#unfortunately you might not be able to find the written pattern since the creator has passed away and their blog has been scrubbed since <

[uncanny-tranny]

This is my first finished project (well, mostly, I just have to give it a final edge and then weave my ends in), I found a crochet hook holder a while back and really liked how it looks; it's crazy that I could replicate it, even if it's not technically great. If you don't look too hard or scrutinize it, you might be impressed (so please don't look close)

If you want to watch somebody who's competent in crochet, watch the video where I followed the pattern!

#art #fiber art #crochet #my crochet projects #described images #image description in alt #i'm going to make another one in a cotton yarn which i think will be better (plus it'll be in my favourite colour) #i wanted to make this one in acrylic mostly as a mock-up and proof of my ability to understand the pattern #the pattern is deceptively hard. i found it was actually very easy to follow and get used to #unfortunately you might not be able to find the written pattern since the creator has passed away and their blog has been scrubbed since </ #but their memory is still legacized in this video... and i made this hook holder because of their original design. that's mind-blowing #unfortunately i started the pattern by obsessively counting my stitches and then that went out the window

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 8/20/21 - REMINISCENCE, PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE, THE PROTÉGÉ, THE NIGHT HOUSE, FLAG DAY, DEMONIC and More

Ugh.

Apparently, we have four or five new wide releases this weekend, just as we get into what I always lovingly referred to as “The Dog Days of Summer.” Thanks to COVID, that could be referring to almost every weekend this summer, but it definitely becomes more true as we get to the end of summer as many kids are returning to school, some of them wearing masks, others social-distancing, some just getting us closer to the herd immunity we were always heading towards… ha ha… that’s one way to see if anyone is even reading this column. Get Political!!

Presumably, the widest release this weekend will be the sci-fi noir, REMINISCENCE (Warner Bros.), starring Hugh Jackman, Thandiwe Newton, and Rebecca Ferguson, which is the feature directorial debut by Lisa Joy, the co-creator of HBO’s popular series, Westworld. Like The Suicide Squad, In the Heights, and every other Warner Bros. movie this year, Reminiscence will be released concurrently on HBO Max this Friday. Unlike any of those other movies, I honestly don’t think anyone will give a shit about getting off their asses to risk COVID in order to see this. And I say that a.) without having seen it; b.) knowing almost nothing about it; c.) not believing the poppycock that movie theaters are the death traps some claim; and d.) I already have a ticket to see it on Friday.

In fact, I almost feel like I shouldn’t do a lot of research into what this movie is about, because despite having seen the trailer a few times, I still have no idea. All I know is that it stars Hugh Jackman, and it’s science-fiction, and that’s enough for me! (I haven’t even watched that much of Westworld beyond the first season for no other reason except that I haven’t.) The plot according to IMDB is, “A scientist discovers a way to relive your past and uses the technology to search for his long lost love.” Good enough for me.

Okay, then, so basically it sounds like a Christopher Nolan movie like Tenet or Inception from a lesser-known director -- who also happens to be Nolan’s sister-in-law, because she’s married to the other Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan. See how Hollywood works?

Because of all the Nolan connections, maybe we need to look at something like Transcendence, the 2014 sci-fi thriller directed by Nolan DP Wally Pfister, which starred Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall (coincidentally), and Paul Bettany. The movie opened in mid-April (a known dumping ground) to about $10.9 million in 3,455 theaters, and then tanked, making just $23 million domestically. (It made about $80 million overseas.) The fact that the title Reminiscence bears more similarity to Pfister’s movie brings another level of foreboding.

At the time, Depp hadn’t completely destroyed his career, and he still had a few bit hits under his belt, including Into the Woods and his final Pirates of the Caribbean movie in 2017, as well as Murder on the Orient Express. Jackman, on the other hand, is still in a better place career-wise, although he still owes much of his career to playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies for nearly two decades. He’s had one significant hit since Logan’s swan song, fittingly enough in 2017’s Logan, which grossed $226.3 million domestically. That was the PT Barnum musical, The Greatest Showman, which made $174.3 million over the holidays that same year, and that really centered around Jackman as a leading man. His next movie, the Gary Hart movie, The Front Runner, didn’t fare very well (less than $2 million gross), nor did the animated Missing Link, although the latter did get an Oscar nomination. The question is whether Jackman can do much to get moviegoers into an original science fiction movie with his mere presence.

Even the rest of the cast that includes Ferguson from Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies, Newton from… well, another one of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies, and Daniel Wu from the series Into the Badlands and the most recent Tomb Raider movie. Again, take these three out of a franchise and who knows if there’s really much left?

I’m not even sure how many theaters Warner Bros. is releasing… sorry, I hate spelling out the title of this movie… into, but I have a feeling it won’t be that much more than 3,000, especially with the movie being readily available on HBO Max and all the week’s other movies being theatrical only.

Because of that, I’m very dubious about this movie making $10 million this weekend. In fact, I’m not even sure it can make $8 million this weekend. No, I’m probably going to go closer to $6 to 7 million on this, and even that might be overly optimistic.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see Reminiscence in advance, so we'll just have to see what other critics who see it think about it. I’m not really expecting it to get too many good reviews, since it seems like the kind of movie that critics go to see begrudgingly, because they were assigned to see it, more than having any interest in it. And I was right.

On the other hand, I’ve already been seeing rave reviews about the animated PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE (Paramount), which I also haven’t seen, and in fact, I can guarantee that I will never see it. Why? Because I don’t have kids. Nor will I ever have kids. Nor do I know anything about this other than it’s about police dogs?

In fact, opening in 2,700 theaters, I wouldn’t be surprised if this rare G-rated movie ends up winning the weekend, or at least comes in second to Free Guy, despite many kids being back in school, kids being unvaccinated and more likely to get COVID by going to movie theaters, etc. etc.

If you can’t tell, I’m writing this while on a mini-vacation and I’m kind of in a “I just don’t give a shit” kind of mood right now, but as I said, I don’t have kids, and the only reason I know what “Paw Patrol” is because the people I know who have kids seem to know of the movie’s existence. Maybe even some of them will take their kids to see it or at least wait until it’s on Paramount+, which you know is coming.

I’m going with this making somewhere around $8 million this weekend, taking second place behind Free Guy, which should continue to do well with little other direct competition.

On the other, other hand (I have three arms, you know), I have had a chance to see the action flick, THE PROTÉGÉ (Lionsgate), directed by Martin Campbell of Casino Royale acclaim and Green Lantern… what’s the opposite of acclaim? That.

The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton, but more importantly, it stars… the awesome Maggie Q from Mission: Impossible III! (See a pattern in this week’s Weekend Warrior?) Most will probably know Ms. Q from her run as Nikita on the show of the same name, and she’s definitely back in that mode for this action-thriller in which she plays an assassin looking for the killer of her mentor (Jackson) which puts her at odds with another assassin, played by Keaton. I loved the fact that Maggie appeared in three very different movies last year from Sony/Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island and two other movies that ended up going to VOD, but the former of these shamefully opened with just $12.3 million over Valentine’s weekend and then it quickly got destroyed, first by the release of Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man in its third weekend and then by COVID, because theaters shut down in its fourth weekend. It made less than $50 million worldwide, which is a shame, because I actually liked it.

This is another case where I don’t know how many theaters it’s getting, although I do know reviews are embargoed until sometime Thursday evening, which is never a good sign, and actually, I can’t even tell you if I liked it or hated it until then, so… I guess we’ll have to go blind on this one, assuming Lionsgate will dump it into around 2,300 theaters with very little promotion. Even though action has been faring well this year, I have a feeling this will struggle to make $3 million this weekend.

Mini-Review: As I’ve probably mentioned, I love Maggie Q whenever she’s in any movie, but she’s particularly good in this sort of action role that requires a little more of a dramatic touch than we’d normally get from a man in this type of role. Sure, we can be slightly worried when there’s a movie with a female lead both written and directed by men, and some of those worries are founded, but Ms. Q always finds a way to bring more to her roles, and that’s the case here as well.

