shirayuki crouches to slip into and buckle her kitten heels. She straightens to meet him with a smile. “Shall we go, Obi?”

When he’s with Shirayuki, it’s like breathing fresh air again.

When cars roar and screech through city roads, her voice is soft in the suffocating smog. When bright lights smear and blur in the concrete jungles, the fiery red hair and sea green eyes ground him in time and space, the only existence he can be sure of in a city with too many people doing too many different things in too many different places.

But when Shirayuki looks at Obi, she sees history, memories of innocence, laughter and warmth under the sun. To her he is safety and honesty, a life-long friend. She sees them as two souls together in a wide world that were lucky to find each other when they needed each other the most, and have stayed together since.

But that’s not really the truth.

Not when Zen paid Obi for finishing building her in a Wisteria lab just eight months ago.

“Obi, look, there’s a special event here tonight.”

Obi turns around, and Shirayuki is standing outside a restaurant, reading the scrawling on the window. “They’re serving chocolate dumplings and cocktails, all you can eat! There’s a board game too!”

“No way!” He stumbles back next to her. “How much?”

Shirayuki suddenly holds onto his wrist as they both read the swirls of rainbow markers on the window between them and the warmly lit restaurant inside together. “$20 per person for a banquet offering, including a selection of in-house favourites of chocolates and cocktails.”

“The two-person game navigates diners through truth-or-dare style questions…” Obi reads, “the concept has continued to entertain…” he stops, trying not to click his tongue, “…couples.”

Shirayuki immediately turns to him, a little too quickly. “We can pretend.”

Obi blinks. “…What?”

“We can just pretend. I mean, look,” she points at the sign on the door, “it says the game is designed for first dates, so all the questions will be about getting to know each other. But it’s…easy for us, right? Since we’ve been best friends since high school?”

Ah, right. High school. He forgets he’s supposed to pretend he spent three whole years there sometimes.

He nods. “Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be easy.”

Shirayuki smiles, but, it’s different than usual. It’s more reserved, hidden in the dim lights reflecting stars in her eyes and blush in her cheeks.

Though, it’s not a lie either.

Shirayuki was designed entirely, from the expert database in her brain to her passion for conservationism. Izana only really needed intelligence and work ethic, but Zen wanted to push the boundaries. He wanted cognitive thinking, memories and personality, as close to a human as possible – for further advancement, he had said.

The only real difference between Shirayuki and a human is where and how she was created, and the parts inside her body. She’s still Obi’s companion and friend, even if the history is different.

But it always hurts to lie to a friend.

Shirayuki and Obi gave up on the board game five minutes in. They decided to kick back in the corner booth with a pile of truth cards each and stacks of bamboo steamers the table between them, steaming with the dumplings inside.

Obi snorts. “Okay, this is an interesting one. What book have you read so many times that the cover is wearing?”

“Hmm…probably…” Shirayuki thinks for a while, head tilted, but eventually smiles sheepishly. “The first botany book I ever got from my grandparents. I literally tore the spine from the sheer amount of times I read it.”

Ah, he remembers putting that one in. It took the mechanics and psychologists weeks to figure out how to input fabricated memories straight into the long-term storage for the first time.

Obi takes another dumpling and devours it in a bite as Shirayuki flips over her next card. “So, Obi,” she says, “How many houses have you lived in? What was the first one like?”

He tries really hard not to sigh. At least he’s rehearsed this one before.

“One childhood home in the suburbs, and now our lovely little apartment near Poet.” He fakes a smile. “So, two.”

In truth, it is only two if he counts that rundown shack in the wastelands a home. He doubts anyone outside Wistal is any different, with the government hoarding the country’s little resources into one city for luxurious living, leaving everyone else struggling to survive almost thirty years after the meteor set the world on fire.

Obi flips his next card over. “Shirayuki!”

“Yes!”

“The last lie you told and why?!”

Man, is he glad he was not asked that one.

