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foundthe8wing · 4 years

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I know exactly what I mean when I say “the dndads team is endangering minors in their spaces,” but I think from the outside, seeing that sentiment repeated, it’s easy to interpret it as rhetoric or as something like “if you’ve ever mentioned the existence of sex you’re a danger to children” when that isn’t the argument here at all. So I want to do my best to lay out why we call it dangerous.

CW: discussion of grooming (a bit more specifically than in previous posts of mine)

For context, these are the rules for the dndads patron server, at least as of October 4:

[ID: a discord message from Freddie:

In order to keep this a safe and welcoming community, we have some rules and guidelines everyone must follow.

If you need help or if anyone makes you uncomfortable (in chat or in DMs), the mods are here for you! You can ping them in the chat by using @/moderator, message the group using @/ModMail, or if you’d prefer to discuss a matter privately 1-on-1, you can also PM the community manager @/Ash or moderators directly.

Listen to the mods! They enforce the rules. Infractions are handled on a case-by-case basis. Breaking the rules will result in you being muted for a duration determined by severity and infraction history.

We’ve enabled nicknamed editing on the server, so please feel free to append your preferred pronouns at the end of your username.

Always remember these basic guidelines:

This is an 18+ space. Per Patreon’s policy, you must be 18+ or have parental permission.

Keep conversation polite. NSFW content is not allowed!

Stay on topic! If you find yourself drifting off topic, move to another channel. When in doubt, go to #shoot-the-breeze or #shoot-the-breeze-2 /End ID]

You’ll note the policy against NSFW content, but damn, I don’t know what kind of world they live in where linking kink tests and writing erotica are SFW activities. Definitely wouldn’t fly at my job, I’ll tell you that. Anyway.

I’m not saying that everyone who’s ever discussed sex in the presence of a minor is a predator, or that these discussions are always, definitely a slippery slope to kids getting groomed. But I’m saying that when the cast says things like “Grant has never jerked off in that house” and “there’s so much sexual tension between Bella and Dr. Cullen” and “Glenn definitely looks through Nick’s porn history,” among other things; and when they then allow people to regularly discuss sex acts and share kink test results and erotica in their server (yes, even if it’s meant as a joke), they’re making it much easier for predators to approach minors, and much harder for those minors to then be able to tell when lines are being crossed.

You know the saying about how you can boil a frog and it won’t hop out of the pot as long as you heat it up slowly? The server is getting uncomfortably warm, and it makes it that much easier for someone to turn it up a few degrees in private. It contributes to things like, for example, 9th grade me not pushing back when a then-20-year old made comments on all the “sexual tension” between me and one of my classmates (in response to me telling a story from when we were eleven).

I believe that if a 14-year-old in a position like the one I was in said “hey, this person keeps asking invasive sexual questions and I’m uncomfortable,” the mods would do something (though whether it’d be handled well is still questionable), but I don’t feel confident that that hypothetical kid has a good reason to believe that’s the case. If I was in a similar situation, I can’t cite anything that would make me feel like I’d be supported and have my concerns addressed, or that would validate my discomfort with the situation, and I can actually point to a lot of things that send the opposite message.

Because if that kid takes a look around the server and sees that plenty of adults here are bringing up sexual topics in this all-ages space anyway, that no one in charge is objecting to users sexually discussing 13-year-old characters, that Anthony considers “why, did the podcast make you nut” a perfectly acceptable thing to say unprompted . . . it doesn’t give a great impression that whoever they approach will take them seriously if they ask for help. It doesn’t give them a good basis for trusting their instinct that something is off with the way they’re being spoken to. That piece is vital, and it’s where the cast, community manager, and moderators have failed over and over and over.

Simply saying “if anyone makes you uncomfortable (in chat or in DMs), the mods are here for you!” isn’t sufficient when it’s not coupled with a direct statement that adults approaching minors about sexual topics isn’t okay. It’s not cool for adults to be having explicit conversations with or around minors. There is no good reason for an adult to be asking or speculating about a minor’s sexual behaviors, or discussing their own sex life with minors, or sharing/discussing explicit media with them. Make that clear. It’s not the kid’s job to automatically know this; it’s your job to tell them.

(Which isn’t to say that an action has to definitively cross that line in order for someone to express discomfort-- “these things aren’t okay, and if you’re unsure, you can reach out anyway” would be a good approach in my book, but the second part on its own isn’t enough.)

Right now, if a teen in the dndads server is being groomed, all of the responsibility is placed on this teen to:

Identify the fact that they’re uncomfortable (and then choose to examine that discomfort rather than immediately downplay it)

Articulate why this is bothering them

Convince themself (and, potentially, whoever they approach about it) that it’s a big enough deal to bring up at all

Speaking as someone who’s been there: it can be really fucking hard to do. But it’d be a hell of a lot easier if the cast said anything to the effect of “hey, adults shouldn’t be initiating this kind of conversation with you,” or if they made any effort to rein in the “spicier” conversations in the server.

Adults detailing their kinks in the presence of kids isn’t cool, even if none of those kids say they’re uncomfortable. I need an indication that a single person managing the dndads patron server understands that and is taking it into account.

Nobody wants to be the killjoy who says “hey, I’m not comfortable.” Especially not in an environment where there’s a pattern of such concerns getting dismissed and belittled. Double especially when the behavior is coming from some of the most influential members of the community. It’s not fair--and not safe--to foist all of that pressure onto an uncomfortable kid, and it’s absolutely crucial that the people with power get ahead of it and take on the responsibility of calling out and shutting down unacceptable behavior.

In order to be effective, “reach out if you’re uncomfortable” needs to also be coupled with an apology for the way they’ve been conducting themselves. Because if they don’t apologize for things like the examples I listed above, for the ways their content and actions have contributed to harmful ideas about consent and about sexualizing kids, for allowing the server to exist in this state for so long, then they’re implicitly saying either that those things were okay, or that they’re above those standards. Not a great look no matter how you slice it.

TL;DR: allowing this level of sexual discussion around minors, especially in the absence of any type of messaging or warning regarding grooming, makes it easy for those minors to get preyed on. And saying “we’re here for you if you’re uncomfortable” doesn’t on its own count as actually making the server a safe or comfortable environment.

#dndads #dungeons and daddies #cw grooming #cw sexualizing minors #8wing

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nobody-wants-ice-cream · 4 years

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Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 1, We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals.

Some context before the cut: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

We Only See Each Other At Weddings And Funerals

The story opens with a random scene. I know why this is important now, but for a first time viewer this is a strange Russian show with no subtitles. Sin for the fact that this opening scene could drive away audiences when they could have opened with Pogo’s monologue or the sudden birth scene. +1

Sudden birth. I know that this is what starts the whole series, but not once do these assholes discuss the implications of sudden birth. That shit is traumatic and must have induced a lot of trauma in the mothers. Sinning for trauma. +1

The russian ladies all help this poor girl. Teamwork and togetherness gets a sin off. -1

How did they get her swimsuit off enough for her to give birth without just taking the whole thing off? Did one woman happen to have a pair of scissors on her so they could cut the crotch? Because one piece suits are not that flexible downstairs. They didn’t take it off her, it’s still covering her. Sinning for lack of realism or explanation. +1

This narration should have happened much sooner. +1

Buying children. Literally buying children. And he gets seven so he buys them wholesale. Seven sins because Sir Reginald Hargreeves is a dick that bought seven children. +7

One sin off for the soundtrack now. All the songs used in this show are bops! -1

Ellen Page starts playing the Lindsey Stirling Phantom of the Opera piece on the lowest string when the piece starts on a high note. One sin for lack of musicality. +1

Minus one sin for Ellen Page’s vibrato. Not many people pretending to play the violin get that so accurate. That or this was the talented body double. Either way one sin off for musicality. -1

“Please send more food” Reginald Hargreeves is a dick to his adopted children. He didn’t feed Luther enough, so who knows what he did to the ones he didn’t like as much. +7

Also, Luther has presumably spent four years in this base on the moon. Did he hit his head every morning? You would think that he would learn to duck. +1

One sin off for the moon plant. -1

I’m taking 10 sins off for the special effects of this entire series. -10

That car transition between Diego’s and Allison’s entrances was out of place. I know it’s meant to show that Allison is far away from the action. But did we really need that? It’s not shown when transitioning from the red carpet to Klaus in rehab. +1

What is keeping the lawnchair that Luther has on the moon down? It looks lightweight. Does he have it nailed to the moon? Is there now a lawnchair on the moon forever? +1

Tom Hopper is an excellent actor. He nailed the “just got the news that my father is dead” without saying a single word. -1

Diego doesn’t bother to untie the family he saves. He caused property damage and severely injured the thugs that broke in. No wonder Patch has a problem with him being a vigilante. +1

“Allison, will you wear Valentino to the funeral” +1

One sin off because Robert Sheehan has already won my heart as Klaus and he hasn’t said a single word yet. And for the little jig he does when he gets the drugs. Interesting choice, but I like it. I could be biased because I’ve watched the series already, but I don’t care. One sin off for Robert Sheehan. -1

Why was Vanya allowed to be playing to this empty theatre with spotlights on her? Does she have an arrangement with maintenance? Is that why the orchestra isn’t set up? +1

One sin off for the Hargreeves mansion. The set designers did an amazing job.-1

Creepy shrine portrait of Five is creepy and somehow manages to not look like Aidan Gallager. This could be a stylistic choice to show that Reggie didn’t care about Five, in which case, another sin for child abuse. +1

Creepy statue of Ben is creepy. And it doesn’t look like Justin Min or Ethan Hwang. Who is this statue honoring? +1

It has been stated that Ben’s death broke up the academy. Yet, the other four assholes stuck around for one more portrait after his death? +1

Vanya doesn’t close the doors behind her when she walks into the mansion. +1

Diego’s outfit is central to introducing his character. However, it is dumb as hell and he probably stabbed himself with the knives in the harness multiple times. Especially the ones on his back. +1

Diego is a dick to Vanya at their father's funeral. I know Reggie was a jackass, but Jesus Christ, Diego. Have some tact. I know this is meant to show that Diego doesn’t have any tact, but this is such a severe line. +1

In the first shot of Reggie’s bedroom there are 6 freaking lamps. What is he, Bella Swan? And later, there are three more. +1

David Castaneda really brings Diego to life with his interaction with Luther in Reggie's bedroom. -1

I know I already took sins off for the special effects, but Pogo deserves another two off. Special Effects team, you did good. -2

“How long has it been since Five dissapered” is the most obvious bit of exposition/foreshadowing. To the point where it reads lazy. Another option would be Vanya asking “How long has it been since” and trailing off from there. Pogo knows what happened. This is a crucial reveal, let the audience wait for it a bit. +1

One sin off for Vanya being a good sister to Five. Fluffernutter sandwiches and leaving the lights on is heartwarming. -1

Props to these child actors for being able to portray the way Reggie treats them and how that affects their emotions in the scene where they wanted to say goodnight to Reggie. -1

However, Reginald Hargreeves is a dick to his adopted children. I will keep sinning this. +7

After Reggie shuns and ignores his children, Luther’s hand on Ben’s shoulder is a subtle way to show that Luther and Ben were sort of close, which is what an excerpt from Vanya’s book implies in the comics. Good job directors or actors for making that choice! -1

Robert Sheehan in the office scene. This is where we meet Klaus as an audience for the first time with dialogue, and he fucking nails it. -1

“Thank God he’s not our real father so we couldn’t inherit those cold dead eyes! Ahh! Number Threee-” The delivery on that line is excellent. -1

Klaus’s dangly necklace that looks kind of like dog tags foreshadowing the real dog tags he wears later on in the show. -1

No way in hell Klaus’s skimpy outfit provided enough concealment for that massive box. In fact, in the shots we do see of his back, we should have seen the outline of the box. +1

Sir Reginald Hargreeves is as obsessed with lamps as he is with collecting children. His office is full of them! +1

“Do you think he wears that thing in the bathroom” “Like in the shower” “Yes, absolutely” Allison and Luther have some good interactions. This is where they really act like siblings making fun of another sibling. -1

A woman who told bedtime stories to her kid about her uncle on the moon forgets that said uncle has been on the moon and judges him when he doesn’t know about her divorce.+1

“Rumor thing” Way to be specific, Luther. +1

Allison’s expression at the family meeting when she takes a sip of her drink. Emmy Raver-Lampman is what makes this character likeable. -1

Reginald Hargreeves was a dick to his children. The whole favorite spot thing? Yeah that. Golden child abuse victim. +7

Sir Reginald playing tennis with Hitler line. -1

Luther accuses his siblings of killing their father. Have some tact man, not at the funeral. This makes sense for the character and his circumstances, but I am still sinning it because Luther doesn’t think he did anything wrong. +1

I feel kind of bad for Luther after his siblings leave the room. Great acting on Tom Hopper’s part. -1

How did Allison get into the bank? +1

Luther straight up throws this man out of a building! That guy is 100% dead. And then he admonishes Five for being a killer later! +1

“Guns are for sissies, real men throw knives!” is a line that would only be spoken by a twelve year old that has never faced the judgement of people he isn’t related to. Also, Diego practiced this line in front of a mirror. +1

But that throw was badass, so... -1

Also, how did Klaus, Diego, Five, and Ben get into the bank as well? We only see Luther enter. And presumably Five teleported in. So were the rest already in there? +1

Five manages to jump faster than a bullet here, but in episode two he’s a lot slower when jumping from one side of the table to the other. You could make the argument that the table is in the way, but there was a human being and a bullet in the way here. +1

“Woah! That’s one badass stapler!” This is the first sin off because Aidan Gallagher can act, and it will not be the last. For all his grumpy 58 year old man, he also manages to shine while playing a young version of said grumpy 58 year old man. You would think that one or the other would be a little weak, but no he nails both performances. -1

But, how did Five switch the gun and the stapler? And why do we never see him do this again with more useful items like a briefcase or one of the machine guns used by the local commission hires? Can he only switch items with a similar mass? How does this power work? +1

Luther is the one that tells Ben that there's more guys in the vault to kill. Not Klaus who could have been like “a ghost said there's more guys in the vault”. What exactly did Klaus do on missions? He isn’t shown helping the hostages or fighting in any way. +1

“I didn’t sign up for this.” yeah Ben, like it’s a summer camp and not your abusive father buying you as an infant and then forcing you to kill people. +1

Kenny’s mom appearance. Also, the woman mixes leopard print leggings, a black dress, a square pattern cardigan, and a hat with stripes and a pom-pom. +1

“Can we go home now” Ethan Hwang had great delivery on that line. -1

Sir Reginald Hargreeves is a dick to his children. He forces 6 of them to kill, and then makes it seem like it’s all fun and games to the one he isolates. +7

When did they get coats and scarves? Did Reggie bring them coats and scarves while coming down to address the crowd? +1

Also, Reggie was on the roof of a different building with vanya! What did the kids do while they were waiting for him? Stand around and look pretty? Not likely, Ben was covered in blood. +1

Also, when did Ben have time to clean up? He is significantly less bloody in the scene where Reggie talks to the press. Yet his mask, uniform, and a bit of his jaw still have blood. This suggests he had time to wipe down. What kind of magic wipes are these that soak up and remove blood quickly and where can I get them? +1

The way the children wear their scarves show their personality. Luther has it done properly, Diego has his flapping around, Allison and Klaus have tied it fashionably, Five has it done well, but not as proper, and Ben has it done like Luthers. Well done costume people or actors who made that character choice. -1

The entire scene when Klaus attempts to summon Reggie from the afterlife. -4

I forgot that Klaus actually calls him Reggie in this scene. I thought it was just a fandom thing lmao. -1

How did Klaus clean up the ashes without leaving evidence on the bar? Did he vacuum it? +1