The general plot is that her Anna is an assassin and when her mentor Moody (Jackson) is murdered, she sets out to find his killer or killers, which brings her back to Vietnam where she runs headlong into another known as Rembrandt, played by Michael Keaton. At the same time, Moody has set Anna on a mission to find a boy whose father was assassinated 30 years earlier, as she learns that the two things are connected.

Written by Richard Wenk, who has quite a bit of experience with this sort of action movie, having written Denzel’s The Equalizer movies, as well as a few of The Expendables movies, he gives the movie enough story and characterization to separate it from the normal trashy action movie where that stuff isn’t important. For instance, giving Maggie’s Anna a full backstory with Samuel L. Jackson’s Moody, her blues guitar-playing mentor, or having her be interested in books and running a bookstore.

Unfortunately, the movie is kind of erratic, comical sometimes but deadly serious for the most part and the flirtatious relationship between Anna and Keaton’s character leads to some super cringe-worthy moments. While the action and fight choreography is pretty solid, the fact that 69-year-old Keaton doesn’t seem to be doing much of the actual fighting is a little too obvious. (Is he trying to be Liam Neeson now?) The way the violent fighting leads the two of them into bed also feels problematic. I generally abhor any sort of violence against women, but at least Maggie Q makes her character look super-tough and able to handle anything.

I wasn’t as keen on the film’s multiple twists in the ending or the flashback to Anna’s past, which seems to come far too late in the movie. In general, women are going to HATE this movie and I know exactly why, but men will probably enjoy it for just as many obvious reasons. All-in-all, it’s not a terrible throwback action movie that only sometimes goes off the rails. Rating: 6.5/10

Next, we have another highly-acclaimed horror film that played back at the Sundance Film Festival back in 2020 (like the recent Nine Days) with David (The Ritual) Bruckner’s THE NIGHT HOUSE (Searchlight Pictures), starring Rebecca Hall as Beth, a teacher whose husband Owen shot himself but not after designing and building their house on the lake. Shortly afterwards, weird things start happening and Beth thinks the house is haunting, but then she discovers a mysterious mirror image on the other side of the lake, and things start getting even weirder.

Definitely don’t want to say too much about this, because whether you like it or not might rely on whether you like the twist(s) in the movie, and I’m not sure that average moviegoers will like them as much as the type of person that goes to the Sundance Film Festival.

Hall is one of my favorite actors, because I feel she can do anything but she’s also very underrated. I mean, she can play a role in Iron Man 3 (one of the best things about that movie) or a movie like Transcendence (mentioned above) or Godzilla vs. King Kong or do comedy like ...um… Holmes and Watson, if anyone would consider that “comedy.” What she hasn’t been able to do is really get people out to theaters with her presence, although one of her more successful non-Marvel movies was Joel Edgerton’s The Gift, and she’s done a couple other good thrillers.

On top of that, the movie is still sitting pretty with 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes one wonder if Sundance buzz is able to transcend the 20-month gap since a movie’s premiere, and Nine Days seems to say otherwise. Another thing going in The Night House’s favor is that there’s been quite a bit of horror movies in recent months, which means this trailer has played in front of a lot of them.

I’m not really sure why Searchlight didn’t put this concurrently on their streaming partner Hulu, but maybe they’re giving theatrical another chance even with COVID still being a concern to many, but maybe not the fan of horror who might want a little escapism. This is only opening in about 2,000 theaters, and I think that might make it tough for it to make more than $3 or 4 million.

Mini-Review: Like with Maggie Q above, Rebecca Hall is an actress who I honestly think can do no wrong. Therefore, David Bruckner’s thriller might already have a bit of an advantage, because I assumed (correctly) that this movie will feature a lot of the filmmaker’s camera trained on her at all times capturing her every emotion, every fear and facial twitch.

As mentioned above, I don’t want to say too much about the plot beyond what you can easily watch in the trailer, but this is only partially the movie you might be expecting. Sure, there’s a good amount of eerie creepiness as Hall’s character tries to find whatever is haunting her house after her husband’s suicide, as well as discovering the identical house that may or may not be in a dream. (It's that kind of movie.)

Much of the film is kind of slow and mopey, and even funny in a weird way, since Hall’s character seems to be going crazy and her behavior (and performance) is quite erratic because of it. Think of it a bit as if you can imagine Hall going into crazy Nicholas Cage moments over the course of the movie or acting that way towards her friends, including Sarah Goldberg’s Claire, who always seems to be saying the wrong thing around her BFF.

One of the things that tends to work about Bruckner’s film is that you’re never quite sure what exactly is happening, but it keeps you interested enough to want to know where it might be going. The other great thing that works even moreso is the film’s amazing score and sound design that helps to keep the viewer on edge through all of the film’s ups and downs.

As the film went along, I presumed correctly that there would probably be some sort of semi-inane M. Night Shyamalan twist, and in some ways, I was right. I certainly didn’t hate the twist when it showed up (or the second or third twist), but I know plenty of fans of more straight-ahead (translation: bad) horror that might be thrown off and even perturbed by so many twists.

The Night House may ultimately be too smart or clever for its own good, since it’s being sold as a straight-ahead ghost story with the twist of this mirror house, but that’s really something that’s very much only on the surface. Any problems with the movie are countered by the fact that Hall is just so good at selling its strange concept.

Rating: 7/10

Lastly, there’s Sean Penn’s film FLAG DAY (MGM), which may or may not get a wide release -- I'm going to guess not, but just in case it does, I might try to figure out how it might do. It tells the story of lifelong criminal and con-man Jon Vogel (Penn) as seen through the eyes of his journalist daughter Jessica (Penn's daughter, Dylan Penn). Based on Jessica Vogel's book "Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life,” the movie covers Jessica's entire life from when her father left her and her brother Nick (played later by Hopper Penn) and mother Patty (Kathryn Winnick) through her own troubled life to when she takes back her life to succeed as a journalist. Also starring Josh Brolin, Dale Dickey, Regina King (blink and you'll miss her), Eddie Marsan and more, it's opening on Friday.

Without knowing whether Flag Day actually is getting any sort of wide release or will just be put into a few hundred theaters, but as you'll read in my review below, it's a very strange movie for MGM (or rather, United Artists Releasing) to have picked up before it premiered at Cannes, because it's just not that great, and it certainly isn't something that might do well in a wide release. Even if somehow MGM gets this movie into 1,000 theaters this weekend, I’m not convinced it can make a million dollars, because I just don’t think many if any people really know about it. Maybe it didn’t turn out to be the awards contender MGM hoped to release it later in the year, but it’s also strange for it to be opening a week after Respect, which I expect to do quite well in its second weekend. I’m just going to assume this will be in a few hundred theaters, and that’s about it.

Mini-Review: I really didn't know much about this movie going into it, other than the fact that it was directed by Penn, co-starred his daughter Dylan, as well as his son, Hopper. (Okay, maybe I didn’t know that last part.) What I didn’t know was that it was about a notorious counterfeiter named Jon Vogel, as seen through the eyes of his journalist daughter Jessica, and as with most of these type of memoir adaptations, it’s only going to be as interesting as how the story is told.

Penn has proven himself to be a decent filmmaker and storyteller, but here, he’s going for something arty that’s almost Terrence Malick-like at times, but needlessly so, because it just feels like he’s trying to make up for the flaws in the story by throwing in things like shaky camera work, overusing voice-over narrative and frequently leans on its soundtrack to try to make up for the weak storytelling.

On the other hand, if Penn was trying to create a great showcase for his daughter Dylan, Flag Day does a great job doing just that, and when you first see her on screen, you might be thrown off by how much she looks like her mother Robin Wright when she was much younger. It’s somewhat interesting to note that Sean Penn has never appeared in a movie he directed, which is only odd because you would think that being in scenes with other actors would make it easier to direct them. (I learned that from Jason Bateman, oddly.) In fact, the very best moments in Flag Day are those between Penn and his daughter, although there's still a lot of overacting and melodrama.