Shirayuki laughs, “You know how I told you the other day that I woke up at 9:30?! I actually woke up at 12!”

“Well, aren’t you wild!?”

“Alright then, what was the craziest day you’ve ever had?” She kicks back into the seat and folds her arms. “I can think of a few of yours from high school! Devoured a whole cafeteria tray of pasta in one sitting at lunch, then fought two seniors at once for not leaving a teacher alone ten minutes later. Then there was the time you escaped English through the window…”

Shirayuki’s voice fades in his ringing ears. None of those stories could compare to the truth.

He lost count of the amount of days he spent traveling that time, but it didn’t matter anymore. Not when he had pulled up in front of a dense forest and a fucking jackpot inside – an endless stream of old cars between the trees, drowning in regrowth that crawled through the broken windows and over hoods and boots. It was probably a highway before the meteor hit. He was just surprised no one else was near it.

He leapt onto the nearest car roof and screwed his crowbar into the hood, cranking it down to break it. He scavenged for any parts that were usable, that he could sell. It took him until sundown to get through even a third.

When night fell, he squeezed through a broken window into the backseat of the nearest four-wheel drive and dropped his bag next to him, bulging with sellable parts. Obi huddled into his sleeping bag, long legs constantly knocking against the door or the driver’s seat – it had been a while since he slept outside like this. And he was getting too tall. If he followed the old highway, he was sure he would’ve been able to find a small town eventually. His chest filled with a little hope as he fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, there was a crash.

Obi jolted awake, immediately grabbing for his crowbar. He held his breath and pressed his back further into the seat. There was no rustling in the regrowth, no human breath or groaning in pain. Taking his bag, Obi slipped out the car window and eased himself back into the regrowth. Further down the highway, a bright light behind another car illuminates the dark. The static of a dying radio breaks the silence.

“Ryuu, can you come in? It’s Zen.”

The voice went on as Obi crept closer to the light, asking for an answer, but the one named Ryuu never responded. He tightened his grip on the crowbar as he peeked behind the car. He meant to swing at it, break the radio immediately and do the same to the guy’s head, but—

It was…a boy, but not really, crumpled against the car door. At least, it looked like a human boy. The electric circuits sparking from his unmoving joints and the hologram image of a young man projecting from his eyes told him otherwise.

The man in the hologram silenced and turned to Obi immediately. His eyes narrowed. “Did you do this?”

He meant to just bust the android’s eyes out, to cut the connection and steal him away. But instead he held his breath. “And if I did? What would you do?”

“Not that anyone could ever give you the monetary value of him, but nothing that would make any of your scavenging worth it,” he said. “So I suggest you answer properly.”

Obi looked the hologram up and down. “No, I didn’t. I heard a crash and came here.”

The young man, Zen, sighed. “A breakdown on the first mission…that is not good at all. I really do not want to use more resources to retrieve him…”

People on the Outside had been talking about the idea of holograms and…and androids, but no one ever thought to be able to actually build them since the meteor hit. The only people who ever could’ve ever made them, much less control them, were the Insiders of Wistal. And considering it had only been 30 years, at least one of them was probably in new development. It would’ve been especially problematic for Outsiders to get their hands on their newest technology – it would’ve meant they could catch up, compete for the Earth’s little resources that Wistal needed…

…If he found a way to fix this android…

Zen suddenly turned to him again. “Don’t you even think about it. I know your face. If you dare break this radio you will not see the light of day again.”

Obi clicked his tongue. So much for that idea. How about…

“Then I’ll fix him and bring him back to you,” he said.

“And how exactly are you going to do that?”

“What matters is that I will. And after I do, you will either pay me a hefty ass repair fee, or take me back to Wistal as a mechanic.”