The cutesy fighting posters are a great set design choice. -1

Allison had her trauma tattoo refreshed at some point. It’s faded on Klaus, but on her it’s perfectly visible and stark. I’m sinning because they don’t show or tell why Allison might want to do this. +1

Also, that guitar Klaus was cuddling in a later scene, was just in the kitchen for some reason. Why? +1

Five and Ben are not part of the I Think We’re Alone Now dance party. I know it’s for plot, but come on! They don’t even have another dance party later to make up for this. +1

Diego and Vanya totally saw each other when Diego went to close the door between the foyer and the living area. +1

Luther and Vanya’s dance moves. No hate on either though because I dance like them if it isn’t swing or any other partnered dance +1

Diego, Klaus, and Allison’s dance moves. -1

Also, the song is heard all the way in the kitchen. There is no soundproofing in this mansion. +1

Luther punching down the airplane is funny. -1

David Castaneda doing those amazing dance moves in character. -1

Oh hello Five. Nice of you to show up and kickstart the plot into being something other than washed up superheroes are really sad and abused. +1

“Daddy!” -1

Why were Five’s powers affecting random objects? +1

Klaus is the only one with self preservation. “I vote for running” +1

“Does anyone else see little Number Five, or is that just me” is a great line because Klaus can see the dead. However, the dead don’t show up in massive portals, otherwise something like that would have happened when we see Dave in The Day That Wasn’t. +1

Five asks for an exact date and then Vanya gives him “the 24th” real specific, Vanya +1

Five doesn’t close the fridge properly because that doesn’t matter in the apocalypse -1

“In the end I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time” “That makes no sense” “well it would if you were smarter” the mark of someone being smart is being able to explain concepts like this in layman's terms. If Five were as smart as he said he was, then he could have been able to come up with an analogy. That or the showmakers have no clue what they’re talking about and wrote a bunch of science-y bullshit to make Five sound smart. +1

Diego was ready to throw hands with Five, someone who looks thirteen and was thirteen until Five explained otherwise. +1

“Dolores kept saying the equations were off” so in other words, Five knew that his equations were off, but he still risked it. +1

But also, Five knew his equations were off, but he was so desperate to see his family that he risked it anyway. -1

Nations Gazette paper has articles that look like they’re actually about the headline. -1

“What part of the future do you not understand.” -1

Aidan Gallagher’s delivery in that scene really set the tone for his character. Impressive. -1

Five decides to dress in the full on school boy getup. Complete with the tie and the blazer when those items aren’t necessary. +1

Aidan Gallagher and Ellen Page are two kick ass actors. They play off each other surprisingly well. -1

“You mean like what happened to Ben” “Was it bad?” What happened to Ben? This remains a sin until they explain it. +1

“May the darkness within you find peace in the light” that sounds really bad. What a horrible thing to have on your statue. +1

Jordan Claire Robbins’s performance of Grace -1

Luther and Diego are so emo that they don't need umbrellas. You’re in The Umbrella Academy! This had to be a personal choice to not carry one. +1

Klaus’s face when Luther dumps out the ashes. -1

The camera cuts to Five when Diego says that Mom gave them actual names. -1

The fight between Luther and Diego is stupid. +1

Klaus and Five fight over who is going to protect who. +1

“Stop it!” “Hit him! Hit him!” -1

The detail on Ben’s statue. It shows his toe and knee have been touched many times by people who presumably miss him and love him. -1

Luther punches Ben’s statue in the crotch, which makes Klaus’s face 10x funnier once you remember that Ben was probably there too. -1

Luther punches Ben’s statue in the crotch and beheads it, suggesting that Luther had something to do with Ben’s death. -1

Luther punches Ben’s statue in the crotch. +1

Klaus puts his cigarette out in reggie’s ashes. -1

Reggie narration +1

Reggie is a dick to his kids +7

The stupid, bright green jumpsuits +6

What is the point of this exercise? How does running up the stairs make them better heroes? +1

Young Diego either practiced “That’s not fair, Five’s cheating” or his stutter is only there when the plot calls for it. +1

Child Abuse tattoos +12

The fact that Vanya feels left out because she didn’t get a child abuse tattoo. Reggie, you fucked up these kids real bad. +2

We think that Reggie is comforting Luther after he got a child abuse tattoo, but no, he’s actually just attaching monitors to his head. +1

Reginald Hargreeves likes to watch young children sleep. +7

Vanya foreshadowing. Her monitor showing more activity then the cut to her taking one of the pills is brilliant. -1

Vanya still doesn’t close the academy door behind her when she leaves. +1

“An entire square block, 42 bedrooms 19 bathrooms” Five are you a real-estate agent now? +1

“Dad hated children too, but he had plenty of us!” Klaus would be excellent at cinema sins. Seven more for child abuse +7

What are the rules to Five’s jumps? We only really see him jump to places he can see unless he is time traveling or in the instance where he jumps to the car. Speaking of, the car had the keys in it. Reggie, are you trying to get it stolen +1

Diego is a dick to Allison about her divorce. +1

Klaus and Diego’s interactions make me happy. -1

The Klaus theme is a wonderful piece of music. -1

Robert Sheehan making David Castaneda laugh. -1

We get our first glimpse of Luther’s arm here. It’s super weird and vague and only teases the reveal. This is where the ape reveal should have been for the audience and where it would have made sense. Doing the reveal in a later episode is weird. +1

Five doesn’t know how to break correctly, which contradicts “I know how to do everything” +1

Something I just noticed, Five completed the uniform not only with the tie and blazer, but with the hair gel too. +1

The towing guy chooses to sit next to Five at an empty counter. +1

Five looks so offended when Agnes refers to him as “the kid” -1

The creepy smile Five pulls in an attempt to look innocent doesn’t make Agnes scream in terror. Seriously Aidan Gallagher, what the fuck was that that was absoulutely terrifying. +1

Five attempts to relate to a man that looks the age that he should be, but it ends up exceedingly awkward because Five looks 13. +1

The tow truck driver helps him out, but how was Five going to pay for his coffee? We don’t see him with money. Was he just going to jump out to the car? +1

Five never gets his cup of coffee :( +1

“Istanbul was Constantinople/ Now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople”. This whole scene is great. Five plays with them like he did in the bank scene which shows that even if he did age, he didn’t do it around people so he doesn’t have maturity. -1

Five stabs a guy with a mop and kills him. -1

Five stabs a guy in the crotch with a pencil, then uses the same pencil to stab him in the eye. In between he throws a plate at another guy. This is badass. -1

Five jumps in a way that actually does make two of the idiots shoot each other. Which means that technically, Patch was right. -1

Five kills a man with his bare hands. -1

But he stops to put his fucking tie back on. +1

And yet after all that, the goriest thing is when Five pulls the tracker out of his arm. Props to the makeup department and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skill for making that look so real. -1

Five should be way sweatier when he walks out of Griddys. Unless he moped that up with some napkins? What are these super absorbent napkins and where can I buy them? +1

Agnes should be far more traumatized. And definitely shouldn’t have survived that. +1

Diego is emo with the monocle. +1

Luther flashback narration. +1

Klaus, thankfully interrupts this. -1

“Number 6 “Ben” (deceased)” -1

We can see Ben depending on if it’s Klaus or Diego talking. -1

The vigilante mask Diego wears +1

Five jumpscare in Vanya’s apartment. +1

“Rapists can climb” yes Five. Continue with the criminals that can climb. Including you. +1

This whole scene is the best ending to an episode in the entire season. -1

Aidan Gallagher and Ellen Page play off each other with subtle expressions. This acting talent is amazing. -2

“The world ends in eight days and I have no idea how to stop it” “I’ll put on a pot of coffee” roll credits. I love this ending for many reasons. It’s a total mic drop moment. -2

Overall review:

While actively looking for nitpicky things, I got to see the first in a whole new light. Both the great parts and terrible parts stood out in a way that they didn’t when I wasn’t looking for them. Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, and Ellen Page were the stand out actors in this episode. All three contributed something significant that didn’t heavily rely on the script writers.

The child cast also really stood out to me. All seven of them had very limited screen time (I am counting Gallagher playing a child version of his character in this assessment) and they absolutely made the best of it. Out of all of them, Ethan Hwang stood out to me because of his overall great delivery. I hope that we see him play Ben in a more in-depth way in season 2.

Don’t get it twisted, I genuinely like this series and I think that it tells a great story. I just think it’s fun to nitpick and look deeper. After over analyzing everything else, it’s time to get back to basics. Especially because the season 2 trailer could drop any day now.

Total: 82 sins

Sentence: Tennis with Hitler and Sir Reginald.

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #Allison Hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #i worked really hard on this

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every-kirishima-eijirou · 4 years

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The Beauty of Red Riot’s Origin Story: Episode 72 Analysis (LONG POST AHEAD)

Well, here we are! I’ve been waiting ages to watch this episode, and now, it’s finally done, and I am more than happy with how it turned out. I’ve seen it in both Japanese and English, back to back, and both Toshiki Masuda and Justin Cook knocked their performances out of the park, and the emotion conveyed in their voices only made our boy’s origin story that much more emotional. But WHY is it so emotional? What makes such a seemingly ordinary backstory have such an impact on a viewer? (Especially viewers like, you know, US). Well, this is the purpose of this lil analysis here, so let us explore how Kirishima’s backstory contributes so nicely to his character. (Disclaimer: Manga screencaps are not my translation).

Let’s start from the beginning:

This panel shows us what we already knew to begin with: Our boy Kirishima is good-natured, stands up for others, and has strong, manly convictions. Nothing special, really, and the revelation that he was like this long before he entered UA is a great foundation for his character. In that regard, he has a similar foundation to Deku, but what differs is their struggles. Now, we know Deku grew up without a quirk in a society where quirks have been thoroughly normalized, but what does Kirishima struggle with, if anything? Is that even possible, what with him being so outgoing and boisterous?

As it turns out: yes. It’s VERY possible. This is where we see that our Red Riot is not as infallible as we may have thought. Yes, Deku had a hard time growing up without a quirk, and while Kirishima was born with a quirk just like most others, he grew up being ashamed of it, which if you think about it is a lot worse in some ways. Quirks are hereditary, and for many people, including Kirishima, quirks are also an important part of one’s own identity. This can inspire feelings of depression and even envy towards people with “better” quirks, like Mina. In contrast with Kirishima’s more traditional view of heroism and chivalry, Mina has a flashy quirk and bubbly personality, which is really effective for diffusing the situation with the bullies. This is where Kirishima’s manliness fails him, and no, not because he got shown up by a girl (thank GOD for that). It’s because heroism in the “modern” age favors heroes who can provide entertainment. Someone who’d be right at home in, say, the idol industry (like Mina). According to his friends, Kirishima’s hardening quirk, which he sees as boring, would not fly in today’s society. Now, Kirishima doesn’t care so much about what his peers think of him, but he’s still ashamed of his quirk, so he trains to harden his body and spirit, both literally and figuratively:

Also much like Deku, Kirishima has his own hero he looks up to: Crimson Riot. He serves as Kirishima’s main source of inspiration. It’s where he gets his hardline traditionalism from, and also how he copes with having a quirk he sees as “boring”. Again, this is where he and Deku differ. Deku looks up to All Might in a fanboyish sort of way, which inspired him to strive to be a hero as well. Kirishima, on the other hand, not only sees Crimson Riot as an inspiration to be heroic, but also because they have similar quirks. It’s only natural for a child who’s been conditioned be ashamed of something they can’t help. It’s something I can personally relate to as someone who struggled a lot with sexuality as a teenager, and something many others can surely relate to as well. This makes our boy an effective source of inspiration as well.

However, no matter how hard he trains, both physically and mentally, Kirishima still can’t train himself to not feel fear. It’s only natural for ordinary people to feel fear. After all, fear was what kept humans alive back when they were just starting out. Still, this goes against all of Kirishima’s ideals of what being a hero means. Sure, he has no problem standing up to some regular school bullies, but unlike him, Mina didn’t hesitate to act when her friends were cornered by a 30-foot tall villain in the street. She’s a prime candidate for UA, so what chance does he have of getting in if he can’t stand up to a literal supervillain?

So, he gives up on his dreams of getting into UA. He didn’t act when it mattered. That was it for him. Even worse, the incident where Deku saved Bakugou from the slime monster made headlines. It was good that Horikoshi showed how this affected Kirishima, who was totally uninvolved, because it makes you think of what exactly that implies. After that incident, Deku was miraculously given a powerful quirk by All Might. Maybe if Kirishima were the protagonist, he would have been so lucky, but that’s not the case (more on this later). Despite this, Crimson Riot blesses Kirishima in a more indirect sense:

In his frustration, Kirishima throws a book against the wall, and coincidentally, this hologram-looking thing of Crimson Riot starts playing, and it’s exactly what he needs to hear. As he listens, Kirishima realizes that not even Crimson Riot is immune to fear, but he copes with it by telling himself that failing to save someone because you didn’t do anything is far worse than charging in and giving it your best shot. That way, he can live his life without regret, which is, from then on, what Kirishima strives to do.

Finally, with a fresh motivation to get into his dream school, our boy pulls through (and gets 2nd place in the entrance exams!). To commemorate this, Kirishima dyes his hair and vows to leave his past behind him, and Red Riot as we know him today was born.

This should surprise absolutely nobody, but Kirishima’s is my favorite backstory in the whole series, and to conclude this lil essay, I’m going to explain why. As I said before, his backstory is something a lot of people can resonate with. Feeling shame and self-doubt is something many people go through, and it’s prevalent with people who have conditioned themselves to feel ashamed of something beyond their control. Coming to terms with my bisexuality was a struggle for me, so I can definitely relate indirectly.

This ties into the SYMpathy vs EMpathy argument. A lot of backstories in My Hero Academia, or even media in general, are tragic in a way that not everyone can relate to (not criticism, just observation). Let’s take Todoroki, for example: he was essentially quirk-bred by his father and was abused by him, being trained to the point of overexertion. On top of that, his mother gave him the scar over his left eye, and he has carried that trauma with him his whole life. Not everyone had such a toxic upbringing, but Todoroki sure did, and many people feel sorry for him. In other words, they sympathize. Kirishima, to contrast, had a much healthier upbringing, but has a lot of internalized self-esteem issues that everyone can relate to (or empathize with). While sympathy is the capacity to feel sorry for someone, empathy is the capacity to UNDERSTAND someone. Don’t get me wrong, tragedy is often a crucial element to a story’s narrative (if it’s done well), but it’s sometimes more cathartic for the viewer to see a character overcome more everyday struggles, especially if they can understand them on a fundamental level.

The last argument I will make goes back to what I was saying about Kirishima not being the protagonist, and I think if he WERE, his origin story would not be nearly as impactful. One might say that Kirishima embodies the more stereotypical “hot-blooded” shonen protagonist than Deku does, and I agree to some extent. However, it works better for him to be a supporting character. In most shonens (like Naruto), the protagonist’s backstory is established right away, and as such, the viewer always sees their character in the context of what they were like in the past (we get it STOP SHOWING US THE FUCKING SWING--) In Kirishima’s case, his backstory comes into play much later, and by that point, we are already so familiar with his Red Riot persona that the revelation that he wasn’t always so eager and optimistic hits that much harder, and seeing how it contrasts with Kirishima as we know him in the present feels more rewarding. Yes, we get to see bits and pieces of it early on, like when he feels inadequate after meeting Tetsutetsu and seeing that their quirks are nearly identical, but seeing those feelings fully presented in his backstory only serves to drive that home. In short, we see, at a glance, how far he’s come since then, instead of being forced to watch the whole process from start to finish, and it works really well.