Honestly, I’ve met people like Jon Vogel, who are just constantly trying to make money however they can without worrying about who they hurt with their dishonesty. Because of this, I couldn’t fully get behind the father-daughter aspect of the story vs. just being interested in Jessica’s own personal growth.

In other words, maybe Flag Day should have been prefaced by "Based on a Dull Story,” because it just never really connected with me even though there were a scattered few moments that worked.

Rating: 5/10

Presuming that Flag Day isn’t going nationwide into over 500 theaters (and even if it does, it won’t be in the Top 10), here’s what the Top 10 should look like.

1. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $15 million -47%

2. Paw Patrol: The Movie (Paramount) - $8.4 million N/A

3. Reminiscence (Warner Bros.) - $6.2 million N/A

4. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $5 million -45%

4. Respect (MGM) - $4.8 million -45%

5. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $4.6 million -57%

7. The Night House (Searchlight) - $3.3 million N/A

8. The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros.) - $3.2 million -57%

9. The Protege (Lionsgate) - $2.6 million N/A

10. Old (Universal) - $1.4 million -41%

District 9 director Neil Blomkamp returns with the horror film, DEMONIC (IFC Midnight), in which Carly Pope plays Carly Spenser, who learns her estranged mother Angela (Nathalie Boltt) who disappeared years earlier is now in a coma, although new technology has been created as therapy that will allow Carly to enter her mother's brain and communicate with her. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, read the title and take one effin’ guess.

I went into this one fairly hopeful that maybe Blomkamp had figured out a way of getting out of director’s jail after the last few duds by essentially going the M. Night Shyamalan route i.e. making a super low-budget horror movie without stars that can let him show people that District 9 wasn’t a fluke. But unfortunately, kids, Demonic does the exact opposite, because it’s one of those horrible high concept tech-driven horror movies (not unlike the Blumhouse model) that gets so bogged down in a premise that should thrive on its simplicity that it just fails to keep the viewer entertained, let alone scared.

As soon as Carly enters the mindscape that is her mother’s brain, you know you’re in trouble, because it looks like a scratched DVD or an old video game that’s gotten dirty and is now skipping or crashing just as you’re almost past the hardest level. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie, and after Carly’s first horrific experience in her mother’s brain -- I mean, just writing that and knowing my own mother makes this a scary idea -- you wonder why she’d go back and do it again.

On top of that, there’s just so much exposition with Carly talking about her mother’s disappearance, but before you can get bored, something weird happens like her best friend turns into some weird creature and gets pulled into the mix of whatever is possessing Carly’s mother. I won’t say too much more, because like with The Night House above, you shouldn’t know too much. Unlike that movie, as you learn more, you become more annoyed with the whole idea.

Then on top of that, Pope just isn’t a particularly dynamic actress, so she does little to elevate the weak material, and when her dumb-ass BFF shows up at 3 in the morning, the banter between them is so cringeworthy, you might wonder who wrote this crap. (Surprise: Blomkamp did, so he can’t even blame how bad this movie is on the script.) There’s also what looks like a scary chicken, which just makes the whole thing more laughable than scary.

Demonic is a truly awful movie, taking Blomkamp further down the spiral of a filmmaker that was obviously a one-trick pony and doesn’t seem to be able to prove otherwise.

Rating: 4/10

Now available on digital is Gracie Otto’s documentary, UNDER THE VOLCANO (Universal Pictures Content Group), which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March, and I absolutely loved it, though that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone who knows about my background working in recording studios. The doc is in fact about the Air Studios Montserrat that the late Sir George Martin built in the Caribbean in the ‘70s where some amazing artists like The Police, Duran Duran, Mark Knopfler and others recorded some of the classic rock records of the ‘80s. Of course, like the movie Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm about Rockfield Studios in Wales, I’m a complete suck for these movies about legendary recording studios where great music was recorded, because it feeds one of my primary interests in life: music and specifically the history of rock music. I’m actually going to have an interview with the filmmakers over at Below the Line sometime soon, so you can read a lot more about the movie then.

Because I was away this weekend, I wasn't able to get to any of these. Sorry, publicists!

ON BROADWAY (Kino Lorber) MA BELLE, MY BEAUTY (Good Deed Entertainment) BARBARA LEE: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER (Greenwich) CONFETTI (Dada Filims) CRYPTOZOO (Magnolia) COLLUSIONS (Vertical) Next week, we're back to just a single new wide release -- thank you, God! -- and it's the Universal/Blumhouse remake of the cult horror classic, CANDYMAN.

Incidentally, I couldn’t write this column weekly without the fantastic data found at The-Numbers.com. The site continues to maintain one of the best box office databases on the internet, and I appreciate that being available to us.

#The Weekend Warrior #Reminiscence #Paw Patrol #Flag Day #The Night House #Demonic #The Protege #Movies #Reviews #box office

[marrincostello]

How to Reclaim Lost Habits and Start New Ones : Social Media Examiner

Need to develop better habits? Wondering how uncertainty or change impacts your habits?

To explore how to reclaim lost habits and build new ones, I interview James Clear on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

James is the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. He also publishes a popular newsletter at JamesClear.com.

You’ll learn how environment influences habits and discover the four laws that govern how behaviors or habits are established. You’ll also find tips to create and maintain good habits in your own life.

Listen to the Podcast Now

This article is sourced from the Social Media Marketing Podcast, a top marketing podcast. Listen or subscribe below.

Scroll to the end of the article for links to important resources mentioned in this episode.

Habits: Starting Small

People are building habits all the time so James obviously had many habits before he ever started consciously thinking or writing about them. But his first conscious exposure to habits came from a traumatic event when he was in high school. His recovery brought out a lot of the ideas that he ultimately ended up writing about.

James played a variety of sports growing up, especially baseball. In his sophomore year of high school, James was hit between the eyes with a baseball bat—an accident that broke his nose, the bone behind his nose, and his sphenoid bone (which is fairly deep inside the skull), and shattered both his eye sockets.

Due to the severity of his injuries, he was airlifted to the hospital. There he was placed into a medically induced coma because he kept having seizures and couldn’t undergo the needed surgery.

Learn how to become the top expert in any industry with this new online course.

Now Open! DOORS CLOSE MAY 1ST

Recovery from that injury was the first time in James’s life that he was forced to start small. In James’s first physical therapy session, he practiced basic motor patterns like walking in a straight line. He began routines that seem almost insignificant like going to bed at the same hour each night.

Once he was done with physical therapy, James started training in the gym consistently for the first time in his life. At first, he went once or twice a week. He then increased to three or four times. More small habits, like studying and preparing for class for an hour each day, gave him a sense of regaining control over his life that he felt had been taken away with the injury.

Gradually, James was able to make it back onto the baseball field and played for his college team. He was a starter in his sophomore season and team captain in his junior season. In his senior season at college, he was chosen as an Academic All-American, a team comprised of about 30 scholar-athletes from around the country. With that, James felt like he had truly maximized his potential, given the challenges and circumstances he had faced.

That experience taught James about the power that habits have. We all have things that happen to us, unfortunate circumstances that we don’t ask for. Luck and misfortune play a role in all of our outcomes in life but we don’t have control over those situations. What we do have control over are our habits and the way we respond. This was James’s first practical exposure to those ideas.

Eventually, James started writing about how habits form, how we can use them, the science behind them, and how we can apply all of this to daily life. He’s been doing this now for a decade.

After earning a degree in biomechanics, James went to graduate school at Ohio State University, where his work at the Center for Entrepreneurship inspired him to start his own venture. Right around that same time, James started to read blogs. It was the time that blogs were starting to mature—around 2009/2010. There were a handful of people who were making six figures a year from their blogs, which gave James the idea to start writing his own.

James published his first article at JamesClear.com on November 12, 2012. His work has since been published or republished in many different places including major publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Lifehacker. He wrote two articles a week for his blog from 2012–2015, which built up his audience. His email list had around 220,000 subscribers in mid-2015. That’s when agents and publishers started to contact him.