He didn’t think Zen could look even more unimpressed and disbelieving than before, but clearly he was wrong. He stood there for a while, probably waiting for Obi to say he was joking. “Fine,” he said, folding his arms. “We’ll need all the worthy hands we can get – you have yourself a deal.” His voice darkens, “But if you don’t finish by sunset tomorrow, you will be captured for possession of classified information and materials.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Obi growled. “I might be a scavenger, but it’s parts from your drones and surveillance machinery that makes our world go ‘round.”

He barely did it in time, but he did fix Ryuu. After Zen took him back to Wistal, he helped improve him. Made him closer to the human boy he used to be, apparently. But soon, they moved onto building an android from scratch to be his partner. Together they would help save the Earth, Izana had said at the first project meeting, but for whose benefit, Obi wasn’t sure.

Four and a half years later, Shirayuki opened her eyes for the first time.

“Obi, are you alright?”

Obi snaps wider awake. When he looks across the table, Shirayuki has her lips pressed into a thin line. “You’re probably tired from work, huh? Should we go home?”

He nods slowly. “Y…yeah, I think I’m just tired.”

The next thing he knows, Shirayuki tells him she paid the bill and cool night breeze brushes against his face as they step out the door. Pedestrians and cars alike still fill the streets. Everything reverts into blurs and smears against the night to the point Shirayuki has to hold him by the wrist and pull him along with her.

“Just a couple more crossings and we’re home,” Shirayuki says, looking up at him worriedly as she lets go of him at the Starlight’s crossing. “Did something happen? You seemed okay before we went out.”

“I’m…fine,” Obi breathes. He’s not fine at all. Everything feels heavy, and his body cracks whenever he needs to move. “I just…I think I just need to go home.”

She nods sympathetically. “I feel you.”

He’s growing impatient by the second. He pokes his head further out into the crossing, and sees no cars coming from the left. “Shirayuki, come on.” He stumbles out into the crossing.

From behind him, Shirayuki yells, “Obi, no! The light’s still red!”

He turns around, “There’s no one coming—!”

A horn blares.

In the corner of his eye, he sees two lights ripping into his eyes. Then he’s flying, sky gliding above him as he flings across the road. His body rolls against the bitumen like a ragdoll. Screeching tyres and car horns erupt around him. It comes to a stop, eventually, and then he can only see the black sky and a streetlight in the corner of his eye.

Heels pound on the road towards his ear. Closer, closer. The light starts to fade.

He sees green – Shirayuki leaning over him and screaming while her hands grab at his. Hang in there, she’s saying, the ambulance is coming soon.

Her hand moves further up his arm, but pain suddenly flashes across her face. She pulls back, eyes wide, almost white.

Obi thinks he can move his arm a little – see what made her draw away. It feels like forever, the time it takes to drag his shoulder while his head falls to the side. He expects blood and purple skin, probably broken bones and ripped muscle at the worst.

But when he sees metal, red and blue and green wires, some cut others not with strings of sparks crackling down his forearm, it’s like his heart stops. His eyes snap back to Shirayuki’s above him, green clouded in confusion and horror. His heart races faster. This isn’t right. He…he’s not the one who is…it’s meant to be her—

Everything is black, but he doesn’t feel his eyes close.

[cordonianchoicesqueen]

Rewritten: The Royal Romance: You’re the Prince of What Now? (Part Three)

A/N: I never read the diamonds chapter for this but this is how I’d want it to go. I like to think that most people wouldn’t believe Liam outright when he says he’s a prince and actually question him on it.

Summary: Riley comes to terms with the fact the handsome stranger she has been spending time with is a prince. She decides to take him on an adventure to see the Statue of Liberty.

Choices Chapter: Book One, Chapter One, Second Half

Disclaimer: Characters and main storyline from Pixelberry’s Choices.

Word Count: 2653

Warnings: none

You’re the Prince of What Now?

He took my hand gently, “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you the truth.” “What is that then?” “The truth is, Riley… I’m the Crown Prince of Cordonia.”