Another common trend among shonen protagonists, as I said before, is their tendency to be blessed with miraculous new abilities to make them special (and that includes Deku). Obviously, that didn’t happen with Kirishima. He had no pro-hero mentor to guide him, nor an all-powerful booster quirk to bolster his hardening abilities. He got to where he did through sheer perseverance and hard work, with only his idol’s words to keep pushing him forward. While Deku also had to work hard to get to where he is, fortune was on his side, and the fact that Kirishima pulled himself up by his bootstraps (so to speak) is, to me, a lot more admirable.

And THAT, my friends, is the core of why Kirishima means so much to me as a character, and even if he doesn’t become the #1 hero in the story, he’s my personal #1 hero. So, on that note, thank you for all your support, and as always...Stay sturdy!

tl;dr I FUCKING LOVE KIRI SO MUCH YOU GUYS

#admin talks #essay #episode 72 #kirishima eijirou

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replicantdeviancy · 3 years

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☠ What does someone have to do for an instant unfollow from you?

@murdcck | the salty af munday meme | Accepting

Oh, man... This one is both difficult & easy to answer, & a little extra. I mean, we all have our own tolerances & there are some things that just make us go ‘Wow, you really did that’. Personally, I have a pretty high tolerance for bullshit, given the nature of my job irl. I’m used to some very choice things coming out of people’s mouths & I’ve worked with all walks of life on both sides of the liberal-conservatives divide, so I’ve seen a fair share of things. But I have my hard limits.

One things I have concluded is that racism is never okay (Yes, against white people as well. Racism is racism. Don’t be a bigot. Skin color & origin don’t matter. It’s the individual that matters, & if the individual is a piece of shit, look to their upbringing & environment instead of their melanin levels for blame). If I find out someone is a racist they’ll be missing a follower.

The next is any kind of phobia against the LGBTQ+ (OOC obviously. Characters are exempt so long as it’s in character). I understand criticisms & again, each individual is different, but being anti gay, trans, or queer of any kind is a really bad look. Especially homophobia or transphobia (I have a little story under the cut if you care to look).

Also, if you blatantly do not read or respect my rules. This one is very crucial, as I have crafted them to help with my anxiety & my personal discomforts.

The next is being an extremist or fascist. I’m too old & too tired to be seeing that brand of crazy on my dash & it makes me pretty darn anxious. I’m just here to write & make friends with awesome people. Thus far I’ve done a relatively good job of that, & I’d like to keep that positivity going.

Oh,& lying. I don’t mean about silly little things. I mean straight up lying to my face or to people about me. Not cool, bro.

Storytime: tw;transphobia. No URLs, fandoms or any identifiers will be used.

While I was in the very early stages of dipping into a new fandom for a crossover type scenario I came upon a blog for a character I’d have personally liked to write with. This person followed back, I sent a couple memes. Everything was peachy keen. I anticipated they would want to write with me, as most do when they’re mutuals, in theory. I reached out with the intent to plot something out & we got talking. They were familiar with Detroit: Become Human & my characters, which was a plus. I thought I had been rather fortunate. They wanted more information on my Connor’s human verses, so I linked them the current synopsis I had going. Immediately they began policing why my Connor was transgender &, as one might expect, my heartrate & anxiety instantly spiked.

I was appalled. They began grilling me on whether or not I was trans & the like. That’s incredibly disrespectful & honestly, it’s nobody’s god damn business what I am. No self-respecting individual would push someone to out themselves as non-cis & quite frankly, anyone who does is an asshole. I’ll make a side note here & state that it hadn’t been my original intention to make Connor transgender. He simply developed that way. That was where his character was most comfortable & that’s how he became. At the time this individual claimed to be trans as well as their partner, of which, frankly, I think was a falsehood to keep themselves from sounding like a massive transphobe. I can’t prove it & I want nothing to do with them, so I’ll keep my theories. I want to make it clear that this is only my opinions & not necessarily factual, only a reasonable conclusion drawn from the context of our conversation.

Next they had stated they don’t let their character have sexual relations with trans characters, which, again, is very skeevy. It was claimed it triggers them, but again, I have my doubts on their claims. That’s all I will say on that. Regardless & transphobic sentiments aside, this proves they also did not look at my rules as I very, very clearly state I absolutely under no circumstances (unless I really know/trust you & am comfortable & even then it’s a grey area) will ever write smut on this blog. Ever. I am a sex-repulsed asexual & I know my limits on tolerance. The insinuation alone that I was only there for a sexual ship was egregiously upsetting.

At the time I did not immediately block as I needed a moment & they had put my stressed arse on the defensive. But I lost sleep over it (I also had something else very stressful going on) & so I wrote a firmly worded statement about their behavior & asked them to do better in the future, as well as reevaluate themselves from within, before blocking them for my personal comfort & safety. It was a gross & upsetting encounter, & I’m so, so glad that I’ve never encountered someone like that before or since in my time on tumblr. My time here has, for the most part, been incredibly rewarding & pleasant experience. I like to keep things positive here. The real world is crazy enough right now.

#murdcck #> ˢᵘᵇʳᵒᵘᵗᶦᶰᵉ ᴵᶰᶦᵗᶦᵃᶫᶦᶻᵃᵗᶦᵒᶰ ⁻ ˾ ʀᴇꜱᴘᴏɴᴅ ̚ ⁻ ᴱˣᵉᶜᵘᵗᵉ #˾ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍᴍᴇʀ ̚ ;; ᴵ'ᵐ ᵃ ᶜᵒᶫᶫᵃᵖˢᶦᶰᵍ ˢᵗᵃʳ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵗᵘᶰᶰᵉᶫ ᵛᶦˢᶦᵒᶰ.#tw; mentions of transphobia #tw; mentions of racism #tw; mentions of homophobia

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chickgander45 · 3 years

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Sql Interview Questions You'll Keep in mind

The program has lots of interactive SQL practice exercises that go from easier to challenging. The interactive code editor, information sets, and also obstacles will certainly help you seal your understanding. Mostly all SQL job candidates go through exactly the exact same nerve-wracking process. Here at LearnSQL.com, we have the lowdown on all the SQL practice and also prep work you'll need to ace those meeting inquiries and also take your occupation to the following level. Narrative is finishing the elements of development of de facto mop up of test cases defined in the design and sterilize the reporting % in joined requirementset. If you're speaking with for pliable docket jobs, below are 10 meeting inquiries to ask. Be sure to shut at the end of the interview. And also exactly how can there be obstacle on liberation comey. The first affair to celebrate or so the emplacement is that people. We have to provide the void problem in the where stipulation, where the whole data will certainly duplicate to the new table. NOT NULL column in the base table that is not picked by the view. Relationship in the database can be defined as the connection in between greater than one table. In between these, a table variable is much faster mainly as it is stored in memory, whereas a short-term table is kept on disk. Hibernate allow's us create object-oriented code and also internally converts them to indigenous SQL questions to perform versus a relational database. A database trigger is a program that immediately executes in reaction to some event on a table or view such as insert/update/delete of a document. Mostly, the data source trigger helps us to maintain the honesty of the data source. Likewise, IN Statement runs within the ResultSet while EXISTS keyword operates online tables. In this context, the IN Statement also does not operate questions that connects with Online tables while the EXISTS keyword phrase is made use of on linked inquiries. The MINUS keyword essentially deducts in between two SELECT queries. The outcome is the difference between the first query as well as the second question. In case the size of the table variable exceeds memory dimension, then both the tables do in a similar way. Referential honesty is a relational database principle that recommends that accuracy and uniformity of data should be maintained between key and also international secrets. Q. Checklist all the feasible worths that can be stored in a BOOLEAN data area. A table can have any number of foreign secrets specified. Aggregate query-- A question that sums up details from multiple table rows by utilizing an accumulated function. Hop on over to the SQL Method course on LearnSQL.com. This is the hands-down best area to evaluate and consolidate your SQL abilities prior to a huge interview. https://geekinterview.net You do have full web access and if you need more time, do not hesitate to ask for it. They are extra worried about the end product instead of anything else. Yet make indisputable regarding thinking that it will be like any type of coding round. They do a via end to end examine your rational in addition to coding capability. As well as from that you have to analyze and apply your method. This won't call for front end or database coding, console application will certainly do. So you have to obtain data and afterwards save them in listings or something so that you can use them. Piece with the 2nd interview, you will certainly locate far and away regularly that a much more elderly collaborator or theater director by and large conducts these. Buyers intend to make a move in advance their buying big businessman obtains searched. Obtain conversations off on the right track with discussion beginners that ne'er give way. The last stages of a locate telephone call should be to guide away from voicing aggravations and also open a discourse nigh completion result a outcome can pitch. Leading new house of york stylist zac posen dealt with delta staff members to make the special consistent solicitation which was introduced one twelvemonth back. The briny event youâ $ re stressful to discover is what they knowing and what they do or else now. And this is a rather complex query, to be sincere. Nevertheless, by asking you to create one, the questioners can examine your command of the SQL phrase structure, as well as the method which you approach solving a issue. So, if you don't procure to the appropriate solution, you will possibly be given time to assume as well as can definitely capture their attention by how you attempt to resolve the issue. Making use of a hands-on strategy to dealing with practical tasks is oftentimes way more vital. That's why you'll have to manage functional SQL meeting inquiries, also. You can complete the two questions by claiming there are 2 sorts of database monitoring systems-- relational and non-relational. SQL is a language, designed just for working with relational DBMSs. It was created by Oracle Corporation in the very early '90s. It adds step-by-step attributes of programming languages in SQL. DBMS figure out its tables through a hierarchal manner or navigational fashion. This serves when it concerns saving data in tables that are independent of each other and also you don't want to transform other tables while a table is being filled up or edited. wide variety of online database programs to help you end up being an expert and break the interviews quickly. Sign up with is a query that recovers related columns or rows. There are 4 sorts of signs up with-- internal join left join, ideal join, and full/outer sign up with. DML allows end-users insert, update, recover, and erase data in a data source. This is one of the most prominent SQL interview concerns. A gathered index is utilized to purchase the rows in a table. A table can possess only one gathered index. Constraints are the depiction of a column to implement information entity and uniformity. There are two degrees of restraint-- column level as well as table degree. Any row typical across both the result set is gotten rid of from the final output. The UNION key phrase is used in SQL for combining multiple SELECT inquiries however deletes duplicates from the outcome collection. Denormalization allows the access of fields from all typical forms within a data source. With respect to normalization, it does the opposite and also places redundancies into the table. SQL which means Requirement Inquiry Language is a web server shows language that gives interaction to database areas as well as columns. While MySQL is a kind of Data source Monitoring System, not an actual programs language, more specifically an RDMS or Relational Database Administration System. Nonetheless, MySQL likewise implements the SQL phrase structure. I responded to all of them as they were all simple questions. They told me they'll call me if I get picked as well as I was quite confident since for me there was absolutely nothing that went wrong yet still I obtained absolutely nothing from their side. Basic questions concerning family, education, jobs, placement. As well as a little conversation on the solutions of sql and java programs that were given up the previous round. INTERSECT - returns all distinctive rows chosen by both queries. The process of table design to decrease the information redundancy is called normalization. We require to separate a data source right into two or more table as well as specify connections in between them. Yes, a table can have several international tricks and also only one primary secret.

Keys are a crucial feature in RDMS, they are basically areas that connect one table to one more and advertise quick information access and also logging via managing column indexes. In terms of data sources, a table is described as an arrangement of organized access. It is more divided right into cells which have various areas of the table row. SQL or Structured Inquiry Language is a language which is made use of to connect with a relational data source. It supplies a way to adjust and produce data sources. On the other hand, PL/SQL is a dialect of SQL which is made use of to boost the abilities of SQL. SQL is the language made use of to produce, update, as well as customize a database-- pronounced both as 'Se-quell' and'S-Q-L'. Prior to starting with SQL, let us have a short understanding of DBMS. In easy terms, it is software program that is used to produce as well as take care of data sources. We are mosting likely to stick with RDBMS in this short article. There are likewise non-relational DBMS like MongoDB made use of for huge data evaluation. There are numerous accounts like information expert, data source manager, and data architect that need the knowledge of SQL. Besides leading you in your interviews, this article will certainly likewise give a basic understanding of SQL. I can additionally advise " LEADING 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks" by Matthew Urban, truly wonderful book when it concerns the most typical SQL coding interview inquiries. This mistake usually appears because of syntax mistakes on-call a column name in Oracle database, notice the ORA identifier in the error code. See to it you key in the correct column name. Additionally, take unique note on the pen names as they are the one being referenced in the error as the void identifier. Hibernate is Things Relational Mapping tool in Java.

#sql interview questions #sql interview questions and answers

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pauladchnd2c · 3 years

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Something Told Research

Conceptual still life photography

Tips:

1. Choose Subjects that Speak to You

What you photograph is completely up to you. Have a search around the house to see if you can find something simple but interesting to start with. Please don’t feel like you have to take photos of fruit or flowers just because everyone else does: think outside the box without being overly ambitious.

If when you’re out and about something catches your eye, take it home with you (don’t steal it!) or make a note of it so as to remember to try photographing it in a still life context. Try to avoid reflective surfaces such as glass and metal to begin with, as they will be extremely difficult with regards to lighting. Once you’ve mastered the single object shots, try mixing it up, combine objects of contrasting shape, colour, texture and see what you can come up with.

2. Get Comfortable with Light and Lighting

Lighting doesn’t have to be expensive. I know certainly for me that a set of studio lights aren’t really within my budget, so for still life shoots I need to utilize all the light I can get my hands on, and that often means sunlight.

Remember that you have full control over the shoot, so if you want, find a room in which you can block out all natural light by using shutters or curtains, this way you will have complete control over the light upon your subject.

Using standard table lamps can work extremely well if used effectively. Be sure to try multiple positioning set ups, not all light has to come from the front of the object, side and back lighting will add interest, shadows and depth to the shot. Alternatively, choose a room that is well lit via a window, and use this to your advantage. The natural light from one side will comprehensively light your subject and you can compliment this with a lamp or reflector.

3. Get a Good Tripod and Work Your Angles

Depending on your lighting situation, you may or may not need to use a tripod and shutter release. I would recommend using these as they will allow you to observe and work with your subject matter. This set up will also allow you to use slightly longer shutter speeds than usual to ensure a small aperture allowing the image to be in focus front to back, if you so choose.

However, please don’t let a static camera stifle your creativity, it quickly gets forgotten that your camera has been sat in the same position for the whole shoot. Be sure to vary the angles and heights at which you are shooting. Otherwise, before you know it, you’ll have a whole collection of shots all take from the same point with little or know variation. Mix it up a bit. Try shooting at the level of the subject or try a bird’s eye view, looking down onto the subject, but be careful if you are moving around not to cast any shadows on your subject!

4. Get the Backdrop Right

Having a suitable backdrop for your subject matter will play a crucial role in the overall success of your shots. It’s best to keep it nice and simple, so it doesn’t interfere with your subject. A plain painted wall or a large sheet of white or plain colored paper would be ideal.

Think about how your choice of background contrasts the subject, do you want a neutral background, or are there tones that may work in complimenting the shades within your subject. For smaller objects, you may not need a backdrop as such, but instead require a surface to place the items on, for which something like black velvet is ideal, as it absorbs light and looks like a solid black surface.

5. Compose the Shot

The compositional element of your still life work is an absolutely crucial part of ensuring that your work is engaging and unique. Consider the rule of thirds, how can that be applied to your shoot to create a strong composition. Ensure there are no distractions within the frame, just the subject and the backdrop.

Be sure to vary the composition of the subject matter through the shoot and think outside the box. Where are you leading the eye within the image? Are you utilizing negative space or might it work to try and fill the frame? Engage with the subject, what are its defining features? What is it used for? Are you able to put it into context or does it work as a stand alone subject?