Atomic Habits: The Book

James says that his book, Atomic Habits, almost wrote itself, in the sense that he had to practice the ideas to be able to write about them. He had to build good writing habits to write a blog and the book. He had to build good exercise habits to get into shape. He had to build good productivity and management habits to create a successful business. He actually had to try it all so he knew what it was like to fail in real life, as well as to succeed.

Early on, like many creators, he felt a touch of imposter syndrome—wondering, “Who am I to be the expert on habits?” A friend told him, “The way you become an expert is by writing about it every week,” and James really internalized that idea.

Once he’d been blogging for 3 years, even he had to admit that there weren’t many other people who had written 150 or 200 articles about habits. Also, he had indeed learned a lot along the way. He had a bit of a science background to back him up as well.

Agents and publishers were reaching out at that point. So he wrote a proposal, went to New York, and pitched his manuscript to publishers for a week and got a variety of bids. James ended up going with the team at Penguin Random House. He spent the next 3 years writing the book so the frequency of his blog posts decreased somewhat during that time.

From 2012–2015, James spent his time building his platform and audience. Many ideas from that period ended up making their way into the book but probably 90% of it was either new or so heavily reworked that it was essentially new. James devoted 2015–2018 to writing the book. It ultimately took 5 or 6 years of work to get the whole thing out. During that time, there were quite a few occasions when James felt like giving up. He wondered if all that effort would be worth it.

Looking back on it now, James is glad that he took the time to do it right the first time, rather than rushing it. There are probably a lot of general life lessons there. Most importantly, if you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?

Atomic Habits launched on October 16, 2018, and remains in the top 11 all-time bestsellers on Amazon. The book has sold over 1.7 million copies worldwide and James is fairly confident he’ll hit 2 million before reaching the 2-year mark. What matters most to James, though, is hearing from people every day whom he was able to help to make changes in their lives.

Why Habits Are Important in the Midst of Uncertainty

Anytime there’s a big change in your environment, there’s a big change in your habits. A lot of people’s environments have changed in a big way right now. They’re working from home instead of at the office. They’re sheltering in place instead of going about their business or traveling. There are big reasons why the topic of habits is certainly relevant at this time.

Your habits can also ground you in times of uncertainty. When you’re not quite sure where to look or what to do, your habits can serve as a solid foundation to return to. Show up and do those well, and you can at least say, “I don’t know what else this day is going to hold or what the news cycle is going to say tomorrow—but I know that I can at least have a productive day.”

The place to direct your attention may simply be to try to win the day, right now. Win the moment in front of you. Returning to your habits and using them to ground you are great ways to do that.

When you don’t have all of those typical routines that you go through—with your commute, the way you get ready for the day, or the kinds of clothes you put on—it’s easy to feel unmoored. You can also end up getting more easily distracted. You can find yourself thinking, “Whatever happens to pop up during the day is what I spend my time on.”

Establishing a good morning routine, getting into the flow of your life the way you normally do, or having a little bit of structure in your day (like taking lunch at the same time) are good examples of ways to keep on track and provide a little bit of a barrier against all of the other things that could creep in.

The Role of Environment Design in Creating Habits

A lot of people feel like they’re victims of their habits. They begin to feel like their habits are happening to them; they don’t feel like they have control or they act before they even realize it.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be the victim of your habits—you can be the architect of them. Environment design is one way to design context or places that serve you and get you moving in the right direction.

Your habits occur within an environment. All behavior takes place within a certain context, within some space in the world. Often, your habits get tied to a particular context.

To illustrate, your couch might be where you have the habit of turning on Netflix at 7:00 PM when you get home from work. The coffee shop might be the context where you have the habit of checking your social media feeds at 10:00 AM when you go for a coffee break. These places get tied to behaviors and you have this behavioral bias when you’re in that space, even if you’re not conscious of it.

Now that everybody’s working from home or sheltering in place, you may sit down at your couch and think, “This is where I want to do some emails or work on this project for a little while.” But without even thinking about it, you may be pulled toward turning on the TV, checking Netflix, browsing social media, or whatever normally happens in that context.

One of the practical takeaways for environment design is that you want to create one space for one use as much as possible. There are a couple of different ways this can come into play.

There’s one writer James knows who has three devices: his desktop computer, his iPad, and his phone. The desktop is where he does all of his writing; social media doesn’t happen there. When he’s at the desktop, he’s writing. The iPad is what he uses to read anything online. His phone is what he uses for social media and texting; he doesn’t even have the apps on the other devices.

By having more clearly delineated spaces, it becomes much easier to stick to the appropriate habit in that space. A lot of people who are working from home for the first time probably don’t have those spaces clearly defined.

When James first started his business, he was working out of his apartment at the time. He had to figure out, “Well, is the kitchen table where I answer emails? Or is that where I eat dinner? Is the couch where I write the next chapter of this thing or is it where I watch TV with my wife? What’s happening where?” Because it wasn’t clearly defined, it became very hard for him to shut off.

People often go one of two ways with this. Either they tend to be very distracted and can’t focus, or they become workaholics and never shut off because there’s no clear delineation of when they should stop the workday. James found himself more in the latter camp; he was always working.

The point is the same, whether we’re talking about digital spaces or physical spaces. You can design your environment with the chairs in your room: one chair can become the reading chair, and when you want to read a book you sit in that chair. The more that you can tie your habits and behaviors to a particular space or a particular device, the easier it becomes to focus on the intended thing and not get pulled off-track.

There’s an even bigger principle of environment design: making sure that the good habits are the path of least resistance. Again, there has been a big change in the environment so you have a big change in behavior. People are working from home and there are a lot of things that are the path of least resistance right now that maybe weren’t before.

First of all, you probably didn’t have a couch and a TV as close to your office as they are now so maybe it’s easier for you to just waste an hour watching TV. Or if you’re working at your kitchen table, maybe the pantry is right around the corner so now it’s very easy to snack all the time.

I mention to James that I’m recording this podcast in my home office, which is maybe a 10′ x 10′ room. I brought my office workstation home and I set it up exactly the same at home as it was at work. I even brought home my office chair because I like it and I can sit in it all day long.

I’ve tried to recreate, as much as possible, the environment that I had in the office. I even have a little light above my desk, although it’s artificial, to simulate what it’s like at work—I have big windows with a lot of natural light. I’ve found that I am actually super-productive. There’s a reclining chair in the corner of my home office but I don’t allow myself to sit back in that little comfy chair until my day is done.

James says you want to restructure the environment so that the behaviors you want to do are obvious. They should be available, visible, easy to see. What’s the first thing you see when you open up your phone screen? When James wanted to build a reading habit, he put Audible on the home screen so that it would be the first thing he’d see and it would remind him to read every time he picked up his phone.

What’s the first thing you see when you look at your kitchen counter? It should be healthier foods—or if you want to put everything away, then nothing. If you have chips and other snacks out, it’s much more likely that you’ll eat those things, versus if you tucked it all away in the top corner of the pantry or down in the bottom of the freezer.

What’s the first thing you see when you walk into your office space, wherever that happens to be? It should be the productive thing or whatever the thing is that you want to work on. Make it obvious, available, visible, easy to see.

Next, make it as easy as possible: frictionless, simple, convenient. Remove steps between yourself and the good behaviors, and increase steps between yourself and the bad ones. It’s what people have always recommended for eating healthy.

If you have ice cream in the fridge, you can just pull it right out. If the closest ice cream is out of the house and down the street two miles away at the grocery store, there’s a lot more friction, so it’s less likely you’re going to do it. You want to take that methodology—make it obvious and make it easy—and apply it to all the spaces you can so it’s more likely that the good behaviors are the path of least resistance.

Re-establishing Lost Habits

A lot of people have great habits that may have been lost or completely disrupted. Going to the gym is one example. What do we do, what’s the process of reclaiming a habit that we’ve lost?

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Obviously, it’s happening a lot now because of our present situation. It also happens in regular daily life. People will do things for a little while, then something changes, and they stop doing them. There are two ways to view the situation to reclaim these positive habits that we may have lost.