I scoffed. This man is insane or at least insane to believe I would believe… I looked him dead in the eyes. I saw nervousness but not deception. “You’re a great con-artist. I almost believe you,” I shook my head, pulling my hand away. “You can google it! I promise! I know it sounds crazy. It’s a tiny country. It’s not like I’m claiming to be next in line to the thrown of Great Britain. Although, I do know their family very well…” he rambled as I pulled out my phone. “How do you spell Cordonia?” As he spelt it out to me, I searched: prince of cordonia. Immediately, images of Liam at all sorts of grand events popped up. Articles about his elder brother passing the thrown to Liam earlier in the year. Pictures of Liam wearing a crown, sat beside a man who could only be his father and king of this country I had never heard of. I slowly lowered myself back into my seat. I was in shock. The day had just been progressively becoming more like a fantasy. Liam looked as though he was about to speak but I stopped him. I wasn’t ready to speak and I read page after page. I even spotted Tariq and Maxwell in a few pictures. Finally, I landed on a tabloid page which was titled What Will Our Prince Get Up to in the U.S.A? “You’re a prince?” was the only thing I could muster. This felt like a conversation you could only have in a movie in a beautiful garden with a prince dressed like a beggar taking off his disguise and declaring his love at first sight for the girl in front of him. The reality was that we could barely hear each other over the blaring pop music and cheers of the crowds on the dancefloor of Kismet. Did this change what I thought of him?   “Perhaps I should’ve been more upfront with you… But I’m not normally allowed to go around without the Royal Guard, and I was only allowed out on the condition that I kept my identity a secret. I got to be free. I’m very aware that I have a duty to the monarchy. I’ve never known anything else. But what about you? You could be anything, do anything. What drives you, Riley?” Struggling to figure out how the conversation had come back around to me I said, “what I really want is to see the world. I’m saving and one day I’m going to go see everything.” “That’s beautiful,” Liam said, his voice light and wistful. I glanced up, taking him in again with all the information I had just learned. It weirdly didn’t change anything about how I’d viewed him. He’d seemed caring, selfless and kind, which he obviously was from his philanthropist acts as prince. He seemed both down to earth and from some other world entirely. Mostly, I was just sad to know I’d probably never get to see him again. I guess in our short conversations, I had already started to have feelings for him and had hoped we could maybe have met up again but now… this night was all I was going to have with him. So I was going to make it count. I broke his gaze and spotted the guys on the dance-floor, mingling with other club goers. Maxwell was waving his limbs all over the place, making many people on the dance-floor laugh. I could, almost, hear him egging on Drake to show off his moves. Drake stood almost still, swaying to the beat, a large glass of whiskey in his hand rolling his eyes at Maxwell but smiling. Tariq had joined them on the dance-floor, holding his glass of champagne high so that it wouldn’t spill. It was time to stop being the over-thinker I always tended to be and live in this moment. In some crazy turn of events I was out clubbing with a prince from a foreign country who was interested in me and trusted me enough to share his big secret. “Let’s dance,” I took Liam’s hand confidently. I led him down onto the dance-floor. He seemed amused by me taking the lead and his smile melted my heart. We helped ourselves to more drinks and joined his friends. They all seemed so different but fit together like puzzle pieces from different boxes creating something new, cohesive and exciting. I barely knew them but I felt included and happier than I had felt in months. I wrapped my arms around Liam’s neck, swaying and laughing with him as pop song after pop song played. His hands felt warm on my hips and I wanted to pull him closer but dared not push any unspoken boundary. “Looks like your friends are having fun,” I gestured. “Good. I’m happy for them. They deserve to have fun… tomorrow, it’s back to Cordonia for the start of the social season,” he whispered in my ear with mixed emotion. I stood on my tip-toes to reach his ear and whispered back, “It’s not tomorrow yet…” “What are you suggesting?” he said, his face so close to mine I could feel the dimple of his smile form in his cheek. “You said you wanted to see the statue of liberty. Let’s do it!” I said. “It’s so late! Won’t all the tours be closed?” he questioned. “I have my ways,” I said sneakily.