6. Take All Day Over It, If You Need

I often find that my mentality surrounding a shoot is dependent on the reason for the shoot. If I am simply taking photos for pleasure or for myself (as opposed to being assigned work by somebody else), I will be less stringent with ensuring that all the aspects of the shoot are as well executed as they can be. This is obviously a bad habit that am aiming to shed, but when it comes to still life photography, there is no reason not to get it right. You have as much time as you need to do a good job!

Unlike a landscape shoot, the light isn’t rapidly changing and unlike a portrait, you’re subject isn’t going to get bored of keeping still for long periods of time. Take advantage of this, set up your subject, lighting, backdrop and camera, try a few shots, then move things around a bit and have another go. If you get to a point where you feel like things aren’t going quite right, you can just leave everything set up, make yourself a cup of tea and come back to it refreshed later on.

Another advantage is that there’s no excuse not to have clean and sharp images, take time to get the lighting and focus just right. If you can get your hands on one, a macro lens will be ideal for this sort of work, however, if not, try selecting macro mode on your camera to give you the best chance of capturing the close up detail in your subject.

7. Get Inspired by the Masters

If you’re struggling with the lighting, composing or structuring of your shots, then you need to find some inspiration, and where better to look than to the original still life masterpieces of years gone by. Have a search online for renaissance still life artists and observe the elements of the pieces.

Studying these paintings will help you to think about form, shades and how the colors work together and will hopefully give you a few ideas on how you can shape your photography work to form strong and engaging images.

8. Develop Your Eye for Still Life Scenes

Now it’s time for you to have a go yourself. Find a quiet day in your schedule and set aside some time to practice. Try setting up your camera and backdrop by a suitably light spot next to a window and get snapping!

Once you’ve mastered the basics, try getting creative, experiment with camera angles, lighting angles and alternative light sources such as candles and lamps. You could even try getting creative with apertures and use a f/1.8 prime lens to achieve an artistic shallow focus. However, if you take one thing from this tutorial, let it be this: still life photography does not have to be of fruit and flowers! Find some unique and inspiring subject matter that gets you excited and start shooting!

9. Perfect Your Post-Production Process

Working with your pictures after the shoot shouldn't feel like a chore. It should be fun!

Photoshop actions are often touted as a great time-saver, but to my mind the biggest advantage they give you is a highly repeatable workflow. Instead of having to work through all the steps from scratch, and action makes a set of choices for you, then you teak and adjust to make things perfect.

https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-tips-to-get-started-with-still-life-photography--photo-8278

Some examples:

Liam J Curtin

Dave Bradley

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aalt-ctrl-del · 3 years

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something that does disturb me about some of these corona virus self-reports, is a small account given by those that have had corona virus or know someone who went through corona virus. Third-party reports, with minimal credibility, but there is a disturbing narrative I review, that comes from a common attribute. There is a dismissive often casualness to these reports, which comes from someone who has done minimal research into the significance.

A somewhat frequent trend is that those young people, who have the minimum side-effects (such was mild aches and soreness in the throat, sometimes headaches) go on to ‘recover’ from corona virus. Then go on to say, “Taste or the sense of smell has not returned. At all.”

To the “it’s just a flu” crowd, this is dismissed as typical allergy or side effects of a mediocre cold. But the account may have a more unsettling significance.

I have a family member, who several years prior, suffered a very mild stroke. A mild stroke can be missed, because it does not have outward significance to those who knew the individual. And, we only put together the context of this stroke and it’s impact on her health, years later, when she displayed early onset dementia. The stroke was only made knowledge years following, after a MRI scan revealed the mild onset of neuro damage that matches to a stroke pattern, though it was not outwardly visible. Though this family member, aware that her mind was damaged but not comprehending how, made the efforts to square away essential assets and put her future care in order. There is more to this story, but it is personal and not relevant to the corona virus tangent I am going through.

Now, of this early onset dementia, our first clue was that her sense of smell and taste was affected. Bear in mind, no neurological discrepancies were visibly apparent at the time - and this medical narrative comes before a time when resources for dementia or Alzheimer's was made readily available. The plot we built around our ailing individual, we had to piece together years later following the discovery of medical documents. However prior to the documents surface, as years endured, it became more apparent that memory loss was setting in, and she was aware of this.

What does this have to do with corona virus? From what we have gathered with the virus, is that it is systemic, it can infect and damage other organs and tissue of the body. It can infect the brain and optical nerves, it can affect the liver and kidneys. There is a distinct difference between pneumonia corona virus and the systemic corona virus - these health issues are one in the same - though it only establishes where corona virus has infiltrated and damaged. It is only when corona virus has infiltrated the lung tissue and presents itself in respiratory distress, that people think that they have contracted corona virus. And I tell my family this, when they have a little throat thrash - Corona virus WILL NOT present itself first as a cold or abrasive throat. You will not know you have it, and when you begin presenting the common and true respiratory distress, it may be too late.

And right here I want to make a very crucial note. Ebola first presents as a flu or cold. Meningitis first presents itself as a flu or cold. Measles first presents itself as a cold or flu. Invasive fungal sinusitis first presents itself as a flu or cold. A deadly bacteria microbial that killed a 6 year old in Texas, first presented itself as a cold or flu, or corona virus.

What all these illnesses have in common, is that, they present firstly as a common cold or flu, but if the medical institute which treats the infected fails to work fast enough to actually diagnose the individual, they will die. Yes. Ebola is fatal to many people without hospital intervention and antiviral treatments, and even still if it is not controlled quick enough the infected person will perish. Measles is deadly to children AND adults. Invasive fungal sinusitis is often fatal, unless the contaminated tissue is hacked out of the persons face - this usually results in disfigurement. The point being, because something has been described as a little flu or cold, does not mean it is harmless - it only means that we can see these symptoms presented. It is a prescript response the body has, to many viral or bacterial infections, due to an inflamed reaction to compromised tissue. That is what a sore throat is, tissue contaminated to invasive cells which the bodies white blood cells must destroy and remove - this results in abrasion or a ‘burn’. When you want to refurbish furniture, you first must remove tarnished and unsightly top coat through sanding. You can accidentally disfigure your furniture project if you are not careful, or need to do repairs on weaknesses or damage inflicted by age. The body is the same way, the cells destroy the infected cells and some cells which are not infected - this is the cytokine storm which puts individual infected with covid, into the hospital for essential medical intervention.

Now back to this topic of dementia and neuro damage. These young people as reported casually, having recovered a ‘mild’ infection from covid, and did not present any symptoms or barely ‘noticed’ any aches or whatever. They still report a loss of taste and smell. Why this is concerning to me, is it can mean that covid cells infiltrated the brain and got up to some not good businesses. NOW, I am NOT here to say, “omg, these people are doomed. Oh no.” What I will say, is that they ARE NOT CURED.

The body likely responded to some sort of infection, it might have only affected the sinus cells. Whether or not antibodies were produced is unknown. There is a possibility that the headache is a result of the body attacking compromised cells in the brain, and if that sounds scary, DO NOT LET IT MAKE YOU AFRAID. This is very important. This is only a cautionary segment, and a plea for those who have suspected they may have been exposed to covid, or have recovered from covid, to be cautious from here on out. Neuro cells can rebuild themselves, to a degree. Neuro cells or brain cells, are notorious for being permanent, non-replicable. But they can be fixed by small increments. It can also take months, or years, in an individual that is healthy. This is why I say those who have lost some sensory, must absolutely be careful. Covid cells have a very direct plan of attack, they are very illusive in the body, and cells that have gone through the trauma of protecting you from this virus may be weakened to some degree.

This is why I am adamant about directing focus to the lack of immunity or the relapses when they occur, to those that previously thought they recovered from covid. I saw a beautiful post on here a few days prior, about a woman who is HIV +, but is able to have children and a husband, without fear for them contracting the virus, because she has medicine to keep the viral count down. Thus, her family does not need to worry about HIV, her children can live a normal life, and she can have children. It’s a blessing.

It is also a very important narrative for the corona virus, an illness we are still struggling to understand to the full of our capacity. This speculation I have that antibodies formed following a corona virus infection, may be short lived or unreliable to future infection. If a person is subjected to a high concentration of virus load, such as our healthcare workers, the prospect of infection and a lethal infection increases. This is why metropolitan areas need harsh restrictions due to the corona virus, the high concentration of people increases the infection rate - probability - of a positive infection. The more covid cells you encounter, the higher risk and possibly the more severe your infection because your body is not capable of keeping up with the infection onslaught. Healthcare workers MUST BE EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS - that is why they wear hazmat suits while treating covid sufferers. They are in a viral load element, and many can not go home to their families because the risks are too great.

If you suspect you have had covid or may have encountered someone with covid, reduce your interaction with people. Do not go out. Treat yourself like you are still struggling with the virus, even if you feel you are not. Behave like you are still taking the medication your doctor gave you, even though you feel better. Let your body do its job to its fullest, before you go out courting covid once more. If you keep subjecting your body to a trauma, then the cells become eroded and run down - it increases the probability of a severe infection which will have ultimate consequences.

“Young people seem to bounce back” is a highly irresponsible narrative. We do not grasp the full effects of corona virus infection in young people. We have no test group, nor a control group. But we can follow patterns. The cases increase, due to the false belief that corona virus is not serious. It likely comes from some young person believing, “I recovered and didn’t feel that bad, thus, the virus is not that bad. I am very healthy, and the virus didn’t stand a chance.”

Wherein the truth is, your body managed to get the virus under control to the point the young person felt good. And yes, because the young person may be healthy, but they are not exempted from a second, or third infection. IF THE ANTIBODIES ARE NOT THERE. This is where we reach the relapse, reinfection, and the ongoing lethargy that some people endure. The virus is still present, but it is managed by the body. The body is producing antibodies, but the virus is still producing cells which attack the body.

This may also explain the “negatives” of those that test negative, but still feel like crud. The negative of a covid test, might mean that there is not sufficient viral load to reach a positive result. I could be wrong. All I have right now are speculation, theories. But the doctors are telling us fundamental things, and not going into specifics why.

You do not want to contract corona virus. It does not care how healthy you are, it’s primary mission is replicate and spread, and feed on hemoglobin.

When people say, “Yeah, I still don’t have my sense of taste and or smell back.” I am very alarmed. Because when someone dismisses something so essential, my first concern is not, “That is common in colds”; I begin thinking, “This virus attacks any tissue, and the sinuses have been traumatized. How long does this last?”

We do not know enough about this virus to be complacent. It does not behave anything like a cold or flu, aside from symptoms which are a synonymous onset to every other kind of horrendous viral or bacterial infection with a high fatality rate. The cytokine storm is a very sudden, aggressive onslaught on anything compromised by corona virus cells - including cells that may have not been infected let alone compromised. Individuals who come across as very proud to have recovered so efficiently from a possible corona virus infection, may be health compromised or primed for a second more serious infection.

And last, if you are a person who does not know where you liver is located, then you probably shouldn’t conclude you’ve recovered from the corona virus. And final, if you lost your sense of taste or smell, you need to be more cautious from here on out because it is possible you are not fully recovered.

#corona virus #coronavirus #covid19 #covid #covid 19 #covid-19 #wear a fucking mask #wash your hands #watch your distance #viral behavior #rona #corona #beer #i feel like Im talking to a brick wall that believes it is a fluffy fog bank #you are not a fluffy fog bank youre a fucking brick wall #there is no way in hell i will try driving through you only an idiot would do that

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sylleboi · 4 years

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𝕾𝖊𝖊𝖐𝖊𝖗𝖘 | 25/11/19

When I initially heard of the content for this brief, I couldn’t help but get excited. I have a soft spot for illustration and concept art, as well as world building and writing (especially fantasy). After reading through the brief for “Seekers”, I immediately thought of a short story I have been writing for around a year and a half at this point, the plot and context fitting perfectly with the challenge that the brief sets.

During the morning we briefly went through the good things and the things that “need improvement” from the past two briefs;

Good:

Responding to the workshop and technical skills. This includes how each person within the class have responded to the challenged on a technical level, being really good.

Developing ideas past the workshop activities and building technical skill through repetition and synthesis. This is purely based upon the development each individual have gone through and made thus far and exploring beyond what the brief asks to do, as well as using more primary reseach at a higher rate.

Understanding technical terms and their use within the specific subject. This describes how well we do at resiting all the terms thrown at us.

Need improvement:

Drawing & Repetition Make sure to draw often; ideally every day, but in general just as much as possible.

Drawing from observation- draw from primary research! We do this a little, but we have to keep at it and stick to it.

Evaluate and conclude It’s important to make sure to evaluate and conclude at the end of each blog post; “What have I learnt and what will I do?” Also try and be more conclusive and forward with the evaluations. It’s also important that we make sure to keep reflecting upon everything we go through each day that we work.

Visual language Our research needs to talk more about the visual language; more about what you can see and why this is important to you and the work you have done and will produce.

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𝕾𝖊𝖊𝖐𝖊𝖗𝖘

(2D problem solving)

Aims and objectives

Be able to analyse and research a 2D problem in art & design.

Be able to use an integrated approach to 2D problem-solving in art & design.

Be able to use evaluation to support solutions to problems in 2D in art & design.

Using an integrated approach means to apply what other things we have learnt as well as integrating all the ideas we have, to create a successful concept, story and narrative for this brief.

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What have I learnt, and what will I learn now?

I have learnt:

Rotoscoping

Character turnaround

Model sheet

Frame by Frame = sequence

Illusion of life

Digital programs (photoshop & illustrator)

I will learn:

Character narratives

Fantasy

Frame by Frame animation

Key poses

Primary observation and research

Concept art

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Are there different types of characters?

Protagonist

Antagonist

Sidekick

“Damsel in distress” & “Male hero”- try and subvert to be inclusive and original!

Ice breaker task - Key terms

Find the definition for the following terms (these need to be presented in your production file in your own words to establish the character design part of your project):

Who is the Protagonist?

This is the main character or one of the major characters in a play, film, novel, etc. It is not at all unheard of that the protagonist is a heroic figure for. They make the key decisions and experience the consequences of these decisions and actions. Protagonists usually go through a journey to learn and evolve upon themselves.

Who is the Antagonist?

They are the rival of the protag. A person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary. They are often portrayed as characters with a dark background; an example of this could be an evil ruler that grew up in an abusive environment or something alike.

What is an Archetype?

This can be defined as a very typical example of a certain person or thing, often very generalising/stereotypes, but this is not how you would define archetypes in storytelling specifically. Archetypes can be defined as for example; the sidekick or comical release character (the jester), the mentor (wise), the innocent, the explorer, the hero, the lover, the ally, the trickster, the guardian, the shadow, the ruler, the friendly beast. Essentially, they are different roles.

The protagonist should:

Be someone the audience can identify with through empathy.

Go through changes/stages during the quest (emotionally or physically)

Break rules and makes mistakes but is always good at heart, putting others before themselves.

Quest:

A quest is a journey that someone takes, in order to achieve a goal or complete an important task. Accordingly, the term comes from the Medieval Latin “Questo”, meaning “search” or “inquire”.

Heroic protagonist (definition given from the brief):

The main character within a story and told a narrative that goes on a dangerous mission against all odds to save a group of people or a society. Sometimes, the hero sets out on a quest to find a symbolic object or person and bring it or them back to his/her/their home. They also have a particularly large presence in Medieval romance, folklore and Greek and Roman mythology, and have been playing an important role in fiction since the earliest examples of English literature.

What does the fantasy hero look like?