The first one is the ‘big picture’ way. Many people who are ambitious or who want to achieve things have many priorities or goals that they want to accomplish. It can be hard for them to say “no” to things because they’ve got a lot of things they want to do. They end up biting off more than they can chew and losing their focus. One ‘big picture’ thing that can help is thinking about life as a series of seasons. Ask yourself, “What season am I in right now?”

Your habits should match your current season. For instance, James doesn’t have kids yet and he’s fairly young. He’s in a period where he’s mostly focused on his career and personal health. He has the ‘family’ and ‘friends’ dials on the burner turned down a little and that’s the season that he’s in.

At some point, he’ll have kids and that will signal a change in seasons. Maybe the career burner will need to get turned down and the family burner will need to get turned up. When that happens, his habits are going to need to shift to match that season.

The first question when you’ve lost a habit that you want to reclaim is, “will reclaiming it truly be the best thing for my current season?” Are you just nostalgic for that old habit because you miss that old season? Maybe it’s really what you need to do but it’s also possible that it shifted because you’ve shifted seasons.

The second consideration is a little more granular. Let’s assume that you actually want to reclaim the habit and it’s the right thing for the season you’re in. Sometimes you just have a shift in your behavior that leads to this.

To visualize this, maybe you were working out consistently. Then you took a new job, or your company moved offices, and your commute changed. At the old office, you passed the gym on your way to work and now you’ve got to go out of your way to get there. Just that is enough to curtail the behavior.

Take the habit that you’re trying to build or that you wish you could reclaim. Now go through this list of, “Where does it happen? Who am I around? What time do I do it? When, in my week or my day does it usually fit in?” Try to get to the root cause of the problem and understand where the points of friction are.

James’s mother had built a habit of exercising at the YMCA near her home. She packed her bag in the morning and went to work. As she was leaving work in the evening, she’d stop by the YMCA before she went home. But there were two parts of the process, when she dug into it deeper, that she realized she didn’t like.

One, she didn’t like having to remember to pack her bag before work. She just wanted to get up, do her normal routine, and go to work. She didn’t want to have to worry about the gym bag. And, two, she didn’t like working out in front of other people at the YMCA.

So she bought an at-home yoga and workout program, which enabled her to exercise without having to do either of those things she didn’t like. She went to work and came home but then she was able to work out right away. That solved those two problems: having to pack her bag and working out publicly.

Whatever it is for you, ask yourself what the points of friction are that prevent you from reclaiming that habit. Then try to solve those specific problems rather than the big picture problem of wishing you had more willpower. Then get more specific. Why aren’t you working out? What exactly is the bottleneck? Identifying that can help you troubleshoot a little more, pinpoint where to focus your attention, and get that habit back.

Setting New Habits in Motion

Anytime there’s a big change in the environment, there’s a big change in behavior. That creates opportunity.

James finds that quite a few people he hears from who travel a lot have a hard time building habits. It makes a lot of sense, based on the premise that habits are tied to a context. If the context is always changing—you’re always going to a new city, always going to a new hotel—it’s really hard to build a stable habit because you’re in unstable environments and you’re always shifting.

James suggests that rather than focusing on the shifting context, focus on a stable part of the process to anchor the habit to. You could decide that after you check in at the hotel, you always say one thing you’re grateful for.

You don’t know which hotel it’s going to be, you don’t know what city you’re going to be in, but you know that you’re going to be checking in. Or after you set the luggage on the bed or the luggage rack in your room, you’ll do 10 burpees. (It’s like a pushup, a jumping jack, and crawling onto the ground and back up.)

You don’t know which room it is, you don’t know what it’ll look like, but you know that you’re going to be setting your luggage down at some point. So you’re trying to find these stable parts of the process to build on.

We’re all working from home now. In a lot of ways, this experience feels like it was forced upon us. “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t want to be working from home. It’s upsetting all of my behaviors and my routines.” But we can turn it into an opportunity by asking, “What’s the new stable thing now?”

Since you don’t have the commute, maybe you’re able to sleep in a little bit longer so you can build better sleep habits. Now that you don’t have to leave the house, you’re doing less context-switching. Maybe now you can build cleaning and tidying habits that you didn’t normally have. Find the pieces, the places, or the parts of the stay-at-home process that are stable, and tie the new behaviors to them.

Stanford professor BJ Fogg has a method he calls Tiny Habits. His formula is to say, “After I do X, then I will do Y.” X is your current habit, Y is your new habit. You can do this throughout your day as you’re looking around your new experience, as you’re working from home.

Let’s say that you already have a habit of making a cup of coffee when you wake up in the morning. That’s already stable; you know that’s going to happen. You can use that as the springboard to build a new habit. Let’s say you want to build a habit of meditating. You could say, “After I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds.” The current habit, the stable thing, becomes the anchor for the new habit that you’re trying to build.

In that way, working from home is a huge opportunity because all you’ve got to do is look around. What are all the stable things that you can count on doing? Each one of those could potentially be a connection to a new habit that you can insert into your new routine.

The Four Laws of Behavior Change

Four different things are necessary if you want a good habit to stick. You don’t always need all of them but the more you have working in your favor, the more likely the habit will stick.

Make It Obvious

The more obvious, available, visible, and easy to see a habit is, the more likely it is to catch your attention and to get started. Some of the environment design concepts we talked about are like that.

Make It Attractive

The more attractive, appealing, or motivating a habit is, the more likely you are to feel the desire to do it.

People think, “It’s the same habit. If I didn’t like doing it the first time, why would it suddenly now be attractive?” As an example, let’s say you go to bed tonight and you think, “All right, I listened to this guy talk about habits. Tomorrow’s going to be the day I’m going to go for a run.” You set your alarm for 6:00 AM.

Then 6:00 AM rolls around, your bed is warm, and it’s cold outside. You think, “Well, I’ll just press snooze instead.” But, what if you turn the clock back a day, and you text a friend and say, “Hey, can we meet at the park at 6:15 and go for a run?” Well, now 6:00 AM rolls around—and your bed is still warm and it’s still cold outside—but if you don’t get up and go for a run, you’re a jerk because you’d be leaving your friend at the park all alone.

Suddenly what you’ve done is you’ve simultaneously made it more attractive to get up and go for a run, and less attractive to press snooze and sleep in.

There’s a variety of strategies like that in the book. This particular one is called a commitment device. It’s a choice that you make in the present moment—”I’m going to text my friend to have an accountability partner tomorrow”—that locks in your behavior in the future. It changes the calculus that’s going on in your mind and makes it more appealing than it otherwise would be. It doesn’t make it easier in that case but it does make it a little more attractive.

Make It Easy

The more convenient, frictionless, easy, and simple a habit is, the more likely we are to stick to it.

We touched on a couple of ways to do this like removing friction, reducing steps, and making it as simple as possible. Another effective technique is to scale it down. James has a concept in the book called, “The Two Minute Rule.” The basic idea is to take whatever habit you’re trying to build and scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less to do.

“Read 40 books a year” becomes “read one page.” Or “do yoga 4 days a week” becomes “take out my yoga mat.” Sometimes people resist that. They understand the concept but they also know the real goal is to do the whole workout so they don’t want to take their yoga mat out.

Here’s an example from the book. A man named Mitch ended up losing more than 100 pounds. When he first started going to the gym, he had a rule for himself. For the first 6 weeks, he wasn’t allowed to stay for longer than 5 minutes. He’d get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, and drive home. It sounds ridiculous. Obviously, this isn’t going to get the guy the results he wants.

But when you step back, it becomes clear that he was mastering the art of showing up. He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym 4 days a week, even if it was only for 5 minutes. That’s something the Two Minute Rule helps us get over: that urge to do things perfectly, and if we can’t do it perfectly, then why bother?

There’s a much deeper truth about habits that people often overlook. The habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can worry about scaling it up or optimizing it.

There’s something about getting started, like putting the yoga mat out or showing up for a couple of minutes at the gym. There’s something that happens inside our minds. Once we get started, the flywheel starts to spin and it gets easier. Most of the time, it feels like most of the friction is at the beginning. If you can just show up and get into the gym, then it’s much easier to finish. Or if you just start writing the book chapter or write one sentence, then it’s much easier to keep going.