Getting Liam to ride the subway with me was a challenge. He stuck out like a sore thumb as he looked around in awe at the public transport system he had heard so much about but never seen for himself. We had swung around poles on the almost empty carriage and annoyed everyone with our giggling. Finally, we made it Whitehall street where the Staten Island Ferry docks. “So I can’t get you all the way to the statue of liberty,” I admitted, “but I can take you on a boat with the best view in town, I promise.” As if by magic, the Ferry came into view and began to dock. I explained to him that the Staten Island Ferry runs 24/7, is frequent and doesn’t cost a penny. “I used to love riding the ferry after a night out and eat some take-out food with a view. It feels classy but on a budget,” I laughed. He shook his head at me in disbelief, “what a lucky man I am to have stumbled upon you this evening.” I looked away before he could see me blush and led him onto the boat. We situated ourselves in some of the ugly plastic seats with a view out of the windows. As the boat left the docks, I felt the wind get chillier and shivered. “Are you cold?” Liam asked, concern in his voice. “I’m okay, really,” I lied, missing my sweat pants that were still sitting in my locker at Elliot’s. We sat in comfortable silence until suddenly out of the darkness, the unmistakable sight of the Statue of Liberty came into view. Liam stood, his mouth open in awe, staring at the sight. I had seen the statue enough times to no longer be hit by the history of the monument but looking at it through his eyes made me feel like it was the first time. I thought of the history of immigrants arriving in New York and seeing Lady Liberty, ready to welcome them through. Times had changed since then, some positive and some negative. History has a way of repeating itself and remembering how prejudice has affected the world can help figure out the problems of today. “Did you know,” Liam said, still transfixed on the statue, “that there are seven spikes on her crown? They represent the seven oceans and the seven continents of the world. Reminding us of the universal concept of unity and liberty.” “I did not know that,” I stood next to him. He placed his arm around me and it felt like the perfect fit. “Thank you for this, Riley, really,” he said quietly. He felt how cold I was and took off his jacket, draping it around me. “This really is turning into a corny fairy-tale you know,” I said laughing at his kind gesture. “How so?” he smirked. “Come on. Prince and his pauper on a night time boat ride in New York city, the attractive male lead puts his jacket round the girl’s shoulder so that she feels protected and cared for.” “And what happens next in his story?” he asked. I tucked a hair that was blowing in the wind behind my ear. I felt all the confidence in my body surge as I stood on my toes and kissed him. His lips were soft and tasted like a mix of honey and champagne. He took my face in his hands and pulled me closer, kissing me deeply. I could feel his nose pressed up alongside mine as he lightly nibbled my lower lip. I felt anxiety leave my body, all thoughts and worries were gone and replaced with the thought of the man who stood before me. When the kiss ended, we both blushed beetroot red and giggled. “I feel like I’m five years old,” Liam laughed. “You’ve completely captured me, Riley.” He shook his head in disbelief. I wanted to tell him that that was ridiculous, that I couldn’t possibly have done anything to make me care for him that much in the short few hours we had known each other. But I couldn’t because I felt the same. It wasn’t love at first sight but it was definitely chemistry, attraction, care and a lot of other bubbling, butterfly feelings. Enough that I knew saying goodbye would hurt.

A short while later, we stood outside the door to my apartment building. Liam, ever the gentleman, had insisted he make sure I get home safe. The stars above us twinkled. A beautiful night, for a beautiful story I would tell for years to come, I was sure. The story of my night with a prince in New York City. “Well I guess this is me,” I said, letting go of his hand. “Thank you for your company, Riley. Tonight has been… for lack of a better word incredible from the moment I met you,” Liam stepped closer to me so that I could feel so body heat radiating. He kissed me, pulling me in deeply. It was a kiss tinged with sadness, of a story that was never going to be told, of what could have been. My arms still around his neck we kept our foreheads touching, enjoying this final moment. “I am a better person for having met you,” he said softly. “I’ll never forget this night.” He kissed me on my forehead. “Neither will I. Goodnight, Prince Liam. Good luck picking a bride. She is a really lucky woman,” I said. We stepped apart. I walked up the few steps to the building and unlocked my door. As I stepped inside I looked back. Liam hadn’t moved an inch. I waved sadly. He bowed and walked away...