Artists to take inspiration from

Good/Hero/Protagonist:

Simon Bisley

Andrew Maclean

Luke Pearson

Bad/Villain/Antagonist:

Frank Frazetta

Pendleton Ward

Jeffrey Alan Love

Task:

Put together 2 similar “slides” in keynote (hero/villain) with 3 visual examples on each. We then printed them out and then answered the following questions in note form around the artists we chose;

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

Good/Hero/Protagonist:

“Hey, you.”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

Tony Zhou Shuo is a very inspiration artist in my eyes. In the majority of his artwork, he manages to convey shape and readability clearly by using minimal strokes. This is something I have learnt to understand is key for illustrating concept art or general illustrative work for stories. An example, different from the use of shape, is the texture of the brushes he uses. They are rough, creating a feel of sand moving across the rocky desert.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

To me, it feels mischievous, but not necessarily in a villainous way; which is what drew me in to this piece in particular when attempting to find some inspiration for my own character/characters. The hooded figure in the foreground is the main subject, looking back towards the sound of the strangers, thinking the hooded person is just the same to them, a stranger. This automatically makes your eyes wander to the figures in the background, that then point back to the hooded figure. It’s a very smart approach for conveying storytelling within a still image. As an illustrator in particular, it is crucial that you can convey the wanted message or meaning without the use of motion or sound; this is much like in film-making or book writing; if you are vague or limited in the way you tell the story, the viewer automatically fills in the blanks.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

The fact that the overall mood of the painting is portrayed to be bright and warm gives me a feeling of the character in the foreground not actually being “bad”, just questioned (the title being “Hey, you”) and potentially unwanted. I suppose an example of this could be Assassins Creed. The main characters within this world are feared and unwanted by many since they are assassins sent to kill, yet they are not portrayed as being the villains of the story, but in fact the opposite. It all depends on how you choose to portray the character in a given scenario. It can very easily be altered, which is what I did to prove that this point stands. I did this very quickly by just adding a multiply layer and some stars and highlights (as if the hooded guy now is in the spotlight, caught off guard, now indicating that they are up to nothing good.):

“Viking Boy”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I absolutely adore the art style of Tim Mcburnie. It is very stylistic, but it has its own unique flare to it with the use of brushwork and texturing. Primarily this is seen in the landscape. I think he uses different pictures of watercolour and setting the layer mode to something like overlay to create those moody and strong, gritty textures. With the art style being heavily stylised compared to Tony’s work, he uses line very efficiently. Despite the line work being relatively loose and messy, it still manages to make the subject/subjects (the boy and the Viking huts ((village?)) + smoke in the background) stand out without feeling as if they are completely out of place.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

The visual language used for this painting in particular, manages to communicate the rough environment that was the Viking age (793–1066 AD). Back then things worked more primitively; death often being brutal and inevitable if either sick or on the wrong side of the border to enemy territory.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

The composition I find to be really appealing in this particular piece. The way that the boy feels as if he’s gone from his home in the village behind him to begin a journey. He looks young and his expression resting on his face communicates that he seems nervous and wary of his surroundings. To me, he seems innocent and not a person based upon anything evil; like a hero in the making.

“Night Trip”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

For context, Night Trip is a short comic story done by the artist Mi Dong. I chose this piece in particular (the cover for the story) for multiple reasons, with the main one being his use of line. The comic itself is only illustrated using line work, which isn’t uncommon in comics, but even the cover itself portrays what you can expect in a very clear way. This is what really drives the interest to this Mi Dong’s work in particular. The use of colour and value for this cover picture has clearly been thought about; For the values, it is easier seen when making the illustration black & white;

When looking at the desaturated version, the values already speak clearly by themselves, even without the aid of colour. The subjects base value is much brighter than the backgrounds base value. This makes sure that the viewer can differentiate the subject from the background without a struggle. It is also worth mentioning that the choice of line has also been used to create texture, which works very well as a stylistic approach since it matches all the other aspect of this illustration that I have gone over previously.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

The overall feeling that I get personally is a mix of “overwhelmed”, “daunting” and “fear”. This I believe is based on the fact that the texture of the line work plays such a big role in making the piece come to life. If there were no texture and only flat colour, it wouldn’t portray emotion as strongly and confidently as it does with the texturing applied. The texturing used in this drawing also indicates some kind of “danger”. This is purely because of the way that Mi Dong has chosen not to use any texture on the main subject; in fact, there has only been used flats for the foreground subject- signalling a sense of purity compared to the looming figure in the background.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I think that with everything mentioned about this piece of artwork, It definitely leans toward the feeling of “heroic” if you focus on the main subject, but I also definitely shares traits of “villainous” characteristics if focusing on the background subject. Without knowing the content of the comic itself, the figure seeming to be looming in the dark and behind the subject, the figure might be a distorted version of the main subjects; indicated by their eye colours being the same; infant, they share all the same colours. Weather that’s nothing but a stylistic choice, or of a deeper meaning, it works quite well, because it lets your mind wonder “What does this mean?”, “Why does the person look so afraid?”, “What are they afraid of?- Why are they looking at me? am I the monster?” That is why this cover is successful. It makes the reader want answers, therefore willingly indulging themselves into the story, narrative and plot-line, on their own quest for answers based upon their curiosity.

Bad/Villain/Antagonist:

“Dragon hunters”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I chose this piece for several different reasons. The obvious being; the dragon. My entire plot is based upon the lore of dragons and how they are hunted down by men, so this was great inspiration! The other reason is how my “villain” is not actually anyone in particular, but instead, it is the society living in the universe I have created. People are the ones killing what isn’t actually there to cause harm, but everyone believes that the dragons are cold-blooded killers. Loosely, this is the basic premise of which I base the plot in reality; We kill the earth in ignorance with pollution and plastics choking life, even in a literal sense. - In my story, mankind does this, but with the dragons. They are in the way, and the quickest way to get rid of them is by eliminating them. The drawing is highly rendered, which is what initially (alongside the use of perspective and scale) drew me into it. This illustration doesn’t need words to explain what is happening. The storytelling is so clear and loud, which is absolute key when portraying story within a limited amount of frames (or often even just by using a single canvas).

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

This question can be interpreted in different ways depending on who you refer to; the dragon or the hunters. The dragon seems to be fleeing from the hunters, trying to take it down. For some reason, the overall perspective and scenario reminds me of when you go hunting for the air balloons with your parents in the car to see where they land; it almost in itself feels like a quest. In the painting, it can be argued as to who the bad guy is, the dragon or the hunters? This is where, once again, ones imagination comes into play to fill out the “gaps” and attempt to answer all the questions it sparks. “Why is the forest burnt down?”, “Did the dragon do that?” If so, then why did it do that?”, “Is it evil or did the hunters agitate it or scare it?”.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I think that the fight between whether the dragon or the men are the villain in this is what makes it stand out so much. It tells the scenario clearly, but yet there are so many unanswered questions left to be looked into. You could write an entire story just from this premise alone.

“Dragon Hunter”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I chose this piece of artwork done by Julian Calle for several different reasons; one of them being the use of colour and a potential underlying meaning hiding. The colours used in this illustration are all very desaturated, which works well when referring to the content and scenario of what's happening. It gives off a strong and moody feel without the use of a wide arrange of colours. The other reason to why I chose this piece of artwork in particular, is to do with the fact that it most definitely is based on the Viking age (Which my concept is as well). You can tell by the types of weapons, tattoos and the shield in the background, all being very typical for this time period; Even the shoes are common for this time period.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

Because it feels so messy despite the fact that it’s highly rendered, it gives off the feeling of the aftermath of a long battle. You can almost imagine the characters chest rising and falling to even out their breathing, with the sound of the crows’ flapping wings, settling around the dead bodies of the battlefield. - What I found to be particularly interesting is how a deeper meaning of “a new beginning” after an “end” might be lurking within the sky; behind all the fog and the dark clouds is a blue sky slightly peaking through. In old folk lore, it is not at all unheard of to have used the idea of death being a new beginning, so I thought this was a really smart detail.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I put this in the “villain” section due to the fact that I personally really like how the hunter almost looks barbaric; fearless and bloodthirsty in battle. This is definitely something I will be considering for the design aspect of a specific army in my concept, thought it could also be interesting to try and translate this very “barbaric” design into something that leans more towards the role of a blacksmith or craftsman.

“Swords”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

“Swords” by the talented concept artist Max Steksov is a small collection of illustrations that focus on a heated battlefield. I have known this guys work for a while, and I really enjoy looking at his work. His eye for doing composition and making every aspect of a drawing move, despite it actually being still, is impeccable. Each detail has a meaning to it. He uses texture, but compared to the other artists mentioned in this list, the texture he uses is very fine and less saturated. I find this to be a great way of levelling out the clean feel of his style, while still conveying the gritty and harsh reality that battles that shed blood are.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

To me, I find it to be very successful in conveying a lot of aspects related to war; how morbid humanity can be over things that, in the bigger picture, seems pointless at times. Since I myself have a war integrated into the plot of my story, I found this incredibly inspiring.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

As mentioned: war. Even if it’s portrayed as a heroic thing to do (fight for your pride, land, country or/and freedom), there are also some more villainous underlying factors hidden within this; at the end of the day, all these men battling and killing each other are just like one another; normal men. There are countless stories from WWI and WWII that talk about how soldiers from the enemy have become friends when holding some captive for a little while, to then be forced to murder them a few days later. It’s a dark concept, but that is also just the reality of it.

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Once we had finished the task given, we went over all the different types of creatures and character roles that we could think of, dividing them up into the stereotypical “Good” and “Bad” and “Unsure”, as well as “Accessories” and “Historical inspiration”, all for the benefit of letting ourselves get inspired by the words listed below for our own concept;

𝕸𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖑 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖊𝖘:

Good:

Fairies Unicorn Pegasus Dwarf

Sage (wise/medical) Cleric Paladin

Fawn/Faun Genie Gnomes Knight

Blacksmith Druid Monk

Griffin Hyppogriff Mermaid

Berserker Phoenix Whisp

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Bad:

Goblin Kelpie Boggart Minotaur Hydra

Pixie Krampus Medusa Banshee

The headless horseman Orges Orcs Nymph

Cyclops Triclops Cerberus Orthrus

Warlock Kraken Succubus Direwolf

Imp Manticore Cocotrice Gorgon

Basilisk Cthulhu Syrens Zombie

Ghoul Skeleton Wraith Gargoyle

Reaper Chimaera

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Unsure:

Dragon Familiar Witch Demons

Yokai Trolls Yeti Giants

Centaur Kings and Queens Elf Samurai

Gladiator Rogue Prince and princesses

Kaijo Werewolf Vampire/Vampyr

Elemental Jörmungandr

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Accessories:

Sword Dagger Katana Axe Wand

Shield Potion Spellbook

Crystal Cauldron Spear Broomstick

Crystal ball Scroll Flask Crossbow

Bow and arrow Hammer Witches hat/hats

Armour Helmet Jewellery Flail

Bottle Lantern Knife Torch

Cloak Sickle Sai Whip Pick

Scythe Nunchucks Chakram

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Historical research:

Greek mythology Nordic/Norse mythology

Local witch trials Irish folktales

Scandinavian folklore Japanese folklore

Egyptian mythology Biblical references

Roman mythology

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shemakesmusic-uk · 3 years

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Everyone needs to have Maja Kristina on their radar immediately. She is an incredible artist that is straight out of our pop dreams. Her whole self-titled EP is absolute perfection. Maja has released the song ‘Jessica’ off her EP as a single, and she couldn’t have made a better pick. ‘Jessica’ is a new take on a breakup song that we hope to see much more of. It’s written with the mindset that the person that cheated is at fault, not the person they cheated with. That is the mindset everyone needs to have! Maja sings, “Cause she seems really nice, and I think in the end, Me and Jessica could be friends.” We love to see women lifting up other women, instead of adding to the teardown. It’s a breath of fresh air. Normalize shaming cheaters, but not other manipulated women. [via The Honey Pop]

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Lucia & The Best Boys have shared a new video for ‘Forever Forget’. It’s a cut from the band’s recent EP The State Of Things, it arrives alongside the news that their upcoming support tour with Dream Wife has moved back to 2022. Speaking about the video, director Rianne White says: “'Forever Forget' is a landscape of a feeling. Lucia and I wanted to create a piece of choreography that exists in a solo otherworldly space shaken up by an unsettling sensation of feeling trapped. Guarded by multiple camera perspectives, this movement sequence is shattered like a mirror into pieces and dominated by a blinding sensation of overwhelm, refracting the internal electricity of the brain into view. This video is a portrait of inner turbulence, liberated by Lucia’s untamed and magnetic expression of self. Frontwoman Lucia Fairfull adds: “The 'Forever Forget' video concept has kept completely true to the meaning of the song, 'Baby you've taken me to higher places. It hurts if it's just in my head', is the first lyrics of the chorus. The video portrays this with an other-worldly head trapped space, along with the choreography expressing a state of wanting to escape your own mind and thoughts. The lyrics throughout speak directly about wishing you still had what you once did, but having to face the reality that it is no more, and then trying to erase the memories from your head and move on. Making videos has always been one of my favourite parts about being an artist and over the last year I’ve really detached myself from the idea that I need to be perceived in a certain way and have enjoyed being more adventurous with Visuals. I have imagery almost as soon as Ive written a song so bringing it to life, and creating different characters to go with them is something I really feel helps to get across what I'm saying. I couldn't have brought these ideas to life ('Perfectly Untrue' & 'Forever Forget') without Rianne and Furmaan, and can’t wait to make more with them.” [via Dork]

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Foxes has returned with news of her forthcoming EP Friends In The Corner, alongside sharing new cut 'Kathleen' to accompany the announcement. 'Kathleen' is Foxes' first release of 2021, and follows December's 'Hollywood', which will appear on her upcoming EP alongside last year's 'Friends In The Corner', 'Love Not Loving You' and 'Woman' singles. The new track is produced by Courage (Stormzy, MNEK, Ray BLK) and Charlie Hugall (Halsey, Florence and the Machine), and is an ode to her grandmother Kathleen. Foxes, real name Louisa Rose Allen, says of the single, "My grandma, Kathleen, has always given really good advice so on one visit I thought, ‘why am I not recording this?’. A couple of weeks later in the studio I happened to be going through my voice notes of random melodies and lyrics I’d saved and stumbled across her words of wisdom and within 20 minutes we’d written it with all her advice from the notes. I kept that exact recording of her talking at the end of the song. I don't think I’d be a songwriter without her." She adds, "For me, 'Kathleen' closes the chapter of the last year. Focussing on creativity during lockdown has been essential for me – it’s given me so much strength and positivity. Almost without realising, I ended up writing a whole new album. The new songs have a really different energy and need to exist together as a record. But first I need to release 'Kathleen' as it’s such a special song for me and just seems so right for now. It felt right to wrap these songs up together as an EP before the new album gets released later this year." [via Line Of Best Fit]

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The Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids release the cinematic title track and video from their hotly anticipated second album, Today We’re The Greatest, out now via Lucky Number One. 'Today We’re The Greatest' features a heartachingly beautiful performance from lead singer Hannah Joy and showcases the juxtaposition of her compelling songwriting. The grandiose and romantic notion of the song’s title is offset by the repeated refrain “life is gory and boring sometimes” which both closes the song and also the album – reveling equally in the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. About the song, Hannah explains: “This is a simple song of people being TINY and our lives being FLEETING but in that we are EPIC and GREAT. It’s finding the beauty and majesty of the every day. Therein lies life and meaning. LIFE IS GORY AND BORING SOMETIMES: it’s both hectic and mundane and we have to accept both.” 'Today We’re The Greatest' is accompanied by a stunning music video directed by W.A.M. Bleakley and filmed on the Kiama costal path in Australia.