Ed Latimore has this great quote that says, “The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.” That’s exactly the idea. If you can just manage to open the front door, then a lot cascades from there. The Two Minute Rule helps you get to that. That’s what “make it easy” means. Not only to do easy things but also to make it as easy as possible to do the things that pay off in the long run.

Make It Satisfying

Behaviors need to be enjoyable. They need to be pleasurable or have some kind of positive emotion associated with them for you to want to repeat them. If you do something and it has a consequence that isn’t that enjoyable or is just neutral, your brain essentially wonders, “Why would I repeat that? I didn’t really get anything out of it.”

This is one of the challenges of building good habits. It also is very illuminating why, in part, it’s so easy to build a lot of bad habits and so hard to build good ones. You can think about pretty much any behavior as producing multiple outcomes across time—an immediate outcome and an ultimate outcome.

For a lot of bad habits, the immediate outcome is actually favorable. The immediate outcome of eating a donut is great. It’s sweet, it’s sugary, it’s tasty, and it’s enjoyable. Or even something like smoking a cigarette. Maybe you get to socialize with a friend outside of work, it curbs your nicotine craving, or it reduces stress. It’s only the ultimate outcome—6 months, 2 years, or 5 years from now, if you keep doing it—that’s unfavorable.

Meanwhile, good habits are often the reverse. The immediate outcome of going to the gym is almost unfavorable. You go to the gym for a week and your body’s sore, you look the same in the mirror, and the scale hasn’t really changed. It’s only if you keep doing it for 6 months, a year, or 2 years, that you get that favorable outcome you want.

A big part of the challenge of getting good habits to stick and breaking the bad ones is finding a way to pull the long-term rewards of your good habits into the present moment. If it feels enjoyable or pleasurable right now, you get a little bit of feedback that it’s good.

Conversely, you need to find a way to take those long-term consequences, or the costs of your bad habit, and pull it into the present moment. That way you feel a little bit of the pain right now, and think, “Oh, I should avoid that.”

That’s one way to summarize or distinguish between good habits and bad habits. The cost of your good habits is in the present, the cost of your bad habits is in the future. That misalignment between the two leads to a lot of unproductive or unhealthy behaviors because we tend to prioritize the present moment, the immediate short-term rewards.

This principle is so strong that in Atomic Habits, James refers to it as “The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change,” which states that behaviors that get immediately rewarded get repeated, and behaviors that get immediately punished get avoided. It’s really about how quickly you feel successful or unsuccessful that drives you toward or away from certain behaviors. Satisfaction and reward are also important components of getting those good or bad habits to stick.

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

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[massive-mythopoetic-mashup]

I hope you don't consider this too prying, but are you strain_of_thought? If so, I love what your doing with RWBY. I've always thought the strongest thing about RWBY were how the allusions played into the characters and story, but I always thought it didn't really use them as much as it should. All of your ideas paint the idea RWBY is using them far more effectively than I thought you could! One question, where do you look for allusions? You make some connections I would never think of.

I _am_ Strain of Thought! I also go by Karma Chimera in some places. This blog was supposed to be for posting concise, thorough, and well-formatted explanations of allusions I’ve found in RWBY, but unfortunately I’ve really had very little time to devote to it over the past two months due to crazy life events. Also, my thoughts on how the big theory should be organized and presented have been constantly evolving, largely as a result of having nice people who humor my attempts to explain it to them, and that’s somewhat held up producing finalized presentations. Most of the G.U.N. theory has been informally described in back-and-forth conversation over on my Discord server, but it’s very, very long and a mess to slog through.I want to be clear, before I get into this: the stuff I talk about on reddit and here and on the wiki and the RT forums and on Discord is not stuff I figured out overnight. I was a passionate but casual fan of RWBY who wasn’t into RT at all and didn’t even start watching the series until late summer of 2016. I was deeply haunted by Pyrrha’s death after finishing Volume 3 and dwelled on it for several months without finding any understanding of it; I wasn't even able to bring myself to watch Volume 4 until the last episode had been posted. Then, about five months ago, I had a sudden epiphany about one character- which in short order lead to another, much much _much_ bigger epiphany about another character that completely changed my perception of the show; since then I’ve been tearing the show apart piece by piece with an obsessiveness that still hasn’t really abated at all. At this point, I have spent many hundreds of hours researching the allusions in RWBY. So please don’t feel bad for not having immediately caught all of the things I point out. I had to _work_ to find them, and I didn’t begin to see them for a long time.That said, let’s talk about that first epiphany.The basic method I use for looking for allusions in RWBY is something you might call the “Cast of Characters” method. First, take a RWBY character who has an overt literary allusion that you're certain of- let's say Penny. Then list all the important supporting characters in the story of the inspirational character who the RWBY character alludes to. For Pinocchio that would be Geppetto, The Blue Fairy, Jiminy Cricket, The Puppet Show Master, The Fox and The Cat, The Coachman, Lampwick, and The Terrible Dogfish. Now, you can’t really tell the story of Pinocchio without having all of these characters also represented in some capacity. RWBY does have some characters who appear to overtly play some of these roles: Penny’s ‘Father’ is Geppetto, Ciel Soleil is The Blue Fairy, and Ironwood is the Puppet Show Master. But other important characters are conspicuously missing- Jiminy Cricket, for example. So go down the list and ask: “Who is playing this necessary role in order for this story to be told?”Doing this successfully often requires a lot of familiarity with the work in question, which means you often have to go back and actually _read_ something you’ve only picked up on through osmosis or adaptations. Sometimes you’re going to need to sit down with some 19th century children’s literature for a few hours before you’ll be able to pick up on the subtle cues that are hidden in RWBY. Reading material _about_ the work, such as Wikipedia articles on the individual characters, can also be hugely instructive.Getting back to Penny Polendina and the search for Jiminy Cricket- who is Penny's conscience? Who tries to answer her difficult questions and guide her morally and keep her out of trouble? Who is a Christ-like figure, especially in their purity of heart? (No, seriously. ‘Jiminy Cricket’ is literally a bowdlerization of ‘Jesus Christ’. Carlo Collodi never named him, simply calling him ‘The Talking Cricket’, so Disney named him after a clean expletive.) Who is repeatedly separated from Penny and ultimately fails to keep her out of trouble but nevertheless provides an example that inspires her and helps her become a much better person in the long run? _Who can jump really high?_Realizing that Ruby Rose is Jiminy Cricket, and that the writers had snuck that right past me in plain sight, was the first forehead slap that made me suspect there was much more to RWBY than what meets the eye. You can take the “Cast of Characters” method and systematically run every character in the show through it; if you do, some startling connections can jump out at you fairly quickly. Also, for RWBY characters with mythological, legendary, or historical origins, there’s often a wealth of supplemental information to be found about their supporting characters outside of their source stories themselves.For another example: Has it occurred to you that there might be important supporting characters in _Joan of Arc_’s story? Reading up on Joan of Arc, you’ll find that she consistently described her visions as always containing the same three saints: Saint Michael, Saint Margaret of Antioch, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. We can read up on these three saints in turn, and in doing so we learn some interesting facts:Saint Michael is actually the Archangel Michael, revered by military orders as a soldier who is the leader of God’s armies and battles demons, but also paradoxically strongly associated with medicine and tranquil, healing waters. He’s an angel of mercy: he repeatedly prevents deaths, and is specifically named as the angel who provided the ram to prevent Abraham from killing his own son Isaac. Most remarkably, Michael is strongly associated with Christ, and many protestant traditions have held that Michael actually _is_ Christ in his heavenly, pre-incarnation form.Saint Margaret of Antioch was the daughter of a demon-worshipping pagan priest, who abandoned her as an infant when he had a vision that she would become a Christian. She was raised by a Christian nurse who took her in, and became a shepherdess as a teenager. As she grew up she developed a fanatical, virginal devotion to Christ that bordered on romantic fixation. She resisted worldly temptations by a pagan lord who saw her herding and was captivated by her beauty, and she kept her faith through being tortured by him after her rejection. Eventually, she faced and was swallowed by a demonic dragon, but was able to escape from its belly because the cross she wore irritated the dragon’s stomach so much that it vomited her up.Saint Catherine of Alexandria, lastly, is an absurd Mary-Sue even by biblical standards: she is not just a saint but also a martyr, a brilliant scholar, and a _princess_. She brought _herself_ to Christ through study and boldly appeared before the emperor of Rome to rebuke him for his cruelty. The emperor summoned _fifty_ pagan philosophers to argue against her, and she defeated them in debate one after another _and converted them to christianity_, prompting their immediate executions. She was whipped and imprisoned, but hundreds of people came to visit her in the dungeon and she converted all of _them_ as well, including the emperor’s _own wife_. The emperor attempted to use torture upon her, but every torture device used upon her magically broke, including a massive breaking wheel she was strapped to that was specially built to kill her. Even when she was finally beheaded, her body was carried away by angels and placed upon Mount Sinai where God spoke to Moses; there her body remained fresh without rotting, her beautiful hair never stopped growing, and she continuously issued a ‘stream of healing oils’.Are you seeing any patterns here? Can you think of three people in Jaune’s life who exhibit some of these traits? I hope you can! Now understand: I knew basically _nothing_ about Joan of Arc when I started this other than the basic “Hears voices, drives the English out of France, gets captured and burned at the stake.” bits that you can pick up through cultural osmosis as an American. I vaguely remembered her liberating Orleans entirely because of a campaign mission in Age of Empires 2. You ask where I look for allusions- my answer is, I pick a character and just start reading things about them until I feel like I’ve exhausted the resources I know to look at, and then I move on to the next one. Then later I end up coming back for additional passes with a fresh sense of what I’m looking for and what to read, and a better sense of how the show is written, and find even more connections. RWBY has given me ten times the education in western literature that college did, and even if I’m wrong about everything, I still want to thank the creators of the show for that. They couldn’t get me to read the _Iliad_ in school, but I cracked it open and tried my level best for Pyrrha.Not only does taking the thorough approach and investigating seemingly less promising character allusions like Joan of Arc allow you to find layers to the show you’d likely never pick up on otherwise, but finding who _else_ a RWBY character is drawn from besides their overt, top-level allusion often becomes very instructive in understanding them and the ways that they differ from that top-level character. I’ve repeatedly had my perception of a RWBY character completely changed by discovering some lower level allusion that recontextualizes them, and I’ve found paradigm-shifting revelations in sources as diverse as black-and-white 1950s American western films, the works of Dr. Seuss, and episodes of _Sesame Street_. I’ve generally found that the top level character allusion informs a RWBY character’s personality more (and obviously their appearance) but the immediately underlying character allusion has a much bigger impact on their story and character arc- and sometimes there are third and fourth and even _fifth_ level allusions with major impacts on a character. In one case, the layers of significant allusions go down to a _dozen_. What took me almost all of the past five months to realize is that RWBY characters are designed exactly like RWBY weapons: they’re crazy awesome mashup combinations of multiple completely different things that externally _appear_ to just be extra cool versions of one thing, but then at critical moments they perform dramatic, spectacular transformations to reveal other essential aspects of themselves that have existed within them all along.For all the reasons I’ve mentioned already, if you want to be able to perceive the allusions within RWBY, the most important thing is to just experience the world of literature it’s drawn from. In the interest of helping fans do that, I’ve started a regular weekly online film viewing group where RWBY fans can watch and discuss films together whose stories RWBY alludes to. The group is open to everyone and based from my Discord server. If you want to learn more, or maybe just watch some good films, come check it out:https://discord.gg/PMNSfhK