The next morning, I woke up with only a slight hangover headache. I grabbed some water and looked at my dishevelled morning after face in the mirror. The night before had been a dream… a memory I would have to hold close to me otherwise I’d never believe it had actually happened. It was time to get back to the real world and that meant preparing for another shift at Elliot’s. Dragging myself to the bar took a lot of coaxing but I still managed to get out my apartment with enough time to get some fresh air walking over. Just as I reached the door of the bar, I heard a familiar voice shouting behind me. “Riley! Riley!” I turned and saw Maxwell from the night before panting as he ran up to me. “Glad I caught you.” He stopped, putting his hands on his legs as he caught his breath. Maxwell then stood up straight, shook off the run and smiled widely at me. “We’re heading back to Cordonia so Liam can find someone to marry and all that jazz. But before I go, I wanted to officially extend to you an invitation to join us for the festivities in Cordonia.” “What?” was all I managed. I hadn’t expected to see any of the men again from last night, never mind Maxwell surprising me the next morning before work with an invitation to go travelling with him. “You wouldn’t usually be allowed to join… but I want our family to sponsor you!” Maxwell goofily smiled and gave me finger guns. “Sponsor me?” I was still so confused. “I’m from a noble house, but I don’t have any sisters, so we don’t have anyone in contention to marry the Prince. Instead, we can sponsor any girl we choose,” he said. “And I want you to be our pick.” “Why me?” I asked aghast. “I’m not just doing it for you. I saw how Liam looked at you last night. I’ve never seen him so happy. Honestly, I don’t want him to lose that,” he said. He waited a moment for a response but seeing my speechlessness said, “We’re kinda crunched for time, though. I’ve got a plane leaving within the hour…” “You’re moving a little fast, don’t you think? You want me to drop my whole life and move to another country with strangers to marry a prince?” I asked abruptly. “No time to waste! The opening Masquerade ball is tonight! It’s the start of the… uh, I guess you could say, it’s the start of the competition,” he said un-phased. “What do you mean competition?” “There’s a whole horde of gorgeous, rich, noble women vying to become Cordonia’s next queen. And it’s not just about winning the Prince’s hand. You’ve also got to prove to the council that you can rule Cordonia with him. But I think you’ve got what it takes. You’re witty, charming, beautiful, intelligent and Liam’s already suuuuper into you so you’ve got all that going for you!” he explained excitedly. “So… a fancy masquerade… so if I said yes… what else would I be getting myself into?” I said wondering how my mind was already talking myself into this. “Fun stuff! I promise! You’ll get to go yachting in the Mediterranean, ski-ing in the Alps and dancing in the Royal Palace… and it will all be funded by the Beaumont family as our sponsor,” he added, wiggling his eyebrows. Travelling and experiencing the world had always been my dream. This offer sounded too good to be true. “I just…” I felt reality stopping me from jumping up and down yes.   “Or you know, you can stay here… and go back to your waitressing gig with your shitty boss. That’s probably just as fun.” For a moment I thought about the life I had in New York. My friends had all moved away. My family ties were not tight. I hated my job and most days living in my tiny apartment. I felt crushed by the expectations of the life I felt like I had to lead. I then thought about the night before. Was I really going to give up everything I had for a man? But I wasn’t really giving up anything. I could do this for me, for adventure, for a positive change. I slowly started to smile. “I’m in!” I said, not quite believing what I was saying. “Yeah! GO PACK! This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime!” Maxwell yelled in glee wrapping me up in a big hug.