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Pacific Northwest native pop singer ALITA has released her new music video 'I’m Not Your Mother'. The video is a 50's inspired homage to empowerment and subverting antiquated gender roles. It was co-produced by ALITA & Zach Nicita (VERITE, Anne Marie, MS MR), and co-written by ALITA & Grammy-award-winning songwriter Jesse Saint John (Lizzo - Truth Hurts). “I wanted to create a visual world that put the song into a little more context," exlplains ALITA. "The song has a lot of classic & almost retro influences, from the old movie voices of women to the genre-blending pop, r&b, soul production. I wrote, ‘I’m Not Your Mother’ as a reflection on my own relationships, but I also know how shared of an experience this is for so many women. I see it every day in my friends' relationships, in my own family dynamics, in media. It’s constant. So we pulled in moments from old movies & tried to sprinkle in some history into the song as well. For the video, I wanted to honor the sonic storytelling with an exploration of the modern and classic roles women play. I wanted it to be a little weird & left of center, so there’s a lot of strange Easter eggs throughout the video. We’ve evolved as a species over the years, thank God, but instead of women being expected to be a homemaker, for example, there’s still this expectation for women to take care of and take responsibility for the men in our lives. It just may look a little different than it did 50 years ago. The application has changed, but the subtleties and impact remain. My goal was to tip my hat to that in the video, and just make something that looked nice.”

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Glüme's Instagram bio reads "Walmart Marilyn," offering a succint intro to the LA-based artist's DIY approach to old school Hollywood glamor. She recently signed to Italians Do It Better, making her label mates with Chromatics and Glass Candy with whom she shares a penchant for bittersweet and melodic synth-pop, the perfect backdrop for a struggling ingénue. This week she debuts 'What Is A Feeling,' taken from her forthcoming debut album The Internet, due next month. 'What Is A Feeling' was written after Glüme, who has the rare heart condition Prinzmetal angina, was informed that her emotional health was starting to affect her physical condition. Over a chugging bassline and drum claps she questions the very make-up of her existence, asking questions including "What makes me work?" and "What makes me hurt?" Not even a doctor's orders can keep her away from temptation though, with the chaos of conflicting feelings tied up tight in the song's restrictive confines. “I had a doctor once tell me my feelings were doing my heart more harm than good," Glüme says via email. "I left wanting to completely disassemble my emotions and throw them in the trash. I studied emotions from physical and philosophical perspectives to see if I could outsmart them. But feeling less wasn't an option.” The Internet is out on April 30 via Italians Do It Better. [via The FADER]

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Singer, songwriter, and producer ZAND is known for their uniquely brash brand of self-described ugly pop, and the iconic look that accompanies it is almost as distinctive. New single 'Bald Bitch' is ZAND’s most compelling earworm yet, its crunchy synthesised bassline driving beneath Blackpool accented pseudo-rap and the buzz of an electric razor. It’s the fourth and final cut to be lifted from last year’s Ugly Pop EP. ZAND isn’t afraid of controversial subject matter, with previous singles tackling topics such as misogyny and the stigma of sex work. 'Bald Bitch' is no exception to this trend, with ZAND squaring up to and superficial detractor chosing to comment on their appearance. 'Bald Bitch' is the next installment in the story of an artist who refuses to cow to convention. [via Line Of Best Fit]

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Korean-American musician Jessi says she hopes her new song ‘What Type of X’ will inspire listeners to be “more confident”. The singer-rapper noted that “the most crucial thing” for her is self-love and how important it was for ‘What Type Of X’ to reflect that. “I am a woman of strong mentality and for me, loving myself is the most crucial thing. If you do not love yourself, nobody will do so. On top of that, you have to be surrounded by people who give off positive vibes,” she said. “Through the song, I want to tell people to be more confident and hope they remember that being different is not wrong.” Jessi co-wrote ‘What Type of X’ with Psy, who is the head of her agency P Nation. Psy. She shared that the lyrics were originally written in English before Psy helped to translate them, adding that the duo “did not argue as much as we did in the past while working together”. The singer also noted that, compared to her previous releases, she did not have as much time to prepare for this comeback. Calling herself a “perfectionist”, Jessi added that she feels like she is not fully ready to perform the song on stage yet, although she says she’s “quite content with the single’s quality”. [via NME]

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Newcastle-based trio Cat Ryan have shared the official video for their latest indie-pop stunner ‘Mary Shelley Song’. The band has this to say on the clip: “Our film student friends, Briana and Gabi offered to film a music video for us and it was the first opportunity we’d had to film a professional kind of video. The first thought I had was to have a film noir style video. I think Lucas came up with a loose storyline and the idea to have it in reverse. We all quite liked the idea of a murder plot and with some tweaking of the narrative and, with the help of Briana and Gabi, the ideas came to life.”

#videos of the week #maja kristina #lucia and the best boys #foxes #middle kids #alita #glume #zand #jessi #cat ryan

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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If wokeness is a religion, can we keep a wall of separation between it and the state?

I can’t take any credit for this idea as it comes entirely from James Lindsay. Wednesday he published his argument along these lines and it is more than 30,000 words long. So long that I’ve only read a fraction of it at this point but the gist of the argument is clear:

Critical Social Justice has already encroached deeply into our public education system and halls of government in the United States. In fact, this trend is accelerating to a pitch so extreme that complaints that schools are operating in the service of political indoctrination rather than as houses of a basic and liberal education, as they were initially conceived, are rapidly becoming plausible. The second is that a time may come in the not-distant future in which this totalizing and totalitarian worldview could be installed as the de facto state religion, even while it elides categorization as such. The state endorsement—or worse, enforcement—of any faith falls directly afoul of the protections the U.S. Constitution was written to ensure to individual citizens, and, in fact, to other systems of faith that would disagree with it. The question is, which totalizing worldviews that are not traditionally recognizable as faiths should be treated in the same way for the same reasons? While the answer to this question is not immediately clear, it must have to do with how they function in society and in the lives of those who believe them.

Therefore, to put it directly: It is my belief that the contents of the Critical Social Justice worldview should be protected as matters of private conscience only, and they should also be limited as such. That is, I want to contend that the Free-exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment apply to Critical Social Justice. It is therefore not merely a philosophical exercise to ask whether or not Critical Social Justice constitutes a religion but also a serious legal one that gets to the very core of what the American Experiment has always been about—freedom of belief and from state religion. It is my intention here to make this case as briefly as possible, which means it will still be very long.

Almost immediately, Lindsay confronts a problem with his argument: Wokeness exists in a post-modern framework, one which doesn’t rely on any metaphysical beliefs in forces outside man himself. In short, it’s a religion without a god or gods.

As a general note that was central to my preceding piece, it is crucial that one understand Critical Social Justice as a fundamentally postmodern phenomenon. As most religions that we are familiar with present in a genuinely premodern way by invoking literally believed spiritual forces that exist in a separate plane of reality or as imperceptible-but-causal “energies” and engage in worship and practice in ritualistic ways that are, in turn, recognizably holdovers from premodern liturgical contexts, it can be difficult to see a postmodern faith for what it is. In a postmodern faith, God is dead, and the forces that work in a mysterious way in the world are necessarily sociological as a result. Formalized liturgical modes have been deconstructed and replaced with something more decentralized, chaotic, and even ironic. Because the central object of interest in all postmodern thought is social power, postmodern “deities” are systems of social power and the “social” phenomena that construct them.

Lindsay’s answer to this is that religions can be described not just metaphysically but sociologically.

Religions are, in the most general description, moral communities that provide three basic types of psychosocial (combined psychological and social) needs for their adherents and participants: meaning-making, a sense of control, and the capacity to establish, police, and understand one’s place in a community of people with shared (religious) values. While the precise definition of a religion may remain fuzzy and elusive, speaking functionally, these properties seem to form an identifiable skeleton upon which the meat of the matter is organized.

It should be almost immediately obvious that the worldview of Critical Social Justice satisfies all of these criteria. Life in the community gains meaning in the (almost cosmic) battle for “liberation” against systemic oppression, and individual meaning (and agency) are defined almost entirely in terms of this struggle. The point of the struggle is obviously to achieve liberation from all systemic oppression, which can be achieved by gaining control over the machinations of society and the harms that an improperly managed society will mete out to some of its members, often the most vulnerable. A hierarchical community is set up by the doctrine of intersectionality around this view of the world, and policing of one’s status within it (as assessed under the term “positionality”) is famously vigorous within Critical Social Justice-run communities. A volume could be written on this topic, and yet even these few sentences are enough to convey the point that “Woke” communities are moral communities to most readers even passingly familiar with the ideology.

Lindsay does eventually argue that Social Justice has a kind of deity and a kind of teleology (though again not a metaphysical one):

Religious moral law positions God as Moral Lawgiver and (Moral) Judge, and if we were to follow Aquinas again, we could say something like that there is something that gives moral law and is the ultimate judge of moral wrongdoing, and this all men call God.

In this respect, though not necessarily in others and in not all regards, Critical Social Justice quite plainly has a God-concept, and it might be called (following but extending from Marx) “the Eye at the End of History,” which is something of a metaphor for that which looks back upon all of history from its end with the capacity to judge that which was on the right side of history and that which wasn’t. The Eye at the End of History will be able to tell the abolitionists from the slavers, the colonized and decolonizers from the colonizers, and the oppressed from the oppressors.

While they don’t believe this Eye of History is a metaphysical being they behave as if such a moral lawgiver exists. And in the light of this future judgment it’s possible to make all kinds of absolute judgments about good and evil in the world. And not only in the world but in the adherents themselves. Lindsay spends several thousand words comparing the Social Justice believers to the Puritans and notes how both groups have a similar fixation on sin, introspection, confession and the need for outside correction. Here’s his conclusion to the section about Social Justice as religion:

I think this does a thorough job of summarizing the case that Critical Social Justice, as an ideological worldview, is very similar to religion in most of the relevant ways. It forms a moral community that is designed to meet the same psychosocial needs as religions are, though it is decentralized and disorganized (I have previously called it “disorganized religion,” though “decentralized” might be nearer the mark). It provides a mythology, metaphysics, and moral law that binds the community and enables “divinity”-based psychosocial valuation of adherents and others, and this gives rise to clear “critical” duties of conscience in everyone the system can touch. It ontologically grounds its moral commandments against the long view from the End of History, as a kind of legacy-based moral lawgiver and adjudicator. It possesses its own epistemological framework as well—one rooted in the critical mythology of problematization and postmodern mythology of lived experience and discursive production. Since it proceeds from a mythology with its own creation myth, metaphysics, and moral law, this view is totalizing to those who adhere to it, as is typical of religious belief. This system of belief is, in fact, constructed along the same lines as how Augustine organized Christianity and Aquinas “proved” the existence of God. Finally, it gives way to fundamentalism of both types and manifests in puritanical form, which is something that, while it is not limited to religion, is very common within sects or cults that arise within religious movements and worldviews.

From there he moves on to the legal argument, i.e. if it is a religion then it should be bound by the same rules as other religions including the separation between church and state. At this point, I’ll skip ahead to his conclusion:

Given the situation we find ourselves in, in society today, this matter demands serious debate. If this argument is correct, Critical Social Justice must be protected under the Free-exercise Clause of the First Amendment, so that any who wish to hold this religious view for themselves as a matter of personal conscience must be protected in doing so. That is their fundamental right, and it shall not be infringed. In the same turn, the rest of us have fundamental rights to our own consciences as well, and Critical Social Justice has no standing upon which it can infringe upon them, or us. The Establishment Clause should remove Critical Social Justice from our schools, our administrative state, and the halls of our government, as this faith, like any other, cannot receive state endorsement or become a state religion.

It’s quite an audacious argument and I think Lindsay makes a convincing case that wokeism is a kind of alternate religion for a lot of people on the left. Whether it could be treated as such under the Constitution in an interesting question. It’s one thing to argue that it’s rational to do so but then you’ll wind up being shouted down by tens or hundreds of thousands of Social Justice Warriors who aren’t the least bit interested in debating you on the point. It’s just not part of their game.

This content was originally published here.

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saras-almanac · 7 years

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I am procrastinating actually working on my portfolio so I figured why not write about my frustrations.

This will surprise no one, but I’m still thinking about the Emmerdale garbage and boring storyline that is Rebecca’s pregnancy. The reason I can’t let this go is just the absolutely lazy writing with it. What exactly was their goal here?

That’s actually a serious question. What were they trying to accomplish? What was the end result? Because how it stands right now, there isn’t one. (Under cut because this is a long slightly rambling thing.)

I have seen a few theories popping up, trying to explain it but that shouldn’t be entirely on the viewer! (I actually wrote about them all in here but it turned into a monster document so I’ll post that later as a random side post.) It’s fun to have theories that we share and try and piece things together, but there still needs to be a base of something. There’s nothing with this storyline.

It literally feels like they wanted us to completely forget the last year or so because if you think about it, it makes absolutely zero sense. I talked a little bit about Robert and the context surrounding the ONS that sort of strains the believability for me. But what I want to talk about is Rebecca.

First of all, if you’re going to impregnate someone, probably best to actually give them a storyline or at least a central voice regarding that pregnancy. Call me a crazed feminist, but if you’re having a woman get pregnant just to fuel a man’s storyline, not a great storyline to have. Even though I hate this storyline, they could have at least pretended to care about Rebecca. I mean, if you’re going down this route, making sure Rebecca actually gets a point of view is slightly crucial. Especially with how desperate IM is for us to love Rebecca. How can we love someone who barely feels like a person more days? Giving us more of her point of view or Robert’s on the actual baby would have helped the disconnect between Rebecca’s storyline and the plot that her womb has created. They have literally separated Rebecca from her own pregnancy storyline.

On that note, why did you have to completely alter her personality and character? Writers, you do remember that this is the same woman who slept with her sister’s boyfriend for an undisclosed amount of time up to and including Chrissie and Robert’s engagement party? Robert is by no means off the hook for this, but they both were present and knowingly doing that. Even when Rebecca came to Emmerdale she came to try and betray her family for Robert.

She’s not this innocent victim—something I thought the show had made pretty clear especially in regards to Rebecca’s relationship to Chrissie. However, that’s the route the show decided to go down post the ONS. It’s ridiculous and honestly a little insulting that they felt the only way to get people on board with this idea is have her be this completely innocent bystander that this pregnancy just happened to. It’s like they introduced Rebecca almost like a female Robert but then tried to transform her into a female Aaron because people love Aaron but it doesn’t work.

The thing is, as frustrating as it was to see Rebecca constantly trying to start things up with Robert again and constantly throwing herself at him, at least she was a fleshed out character then. They could have played with that. They could have used that dynamic that when she found out she was pregnant she decided to keep it just because it might make Robert choose her. Or maybe try to play the longer con of knowing that him and Aaron would probably break up again in the future since that’s sort of their MO and she’s just lying in wait again.

Or maybe she decides this is a chance to start over with someone who will love her unconditionally. Or it’s her way of trying to fill Chrissie’s shoes; she has a baby and lives at home with their dad while trying to learn their business. Or maybe it’s just because she has actually wanted a child for a while but never had a steady enough boyfriend for it to happen.

To be quite honest, the only thing I remember her saying is that she wants to be a mother. That’s great, but then they completely dropped everything that has to do with Rebecca. Vic’s the one putting together the nursery on apparently Robert’s dime. Actually Vic’s the one doing everything. If you’re going this route, then actually go down it and don’t hesitate to show both sides of this argument. It’s especially frustrating because they haven’t really given Robert a chance to figure out how he feels about this potential baby either.

They literally threw this plot together as a way to tie Robert to the Whites forever and be instrumental in booting them from Home Farm. But if you don’t know what your characters want, what their motivations are, then what’s guiding them?