#answer #essay #RWBY #The G.U.N. Theory #RWBY Movie Matinee #Penny Polendina #Ruby Rose #Jaune Arc #Pinocchio #Jiminy Cricket #Joan of Arc #St. Michael #St. Margaret of Antioch #St. Catherine of Alexandria

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Auteur Theory about Lino Brocka Films: Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag & Insiang

Auteur Theory about Lino Brocka Films: Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag & Insiang A Movie Review for Film Language, Midterms Part 1.   Introduction & Auteur Theory

Catalino Ortiz Brocka a Filipino film director who made an amazing amount of recognitions as well as several types of film that becomes outstanding later on the awarding because of how he handled and manipulated his creations to provide deep meaning, intention and was they were later showed on as a movie especially during the Marcos era. Lino Brocka from his films latter inspires youths as you keep watching the films that he made, watching films again and again can let you see that the movie is telling you something. He was an intentional film maker when he created his films and you can tell from the way he directed his films meaning, there are actors that are only prescribe to his films over and over again starring his films without any difficulty and the repeating patterns from the casts to who it dedicates to could be seen from every part of his films. His films created in the 90’s are the types of films that has several dictations and they have a flow in their parts, not just your typical shake, rattle, roll series meaning, the film he creates has context, literally you just do not stare at the cinema just to see how the movie comes and goes you somehow become intrigued and mold yourself if you were in their shoes what would you do, how will you survive in those situations. It’s one of those movie directors that gives emphasis on what reality can do to you and how your mindset will be evolving of, but that is if you had not watch the film he makes yet. You’ll end up beguiled and unexpectedly want to change the fate of the protagonist’s choices and ended up doing it for them in your seats. The way he writes his scripts are unimaginable meaning, you won’t know what will happen next, you think that the characters will obviously do that, but only ending up doing other decisions that you have not thought of. You never expect a Filipino to get these kinds of achievement in life, a wise and cunning tactic he had created to hide the root of his intended target for his films. People like Lino Brocka do not often appear much like the creators of this generation, yes some current directors can satisfy the wants of millennial youths with their genres but the agenda to that is how the directors will be able to actually satisfy the mind of the youths into understanding the factual truth of today’s actualization like how Lino Brocka was able to confidently hide his true message to the masses much more to the President Marcos back then which he was attacking the system of President Marcos because of how he was handling the country and it’s fellow citizens with communism, the difficulty of being able to provide and be provided is thought to be simpler with Marcos as the leader thinking that he’d do great things, which in some ways President Marcos did but the citizens were never satisfied with anything for the pain and suffering were the cries and that made Lino Brocka think that maybe he’d create something for fun but with realization of the countries situation that is how amazing Lino Brocka was and his mindset for every film remained the same and still sane for all he could use his skills was to announce to the public that are qualified enough to understand his films to shout the prejudice of many Filipinos.

Maynila sa mga kuko ng Liwanag

Filipinos from the early centuries in our country had this vague and risky thoughts that going and longing for Manila can make all wishes happen, from being poor to rich, uneducated to educated, goals to achievements. Filipinos out righted told themselves that Manila Is considered as the tome of ‘hope’ for everyone. You can change and could be anything you want to be that you dreamt of since you were little. What’s sad is that the most affected Filipinos were the ones living in the provincial area because all the ones who can buy anything are settled immediately in Manila and tend to over crowd the sanctum and dirtying the vicinity with all their seven deadly sins mixed in one point, working hard to earn income and selling their souls to the corporates becoming a slave to let only one reach the highest summit in human satisfactory to hierarchical status, in which should be the opposite. Provincial Filipinos should be the one earning the highest income of all especially in the agricultural course because of how they handle to soil to the sea and so on, they should be the one receiving all the merit and further enhance the country with their efforts, but of course, they are belittled and scammed at thinking that their efforts were all easy as one, two, and three and therefore should be considered as the lowest importance of the human needs. The introduction of industrial mindset has officially  decrease the intellectual of few modern Filipinos because of how they treat others as competition and forgetting that they are Filipinos to other Filipinos too, but of course the society rule was bound to happen either way and there is no escape. Manila a word to sought their dreams and goals in life to remove inequality and disregard their harsh life for their selves or their family, or so they thought and later on regret and lose confidence of their humanity, values, and morals in life and later on fell into despair. The youths are taught that everything in Manila is heaven while those living in Manila thinks everything in Manila is hell. Well to understand ones suffering one must go through it and let the cycle continuously drive us all insane over and over again. Once entered the hell hole called ‘Manila’ they later on regret how dreadful the municipality is and will be of in the near future, even now ‘Manila’ has never changed it ways. Lino Bracko who directed this theorizing film made it obvious what Manila’s situation in worst cases the deepest part of the disgusting area too. Now from the film, simple two love birds that was denied by fate because of one simple contract by their lack of suspicion and knowledge of strangers. Julio the innocent young man from a certain barrio near the shores to fish as his livelihood that has a girl friend named Ligaya whom also comes from the same barrio that Julio grew up from saying that they were childhood buddies. But one day their fate changes, from an unknown woman suddenly appearing in front of Liagaya’s house and saying that she is in need of new beautiful lady recruits that is able to work and tend to the need of their orders from the one recruiting them. Julio insists to not go they do not know of her and unsure of her legality to recruit members, but for Ligaya it was like a chance to go to Manila and seek help to assist for her family and as well as Julio for their future to marry and so on hearing that Julio has no choice but to accept the decision of Ligaya for it was a chance as well to live to a better life then after Ligaya went to say farewell to all her dear love ones. Later on, months passed that the mother received a later that the unknown woman apologizes for Ligaya’s disappearance for she stole a jewelry and ran away which was written in the letter, they were all dismayed and saddened by what happened to Ligaya. But, Julio thought that Ligaya could never do such a thing and therefore realized that there’s something wrong with what the letter was trying to say. As Julio packed his things to recollect where Ligaya could be and find the unknown old woman that abducted and framed Ligaya for stealing then running away to be found and question her if what she says is actually the truth, while in Manila already Julio kept on standby at that certain are where he might actually conclude that Ligaya is there and therefore insisted on staying to further see. Staying in Manila, Julio worked at a construction site hoping that with the amount of money earned he might look farther to where Ligaya is, and along the way he made friends or buddies as we call them along the construction site. Further along the film, he found Ligaya by accident when she’s on her way to the nearest church in Binondo, Manila the roughest area where no one wants to be in. Anyways, as Julio took a step closer to insure that, that really is Ligaya was to follow her onto the chambers to seat beside her as he questions her differentially unlike the norms she used to be like way back in their seashore barrio, there she looked vague with the face of awe and guilty expression she showed when Julio truly found her in the damps of Manila like a savior saving the damsel in distress. But unfortunately Ligaya refused the offer for she was clamped and cannot escape the grasp of the Chinese man that bought her to his arms and saved her from the danger of opium addiction that they give to women in prostitution. Also, Ligaya refused because with a sad news she had a child with the Chinese man that swindled and saved her, caring for her the Chinese man doesn’t want to hurt her and the child as long as she follows his order in which Ligaya going insane of not knowing what to do has no choice but to follow instead, thinking that no one can save her for it was long months that she disappeared and maybe Julio already can’t find her. After their long awaited reunion Julio decided to make a plan for a plot against the Chinese man and then ran away along with the child so that she’ll be away from harm and go back home, Ligaya widely hesitated because that plan doesn’t work against the Chinese man and would just end up dead if the plan failed and will be jailed forever. But in the end, they still decided to come up with the idea of meeting very early so that Ligaya can escape quietly by making an excuse that she’ll go somewhere for a minute but then night falls as Julio waits across the area where Ligaya lives and was later revealed after Julio went back to his cousins place and took a drink to ease Julio after the cousin saw in the newspaper that Ligaya was already dead and doesn’t want Julio to do any risky move if ever he found out of her death. Huge mistake to think that Julio will be calm after taking a drink together he went rampant and decided to take a leave to make a plan to kill the Chinese man that killed Ligaya, without the notice of the cousin. Julio filled with rage and hatred decided to buy a small icepick to use as a weapon to kill the Chinese man, as he went on in the place Ligaya used to live Julio attacked the Chinese man and as the lady beside the dead Chinese man yelled for the police to help catch Julio fleeing from the scene as they catches Julio in a dead narrow space, Julio knew that it was over the day that he decided to kill someone and accepted the fact of being left off since Ligaya whom he lives for is already gone, he fights back the mobs that is also trying to kill him but in the end he was overpowered and ends of dying being helpless because he was fueled with rage and hatred that the has done something unavoidable and unforgivable to the eyes of the society.

Insiang

Incompetency and the lack of suitable needs provided for you and your family unable to do a protest, strike, anything that you could get your hands on to let other people higher than you to hear your scream of pain and suffering from the moment you were born onto the earth and thought that your destiny rests in these slumps of greyed engraved life placed upon you by the almighty one, cursing everything on across your path hurting everyone alongside you so that you are able to not only suffer alone but at least you brought one down together with you until your very last breath to speak and shout what you want to say until it works no more and as the                time pass by you are and only one rotting heavily to your core unable to speak, hear, and move. Poverty in this film is seen as something disastrous and a stigma to all nation in the Philippines as Lino Brocka thoroughly shows the scams of the damned ones and how they are able to maintain their precious life by forcing their very best to become them until they sprout wings to be free from the shackles of an uneasy life they’ve been given. It has been long years ever since we had issues about poverty as seen from the world statistics we are closer to the graph as of now than we used to be because of the introduction of immediate Industry to every Filipinos.  If I were to describe poverty it would be a gray version of the colorful world the others have with the state of lacking and be socially accepting to have no amount of money to buy their needed material items, a scarce of life passed down to one member to another leading a domino effect of never ending darkness to the ones in front of it and inadequacy of sustenance of abundances this is how the girl from the film survived. Her name is the film itself, Insiang a woman who lacked a father leaving her mother taking care to all of them altogether with their cousins living in the house of frailty and happily joyous working together to unite and restore their former home once lost by replacing them with anew. Insiang, a daughter that grew up in labor working hard for her mother to earn by selling items that she had gathered every day to support the family. The daily struggle to earn and see how they will turn out tomorrow is like a grim fairytale for Insiang and her family not knowing what tomorrow lies for them and how it might change their life forever. Until one moment where Insiang’s mother had a fight with their cousin’s mother that made them leave the house and hate each other for it by then only Insiang and her mother living together in the house that filled them whole only by giving them now a cold shoulders every night. The next day when Insiang was carrying her heavy baggage’s to sell to the place where she goes every day there’s this man that approached her and seems to have affection for her by trying to help her carry her items, but of course Insiang an independent woman who can totally do what she’s told to refused the man and went away. The man looked amused and didn’t further interrogate Insiang of her items. Later on the film, the news of Insiang’s mother having a sexual relationship with the young man that likes Insiang and used Insiang’s mother to get closer to her and gain her taste. WELL, further along the film we can see that because of Insiang’s mother fallen deeply in love with the man she cannot stand whenever she sees Insiang and the man together and because of that Insiang and her mother had a huge fight and later on Insiang could not stand by anymore due to her mother’s blindness and not believing her after what everything happened and only hopes that her mother would listen to her as a mother figure would do but instead all she would get is the shame and a none existent love that her mother now gives her all because of that one man who went into their lives and destroyed them both all because of greed and lust the man holds to the two used them for his own gain. Insiang going insane of not knowing who to trust and hold on anymore all alone in their own home can’t do anything until her mind break and had a devious plan all the while killing all those who once loved and but now left by her because of fear and injustice understanding. In the end, Insiang’s devious and unimaginable skill of manipulating the people around her because of her sanity decreasing very low, succeeded and now the man is dead by the hands of whom her mother loved and to that also her mother went to jail by the act of killing, or we can say a homicide case that happened because of jealousy, hatred, and greed and now Insiang is free of pain and suffering and will continue to live moving forward towards her newly founded life unchained by all those that pained her from her own home making her sane once more, or so we thought. This is what poverty could do to anyone living all those misfortune life that is ahead of them, unprotected, unloved, and no trust can be found to the place that stabbed you in the back whilst living closer to them as we all thought that we are safe from harm even if it’s the slums we all live in, but in the end what kills you is the one that truly supported you since birth and all the toxicity held went on a rampage and killed the ‘you’ in the final moments.