Another point I wanted to come back to regarding Rebecca’s personality is the idea that Rebecca has apparently no more business sense. No sense at all. Wasn’t this the same woman who flew in on a helicopter and had the street smarts to figure our her own way for years? I could understand her struggling a little bit, but not to the extent that they have made her. I’d see her more like Charity when Charity was trying to help Debbie with that business deal—a bit out of her depth and just used to doing things differently. If she’s that bad at it, then why is she running Home Farm? You can’t honestly expect me to believe that Lawrence would have even allowed her to help if she was that awful at it—before his breakdown and break up Ronnie. But that might just be me.

They completely destroyed any potential for her character with this storyline and seem to be confused as to why people are not on board with her. First of all, you used her to break up one of the most supported pairings on the show; that was always going to be a hard thing to come back from. Just on principle alone there’s numerous fans who hate her just for that. Two, you took all her personality away and replaced it with a blinking humainoid whose only purpose seems to be interrupting Robert whenever he’s in a conversation with someone other than her and crying over her dad. We literally had the same scene with her about 15 times. How do they expect us to root for a character that doesn’t seem to actually be a character anymore? As much as I hate this storyline because it’s insulting to so many people on a rather personal level to assume that having a biological child seems to trump any other relationship you might have, there were still ways to have this come about with people still on board with Rebecca. Definitely not everyone, but I’m willing to be there would have been people who at least dealt with her a little bit.

That’s why I’m holding out hope for some sort of twist or scheme that Rebecca’s been planning this whole time. Don’t get me wrong, it would completely suck because they still need to give us something to hold onto regarding this scheme so it doesn’t come completely out of nowhere—unless of course it blindsides her as well. I just don’t want to believe that they would have thrown away all of Rebecca’s character for this.

#emmerdale #robron #rebecca white #if all they cared about was getting people to like rebecca than using her womb as a plot is not a smart move #literally just including rebecca in the plot with her womb would have made her so much better in my mind #but they didn't actually want to give her a storyline #and they wonder why people are just not on board with her #it's ridiculous to me

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swelldomains · 7 years

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Local SEO Checklist: The Small Business Owner`s Guide to Better Organic Search Rankings

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an overwhelming subject for any type of business owner.

After all, you're active running your company-- something you understand best-- as well as don't have much time to find out a totally new advertising and marketing technique.

However, although it sounds frightening, fundamental SEO approaches are a NECESSITY if you're mosting likely to have any type of chance of appearing on local online search engine results web pages (SERPs) when potential consumers look for your company, and it's particularly crucial if your company remains in a larger, a lot more competitive city.

The excellent information? The suggestions I'm concerning to share are absolutely traits you can do and can learn by reviewing this article as well as making the effort to carry out these local Search Engine Optimization strategies.

Before We Begin, What IS SEO?

SEO includes methods and also strategies you can use on your site and off of your web site with the goal of assisting your site rank greater when individuals look for your company, items, or services on search engines.

It includes a slew of principles and approaches, such as long-tail keyword phrases, metadata, verification codes, HTML, material marketing, online company directories, etc. Don't panic, I'm going to prevent the jargon as a lot as possible, and educate you the basics of neighborhood company Search Engine Optimization in under 15 minutes.

Lesson 1: The Newbie's Overview to Search Engine Optimization Key phrase Research

When you do a search online you start by getting in a search query in the search box, something we've all done hundreds if not thousands of times.

When you believe about exactly how people search for your business, you want to think of the terms your consumers actually search and also stay clear of sector jargon that you and also your colleagues understand and also use.

As an instance, one of my Search Engine Optimization customers was a maker of huge commercial buildings and also barns. The proprietor insisted that the appropriate term for a particular structure was a "message frame building." Exactly what he didn't understand is that even more people were looking for the old-fashioned term "post barn" when they looked online.

It was tough, but I was lastly able to convince him that we needed to compose as well as enhance the content on his page of what his clients were actually browsing for-- pole barns-- not the market lingo term-- blog post framework building.

This is a vital lesson every business has to learn.

To discover just what people are really looking for, you can use paid as well as totally free key phrase study tools such as Ubersuggest and KWFinder.

Google additionally makes it relatively simple to figure out exactly what individuals are looking for with their cost-free Google Search phrase Planner. Despite the fact that AdWords is for pay-per-click (Pay Per Click) marketing, you can establish a complimentary account and also use their key words organizer device to figure out the amount of people are looking for your key phrases, which works for SEO as well.

You can additionally see just how competitive the key phrases you're attempting to place for are. Just what you intend to try to find are keyword phrases that have a significant search quantity but with tool to drained competitiveness due to the fact that you'll have a much better opportunity of ranking for these types of keywords/keyword phrases.

iSpionage is another great tool for SEO keyword research. You can make use of iSpionage to uncover all the SEO terms your rivals' rank for in order to recognize which terms you might also intend to target. In the screenshot listed below, for instance, GoDaddy.com places for terms like 'webhosting bundles,' 'hosting configuration,' and 'looking domain' which means these are all terms you as a competitor could likewise want to attempt to rank for.

Now that we have actually discovered a bit concerning SEO keyword research and just how important it is to use the terms your consumers are in fact look for, allow's relocate on to find out even more concerning the search engine results pages (SERPs) themselves.

An Intro to Online search engine Web page Results (SERPs)

You'll see on the SERPs when you search for a local business that there are paid advertisements from Google AdWords marketers in addition to Google neighborhood company listings (the map location).

Below the neighborhood company listing you'll see the natural search results.

Organic positions are essential because you don't pay to obtain those desirable leading places. It's all based on just how well Google assumes your site matches what the searcher is looking for.

Keep in mind that you want to jump on the online search engine' local listings AND ALSO organic positions if whatsoever possible.

Here are some quick suggestions for on-page keyword optimization to get you began:

The basic regulation is to optimize individual pages on your website for 2 to 3 key words at a maximum. Just ensure you do not overuse the keyword phrases. Rather, utilize them around a couple of times per web page and also be sure to use basic synonyms or other methods to describe the key words you're aiming to place for. If you're a floral designer, you'll desire to attempt and also place for the search key phrase "flower designer," yet on that page you could additionally make use of the terms flowers, blossom setups, flower, funeral blossom plans, and so on (KEEP IN MIND: Search engines, particularly Google, have gotten a lot more innovative over the years and they're currently able to look at the context of the page and also establish just what the web page is around, which implies you don't need to overstuff keywords as well as can in fact get penalized if you do.)

Now that you have a better understanding of neighborhood SERPs, allow's have a look at some on-site optimization you can do to place greater in Google.

Important Metadata: Web page Title and Description

There are two pieces of HTML code that you must have on every page of your internet site, and it should be unique on all web pages based on the material of the pages.

Of training course we're discussing the Title and Summary HTML tags.

The Title tag appears as the title for pages in search results pages, and also the summary shows up below the title, as seen in the screenshot listed below with the title in a red box and also the description in a blue box.

Thus, your Title and also Summary metadata tags end up being just what individuals see when they do an online search, so you can think about this as a one-shot possibility of catching the searcher's attention ... virtually like a tiny ad.

If you were looking for a veterinarian in Dubuque, IA, would certainly you click on the above listing based upon its Title as well as Description? (Hint: I possibly wouldn't due to the fact that it does not tell me anything about just what solutions they offer. It's merely not compelling and also just includes realities like the businesses address, telephone number, and also e-mail address.)

To see exactly how your Title as well as Description appears for your site-- or if you even have them on your site-- go to a web page on your website, best click, as well as select View Web page Source. Then press CTRL + F and a Discover box will certainly appear. (This will certainly look something like the screenshot listed below.)

Next, search for Title as well as you'll see your page Title. Do the exact same for Description.

If your Title is simply "Home" you've got some job to do and require to function with your web designer to obtain this remedied. If your site is a WordPress site, you can also mount the free SEO Yoast plugin which will make including Titles and Descriptions per of your web pages a piece of cake.

Keep in mind that all of your page titles and summaries must be enhanced to include keywords and to interest searchers in order to boost your click-through rate for natural rankings.

Next Up: Google+/ Google My Company, Bing Places for Business and also Yahoo! Local

Did you understand that Google, Bing, as well as Yahoo! deal regional companies FREE business listing pages? Yep. Absolutely, 100%, entirely free.

You could include photos, your logo design, company description, hrs of procedure, etc. The twist? YOU need to put in the time to case as well as maximize your listings. It's fairly very easy to go via the asserting procedure, yet right here are a couple of tips:

Make sure your business name shows up SPECIFICALLY as you desire it to throughout ALL directory homes. Choose your authorities company name and also stay with it. (Do not have your company name noted as "Tom's Gym as well as Health and fitness Center" on one directory and "Tom's Health and fitness Center" on another). See to it that the very same is real on your website also using the correct name throughout your site as well as in the footer of your website as well.

Your address MUST be consistent as well as proper-- right down to whether you lead to out "Roadway" vs. "Rd." vs. "Rd" I understand it seems nitpicky yet it's essential. As well as no P.O. Boxes. It's additionally useful to place the exact address on your Call United States web page along with in the footer of every web page of your website.

Phone number: Make sure you have a local phone number listed on your site. Make use of the standard method of listing telephone number -LRB-319-RRB- 555-5555 or 319-555-5555 vs. 319.555.5555.

To check and claim your Google My Business/Google+ web page, check out http://www.gybo.com/business. To declare your Bing Places for Business regional business listing page, go to https://www.bingplaces.com/, and also for Yahoo! Neighborhood most likely to https://local.yahoo.com/ and also click on the "Include a Business" link below the page.

Setting up your neighborhood web pages is relatively straight-forward, however you'll most definitely wish to adhere to the three ideas above as well as make the effort it takes to establish up these pages. It's a little bit of a discomfort to get every little thing established, but it's absolutely worth the trouble!

70+ Various other Online Business Listings You Can Claim

There are around 70+ various other on-line local business directory sites that you're additionally mosting likely to intend to make sure to claim and optimize. Instances include Yelp, Citysearch, DexKnows as well as EZlocal.

Optimizing your internet site and also online business directory site listings for your company's physical location offers you a wonderful opportunity to obtain new consumers as well as enhance sales, and also could also enhance your possibilities of being located when people do a regional search.

However, being findable for local related searches will not happen without a technique. Just like Google, Bing and also Yahoo, you need to be consistent with your Name, Address, and also Telephone number (NAP). Hang out totally loading out all your business' info on each of the directories, i.e. your business hours, business summary, category, kinds of payment approved, etc.

And don't be overwhelmed among the directories you should insurance claim. Rather, do a few every day or you could employ an expert Search Engine Optimization expert or a hourly worker to do the effort for you.

How to Boost Your Online Reviews

Once you assert your online company directories, you'll be able to connect with customers that could leave favorable or unfavorable evaluations concerning your company online. These on the internet reviews are essential to your success.

According to BrightLocal 88% of people depend on online assesses as much as a personal suggestion. Google also shows the number of 5-star testimonials you have in the SERPs.

Begin by proactively trying to solicit positive testimonials from satisfied consumers. As soon as you claim your Google+/ Google My Business page, you'll have an URL one-of-a-kind to your business listing. Place that link in your signature of every e-mail you send as well as include: "Inform us exactly how we're doing. Your point of view matters. Leave us a testimonial by going to XXXXXXX" and also connect directly to your Google My Company page's URL.

By taking a little of time to boost your online evaluates and to guarantee your completely satisfied customers leave reviews, you'll enhance the amount of trust possible clients have in your business.

Don' t Neglect a Mobile-Friendly Website!

Now more than ever you should have a mobile-friendly website. If you do not have a mobile website, drag for you-- you need a brand-new website.

Why? Due to the fact that even more individuals are looking on mobile tools like tablets and also mobile phones vs. home computer than before As Well As Google began this year to punish sites that weren't mobile friendly. Yikes!

To see if your website meets Google's Mobile-Friendly criteria, browse through https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly, enter your URL as well as you'll obtain the results.

Again, if your website isn't mobile-friendly, you definitely need a new mobile-friendly website because you'll obtain penalized by Google or else. I understand that's rough, however it's a reality as well as a reality.

Why Content Is Now a Necessity

Do you hate to blog? Sorry, but you require to obtain over it.

Search engines examine your site for constant web content updates, and also they desire top quality web content, not just an easy mind dump.

Blog messages are also the most effective means to enhance for targeted key phrases and to create new material that could rank in internet search engine. If you have the ability to publish a brand-new blog article at the very least as soon as a week, that's an excellent beginning that will assist your internet search engine rankings.

Start by doing keyword research to discover just what people are looking for, such as " just how to find the ideal dental professional," "exactly how do I make hen noodle soup," "exactly what's the most effective means to drop weight," and so on. Pick one to 2 key phrases or keyword expressions as well as create a blog message targeting those search phrases. Bear in mind, you're creating blog messages for your visitors, so make certain you're not pitching your business but rather you're offering valuable, objective content.

This will certainly aid to build count on with your site visitors while additionally producing more material that can rate in and get located by search engines.

Are You Bewildered by All of These Steps?

Don' t be. From one local business owner to an additional, I recognize you certainly can learn how to maximize your internet site (hell, I educated myself SEO 17+ years' ago). And also that there are several actions to finish means that each box you inspect off ends up being yet an additional method your business is set apart from the competition given that a lot of companies will not place in the moment and also initiative it requires to enhance their web site as well as listings for organic online search engine rankings.

Do a little of this overview each day and also gradually and you will assist your website rank greater in online search engine, which will ultimately mean even more business for you and also less website traffic for your competition!

#business #business owner #business plan #creating a business #marketing #marketing campaign #online business #seo #social media #social media campaign #web marketing

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Can you analyse the post-execution dialogue with Ouma? The one where Ouma called Saihara a dumbass and was into some kind of madness mantra? Would it also be okay if you could analyse the dialogue between Saihara and Ouma during that scene because Ouma became quite distant after that and said that this whole thing became boring after Saihara told me Ouma is all alone? Do you think this somewhat hurt Ouma? I know it was a charade to bring them together, but I do think it affected him a bit.

Of course, anon! That scene is one of the best (and most painful) in the entire game, and understanding Ouma’s motivations and the subtext behind what he’s actually saying is crucial to understanding his behavior in the chapter to come.

I’ll be referencing the full translation of Ouma’s speech in Chapter 4, so please check it out here! A very huge thanks to @basedmoniwa for taking the time to translate all of it!

As with a lot of things that Ouma says, this will require a lot of in-depth analysis and some guesswork to fill in the blanks, but for now consider this my attempt at a sort of “Oumaspeak-to-English” translation. This will get very long.

So we start off just after Gonta’s execution, with the group devastated and Ouma incredibly quiet for a change:

Harukawa:Hey, Ouma… why don’t you talk?What is “the secret of the outside world”?I will not be able to understand unless I know about it,I’m not sure if I can accept it, though.

Shirogane:I-I, also, cannot accept it as it is!Ouma-kun! What’s “the secret of the outside world”!?What is the secret you told Gonta-kun that drove him that far!?

Ouma:………………………………………………

I’ve mentioned it before, but while Maki is asking for genuine purposes, it’s obvious on a reread that Tsumugi is testing the waters here. Gonta is dead and she no longer has to worry about what he either did or didn’t know, and that leaves her the remaining problem of Ouma: she’s obviously fairly certain that he’s on the mastermind’s side, but if he were to reveal a huge secret or crucial information to the rest of the group, he’d become a huge thorn in her side.

I don’t doubt for one second that she would have killed him herself in Chapter 5 had he said anything that indicated he was actually against the mastermind and the killing game.

Being found out by the mastermind is one of Ouma’s primary things to avoid, so of course, when they keep asking him for information, he switches tactics.

Momota:Ouma… If you’re seriously thinking about Gonta,then for his sake, explain all of it to everyone—

Ouma:I don’t want to…

Saihara:…Eh?

Ouma:I said I don’t want to! Dumbass!

We have what I would consider a note of genuine hesitation for a split second, and then he instantly leaps right back into playing the villain. For Gonta’s sake, and for the group’s sake, because after everything he had to do to stay alive in Chapter 4, getting killed without being able to stop the killing game would be literally the worst-case scenario to Ouma’s plans. So he decides to pull out all the stops, and if he’s going to be hated anyway, then he wants to be really, thoroughly despised.

Ouma:Ahahahahahahaha!Did you all seriously believe in such an act!?So stupid!There’s no way I’d cry for someone like Gonta!

Shirogane:I-It was all fake…?

Ouma:Look, if I said the truth there,Gonta most likely would have gotten mad and acted violently.Since it would interfere with the progress of the game if that were to happen,I lied and calmed him down.…Well? There’s a time and place to use lies, right?

His plan of putting the mastermind at ease and making them think his entire display of emotion earlier in the trial was a ruse is clearly working, because Tsumugi seems deeply relieved. If Ouma didn’t actually care about Gonta at all, then she can trust that he’s actually as cruel and chaotic as she thought initially.

This is all nice and fine for the mastermind, but of course the others want a good explanation for Ouma’s words and emotional outbursts earlier. They want to know why he would possibly think it was okay to act like he was sad over his death, only to turn around and act like this the moment the execution is finished. And Ouma has a perfect explanation in place:

Saihara:The truth… Tell us.Why did you do such a thing to Gonta-kun!?

Ouma:Why obviously, because it’s more entertaining in this way!

Saihara:…Eh?

Ouma:I stirred up Gontabecause I thought it would make the game exciting.Let’s think through this carefully, from the very beginning.If I was gonna act “in order to save everyone”,just like Gonta did,there would no reason for me to betray Gonta in the middle of it.Try to comprehend at least this much.

In a reality show clearly meant for entertainment and providing the audience exactly the kind of plot, themes, and characters that they want every single time, Ouma’s awareness of the broadcast (backed up here, as I’ve mentioned in a few other posts) means that he knows he’s an actor and he knows that he stands the best chance of slipping under the mastermind’s radar if he intentionally kicks his own entertainment value all the way up.

It’s things like this that really incline me to believe he was a comedian or a performer in the real world before, because this level of quick-thinking on his feet and knowing how and when to give an audience exactly what they want is such an essential part of his character. He’s extremely aware of the fact that people will like his character on the show better if he plays the role of a character who adds immense conflict and entertainment simultaneously, and it has the added benefit of keeping the other members of the group out of his business and presumably a little more united in their hatred of him.

Saihara:Th-then, for what reason did Gonta—

Ouma:Nishishi… Nishishishishi…I don’t give a damn about such foolish things!Purely, I’m just enjoying this suspicion gamefrom the bottom of my heart!

Despite everything that Ouma has done up until now, Saihara has clearly always tried to pay him some benefit of the doubt. Members like Maki and Momota clearly thought he was beyond reasoning with long before this, but as a detective and as someone relatively sure that Ouma was hiding something underneath that facade of his, Saihara never truly doubted before this that Ouma must have had somewhat justified reasons for acting the way that he did.

But Ouma is intent at this point on cutting ties entirely. While I think there’s definitely a part of him that wants Saihara to surpass all his expectations and use his detective’s reasoning and intuition to piece together why Ouma is like this and what he truly wants to do, his logic and reasoning says it’s never going to happen. And that it’s best if it never happens.

In order to push Saihara and the rest of the group away almost entirely, this is the first time Ouma has ever flat-out stated without beating around the bush that he loves the killing game. People can read into it however they want, but I’m firm in my belief that it’s a lie. If he genuinely loved the killing game, he had a thousand opportunities before this to lead them all astray or betray them or kill them himself. But he knows that if he lies here, it’s not like the group or the mastermind will ever see through those lies anyway.

Saihara (Monologue):After saying that, Ouma-kun smiled eerily.The moment I saw that smile,only one word came into my mind…Malice.Yes, the aura emanating from all over his body,was of pure malice.

Ouma:Behold, I’m the “evil supreme leader”,whose personality is corrupted.The more you guys suffer,It’s just so funny to me, I can’t help it.People experiencing pure suffering makes me happy!There are people like that in this world, too!There are people like me,who spread malice for no reason!

It’s interesting that the key word in this entire part should be “malice,” of all things. If Ouma were truly enjoying the killing game or human suffering half as much as he said, then you would think the aura he’d be giving off would be considerably…happier. After all, characters like Junko, who truly do live for the despair and suffering of others, are 100% ecstatic from the bottom of their hearts when they see it. “Despair-inducingly happy,” as Junko always says. And yet Ouma just feels…malicious.

In my opinion, you don’t get bitter or malicious without having something in particular to hate. And if Ouma didn’t hate the killing game, hate the necessity of lying and manipulating, and even hate himself, then his feeling “malicious” would make absolutely no sense in this context.

Something else very worth noting is that he specifically says his “personality is corrupted.” We have mountains of evidence at this point that Ouma knows his talent and memories are fake, and this just keeps adding to it. Why put his own talent in such a sarcastic context with quotation marks if he didn’t think it was the cruelest sort of irony? Why mention flat-out that his personality is “corrupted” if he didn’t notice the dissonance between his memories pre-game and in-game, and if he didn’t know that he was supposed to actually be a force of SHSL Despair.

If you instead look at this from the viewpoint that Ouma knows all these things, and that he loathes that he has to embrace this kind of role to beat the mastermind at their own game, this entire part of his speech feels…extremely self-deprecating.

He mentions that there are “people like that in this world, too,” and I still can’t help but think this is a barbed jab at the audience. He knows neither the innocent members of the group, nor the mastermind, nor the audience watching outside the game are going to realize that he’s making fun of them, so he can’t help but throw in a bitter indication that by acting cruel and as if the suffering of others was just pure entertainment, he is actually acting just like the audience.

Harukawa:Well then, did you sacrifice Iruma and Gontajust for your own happiness?

Ouma:Is there something wrong with that?Even you, Harumaki-chan, didn’t you kill for money?

Maki’s remark clearly doesn’t sit well with him. Ouma states several times throughout ndrv3 that he doesn’t like or trust murderers, and he only outed Maki’s identity as the SHSL Assassin in the first place because he clearly thought it wrong that she should hide such a dangerous and potentially lethal talent from the rest of them.

He also tacks on the “Harumaki” at the end because of course he’s perceptive enough to know that it’s a nickname only reserved for close friends, and that using it here will only provoke her and the whole group into hating him more.

Ouma:Nishishi… As I thought, Harumaki-chan,that angry face of yours suits you better.Well anyway, you all believe in each other too much.At the very least, you should have watched me a bit more suspiciously.Ahahahaha! If you did, then both Iruma-chan and Gontawouldn’t have died for nothing!

Clearly, he’s getting carried away with his speech now. He’s spewing venom out however he can now, and while he’s still working with the intention of getting them all to hate him more and severing ties with all the rest of them completely, this is also deliberate provocation to try and get someone to run at him.

The obvious two characters most likely to do this are either Maki or Momota, and Ouma is clearly counting here on Maki’s cold composure coming through. So of course, Momota runs at him and tries to punch him, except unlike earlier in the chapter, Ouma is expecting it this time and not only dodges it but counters it mercilessly.

Ouma:Ah, sorry… I only planned to dodge that,but I accidentally countered instead.

Saihara:Momota-kun!

Momota:You, you bastard…!

Ouma:By the way, Momota-chan…I wonder if this is my imagination.It feels like… your punch’s speed dropped, compared to before?

Momota:…Ugh!!

Ouma:Could it be that… Momota-chanis also hiding something from us?

Momota trying to hide his condition from the rest of the group is only going to land him in a world of trouble the more he tries to keep it up (as it inevitably does in Chapter 5), so while he’s already off antagonizing all of them, Ouma decides to get it out of the way and force Momota to somewhat come clean about the whole coughing blood issue.

He’s seen it happening all through Chapter 3 before this when Momota was claiming he just wanted to avoid the occult student council, and no one had thought to pressure Momota for a real answer, so he’s forcing that particular lie to come to an end. Takes a liar to know a liar, and this also backs up the idea that Ouma actually does hate lies and deception.

Harukawa:Just now, that was… Momota said that he hates violence, physical battles, and other such things;You shouldn’t have countered back…

Ouma:Ahaha, did you believe in such a lie!?

Harukawa:………………………………………………You really want to be killed… Don’t you!?

Ouma:Oh? You’re finally getting on board with my provocations?Are you going to say “this one’s for Momota-chan” next?

Saihara:No, don’t do it, Harukawa-san!

Ouma:That’s right, Momota-chanisn’t man enough for Harukawa-chan to snap over on.Just look at him, he’s so lame.He’s just all bark, but in the end, he can’t do a thing.Well, even if you’re the “Super High School Level Astronaut”,you’re merely at the level of a trainee—

Saihara (Monologue):Ouma-kun never finishedsaying his provocation to the end.Everyone else ran towards Momota-kun at once.

Even though both the antagonizing and the punch was actually for Momota’s own good in the end, it’s clear to see that Ouma really, truly is just throwing himself into the villain role here. He’s hating every minute of it, and he wants them to hate him too. The fact that he’s being, in his own opinion, pretty transparent here, and that no one can see through it in the least, is leaving him simply…bitter.

And then there’s the fact that where his own lies are received with universal hatred, Momota’s lie is received with concern and universal acceptance, and Ouma noticeably falters in his facade, just a little bit.

Ouma:Hey, why is everyoneworrying over such a lame person—

Saihara:You’re the one who’s lame… Ouma-kun.

Ouma:…Eh?

Saihara:Momota-kun always has people gathering around him,but as for you, there’s no one.You’re… meant to be that kind of guy.

This is without a doubt, the first time anyone has truly struck back at Ouma. And most importantly of all, it’s Saihara. Saihara, who he’s constantly teased and left a trail of breadcrumbs to follow, who he’s subtly guided through each trial and obstacle that’s occurred. Saihara, who before this was one of the only people in the group besides Gonta who ever believed that Ouma was perhaps not as horrible as he made himself out to be.

And now Gonta’s dead, and Saihara for the first time outright says something worse than “I hate you.” He just says that Ouma is pathetic, basically. That he’s not worth responding to, and that he’ll always be alone.

Ouma:Ahaha! What’s with that talk?Even if you make friends, that wouldn’t make the game more exciting or—………………………………………………Aah, this is getting boring.Somehow, the excitement became less intense.I don’t care anymore…But I’ll just say this…… Because I’ll be the one to win this game.

Ouma can’t manage to throw himself back into the role the way he was doing before. Saihara’s words hit too close to home, and that’s pretty plain to see, considering no one and nothing else in the entire game has ever actually made him falter this badly before.

Ouma has distanced himself from everyone, believed firmly that it was best to work alone rather than with the others because he can’t really trust anyone but himself, and also, to a large degree, believed that he is a horrible person for thinking and doing these things. Hearing from the one person who he constantly found “entertaining” and “amusing” that he’s meant to be alone and that he’ll never be understood, Ouma just becomes…tired.

He’s already achieved his main objectives in dispelling the mastermind’s suspicions and in getting the group to hate him, but there’s no more fun or catharsis in it for him. He goes quiet and blank for a long time, and then says perhaps the most straightforward line in his entire speech.

And what the rest of the group interprets as an ominous line about him being willing to “win the game” via killing, or even being the mastermind himself, Ouma clearly intends as his own declaration of war. He cut all ties with everyone, and this is what it took, so he’s going to go through to the end with trying to put a stop to the killing game.

This was very, very long and very, very fun to interpret and explain. Thank you so much for asking, anon! I hope by providing this kind of analysis to it, more people can come to understand Ouma a little better in Chapter 4 and 5!

#ndr3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #ouma kokichi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #chapter 4 hurts me so much every single time i go back to it #anyway here's kokichiohma's oumaspeak-to-english translation attempt #anonymous

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beesandbooks1 · 4 years

Text

Discussion: Worldbuilding is So Necessary

Original Post

Introduction

Lately I’ve read some really interesting novels that built an intriguing or beautiful or otherwise wonderful world around the reader. But I’ve also read a few duds that just completely missed the mark. I’m a cinematic reader; I like to be able to see the characters, actions, and world unfold in front of me. Not enough or too much description take me out of the reading experience and turn it into reading words on a page, which isn’t fun for me. So today I’m going to discuss aspects of worldbuilding that as a reader and a writer I’ve found are super important.

Immersive Worlds

An immersive world is one where you seamless float into the world of the novel. You don’t even realize that you’re reading words, you just see the world around you as the characters do. This is done through well written prose, beautiful descriptions, and most importantly smart decisions. A sentence can sound amazing in theory, but have just one word that throws a reader out of the reading experience. Once a reader is aware that they’re reading, they’re more likely to notice other strange word choices and see through the world you’re trying to create. An immersive world doesn’t do this, instead allowing reader, writer, and character to float through it with ease.

Insufferable Worlds

The other side of the coin for wonderfully immersive worlds are worlds that just don’t make sense. This includes worlds that try to combine elements of various genres and are unsuccessful, such as worlds that try to create a modern equivalent of a fantasy novel but can’t quite get the formula right. There are also worlds that incorporate just enough jarring elements of various genres, like fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, steampunk, etc. to become a mish mash that doesn’t quite feel right or real. Because that’s ultimately the goal, to make your world no matter what it is feel real. This is easiest when writing fiction that takes place in the real, modern world of course. Historical fiction, too, can be easily immersive by including the right amount of accurate flavor. Creating an immersive world is hard when you’re starting from scratch, which is why insufferable ones where the rules of magic don’t make sense and you create plot holes by the nature of your creatures are so easy to find.

Why you can’t just jump right in

Recently while reading These Rebel Waves, I discovered that it really irritates me if several paragraphs into a situation or conversation, I have no idea what the room around the characters looks like. In These Rebel Waves, I often found myself realizing mid-sentence that the setting hadn’t been properly introduced yet despite the scene starting a few pages back. It really took me out of the story and got me thinking–in fact that was what inspired this post at all.

When setting a scene for a book, you absolutely have to give the reader something to picture. You can build n the scene more as you move on, I’m not saying you have to give a perfect description of the setting before getting to what the characters are doing. But at the same time, clumsily including setting description tacked on to the end of a piece of dialogue or action is equally jarring. Taking a moment to focus on the scenery in the middle of a chase or fight scene will take the reader out of the moment as well. You have to ease into the world, showing a little bit of it before you introduce a character, then a little bit more from that character’s surroundings, including any changes that come up as the character interacts with their surroundings.

Jumping right into the world and its history and its politics and its descriptions before you give the reader something to grasp onto and care about is a good way to confuse the reader. If you haven’t introduced me to the main character yet, I hardly care about the greater political implications of the action I’m watching. Vice versa, if you introduce me to the main character and I have no idea where they fit into this world around them, I’ll be confused and jarred when you finally give that context. It’s a tricky balance, and as a writer I also struggle with deciding when descriptions are important and when exposition is needed.

Final Thoughts

Worldbuilding is an absolutely essential part of any story. Whether that’s establishing what the life of the protagonist in a modern day set story looks like, or expanding a bubble of a magical world into a full blown fantasy kingdom, it’s an exercise in good writing, descriptions, and timing. You have to feed information to the reader quickly enough to keep them interested but slowly enough to let them digest what they’ve already learned. It’s hard not to just jump right in when the world’s already been laid out in your head and your notes for so long, but it’s crucial to remember that the reader doesn’t know anything when they crack open the book for the first time. At the same time, you can’t leave the reader in the dark for too long or they’ll find themselves wondering how in the world your characters exist. Writers and readers alike, tell me in the comments your tips and tricks for worldbuilding, or the things that you like to see when reading about new worlds!

#bookblr #fantasy #writing #world building

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